Until the Night (22 page)

He was astonished by the simplicity of the place. A whitewashed attic, angular walls, slanted high ceiling, little more than one room, but whether through frugality or good taste she had managed to make it look large and inviting. She had painted the baseboards walnut brown and papered one wall with a spacious frond theme that maintained the brightness of the space but saved it from monotony.

The floor was covered with scraps of carpet in various shades of grey, fitted together in random squares and rhomboids. A single artwork dominated the place, a poster from the Musée de Cluny, bright red, showing a princess in medieval dress. Other than that, the most vivid object was a double bed draped in a spread of scarlet corduroy. Beside it, a wooden library table, with books packed into the shelves at either end. No television, no CD player, but she wouldn’t need one. In the past five days he hadn’t observed her more than twice without the white audio arteries of an iPod dangling from her ears.

An Apple laptop front and centre. He had followed her to Starbucks and watched her pull out a stack of papers to mark. It seemed early in the term for papers to be due, but perhaps she was earning extra money marking for someone else.

He had entered by the fire escape, the only way into what must be an illegal sublet. The door had a solid enough lock but he had managed to jimmy a window without much problem. It opened beside the galley kitchen, if that was not too grand a term for a built-in hot plate and sink. She had forgotten to switch off the overhead light.

The pay for a contract teacher, even at a major university, had apparently not improved much over the years. She didn’t even have bookshelves. Instead, forty or fifty volumes were lined up along the baseboard. Chaucer,
Dante, Villon. Norton anthologies. Not following in Daddy’s footsteps, obviously. Not living on his money, either.

The clothing in her closet consisted mostly of neatly stacked T-shirts. A few pieces suitable for lectures, two small dresses, nothing expensive. He made a mental note of sizes.

The bathroom had no door. It was separated from the rest of the space by a curved wall. In the medicine cabinet, birth control pills, a prescription cream for eczema, allergy pills. Nothing she would die without.

He went back to the desk and opened the laptop. E-mail from students angling for higher marks or to retake tests. A couple from her father. Her calendar was more useful. It gave course numbers and times’ the locations would be easy to find. She had a conference coming up in Chicago in a couple of weeks. A doctor’s appointment tomorrow. Spin class on Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.

A dark stairwell. Using his flashlight, he went down it and examined the door to the second floor of the house. Bolted from the inside. Dust on the doorknob and on the stairs themselves confirmed that the fire escape was the only entrance in use.

He was starting upstairs again when he heard a key in the lock. He drew back into the shadows. Sound of the door closing, keys hitting the counter, backpack hitting the floor. He lowered himself to sit on a step and waited.

Her boots hit the boot tray, her footsteps crossed the room. Rattle of hangers. He listened in his darkness as she undressed. And he listened for a long while after that, during which there was no sound. Above the stairwell, the lights remained on.

She was crying. Not loud, but unmistakable, the sound of sobbing, the rattle of mucus. Then her bare feet, the light, light step of a ninety-pounder, a hundred at most. Splash of the shower.

He moved soundlessly up the stairs. He opened the door and stepped out onto the snowy fire escape. Dull clang of metal steps as he descended. Rusted hinges squealed as he opened the rear gate. Snow swirling in the alley lights as he pulled his hood up and headed toward the street.

The sound of the young woman’s tears stayed with him as he walked several blocks. It was with him still as he got into the van, and as he started it, and as he stopped at the first intersection, and as he crossed it.

From the Blue Notebook

Did you hear Ray last night? Rebecca said, twiddling a knob on her lidar unit. He scared me half to death. I thought some little animal was being tortured.

He suffers from nightmares, I said. Minute he touched down, I told Jens he wasn’t suitable. Jens, of course, wouldn’t discuss it. I think Kurt pressured him to accept his acolyte.

Kurt isn’t like that.

No one is immune to worship. Except possibly you.

She ignored that. Kurt was looking for Ray earlier, she said. It’s a good thing you weren’t in here when he came by.

No doubt.

Ray does seem a little lost. Do you think he even wants to stay?

Wants? Maybe—if you can be said to want something that is killing you. He’s staring into the jaws of failure if he quits—and God-knows-what if he stays. Annihilation, I suppose.

God, you’re grim. Suddenly your ash-black globe makes sense. You’re not one of those people who mistake being depressed for being intelligent, are you?

This is the dark side of the earth up here, in case you hadn’t noticed. And anybody who loves it—in winter, at least—is not likely to be the life of any party one would care to attend.

Rebecca had removed the towel from her porthole window. She turned from her lidar readout and stared at the circle of fog pinned to her wall. The camp had been fogged in for days and nerves were raw.

Unlike you, I don’t feel any urge to come up here in the dark of winter. I’m not even slightly attracted—emotionally, I mean—aside from my research interests. And yet I’m drawn to those who are. Kurt. You.

Opposites attract? That’s your analysis? Eight years of postgraduate education and this is what we get?

I was leaning against her door, arms folded across my chest. There was nowhere to sit. I was smiling, but she wasn’t looking at me and took me seriously.

She shook her head. Not opposites.

I took a half-step forward and placed my hands on her shoulders. She rolled her chair aside to escape.

There doesn’t seem to be anything I can do about it, she said. I’m drawn to you the way you are drawn to the dark.

Then why do you pull away?

Don’t be obtuse, Kit.

Tell you what, I’ll put together a repertoire of jokes. I’ll become the sort of person people call “a great storyteller.” Remember in your high school yearbooks they would always say so-and-so “livens up any gathering”? So-and-so “really knows how to tell a story”? That’s who I’ll become.

Please don’t.

Just for you. That’s how much I love you. Karson Durie, raconteur.

I know this is your version of being light-hearted, but why is it every time I talk to you about anything serious it’s like I’m feeling my way around the knife drawer?

