Till the Dust Settles

by Pat Young

  She was so tired, the journey back out to the suburbs seemed as impossible as a coast-to-coast run. By morning the trains would be running and Curtis would have had time to calm down. The phones would be fixed and she could call her parents and set up that meeting with her mum. Maybe, now, her dad would let bygones be bygones and come too.

  It made sense to stay here. Try to get some sleep. In the morning, she’d get up and clear out. She could leave a note explaining how she’d found and returned Miss Gillespie’s bag. She’d take enough money to get home and no one would be any the wiser. Lucie made sure the door was locked then turned and leaned on it, frowning at the mess she’d made of the hall floor. She was gradually shedding her mantle of dust, and it was settling all over this beautiful apartment. She could clean up the apartment before she left in the morning, but right now, showering this dust off her skin was the main priority.

  As if stripping herself of painful memories, she peeled off her clothes in a corner of the bathroom and rolled them into a tight bundle. A cloud of dust rose to the ceiling and sparkled in the beam of recessed spotlights. Lucie made a mask of her hand and held her breath till she was under the shower.

  Miss Gillespie’s good taste extended to her toiletries. Jo Malone body wash. Forty dollars a bottle. Once, in Bergdorg-Goodman, Lucie had sampled all the fragrances, longing to own one, until a snotty assistant had enquired whether she intended to make a purchase. She squeezed the tiniest amount onto her hand and washed the dust from her body. The citrus-scented steam was as cleansing as fresh air and she breathed deeply for the first time in hours.

  Afraid to linger in the shower, Lucie wrapped an immense bath sheet around her body and tucked the end in tightly. With her hair turbaned in a towel, she wiped down Miss Gillespie’s bathroom and left it unsullied, apart from the poor bundle of dusty old clothes dumped on the floor. There was no point in putting them back on, but she couldn’t wander around draped in luxury towels like a client in some high-end spa.

  A door off the bedroom opened into a space as big as the one she slept in with Curtis. Hanging rails ran along two sides and the rest of the wall space was given over to shelves of sweaters, piles of shoeboxes and drawers full of gorgeous underwear.

  A quick look at a few labels confirmed a lot about Miss Gillespie. She had very expensive taste and the income to indulge it. She wore a small size, the same as Lucie, and probably most of the women in Manhattan. One rail held nothing but black suits, dresses and coats – the unofficial uniform of city businesswomen. Lucie felt no sense of envy until she saw Miss Gillespie’s collection of casual and sportswear. It had been a long time since Lucie had owned anything so cool. She chose a pair of soft sweatpants and a slouchy top from Pineapple. Both fitted perfectly. That was one advantage of her life with Curtis; living on nervous energy and very little food meant she never gained weight.

  When she was dressed she tied her hair in a tight knot on the top of her head. Her granny would be appalled. ‘Never go to sleep with wet hair, hen,’ she always said. ‘Ye’ll catch yer death of cold.’

  The bed was piled with plump pillows and covered in a quilt as pale and soft as whipped cream. The sheets felt smooth and silky to the touch. The temptation to crawl between them and curl up in a ball was hard to resist, but Lucie couldn’t. Stealing the woman’s food and using her Jo Malone was one thing. Borrowing her clothes was even okay. But sleeping in her bed was too intimate, too intrusive, too wrong.

  Lucie double-checked the door was locked and paid a visit to the bathroom, where she found some Tylenol. She forced two over her aching throat, wincing as she swallowed. Then she took a pillow and a soft comforter from the bed and lay down on the sofa, alert to the slightest sound.

  Every time she closed her eyes a cloud of dust raced towards her, shrouding her in white and clogging her throat. She didn’t expect to get much sleep.

