He leaned forward confidentially. I held my weapon up. “I’d like to help you,” he said.
I started to laugh and then couldn’t stop. “Help me???”
The phone started ringing. I made the mistake of glancing at it—and he was on top of me. He had the Empire State Building out of my hand before I knew what was happening. This time he lobbed it into the living room. I heard it hit the far wall and clatter away.
He jerked my arm half out of the socket. “Sit still.”
The phone rang and rang. Eight times. We stared at each other, not moving. I thanked God I hadn’t put my answering machine on—there must be somebody out there who would think it odd that I wasn’t picking up at home. I thought of my conversation with Terence—he wouldn’t call because he thought I was staring at a film somewhere—anyway (I glanced at the clock) it was seven. Too late for a call from him even if he’d thought to double-check my whereabouts. At seven he’d already be manuevering into position, physically and psychologically, for the raising of the eight o’clock curtain. He’d be limbering up, doing body and throat exercises, yoga; he’d be saying a troublesome line over and over, sipping lemon and honey, his concentration on the dialogue, his stage presence, intensifying second by second. Then when the curtain went up, no emergency of the outside world (short of nuclear war) could touch him till the play was over. Still, if I can keep this guy at bay till the play’s over, I thought grimly, Terence will handle him.
A quick peripheral scan told me that there was nothing close by to pick up and bean him with. Up on the counter were knives, frying pans, a pizza cutter. I thought of the .38 in the bedroom drawer—it might as well have been in Brooklyn.
I looked into those strange eyes, rimmed with blood, flecked with gold, very clear yellow eyes. When I stared in his direction, they lit up like a jack-o’-lantern. Talk, I ordered myself. Talk to the maniac. I recalled a TV thriller where Farrah Fawcett or some other determined starlet soothed a psychotic killer who’d broken into her apartment by teaching him how to crochet. Could I do that?
“You’re lucky.” He leaned in close to me. “You didn’t try to pick up that phone.”
I tried to smile in a placating way. My mouth muscles weren’t working very well. “So you’re Danny, Colonel Hayburn’s son.”
I was trying to move my rump, a fraction of an inch at a time, closer to the counter. He raised a bloody hand.
“Don’t. You see, I really don’t want to hurt you, but I will if you insist on trying to get away. You’re just going to have to listen. I have some things to say to you. I think they’ll help you. So pay attention.”
I relaxed. “Listen, Danny. I’m sure we can make some … agreement here.”
The hazel eyes blinked.
“I’m willing to forget this whole thing: your getting in here, the letters, everything. If you’ll just get up and go now, I won’t even call the police.”
Silence. I forced myself to smile at him.
“You’re not badly hurt—just a few cuts on your face. I’m sorry about that, but you know, you … scared me. So if you’ll just leave now …”
Long silence. Then he smiled.
“I want to take your picture.” He started to get up, then looked at me. “Do you promise you’ll stay here and not move?”
I smiled again. “Sure.”
He steadied himself against the wall, then turned toward his pile of camera equipment. I lunged for the stove, the hanging pots and pans, the knife holder. I got halfway there. He grabbed me and spun me around, he plucked a dish towel from a hook and tied my wrists together, pushed me back down. He was making a growling sound.
“Don’t lie to me,” he said. “I told you before, I don’t want to hurt you. Why do you have to push me like this?”
Then he put a hand very gently under my chin. “I can’t believe I’m touching you. It’s extraordinary to see you’re real. Extraordinary.” I watched the Avenging Angel return. “Don’t try any of that shit again! I’m warning you.”
I sat still while he gathered up a camera and light meter. I looked at my wrists, my hands held together as if they were applauding.
After he’d waved the meter all around me, the intercom box on the wall near the door came to life, crackling and popping. It was Whizzer.
“Hi … Will … is.” He cleared his throat twice. “Hope … every … thing … is … hunk … y … dor … y … up … there.” He sighed, cleared his throat again. Silence.
The Watcher glared at the wall, then pulled me to my feet again. “You tell him everything is okay,” he hissed.
