“Why?” he asked.
“As a threat.” Ivena pushed herself slowly from her chair and hobbled for the kitchen. “Do you want a drink, Janjic?”
He followed her, but did not answer her question. “This has to do with Helen.” His voice had stiffened. “Look at you. You can hardly walk and yet you're playing this as if it were some kind of game. What does Helen have to do with this?” he demanded.
She stopped in the middle of the kitchen and faced him. “But it
is
a game, you see? And it seems that Helen is the prize.” She left him staring and retrieved two glasses.
“What game?”
“What game? It is the game of life, a testing to see where the player's loyalties really do lie. Like Christ's temptation in the desertâbow to me and I will give you the world. But with Glenn it is, âcome to me and I will extend my mercy
.
'” She poured the lemonade, knowing Jan couldn't understand yet.
“Ivenaâ”
“Leave Jan, Glenn told Helen, and I will allow this bag of bones to live.” She handed him the drink.
For a long moment, the kitchen was quiet except for the sound of those children laughing down the street. Ivena took a sip of her drink and then walked for the living room again, smiling. She had nearly reached the chair when he spoke.
“He said that? Glenn said that if Helen didn't leave me he would kill you? He actually threatened your life?”
“Yes, Janjic. He said that.”
He marched into the room and set his glass down without drinking from it. “He can't do that! He can't just threaten like that and hope to get away with it! We have to call the police immediately!”
She eased into her chair and sighed.
“Ivena! Listen to me! This is madness! He's not one to fool with!”
“You know, I have had an incredible peace these last few weeks. And do you know what has accompanied that peace?”
Jan sat down without answering.
“A desire to join Christ. To join Nadia. To see, with my own eyes, my Father in heaven.”
“But you're not saying that you want to die! That's why you haven't called the police? Because you actually want this creep to end your life? That's suicide!”
“Please!” she chided. He blinked. “I have no death wish. I said that I wish to join Christ. I did not say that I wish to die. There is a difference. Even Paul the apostle saw joining Christ as gain. Do not mock my sentiment!”
“I'm sorry. But you seem to take this all too lightly. Goodness, your life has been threatened and you've been beaten up! Did he give a time frame?”
“Three days.”
“He said that if Helen does not leave me in three days, he will kill you?”
“Am I not speaking clearly, Janjic?”
“It's impossible! Who does he think he is?”
“He is a man obsessed with destroying your union with Helen. With stealing her love. And he's doing it by threatening death. Love and death. They seem to intersect often, have you noticed?”
“Perhaps too often. I'm going to call the police.” He started to walk for the phone. “This is utter nonsense.”
“There is more, Janjic.” She guessed it was her tone that stopped him.
He hesitated and then turned to face her.
She looked at him, unable to hide a smile, wanting him to ask her. He only stared at her, still distracted.
“I saw the field.”
“The field?”
“The vision.”
His eyes widened and he blinked. “Of Helen? You heard heaven weeping?”
Her face took on a wide grin. “Not the weeping. But I heard the laughter.”
“You saw the field of flowers?” Jan asked.
She nodded. “Tell me again what the flowers in your vision looked like, Janjic.”
“White.”
“Yes, but describe them.”
“Well, I wasn't looking too closely . . . they were large . . . I don't know.”
Ivena stood and walked for the bookcase behind him. She pulled the single red-rimmed flower from a crystal vase and turned to him. “Were they like this?”
He stepped toward her. “Maybe. Yes, as a matter of fact I think they were. It's the same flower you showed me before. What is it?”
“I'll show you.” She took his hand and pulled him through the kitchen, excited now. “You will like this, Janjic. I promise you.”
“Ivenaâ”
“Hush now. You will see. I know you will like this.”
She reached the greenhouse door and paused, thinking that such an occasion needed an introduction. But there was nothing that could prepare him. She turned the knob and shoved the door open.
A soft breeze greeted their faces, pushing the hair from their foreheads. Ivena stepped in and spread her arms in the wind, drawing the air into her lungs. The delicate aroma rose through her nostrils, stinging but sweet. Oh, so very sweet. She faced the rosebushes and for a moment she forgot about Janjic stepping in behind her. Hundreds of vines covered the walls and ceiling in emerald green. A thousand brilliant white flowers trimmed in red swayed gently, bowing with the breeze. The vine's leaves rustled delicately against each other, filling the room with a cacophony of soft rustling. It all swept over Ivena's senses like a drug. She could almost taste honey on the air.
The door shut behind her, and Ivena turned to see Janjic standing wide-eyed, mouth agape.
“They came from Nadia's rosebush,” she said. She ran for the bush and rustled her hand through the leaves. “You see it was a graft, but I didn't make it.”
“A graft?” He stepped gingerly, as though anything less might break something. “What . . . ? This is amazing, Ivena! How did you grow this?”
“I didn't. It's beyond me. It began the day Helen came into our lives.”
He shot her a glance, and then looked about, blinking.
“And there is more,” Ivena said. “I can't find a source for the breeze. I think it comes from the flowers themselves.”
“âLet your wind blow through my garden,'” he quoted from the Song of Solomon. “It's impossible!” He spun around to face her. “Who else have you told?”
“Only Joey.”
Jan couldn't stop his turning and staring. “And you knew about this all along? Why didn't you tell me? How did it grow?”
He looked closer at the graft and then she retraced the plant's growth for him, first along one wall, then another and another until the whole greenhouse was covered with vines and leaves and flowers.
She watched him walk around the small garden for thirty minutes, amazed.
“I should go to Helen,” he finally said.
“Yes. And now you know the truth.”
He shook his head. “I'll do anything to keep her love. Anything.”
“Then promise me one thing. Promise me that no matter what happens in the days to come you won't become distracted by hate or revenge or any other notion that seizes your heart.”