  7

  Lucie’s sleep, when it came, was disturbed by dreams of suffocating dust. Each time she woke, the huge window showed the same sky in a different colour. When daylight came, she could see the ghost of smoke rising and drifting, a reminder of the horrors of the day before. She’d relived them countless times in the night. The dust chasing her down, choking her. The running, screaming crowds. Her fall and loss of consciousness. The policeman’s flashlight reaching out towards her through the blackout. Waking her. Saving her. Several times she’d startled, sure she’d heard a key turn in a lock, or a door open, someone tiptoeing into the apartment. At one point, just before dawn, it seemed, she heard the elevator working and lay there, paralysed with fear. When she slept again, Curtis was chasing her through the dust cloud. Curtis locking his hands round her neck as vast towers crashed around them. People, running to save themselves, paying no attention to a strangled wife.

  Lucie wondered where he’d slept last night. If he’d woken eventually and crawled to bed with the dregs of his hangover. Despite the nightmare she’d lived through to get here, it felt good to be free of him. Lucie imagined the luxury of sleeping alone every night, even on a couch. No snoring, farting man to wake her at any hour demanding she satisfy his need for sex. In the early days he’d been loving and gentle, patient with her and eager to please. It wasn’t hard to identify when he’d started to change.

  Now if she tried to refuse him during the night, Curtis claimed it was his right as a husband to have sex where and when he wanted. She had no rights. He made that clear in as many ways as he could think of. The only time he’d left her alone was when she was carrying the baby. He refused to touch her at all during the pregnancy, even when she craved hugs of reassurance. She never allowed herself to wonder where or how he’d got his satisfaction during those months. Afterwards, he had made up for lost time, telling her how much he’d missed her body.

  That was one of the reasons she’d never left, apart from the obvious fact that she’d nowhere else to go. Curtis could be the most loving man, making her feel cherished and needed. Sometimes, it felt as good as their first months together and she dared to hope they could fall in love again.

  He always said sorry for hurting her. Sometimes he looked at the marks he’d made on her poor body as if he couldn’t believe he was responsible. He’d cuddle up to her, seeking forgiveness, often weeping till she hugged him and told him it was okay. She’d managed, almost, to forgive him the blows that cost the baby’s life, but she’d never forgive the words he’d used. Funny how his verbal abuse had hurt more than punching and kicking. Granny had taught her a chant when she was wee and some girl at school had been giving her a hard time. ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.’ Not true, Granny. Words can wound as surely as fists and feet, you just don’t see the damage.

  Lucie rose from the sofa and walked to the window. The sky was a clear blue and the river gleamed like polished silver in the morning sun. It was difficult to imagine the mayhem of the day before and the awfulness of what was happening down below in Manhattan. This apartment was a haven where all sounds from the street were silenced and horrors were confined to the TV screen.

  She picked up the remote. There was no need to select a channel to find coverage of the story. Flicking through several, she saw the same images again and again. The towers intact against a sky of perfect blue. A plane hurtling into a wall of windows. Flames raging from a vast gash in one tower and a plume of black smoke rising from the other. Desperate people clawing at windows higher than the flight path.

  Only one scene made any sense to her – the one she’d lived through. People racing along the street trying to run away from the cloud of smoke and dust. She watched it catch up with runners as if they were standing still, obliterating them and everything around them. She switched channels looking for the same footage, longing to understand what had happened to her and to the city. No matter how often she looked, it seemed surreal. And yet Lucie knew exactly how real it had been.

  Live coverage was showing the rescue operation in full swing. Thousands of peopl
e were missing, feared dead. She could have been one of them.

  She turned up the volume, just a little, afraid of being heard next door. Snippets from the different channels began to fit together and tell the story. An attack on the World Trade Center by terrorists, thought to be Muslim. Osama something or other thought to be behind it. She couldn’t make out the name. Knew she’d never heard it before. Planes had been hijacked, it seemed, and flown straight into the Twin Towers.

  As Lucie watched them implode and collapse, a gush of acid flooded her stomach. Her cleaning job was with an employment agency based on the fifty-second floor of the South Tower. Had she been on time for her nine o’clock interview, she’d have been inside that tower when the plane hit. She’d be dead.

  The newscasters talked on, but their voices faded in her head, lost in the morass of her thoughts. When she heard the familiar strains of ‘God Bless America’ she focused on the screen. In a show of solidarity and defiance, a crowd of Congressmen stood singing on the steps of the Capitol. The last time she’d heard the song had been way back in January. Curtis, drunk before the Superbowl even kicked off, had stood to attention, hand on heart. She remembered laughing at him singing with the Backstreet Boys as they pelted out the national anthem.

