Perfect Nightmare

by John Saul

  And hardwood floors and nine-foot ceilings.

  Things were looking up.

  The living room windows looked down over Amsterdam Avenue, which was okay. Not Central Park, but there was no way they could afford that.

  “There’s a rooftop garden,” she heard the agent tell Steve. “I won’t pretend it has the best view, but it’s quite charming.”

  Kara caught Steve’s eye, and they nodded at each other. So far, so good.

  Then they came to the kitchen. It was barely big enough for one person to maneuver in, the stove had only two burners, and the tiny countertops were covered with Formica in a particularly ugly shade of brown. It was nothing like the enormous, custom-designed kitchen with granite countertops that Kara had lived with so long that she’d almost forgotten there was anything else. Now the ugly truth hit her.

  You can get used to it, she told herself. But even if she could adapt to the size, she knew the kitchen would still need a complete remodeling.

  A remodeling they’d never be able to afford if they bought the place.

  So she’d just have to get used to it, she decided, hustling Lindsay down the hall, hoping her daughter hadn’t noticed quite how bad the kitchen was. “Let’s take a look at the bedrooms.”

  The master bedroom seemed almost as small as the kitchen, but at least it had windows. On the other hand, the windows faced another building, which was barely ten feet away. If the neighbors hadn’t had their shades drawn, Kara realized, she would be looking directly at them and see whatever they were doing.

  And they could look back, which meant she’d have to keep her shades drawn, too.

  The master bath looked like it belonged in an old motel.

  A cheap old motel.

  It’s the city, she reminded herself. This is how people live here. Modern plumbing is not an option.

  “Two blocks to Central Park,” the agent was saying as she and Steve followed Kara and Lindsay into the bedroom end of the apartment.

  “Hear that?” Steve said to Lindsay. He turned back to Rita Goldman. “What about the schools?”

  Lindsay, obviously uninterested, wandered away, and Kara followed her into the other bedroom.

  Small.

  Tiny closet.

  Saying nothing, Lindsay turned, walked out of the bedroom and headed for the front door. Kara, Steve, and Rita Goldman followed. As they left the apartment and moved toward the elevator, no one said anything at all. The silence stretched until the elevator arrived, its door slid open, and they all entered.

  As the elevator started down, Kara finally spoke. “Nice light in the living room. I love those big windows.”

  “Maybe we should have gone up to see the rooftop garden,” Rita Goldman suggested. “Shall we do that?”

  Kara glanced at Lindsay and read her daughter’s feelings. “I don’t think we need to,” she said. “I don’t really think this is what we’re looking for.”

  The Realtor nodded, her lips pursed, and no one spoke until they were back on the sidewalk. “I’m sure you’ll all love the next one,” she said, smiling just a little too reassuringly.

  But even before she’d finished speaking, Kara saw the expression on Lindsay’s face and knew that one of them, at least, would not love anything that Rita Goldman had to show.

  And Kara knew there would be nothing she could do about it. Suddenly she felt like crying.

  Chapter Six

  Sunday morning is when the big edition of the New York Times comes out.

  Which is why Sunday morning is my favorite time to wake up.

  I know Sunday is a lot of people’s favorite day, and I know that for a lot of them, it is also because of the paper. But for most of the others, the paper is loved because of the Arts section, or the book reviews or the sports or the editorials.

  I love it because it lists the addresses of open houses.

  And every open house presents me with a possibility.

  An exciting possibility.

  Today there were two new listings in the real estate section. I circled each of them with my red felt pen, then located them on my map.

  Finding them on the map is especially exciting, because it gives me clues as to the kind of people who live in the houses. Today, both the houses seemed to give promise of the kind of girl I’m looking for, and since they are both convenient, I was at first tempted to visit both of them.

  I began my very meticulous routine.

  First, I plot my route. In the event I decide to actually go visiting today, I shall rent a car from an agency in Port Jefferson. Perhaps some kind of Chevrolet—the sort of car one sees by the dozens every day but never notices.

  Exactly the sort of car I like best for my outings.

  Then I plan the route I shall take from the car rental agency to the first house, then to the other, and then back to the agency, always using the busiest—and the most anonymous—roads. Most of the looky-loos (a term I deeply despise) show up in the middle of open house hours, so I shall time my trip to slip in when the houses will be at their fullest.

  After all, it doesn’t take me long to find out whether I’ve found the home of the girl for whom I search. . . .

  And no one will notice me at all.

  I reread the ads, studying them carefully. The first house had four bedrooms. That’s a good sign, but its listing agent turns out to be one of those vile, pushy women who darts from room to room keeping track of everyone, babbling inanely, and insisting that everybody sign her book. The last time I saw her, she talked about interest rates and market conditions until I wished I’d never awakened that morning. Now I try to avoid her, but I’m not sure I can today.

  After all, the house has four bedrooms, and chances are strong that one of those bedrooms belongs to a girl, although there is no virtual tour of that house on the Internet.

  The other house is smaller, but is listed by an agent who is lazy and invariably spends most of his workday smoking on the front porch or the back steps, or the terrace if the house has one, smoking cigarettes and letting the prospective purchasers wander through by themselves.

