A Charmed Place

by Antoinette Stockenberg

  "I did do that!"

  "Half of the time. The other half you ignored the clock and guessed the object based on—what? Your intuition? Don't make me laugh."

  "What did you expect?" Michael shouted, feeling humiliated. "I was in a zone, Geoff! I couldn't just pull out of it and focus on some dumb-ass clock. I was focused! Ask Michael Jordan if he could turn it off just like that; ask Mike Tyson."

  Woodbine leaned over his desk, palms flat on the surface. "Those are hardly compatible zones, either with one another or with yours, Michael. Quite simply: you're a deluded fool. You drew a bed when I signaled the garden; you drew a teapot when I signaled the bathroom. You're a fool and an idiot. The only reason we got that funding was because I was able to capitalize on the few times you did manage to follow the plan. Next time, I'll buy myself an engineer; at least they can follow instructions."

  "You son of a bitch!" Michael shouted.

  Woodbine reached into the top drawer of his desk. Michael threw himself across it, slamming the wide drawer hard and catching Woodbine's left hand in it. With a cry of pain Woodbine yanked it out, holding it hard against his chest with his other hand.

  "Sonovabitch—you've got a gun in there, haven't you?" Michael cried. He vaulted over the desk and pulled the drawer all the way out, revealing a revolver at the back of it. Snatching it up, he felt his first real surge of power over his despised mentor.

  "This is the one, isn't it?" he said to Woodbine, hardly containing his glee at having the upper hand. "This is the gun you used to blow away my father-in-law."

  Woodbine's breath was still coming fast. "I don't ... know what you're ... talking about, you freak."

  "April 6. You agreed to see him April 6," Michael said, pointing the gun at him. "You thought I didn't know that? I knew that. And not because I'm psychic. Because he told me, you moron. He found out that you were interested in testing Tracey, that you'd been asking me about her. Okay, he found out because I told him you had—but that's me all over, isn't it? Dedicated to the pursuit of parapsychological truth. And am I appreciated? No. Not by you, not by my family—well, screw you all."

  Without taking his eyes from Woodbine, Michael groped the top of the desk for the envelope and dragged it closer to him. "How come you never told me about your colorful past, hmm? How come I had to hear it from Edward Timmons instead? I thought we were better friends than that, Geoffrey—or should I say, Clive?"

  "You're more prone to fantasy than I thought," the director said, eyeing him warily.

  "Uh-huh. Y'know, I don't much care what you did or did not do. All I really want at this point is the money. I'm mad, I'm tired, I need a vacation. Besides, it's the principle of the thing."

  Michael struggled to open the clasped flap of the envelope with one hand, then jiggled it lightly so that some of the money eased part of the way out.

  He glanced down. "Twenties?" he said, stunned. "Twenties?" He dumped the rest of the envelope on the desk: all twenties, no more than a few thousand dollars' worth.

  "Money's tight right now. I told you: it takes a while for the funding to come through."

  Woodbine took advantage of the distraction to make a lunge for him, knocking him back into a bookcase. They locked in an uneven struggle over the gun; Michael was younger, stronger, uninjured. The gun went off with a deafening sound and the director staggered back, his eyes wide with shock. He grabbed his stomach, then fell to the floor.

  Michael stood there, paralyzed by the sight of the blood oozing from the wound. He dropped to his knees and felt for a pulse. If there was one, he couldn't find it. He stood up. His mind went blank. Then he seized the gun and he ran.

  Heart hammering, head pounding, he tore down the hall through the lobby and grabbed at the handle of the glass entry door. Locked! He turned and ran down the nearest aisle, looking for another door. He found a fire exit, then pushed the door open, setting off a shrill, mind-bending alarm. His pace was frantic now, his breath exploding in his chest. He circled back to the parking lot, dropped into the front seat of his car, and with violently shaking hands, got the key into the ignition slot. He sped out of the lot and down quiet residential streets and didn't look back until he was merged into the Friday night metro mess on Route 9.

