by Lisa Tuttle
“So would I.”
“I'd like to know what happens with Jenny. You'll let me know?”
“Of course.”
Suddenly her eyes widened, and she gasped. “I haven't paid you!”
“Forget it.”
“Don't be silly! Did you bring your bill?”
I thought of the two draft bills, still on my computer. I shook my head. “Really, it's on the house. Peri would have come back anyway. I'm not out-of-pocket—you paid for everything in Scotland, and now you've just paid for dinner.”
“That was for your birthday.”
“OK, then will you grant me this as a birthday wish? I don't want to be paid. I'm happy if I helped. I did it for love—or friendship. You don't owe me anything.”
When I'd finished my little speech she stretched up on her tiptoes to kiss me. This was not a perfunctory peck, such as I'd given her on meeting; this was full on the lips, and it was warm and promising. When I put my arms around her, she seemed to melt against me. If we hadn't been on a busy street corner, surrounded by people, it might have developed into something much more. It was the best kiss I'd had in years.
My head was spinning when we parted. “Shall I—”
She shook her head. “Not tonight. Come and see me in New York, Ian. Whatever else happens.”
“I will,” I promised.
I watched her descend into the Leicester Square underground station and didn't follow. I couldn't bear the thought of going tamely home alone. I was too wide-awake, too restless and hungry for life.
So I walked. I was walking as a way of thinking, and exploring the territory inside my head meant I paid little attention to which way I turned. I was alert enough to keep out of the traffic, and my course was northerly because that would eventually take me home. Apart from that, I might have been in another world. I daydreamed about Laura, that promising kiss, and fantasized about where it might lead. I imagined us exploring New York together, as, many years ago, I'd explored it with Jenny. Then I wondered what Jenny looked like now, and what she expected of our meeting, and if she still had fantasies about me.
With my mind so pleasurably occupied, it's not surprising I lost track of where I was and where I was going. All of a sudden it was dark but for the yellow streetlamps casting their unnatural glow, and I found myself on a street I didn't know.
It was a quiet, residential street of substantial brick terraces, heavily parked with cars along both sides. It looked in no way a major thoroughfare, and I didn't recognize it as being along any of my usual routes. After a moment of uncertainty, I kept walking. When I got to the corner I should be able to find the name of the street and get my bearings.
Before I reached the corner, though, something caught my attention, movement glimpsed from the corner of my eye. Looking around, I saw someone coming out of the house across the street. That sounds ordinary enough, but somehow I knew immediately it was not. The door, as it shut, made no sound. The figure emerging from the front gate onto the pavement was that of a woman, not very tall, wearing a long dress. She was carrying something wrapped in a blanket cradled against her chest. Although I couldn't see anything of it, from the size and the way she carried it, I felt certain it was a baby.
As the woman passed beneath the streetlight, her hair gleamed a brassy, improbable color in the glow, and I had a clear glimpse of her face.
It was Fred.
For a moment I was rooted to the spot, too astonished to call out. Surely I was mistaken. Then, as she continued to move swiftly away from me toward the end of the street, I became determined that she shouldn't get away, and I ran after her. My footsteps sounded clearly in the still, quiet air, yet Fred made no sound at all. And although I was running, and she seemed to be moving at no more than a quick walk, not only did I fail to catch up to her, but the distance between us grew rapidly greater. By the time I reached the end of the street, she had disappeared. I ran out into the middle of the road and looked around wildly, and there she was, moving at the same, even pace down the next street.
I chased after her, past more of the sleeping terraced houses, hearing only my own footsteps and my own panting breath. I couldn't catch up to her. Again she turned the corner well ahead of me, and again passed out of my sight. This time, the street ended in a little square, filled with a gated, communal garden. I was just in time to see her open the gate and go inside.
There was no hurry now. There was unlikely to be another exit.
I crossed the street slowly, looking around at the houses whose windows overlooked this little private park, trying to see if there was anything I recognized, trying to recall if I had been here before, on my way to visit Laura. Was this the garden where Hugh had filmed Peri the summer before she disappeared?
The gate, when I reached it, hung slightly ajar, just waiting for a push from me. I stared through the bars, trying to see into the garden, but it was scarcely possible. Bushes had been planted thickly around the entrance and trained into an arbor. Just now it felt like a tunnel. Perhaps, in daytime, there might have been a view of the garden through the arbor, but now, in the dark, I could see nothing but shadow, and I could only guess where the tunnel might take me.
I might walk through and find myself in a nighttime garden, alone.
Or it might take me to wherever Fred had gone.
My heart pounded erratically. I pressed my hand against it and felt the card in my breast pocket. I thought of the picture on the front of it, the silent landscape from my dream; and then I thought of the real and living woman who had chosen it, perhaps on impulse, or for some unknown personal reason, and I remembered, word for word, the message she had written inside. I imagined Jenny walking up and down the cool, stone corridors of The Cloisters, hoping I would come, fearing I would not, as the day wore on. Was she alone, or was there a child with her? My son? My daughter?
I thought of the promise I'd made to Laura, and imagined her anger, and her anxiety, if I never called. Would she come looking for me?
I thought of all the mysteries of my own life, waiting to be solved, and wondered how I could let myself be so distracted.
I don't know how long I stood there.
Acknowledgments
The lines from “Mider to Etain” in the epigraph, and the quotation in Chapter 11 are both from Jeffrey Gantz's translation of “The Wooing of Etain” in Early Irish Myths and Sagas, Penguin Books, 1981.
The quotation in Chapter 9 is from The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger, copyright 1945, 1946, 1951.
The letter and some lines of dialogue in Chapter 17 are from “Nelson, Mary” in An Encyclopedia of Fairies by Katharine Briggs, copyright 1976; she gives as her source Sir Walter Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.
The “quotation” in Chapter 24 is adapted from a description in “The Land of Knapdale,” Number 13 in the West Highland Series, a pamphlet compiled and illustrated by Mairi MacDonald F.S.A. Scot., copyright 1986.
Thanx and a tip of the Tuttle hat to Lewis Shiner, who planted a seed years ago when he let me read his unpublished play, Neverland, and to Faith Brooker, who showed me Sydenham Hill Woods.
Also by Lisa Tuttle
Windhaven (with George R. R. Martin)
THE MYSTERIES
A Bantam Spectra Book / March 2005
Published by
Bantam Dell
A Division of
Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2005 by Lisa Tuttle
Bantam Books, the rooster colophon, Spectra, and the portrayal of a boxed “S” are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Tuttle, Lisa, 1952–
The mysteries / Lisa Tuttle.
p. cm.
>
I. Title.
PS3570.U85M97 2005
813'.54—dc22
2004054877
Published simultaneously in Canada
www.bantamdell.com
eISBN: 978-0-553-90128-3
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