I racked my brain, trying to think of a code that Whizzer could crack. The box crackled again. “If … you’re … too … bus-y … to … pick … up … right … now …”
I pushed the TALK button awkwardly with my bound hands. “No, Whizzer,” I said. “No, thanks for checking on me! That’s great. You know how security-conscious I am, always watching everything like a hawk—so I’m grateful, Whizzer.”
There was a large foghornlike blast, and I realized that Whizzer had just blown his nose.
“Par … don … me … Al … ler … gies … You … know … Miss … us … Wall … en … stein’s … cat …”
He sneezed loudly; the intercom box shook. He apologized, interminably.
I hit the TALK button again.
“Whizzer, if you could just see me now, you’d see that everything’s …”
The Watcher crooked his elbow under my chin and pulled my head back. He looked down into my face.
“Tell him you’re fine, not to come up. Do it now. Then say good-bye,” he whispered. He let me go roughly, and I staggered forward.
“Whizzer,” I croaked, “I’m fine. Don’t bother coming up! Good-bye!”
“O … kay, Will … is. Nice … talk … ing … to … ya. When … ev … er … I … think … about … you … bein’ … in … PA … PA … RAZZ … I … I … get … the … chills.”
“Bye, Whizzer.” I was nearly crying.
He took my picture. In fact, he took several pictures of me, sitting on the kitchen floor, my back against the refrigerator, my hands bound.
“Put a little expression in your face, Willis,” he said at one point.
“I have some great shots of you that I took with a telephoto lens—from my office roof. You can see the goose bumps on your skin.”
“How neat.”
He looked hurt. The blood on his face had congealed into a dark webbing.
He reached into a camera bag and pulled out an envelope. “Look,” he said.
I rubbed my eyes with my bound hands and looked. It was an extraordinary photograph. A black-and-white eight by ten. It was a picture of me, in my tux and rabbit ears, but it wasn’t amusing. It had been taken with a telephoto lens through plate glass, but the texture was coarse and clear. I was standing in an office window, high over Manhattan, looking down. The background was flat, except for the frozen metallic flash of a window or two. I looked like a cabaret artiste who’d just taken off her makeup, my eyes and mouth wiped clean of expression in the flat light. My face wiped away to a bald suffering slate.
“I call it ‘Letters to the Editor.’” He gave me a meaningful look.
“Look at these.” He fanned out twenty or so matte photographs. Me running in the rain down Lex, my arm thrown up in a taxi Sieg Heil; me falling asleep in my collar on the IRT; eating Szechwan with Page, my chopsticks poised above a plate of noodles; me in a phone booth, laughing hard.
“Why do you take these pictures of me?”
“I document everything. I videotaped my goldfish giving birth last week—I actually have a tape of my budgie having a seizure.” He snorted at his own humor. Then he looked away from me, across the living room, and the big cat’s eyes in his gory face lit up. “To me, you’re a living document.”
He got me on my feet and led me into a room I call my study, a nook off the living room. Only a Japanese screen makes it private.
It
was dark; there was a little light from the window—city reflections. I hunkered down on the Moroccan rug. Not far from me a brass letter opener gleamed on the desk top.
He took some things out of a leather bag, muttering to himself: an Orange Crush bottle, a lantern, and a .22 rifle in a case.
He yanked out four cushions from the sofa, set them in a circle, and put the bottle in the middle of the circle. He lit the lantern; it took him a while to get the wick going, then it flared and shadows leaped onto the walls, eerie as cave drawings.
He gave me his Halloween smile. “Remind you of anything?” I smiled and nodded. I was trying to cover my desperate work on the dish-towel tourniquet around my wrists. I was surreptitiously sawing it against the radiator frame.
He walked over. He took my arm and dragged me over a few feet.
“Don’t try it!” He got up and put the letter opener in a drawer, turned and winked at me. “I’ve got eyes in the back of my head.”
“Danny,” I said, “listen to me. …”
He bent down and kissed my bound hands. “I’m so sorry about this. I didn’t want to have to tie you up. I wanted us to have rapport.” Then he took a bandanna from his jeans pocket and tied my ankles together.
I stared at the dried blood that clotted his eyelashes. They fluttered, giving him a made-up, geishalike look. He lowered his lashes and talked about how he’d wanted us to be friends. Then I’d printed his letter and he saw he’d have to try another approach. It was time to change the story. He looked over his shoulder at the tableau set up in the middle of the room. “I’m ending this story.”
