Ghostheart

by R.J. Ellory

  Annie’s face was white, shocked. Not until she reached the door did she realize she was holding her breath.

  ‘Annie!’ Sullivan was calling, confused, unaware of what she’d seen.

  He followed her, trying as best he could to settle the people around them, and when he went out through the door, a waiter following – perhaps believing that they were planning to run without paying the bill – he found Annie standing on the sidewalk, her whole body shaking, her head moving swiftly back and forth as she scanned left and right down the street.

  ‘Annie?’ Sullivan was asking. ‘Annie … what is it?’

  She looked at him, her eyes wide and brimming with tears, perhaps from the cold he thought, but then she opened her mouth and her tone of voice told him that it was nothing to do with the temperature.

  ‘Da-David,’ she stuttered. ‘David was here … looking … looking through the window at me. David Quinn was right here on the sidewalk …’

  Sullivan stepped forward and held onto her as if she would suddenly turn and bolt.

  She looked at him, seemed to look right through him, and then once again she was looking left and right, trying to see between the passing cars and taxicabs to the other side of the street.

  ‘You’re sure?’ was all Sullivan could think to ask.

  ‘As sure as I could ever be,’ Annie said. ‘I turned to look out of the window and there he was, right there in front of me looking in at us.’

  ‘It can’t have been –’

  ‘It was!’ Annie snapped. ‘Jesus, I should know Jack, I had the man practically living with me. I don’t forget a face, especially a man I’ve slept with.’

  ‘Okay, okay, okay … settle down Annie …’

  ‘Settle down? What the fuck good is that gonna do? He was here Jack, right here where I’m standing now.’

  ‘Okay Annie … he was here. He’s gone now … he’s gone. Let’s go back inside. I gotta pay, okay? I gotta pay and then we’ll go home.’ He took Annie’s arm gently, and started to lead her towards the restaurant. ‘Come back inside, sweetheart … please.’

  The waiter who had followed them seemed satisfied that they were not planning a sudden escape and walked backwards until he reached the entrance. He held open the door as Sullivan took Annie inside and returned her to their table. He asked for the check, stood there while Annie sat shivering, the man behind her turning round, looking at Sullivan, mouthing She okay? to which Sullivan nodded and smiled, and then the check was paid, and they were gathering coats, and whatever ambience they may have briefly created, whatever respite they had found away from the sharp corners and rough edges of the world, came back in full technicolor and 3-D visuals. Outside it was bitterly cold, and Sullivan walked beside Annie, pulled her tight, tugging his overcoat around her and holding her hand until they reached the steps of the apartment block and were on their way up.

  He saw her inside, went to the kitchen, and poured an inch of Crown Royal into a glass, and though the temptation hit him hard – hard like a Mack truck carrying bridge parts – he resisted. He carried the glass through to where Annie sat, silent and staring on the couch, and handed her the glass.

  She took bird-like sips, winced at the taste, the burning sensation that flooded her throat and filled her chest, but she did not complain. She drank the glass empty and set it aside.

  She said nothing for some time, seemingly in shock, and then at last she turned and looked directly at Sullivan and said, ‘He followed us.’

  Sullivan started to shake his head.

  ‘He did Jack … he goddamned followed us. You’re gonna turn around and tell me that coincidence isn’t bullshit now?’

  Sullivan shook his head. This was one he wasn’t going to win. ‘You can’t be sure,’ he said. ‘You cannot be sure he followed us.’

  ‘I don’t have to be sure,’ Annie said. ‘I only have to be more than fifty percent on this, and I’m ninety-five percent Jack, ninety-five fucking percent certain that David Quinn followed us.’

  ‘And what the hell would he do that for?’ Sullivan asked.

  Annie shook her head. ‘How the hell do I know? Same reason he seduced me, fucked me, took me to Boston and then ditched me from a great height. You know as well as I do that crazy people don’t think the same way we do.’

  Sullivan smiled. ‘I don’t think he was crazy Annie, I just think he was weak and confused and scared to commit to anything more than an uncomplicated relationship.’

