A Tangled Web

by Judith Michael

  All those high-flown words, all that dancing around, to hide the fact that he cares only about his own power, his own publicity, his own agenda. And that he’s for sale.

  Sabrina turned back to the long table in front of her, covered with samples of carpeting and drapery fabrics, tiles, wood flooring, faucets, textured plaster for walls, and cut sheets of lighting fixtures. The specification books that she had first shown to Vernon Stern and Billy Koner had grown to twice their original thickness as the design of each room of each apartment was described, with samples of materials pasted in, and the names of the manufacturers and dealers who sold them. She had just inserted into the book the latest changes, and now she was packing the samples in boxes to be sent to the contractor for ordering. It was the biggest job she had ever done, and as she taped shut the last box, she felt content and a little sad that it was over. On the floors below, her empty house drowsed in the dense August heat, and Sabrina felt as if she were protecting it, like a bird nurturing the eggs in her nest. Everything was silent and still, Mrs. Thirkell on her day off, Penny and Cliff visiting friends, Garth in Chicago on a mysterious errand, which Penny had predicted at breakfast was probably to buy Mommy a birthday present. “Because it’s only two weeks,” she said, “and Cliff and I already did ours.”

  Two weeks, and it will be one full year that I’ve lived here, one year that I’ve been Stephanie Andersen, one year since I began to love this family and feel that it was mine.

  But a year ago she had had two lives, two homes, two businesses. Soon she would have only one, when she signed the papers transferring ownership of Ambassadors to Alexandra. The house in Cadogan Square was still Sabrina’s, but Alexandra’s friends had agreed to buy it and would take possession in December. And then I will have one place, Sabrina thought: one home, one family, one business, one center to my life.

  Shafts of late afternoon sunlight dancing with dust motes lay like white ribbons across the worktable, empty now except for the boxes she had just packed. Finished, she thought; so many things are being finished. But so many are being started. That’s the fun of a family: never knowing what will be around the next corner.

  She carried the boxes to the head of the stairs for the UPS driver to take them to his truck, took a last look at the bare worktable, and left the attic, running lightly down the stairs. The telephone rang as she reached the kitchen.

  “Stephanie, Vern Stern; I’m just checking on the samples.”

  “They’re ready; I’ll send them tomorrow.”

  “Good. I wasn’t worried, but I like to check.”

  “You don’t have to apologize. I’d do the same thing.”

  There was a pause. “I hope we connect again soon,” he said. “I’ll miss working with you.”

  “I’ve enjoyed it. And I’ve learned a lot from you; I was going to write to thank you for all you’ve taught me.”

  “Write? So formal. We could have had dinner; you could have told me then.”

  “No, we couldn’t,” Sabrina said easily, “unless you’ll come here. I’ve invited you often enough.”

  “Someday I might take you up on it. You know, there’s a downside to being watched over by your friends; there’s always the end of the evening when they wave goodbye from their cozy hearth and you go off alone. I’m not saying I’m not glad to have a place at my friends’ tables; I am. But you’re different, for me, and right now I’d rather not see you happily married and ensconced and ensnared.”

  “Friends are glad to see that in their friends’ lives. I’d be glad to see it in yours if you found it.”

  “Well, who knows? I do envy you, Stephanie; you make the most of where you are. So many people don’t, you know; they keep running after something else: money or fame or a bigger house or car or a new wife or husband . . . if it’s there to want, they’ll want it. But there’s a serenity in you, like a fixed star; you know who you are and what you want to do with your life and whom you want to do it with. I was hoping some of that would rub off on me. Maybe if we do a few jobs together, it will.”

  A fixed star, Sabrina thought as they hung up. After a lifetime of feeling unconnected. Garth doesn’t have to buy me a birthday present; he’s given me the best I could ever have. He’s helped me find my place.

