The sketch was extraordinarily detailed and perfectly shaded. An ice-cream truck with
Newburyport Premium Ice Cream
stenciled on the side. At the sliding window through which ice cream was served, instead of the classic ice-cream man, there was a breathtakingly sexy brunette in a barely-there, teeny tank top, her breasts practically spilling out the top as she leaned over to hand a cone to one of several gawking boys gathered around the truck. Chocolate ice cream dripped over her fingers. Her breasts were quite clearly the focus of the illustration.
There was even a tag line already.
Perfect Scoops. Every time.
Nice double entendre. Short and sweet. Teddy's work was done for him.
It was fully half a minute before he even turned the page. This one was the idea Michael had been working on before he started to freak out. A sexy blonde on the beach, one hip cocked arrogantly, all attitude and sass. Her vanilla ice-cream cone was dripping down over her fingers. Once more, the tag line was in place:
It's a Sticky Situation.
With the company logo at the bottom.
“Damn,” Teddy whispered. They were the finest work Michael had ever done.
The third page was a redhead in lingerie, sprawled across a loveseat in front of her television, eating a pint of strawberry ice cream. Only then did he get that Michael intended for the company not to pick one of these, but to use them all. The brunette for chocolate, the blonde for vanilla, the redhead for strawberry. And yet again, Michael already had a tag line in place:
All Dressed Up and No Place to Go
.
Teddy had come up with dozens of possible slogans. One or two of them might work as a consistent line to go beneath the corporate logo, but otherwise Michael's ads worked perfectly exactly as they were.
“Son of a bitch,” he whispered. Then he laughed. “You son of a bitch.”
He spent another five minutes just studying them, over and over, relishing the knowledge that despite how much of a fuckup he'd been the last few days, Michael had saved both of their asses. Teddy could make the pitch to the client without him. He had done it before.
I'd like to see Gary try to make trouble for Mikey now,
Teddy thought.
Suddenly he felt very guilty for the way he had spoken to his partner. Not that he hadn't had reason, but with all the work they had done together over the years, he ought to have had more faith that Michael would come through.
He looked again at the first illustration, the one with the ice-cream truck. It was brilliant. The clients were going to love it.
Yeah, Teddy would cover for Michael for as long as he could.
It was the least he could do.
M
ICHAEL WOKE ABRUPTLY, REACHING FOR
his throat to tear away the hands that were choking him, cutting off his air.
There were no hands.
Gagging, he sat up, heart thundering in his chest. He wheezed as he drew in long drafts of air, calming himself, becoming oriented to his surroundings. His gaze darted about the room. Framed prints on the walls. Lamp, alarm clock, TV on top of the bureau. The little cardboard sign that sat on the TV advertising HBO in the room caught his eye. For some reason, staring at it helped him to relax.
The drapes were open partway. The sky was overcast, clouds ominously gray and pregnant with the threat of rain. A light drizzle misted the window. He glanced at the alarm clock again, noticing the time: 12:47. He had slept less than five hours. But that would have to be enough. Every moment that passed with Jillian like this, he felt himself drifting farther away from her. And there was no telling what she would do. Nausea churned in his stomach as he remembered the things she had said to him. An image swam up into his mind of her pulling her thong from her pocket and he bit his lower lip, refusing to allow himself to dwell on that.
She'd been wounded. Violated. Her mind had been damaged. Michael knew it was possible she couldn't be helped, but he had to try.
He dragged himself out of bed and rubbed at his eyes as he gazed out at the gray day. Sleep still had a grip on him, but he knew that a shower would help. Clean clothes. Caffeine. Idly, barely aware that he was doing it, he ran a hand over his throat where one of those things, one of those malformed women, had touched him. When he realized what he was doing he pulled his hand away.
Whatever dream or nightmare had driven him so violently up from sleep, he could not remember it. Michael considered that a small mercy.
With the television on for company, he took a shower and dressed quickly. His jacket was rainproof canvas with a thick lining, but even so he hurried to his car. The drizzle of rain was icy cold, and the chill seeped into his bones. He felt weak and shivery, and it was not until he was a mile away from the Hawthorne Inn that his preoccupied mind settled down enough for him to realize why. In the previous twenty-four hours he had eaten nothing but popcorn.
