The Darkest Evening of the Year (3 page)

Chapter
3

B
rian McCarthy and Associates occupied offices on the ground floor of a modest two-story building in Newport Beach. He lived on the upper floor.

Amy braked to a stop in the small parking lot beside the place. Leaving Janet, the two children, and the dog, Nickie, in the SUV, she accompanied Brian to the exterior stairs that led to his apartment.

A lamp glowed at the top of the long flight, but here at the bottom, the darkness was unrelieved.

She said, “You smell like tequila.”

“I think I’ve still got a slice of lime in my shoe.”

“Climbing the table to jump him—that was reckless.”

“Just trying to impress my date.”

“It worked.”

“I’d sure like to kiss you now,” he said.

“As long as we don’t generate enough heat to bring the global-warming police down on us, go ahead.”

He looked at the Expedition. “Everybody’s watching.”

“After Carl, maybe they need to see people kissing.”

He kissed her. She was good at it.

“Even the dog’s watching,” he said.

“She’s wondering—if I paid two thousand for her, how much did I pay for you.”

“You can put a collar on me anytime.”

“Let’s leave it at kisses for now.” She kissed him again before returning to the Expedition.

After watching her drive away, he went upstairs. His apartment was spacious, with Santos-mahogany floors and butter-yellow walls.

The minimalist contemporary furnishings and serene Japanese art suggested less a bachelor pad than a monk’s quarters. He had gutted, rebuilt, and furnished these rooms before he met Amy. He didn’t want to be either a bachelor or a monk anymore.

After stripping out of his tequila-marinated clothes, he took a shower. Maybe the hot water would make him sleepy.

Still feeling as alert and wide-eyed as an owl, he dressed in jeans and a Hawaiian shirt. At 2:56
A.M.
, he was awake for the day.

With a mug of fresh-brewed coffee, he settled at the computer in his study. He needed to get work done before sleep deprivation melted the edge off his concentration.

Two e-mails awaited him. The sender was
pigkeeper
.

Vanessa. She hadn’t contacted him in over five months. He had begun to think he would never hear from her again.

For a while, he stared at the screen, reluctant to let her into his life once more. If he never again read her messages, if he never answered them, he might be rid of her in time.

Hope would be gone with her, however. Hope would be lost. The price of freezing Vanessa out of his life was too great.

He opened the first e-mail.

Piggy wants a puppy. How stupid is that? How can a piggy take care of a puppy when the puppy’s smarter? I’ve known houseplants smarter than Piggy.

Brian closed his eyes. Too late. He had opened himself to her, and now she was alive again in the lighted rooms of his mind, not just in the dark corners of memory.

How are you doing, Bry? Do you have cancer yet? You’re only thirty-four next week, but people die young of cancer all the time. It’s not too much to hope for.

After printing a hard copy of her message, he filed the e-mail electronically under
Vanessa
.

To avoid slopping coffee out of the mug, he held it with both hands. The brew tasted fine, but coffee was no longer all that he needed.

From the sideboard in the dining room, he fetched a bottle of cognac. In the study once more, he added a generous portion of Rémy Martin to the mug.

He was not much of a drinker. He kept the Rémy for visitors. The visitor tonight was unwelcome, and here in spirit only.

For a while he wandered through the apartment, drinking coffee, waiting for the cognac to take the edge off his nerves.

Amy was right: Carl Brockman was a pussy. The drunkard reeked of tequila, but even at a distance, Vanessa smelled of brimstone.

When Brian felt ready, he returned to the computer and opened the second e-mail.

Hey, Bry. Forgot to tell you a funny thing.

Without reading further, he pressed the
PRINT
key and then filed the e-mail under
Vanessa
.

Silence pooled in the apartment, and not a sound ascended from the office below or from the dark depths of the street.

He closed his eyes. But only genuine blindness would excuse him from the obligation to read the hard copy.