  She also remembered the beating he gave her when the Giants lost. She could feel his hands closing round her neck. Squeezing.

  Lucie’s throat ached on the inside and her neck on the outside. Last night’s medication had worn off. She touched her scalp, tender where she’d banged it on the sidewalk.

  She fetched more Tylenol and a bottle of orange juice from the fridge. Wincing as she swallowed, she drank down the tablets. The juice was sweet and zesty, and she gulped, greedy till her thirst was quenched.

  Like Goldilocks stealing the bears’ porridge, she foraged and nibbled, exalting in the delicious food. She banished the thought that she was thieving and concentrated on the need to appease her hunger.

  She had slept in this woman’s home, eaten her food, used her bathroom and she didn’t even know her first name. Was she Carol Gillespie? Christina Gillespie? Carrie-jo Gillespie?

  Lucie retrieved the bag from the hall floor. She wiped away the dust with her sleeve and opened it. The Filofax was still there, of course, and a bunch of keys. A pack of tissues and a small make-up bag. A soft leather pocket book, fat with twenty-dollar bills. A separate little wallet, that looked and felt handmade, contained store and credit cards, all registered to Charlotte Gillespie. Lucie breathed out a long, sad sigh. ‘Charlotte,’ she whispered, ‘Charlotte Gillespie.’

  When Lucie found Charlotte’s driving licence, she shivered. She’d often seen Granny do the same thing and say, ‘Somebody just walked on my grave.’ Lucie had never understood what it meant. Now she did. The woman staring back from the tiny photo was so familiar and yet Lucie knew she’d never met this Charlotte Gillespie. It was like looking at a photo of herself and yet not herself. More like a cousin who shared the family colouring and bone structure. Her hair was darker than Lucie’s, at least in the photo, and the style was shorter, expensively cut and expertly styled.

  The address shown was for this apartment. Miss Gillespie’s date of birth was given as May third, 1972. That would make her three years and a bit older than Lucie. Twenty-nine.

  As she tucked Charlotte’s licence back into her wallet, Lucie spotted a photo, so small she almost missed it. One single image, torn from a strip, its edges softened and creased. Lucie remembered the photo booth she and her pals used to visit in the local station. It had been a challenge to see how many girls could squash into one photo before the camera flashed and the crabby wee stationmaster came along and chased them.

  This photo, passport sized, had plenty of room for two smiling faces, cheek to cheek. Charlotte and a boy. A special boy, judging by the sparkle in their eyes. In a caption competition, every entry would have been a variation of ‘Young and in love’. Lucie wasn’t sure she and Curtis had ever radiated joy like this.

  She turned the photo over. ‘Me and Matthew 7/3/90’. She fished the licence back out and checked Charlotte’s date of birth. She’d have been seventeen in the photo. About the same age Lucie was when she fell for Curtis. It seemed a long lifetime ago. Lucie took a last look at the young, vibrant Charlotte and couldn’t help a sad smile. Then she realised how devastated this Matthew would be. And that she might have to be the one to tell him Charlotte was dead.

  Lucie put the photo back where she found it and packed the stranger’s belongings into her bag. She was fastening the clasp when the doorbell rang.

  Lucie stiffened.

  It rang again.

  When it rang for a third time she still hadn’t moved. Or breathed.

  8

  Central park would normally be bustling with people at this time of the day. Workers grabbing some fresh air and open space to eat their lunch. Keep-fit nuts skipping lunch so they could fit in multiple laps of the pond before swapping their shorts and singlet for a business suit. Childminders blocking the paths with traffic jams of strollers and gangs of wayward toddlers; but today the park was eerily quiet. Emergency vehicles could be heard every now and again, heading for the ruins at Ground Zero, as the media had taken to calling WTC. He thought it ironic, knowing the origins of the phrase ‘Ground Zero’. First used for the Manhattan Project and the bombing of Japan. A strategy employed to put an end to war, whereas the events of 9/11 were more likely to kick-start a war. The war against terrorism. One that would prove very lucrative for him. Not that he was about to feel guilty. Hell, didn’t all wars make money for some guy? Whoever happened to be in the right place at the right time, with grand ambitions and enough invested to see them to fruition.