“Just let me go, really, it’s better!” I tried to get him to look at me. “Whatever this is all about—we can meet for a drink sometime and talk about it. But right now …”
“I’ve watched you so closely.” He raised his voice slightly, still looking at me. “I know everything about you. Your taste in books”—he swept his hand around to include my library—“is exactly what I expected.” He moved to a bookshelf and touched the worn spine of a book reverently. “To the Lighthouse” he intoned. “God. Mrs. fucking Ramsay.”
He caressed the book. “One of the most moving characters in literature,” he whispered. “And how does she die?”
“In a bracket,” I answered without thinking. That peculiarly Woolfian demise had always angered and hurt me, too.
He nodded and shook his head at me again, laughing at our twinned, tragic sense. Then he picked up the .22. I flattened against the wall. He pulled a box from his jacket pocket, opened the rifle case, and took out the gun. He shook the bullets out of the box and loaded the magazine from the front. Then he put on the safety.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. “I’m just going to talk a little.” He pointed the gun at a framed photo of Holly Partz on the wall. “I never liked that woman,” he said. Then he spun around and pointed the gun at me. I slid, scraping my vertebrae, down the wall.
“Listen!” Now he looked down the barrel at the sofa cushions.
I pulled myself back up and paid attention.
“Once upon a time there were three boys who loved to hunt together. We used to hunt by the river with BB guns and .22s. We had dugouts in the high grass. We were like brothers—and Matthew was the oldest. Matthew was powerful. He knew how to rule. He beat up every other kid who refused to acknowledge his supremacy—but I was one of the ones who acknowledged it. I was a little younger than him. I thought being mean was his privilege. He liked having Stevie, the third member of our group, around because he was young and easy to boss around and his father owned a lot of the land we hunted on. He was our mascot.
“Then, Willis”—he knelt next to me, knightlike, the rifle planted like a standard—“one day you came with us. Our dads told us we had to put up with you coming. They were humoring your dad, they said. We hated you—a trespasser in our private kingdom. You came marching out with your red hunting cap and field boots, very serious. Skinny and tall for your age. We were all laughing at you behind your back. Then the dogs started pointing and you began to shoot—good God!” He shook his head; the yellow eyes blinked in their blood mask. “You could nail anything, moving or not. Matthew was furious. He whispered to me, ‘She’s asking for it.’ He got madder and madder. When he missed shots, he kicked the dogs. You didn’t seem to notice him. Neither did your dad, except once he said, ‘Kurt, your boy Matt shoots a little wild—he oughta go out with my Willis one day. She could give him a few pointers.’”
I laughed out loud. I hadn’t heard anything like that.
“Before we went in the tent for the night, your dad took me aside. ‘Would you watch out for my daughter?’ he said. ‘She can take care of herself, but she might need a friend.’”
“He said that to you?”
He smiled. “He did. I was a little afraid of him, but I felt flattered. I said sure, I’d watch out for you.
“Then, in the tent, I could see you getting scared. You knew Matthew a little from school, and you tried to kid around with him. But it didn’t work because Matthew was feeling like you had stolen something from him. And you had.”
“I hadn’t stolen anything. It belonged to me too.”
He got up. He nudged the Orange Crush bottle with the toe of his Frye boot. The lantern light rocketed around, pinned to the bottle, and for one ghastly second the four lumps around the bottle looked lifelike: slouched figures, kids.
He stood facing the window, remembering. “I didn’t understand right away what Matthew had in mind with Spin the Bottle—when I saw he was serious, it was too late, you were already rolling over each other on the floor. I saw you pick up the .22—and then I knew what was going to happen.”
I found my voice. “Why didn’t you try to help me before that?”
He poked at one of the cushions with the barrel of the .22. “I was afraid. And I stayed afraid, all the days afterward—I never gave anyone my account of what happened.”
He stabbed at the cushions with the .22. “And then it all moved so fast. They hushed it up—they had an autopsy but no inquest. Even the coroner, I guess, didn’t want criminal charges brought. They all said it was an accident.”
“It was an accident.”