  Convinced that he was being pursued by police, he took a roundabout route from Brookline to his condo on the Back Bay, then parked in his rented carriage stall, where he checked obsessively for blood. He searched his hands, his clothes, the leather upholstery of the Beemer. No. He was clean. The car was clean.

  Once he was safely ensconced in his kitchen, he poured himself a huge Scotch, still with shaking hands, and tried to assess. He was okay. He was okay. He hadn't been followed, hadn't been seen. He was okay. Most importantly, he had remembered to snatch up the gun. It lay on the table in front of him; he'd have to heave it off a bridge or bury it deep.

  It wasn't until the Scotch had settled nicely in his brain that he was able to re-assess. For one thing, his fingerprints were everywhere. The chair, the desk, the handle of the lobby door—those were all legitimate and easily accounted for. But the fire door? The money envelope?

  What about the struggle itself—what other evidence of himself had he left behind during it? He held his arms up and scrutinized them front and back. Scratches, not enough to draw blood—but this was the age of forensic miracles. Had he left his skin behind, under Woodbine's nails? Oh God, of course he had! He kept his arms extended rigidly in front of him, his hands gripping the edge of the kitchen table. Slowly, painfully, his alcohol-soaked mind focused on a white band across his otherwise tanned wrist.

  His watch.

  Where was it? Had he been wearing it? He jumped up and ran around the apartment like a scalded cat, checking his dresser, his bureau, the low table where he ate while he watched TV. Nowhere. Yes! He'd been wearing it, he had! He remembered checking the time by the overhead light when he got to the parking lot, because the clock in the Beemer was shot.

  He collapsed on a chair at the kitchen table in front of the gun and dropped his face onto his hands, gripped by sudden despair. He'd left money and his watch, and fingerprints on everything. The gun that lay before him now—was it the one that had killed Ed? Would he be blamed for that, too?

  He jumped up; he had to go back.

  No. He couldn't go back. He couldn't get in, for one thing, and for another, the fire department had undoubtedly responded to the alarm. By now they knew.

  The pit of his despair grew deeper still. He remembered that the Institute had a copy of his fingerprints and a photo on file; they were required for classified government work. It was only a matter of time, then. How much of it did he have?

  He tried to make himself think, but his mind drew a blank as thorough as anything he'd ever achieved during meditation. He sat at the cluttered table for a terrifying length of time, trying to come up with something—anything—to break him out of his paralysis of fear and get him moving again.

  It was a neon pink newsletter folded in three that finally caught his eye; it lay on top of the day's mail, all of it still unread, on the table next to the gun. His gaze fell on the masthead of the pink missive: The Sandy Point Crier, Trixie Roiters, Editor.

  The banner headline was visible in the tri-fold: Hurricane Batters Sandy Point. So was the head to one of the twinned stories underneath it: Lighthouse Damaged. He tore through the staple and began to read.

  Hurricane Dot, packing top winds of 110 miles an hour, caused serious erosion to the town beach, undercutting the foundation of the Sandy Point Lighthouse. The lighthouse, which now leans noticeably to the east, has been the focus of a recent fundraising effort to relocate it inland across Water Street. The keeper's house, which was unoccupied for the duration of the hurricane, sustained moderate damage.

  Michael read no further. Unoccupied. The word throbbed like a raw wound in his head. Unoccupied. If Hawke hadn't been in the keeper's house for the duration of the hurricane, then where had he been?

 
With Maddie, of course. Had he been there while Michael was talking to her on the phone? Had he appeared at her front door while the phone was still warm in its cradle?

  That lying, lying slut. She lied. She promised, and she broke that promise. She lied. She was with him now. She lied then and was lying still and would always lie.

  This is all her fault. Once that simple realization coalesced, his brain immediately cleared and he became energized. It was all Maddie's fault. If she'd stayed married to him, none of this would've happened. His life was in ruins, he was going to prison, and it was all Maddie's fault.

  That thought, and only that thought, sustained him for the rest of the night as he made his plans.

