Blood in the Water and Other Secrets

by Janice Law

  Meanwhile, she was like a woman in a dream; she marveled at air so smokey it was visible, a palpable veil irradiated by the fluorescents, and gazed at the banks of monitors, the dozens of watchful eyes that were the visible sign of their suspicion. They might call Ben, she thought, they might call security; instead, a clerk came back carrying a negotiable check with a lot of digits. She slipped it into her purse, thanked the manager, and distributed lavish tips.

  The manager personally escorted her to the garage, where he helped with the door of the Mercedes and shook her hand— still tender under her glove. Then she was off down the road, disappearing, literally, into the fog. She had no recollection of where she had driven next or where she had left the Mercedes. Presumably at the airport, but maybe at a bus station. Or Amtrak. She only knew that she’d somehow gotten rid of the car and transferred herself to a Manhattan hotel where she became aware that she was watching a movie on television.

  For quite a while, the movie was more real than the room— some sort of suite; than herself— dressed in an unfamiliar pair of jeans and a cashmere sweater; than Manhattan— an implausible rumble punctuated by horns and sirens. The black and white film provided entrance to a simpler, more comprehensible, universe. The soft gray tones did not jangle her nerves like the violent colors of everyday life, where sullen purples, whining citrons, furious reds, and poison greens burned her eyes and made her head ache.

  She loved the movie’s effortless elegance. The sheen of a streetlight on a bulbous black sedan, the smooth silver and gray patterns of a woman’s face, the jagged lights and darks of a man’s profile: this was a code that she could read; this was a message for her alone.

  And she studied it devoutly, recognizing her story in its hackneyed plot of desire, betrayal, and revenge; reading her fate in the click of high heels, the acceleration of a car, the tense confusion of shots and phones and alarms. But her particular study was the heroine, a tall, straight, beautiful woman, calm and clever, with a lethal snub nosed pistol and an amazing suit. The jacket started with wide shoulders, narrowed to a fitted waist, then belled into a peplum. The skirt was long and gently flaring. With this outfit, the heroine wore high dark heels, a neat, smart hat, gloves— she could have wept with relief when she saw the nearly elbow length gloves— and carried a little purse, dainty, but sturdy. Sometimes the heroine added a scarf, sometimes a fur; whatever the accessories, the look was always elegant and efficient.

  Stranded in her unfamiliar hotel room, she saw at once how it all added up; she understood the way it worked— even the old fashioned stockings with their seams. How she admired the discipline of those two straight lines, sure signs of resolve and invulnerability. If she only had stockings like those, if she only had such a suit! Resolve and invulnerability were precisely what she needed, and there, in front of her, was the identity that would provide them. She need only become that straight, beautiful woman to leave the technicolor world behind.

  The first thing, clearly, was that magic ensemble, that emblem of another dimension. As soon as the film ended, she called Bloomingdales’ and then Sax’s. Finally, she obtained something almost right, good enough so that when the boxes were delivered and the clothes spread out on the bed, she felt safe. She felt that she could go out and do the practical things she knew must be done: deposit the check, open an account, sell her jewelry, find an apartment, destroy her credit cards. Start, in short, a new life and obliterate all traces of her former existence.

  Later on, after she was settled in a small East Side apartment, she found a dressmaker, a witch woman who understood clothing and armaments and who made exactly what she wanted: a suit with wide shoulders, fitted waist, soutache braid collar and pocket detail, a peplum, and a long, slightly flared skirt. She had it made up in gray. But although that was the screen color, the shade did not translate as well, she thought, to real life. The second version, in taupe, was perfect. Absolutely perfect.

  The blouse was to be cream, and they had a struggle with that. Polyester was out of the question, and modern silk, the dressmaker said, lacked body. She agreed, they were in perfect harmony, but, in the meantime, she felt worried and nervous and hesitated to go out. Fortunately, the dressmaker was resourceful; she found some Chinese silk for warm weather and, for winter, an antique satin, as heavy and smooth as the finest ice cream.

