by Ira Levin
She said, “Maybe there’s some kind of built-in timer. I don’t know anything about biochemicals, I’m pretty sure that’s what’s involved here, but there are two parts to the candles, right, the blue and the yellow? Maybe they’re more complicated than that. Maybe there’s some chemical something that keeps them safe or unarmed or whatever till a certain time, and a few of the candles are a little off. And a few of those few were in Hamburg and Quebec...”
They looked at each other. Sipped from their glasses of beer.
He gave her a sidelong smile and said, “Do you think maybe this could be a case of opening-night jitters? You’re Andy’s Mom, you want everything to go off picture perfect...”
“It might be,” she said. “I hope so. But maybe it’s more; we have to check it out, Joe. Do you know someone who could? Not in the Police Crime Lab or the FBI, though. Someone private, a forensic chemist who does consulting work. Someone like that. With access to up-to-date equipment.”
“Did Judy really say anything?” he asked. “Or was this a vision?”
She looked away, stayed silent, looked back at him. “A little of each,” she said.
They sat back as the waitress put plates on the table and doled out dumplings with a pair of chopsticks.
They ate, he with chopsticks, she with a fork.
“Aren’t these good?” he said.
“Mmm,” she said, eating.
“This is the worst time of the year to get anything done,” he said, “let alone something as complicated as this; everybody’s on vacation. The NYU School of Medicine is closed down, which is where the first person who comes to mind is on the faculty, a classic-car collector up in Armonk. If he can’t do it himself, he’ll know who can. Except he’s probably in Aspen or someplace, he and his wife and kids all ski. Look, if you’re this serious about it, then we should go to the FBI. I know guys in the office here, and they have the facilities in Arlington to do the job right and do it fast.”
She shook her head. “I don’t want to get Andy involved in a—whole investigation,” she said. Covered her mouth with her hand, her eyes tearing.
“Hey, hey, aaah...” He reached across the table, patted her shoulder, her cheek. “Andy wouldn’t be involved,” he said, “not in any bad way. I’m sure he’d be the first one to—”
“I don’t want to go to the FBI,” she said. “Maybe I’m—hallucinating, you’re right, and I don’t want to open up a whole can of worms. Please, Joe!”
He sat back frowning, watching her as she pressed a paper napkin to her eyes. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll get after this guy this afternoon. He’s in something with biochemistry in it, Dr. George Stamos. One of his lab assistants was making designer drugs, right there in the lab, until her boyfriend shot her. In ’94. George has two Alfas but they don’t come anywhere near mine.”
He called her around five that afternoon. The Stamos family was away but their message said they’d be back Monday morning. “I didn’t say why I was calling; he’ll think I’m ready to sell the car, I’ll be his first callback. You can’t realistically expect to get any action before Monday anyway. But Rosie, the more I think about it... If Hamburg was a sample, then you’re talking about something that could maybe wipe out the whole human race. Nobody is crazy enough to want to do that.”
She drew a breath; said, “I hope you’re right, Joe. Thanks for following through.”
“No sweat. Feel better soon.”
She went back to reading a trade paperback she had bought that afternoon in the Doubleday’s on Fifth Avenue—Biochemistry: The Two-Edged Sword. She was up to the chapter on nerve gases and flesh-eating viruses.
The Stamos family was back from its skiing vacation by Monday morning—all except George, who was in a hospital in Zurich, in traction. Joe got his phone number from Helen Stamos after he explained that it was about a favor for Rosemary, not cars, but he couldn’t make the call till Tuesday morning because of the time difference.
That was the bad news he phoned to Rosemary on Tuesday afternoon. The good news was that George had immediately come up with the man for the job, a colleague who was a partner in a laboratory in Syosset, Long Island, that did free-lance forensic work in criminal cases. Joe had spoken to the man, telling him that he himself, as an employee of GC, had heard a candle-tampering rumor that he wanted to check out just for his own peace of mind; almost certainly nothing to it, but still. . . “He’s going to check a few of them. He’ll know whether or not they’re clean by tomorrow morning.”