  She heard the front door open. They’re home early, she thought. She went to the living room and stopped abruptly in the doorway. Lu Zhen stood in the middle of the room. His face was haggard, his eyes were huge and darting, his tie dangled around his neck, and in his hand was a small black gun. He stared at her in shock and anger. “You weren’t supposed to be here.”

  “Lu, for heaven’s sake, what are you doing?” He waved the gun toward her tentatively, as if waiting for someone to tell him what to do next. “Lu, what are you doing?”

  His head jerked back, his arm stiffened. “Mrs. Andersen, sit down. Please.”

  “Not until you put down that gun. Lu Zhen, what is the matter with you?”

  “You must sit down, Mrs. Andersen. I order you to sit down.”

  “I will, Lu, we both will, but first give me the gun.” Her heart was pounding. This couldn’t be happening; such things didn’t happen to anyone they knew. “Give it to me.” Her voice came out hoarsely and she cleared her throat. “I’ll put it away and I won’t tell anyone about it. Professor Andersen won’t know—”

  “Professor Andersen!” He spat the name. “He’s the one I came to see. You were supposed to be at your work; no one was supposed to be home.” He raised the gun. “Sit down!”

  Sabrina sat on the arm of a chair. “Why do you—”

  “In the chair! In the chair!”

  She let herself down, her eyes fixed on him. “Why do you need a gun when you come to this house?”

  “Because there’s nothing else to do. But I will not talk to you; I will talk to the professor and no one else.”

  “I don’t know when he’ll be home. Why don’t you sit down while you wait?”

  “I will not sit in your house anymore!”

  “Oh, won’t you!” she flared, forgetting the gun for a moment. “We’ve been good to you, we’ve made you welcome here as if you were a member of our family—”

  “I have never been a member of your family! No one ever cared a damn for me!”

  “That’s not true and you know it; for two years we cared greatly for you. I know you miss your family and haven’t made many friends; you’re alone far too much. But why do you blame us, when we’ve tried to give you a family and a home to come to?”

  “That isn’t it,” he muttered.

  “What is it, then? Lu, I’ll try to help you, but not if you threaten me with a gun. Good heavens, is that the way you treat your friends?”

  “I have no friends in this house.”

  “Well, whose fault is that? We were all your friends once, and you liked it here: you couldn’t wait for the next invitation. Now put that gun down; I can’t talk to you while you’re holding it.”

  “I need it.”

  “For what? To shoot me?”

  He shook his head. He was very pale and his hand hung at his side, the gun pointing at the floor. “I don’t want to shoot you.”

  “You don’t want to shoot anyone. You know it would only make things worse. Lu, give me the gun. It’s a terrible thing to stand there like that: it makes us enemies.”

  He stared at her and she thought she saw him waver, but then the front door opened and Garth came in, followed by Cliff and Penny.

  “What the hell—!” Garth exclaimed.

  “Stay back!” Lu cried. “Move over there, all of you!”

  “Lu, what are you doing with a toy gun?” Penny demanded.

  Cliff shoved her with his shoulder, moving her with him toward the stairs. “Maybe it’s not a toy.”

  Garth stormed in, his hand outstretched. “Give it to me. God damn it, give me that gun!”

  “Don’t come any closer!” Lu’s voice rose in hysteria. “Stay away from me!”

/>   Garth stopped, his body straining forward. “You will not hurt anyone here, do you understand that? I’m the one you’re angry at; you leave them alone or I swear I’ll tear you to pieces. Come outside; we can talk—”

  “I won’t go anywhere with you! You want to ruin my life!” He swung around as Penny and Cliff reached the stairs. “Come back! You can’t go anywhere! You’ll call the police; do you think I’m stupid?”

  “Leave them alone!” Garth started for him, but Lu swung back, pointing the gun at Garth’s head.

  “I hate you!” Penny screamed. “I thought you were nice, you were going to teach me Chinese, but you’re mean and I hate you!” She ran to Sabrina and flung herself in her lap, crying. “Why do people have to be mean?”