  Chapter 31

  Hawke had his first shower in eleven days, and he had to admit that it felt good. As he rubbed his hair dry with a sinfully thick white towel, he tried to figure out what perverse motive had made him turn down Norah's repeated offers of hospitality.

  On balance, he decided that he had wanted to feel sorry for himself, which was easier to do when he was living in a state of primitive hygiene. If he'd had any other motives, he preferred not to think of them now.

  He stuffed his dirty workclothes into his duffel and walked barefoot through the guest suite down to what Norah called her gathering room. Everything, upstairs and down, was done up in shades of white. Pity the kid with dirty feet who tried to run free in this house.

  While he waited for Norah to shower and come down, he helped himself to a bourbon from the sideboard, then walked through one of half a dozen French doors that were opened to the night breeze. He was on a deck that ran the length of the house and overlooked a turquoise pool with underwater lighting. Norah was right: her chaises were fancier than his.

  The sea was ahead of him; he could hear it. The town was somewhere off to the left; he could sense it. Sense her in it. To the right was new development—big houses like Norah's, built on stilts and with their own huge generators for awkward times like these. At the moment the houses were all lit up like Las Vegas, doing their best to stick it to the older, humbler part of town.

  He turned his back to the sliding, hissing sea and gazed into Norah's gathering room. Everything was very elegant, very understated. He liked all the Tiffany lamps; they gave the white a much needed shot of warmth.

  Yes, indeed, a man could get used to a life like this.

  Even as the thought was shaping itself in his mind, Norah glided in, dressed in a simple black tunic over long bare legs. Like him, she was barefoot. Was she just kicking back, or was she making things easy? He heard a compact car start up in the driveway and then drive out: Tanya had just been given the night off was his guess.

  Norah smiled and beckoned him in. "There's food," she said, waving to a plate of nibbles on a low table.

  Hawke was hungry, so he took her up on her offer and dropped into one of the white chairs that surrounded the glass-topped, bronze-legged table. "What happens when someone spills grape juice in a joint like this?'' he asked, helping himself to a thick wedge of cheese. "Do you just zip off the slipcover and throw it out?''

  "Something like that. I have a closet full of spares," Norah said, reaching down in front of him and knifing some beluga onto a thin white wafer.

  Her tunic had a deep vee that fell away from her unbound breasts. He didn't gape, but he didn't look away, either. He hadn't played this game since before Afghanistan. It interested him to know that it was a lot like riding a bike: you never really forgot how.

  He said, "Why do you call this a gathering room? What do you gather? Scalps?"

  "No-o, money for worthy causes."

  Chastised, he said, "Yeah, well, you've done a bang-up job there. You're saving the lighthouse almost single-handedly, as near as I can tell."

  "Don't go all sentimental on me, Mr. Hawke; it's not your style," she said, biting through the caviar with straight white teeth.

  "Nope, that's where you're wrong," he said with a hapless smile. "Right now I'm feeling downright maudlin."

  "You know what cures the blues?"

  "No, but I'll bet you do."

  "A really good bottle of wine. I'll get one."

  "Don't make it too good," he said as she headed out of the cavernous room. "It'll be lost on me."

  She paused and gave him a look over her shoulders. "In that case, I'll see if I can dig up some muscatel."

  He laughed and she disappeared from his view. He stood up, edgier now than when they'd arrived. Something was out of whack. He wanted this to happen; he really did. On the way over he'd made up his mind, just the way he'd made up his mind a thousand times before in his life.

  Had Norah made up hers? He didn't feel as certain about that as he had on the beach. Maybe Norah had more scruples than he. Maybe she really was just offering him a hot shower and a snack. Hell, he didn't know. He felt so screwed up right now ....

  He wandered around the room, trying to walk off his restlessness. What did he want? What the hell did he want? It wasn't Norah. When he came right down to it, it wasn't Norah. How could it be, when there was Maddie?

  This was pointless; he was lashing out at Maddie by hitting on one of her best friends. More embarrassed at his juvenile response than ashamed of it, he began to walk out to the kitchen to stop Norah from popping the cork.

