There, Peter thought in dark, solitary satisfaction.
There.
It was the anger. The rage. That was his battery; that was his power plant. All he had to do was sustain it.
Somehow he didn't think that would be difficult.
He settled into his body without thinking, content with his night of discovery. Then his eye caught the blizzard outside and he thought of Kelly.
Is she alone on this nasty night? he wondered. Thinking of me?
He closed his eyes and reached again for the trance. . . but now it eluded him.
Unperturbed, he closed his eyes and waited.
TWENTY-SIX
December came on with a battering cruelness that matched the climate in Kelly's heart. The advances winter had already made were dwarfed by a quick-fire succession of some of the worst wind and snowstorms the north had endured in a century. Even those who read and heeded the almanac were ill prepared for the fury of this the first winter of the approaching decade. At midnight on the evening of Tracy Giroux's regrettable accident in the gym, Kelly sat alone before the big north-facing window of her home and watched the first of the blizzards come.
Tracy had needed surgery to set her arm. It had taken three hours, two metal plates, and eleven stainless-steel screws. The tragic but predictable verdict was that she would be out of gymnastics for the season and quite possibly forever. Kelly, weeping and wringing her hands, had waited with Tracy's parents in the emergency room at the General Hospital. Mr. and Mrs. Giroux, a pleasant couple from the valley, had done their best to console her, assuring her that it had been an accident and that she shouldn't blame herself. But it had done little good. Kelly wept for Tracy Giroux—for the hard fact that she would be out of gymnastics, the one thing in her life that had given her direction; for the loss of trust that would inevitably follow this incident; and for the suddenly doubled probability that Tracy would drift back to drugs. A lot had been lost in a moment's inattention. But she wept for herself, too—for the sweet dreams that had snapped with Peter's spine. An old voice rose up in her in the stark fluorescent glare of the waiting room: Six years, it yammered, six years and still he's got a stranglehold on your heart.
Kelly bit her lip to quell its quivering, and gazed into the worsening squall. From the rocky point on which her house stood, the lake narrowed back to the starless horizon like a runway into oblivion. It was out of this dark hiatus that the wind and the snow came pelting. Normally Kelly enjoyed the time she spent at home alone, especially during storms. There was something about nature's tempests that always made her feel humble. . . and yet somehow eternal.
But tonight it only made her feel cold. She had banked a birchwood fire and bundled herself in a comforter, but it made little difference. The cold was lodged inside her.
Oh, Will, she thought unhappily.
And deeper, more sadly: Peter. . .
The wind harped through the latticework skirt of the porch, blew hellish baritone in the downspouts, rattled the limbs of the trees. In its force, the familiar creaks of the house became stealthy creepings. . . and for the first time in her adult life, Kelly felt afraid in that elemental way that is the exclusive province of children. Afraid of the storm and the night. Afraid of being alone. Afraid of the goblin-green eyes of the bogeyman. Something very peculiar had taken place in her bedroom the night before, in that maroon hinterland between sleep and wakefulness, something which had shattered the house of cards that had been her life since Peter. Maybe Will was right: maybe this was the cost of caring so deeply. Nothing was forever. When that kind of love got destroyed, where did you go from there?
A low black shape detached itself from the shadows of the porch and blurred toward her from the opposite side of the glass. Kelly flinched—and then Fang was sitting on the sill, peering mournfully in at her. Still wrapped in her comforter, Kelly shuffled to the door and let him in. He'd been off on one of his all-day romps, and what he wanted right now was food. Trailing him out to the kitchen, Kelly felt the familiar, almost seductive pull of routine.
Get busy, a familiar voice counseled her. It was a simple doctrine that had seen her through the last six years, forming a three-syllable backbeat to a life that had lost its engine yet somehow managed to keep running.
When the shit hits the fan, kiddo, when it seems that life has passed you by, just get busy and keep busy. It's the only way to heal.
