Precipice

by Tom Savage

  Then, as she stared, the old man lowered his gaze from her face to the view of the water behind her, and the spark in the eyes went out. She leaned forward to study him. No, nothing. If her presence, or even her identity, had briefly registered, the moment had definitely passed. His expression was devoid of intelligence, of life. He didn’t know she was there.

  She whirled around and stood with her back to him, her left arm hugging the box, her right hand clamped over her mouth lest she cry out. The ocean flowed before her, implacable, eternal, host to the gulls and sailboats that even now flashed white against it.

  The ocean. Sailboats.

  Then, in that horrible moment, she knew.

  He could tell her nothing, this old man in the chair behind her. His part in it was over. Forever. He sat there, incapable of speech or even of reason. She would not learn from him why he had gone—twice—to St. Thomas, or why he had been sent to Hawaii.

  She must have turned around again, though she would never remember having done so. She must have reached forward with her trembling hands and placed the candy box in his lap. She might, for all she knew, have even taken a last, brief look at him.

  Then she was running. Out from under the willow tree, up the sloping lawn, and around the side of the building to the parking lot. Curious, mildly astonished faces. Fumbling in the pockets of her dress, searching for her keys. The ignition turning and the engine roaring mercifully to life. The blur of the gravel drive and the winding main street of the town as she searched frantically for the signs that would lead her to the Expressway and thus home, to the comfort of her house, to the reassurance of her roses.

  Robin pulled on a T-shirt over his faded jeans, ran his fingers through his hair, and went out on his balcony to wait for her. Almost five o’clock, he noticed: she’ll be here any minute.

  Her call had surprised him. He hadn’t expected to see her again until Monday, the day after tomorrow. He’d promised her a Labor Day sail, and he’d keep his word. But he’d already packed most of his things and called American Airlines to reserve a seat on the Tuesday-morning flight to New York.

  Now all he had to do was tell Margaret Barclay.

  He looked back into the room at the phone on the bedside table, next to the Chablis and the two glasses he’d ordered from room service. No, he thought, it can wait until tonight, when she calls me for the daily report.

  The daily report. His last two installments had been briefer than usual, because he had decided—for reasons he himself was unsure of—not to tell Margaret everything. Ever since the dinner party on Thursday, which he’d related in the most general of synopses. Very nice, he’d said: beautiful house; good food; the wife and the child were nice, but the husband was kind of strange. A going-away party for the husband and the child, she to relatives to Connecticut and he to a regatta in Palm Beach.

  And how, she’d inevitably asked, is my niece?

  Oh, fine, just fine, he’d said. Big lie. But he hadn’t had any qualms about it, because he had no real concern about the girl. She was silent and secretive, but she seemed to be relatively happy. Well, as happy as she’d probably ever be. . . .

  As for the end of the evening, he’d thought about it a lot and come up with a theory that explained her behavior. She liked the woman, Kay, and the little girl, and she was, naturally, concerned about their welfare. She’d obviously concluded—as Robin had—that Adam Prescott was too good to be true. When he started behaving suspiciously, changing clothes and shaving after dinner, she’d pulled a Nancy Drew and followed him down to the beach, where her suspicions—and Robin’s—had been confirmed. What they’d both seen was no big deal as far as he was concerned, but then again, he didn’t know these people. He had no emotional connection to them. The girl would just have to live with her knowledge: he couldn’t imagine her getting involved in a private family situation. If Adam Prescott and his mate, Kyle, were lovers, it was really no business of hers. But she certainly had been disturbed when she saw the two men together in the boathouse.

  Enough, he decided. Just do your job.

  So, on Tuesday he’d return to New York, after he went sailing with her. And maybe kissed her.

  He was thinking about that, fantasizing about what it would be like to go to bed with her, when he heard the low, tentative knock on his door.

  Perhaps that explained what happened when he opened it.