  I shall certainly go see this one.

  After all, one never knows what surprises await just around a blind corner.

  Still, neither of these listings gave me a shiver of anticipation like the one I saw on the Internet a few days ago.

  I just have a feeling about that one.

  After plotting my route and planning my day, I doodled on the newspaper with my red felt-tip pen, circling the two ads over and over again. Oddly, the circles around the open houses seemed to turn into eyes.

  Two big red eyes that reminded me of something, but I couldn’t remember what.

  Underneath the eyes, I drew a mouth.

  A big, red, smiling mouth under the big, red eyes.

  It was absurd, I know, but for some reason, I couldn’t stop. The larger and more grotesque they got, the more they made me smile.

  Perhaps I won’t go out at all today.

  Perhaps I’ll just spend the day dreaming.

  Still, the open houses call me. Oh, I do love Sundays!

  Chapter Seven

  “This is the last place I have to show you,” Rita Goldman said, and Lindsay silently sighed in relief. The morning, which had started off badly with the traffic jam, just seemed to be getting worse, and even before she looked at her watch, her stomach told her it was at least an hour past lunchtime. But her hunger was only part of it.

  The worst of it was that as the morning had worn on, and they’d gone from one awful apartment to another—each of them seeming worse to Lindsay than the last—she’d slowly come to the conclusion that despite her brave words the other night, moving was going to be a lot harder than she’d dreamed, even in her worst nightmares. She hated everything about the city—the crowds, the noise, the traffic—everything.

  And now she was starting to get a headache.

  As if in response to her mood, a dark cloud had formed over the city and the wi
nd was blowing cold. Still, there was just one more place, and then they could get to the good part of the day.

  Lunch and shopping.

  It was an open house on the Upper West Side.

  Lindsay followed her parents and Rita Goldman into the building. The elevator opened, half a dozen people got out, and even more got in with them.

  Crowded.

  Lindsay hated that about elevators. People you didn’t even know were always touching you, even when they didn’t mean to. She pulled her shoulders in, pressed her arms against her sides and herself against the wall of the elevator, but even so, the man next to her brushed against her and she felt a chill pass through her. The knowledge that this would be happening every day after they moved to the city only made the chill worse.

  The apartment was on the sixteenth floor, actually had a good view and a big kitchen—big enough to hold a breakfast table. Not so bad.

  A nondescript man with greasy hair was the hosting agent, and he had a plate of cookies and a stack of color flyers, which he pushed into the hands of anyone who would take them. There were at least a dozen people standing in the living room in groups of two or three, whispering among themselves and examining every detail of the room.

  Lindsay headed for the bedrooms, leaving her parents to listen to Rita Goldman’s sales pitch, which by now she was pretty sure she knew by heart: “. . . close to the subway . . . good school . . . great restaurants . . . fantastic view . . . blah blah blah . . .”

  She edged past a young couple coming out of one of the bedrooms. It was a girl’s room, with posters on the wall and a pink bedspread. She looked at the jewelry box on the dresser and the cluster of framed photographs that could only be family pictures. A bunch of high school photos were stuck around the edges of the mirror over the dresser, and Lindsay wondered if one of the cute guys was the girl’s boyfriend.

  She felt a sudden urge to look through the girl’s CDs to see what kind of music she liked, but just as she was about to flip through them, she realized there was going to be an open house at her house next week.

  An open house just like this one.

  With strangers looking through her things.

  She jerked her hand away from the CDs almost as if her fingers had been scorched.

  She suddenly felt creepy about even having looked at the pictures and wondering if one of them was the boyfriend, and silently apologized.

  The thought of this happening in her own room, with anybody at all going through her stuff, made her queasy. Having an agent show people through apartments and houses that belonged to other people was bad enough, but open houses, where anybody—anybody—could just walk in and look through her underwear . . .

  Lindsay felt her queasiness turn to nausea, and knew that if she didn’t get out, she was going to throw up. She hurried back through the rooms and found her parents in the kitchen discussing the apartment with Rita Goldman, who looked just like a raven cawing over a prize piece of garbage.

  “Mom?” she whispered, trying to pull her mother aside. But her mother, still listening to the cawing of the raven, put her arm around her shoulders and tried to draw her into the conversation.

  “It’s only a block to the subway,” she heard her father telling her. “That’s really terrific, kitten!”

  “Did you look at the bedrooms, sweetheart?” her mother asked. “What do you think?”

  “I think I’ve got to get out of here,” Lindsay managed, bile rising up in her gorge.

  Her mother’s smile faded into a look of concern. “Honey, what’s wrong? You look a little pale.”

  “I just need to get out of here.”

  Kara’s motherly instincts came to the fore and she nodded. “Okay.” She turned to Steve. “I’m going to take Lindsay out for some air.” She looked at her watch. “Oh, good Lord, she must be starving—look how late it is!”

  “Why don’t we find a little place for some lunch?” the raven clattered. “I can make a few phone calls—maybe find something even better than this—and we can all get a bite.”

  Lindsay tugged at her mother. She didn’t want to have lunch with this woman. All she wanted was the Thai cabbage salad she’d been promised. Then she wanted to go shopping and to forget moving to the city. She struggled against the tears now threatening to overwhelm her. “Mom, please?”