Her mother's words, spoken with the flat conviction of a veteran. As a child Kelly had watched her mother live by this creed, hunched over the ironing board or the sink, furiously pressing or scrubbing, and had judged it a poor way to cope. But she had been young then, young and unspoiled, her world still a wellspring of alternatives. Now, with her head in a mess and her heart in a jar, there seemed no way out but to return to that droning existence. Just unplug her brain and keep busy.
No, she promised herself as she crossed the kitchen to the fridge, trying not to trip over Fang. Not this time. No more hiding, You can't deal with your feelings for Peter by burying them. Because no matter how deep you dig, the soil is too thin. It won't hold.
"What do I do?" Kelly said in a pleading whisper.
Face him, the answer came back. Confront him.
She fed the cat and returned to her post by the window, not much comforted by her resolve. Eventually she fell asleep there.
Outside, the storm raged on.
The trance was there, like a memory just out of reach, and for a time he groped for it futilely. Then he relaxed and let it come. In his mind's eye, he saw himself riding the black December wind, a questing Horseman of the Apocalypse, lofting up, up, and away. Within seconds, he felt himself vibrating like a struck bell. . . and then he was free.
He thought again of Kelly.
And in the twinkling of an eye he was there.
She sat asleep in an easy chair by the picture window, her legs tucked under her and her body wrapped in a blanket. A big black tomcat lay curled at the foot of the chair, snoozing soundly. There had been a fire going in the fireplace, but it had burned itself down to embers and the occasional sputtering flame. Rafting above her on the air, Peter watched the pale ember-light creep along the curves of Kelly's face, which was also pale, and beautiful. The stranger was not here tonight, and although Peter had lived through him the night before, he was glad of the interloper's absence. Some nameless instinct assured him that even greater ecstasies lay near at hand.
He commenced a slow orbit about the chair on which Kelly slept, allowing the vertigo these revolutions induced to calm him. With this motion came a clarity of thought, of awareness, which eclipsed the enhanced lucidity that had previously attended this state. He could feel himself. . . condensing, becoming a ring of pure thought. Describing ever-tightening loops, he enclosed Kelly's head in a scintillating band of blue light.
Jolted from its sleep, the cat sprang to its feet and backed away from the chair, its spine arched into scruffy spikes. It spat fearsomely and then bolted for the basement staircase.
Like a garrote sinking into vulnerable flesh, Peter slipped into Kelly's dreams.
And found himself there.
They were walking in Bell Park, their bare feet cold in the damp sand that fringed Ramsey Lake. The moon was out, high and nearly full, and the sky was plastered with stars. Hand in hand they strolled through the silvery moonlight, thinking secret thoughts of each other. It was the night he had first told her that he loved her, that he meant to marry her and be with her forever. It had all come out in one shy, awkward lump, but Kelly had never doubted his sincerity. For a time she had nurtured this night as a cherished memory; but as the years dragged past its coming in her dreams became a torment.
The images were vivid, as all of her dreams were vivid. . . and yet, as they reached the slatted bench where Peter had poured out his heart to her, the dreamscape took on a fresh clarity. Now she could actually feel his hand in hers, its film of nervous sweat in spite of the coolness of the night, the accelerating pulsebeat i
n his grip. There was sand between her toes, gritty and cool, and the grass they'd strolled onto was dew-drenched. Peter's dream-figure seemed to solidify, as if some essential sap had been magically siphoned back into it. He was suddenly gorgeously real, not just an image dredged up from muddy memory but whole and solid and real. His face beamed in the moonlight.
"Kelly," he began in his tentative way. "Kelly, I still love you." He smiled. "And I know how we can be together forever."
(no Peter that's wrong that's not what you said)
His grip tightened on her hand, hard enough to hurt.
"Forever, Kelly."
Kelly awoke with a start, cold in spite of the comforter, Peter's words a haunting echo in her ears. Her gaze darted around the room, disoriented, her mind stumbling back to the present with a grudging slowness. Tears leaked from her eyes.
It had seemed so real. . .
The similarities to the last time Kelly had come to visit him were almost too much to bear. It had been winter then, too, a day much like this one, filled with gusting winds and billowing snow and the despairing sense that she might never feel the sun's warmth again; it was there, a high, heatless blank in the sky, but it seemed dead and somehow-traitorous. It was four o'clock in the afternoon, the first day of a bitter December.