The light rain misted the windshield. Low music droned on the radio. The swish of the windshield wipers combined with the whisper of his tires through the puddles on the road to become nearly hypnotic. But his day was only beginning, and he would not succumb to his exhaustion. With the window halfway down, the cold and wet sweeping in, he spotted a strip mall ahead. Athena Pizza seemed an afterthought, a tiny place squished between a CVS pharmacy and a bicycle shop.
It was while he was waiting for the Greek girl behind the counter to make his gyro sandwich that he had an idea. Frustrated that he hadn't thought of it earlier, he borrowed a pencil off the counter and slid into a booth. Turning over the paper placemat, he began sketching on the blank sheet. The image in his memory was fuzzy, but as he focused it began to take on clearer edges, more distinct features. The pencil flew over the paper and he gave himself over completely to the work.
Michael did not look up until the olive-skinned girl tapped him on the shoulder. He jumped in his seat, startled, and looked up into her dark eyes.
“I'm sorry,” she said. “I called to you, but I guess you kinda went to Bermuda for a minute.”
Her smile was playful, but not flirtatious. She handed him his sandwich, wrapped in white paper and stuffed into a brown paper bag. Her gaze went past him, then, and she looked at the drawing he had just finished. It was a sketch of Susan Barnes's house. Or, rather, the house where he had brought Susan Barnes on the strange night when all of this had begun.
“Wow. You're really good,” the counter girl said.
“Thanks. You don't happen to recognize the place? Ever seen this house before?”
She stared at it for several long seconds, frowning as though she wasn't quite sure. Then she seemed to drift, a strange, faraway look in her eyes. After a moment she knitted her brows, troubled by something.
“Are you all right?” Michael asked.
The girl looked at him as though he had just woken her. Then she blinked several times and shrugged, adding a small laugh. “It does look sort of familiar, but I don't think I know where it is. Sorry.” She turned to go back around behind the counter.
“Wait.”
The girl paused, turning to him, shifting uncomfortably.
“You recognize it.” It wasn't a question.
“It's weird,” she said. “I must've seen it at some point. Couldn't tell you where it is, but I must've seen it. It just feels like . . .”
“Feels like what?”
“It feels like something I dreamed about once.”
Her words echoed in Michael's head long after he'd left Athena Pizza behind. If the counter girl had dreamed about the house, he wondered how many others had as well. Of course it could have been a coincidence, just her own strange reaction to the drawing.
He drove out to Old Route 12 with the drawing on the passenger seat and the gyro sandwich nested in its wrapping paper on his lap. Michael was a cautious driver, never understanding why people found the need to make phone calls or put on their makeup, or eat or consult a map while driving. But none of the rules of his old life seemed to apply anymore.
Even without the atlas—which lay on the floor in the backseat—he had no difficulty finding the place he had originally turned off the road. He had been back here once already. He had hoped to show people the drawing and ask if they'd seen the house, but the day was still shrouded in gloom and light rain continued to fall. Cars sailed past him in the opposite direction from time to time, but no one was out for a walk or working in their yard.
As he ate his sandwich, he managed to navigate several turns that he was certain had been his route that night. The area alternated between thick woods and forest rising up toward the peaks of the hills and neighborhoods tucked in amongst the trees. Now he found himself on a long road that sloped slightly upward. He drove slowly for half a mile, looking at every street and driveway. Even so, he nearly went right by a narrow road he had not seen the last time he had searched the area.
“Damn,” he muttered, hitting the brakes. The remains of his gyro slid off of his lap and tumbled to the floor. Grumbling, he kept his foot firmly on the brake and fished around on the sandy floormat before retrieving the sandwich. He wrapped it in its paper, wiping dressing on the bag, and set it all on the floor in front of the passenger seat.
The windshield wipers squeaked dry on the windshield. The rain had ceased. Michael switched the wipers off and at last looked up again at the road on his left. There was no sign, and the trees on either side of the road had grown so large that their branches intertwined above the pavement, creating a kind of dark tunnel.