  “I’m not mean,” Lu said, the child in him breaking through, but the gun was steady and his face was as steely as before. “You’re the ones . . .” His voice rose. “You think you can take somebody and smash him . . . ruin him!”

  Cliff saw him bring the gun up. “Don’t!” he shouted. “Don’t! Don’t! Don’t!”

  Sabrina cradled Penny, bending over her to shield her small body. She was terrified. He could kill them. The television news was full of stories about angry, irrational people who thought the solution was to kill and who found it too easy to get hold of a gun. She tightened her arms around Penny. They can’t die. Penny and Cliff can’t die; they’re just beginning their lives. Panic filled her and she stretched forward to cover Penny’s tense, wiry body, which was pressing into her lap, straining to disappear into her mother. Don’t let her die, don’t let Cliff die, please, please don’t let my children die.

  “DROP THE GUN!” Garth roared and lunged forward.

  Lu scuttled sideways, to the far corner of the room, waving the gun at them. “What will you do if I don’t? You can’t do anything!”

  “I told you, we’ll go outside and talk—”

  “Talk! What good is talking? We talked in your office and I hear your voice all the time, telling me what you’ll do and what you won’t do, and I know you won’t do a fucking thing to help me. You’re jealous of me; you want me to fail. You think I’ll get ahead of you, I’ll get a Nobel Prize and be famous, and you’ll be stuck here in your goddam institute. But I deserve to get ahead of you! Do you know how I worked for two years on my project? Harder than you ever worked in your life. You don’t know what it is to work like that; you have everything, you Americans, you think the world comes to you and gives you everything and you take and take and take and what do you give? You do whatever you want, and if you don’t like what somebody does, you throw him away, like a piece of trash! Well, I’m not trash! I’m as good a scientist as you are—better!—and I did my research and my experiment and you said they were brilliant, and now you fucking will do what I tell you because now I have the power! You will call the people at Science and tell them you are sending in my paper and it is very important and they should publish it right away.”

  “All right, I’ll do that, I’ll call them, but only after you come outside. Come on, we’ll go outside; I’ll take the telephone with me and I’ll call them from the porch.”

  Lu narrowed his eyes. “You don’t really mean that. You’re just saying it to get me out of here. You think you’re so smart, you think you can fool me, but you wouldn’t call them, I know you wouldn’t, because you’re too jealous, you know my paper is better than anything you’ve ever done in your whole life.”

  “That paper is a fraud,” Garth snapped before he could stop himself.

  “It is not a fraud! It is not a fraud! You said it was important! You were wrong to listen to those other researchers; they lied to keep secret what they’re doing. They’re jealous, too, because I’m young and just beginning; you should have known that. Because my paper is not a fraud, and I have to get it published so I can go home!”

  “No one will be able to replicate the experiment. Can’t you get that through your head? The whole scientific community will know it won’t work.”

  “It will work. They just have to do it right. Anyway . . .”

  “Anyway, by then you’ll be in China, is that it? And you think Chinese scientists won’t know what’s going on in molecular biology in the rest of the world?”

  “I’ll take care of that when I’m there.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know!” His voice rose in fury and frustration and without warning he pointed the gun at the ceiling and fired. Instinctively Garth leaped back. Penny screamed; Sabrina cried, “Lu!” The sound of the shot rocketed around the room; flakes of plaster fell on their heads.

  “Lu, listen, please listen,” Sabrina said urgently. “It won’t do any good if you hurt us; it will be worse for you. Put down the gun. Lu, put down the gun.”

  But Lu barely heard her. For a moment he had looked stunned, but then desperation again held him in its grip. “See, it’s not a toy, see, Professor, I mean it and you’ll do what I tell you because you’re afraid, aren’t you? The big professor is afraid! You think everybody is afraid of you, all the little students, but some of us are as big as you, and now you’re the one who’s afraid! How does it feel? Does it hurt? I’ll make you hurt if you don’t do what I tell you and call the journal. Call them! Right now!”