  The minute she put the whole ensemble on, the blouse, the jacket with the shoulder pads, the flared skirt, the high heels, the hat— oh, what troubles they’d had with the hat, too!— she knew she was safe.

  There remained only the gloves, the last detail. She had to search the city for them, through the big department stores, the little boutiques, the luxury importers and vintage stores and flea markets and discounts, because it was not just finding the right style or the right shade. It was finding the perfect gloves, perfect for her purposes, that is; gloves that would complete the costume, that would slide over her damaged hands and take her from the shocks and terrors of reality to the perfect silver shimmer of another dimension.

  Success came unexpectedly in a little out-of-the-way leather shop. Imagine a spring day, sunny and cool with the street smell of exhaust and combustion sweetened by the florists’ tulips and lilies blooming in their galvanized display cans. The old man at the counter lifted his head when she walked in and, instantly, she felt serene. She knew before he opened the drawer that she would find what she’d been looking for, and there they lay: elbow length gloves of the palest bluish gray calfskin. She bought a dozen pairs and, with them, the freedom of the city. Now that her transformation was complete, she found it possible to walk in the nearby park, to shop at the grocery, to browse along the antique shops and the flower stands, to rent movies at the video shop.

  Naturally, she was always on the alert for “her” film, for that special, nameless, half magical, half imaginary movie she had watched so raptly in that strange Manhattan hotel, but it proved elusive. Though she consulted catalogues and books and went downtown to the museums and uptown to the university whenever there were special showings, the tall, resolute woman with the beautiful, enigmatic face never reappeared. She had to be content with echoes in other films: a hint in the music or in the line of a dress, a snatch of snappy dialogue or a sudden, dangerous moment in a city night.

  On these forays, she got around the technicolor city by cab, always alone, trusting her costume to inform others who might interrupt her, solicit her, or threaten her that she was not resident in their world. She was a visitor from another dimension, following her own, inviolate script.

  As time went on, as she was shaped more and more by her new life, she added other ritual protections to her costume. She shopped daily at the same stores, planned the same menus for each week, bought the same papers and magazines. She paid for everything in cash or with cashier’s checks. To the shopkeepers, to the neighbors, she commented on the weather and said, “Good morning” or “Good afternoon,” but she never mentioned her name, never revealed her address, never let slip the slightest personal detail.

  This caution was advisable, because she knew he’d be looking for her, but it sprang less from fear than from her adaptation to life in another dimension. As long as she followed her script, as long as she was in character and in costume, she felt invisible. Nothing could harm her. Not even Ben.

  A year went by, two years. She might have made new friends, she might have gone to another city and started over more or less openly. She might have obtained new documents, secured a court order, taken any one of a number of conventional steps. But more and more the technicolor world seemed alien to her, alien, erratic, and violent. She was quite happy where she was.

  Mr. Silverbaum was the first to warn her, old Mr. Silverbaum, who lived on the sixth floor and exchanged courtly “Good mornings” with her when he went out to walk his elderly schnauzer. There had been someone in the hall, he told her in his light Viennese accent, just the previous night. He’d heard a sound and opened the door, expecting his sister
who lived in Jersey, and there was a stranger, a man in a dark coat. He’d complained in the strongest terms to the management and to Tommy, the doorman, too.

  She listened sympathetically, but being invisible, she was not personally concerned. The Silverbaums were a different matter: elderly antique collectors, they were wealthy enough to be a target for savvy thieves or desperate addicts.

  “You were quite right,” she said. “You were quite right to complain.”

  “Of course, of course,” he said. “But Madame Cee”— with his fine European manners Mr. Silverbaum had taken the initials on her door and christened her “Madame Cee”— “it is for you I was really alarmed. A woman alone. I said that to Tommy: I said, ‘you must be especially careful for Madame Cee.’”

  She thanked him and smiled. “I am always careful about opening my door,” she said.

  She told Tommy the same thing later in the week when he raised the matter. “Mr. Silverbaum told me about the intruder,” she said.

