Ghostheart

by R.J. Ellory

  This time she was determined to walk through it, head held high, eyes wide open, teeth gritted, fists clenched, and take on whatever came her way. Too long in the background, too long skulking in the shadows waiting for someone to call her name and have her come forward. If you wanted it, you had to go and get it. Surely this was the case? Both Harry Rose and Johnnie Redbird seemed to have such a belief as their guiding philosophy. And Sullivan would have agreed with them on that point if nothing else, and Sullivan was perhaps the closest she had to a real friend. If you could not trust your friends, then whom could you trust? David had showed her something – his experiment, his parlor trick – but there was something of substance in what he had done. And then she had asked him to kiss her, and kiss her he did, no more, no less. She had trusted him, and he had not violated that trust. A small thing, but didn’t everything begin with something small, and then grow? And Forrester. Was he to be trusted? She knew nothing of either of them, but each in his own way – David with his words, Forrester with letters from her father and a story that touched the edges of her imagination – had served to strip away some of the façade, the face she had worn for the world for as long as she could recall. It was not her own face – it was a composite of all the things she’d ever believed people wished her to be, like a suitcase, and dependent upon the event there was always an identity within that suitcase that she could wear for the occasion. Sometimes they suited her, sometimes not.

  She considered these things and a great deal more besides, and with each passing silhouette beyond the door she wished the bell would ring, that someone would enter her store, her life, and bring with them a little of the outside world in which she could share.

  But the morning disappeared without visitors, and she wondered how much of this disconnection she had created for herself.

  A little before one Annie locked up and returned home. She sat for a while watching some old black-and-white movie on the TV, defeated a pint and a half of cappuccino ice cream, and when she was done she wandered across the hall to call on Sullivan.

  He wasn’t home, more than likely in a bar down the street, and considering the possibility that she might walk down there and join him she stood on the landing in the silence of the house.

  There was a sound below. The street door opened, slammed shut, and then there was the sound of footsteps on the risers.

  They were not Sullivan’s footsteps. His footsteps she had heard several times a day every day she’d lived here. This was someone else, and as there were only two upper floor apartments – her own and Sullivan’s – the person now hurrying up the stairs had to be a stranger.

  A taut sense of apprehension invaded the skin across the back of her neck. She glanced to her right, the door to her own apartment, and even though the impulse to hurry inside was there, to close and lock and deadbolt the door behind her, there was also something that forced her to stay right where she was.

  What are you doing Annie?

  Her mother’s voice.

  Get inside girl, get inside … you’re inviting trouble … you don’t know who it is …

  Annie clenched her fists involuntarily.

  She took a step backwards, almost as if she wished to fold silently into the shadows at the head of the well. She took a second step back, a third, and found the wall behind her. It was cool and hard and unyielding.

  She had felt like this before. This was not a new sensation.

  The footsteps gathered speed, gathered sound, and soon there was nothing she could hear but the hammering of those feet on the risers as they turned the last corner and came up towards her.

  A sound escaped her lips.

  Where had she felt this?

  And then it came. David’s apartment. The trick he had played on her.

  She looked at her door, cursed herself for not rushing inside it and closing it tight behind her.

  She felt her skin go cold and tight. Again that sense of rushing nausea building in her chest. She started to breathe – fast and shallow – and when she closed her eyes she saw that same depth of blackness she’d seen when she was blindfolded.

  She saw the shadow of the intruder …

  Perhaps the guy from across the street had come to check out where his showgirl has gotten to …

  And then she found herself sliding down the wall to her haunches, her knuckles white, the fingernails of her right hand embedding themselves in the flesh of her palm.

  She closed her eyes, she held her breath, she waited for the intruder to make himself known, to do whatever he had come to do …

  The sound of footsteps was like a frightened heartbeat … her own heart even now trip-hammering in her chest, getting louder, faster, and hearing the blood rush in her ears …

  This was just like David’s apartment … just like it, but worse, because this time she could hear someone coming, and this time they were coming to get her …

  They were seconds away, less than seconds, less than the heartbeat that was even now deafening her …

  ‘Annie?’

  The sound that escaped her lips as she opened her eyes was almost a scream. A sound of shock and surprise. A release of bottled emotion.

  She looked up.

  ‘Annie … what the hell are you doing down there?’

  ‘David?’

  He took a step forward, was standing over her with his hand outstretched.

  She took it, her eyes wide, the color drained from her face, and when she stood she could do nothing but let his arms enfold her and pull her tight.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked. ‘What are you doing here David?’ Her voice was tinged with fear.

  ‘Jeez, you’re shaking,’ he said. ‘Let’s go inside Annie,’ and then he stopped, hesitant, looking both left and right in turn.

  ‘This one,’ she said, indicating her apartment, and without pausing he hurried her into the apartment and closed the door behind them.

  ‘I got your note,’ she said, fumbling to retrieve it from the pocket of her jeans even as she was speaking.

  ‘The job was canceled,’ David said. ‘I think they had someone closer … I got a call and they canceled the job.’