My mother used to say something similar: You’re so sharp you’ll cut yourself.

It’s not you I’m worried about. I don’t think you should visit me here anymore.

Don’t think—or don’t want?

Just go, would you? I can’t take this. I’ll see you in the mess.

I opened the door and went out and the fog closed around me like a fist. The lights of the mess, not more than twenty metres distant, were a barely perceptible glow. I moved with one hand outstretched before me. The temperature was dropping. I could feel the difference in the texture of the slush beneath my boots.

I was startled by a loud crack. A slash of fire tore upward through the fog and vanished. I called out, What’s going on?

Wyndham’s voice came back, oddly close in the fog, though I could not yet make him out.

Ray’s missing. We don’t know what to do about it.

Thwock
of the flare as it burst into a dandelion bloom, a dim throb beyond the fog.

Do you think he’ll see that?

It’s getting colder. The fog must be thinning in places.

My hand touched parka, but it was Vanderbyl. He stumbled a little to avoid me. I’ve been trying to radio Base, he said, but I don’t think they’re receiving me.

Wyndham said, Nobody’s seen him since this morning, when he went back to his cabin to rewrite some material Kurt critiqued. That was when, Kurt? About nine-thirty?

Nine-thirty, yes.

I asked them if he was armed and if he had his radio.

As far as we know, Kurt said. Not that he’s answering.

Hmm. How sharp was your critique?

The briefest of pauses before Kurt answered. It was a candid review. Not what you’d call harsh.

The two of them had searched everywhere: the radio shack, the power shack, the shop, kitchen, labs, and all the other huts. They had even radioed the seismic and core huts. Nobody had seen Ray Deville.

And so we hovered there, three disembodied voices in the fog, wondering where he might have gone. We didn’t even bother asking why, at least not aloud. Ray and his radio silence. Sometimes a man can be so lost there’s nowhere to look, nothing to be done.

We had a gloomy meal, a gloomy evening. People spoke but little. Wyndham attempted to lighten the mood by telling us a couple of unintentionally funny things Ray had said, these rendered in a note-perfect imitation of his franglais. He didn’t get much of a laugh. The truth was, Ray and his manifest neuroses were hard to endure. One sensed that there ran beneath them a slick black river of contempt.

God, I hope he’s all right, Kurt said later as he rinsed his dishes in the sink.

Wyndham listed the reasons for optimism. The temperature, at minus five Celsius, was crisp but far from severe. Ray’s parka and scarf and boots were not in his cabin, so it was likely he would be warm enough. Our ice island was not vast, and in half-decent visibility he should have no difficulty finding his way back. He was armed, he had his radio …

Kurt opened the door, and his irritated response hung there in the mess with the cold air that rolled in: Then why the hell hasn’t he used it?

In my narrow bed, I dreamed I had to climb a glass mountain that glittered in the glare of a savage sun. I was in the company of a man and woman who claimed to know the way but did not. Nor were they of any help when the mountain metamorphosed into a pure, unclimbable pyramid. It rose to a blinding point, and when I woke in the darkness, my eyes were wet as if I had been crying.

The fog had lifted and the hut was lit by a toppled pillar of light that angled through my porthole: they had left the floods burning on the Decca mast as a beacon. I lay there thinking about Ray Deville and imagining his encounter not with a bear or a walrus or a crippling fall, but merely with the Arctic in all its purity—an indifference that was boundless and exquisite, immeasurable to man.

After a time, I heard cries and answering shouts. Slamming doors and frantic voices—manly Vanderbyl and oboe-toned Wyndham. I hunched at my porthole, sleeping bag clutched around my shoulders. Wyndham was helping Ray across the last few metres of slush. Kurt waited, his back to my hut, erect and motionless, his shadow in the floodlight an endless black tangent. He said Ray’s name.

The staggering, limping boy looked up, and I saw in the silvery light the blank, staring eyes of one who has blundered into God’s private palace, who has looked his maker in the face and felt his marrow freeze.

12

A
NOTHER MIRROR
. D
ELORME STARED INTO
the black depths and was aware that this was one of many reflective surfaces she’d studied in the past week or two. This one was an onyx panel, almost as wide as a movie screen, with half a dozen brushed-steel sinks before it and the flattering globes of dressing-room lights surrounding it.

“First time here?”

Delorme glanced at the reflection of a tall brunette who was leaning over the marble counter to examine herself close up. Delorme told her yes, and applied a little powder.

“You come alone?”

“Yeah. You?”

She nodded. “Are you as nervous as I am? I’m totally freaked out, and I’m not the freaking-out type.”

The woman was about Delorme’s age, but she sounded like the ingénue in some movie about show business. A backstage drama. It was hard to see clearly in the dark mirror, but perhaps that was the idea, to not look like yourself. The dark wig helped. It was longer than her own hair and felt reassuring as it brushed against her shoulders.

“Do you think everyone gets this nervous?” the woman asked her. This time she turned to address Delorme and not her reflection. Delorme did the same. The woman had fine, pale skin, opalescent.

“You’d have to be pretty strange,” Delorme said, “to not be nervous.”

“Maybe we should hit the bar together. For moral support. I mean, I’m not coming on to you or anything. Just might be a little easier.”

“Let’s say one drink,” Delorme said. “Then we’ll reassess.”

“Cool. I’m not exactly a hundred percent committed to being here. Or doing anything with anyone.” She went first to the door and held it open. “What’s your name, by the way?”

“Stella.” That name had been part of her role as an undercover hooker, as had the wig.

“I’m Heidi.”

“Okay, Heidi.”

Arriving at Club Risqué had been like stepping off a boat and sinking downward into the deep. The sense of pressure was immediate and building. Her lungs felt one-third smaller, as did her dress.