Back in July, the pigster built sandcastles all day on the little beach
we have in this new place, then wound up with a killer sunburn, looked like a baked ham. Old Piggy couldn’t sleep for days, cried half the night, started peeling and then itched herself raw. You might expect the smell of fried bacon, but there wasn’t.

He was a swimmer on the surface of the past, an abyss of memory under him.

Piggy is pink and smooth again, but there’s a mole on her neck that seems to be changing. Maybe the sunburn made some melanoma. I will keep you informed.

He put this second printout with the first. Later he would read both again, searching for clues in addition to “the little beach.”

In the kitchen, Brian poured the contents of the mug down the drain. He no longer needed coffee and no longer wanted cognac.

Guilt is a tireless horse. Grief ages into sorrow, and sorrow is an enduring rider.

He opened the refrigerator, but then closed it. He could no more eat than sleep.

Returning to the study and working on one of his current custom-home projects had no appeal. Architecture might be frozen music, as Goethe once said, but right now he was deaf to it.

From a kitchen drawer, he extracted a large tablet of art paper and a set of drawing pencils. He had stashed these things in every room of the apartment.

He sat at the dinette table and began to sketch a concept for the building that Amy hoped he would design for her: a place for dogs, a haven where no hand would ever be raised against them, where every affection wanted would be given.

She owned a piece of land on which hilltop oaks spread against the sky, long shadows lengthening down sloped meadows in the early morning, retracting toward the crest as the day ripened toward noon. She had a vision for it that inspired him.

Nevertheless, after a while, Brian found himself turning from sketch to portrait, from a haven for dogs to the animal itself. He had a gift for portraiture, but never before had he drawn a dog.

As his pencils whispered across the paper, an uncanny feeling overcame him, and a strange thing happened.

Chapter
4

A
fter dropping Brian at his place, Amy Redwing called Lottie Augustine, her neighbor, and explained that she was bringing in three rescues who were not dogs and who needed shelter.

Lottie served in the volunteer army that did the work of Golden Heart, the organization Amy founded. A few times in the past, she’d risen after midnight to help in an emergency, always with good cheer.

Having been a widow for a decade and a half, having retired from a nursing career, Lottie found as much meaning in tending to the dogs as she had found in being a good wife and a caring nurse.

The drive from Brian’s place to Lottie’s house was stressed by silence: little Theresa asleep in the backseat, her brother slumped and brooding beside her, Janet in the passenger seat but looking lost and studying the deserted streets as if these were not just unknown neighborhoods but were the precincts of a foreign country.

In the company of other people, Amy had little tolerance for quiet. Enduring mutual silences, she sometimes felt as though the other person might ask a terrible question, the answer to which, if she spoke it, would shatter her as surely as a hard-thrown stone will destroy a pane of glass.

Consequently, she spoke of this and that, including Antoine, the dog driver who served blind Marco, out there in the far Philippines. Neither the two troubled children nor their mother would take the bait.

When they came to a stop at a red traffic light, Janet offered Amy the two thousand dollars that she had given to Carl.

“It’s yours,” Amy said.

“I can’t accept it.”

“I bought the dog.”

“Carl’s in jail now.”

“He’ll be out on bail soon.”

“But he won’t want the dog.”

“Because I’ve bought her.”

“He’ll want me—after what I’ve done.”

“He won’t find you. I promise.”

“We can’t afford a dog now.”

“No problem. I bought her.”

“I’d give her to you anyway.”

“The deal is done.”

“It’s a lot of money,” Janet said.

“Not so much. I never renegotiate.”

The woman folded her left hand around the cash, her right hand around the left, lowered her hands to her lap as she bowed her head.

The traffic signal turned green, and Amy drove across the deserted intersection as Janet said softly, “Thank you.”

Thinking of the dog in the cargo area, Amy said, “Trust me, sweetie, I got the better half of the deal.”

She glanced at the rearview mirror and saw the dog peering forward from behind the backseat. Their eyes met in their reflections and then Amy looked at the road ahead.

“How long have you had Nickie?” Amy asked.