Turn around, the voice of reason counseled her as she made her way up the ice-scabbed walk to the entrance. There's nothing for you here.
Kelly hesitated, heedless of the slashing winter air. It was true. There was nothing for her here. She wasn't eighteen anymore. That part of her life was over, as irretrievable as the snowflakes that melted on her face. What did she mean to say to him, anyway? Hi, Peter, I dream about you? I dream that you still love me and that you want me back? I dream that you're whole again, better than whole. . . and sometimes (like last night) I can feel you inside me. . . ?
An elderly couple brushed past her on the walkway, hatted heads bent forward, collars clutched snugly against the wind. The woman glanced back at her, the way a pedestrian will glance back at a doom-cryer stationed grimly with his placard on a street corner.
She thinks I'm nuts, Kelly thought. And maybe she was. After all this time, she was probably the last person Peter wanted to see.
But they had been in love once, and she allowed this truth to fortify her. They had shared that unique species of intimacy which seemed never to come along again after that first trembling time. She remembered that love and cherished it. . . and if she couldn't have it again, she should at least be able to approach the person she'd shared it with, talk to him openly and, if need be, beg him to release her heart.
She completed her trek up the walkway, feeling the cold and yet itchy with a nervous sweat. What will he say? her mind kept demanding. What will he look like? Oh, God, I hope he's glad to see me. . .
She strode into the lobby and its welcome breath of heat. Crossing the puddled tiles, she caught a departing elevator and punched the button for the ninth floor.
"Time for your bath."
Peter's neck muscles tightened, flexing beneath the skin like snakes in the act of swallowing; years of hefting his head off the pillow had left them thick and inordinately powerful. He had been paging through one of the books Sam had left him when the voice of the nurse startled him. Now his face darkened in irritation.
"I don't want a bath," he said flatly. Parked halfway into his room was the crane-operated sling they used to haul him into the tub room. It reminded him of some robotic, baby-bearing stork. "I had one last month."
Unperturbed, the nurse tried a compromise. "A sponge bath, then."
Peter debated. If he kicked up a fuss they'd drag him in to the tub room anyway, and he was getting pretty rank. A sponge bath would take only half the time of a baggage run to the tub, and then he could get back to what he'd been doing.
"Deal," he said gamely, flashing an ear-to-ear smile. The nurse responded in kind, but Peter saw her gaze twitch to his teeth and then away, repelled. He had let his teeth go. What the hell. They couldn't force him to eat if he decided he didn't want to, and they couldn't make him accept that fucking toothbrush. Having someone brush his teeth made him feel like a tarnished booby prize in a neglected collection of trophies.
The nurse went into the bathroom. Almost immediately Peter heard the sound of running water filling a stainless-steel basin.
His mind returned to the events of the past two nights. Discovering that Kelly still loved him had come as a gratifying shock. The feeling between them had never died. Stricken by circumstance, it had merely crawled into the shade to hide. And despite the best efforts of each of them to kill it, their love had endured there in the dark, beneath the damp dead leaves of a half-dozen autumns, like some secret mushroom that flowers only when exposed to the light.
And now he had seen that light. He could be with her again. Last night had shown him that. Not physically—never physically—but in a way that only the most smitten of poets could comprehend.
He could enter her mind.
The nurse was back in the room. She set the basin on the washstand, drew the covers off Peter's body, and flipped him expertly onto his side. Behind him he could hear her dipping her hands into the soapy basin, wringing out a washcloth, and some tattered recollection from childhood made him tense mentally against the water that might be too cold. . . but of course he felt nothing. Only the gentle rock and squeak of the bed told him that his keeper had begun to scrub him. He had no way of knowing, but he thought she might have started with his feet.
He closed his eyes and ground his teeth and waited for this humiliation to end.
Still in the same room, Kelly thought when the nurse at the desk told her where she could find Peter Gardner. That somehow made it worse. There had been no change, no advancement. If they had moved him to another floor, even to another room, it might have meant he'd regained some feeling in his legs, some vestigial function in his hands, maybe even progressed to a walker of some kind. . .