She said, “You told him ‘biochemicals’?”
“Yes. He says it’s not impossible but would be an amazing feat for a gang of PA’s to pull off.”
She watched TV, thumbing through the multichannel mix—being told time and again by Andy and by herself, in ten-second and thirty-second formats, how moving and inspiring the Lighting was going to be, and how great it was that everybody in the whole human race was going to take part in the glorious, symbolic, artistic happening, and that the time to unwrap and light here in this area is seven p.m. this coming Friday, just do it along with the TV, any channel, don’t miss the warm-up starting at six, and remember, out of reach of the kids. Andy winked at her. “Sick of these by now, right?” He chuckled, she didn’t. “Okay, but it’s so important,” he said. “I ask you please to make sure that everyone you know lights at the right time; will you do that for me? Thanks. Love ya.”
She wondered if there could be something he did, something he projected, that she was immune to, because of their kinship. It seemed no less impossible than gases that could turn a person to jelly in fifteen minutes.
Joe had managed to get Wednesday-matinee house seats for the first solid hit of the Broadway season, a revival of a failed 1965 musical for which, ironically, Guy had auditioned back in the happy days before they’d moved into the Bram, when they were still living in his one-room walk-up on Third Avenue. The show was a charmer, as she’d thought then, but she had a hard time focusing on the first act; Joe hadn’t heard yet from the lab in Syosset.
He went to phone his answering machine during the intermission. She smiled and signed a few autographs for people sitting nearby, then sat looking at her open Playbill.
Joe didn’t get back till the house lights were down and the second-act overture had begun. “Clean,” he whispered, sitting down in the seat alongside. She looked wide-eyed at him. He nodded. “Perfectly clean. No bio-chemicals. Not even any perfume.”
“Shhh!”—from behind them.
She had a hard time focusing on the second act too, but clapped wildly at the end and joined with Joe in the standing ovation.
They hustled into a bar next door and found a foot-square table in a dusky corner. “He analyzed everything,” he said, “the wax, the wicks, the glasses. Four candles—two from here, one from out of state, and one from out of the country. One hundred percent clean.”
“You spoke to him?” she asked.
“The message was on the machine,” he said. “Written report will follow.”
“Whew!” she said. “That is one big relief.”
“You know,” he said, “I hate to mention it, but it’s not conclusive. Don’t forget there were fourteen factories turning them out. There could have been tampering at one, or some, and these were from another.”
“No,” she said, “my—impression was that all the candles were affected.”
“All? At all fourteen factories? You really thought that?”
She smiled, shrugged. “Opening-night jitters,” she said.
The waiter brought them her Gibson, his Glenlivet. “Cheers,” they said, and clinked glasses and sipped.
“Thank you so much, Joe,” she said. “I’m so grateful to you.” Kissed him.
“Where are we going to light ours?” he asked.
“At Andy’s,” she said. “I think. The three of us. Is that okay with you?”
“Why wouldn’t it be? Sure, there’s no place better.” He smiled at her. “For lighting
our first candles, I mean.”
“Right,” she said, smiling back at him.
“Should I pick you up at six and we’ll go up together?”
“Just what I had in mind,” she said.
“Happy New Year,” he said. They pecked each other’s lips. He said, “Call me romantic, but I’m glad we wound up waiting. It’s gonna be one great New Year’s Eve.”
What a load off her mind! Andy may have let GC’s obsessed backers push him into abetting Judy’s murder—for which there could never be any forgiving and forgetting, definitely not—but at least they were that, obsessed backers whose goal was to do good, not his “old man” using him to win an instant Armageddon.
She took a long, hot shower. Finally she’d get a good night’s sleep. Weeks since her last one, with the trip and then Judy . . .
She ordered cocoa and petits fours from room service; sipped and nibbled amid satin pillows, watching preparations for the Lighting in a schoolroom in Argentina, at the Air Force Academy, the Wailing Wall, an oil rig in the North Sea.