  Annie sneered. ‘Christ Jack, he wasn’t even prepared to have an uncomplicated relationship. Two weeks and he ran … that sound like an uncomplicated relationship to you?’

  Sullivan sighed inside. He didn’t know what was going on. There was no way he would ever know if the man who’d looked through the restaurant window was David Quinn, someone who looked like him, or a complete hallucination.

  Annie got up suddenly. ‘This is bullshit,’ she said. ‘This is fucking bullshit Jack. I can’t live like this … I can’t spend the rest of my goddamned life … aah Jesus Christ, this is a fucking mess.’

  Annie collapsed on the couch again, and even before Sullivan had a chance to say anything she was crying.

  ‘I want … I want someone,’ she said, her voice breaking as she tried to stem the tears. ‘I want to have someone around who actually wants me for who I am. Is that too much to ask? Is that really too fucking much to ask? Christ almighty, what does it take to be happy around here? What the hell d’you have to do to find some halfway sane human being who wants the same things you do?’

  She looked up at Sullivan. Her eyeliner and mascara were running down her face. She looked like someone had given her a good kicking. Figuratively, Sullivan thought, someone had.

  ‘And where the fuck are your parents when you need them?’

  Sullivan frowned. ‘Your parents?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, her voice wavering. ‘Your goddamn fucking parents … your mom and your dad … where the fuck are they when you want some sympathy, eh? They’re dead, that’s what. They’re fucking dead, Jack. What the fuck is this? Screw Annie O’Neill month? Did the mayor announce a special Fuck-Annie O’Neill-In-The-Ass-Month and forget to send me a card?’

  She stopped suddenly, her breathing heavy but her sobbing ceasing mid-flight.

  ‘I have to speak to Forrester,’ she said. ‘He’s the only one who knew anything about my family. Some old guy out there knows more about my family than I do.’

  She got up from the couch and started rummaging around amongst a pile of papers on the dresser.

  ‘What’re you looking for?’ Sullivan asked.

  ‘His phone number … I have his phone number somewhere.’

  ‘You have his number?’

  Annie looked back at Sullivan. ‘When he sent that chapter down to the store I called the courier company and got his number … it’s somewhere … here!’ she said suddenly, and held up a plain manila envelope.

  ‘Call the number Jack … call the number and get Forrester.’

  ‘At this time of night?’

  ‘Just fucking call him will you?’ Annie snapped, and she thrust the envelope at Sullivan.

  He took it, went to the phone, and standing there with the receiver in his hand, asking himself what the hell he was getting into now, he dialed.

  Annie was pacing across the middle of the room, glancing at Sullivan as he stood there.

  There was silence at the end of the line for a good five seconds, and then a recorded message told him that the number had not been recognized.

  Sullivan put the phone down.

  ‘What?’ Annie asked.

  Sullivan shook his head, lifted the receiver again, and dialed the number once more to ensure he’d dialed correctly.

  Once again there was a delay, and then the same recorded message.

  ‘Not recognized,’ he told Annie, tension building in his chest now.

  ‘Bullshit,’ she said, and taking rapid steps towards him she snatched the receiver
from his hand, set it down, lifted it again, and dialed the number once more.

  Not recognized, the message told her, and she thought Yes, not recognized … just like me.

  Sullivan silently watched the expression of complete confusion register on her face.

  ‘There must be a fault,’ she started. ‘There must be a fault on the line. I called this number only a few days ago and spoke to him. Call the operator and get them to check the line.’

  Sullivan was shaking his head.

  ‘Call them Jack … call the operator, get them to check the line.’

  Sullivan took the receiver from her, and knowing it was futile, he called the operator. There was no fault. The line had been disconnected.

  ‘Disconnected? What d’you mean, disconnected?’ Annie asked.

  ‘Disconnected,’ Sullivan said matter-of-factly.

  ‘Why? Why would he have disconnected his phone?’