  As if she’d read her daughter’s thoughts, Kara nodded, then glanced at Steve. “We’ll see you downstairs.”

  The elevator was crowded again, and Lindsay’s queasy stomach began to escalate into an anxiety attack. She felt hot and clammy at the same time, and steel bands seemed to be tightening around her chest, making it hard to breathe. As the elevator crept downward, she felt the strange heat rise up through her chest and her neck and into her face, and when the doors finally opened on the ground level, she was unsteady on her feet.

  She dropped onto a bench in the foyer and leaned against her mother, who sat down next to her.

  “What’s the matter, darling?” Kara asked, her brow creased with worry. “Are you sick?”

  “I’m hot,” Lindsay said. She picked up her mother’s hand and pressed it to her face.

  “You’re burning up,” Kara said.

  But already the flush was starting to pass. “No, I’m going to be okay,” Lindsay assured her. “I just needed to get out of there.”

  “Then we’ll just relax here for a few minutes and wait for Dad. Okay?”

  Lindsay nodded, closed her eyes and silently prayed for some kind of miracle that would mean they could just stay in their house and never have to go through this again.

  “Did you like this place?” Kara asked. “It certainly seems to be the best thing we’ve seen—close to the subway, and close to a very good school, and not too far from your father’s office.” She paused, then added, “And we can afford it. Barely, but we can make it.”

  Lindsay hardly heard the words, a single thought filling her mind: “Are people going to be going through our house like this?”

  Her mother looked puzzled. “Well, of course they are. At the open houses next week. Why?”

  Lindsay’s eyes widened and she paled. “I don’t want anybody in my room,” she whispered. “And I don’t want to move. Can’t we just forget about all this and go home?”

  Kara hugged her close. “I wish we could,” she said. “But you know we can’t! Come on, sweetheart.” Turning so she could face Lindsay, she tipped her daughter’s head up and looked into her eyes. “It’s a new chapter, Lindsay. A new adventure. I know it’s scary, but you’ll get through it! We’ve had a wonderful life out on the Island, but we’ll have a wonderful one here, too.”

  “But I hate all these places,” Lindsay whispered, her voice breaking. “I hate the city.”

  “You’ll grow to love it. Trust me.”

  But as the elevator dinged and her father came out with Rita Goldman and a flood of other people, Lindsay knew it wasn’t true. She hated the city now, and she always would. “Someone already made an offer on this place,” she heard her father say, sounding disappointed. “And it’s been accepted.” Lindsay immediately felt better.

  “Timing is everything,” she heard the agent say. “I’ll do a little more research, and now that I’ve got a better idea of what appeals to you, I can zero in. We’ll keep looking until we find the place that’s just right.”

  “Thai salad,” Lindsay whispered to her mother.

  “Thank you so much for your time,” her mother said as her father shook the agent’s hand. Rita Goldman swirled her black coat like a pair of wings, turned and swooped out of the building with a promise to be in touch soon.

  “We’ll find something we all like,” her father said, but Lindsay knew the truth.

  Her parents would find something they liked.

  The best she could do was cope.

  But she would do it. Somehow, she would do it.

  Chapter Eight

  Kara was just fastening the last button on her blouse when she
heard the doorbell. Damn. Was he early? A glance at the bedside clock told her he was right on time—she was late. “Lindsay?” she called. “Are you about ready?”

  The only response was the sound of the toilet flushing in Lindsay’s bathroom, which meant that she was still a while away from being ready.

  Kara slipped into her shoes and hurried down the stairs, tucking the blouse into her skirt. “Coming,” she breathed, hating, as always, to make anybody wait, and wondering why even the few seconds it took to get to the door made her feel guilty.

  Mark Acton stood at the door, briefcase in hand, his agent’s smile covering his face like a mask. “Good morning!”

  Kara pulled the door wide. “Hi, Mark. Come on in. We’re running a little late this morning.”

  “No problem. You take your time, and I’ll just get started setting up.”

  Kara put Steve’s breakfast dishes in the dishwasher and turned off the coffeepot. “Coffee before I throw it away?”

  “No, thanks.”

  She took a final swipe at the countertops, then looked around to make certain the kitchen looked clean and appealing. Suddenly the yellow paint she’d decided on two years ago didn’t seem like such a good choice. Too late now. “Lindsay!” she called up the stairs. “Time to go!” She turned back to the real-estate agent. “How’s the response so far?”

  “I’m expecting twenty or so agents to caravan through.”

  “Twenty! I didn’t know there were that many agents in town.” She wished she’d researched it more thoroughly and chosen a listing agent she liked a little better. Her thoughts were abruptly interrupted by Lindsay’s voice.

  “Mom?”

  “Hi, honey,” Kara said, glancing up at her daughter, who had paused halfway down the stairs. “Time to go.” Lindsay didn’t move, and it wasn’t until she spoke that Kara realized her gaze was fixed on Mark Acton.

  “Is he showing the house today?”

  “It’s the agents’ open house,” Kara said. “Are you ready? I’m already late.”

  “Where are you going?”