The only thing bothering her, as she zapped the TV and snuggled into her warm satin cocoon, was a feeling that Andy was calling her—like the time his head got caught between slats of the crib and he called her without being able to call.
She snaked an arm out and lifted the handset of the phone—alive and humming; she put it back down. Snuggled into the satin.
Knew damn well it was herself calling him.
Should have taken a cold shower, not a hot one.
Mom! His voice, in pain, woke her. Daylight fringed the closed draperies.
She lay listening.
Felt him, less strongly, but certainly didn’t hear him again.
She refused to let herself trick herself into calling him. Went up to the spa after breakfast and biked, jumped rope, swam—the glassy splashing in the window-walled pool masking all other sound.
The bothersome feeling faded away as she sat eating a club sandwich in the living room, watching the Lighting finally becoming real—and so much more richly than she had ever imagined.
All regular programming had been suspended. On every channel the Lighting music, the Lighting logo, the Lighting countdown in one corner or another: -30:44:27, seconds streaming, minutes melting. On every channel shrink-wrapped sky-blue-and-gold Lighting candles being ranked on tables and counters, sky-blue-and-gold Lighting banners being raised.
On the Princeton campus. In a women’s prison in Hong Kong. In a casino in Connecticut, a hospital in Chad, aboard the QE2. In an Oslo department store, a nursery school in Salt Lake City.
Heads talked with other heads about the Lighting’s beauty and significance, and about the discord and pain and sorrow that would be darkening the planet at this cosmic milestone were it not, thank God, for Andy, Son of Rosemary, shepherding us into the year 2000 as One Humanity, Refreshed and Renewed.
Reporters shoved microphones at people and asked leading questions—in a Bolivian shoe factory, a Hassidic community in upstate New York, a firehouse in Queensland, Australia. In St. Peter’s Square, in a subway station in Beijing, in Disneyland, Mickey and Minnie waving shrink-wrapped candles.
Andy was probably watching upstairs. She sighed; they should have been watching together, regardless. Tomorrow night, watching the actual event with him, would be the peak experience of her life.
She surfed the channels, sipping a Coke, using the biochem book as a coaster. Mombasa, Iraq, Tibet, Yucatán . . .
Everybody in the world would be lighting clean, safe, GC candles!
The Amish liked TV, spoke readily into the mike about Andy, Rosemary, the Lighting, and the joy of tractors.
Even the dingbats waiting to be picked up by aliens in UFO’s would be lighting their candles before leaving planet Earth. There would be just enough time, a woman leading a California contingent of three hundred explained; Nostradamus had predicted they would be picked up in the second minute of the year 2000, not the first. Two goes with two, don’t you see?
6+6+6
ON FRIDAY morning, calling him was reasonable; she had to finalize their arrangements, she’d never even given him a definite yes. And she wasn’t imagining he was calling her anymore; she had enjoyed a good night’s sleep at last. And good melon and coffee and croissant, there in the satin. María, who had brought in the tray, had been more excited than she. “I feel like I’m marrying everybody tonight!” she had said, laughing, opening the draperies on an overcast sky.
Rosemary tapped Andy’s regular number and waited through his message, watching Lighting preparations backstage at the Metropolitan Opera House, -9:37:17. “Andy?” she said. “I want to discuss this evening.” She waited, watching the scene at Yankee Stadium.
Beep, dial tone.
She tapped the Number, spoke to the chip.
Felt good having done it. She checked the crossword puzzle and felt even better; there she was—1 across, Noted mother, eight letters. The Lighting was the day’s theme, naturally, and the rest of the puzzle—except 6 down, Noted son, four letters—was tough and tricky, the usual Friday challenge. Almost forty minutes before she finished.
He hadn’t called.
She tapped the Number again, spoke to the chip, stayed on through the different-number option. “If you wish only to give a message to Andy, press two.”
She pressed two.
“Please record your message for Andy now.” Beep.
“Hi,” she said. “I want to discuss this evening. Joe’s picking me up at six; is that what you were figuring on? Call soon, will you? I have a hair appointment at eleven-thirty.” She waited.
