Corkscrew

by Donald E. Westlake

  His fist smashed down. That nose, which has also been fixed, is fixed again. The fist lifts, the wide eyes are wider, but what does it look like? What does it sound like? What is it like?

  His eyes snapped open just before he would have driven off the road into an old stone fence. He righted the car, and saw the Cherokee slowing toward a Stop sign ahead, the right-turn signal on. Keep your eyes open, you have to drive with your eyes open.

  She stopped at the Stop sign. He switched his right-turn signal on. She turned right. He stopped; he turned right.

  Oh, God, is that what I'm going to do? He could feel it coming over him, knowing what it was but not wanting to know what it was. He would never have sex with this woman, this Marcia Rierdon. There was heat for her, but it wasn't in his loins, it was in his shoulders, the straining muscles of his arms, in his legs.

  I wasn't there because I couldn't be there because they would suspect me, but I should have been there, it's incomplete if I'm not there. I don't know this woman, she doesn't know me, no one will ever know I was in her house, never know I was this far west in Connecticut, never know anything, at last I can be there because I cannot be a suspect.

  Sweat ran down and out from under his hair, on to his forehead, down in front of his ears, into his collar in back. He was panting, his hands were clenching and unclenching on the wheel.

  You can't do this. You don't need to know. You don't need to know. You can't hurt Marcia Rierdon, she isn't Lucie. She isn't Lucie.

  She's married, she's self-indulgent, she's faithless, she's evil, she is Lucie.

  Is not having the memory worse? Or is having the memory worse?

  He seemed to be his own prisoner. He watched helplessly, hoping he could stop himself, hoping he wouldn't stop himself, hoping he could come out of this, whatever this was, just come out of this with his mind intact. Just not hurt himself.

  Her brake lights lit. She turned right onto a blacktop driveway between two square brick posts, with a large dark house back there among towering trees. A black mailbox said, in red letters:

  681

  RIERDON

  He touched the brakes. He breathed loudly through his mouth. He drove past that driveway, and on.

  He stared now out the windshield as though he expected some monster to come up out of the roadway at any second and engulf him, car and all. The way he'd stared just after the multicar collision, before he'd realized he was still alive.

  He turned at random, the next intersection, the next. I can go back, he told himself, I can turn around and go back, make an excuse, she'll still let me in, she'll still want me to come in.

  I'm going to have to resolve this, sooner or later, and I can go back right now.

  He kept driving. Nearly an hour later he drove into Amenia, New York, from the south, which would not have been a straight line from her place. He turned right at the traffic light, heading back to Connecticut.

  I can still go back, he told himself, though he was no longer sure exactly where she lived. If I come to her house, he told himself, I will turn in. We'll leave it to fate, or God, or chance, or dumb luck, or whatever. If I see her house, I will turn in. Absolutely, no question. I can always make some excuse.

  He drove another hour, and then he drove home and unpacked his groceries.

  22

  By the middle of February, Wayne had sold three more magazine pieces, and had earned nineteen thousand dollars the first six weeks of the year. At that rate — though realistically he knew that rate couldn't possibly continue — but at that rate, if he actually could make it continue, he'd bring in just about twice as much a year from magazine articles as he'd ever made, even in the best years, from writing novels.

  So far, the new career had been as much fluke as planning. Flush with his Vanity Fair success, he'd done another piece on the subject of charity, again with Susan as his primary source, this time with her also as lead to other sources, this piece on charity and celebrity, on the subject of which celebrities chose to support publicly which charities, and why, with an emphasis on celebrities and charities both based in New York. He'd expected that to go to Vanity Fair as well, but they said it was too much like other things they already had, so Willard Hartman sent it to Playboy, and they bought it.

  All right, then, Playboy. He did a piece about seduction on the Internet, aimed right at the crease between Playboy's one and three pin, and it proved to be a gutter ball instead. So Willard sold that one to Vanity Fair; go figure.