  ‘I don’t know Annie … I have absolutely no idea, but I really think that you shouldn’t get yourself upset about it. You can speak to him on Monday.’

  ‘And what if he doesn’t turn up Monday … what if he just doesn’t come? What the hell do I do then Jack?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Sullivan said. ‘I don’t know what you’ll do.’

  ‘Helluva lot of fucking use you are,’ she snapped.

  Annie walked back and sat on the edge of the couch. ‘I want to be alone,’ she said. ‘I want to be on my own for a bit Jack. Would you mind?’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ he said, ‘but I think I should stay.’

  Annie shook her head. ‘I want to be on my own … let me think this thing through. I need to figure out what I’m gonna do.’

  ‘I don’t know that there is anything you can do,’ Sullivan said.

  Annie waved her hand in a dismissive fashion. ‘Let me alone Jack … just let me alone.’

  Sullivan nodded, his eyes downcast. He started towards the door. ‘You know where I am,’ he said.

  Annie looked up, attempted a weak smile. Yes,’ she said. I just gotta come to terms with what’s happening, okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ he said, and as he opened the door he paused, opened his mouth to say something else, but Annie raised her hand.

  ‘I’ll be okay,’ she said. ‘Go home, get some sleep … I’ll see you in the morning.’

  And Jack Sullivan went, and though he had no wish to go he understood that Annie would not let him stay.

  He did not sleep, not for some time, and somewhere in the early hours of the morning, the apartment block silent, he was convinced he could hear her crying.

  His heart went out to her, but for the first time in his life he felt there was nothing he could do to help.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Sunday unfolded like the distant echo of some other day. A day when something meaningful might have happened. There was that same degree of anticipatory tension, and yet as Annie walked through her apartment, as she surveyed the confines of her own color co-ordinated prison, she believed that today – this day – she would spend alone.

  She had gone with Sullivan the evening before, and yes there had been a movie, and yes, there had been popcorn and a hot dog with onions and ketchup, but in leaving the theater she felt as if she were a ghost, and the sounds around her became nothing more than a continuous blur, and in looking at faces, a sea of faces, she realized she was looking for one face only. David Quinn. But he was not there. Not in the foyer as she waited for Jack Sullivan, not on the sidewalk as he hailed a cab, not in the lines of people waiting for buses, or the crowds that huddled together as if for warmth outside a club on Cathedral Parkway.

  And once home she wanted nothing more than sleep. And sleep came, quietly like a thief, and it stole from her recognition and memory of all that should have been. But wasn’t. And never would be.

  Sullivan came that morning, shared coffee, spoke little, and then asked if she wanted company.

  Annie merely shook her head and smiled.

  Sullivan understood, and went to a bar down the street to play chess as was his routine on Sunday mornings.

  From the window she watched the silent streets, and could feel her own heart beating, and wished for nothing more than the knowledge that someone was there.

  Don’t you want somebody to love?

  Who had sung that? Jefferson Airplane?

  It struck a chord for her. Everybody needed somebody. Until there was a somebody it felt as if this life was only half a life.

  Annie ate little; she had no appetite. There was no physical hunger, only the hunger for something emotional, spiritual perhaps. Such a hunger could not be satisfied by anything other than human contact, the knowledge that you were not alone.

  She played Sinatra, but the magic wasn’t there. Sinatra sounded distant and self-satisfied. Frank had someone. This boy from Hoboken, New Jersey, could’ve had anyone he wished. Today he sounded like that: replete, all filled up, filled to bursting. And so Annie listened to Suzanne Vega and Mary Margaret O’Hara, women who sounded like they’d been hurt, been bruised, and when ‘Luca’ came on Annie sat with her face in her hands and cried dry tears.

  Sullivan returned in the mid-afternoon. He knocked gently, twice, but Annie didn’t answer. He got the message and went away. He would not take offence. He never took offence. He would understand. Jack Ulysses Sullivan had more than enough ghosts of his own.