  There could be no more putting it off: Margaret had run out of excuses. She’d watered the roses and run the dishwasher and sorted the laundry she’d found in the basket in the utility room. She’d made a pot of coffee and emptied all the downstairs wastebaskets into the big plastic garbage can in the garage. She’d actually begun to mop the kitchen floor before she remembered that Mrs. O’Rourke had waxed it only the day before. She stopped and leaned on the mop in the middle of the kitchen, staring down at the bright, immaculate tile. Had it been another day, any other day of her life, she would have laughed at her folly.

  There were no more chores, no more busywork tasks to keep her from thinking about it. She was going to have to confront her worst fears. Now. Carson Fleming, the staring, drooling revenant, had seen to that.

  It was a magnet, that little blue bedroom at the end of the upstairs hallway. A mystical, irresistible lodestone that even now was filling the house with the sound of siren music, the music of those stories in those books that the girl so cherished. And it could no longer be ignored.

  Sighing, bracing herself, Margaret put away the mop and pail and walked across the living room to the bottom of the stairs.

  Afterward, the young woman sat up in bed and looked around her, adjusting her vision to the gloom. The sun had set at some point, and the faint light coming in through the open doors to the balcony did little to illuminate the situation. She peered into the gathering darkness, gradually making out the tangled sheets, the half-empty glasses on the table, the clothes scattered recklessly about the floor. At last she leaned back on her elbow and turned to look down at the man who lay next to her.

  He was lying on his back on top of the sheets, a dark, well-muscled arm folded back behind his head. His hair and skin were damp, and one blond lock hung lankly down across his forehead. His eyes—so friendly, so different from Adam’s!—were staring up at the ceiling. As she leaned over him, he turned his head to look at her, and his hand came up to touch her hair. She grasped the gentle fingers and pressed her lips to them. He grinned up through the darkness.

  She’d heard, or read somewhere, that this was the ideal time of day for love. Not morning, when every part of you is still half asleep, and not the more traditional bedtime, when the average person is reasonably exhausted from some sixteen hours of activity. The perfect time was now, in the late afternoon, the middle of the day; when physical stamina and sensual awareness were at their peak.

  Well, she thought, smiling down at him, there’s truth in certain rumors.

  Then, remembering at last why she was there and what she must now do, she stood up and began retrieving her clothes from the various places where they had fallen. She felt his gaze on her as she dressed and was grateful for his silence. She pulled on her sandals and reached for the nearly empty wine bottle. She filled her glass, picked it up, and went out onto the balcony.

  The beach was deserted. A few lights shone from the empty bar and dining area, and the underwater lamps cast moving shadows on the turquoise walls of the pool. The roll of the surf a hundred yards before her was the only sound in the world. She leaned against the railing and sipped the cool, dry wine and wondered how she was going to get rid of him.

  There was an explanation for what had just happened, she told herself, and it had nothing to do with love. It had to do with last chances, and with the need, in light of recent events, to feel desirable, desired. This afternoon had been the end of a long, silent, invisible process. She hadn’t anticipated it, hadn’t known it was going to happen. Yet every step she’d taken in the past few weeks had brought her here, to this b
izarre yet somehow inevitable juncture.

  She had come here to talk, to tell this man—what?—some lie or other. To fob him off. But then he had opened the door, and she had looked into his eyes and seen something that she recognized, that she understood too well. Without thinking, without hesitating, she had stepped forward—hungrily, desperately—into his arms.

  And now, she reminded herself, it’s over. I must act, and quickly. Otherwise—

  “Penny,” he said.

  She looked back over her shoulder. He was leaning against the door frame, watching her, his rumpled hair and the brightly striped sheet he’d wrapped around himself giving him a silly, comical appearance. The sheet concealed his entire body from the neck down, even his arms; a white and pink and blue striped cocoon. It could almost be an African ceremonial robe, she thought. The sight of him like that filled her with a sudden surge of warmth, of tenderness. These were not the emotions she needed for this scene; she immediately turned back to face the view.