Michael felt his pulse speed up. There was a constriction in his throat and his chest hurt. This could be what he had been searching for. As that knowledge swept over him, a torrent of emotion was unleashed. His face contorted with grief and pain as the words and images of the previous night came back with terrible force. The hatred in Jillian's eyes. The hiss of nylon as she drew her pantyhose out of her pocket. Then the thong.
He had smelled it on her. Not just the alcohol, but the sex, too.
Michael glanced over his shoulder to make sure the coast was clear, then turned into that tunnel of branches. In spring and summer, he imagined the entrance into the road would seem even more like a tunnel. Now, though, it was only the dead, skeletal branches that twined above him. Somehow, that seemed worse.
The road led straight up the hill a hundred yards or so and then curved to the right. The first house to come into view was a massive Federal Colonial that looked as though additional wings had been added to it over time. It was painted rose pink. Though the color was dull, he was not certain if it was aging or if the gloom of the day was to blame.
Michael drove past the rose house slowly. At first glance he had been disheartened. How could he have missed such an enormous house painted such a conspicuous color? Yet it had been dark, that night. And he had not been sober . . . or in his right mind.
The road continued upward; the other houses were of a similar age to the first, all of them from the late nineteenth or very early twentieth centuries. Some were at skewed angles to the road, and too close, a result of their having been built long before the street had been paved. Several had barns. All of them had well over an acre of land. Despite the state of disrepair one or two of them were in, there was money here. Old families, or new arrivals with high salaries and an appreciation for old homes.
Then, abruptly, the road ended in a cul-de-sac. A beautifully restored Victorian thrust up from the hillside on the far side of the circle, as though the owner was the lord of the land, looking out across his fiefdom.
Michael pounded the steering wheel, letting the car idle in the circle as he stared at the house. He knew right away he wasn't high enough. The decrepit house in his illustration was at a higher elevation. For several minutes he sat there, trying to figure out what to do next.
The door to the restored Victorian opened and a heavyset woman emerged onto the porch. She locked the door behind her and Michael watched as she walked down the path to the BMW parked in the drive. He gauged her age at perhaps fifty, though her hair was dyed dark.
“Screw it,” he muttered.
He drove into her driveway, pulling up right behind the BMW. It always amazed Michael that despite all the horrors that happened every day in the world, people were still basically trusting. If he had meant her harm, she would never have been able to reach safety. As he climbed out of his car he was glad to see there was at least a hint of caution in her gaze. She pressed a button that caused her BMW to unlock with a chirp, and she opened the door, prepared to climb in at any sign of trouble. In a strange way, it made him feel better.
“Can I help you with something?” she asked, her tone as polite as could be without masking her wariness.
“I hope so.” He had snatched the placemat illustration in one hand as he got out. Now he approached her slowly, holding the drawing up so that she could get a look at it. “I'm pretty lost. I'm trying to find this house. A . . . an artist friend of mine was driving around up here and drew me a picture. He said it was for sale. I thought I might take a look, but his directions make no sense and I keep getting turned around.”
She seemed to take a moment to decide if she believed him or not, but as her eyes focused on the picture, she became convinced. “Your friend is very talented.”
“Yeah,” Michael laughed, trying to put her at ease. “He thinks so, too.”
The woman smiled and studied the drawing. “Well, I do feel like I've seen it.” Her smile wavered.
Like the waitress,
he thought. And, now that he thought of it, like Brittany, who had not seen an illustration but reacted just to his description of the place. He wondered if they could all really have seen the house before, what the chances were of that, or if there was something else going on here. He wondered how many women in the area would react the same way, and if it would be just women.
“Gosh, I have no idea where, though,” she went on. “It must be nearby. I'm fairly new to the neighborhood.” Her eyes lit up. “You know what, though? Go on down to Bill Ginsler's. That pink house right at the bottom of the street? You must have noticed it. He's lived here his whole life. If anyone knows the streets around here, it's Bill. He roamed all over the woods around here growing up.”