“No,” he said, “it wasn’t. I was there in the tent. They just hushed it up, and pretty soon everyone had forgotten or moved on. I was the only one who remembered—and I remembered everything. I heard you went off to college, became an antiwar activist, broke with your dad. Then I heard you worked for a famous magazine in Manhattan. I heard gossip about all these things—by now I was a professional photographer for a magazine that made its name on gossip.
“One day I was walking back to my offices from lunch and I heard someone say, ‘I’m Willis Digby,’ and there you were among the mail sacks. And I knew immediately that you were hurt by something and I knew what it was. I knew it was that childhood death. I did follow you. I did watch you, yes, because I wanted to see who you’d become. Mostly, I liked you.” He laughed. “I mean, you could have been a jerk.”
“It wasn’t necessary to spy on me.” I waggled my feet up and down to keep the circulation going. “Why didn’t you just call me up and introduce yourself? Why did you try to scare me?”
He laid the .22 on the floor beside him.
“It wasn’t my intention to scare you.” He touched my knee, then quickly pulled his hand back. “I told you, I thought that writing you letters was a gentle way to enter your life. I thought you’d begin to like me, to answer my letters. We’d get to be friends. I wouldn’t just crash through the door and say what I had to say.”
“Oh, yeah, perish that thought.”
He bowed his head. “I saw your father right before he left for Vietnam. The day before.”
I felt a chill.
“Yeah.” His face tightened and he ran a finger along the gun barrel. “I went to see him. My life was really screwed up right then. I was depressed and flunking out of school and I wanted his advice. I wanted t
o enlist. I thought I’d try and be a military man like my dad.”
“Oh, yeah? Did he give you the rah-rah ‘you too can be a second lieutenant’ rap?”
“No. As a matter of fact, he didn’t. He remembered me right away, and he remembered that my father had died a few years before. We went out and had a drink. Well, we had a few drinks. I told him that I was ready to go to Nam. I didn’t give a shit if I died. He grabbed my arm. ‘Don’t enlist,’ he said. ‘Do anything but enlist, and if they try to draft you, run. Go to Canada, go to Mexico. Don’t go over there and get killed in that stupid, wasteful, pointless war.’”
There was a long silence. “You’re quoting my father?” The .22 was lying maybe two feet away from me now, but I couldn’t seem to move. I was trying to imagine the conversation: my father and this skittish young madman.
“He said he was going over there to assist with the withdrawal process, and he had to appear publicly to support it. He asked me if I ever saw you, and I lied and said I did. In fact, I may have even made it sound like we were close.” He glanced over at me. “He told me to tell you something. He said to tell you that you were right about the war. And that he couldn’t admit it to your face. But he was on your side.”
“I saw him too, just before you did. Why wouldn’t he have told me all this? He was Patton when I was there.”
“Maybe he tried. He told me that when he saw you, he asked you for mercy.” He put his head down and began to cry. “I should have found you and told you this long ago. Especially after I heard he went over there and died.” His whole face dissolved in tears.
I felt clearer-headed suddenly. “Untie my hands and feet,” I demanded. He looked up. He loosened the bandanna around my ankles.
“Wait. There’s one last thing.” He got up with the rifle in one hand and kicked the bottle into motion again. Then he kicked one cushion on top of the another. He was shaking visibly—he held his left arm across his stomach and bent over slightly, as if he’d been socked in the solar plexus. Suddenly he straightened up and pointed with the .22.
“You were like this, you and Matthew.” His voice broke. “Get it? Do you get it?” He looked frantically at me for affirmation. I nodded. “On top of each other and you were rolling. It was absolutely quiet and you rolled over and over. First I’d see his face, then your face. You looked so desperate, God!” He turned his head away. I thought he was going to weep, but he caught himself. He pointed with the rifle again. “Each time your face flashed by, I thought you were looking at me, crying, ‘Help me, why don’t you help me?’” He put his head down, controlled himself. “I couldn’t get my aim,” he cried. “It was so hard to get a clear shot, and then when I got it”—he lined up, sighting the two cushions—“I heard your .22 go off a fraction of a second before I shot—then I shot Matthew Kallam dead in the left side. Then your gun went off one last time, into the air, as it fell free. Everybody was screaming; right after that, everybody was confused.”
Dear Digby Page 14