  “Listen,” she said, looking out, her back to him, her concentration entirely on what her acting teachers had called emotional memory. “I’m only going to say this once. You seem like a nice man, and we’ve had a lovely time together, especially today. You saved my life. But I’m going to leave now, just the same, and you and I will not meet again.”

  There was a pause, and then he said, “Just like that?”

  “Yes,” she answered, maintaining her detached, rather icy tone. “Just like that.”

  Another pause. She felt the first chill of evening and shivered slightly as she waited. He would not leave it at that, she knew. No one would.

  Presently he said, “Are you going to tell me why?”

  She shook her head. “I think you know why.” She heard the soft hiss, the expulsion of air. Impatience, perhaps, or exasperation. Good: he was playing the scene with her.

  “No, I don’t,” he replied. “I don’t understand you at all. I really don’t know the first thing about you.”

  From somewhere deep within her she summoned a low, cruel laugh.

  “Oh, yes, you do,” she drawled, amazed at the sound of her own voice.

  Then he supplied her with the necessary cue. “Diana—”

  She whirled around then, fists clenched, hair flying, her face a perfect mask of rage.

  “Don’t call me that!” she screamed. “Don’t ever call me that! I’m not Diana! There’s no such woman, as if you didn’t know! Don’t you dare call me Diana!”

  He rushed forward, extending one arm from the folds of the sheet, his face registering his confusion. “What the hell—”

  “Oh, please!” she cried, recoiling from his attempted touch. “The other day, when I woke up in the water and saw you coming toward me, reaching out to me. You called my name. Do you remember? Not Diana. My name! Don’t stand there pretending you don’t know it, Mr. Robert Taylor—or whatever your name is!” She leaned forward, shouting into his startled face. “Just do me a favor, okay? Go back to New York. Go back and report to your employer!. Tell her I’m fine, never been better. Tell her I have a job I like, with people I like. Tell her that I do not appreciate what she’s done; that I don’t want her sending her lackeys to spy on me; that I’ll come home when I’m good and ready. Go now, Mr. Taylor, and stay the hell away from me!”

  Done, she thought. That’s a curtain line. Now for the exit.

  She glanced at his face, which was now bright red with embarrassment. As well it should be: he obviously hadn’t realized his mistake in the water until this moment, when she told him about it. I must get out of here, she thought, before I lose the momentum, before my real emotions take over and I decide not to hurt this perfectly nice man.

  He was between her and the door. She barged forward, bringing up her hand to push past him. At the same moment, he reached out and grabbed at her shoulder with his exposed arm.

  “Wait,” he began. “You don’t understand. Please, I must—”

  It was as far as he got. She slapped his hand away and thrust herself forward, knocking him aside, her shoulder actually pushing, rather hard, into his chest. The collision of their bodies sent him staggering away toward the railing.

  She was already through the door and inside the room when she heard the awful sounds behind her: the dull thud as his body hit the railing, and the strangled cry. She whirled around in the doorway to see him lurching out over the rail, his body imprisoned in the sheet, trying desperately to reach back and grasp the wrought iron with his one free hand.

  She saw it happening an instant before it happened. She even moved, lunging toward him with outstretched arms, trying to grab him, or at least the sheet, with her hands. Too late. She saw his hand reaching back, grasping air, and a brief flash of his startled, terrified eyes. There was one dreadful second of frozen time as the reality of it overwhelmed her senses.

  Then he fell. His body slid over the rail and down some twelve feet to the patio in front of the hotel room below. She arrived at the rail to see him drop, twisting once in midair as the sheet finally came free of him. He landed almost squarely on a white-cushioned chaise longue directly underneath the balcony. Almost: there was a glass-topped, metal-rimmed outdoor table next to the chaise, and she winced as she heard the sound of his forehead striking its edge, and the shattering of glass. His head snapped back, and he uttered a soft moan as his body bounced on the chaise and tumbled sideways to the patio. He landed facedown, arms splayed, one leg bent up behind him, half on, half off the chair.