  He pushed back his cuff and checked his Rolex. His contact was twenty minutes late. Getting here had been a bit of a nightmare, admittedly, even for him, but he wasn’t prepared to wait all day. Just when he’d decided it was time to make a call, the man appeared at the bench they’d identified as the pick-up point.

  From a safe distance he watched the character walk on, the swagger in his stride a clear message – don’t mess with me.

  Others might be intimidated by this guy, but not him.

  He sat down on the bench, stooping low to sweep up the ribbon that lay in a soft loop at the edge of the path, as if carelessly dropped. He stuffed the ribbon into his pocket, his fingers moving along the silken band till they curled around the key. The last thing that could connect him to Charlotte. And proof she was dead.

  Hard to believe, sitting in the park, that Charlotte and countless others were gone. Some of them he knew; the rest were nameless, faceless strangers. There was little here to suggest the pandemonium a few miles away. Trees and bushes bore a light dusting of powder, the only clue. It glistened like a mild frost, out of place on this sunny autumn day. Rain forecast for tomorrow would wash them as clean as his conscience.

  Pity about Charlotte. They’d had some good times and he would miss their ‘business meetings’. A different luxury hotel each time, but always the finest suite. A bottle of Dom Pérignon on ice, her favourite. Long-stemmed flutes waiting by the bubble-filled bathtub.

  Charlotte came straight from work and usually kept him waiting, his anticipation growing like the bulge in his pants.

  ‘My God, woman, you look sexy in a suit,’ he would say, barely allowing her through the door before he started stripping her. First the sharp black jacket. Then the starched white shirt. He liked to pull it up out of her waistband before undoing one button at a time to reveal her breasts cupped in white lace. Once he’d ripped a button off her shirt in his haste to get his mouth on her nipple and she had become angry, which only excited him all the more.

  ‘That’s a three-hundred-dollar shirt you just ruined, you schmuck.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Charlotte honey,’ he’d tried to cajole her, ‘it’s just a little button. Surely a smart girl like you can sew on a button?’

  She’d pushed his hands away. ‘I
do not sew on buttons. Nor do I tolerate anyone ripping my clothes.’

  ‘But you’re so sexy, I can’t keep my hands off you. Serves you right for keeping me waiting. Feel this.’ He’d taken her hand and placed it on his crotch. She massaged him for an agonising few moments then leaned into him, giving him permission to peel off her blouse, carefully this time. He kissed her neck, just the way she liked it.

  When she was naked, he carried her to the bed. As they lay in the tub afterwards, sipping champagne, she’d whispered, ‘I’d die for you, my darling. You know that, don’t you?’

  Yes, pity about Charlotte. Pity she got so damned greedy. Why couldn’t she be happy with things as they were? She was the only one he’d ever committed to. Before Charlotte, all the others had been one-night stands, meaning nothing. Not even worthy of the name adultery. Just a wicked temptation, as harmless as a glass of champagne or a handmade chocolate. And equally meaningless. But Charlotte had been different, the only one he’d ever been prepared to cheat on Diane with.

  He wound the silky ribbon round his fingers, recalling the moment he’d put it round Charlotte’s neck. ‘This is the key to our future,’ he’d whispered.

  ‘Our future together,’ she’d insisted.

  ‘Guard it well.’

  ‘I’ll keep it close to my heart.’

  He’d kissed her mouth to stop her talking and tucked the key inside her bra. Her breast felt as smooth as the ribbon itself and his fingers had followed it, delving down into the lacy cup. She’d stopped him, removing his hand as she spoke. ‘Uh-uh,’ she’d teased. ‘I want to wait till we’re together forever. I want to feel like a bride on her first night.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I just can’t get enough of you. I’m not sure I can wait.’ Poor Charlotte. She would never know the reason he’d been so keen to have her was because he knew it would be the last time. Ever.