  Tommy shook his head. “I don’t know if it’s the same guy that was on Mr. Silverbaum’s floor, but Joey’s seen someone around back. He called the police twice last week. Well, you know how much that’s worth. But I’m keeping my eyes open. I just wanted you to know that. Plus I’m checking the service door regular, but still . . .”

  “I’m always careful,” she said. She could have reminded him that she got no mail, received no visitors, took no chances. It was not, in any case, a matter of concern. The city was full of thieves, full of the deranged, the homeless. There were plenty of explanations, and she had no intention of changing her routine.

  She went out every morning for her papers and for either a bagel or a danish at the little bakery on the corner. She bought flowers twice a week at a flower stand down on Third and shopped for chicken, pork chops, and pasta at the neighborhood Italian market. She always dressed the same way and carried her small, surprisingly heavy purse in one hand, a string bag for her shopping in the other.

  She was so regular in her habits that she’d become, in a minor way, a feature of the neighborhood. “The lady in the suit” or “the lady wearing the hat” or, most often, “the lady with the gloves.” The shop keepers all knew her and the doormen, too, and when friends or out-of-town relatives visited, the locals would nod their heads at her across the street and remark, “there she goes, the lady with the gloves; we see her every day,” and think no more about her.

  But should she change her routine, deviate from her route, rewrite her script, there would surely be trouble. The universe would take notice that she had rejoined the technicolor world where everything was uncertain and violent. She would become visible again, exposed and defenseless.

  Besides, she’d taken her own precautions. She’d ordered another suit made— there had been some trouble getting just the right fabric last time and she’d had the dressmaker lay in an extra supply— also some light weight fabric gloves for summer in the same pale blue-gray as the calfskin. She had Tommy escort her upstairs if she was out at a late movie, and began to ask the dispatcher for cab drivers she knew. That was only sensible.

  But perhaps she was more disturbed than she appeared, for she began to be troubled by dreams. These, while superficially innocuous, proved deeply disturbing. In them she was always rushed for some reason, hurrying out of her apartment and onto the street only to discover that some article of clothing was missing: she’d forgotten her hat perhaps, or her jacket, or— worst yet— her gloves. Or else, she was wearing what she thought of as ordinary clothes— pants, a sweater, a dress— and felt naked and vulnerable. Because of these dreams, she began to dress with extraordinary care and to check her appearance carefully in the hall mirror any time she ventured out.

  That’s where she was when the knock came at the door. She had just finished her inventory, hat, gloves, purse, when she heard the sound, and froze. The only people who ever knocked on her door were Tommy and Mr. Silverbaum. But Tommy always called first, and old Mr. Silverbaum, who understood her anxieties without ever being told, would even now be calling through the door, “Madame Cee, Madame Cee?” so that she would know there was no reason for concern. She knew this was not Mr. Silverbaum.

  When she looked through the peephole, she saw the man in the dark coat, the man Mr. Silverbaum had seen, the man who had been hanging around the back of the building. Just for a moment, she smiled. Maybe his detectives had found her, but Ben had had to come himself. It pleased her that he would be disappointed; he would never have expected her to escape into another dimension.

  She smoothed her hair, touched her hat and picked up her bag. Then she unlocked the door and looked into his strange, dark, obsessive eyes.

  “Yes?” she said.

  It bothered him, she could see that, it bothered him that she was not frightened, that she was calm, that she was indifferent.

  His hands were bunched in his pockets; his black coat had a purplish sheen; there was red behind his eyes. Ben definitely belonged to the technicolor world where she had no intention of returning.

  “I told you I’d find you,” he said. “I told you, didn’t I? Do you remember what I told you?” His voice rising, he thrust out his hand and shoved her back into the apartment, the apartment in pale silvery and beige tones, where the tall, straight beautiful woman said, “What do you want, Ben?”

  His face was all darks and lights, a craggy, violent pattern. His body was a dark shape against the pale wall and his angular shadow slipped across the rug.