  With the third piece, he decided not to even think about a market, but leave that — as, after all, he'd done with that first piece on the charities — to Willard. Using Jack Wagner and Janet Higgins of Low Fidelity as his entree — happily, neither of them so much as mentioned Lucie — he did a piece on the current state and future prospects of off-off-Broadway.

  Willard called ten days later: 'New York is very happy with the downtown piece.'

  In the meantime, The Shadowed Other was going nowhere. He looked at the printout from time to time, thought about it, even knew part of where the story would move next, but he just couldn't force himself to boot that disc into the computer. What was the point? No one waited for The Shadowed Other. He'd get to it someday, but at the moment he had a living to make. After all, he now had a major accountant, who treated him like a valued client; no point letting that slip away. With Susan's salary and his own new freelance career, he should be able to keep Mark Steiner's interest alive.

  As to this sudden and unexpected success, he thought it was probably the years as a novelist that had prepared him for it, without his realizing it at the time. He'd always been a storyteller who got the details of our world right. Not just the guns and the planes and the perfumes and the whiskies, but the highway intersections and the histories of obscure clans and the reasons for the extinction of this or that species.

  Much of his preparation, in his novels, had been in the library or on the phone, with experts. He had learned early on that he could phone almost anybody in the world, from the Israeli United Nations Mission to Budget Auto Rental's main headquarters, and say, 'I'm a writer working on a novel, and I wonder if you could tell me…' and people would stop whatever they were doing, answer the questions, look things up, spend as much time as he wanted, and wish him luck at the end of the call. It was one of the great secret resources of the fiction writer, that pleasure that the rest of the world takes in helping the fiction along.

  His other strength from the novel writing was a certain liveliness of tone, a writing style that avoided the dull and the predictable, that found unexpected but good connections, that made him fun to read.

  So what he was doing now, in these non-fiction pieces, was not that much different from what he'd been doing all along. Leave out the story and the characters, and sell what's left. Skim milk; sells very well.

  One way this new career was different from writing a novel was how quickly it used up the ideas. Like all of his books, The Shadowed Other was essentially one idea, which he elaborated and ran changes and variations on, and rendered, and used, until it was completely emptied out. That meant one idea every year or two. Writing for magazines, you had to have two or three ideas a month; so far, he could keep up.

  His next idea was a piece on celebrities who chose to make Manhattan their primary residence, rather than flee either to the seclusion of Connecticut or the warmth of California or the more exotic choices of London, Paris, Rome, Geneva. His entree on that one, of course, would be Bryce, who would be his first subject and then would pass him on to other celebrities he personally knew who fit Wayne's profile, who would in their turn pass him on to others, and in less than a month he'd have a piece. And let Willard decide who wanted it.

  But when he called Bryce's New York number he got a recorded announcement that the phone had been disconnected, and no referal number was given. What did that mean?

  All at once, Wayne thought, I'm vulnerable to him. If he goes nuts, he could make trouble for me. But why woul
d he want to do that? Doesn't he have everything now? Didn't he get everything he asked for?

  Nevertheless, Wayne found himself reluctant to phone the Connecticut number. He didn't want to just stride on into that darkened room. So he phoned Mark Steiner instead, the accountant he now shared with Bryce, left a message that he'd called, and when Mark got back to him that afternoon Wayne said, 'Mark, is there anything wrong with Bryce?'

  'Wrong?' Mark sounded wary. 'What do you mean, wrong?'

  'I haven't seen him for a month or so,' Wayne said, 'and I tried to call him in New York just now, and the number's disconnected. I didn't—'

  'Oh,' Mark said. He sounded relieved. 'Bryce gave up the apartment.'

  'Gave it up?'

  'It was in Lucie's name,' Mark told him. 'Bryce is a Connecticut resident, something you and Susan might want to think about one of these days. He didn't particularly like the apartment, when it's just himself, so rather than renew the lease he's given it up. Technically, it's his till the end of the month, but he's already moved out. I think he left some furniture there that he doesn't want, that's about it.'