  She stood there paralyzed, staring down at the naked white body that lay unnaturally still among the shards of frosted glass. As she watched, the pink and blue and white striped sheet fluttered down to land, light as a feather, on the gray concrete beside his bleeding head.

  The two discoveries in the blue bedroom were very nearly simultaneous.

  Margaret was sitting in her niece’s little desk, gazing down at the scrapbook and the sheets of paper that lay beside it. The tiny desktop lamp provided the only illumination in the room, a little pool of dim light that washed across the surface before her, an island in the darkness.

  She knew what she would find, had known before she entered the room. It seemed to her, now, as she sat here, that she’d figured it all out in that strange moment this afternoon, as she stared down at the old man in the chair by the water’s edge. Coming here was merely an act of reinforcement, to prove to herself beyond any doubt that her awful suspicion was correct. Only with this act could she silence the siren music.

  She reached up with her shaking fingers and opened the book. She leafed slowly through the now-familiar first pages, letting the whole terrible story from Islip twenty years ago play once again before her eyes. The headlines; the pictures of her sister and her brother-in-law and the little girl and the mailman and the innocent suspect; the long columns of newsprint recounting every sad detail. Then, at last, the final entry: the empty boat and the facsimile of the heartbreaking note in Albert’s careful, legible hand.

  Then, with a massive, incalculable effort, she willed herself to turn the page.

  And there it was. Obvious. Indisputable. Unmistakable. Hawaii, ten years ago. The newspaper had turned nearly brown with age, and the grainy photograph had never been clear in the first place. But now, as she looked at it again with wiser eyes, she recognized it at once. She’d seen this picture several times in the past few days, but always she had been looking in the wrong place. She’d been studying the face of the woman. Just beyond the figures in the picture was a huge open doorway through which could be glimpsed a grove of palms, with a tiny dock at the edge of the ocean in the background.

  The ocean. Sailboats.

  When she could tear her eyes away from the sight, she looked over at the pages of reproduced photos next to the scrapbook. St. Thomas, one week ago. She leafed through them, searching faces. A long shot of the sailboat, and one of Kay Prescott, and the little girl, and her niece, and—

  There was only the one picture, o
n the bottom page, and it was not distinct. Only the back of a head and a shoulder, blocked by the smiling people in the foreground. But she was certain.

  The ocean. Sailboats.

  She sat there in the dark bedroom, her body slumping, huddled over the dim lamp as if for warmth. She slammed the scrapbook shut and pushed it away from her, to the corner of the desk. With a sweep of her arm, she sent the faxed pages fluttering to the floor. This action revealed a final piece of paper, a lined sheet from a yellow legal pad that had lain hidden underneath the others.

  At first she didn’t notice it. She shut her eyes tightly and bowed her head, giving herself over to her despair. The sound began as a low rumble deep within her, growing to a moan as it forced its way up from her soul. It rose in pitch and volume as it rushed past her lips and out into the room, a high, keening wail of desolation that vibrated on the windowpanes and echoed from the pale-blue walls. Finally, when all her breath was gone, the anguished scream subsided, stopped. The siren song—the jangling, buzzing noise inside her head—was still. Silence.

  When at last she opened her eyes and the real world came slowly back, she found that she was staring down at a sheet of yellow paper. Two words, scrawled across the top in large capital letters with a black felt-tip pen.

  DIANA MEISSEN.

  She stared, pulling the memory from somewhere that seemed a long time ago. Oh, yes, she thought. Dr. Stein had made notes. He’d pointed out the significance of Diana, the goddess in three forms. And he’d told her something else, something about a valley in Germany. . . .

  Diana. The Greek goddess, from the stories her niece so loved. She loved mythology, and drama—anything theatrical. And puzzles: Scrabble . . . word games. . . .

  Anagrams.

  The second shock was as violent as the first had been a few moments before. She gaped down at the yellow paper as the word jumped up at her, rearranged itself in midair, and struck her in a single, overwhelming rush of crystal clarity.