  He never made it that far. As he passed a glass-topped console near the hall that led to the kitchen, he saw the photo albums that Maddie had lent Norah. One of them was opened to two pages mounted with snapshots of the keeper's house being boarded up and the fresnel lens being removed from the lighthouse and loaded onto a truck. Maddie was in a couple of the photographs: a kid of thirteen or so, with skinny legs and a flat chest, wearing a two-piece bathing suit that nowadays would be considered laughably modest.

  Hawke would've known her anywhere, in any life, at any age.

  His heart constricted painfully in his chest; it was like being shot again. He realized that he'd never seen a photograph of her as a young girl before. The things that lovers and spouses took for granted had always been unavailable to him—simple things, like family albums. He began to leaf hungrily through this one, trying to make up for a lifetime of deprivation.

  His face relaxed in a melancholy smile as he gazed at Maddie on a horse ... Maddie with George and it must be Suzette ... Maddie with her father, a man who clearly had adored her. They weren't very artistic shots, but there were a lot of them: page after page after page of Edward Timmons's kids. What must it feel like to love children that much? he wondered. It was an emotion he'd never known—the fierce love of a parent. He thought of his sister, how crazy she was about her own two kids.

  For the first time, some of what Maddie had been trying to tell him sank in. He was astonished to realize that his eyes were glazed over with tears.

  "Ah—you've found her," said Norah, stating a profounder truth than she knew.

  "Indeed," Hawke said in a choked voice.

  He kept turning the pages, utterly captivated by the images of the only woman he would ever love. "You never had children," he said to Norah without looking up.

  "Oh, my gosh, I must've forgot," she said dryly.

  Now he looked up. "I'm sorry. That was personal. I guess ... it's hitting me that I haven't had any, either."

  "If that's a proposition, it's the oddest one I've ever had," said Norah, placing a stemmed glass next to the album.

  He laughed softly. "Not that you're not propositionable, but ...."

  "But your heart lies with another."

  "For all the good it does me."

  Norah leaned back on the console and sipped her wine. "How are you going to handle this thing with Michael?"

  So she knew. Hawke shrugged and said, "My old job's still open."

  "You're going to cut and run?"

  "Hell, no, I'll offer it to Michael," he quipped, unable seriously to face the prospect himself.

  "How do you feel about unsolicited advice?"

  "Believe me, I'm sol
iciting it."

  "Stay in town. This will work itself through."

  "I guess I've pretty much made that decision," he murmured, more to himself than to her. "Not that it matters if it works itself through or not. I couldn't leave her now if ... if .... Well, I couldn't, that's all."

  He kept turning the pages, slowly, compulsively, as Norah watched from alongside.

  "Ah, here they are in London," he said, instantly recognizing the landmarks. There was a shot of three kids on the bank of the Thames, lined up according to height by their doting father. Three kids, feeding the pigeons in Trafalgar Square ... gazing up at Big Ben ... waiting at one of the gilded gates to Buckingham Palace.

  Not all of the photos were taken in London; there were four pages devoted to photographs of the three children at what was undoubtedly a university, probably Oxford, judging from the Gothic spires. Yes ... here was a clipping from a newspaper, yellowed with age, recounting Edward Timmons's lecture at a conference there.

  "It's nice that he took his family along," said Hawke, pleased by the fact. He could never have taken his own kids to a war zone—another disappointing epiphany for him.

  He was about to turn the thick, heavy page of the album, but something had snagged in his brain like a burr on a sock. He looked at the clipping again.

  Dr. Edward Timmons, an American scientist distinguished for his research in particle theory, spoke here on Monday at the invitation of the University.

  Hawke read it through and found nothing more than a nice, respectful piece about what a respected presence Edward Timmons was in the scientific community. He was about to shrug off the odd sensation that had gripped him when his gaze fell on an adjacent article, one that hadn't been completely scissored out. Ah. It must have been the dateline that had caught his eye: Woodbine, Oxfordshire. Woodbine; it was an unusual name. He kept reading.