  So much for celebrities who live in Manhattan. Or, at any rate, so much for Bryce as the entree. 'Oh, good,' Wayne said, 'I'm glad it isn't a problem. I was afraid to call him up there, I didn't know if he'd got sick or moved to Timbuctoo or what.'

  'No, he's fine,' Mark said. 'Staying up there full time. Working on the next book, I think.'

  'Great. That's what he needs.'

  'It certainly is,' Mark said.

  •

  Over their usual candlelit dinner, Wayne told Susan about this change in Bryce's living arrangements. 'I'll tell you the truth,' he said, 'I suddenly got kind of a queasy feeling. You know, sometimes Bryce can act like he isn't wrapped real tight.'

  'At that Christmas party,' she said, 'I thought he was very hostile.'

  'Withdrawn,' Wayne said. 'He can be withdrawn, but it isn't hostile.'

  'It looks hostile. So he's gone from there? Central Park West?'

  'Mark says he's still got the lease till the end of the month, but he's out except for some furniture he doesn't want.'

  She said, 'What would an apartment like that cost?'

  'I don't know. Six or seven thousand a month, maybe more. Why?'

  'Dealing with people every day,' Susan said, 'who pay two hundred dollars a month and can't afford it, it's just interesting to know what other people pay.'

  'Whatever it is,' Wayne said, 'Bryce can afford it.'

  Susan said, 'Let's go look at it.'

  'What? Why?'

  'Remember when we tried to find the house in Connecticut, and we couldn't? We can certainly find an apartment on Central Park West!'

  Wayne said, 'But why?'

  'You say there's still furniture there,' Susan said. 'I want to see the way they live, the way they used to live. I don't know why, I just do.'

  Wayne said, 'If you want, sure. This Saturday. Then we could do lunch at Tavern On The Green.'

  'It's a date,' she said.

  'I'll call the rental agent,' Wayne said, 'tomorrow, find out if they're showing it. I bet they are.'

  'Why wouldn't they?' Susan asked. 'They want a new tenant in there the day Bryce is out. And I read in the paper, just a couple weeks ago, there's a glut of those high-end apartments now.'

  'You're right, it would be interesting,' Wayne said, pouring more wine for both of them, 'to see where Bryce used to live.'

  •

  There was an amazing amount of furniture still in the apartment, including the bed and two dressers and a rocking chair in the master bedroom, most of the living room furniture, most of everything. The dining room was the only absolutely bare space.

  The woman from Price-Cathcart, the building management firm, was named Ms Pered, and she was bird-like under a glorious pink-gold wig. She chattered like a bird, constantly, as they made their way through the rooms, seeing where Bryce had removed most of the things from his office except a wooden revolving book rack and a black leather easy chair; Christmas gifts from Lucie, no doubt.

  The terrace, even now in February, was extraordinary, with its views everywhere except to the north, and Central Park over there like a Christmas card, seen from far above.

  Susan almost vibrated with pleasure as they moved through the rooms, her hands trembling slightly on his arm, and at the end she said, 'What is the rent?'

  'It would depend on the lease. With the shortest lease, two years, it would be sixty-three hundred.'

  'And a longer lease?'

  'A seven-year lease would be fifty-nine. But that would require a larger deposit. And the cost-of-living increases would be the same.'

  Susan said, 'Let me look at the kitchen again.'

  They looked at the kitchen again, and Susan said, 'Will the previous tenant be removing this furniture?'

  'No, he's taken what he wants. He would prefer to sell to the new tenant. Much of it is custom-built for these rooms.'

  'Let me look at the master bathroom again,' Susan said.

  'Of course.'

  Susan looked at the master bathroom again, and then at the terrace again. Wayne by now was looking at his watch, because they had a reservation at Tavern On The Green.

  Back in the living room, Susan looked around and said, 'What a pity.'

  The bird-like Ms Pered cocked her bird-head. 'Yes?'