  “I told you I’d kill you if you ever left me,” he said. “I’d kill you anyway for stealing those chips.”

  He had a knife in his pocket, a gleaming silver streak that leapt from the dark fabric of his coat. The jagged patterns shuddered and rearranged themselves, and the shot, when it came, was startlingly loud, so loud it echoed along the floor and up a flight and reverberated through the Silverbaums’ dining room, so that they stopped drinking their morning coffee to call down for Tommy.

  When he got there, the door was open and the hallway smelled of meat and gunpowder. A man was lying in the foyer with blood on his chest and a knife in his hand.

  “He didn’t know,” she said. She was dressed just as she always was in the same suit and blouse and hat and high heels, holding the same little, surprisingly heavy, purse. She opened it now, and held it out so that Tommy could see the pistol. Quite an antique, as far as he could tell, but up to the job, that’s for sure, because the man gave a groaning cough and died.

  She made the slightest motion of her head, then the tall, straight, beautiful woman walked across the room to the phone and punched in the numbers. Her voice was low and throaty, a voice for dreams, for memories, for alternative dimensions.

  “You’d better send a squad car,” she said. “I’ve just killed a man.”

  Ghost Writer

  Marvin was excited when his agent called. It had been a while since he’d heard from Audrey, whose soft, raspy voice was permanently, if hopelessly, associated in his mind with sales and contracts, and the possibility of fame, if not fortune. Some foreign rights? A chapter in an anthology? Ready cash?

  “Can you stop by today?” Audrey asked.

  Of course, Marvin said he would, clearing out time that would otherwise have been spent in a fruitless perusal of his notebooks or in research on-line for a now overdue article or in sharpening pencils and tidying his desk and, probably, the way things had been going, quitting early to hit the beach. Instead, he fought the traffic down I-95 through blizzards of snowbirds and the mind numbing exhaust of heavy trucks to Audrey’s blue glass office building in the center of Lauderdale.

  Audrey Striker had been his agent for six years. Three books, UK rights on one, a modest movie option on another: not bad, not great, about par for the course for a midlist author of more ambition than talent and more talent than luck. What else is new? Another agent might have done better for him but would, just as likely, have done worse. Besides, he liked Audrey’s throaty, world we
ary voice, her greed, her toughness.

  She was waiting for him, that was surprise number one, and number two, Cindy, her secretary, was nowhere to be seen. He was being allowed an unprecedented private audience. “Come in, Marv,” Audrey called when her office door beeped. She was sitting with her back to the blue tinged panorama of pastel condo and hotel towers, her large, well shaped head awkwardly balanced on her small twisted frame. Her spindly legs were propped up on a footstool. Her cane was beside her, the motorized wheelchair she used for longer distances parked in the corner.

  “I’ve been looking at your latest royalty statements,” she said.

  Marvin’s heart sank. He hoped she had not called him all the way downtown just to tell him that his career was in the toilet. He took one of the handsome leather chairs and angled it away from the bright pastel towers of the city scape toward the comforting expanse of close packed book shelves. He could see the slender spines of his own novels.

  “I think we need to make a move in a slightly different direction, and I think you might be right for a proposal I’ve received.”

  “What sort of proposal?”

  “Completion of a dark fantasy trilogy. I have the contract in hand.”

  “Sorry,” said Marvin, disappointed in spite of himself, “that’s hardly my field.”

  Audrey was undeterred. “We already have a fairly detailed plot outline of the first novel, and rough— I’ll be honest— very rough outlines of the second and third. However, with the exception of two characters . . .” She scrambled among her notes. “Ah, here we go. Someone called Lord Ostrucht and the Lady Fergaine must be spared at all costs. Otherwise, you would have almost complete freedom. And,” she added, seeing Marvin was about to interrupt, “if the first novel proves successful, as I’m sure it will, you would have even more freedom with the later books. The key, Marv, dear, is speed and quality. Write me a good book fast and we can make a lot of money.”