“A little more than four months.”

“Where did you get her?”

“Carl didn’t say. He just brought her home.”

They were southbound on the Coast Highway, scrub and shore grass to their right. Beyond the grass lay the beach, the sea.

“How old is she?”

“Carl said maybe two years.”

“So she came with the name.”

“No. He didn’t know her name.”

The water was black, the sky black, and the painter moon, though in decline, brushed the crests of the waves.

“Then who named her?”

Janet’s answer surprised Amy: “Reesa. Theresa.”

The girl had not spoken this night, had only sung in that high pure voice, in what might have been Celtic, and she had seemed to be detached in the manner of a gentle autistic.

“Why Nickie?”

“Reesa said it was always her name.”

“Always.”

“Yes.”

“For some reason…I didn’t think Theresa said much.”

“She doesn’t. Sometimes not for weeks, then only a few words.”

In the mirror, the steady gaze of the dog. In the sea, the sinking moon. In the sky, a vast intricate wheelwork of stars.

And in Amy’s heart rose a sense of wonder that she was reluctant to indulge, for it could not be true, in any meaningful sense, that her Nickie had returned to her.

Chapter
5

M
oongirl will make love only in total darkness. She believes that her life has been forever diminished by passion in the light, when she was younger.

Consequently, the faintest glow around a lowered window shade will burn away all of her desire.

A single thread of sunshine in the folds of drawn draperies will in an instant unravel her lust.

Light intruding from another room—under a door, around a crack in a jamb, through a keyhole—will pierce her as if it is a needle and cause her to flinch from her lover’s touch.

When her blood is hot, even the light-emitting numerals of a bedside clock will chill her.

The luminous face of a wristwatch, the tiny bulb on a smoke detector, the radiant eyes of a cat can wring a cry of frustration from her and squeeze her libido dry.

Harrow thinks of her as
Moongirl
because he can imagine her loose in the night, silhouetted naked on a ridge line, howling at the moon. He doesn’t know what label a psychologist might apply to her particular kind of madness, but he has no doubt that she is mad.

Never has he called her Moongirl to her face. Instinct tells him that to do so would be dangerous, perhaps even fatal.

In daylight or dark, she can pass for sane. She can even feign wholesomeness quite convincingly. Her beauty beguiles.

Especially in purple, but also in pink and white, bouquets of hydrangea charm the eye, but the plant is mortally poisonous; so, too, the lily of the valley, the blossoms of bloodroot; the petals of yellow jasmine, brewed in tea or mixed in salad, can kill in as little as ten minutes.

Moongirl loves the black rose more than any other flower, though it is not poisonous.

Harrow has seen her hold such a rose so tightly by its thorny stem that her hand drips blood.

Her pain threshold, like his, is high. She does not enjoy the prick of the rose; she simply does not feel it.

She has total discipline of her body and her intellect. She has no discipline of her emotions. She is, therefore, out of balance, and balance is a requirement of sanity.

This night, in a windowless room where no starshine can reach, where the luminous clock is closed in a nightstand drawer, they do not make love, for love has nothing to do with their increasingly ferocious coupling.

No woman has excited Harrow as this one does. She has about her the ultimate hunger of the black widow, the all-consuming passion of a mantis that, during coitus, kills and eats its mate.

He half expects that one night Moongirl will conceal a knife between mattress and box springs, or elsewhere near the bed. In the blinding dark, at the penultimate moment, he will hear her whisper
Darling
and feel a sudden stiletto navigate his ribs and pop his swelling heart.

As always, the anticipation of sex proves to be more thrilling than the experience. At the end, he feels a curious hollowness, a certainty that the essence of the act has again eluded him.

Spent, they lie in the hush of the blackness, as silent as if they have stepped out of life into the outer dark.

Moongirl is not much for words, and she always speaks directly when she has something to say.

In her company, Harrow follows her example. Fewer words mean less risk of a mere observation being misconstrued as an insult or a judgment.