They'd stepped into the kitchen and he looked back at her, surprised. “Of course. You say that as if you know something I don't. And you'll still press charges. This changes nothing. We should call the police immediately.”
“Yes, I will press charges, but know that this could all become very public.”
“Public? We're talking about your safety, for heaven's sake! What do you mean?”
“She's been back to him, Jan. More than once,” Ivena said.
He was halfway across her living room and he froze mid-stride. “What?”
“She has been to Glenn four times already. All in the last month.”
His face drained white. “That can't be! How's that possible? I've been with her constantly! We've just been wed! How can you say this?”
“Glenn told me.”
“And he's a liar!”
“Helen was there, Janjic. She came to Glenn the same night he took me.”
He's stopped breathing,
Ivena thought.
“She saw me bound and gagged, and she removed my gag. We talked and she was very sorry. But she was there, Janjic. By her own choice.”
He started to shake his head and then stopped. Slowly his face filled with blood; his neck bulged with fury. A tremble took to his lips and he stood enraged.
He spoke in a low, bitter voice. “How dare she? I have given her everything! How can she even think of wallowing back to that pig!?”
A chill of fear swept through Ivena's back at his tone. “It's no different than what most men do with Christ,” she said. “No different from Israel turning her back on God. Helen is no different than the church, worshiping at the altar one day and blundering back into sin the next. She's doing nothing more than what you yourself have done.”
His eyes were glazed. “I don't care! I'll kill him!”
“Janjicâ”
“No!” The muscles in his jaw flexed. “No man will do this to my wife! No man! I can't sit by while he plays his games.”
“You must. Janjicâ”
He whirled for the door.
“Where are you going?”
He didn't answer.
She knew then that she might not see him again. Not if he was going to the Towers. “Janjic! Please!”
The door slammed shut and he was gone.
Ivena rose from her chair and watched him through her front window. He pulled the Cadillac out of her driveway and roared down the road. A single tear snaked from the corner of her eye.
Father, you will protect him, won't you? You must. It is not finished for him. His story is not yet complete.
And what about your story, Ivena? Is it complete?
She answered aloud. “Yes, I am finished now. If you give me a choice I will join the laughter up there.”
Ivena sighed again and walked to the telephone. She should call the police. Yes, she would do that.
JAN DROVE straight for the Towers, his vision clouded red with fury. He knew that he had snapped back there. The fact loitered in his mind like a fly, slightly annoying but small enough to disregard for the moment.
It was the image of Helen slinking back to that pig, lying on his bed, that drove Jan mad. Or it was three months of images, all hidden in a reservoir deep in his mind, building to this day when they had broken past their dam and now drove him like a lunatic toward the pig's house. Toward Atlanta's Twin Towers, visible from five miles out, rising tall against the blue sky.
He had no plan; no idea what he would do when he arrived or how he would get to Glenn. He only knew that he had to face that beast now.
And what about Helen, Janjic? Will you knock some sense into her as well?
Yes.
No! Oh dear God, no! The image of the garden flooded his mind. No, he could never harm her. He loved Helen desperately.
She would not be this way if it weren't for Glenn. The man's evil touch was still running through her veins. And now the madman had taken his fight to Ivena. Dear Ivena was the innocent bystander in this, as she'd been twenty years ago. Nadia had died then; there was no way he would allow any harm to come to Ivena now.
The thoughts battered his mind, occupying what space he should have given to reason. To a plan. It occurred to Jan that he was stopped at a red light not two blocks from the Towers, and he had better start thinking about what he was going to do here. He was going to ride to the top floor and he was going to take a tire iron with him. That's what he was going to do.
A horn blared and he saw that other cars had already crossed the intersection. He punched the accelerator and shot through. Helen had said that Glenn's office was in the second towerâthe East Tower. He sped past the first building with which he was already familiar and approached the second.
Jan whipped the Cadillac into the underground parking and screeched to a stop in a restricted space beside the elevators. It had been twenty years since he had set his mind on harming another man, but the memory of it came to him now with a surge of adrenaline.
He grunted, popped the trunk and jumped from the car. He yanked the car's tire iron from the repair kit, slammed the trunk and slid the rod up his shirt. A parking attendant walked toward him from the entry gate. Jan ran to the elevators without acknowledging the man. One of three elevator doors slid open and he entered quickly. Thank God for small favors.
God?
Jan stabbed the top floor button and rode the humming car to its peak without stopping. Maybe he should have called the police before leaving Ivena's. But then she would. Either way, the police didn't seem too interested in bringing this powerful man under their thumb. These Karadzics of the world seemed to have their way too often. But not with his wife!
The arrival bell clanged and he entered the thirtieth floor, his nerves strung tight. A receptionist looked up at him from her station behind a counter that hid all but her head. A huge brass sculpture of the Twin Towers hung on the wall behind her.
“May I help you?”
Jan walked for the counter. “Yes, I'm here to see Glenn Lutz.”
“Do you have an appointment?”
“Yes. Yes, of course I have an appointment.”
The receptionist glanced to Jan's right, toward a tall cherry door, and picked up the telephone.
Jan turned and strode for the door without waiting for her to let him in. “Excuse me, sir. Sir!” He ignored the call and pushed through, gripping the iron under his shirt.
A black-haired woman looked up from her desk sharply. Jan took in the room with a glance. Beyond her, wide-paneled doors led to what would be the man's office. This would be his secretary, then. An ugly wench with a hooked nose. He had to move while she was still off balance.
She stood as he moved forward. “Excuse me.”
“Not now, miss,” he snapped.
Her eyes widened suddenly, as if she recognized him. As well she mightâhe'd been here before. She stepped out from her desk quickly, blocking his way with lifted hands. “Where do you think you're going?”