  He stood for a moment, his eyes on Annie, and then looking around the room he started to nod his head. ‘This is one hell of a place Annie … this is really something. Did you do these colors and things yourself?’

  She nodded, surprised and bemused that he would notice such a thing at all, even more so that he seemed to have forgotten how shaken up she was.

  He looked back at her. ‘Christ,’ he said. ‘I really gave you a shock, didn’t I?’

  ‘A little,’ she said, and then she started to smile. She cut the smile short, she frowned, tilted her head to one side. ‘Anyway, how come you’re here … how did you find out where I lived?’ A fleeting moment of disturbance, the sensation of being threatened, invaded. She had not known this man when she had gone to his apartment, and now he was here, here within her sanctum sanctorum, and truth be known she knew him no better.

  ‘The phone book,’ David replied. ‘You’re the only “A. O’Neill” that lives in this suburb.’

  Annie nodded. She was still shaken, visibly so.

  ‘I can go,’ he said. ‘I went down to the store to see if you were still there but you’d closed up. If you want me to go I can go right now. I’m sorry if –’

  Annie raised her hand. ‘It’s okay … I don’t know what happened. I went out to check on Sullivan and then I heard someone coming up the stairs, and for some reason I just stood there like a halfwit.’

  ‘Sullivan?’ David asked. ‘Is that … is that like your cat or something?’

  Annie started laughing. ‘Sullivan is nothing like my cat David … Sullivan is my neighbor.’

  ‘Oh, right, your neighbor … so where’s the cat?’

  ‘The cat? I don’t have a cat.’

  David frowned.

  Annie laughed again. ‘No cat David. Just a neighbor. Nei
ghbor’s name is Sullivan … end of story.’

  David nodded, still frowning. ‘So you don’t want me to go?’

  ‘No, I don’t want you to go.’

  ‘Which means that you want me to stay, right?’

  Annie shrugged. ‘What is this … stupid day or something? Yes, I would like you to stay. Take off your coat, sit down, make yourself at home. You want some tea, some coffee?’

  David took off his coat. ‘Some tea, yes, that would be good.’

  He set his coat down on the chair inside the front door, looked around once more, and then crossed the room. He sat at the table where Annie and Sullivan had spent so many hours shooting the breeze, unfolding their thoughts for one another and airing them in that same mellow current.

  Annie paused in the doorway to the kitchen, and standing there for a moment she was surprised at how different the entire room seemed to appear with someone new inside it.

  David looked up at her. ‘What?’ he asked.

  She shook her head and smiled. ‘Nothing David … relax, take it easy okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Sure … I’ll relax. You okay now?’

  She nodded. ‘I’m fine, just fine.’

  Annie left him there amongst her co-ordinated colors and tell-tale possessions while she made tea. She was no more than a few minutes, but when she returned she found him looking through the CD rack.

  ‘Sinatra,’ he said.

  ‘You like Sinatra?’

  He turned and smiled at her. ‘I love Sinatra.’

  She looked at his face. It was genuine. David Quinn loved Frank Sinatra.

  ‘Put some on if you want.’

  David took the CD from the case, turned on the player, the amplifier, and within a moment Frank was joining them in the room with his inimitable rendition of ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin.’

  ‘Los Angeles, 30 April 1963,’ David said.

  Annie frowned and sat at the table. ‘What was?’

  David walked across the room and sat facing her. ‘This record.’

  She shook her head. ‘You know that? When and where it was recorded?’

  ‘I do,’ David replied. ‘Do you think that’s really pathetic?’

  She smiled, laughed a little. She was touched. He had shared something with her, something personal. ‘You’re asking me if I think that the fact that you know when and where this track was recorded is pathetic?’

  ‘Uh huh … a bit, maybe?’

  She frowned and looked serious. ‘David, it’s possibly the most pathetic thing I’ve ever heard.’

  For a moment he was speechless, and then Annie started laughing, and then David Quinn was laughing too, and it seemed that Frank was looking over them and crooning ‘I’ve got you deep in the heart of me …’ like it had been written especially for this moment.

  And then there was no-one making a sound but Frank, and though Annie O’Neill had lived in the apartment for the best part of seven years, though everything in it had been chosen by her, though each cushion and drape, each chair and lamp had been purchased after considerable thought and consideration, there was something entirely strange about her surroundings.

  She looked across the table at David Quinn, a man she had met only eight days before, and there was something so meaningful in the fact that he was there. Richard Lorentzen had been here, as had Michael Duggan, but they had never served to change the way she felt inside her own home. David Quinn had been there all of five minutes, and something had changed. Something definitely had changed.

  ‘Thank you for coming,’ she said. ‘Despite how pathetic you are, I appreciate your coming.’

  David smiled, reached out his hand, and closed it over hers. He leaned forward.

  ‘Kiss this pathetic little man would you Annie?’ he whispered.

  The moment was there, right there in front of her. It was the moment of which she’d thought on the train after the priest had gone. It was this moment that required her decision, because now she could choose – to stay with it, or to let it go.