  “And after I call them, what will you do? Just walk out of here? Or will you think you should shoot us because we’ll come after you?” Garth took a step forward. “You’ve boxed yourself in, Lu, and if you don’t give it up now you’ll do yourself incalculable harm.” He took another step.

  “Stop!” Lu cried.

  “Think about China; you have a chance there. Your academic record is excellent; you’ll get a teaching job there; you have a future. But not if you use that gun.” He took another step. “Think about China, Lu; they’ll know, they’ll hear—”

  Oh, Garth, my darling Garth, Sabrina thought through her fear. Always believing in reason. But there are so many times when reason isn’t enough.

  “Don’t come any closer!” Lu yelled. “You don’t know a damn thing about China. I’ll be fine there; I’ll take care of everything. But first I have to have my paper published! I have to have a name!”

  “Based on a deception.”

  “NO! It’s good science. And if you don’t do what I say”—he took a long step forward and swung the gun toward Sabrina—“I will kill all of you. You don’t think I will, but I will, because I don’t care!”

  His eyes followed the barrel of the gun and for an instant he was looking at Sabrina and Penny. And in that instant, Garth and Cliff flung themselves at him and slammed him to the floor. The gun went off and Penny screamed.

  “Garth!” Sabrina leaped up, leaving Penny cringing in a corner of the chair. “Oh my God, my God . . . Garth! Cliff!”

  “All right,” Garth said. He sat up and knelt beside Lu, who was crumpled beneath Cliff. His body shook with silent sobs. Cliff straddled him, stunned by what he and his father had done.

  “How did we do that?” he asked Garth. “How did we know, so we jumped him at the same time?”

  “We make a good team.” Garth took the gun from Lu’s limp fingers and stood up. “All right,” he said again, and took Sabrina in his arms. “I thought I might lose you. My God, the thought of anyone hurting you . . . or Penny or Cliff . . .”

  “I know.” She laid her head on his chest and felt the pounding of his heart. “We were all afraid for each other.”

  “Daddy?” Penny asked. “What will he do when Cliff lets him up?”

  “He won’t do anything. He’s outnumbered.” Garth realized he was still holding the gun. “Cliff, put this in the library. We’ll get rid of it later.”

  Cliff’s eyes were wide. “Sure,” he said, awed by his father’s trust. He eased himself away from Lu’s body, waiting to see if he would move, but Lu stayed where he was, his head in his arms, his shoulders heaving. Cliff took the gun from Garth and held it gingerly by the handle, pointing it at the floor and walking almost
on tiptoe to the library.

  “He can’t do anything,” Garth said again to Penny. “It’s over.”

  “But the gun went off.”

  “We’ll look for the bullet later; it’s probably in some furniture. The most important thing is that we’re all right.”

  Sabrina knelt beside the chair where Penny still huddled. “It’s over, sweetheart. Lu did a terrible thing, but he’s sorry and no one was hurt. All of us who love each other are still here; we have each other and we’re fine.”

  “I was so scared . . .”

  “We all were. It was very scary. But now we don’t have to be because everything is all right. Penny, listen, now we can say it’s over, and feel safe again.”

  Penny’s eyes were still wide with apprehension. “I thought our house was always safe.”

  “Well, it is, isn’t it? Here we are; we’re all fine, thanks to your dad and Cliff’s amazing flying tackle. We’ll talk about it at dinner, all right? But first we have to take care of Lu Zhen, and maybe you’d like to go upstairs while we do that. Okay?”

  “Is Cliff coming up, too?”

  “Why don’t you ask him? I have a feeling he’s in the library, thinking about everything that’s happened.”

  “If he’s not there, can I come back?”

  “Of course.”

  She went off, and Sabrina sighed. There were tears in her eyes. “It isn’t safe. We pretend it is, but the world is full of dangers and they can invade our most private places, the ones we trust to protect us. How can we tell Penny that?”