She is sensitive about being judged. Advice, if she dislikes it, might be received as a rebuke. A well-meant admonition might be interpreted as stinging criticism.

Here in the venereal aftermath, Harrow has no fear of any blade she might have buried in the bedding. If ever she tries to kill him, the attempt will be made between the motion and the act, at the ascending moment of her fulfillment.

Now, after sex, he does not seek sleep. Most of the time, Moongirl sleeps by day and thrives in the night; and Harrow has reset himself to live by her clock.

For one so ripe, she lies stick-stiff in the darkness, like a hungry presence poised on a branch, disguised as bark, waiting for an unwary passerby.

In time she says, “Let’s burn.”

“Burn what?”

“Whatever needs burning.”

“All right.”

“Not her, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“I’m not thinking.”

“She’s for later.”

“All right,” he says.

“I mean a place.”

“Where?”

“We’ll know it.”

“How?”

“When we see it.”

She sits up, and her fingers go to the lamp switch with the unerring elegance of a blind woman following a line of Braille to the end punctuation.

When he sees her in the soft light, he wants her again, but she is never his for the taking. His satisfaction always depends on her need, and at the moment the only thing she needs is to burn.

Throughout his life, Harrow has been a loner and a user, even when others have counted him as friend or family. Outsider to the world, he has acted strictly in his self-interest—until Moongirl.

What he has with her is neither friendship nor family, but something more primal. If just two individuals can constitute a pack, then he and Moongirl are wolves, though more terrible than wolves, because wolves kill only to eat.

He pulls on his clothes without taking his eyes from her, for she makes getting dressed an act no less erotic than a striptease. Even coarse fabrics seem to slide like silk along her limbs, and the fastening of every button is a promise of a future unveiling.

Their coats hang on wall pegs: ski jacket for him, black leather lined with fleece for her.

Outside, her blond hair looks platinum under the moon, and her eyes—bottle-green in the lamplight—seem to be a luminous gray in the colorless night.

“You drive,” she says, leading him toward the detached garage.

“All right.”

As they pass through the man door, he switches on the light.

She says, “We’ll need gasoline.”

From under the workbench, Harrow retrieves a red two-gallon utility can in which he keeps gasoline for the lawn mower. Judging by the heft of the can and the hollow sloshing of the contents, it holds less than half a gallon.

The fuel tanks of both the Lexus SUV and the two-seater Mercedes sports car have recently been filled. Harrow inserts a siphon hose into the Lexus.

Moongirl stands over him, watching as he sucks on the rubber tube. She keeps her hands in the pockets of her jacket.

Harrow wonders: If he misjudges the amount of priming needed, if he draws gasoline into his mouth, will she produce a butane lighter and ignite the flammable mist that wheezes from him, setting fire to his lips and tongue?

He tastes the first acrid fumes and does not misjudge, but introduces the hose into the open can on the floor just as the gasoline gushes.

When he looks up at her, she meets his eyes. She says nothing, and neither does he.

He is safe from her and she from him as long as they need each other for the hunt. She has her quarry, the object of her hatred, and Harrow has his, not merely whatever they might burn tonight, but other and specific targets. Together they can more easily achieve their goals, with more pleasure than they would have if they acted separately and alone.

He places the full utility can in the sports car, in the luggage space behind the two bucket seats.

The single-lane blacktop road, with here and there a lay-by, rises and falls and curves for a mile before it brings them to the gate, which swings open when Moongirl presses the button on the same remote with which moments ago she raised the garage door.

In another half-mile, they come to the two-lane county road.

“Left,” she says, and he turns left, which is north.

The night is half over but full of promise.

To the east, hills rise. To the west, they descend.

In lunar light, the wild dry grass is as platinum as Moongirl’s hair, as if the hills are pillows on which uncountable thousands of women rest their blond heads.

They are in sparsely populated territory. At the moment, not a single building stands in view.

“How much nicer the world would be,” she says, “if everyone in it were dead.”