“Thank you, Rosemary. Andy will get your message soon. You may hang up now.”
He hadn’t called by the time she left.
When she got back to the made-up suite, there were double-digit messages on the regular line and one on the private line.
“Hi, do you know where that son of yours is?” Diane. “I haven’t heard from him since Tuesday and the calls are pouring in. Some he’s got to return—I mean, like the Pope and the President? I don’t even know which site the two of you are going to; I assume the park with the rest of us. Would you please tell him to call me, or call me yourself if you know what’s going on? And guess who’s writing haiku about you. ’Bye.”
She erased it.
Turned the TV on. Talking heads, at -4:14:51.
A plastic bag from the valet hung on the pull-out rod between the closet doors. She tore it open, drew free the sky-blue crepe, laid the pantsuit across the bed. She hung the other things away, and got out the gold silk blouse and the gold high-heeled sandals; put them on the bed too. Rolled the plastic up, popping it, and stuffed it into the wastebasket.
She stood frowning. Checked the pocket of her slacks for her card.
She put the shades and the kerchief back on.
Rode down to the lobby—jam-packed and noisy—and keeping her head down, made her way around the corner from the elevators to the AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY door; ran her card through the lock and pulled the door open.
She carded the elevator door; it split, the cab right there—suggesting Andy had gone out. Maybe he hadn’t died of a heart attack after all while she ignored his calls for help.
She got into the inside-out lipstick anyway, turned, braced herself for lift-off, touched 52. Whoosh as 8-9-10 flicked past. She took the shades and kerchief off, fluffed her hair, waggled her jaw till her ears popped.
Remembered last time, facing his bearded chin, rocketing up with him faster than she liked—to the view et cetera.
The red 52 pinged alight as the cab slowed, and split open.
The sky beyond the black-and-brass lounge was wintry gray, darkening already at three o’clock, clouds growing heavier over distant Queens. More snow on the way?
“Andy?” she called as the brass cylinder closed behind her.
A woman spoke, a familiar, fluent voice, off to the left and back. “... with our continuous coverage of the Lig
hting. It’s just under four hours away now, and everywhere, in every time zone, people are feeling a new solemnity...”
“Andy?” she called, following the voice back toward an open doorway. TV pictures shone and shifted in the side wall of the room within, four large screens she could see and parts of two nearer ones, three over three. “Andy?” she called, along with some kids in a classroom on the screen with the sound. She pushed the door all the way open, looking beyond it to the room’s other side.
He was nailed to the wall. Nailed through his bloodied palms, his arms outstretched, his head hanging. In his white GC sweatshirt and jeans, standing sandwiched between the dark wood wall and the back of a black leather couch pushed against him.
She closed her eyes, swayed, holding the doorjamb.
Looked again in the shifting light at—not a vision— Andy crucified, small pale horns jutting from his bloodied hair. Dead?
She pushed from the jamb, rushed to the couch and on it on her knees, a hand to his chest, a hand to the side of his neck.
Warm.
And a pulse.
Slow.
Feeling the throb in the side of his neck, catching her breath, she winced at his right hand—the fingernails grown into claws, four inches of flat-headed metal thick as a pencil sticking out of the bloodied palm. What lunatic had done it? A track of dried blood trailed down the dark wood wall.
Were his ankles nailed too? She craned her head beside him but couldn’t see into the dark behind the couch. His feet seemed to be on the floor, judging from his height and the moderate strain on his arms. She felt his chest stir. “Andy?” she said. Across the room behind her, he talked about the Lighting.
His head moved, turned toward her, the horns curving thumb-sized from his hairline. She caressed his cheek, wincing. His eyes opened. She smiled at him. “I’m here,” she said. “I heard you. I thought it was my imagination! I’m so sorry, darling!” His mouth opened, gasping; his tiger eyes begged.
She turned to a low black console, put a foot to the floor, and lifted a dripping champagne bottle from a cooler, stood it aside. She took the cooler, turned with it and knelt on the couch again, dipped a hand into water, wet his lips.