  She looked at David, looked at his eyes, looked through them to see what lay on the other side, and tried to hear the language his expression was speaking. There was no way to tell such things, but it would always be like this, and if she turned back now there would be the ‘what if’ life that Sullivan had spoken of. She would look back at this moment, and she would regret it.

  She felt butterflies in her stomach. The palms of her hands were sweating. She felt the grip of tension through every muscle in her body. She closed her eyes slowly, opened them, took a deep breath. She asked herself one last time if this man was a blessing or a threat … but the answer didn’t come, and she knew that had she waited for eternity there would always be silence out there.

  And then Annie O’Neill leaned forward, touched his face, closed her palm over his cheek, opened her fingers and ran them through his hair, and then she pulled him towards her.

  The sensation was somehow different, and yet somehow the same as before – the time in his empty warehouse apartment. This time it was her home, here amongst her things. And simply because it was here it was somehow more meaningful, and when her lips touched his, when she felt the pressure of his face against hers, when she sensed the rush of emotion and feeling that came with it, it was all she could do to restrain herself from tearing his shirt from his back and dragging him to the floor.

  Eventually – a lifetime, perhaps two – she withdrew from him.

  He continued to hold her hand, and when she rose he rose with her, and when she walked he followed her without question, and leading him past the kitchen towards the door on the far side of the room there was nothing in his expression that questioned what she was doing or why.

  And once through the door, her bed behind them, clean clothes scattered across the end of the mattress and over the deep armchair that stood beside it, she pulled him close once more, could feel the pressure of her breasts against his chest, the ache that had started in the base of her stomach, the tension in her throat …

  His hands were on her waist then, his fingers pressing into her, and then he slipped his thigh between her legs and she closed her legs around him, and seeming to float backwards she felt the backs of her shins touch the edge of the mattress, and with her right hand she swept the clothes off the bed onto the floor and collapsed.

  He collapsed with her, and she could feel his weight over her, but somehow weighing nothing, and then his hand was sliding from her waist to the top of her leg, and with his fingers he was tugging her tee-shirt free from the waistband, and when it was free he seemed to lift it from behind, and with one swift motion she felt her tee-shirt slide up over her head and vanish. She found his shirt buttons, slid them free from their eyes, and then he was helping her, and she could feel the warmth of his skin, the rough texture of hair on his chest …

  Her jeans, her bra, his pants, his shorts beneath, his shoes, his socks, her socks, the clean clothes from the mattress, and something up close and personal amidst all of this, and breathless beneath his weight for a second, and then released but enclosed, and feeling the weight of his head on her stomach, his hands over her breasts, her nipples swollen, her back arched, and then his tongue tracing a fine line from her navel downwards, downwards …

  And a warm rushing sensation inside her, like a slow-motion flood of something indescribable as his mouth touched her, as his fingers brushed against her, found their way inside her, deep inside her …

  And then she was turning, and she could feel the muscles in his thighs tensing as she touched him, as she closed her hand around him, as she kissed his stomach, his back as he turned, and then sitting up she closed her mouth around his nipple, and she could feel him sigh without sounds, and then lowering her head she took him inside her mouth, and it meant something, more than it had ever meant before, and never had she felt so close as this to someone …

  From the edge of the mattress he turned her onto her back, and then he was over her, his ha
nds around her, gripping her waist now, and leaning up he pressed himself against her leg, and then sliding sideways he entered her, and she could feel him within her, deeper, ever deeper now, and there were tears in her eyes, and she was laughing she seemed to remember, and then there was motion, and within that motion there was something that could only ever have been described as love …

  At least she believed this was love, for she had never felt something like this … could never remember ever feeling something like this.

  And it seemed to go on forever. And she didn’t want it to end.

  More than anything in the world, she didn’t want it to end.

  But it did, and then there was silence but for their breathing, and out beyond the window rain began to fall.

  She didn’t make a sound, didn’t wish to fracture the atmosphere for a second. She closed her eyes, pressed her face against his chest, and lay silent as he ran his fingers through her hair.

  SIXTEEN

  An hour passed, perhaps more, before she stirred. She turned slightly, looked up at David’s face. His eyes were closed, his breathing deep but gentle. He was sleeping. Here among the mid-afternoon ghosts of something they had shared, he was sleeping.

  She slid out from beside him, slipped on his shirt, and tiptoed to the kitchen to pour a glass of juice from a bottle in the refrigerator. Standing there, in front of the window, the rain sheeting down against the glass, she was conscious of a smile creeping across her face, taking over her whole expression.

  This was something new, something different she believed, and though their lovemaking had been spontaneous, impulsive, she also felt that it had perhaps been the rightest thing she had ever done. She was not in love, not so naïve as to consider such a thing, but she truly felt there was enough about this man that she could love him. He made her feel important, and – truth be known – she believed the feeling was reciprocated. They were both odd ones out, anachronisms within their own lives. She knew almost nothing of him, a little of his family and what he did for a living, but beyond that very little. It didn’t matter, such things would come in time, for wasn’t falling in love – or rising into love – all about creating the here and now and building from that into the future? The past was the past. The past was gone, best forgotten, and for now she believed that the past had been worth it: it had given her this, and this was something which could make her truly happy.