But he was still in the same room: 908.
She walked down the hall toward its end, but it was less like walking than gliding, a feeling of being conveyed along a track to which her feet were firmly glued. The closer she got to his door, the faster that track seemed to propel her, until by the time she was halfway there she was almost running. The lenses of her eyes had slipped into soft focus, and her stomach felt queasy and sick.
The door was open, partially blocked by the sling contraption they used to move him around.
Still the same.
Kelly maneuvered around it.
The room was silent, the window shades drawn. A gaudy orange curtain surrounded the bed. From within came a puddling sound of water, but Kelly didn't notice.
Marshaling the last of her courage, she clasped the curtain and drew it aside.
That first moment spun out interminably. When she saw the bent, unclad body on the bed, with its transparent skin and flaccid muscles, she felt a surge of relief. Wrong room, her mind insisted. That's not Peter, no way.
Then he opened his eyes, and for a heartbeat the warmth she had known in them kindled. She felt herself beginning to respond to that warmth, the stiffness leaking out of her muscles, a smile creeping onto her lips. Then it was as if an invisible wall had popped up and she had rushed headlong into it. Peter's eyes continued to widen, the warmth Kelly imagined she'd seen in them erupting into an infernal, repellent heat. His mouth dropped open, and a horrible inarticulate groan flopped out, the sound a victim of palsy might make in a pathetic attempt at speech. Kelly's hands flew up to her face and dragged at the corners of her mouth. The nurse glanced at her and then backed up a step, her own eyes wide and questioning.
"Peter, I—"
"You!" he cried, his lips peeled back in fury and shame. "You!"
"Peter, please. . .”
"I told you never to come back here!" Now his eyes were a dull, clotted red. "I told you! Never! Why did you have to spoil it?" He made a disgusted scan of his body, then loo
ked back at Kelly. "Is this what you came to see? Huh? This senseless bone bag of a body? Is it? Well, take a good look, kid, because this is what I am." There were tears in his eyes now.
"I'm sorry," Kelly said in a strangled whisper. Her hand fluttered out to touch him.
"Leave," Peter said, a sob twisting miserably through him. "Just leave."
Kelly did.
He wanted to hurt her. He wanted to punish her. He wanted to fuck her. Hate-fuck her. He hoped the stranger would be there tonight. Oh, yeah. There'd be some mean horizontal mambo tonight. Damn her! Why couldn't she have left it alone? What had made her come nosing around to see the incredible decaying man? Maybe she thought that would make her shut of him. Maybe she thought it would kill her love for him once and for all. And maybe it would.
But he wasn't going to allow that.
The next morning, fearful of another calamitous lapse on the job, Kelly called in sick. There had been no sleep last night—after leaving the hospital she'd driven about aimlessly until darkfall, then had wandered home and plunked herself in front of the TV, where she watched all-night movies on Pay—and there had been precious little sleep the night before. She filled that long day with familiar but mindless pursuits: vacuuming the immaculate rugs, mopping the spotless floors, making out her Christmas card list weeks ahead of her usual last-minute blitz. She thought of calling her mother—who would have zeroed in on her mood the way a ham radio operator zeros in on a fuzzy signal, and immediately begun prying—and left a message for Marti at work. . . but these days Marti was pretty busy. She'd met a new fella—the boys' phys ed teacher at the high school in Chelmsford where Marti taught—and for the past few months they'd been going at it fast and furious. Suddenly Marti's schedule was full—and it had never had that many holes in it.
The urge to call Will was a potent one, but Kelly stifled it. She was hurting and vulnerable, and she didn't want him to see her that way. Besides, with this sudden resurgence in her feelings for Peter, muddled and perverse as they were, she could no longer be sure of what Will truly meant to her. She couldn't be sure of anything anymore. As lonely as she was, she was determined not to use Will as a substitute. If she was going to think of Peter while being intimate with another man, then she would forgo that intimacy. It wouldn't be fair any other way.
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