  'We do have a budget, and it's really iron-bound. Our accountant, you know,' she said, and smiled sadly at Ms Pered.

  Who smiled sadly back, and nodded her head, and said, 'They can be hard taskmasters, many of our tenants find that.'

  'We wouldn't be able to go above six, for the two years,' Susan said, while Wayne gaped at her. 'As for the furniture, we'd undertake to dispose of it, but we wouldn't want to buy used furniture.'

  'I'm sure something can be worked out,' Ms Pered said.

  23

  Bryce sat at the keyboard. He typed:

  The man had a wife and she disappeared in Kyrgyzstan, where she went scouting locations for a movie on the Mongol hordes that was a money-laundering operation for the Russian Mafia, with money from their operations drug-smuggling across the Black Sea, using small patrol boats from the Russian Navy that had been taken over by the Ukraine after the breakup of the Soviet Union because Russia no longer had access to the Black Sea, but these patrol boats through bribery were dropped from the official records and are now being used in acts of piracy, operated by a renegade group from the Afghan rebels, to raise money for terrorists linked to the Arab fundamentalists, to get enough money to disassemble a powerful destroyer from the Russian Navy, also no longer existing on the official records, and reassemble it in a tiny fishing village on the North African coast. When he learns, because he is an executive with an international bank, that somewhere this ship, in disguised form, is on its way to New York City to blow up the United Nations from the East River, he goes to North Africa where he meets the woman who looks so like his wife that he believes it must be her, but she claims not to speak English. He must find the destroyer and he must solve the mystery of this woman.

  Bryce nodded. He didn't reread what he had written, he never did these days. He merely reached to the rear of his desk, where there was a half-full box of fifty floppy discs. He took a fresh one from the box and inserted it in its slot in the computer, then clicked File, ran the cursor down to click Save As, and went over to File Name. In that box he typed Kyrgyzstan. All of these movements were automatic, so that he barely even thought about them while he was doing them, nor was he thinking about much of anything else.

  After giving the file a name, he switched it to a disc drive and pressed Enter, to put the story he'd just written on to the disc. Then he went back into File, and closed down. Removing the disc from the computer, he put a fresh white label on it and wrote Kyrgyzstan on it. Then he slid the disc into the rack above his desk with the others already there.

  Every one of those discs, each with its own name on its labe
l, contained nothing but a brief story synopsis. They, and a hundred more, could all fit on just one disc, of course, which would be the normal way to do it, but he believed that sooner or later he'd return to one or more of these ideas and add further detail. He had an endless supply of floppy discs, so why not keep a visual record of his accomplishments?

  And now, it was time to go shopping.

  Almost every day, recently, he did a new plot after breakfast, and then went shopping. He went to different stores, and wandered in them for a long time, and waited for some woman to speak to him. Twice, he'd tried approaching women himself, but both times their reaction was so negative and hostile that he realized it couldn't be made to work that way. He had to wait for one of them to come to him, but so far none had.

  He also, from time to time, drove in the direction of Amenia, New York, looking for that mailbox that said Rierdon, but so far he hadn't found it. Or, if he'd passed it once or twice, he hadn't noticed.

  He did not question himself. He did not look back over his days any more than he looked back over the stories he made up and saved on the discs. He knew that it was possible that a woman, sometime, in one of these stores, would start a conversation with him, and that things would be better after that. Sharper, clearer, more defined.

  Late in February, somebody from Price-Cathcart, the managers of his old building in New York, had called to say they had a new tenant for his apartment, but the tenant didn't want the furniture he'd left behind. Did he want to send for it, or would he prefer the new tenant to dispose of it all? Dispose of it, he'd said, and hadn't thought another thing about it, and now it was March, and the long New England winter slowly thawed.

  In his life generally, things were fine, better than ever. Now that he lived in the country full-time, he'd become closer with other friends who spent all or most of their time up here; there were more of them than he'd known. It was nice to be among people with money and leisure and the kind of work that didn't require them to commute day after day to the city. And they were happy to welcome him among their number.