  And then evening, darkness swallowing up Manhattan, streetlights illuminated across the city, straight lines of brilliance with random yellow pinpoints filling the gaps in between.

  She watched, she waited, and when her body ached for sleep she succumbed, curling up inside the covers, and there she found brief respite from everything.

  Tomorrow was another day, a day that would bring Forrester, and Annie – believing that something good must come from all of this – felt that Forrester might tell her a little of the truth about her father.

  At least she wished so, for it seemed that wishes were all that remained.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  She woke to the sound of a dog barking somewhere, and she thought: All the years I’ve been here and I don’t ever remember hearing a dog barking. It was a desperate sound, a pleading monotony, and as she walked to the kitchen window to see where it was coming from, it stopped. Stopped dead. Just like that. Like someone got pissed off and shot it. But there had been no gunshot. Hit it with a shovel perhaps.

  She shuddered. Crazy shit, she thought. Your head’s full of crazy shit. You’re cracking up. Heard it said that people who live alone finally start talking to themselves … not out loud necessarily, but inside their heads.

  Like now.

  And then she smiled. Maybe crazy would be better.

  She planned to stay home much of the day, leave perhaps late afternoon or early evening. She would go to the store just for Forrester. There seemed to be no other reason. And then she thought that possibly all her years at the store had been a precursor to meeting David Quinn and Robert Forrester, and now she had met them, now she had undergone some indescribable change, there seemed no purpose in it. The Reader’s Rest was somehow representative and symbolic of her past: empty, full of dark colors and narrow shadows, a place someone went to escape the rain, to find someone who could relate to their own loneliness … People like John Damianka. But now even John had found somewhere else to be. He had found someone.

  Annie busied herself with cleaning. She hoovered each room thoroughly, scrubbed the linoleum in the kitchen, the ceramic tiles in the bathroom, and in sorting through the drawers of clothes in the bedroom she found blouses and sweaters she hadn’t worn for years. She thought of Sullivan, the analogy he had drawn, and she folded them neatly and returned them to where she’d found them.

  Sullivan did come and see her shortly after lunch, said he was on his way out to see someone, would be back in a few hours.

  ‘You want me to come tonight?’ he asked.

  Annie shook her head. ‘I want to go on my
own,’ she told him. ‘Don’t ask me why but I feel like this is something I need to do on my own.’

  He asked her if she was sure.

  ‘I’m sure,’ she said. ‘But you’ll be here and I’ll call you if I need you, okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  Annie heard him leave the building a little while later.

  She cleaned some more.

  When the time came to leave she stood in the doorway and looked around the room. She felt she was leaving something behind or, more accurately, she believed that when she saw this room again she herself would bring something back that would change her perspective. She felt certain that Forrester could tell her things, things of which she was – and had always been – ignorant. And those things were close to the bone, things about her father, about his life before she was born, the few years he had stayed alive as she grew up. Before he had disappeared.

  She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Then she turned, closed the door, and walked down the stairwell to the street.

  The Reader’s Rest looked almost derelict: soulless, without light, hunkering in the shadows between stores that seemed to have no difficulty telling the world exactly what they were, and why they were there. The Reader’s Rest appeared as a somewhat retarded and unwashed third cousin, showing up at a family reunion, reminding everyone present that there always had been some distant aspect of their genes and family tree that had been awry. The family shrub. The undergrowth.

  Annie smiled wryly, unlocked the door, and let herself in.

  She made coffee, more out of habit than desire, and glancing at the clock on the wall in the kitchen she set herself to wait out the last three-quarters of an hour before Forrester arrived.

  She daydreamed, she imagined what Forrester might tell her, and then she hardened herself to the fact that he might know nothing at all, that he and her father had been nothing more than passing acquaintances. The idea scared her, for here she had collided with someone, the only one, who knew anything at all about her family. Other people, regular people, they took their families for granted. Like that song: You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone. Perhaps more fittingly, you didn’t know what you didn’t have until you became aware of the fact that you never had it in the first place.