Precipice

by Tom Savage

  She watched the animal for a moment, then returned her attention to Kay Prescott.

  “Isn’t she silly?” Kay was saying, an indulgent smile brightening her weary eyes. “So protective. She fancies herself a guard dog.”

  “Yes. I’ve noticed that.”

  “Amazing,” Kay said. “Anytime there’s the slightest commotion around here, she turns into Canine Cop! I sometimes wonder what she’d do if there was ever any real trouble. Of course, Fred trained her to obey us, but I suspect he may also have taught her some other things.” She leaned forward conspiratorially. “I think Adam’s a little afraid of her: can you imagine!”

  She smiled at the woman and said nothing.

  “Well,” Kay sighed at last, “what shall we do now? It’s strange, really, that I’m not at all tired. I can’t remember the last time I went this long without sleep. Any minute now I’m probably going to keel over and crash.”

  Yes, she thought. Probably.

  Then, forcing a smile, she said, “One more game, Kay. But first I have to call Bob at Bolongo. I’m meeting him at one o’clock, and I want to be sure he rented the right boat.”

  She got up and went over to the telephone as Kay began picking up the tiles from the board. Keeping her back to the table, she dialed seven digits and carefully lowered a finger onto the cradle, severing the connection. She thought about him for a moment, lying in his hospital bed as she’d seen him when she went there the day before, his right leg encased in plaster and elevated by wires. He’d been asleep then, and she’d been able to spare him only a fleeting glance before ducking back down the hall to join Kay in Trish’s room. Of course, neither of the other women knew that he was there, just a few doors down from Trish.

  “Hello,” she announced into the dead receiver. “Bob Taylor, please, room seven. . . . Hi, Bob, it’s Diana. Are we still on for this afternoon? . . . Good. . Did you get the catamaran, the blue one I pointed out? . . . Great . . . Oh, don’t be such a sissy. There’s nothing to it. I’ll show you how. Okay, I’ll see you in about two hours. ’Bye.”

  She put down the receiver and headed for the kitchen.

  “I’ll get us some coffee,” she said. “Just be a minute.”

  “Fine,” Kay called from the table.

  She went into the kitchen, spooned instant coffee into two mugs, and filled them with water. While they were in the microwave oven, she reached into her pocket and extracted a second little plastic bottle. Her own prescription, from New York. For her chronic insomnia. She took a small amount of raw hamburger from the refrigerator, dusted it with the contents of one small gray capsule, and rolled it into a ball. When the coffee was ready, she added the powder from two capsules to Kay’s cup. She placed the mugs and the meat on a tray and returned to the living room.

  “Jumbi,” she called, “I have a treat for you.”

  The dog abandoned her vigil at the glass doors and bounded dutifully over to the table. She swallowed the hamburger in one swift gulp and resumed her original place at Kay’s feet.

  “I won the last round,” Kay said, reaching for her steaming mug. “I get to go first.”

  The young woman sat down and slowly raised her own cup.

  “Yes,” she murmured, looking directly into Kay Prescott’s eyes. “You go first.”

  At that moment, the telephone rang.

  Mr. Theolonius Gridley of West Horsefoot, Texas, might have been a small-town insurance salesman for most of his fifty-nine years, but he knew a fag when he saw one.

  He’d been standing here, minding his own goddamn business, trying to shave off some of the stubble he’d accumulated in nearly twelve straight hours of traveling to get to this godforsaken place that his wife had insisted they come to for their first real vacation in more than ten years. Putting Theo Junior and Betty-Jo through college had nearly bankrupted him, not to mention all those goddamned bills Bertha kept running up at Neiman Marcus.

  The airport men’s room smelled of urine and cigar smoke and God knew what else, and the tiny plastic disposable razor he’d bought from the vending machine was not very effective, to say the least. He winced as he nicked himself for the third time, cursed Bertha for the hundredth time, and stole another surreptitious glance at the weirdo standing next to him.

  When Theo had come in, the guy had merely been spraying something on his hair. He’d parked himself next to the man with a grin and a “Howdy” that the man had ignored. A Noo Yawker, probably. But as Theo was attacking his own beard, the other fellow had produced a tiny bottle and a brush and started painting some strong-smelling, clear liquid on his chin. Then, to Theo’s amazement, the guy had picked up a little circle of hair—black, to match the hair on his head—and pressed the false goatee into place.

  “Hoo-ee!” Theo had exclaimed. “That stuff stinks to high Heaven. What’s goin’ on—is it Halloween here in Puerto Rico, or what?”

  The black-haired man had glowered at him briefly and said nothing. Then—and this is what had completely floored Theolonius Gridley of West Horsefoot, Texas—the guy had reached into his bag and pulled out an eyebrow pencil. A goddamned eyebrow pencil, just like Bertha used! He’d reached up with the thing and begun painting his mustache and eyebrows.

  Fag, Theo decided. He rinsed the residual foam from his now clean-shaven jowls and blotted his nicks with Kleenex as best he could. With a swift, disapproving frown at the other man, he threw away the plastic razor and hurried out of the place before the guy could do something really weird, like make a grab for the Gridley family jewels.

  Bertha wasn’t gonna believe this!

  The young woman stared over at the ringing telephone, her hand holding the tile poised above the Scrabble board, her mind working furiously. Then, before the other woman could move, she was up and across the room.

  “Prescott residence,” she said into the receiver.

  When she heard the voice on the other end of the line, she closed her eyes, exhaling in relief. For a moment she’d thought it might be—

  She listened a few seconds and said, “Yes, of course. One moment, please.”

  She looked over at the woman seated at the table. She waited as Kay raised the cup to her lips and took another long sip of her coffee. Then she held out the phone.

  “It’s for you,” she said.

  “Sorry to bother you, darling,” Trish said into the phone, “but I’m just so bored I could scream.”

  She was lying flat on her back in the uncomfortable hospital bed, and her scalp beneath the bandage was beginning to itch again. Holding the receiver in one hand, she reached over with the other for the button that was supposed to elevate the head of the bed. Nothing happened. Nothing works in this damned place, she thought as she fumbled for the other button, the one that would—allegedly—summon the nurse. Let’s see if that works, she mused.

  “Oh, you’re not interrupting much,” Kay said. “We’re playing Scrabble. We’ve been up all night, can you believe it?”

  “I can believe it,” Trish muttered, squirming on the lumpy mattress as she once again depressed the call button. “So why don’t the two of you come here and play Scrabble with me?”

  “I might just do that later, if I can stay awake. After two o’clock, though. Adam’s calling me then. But Diana can’t come; she’s going sailing this afternoon with Bob Taylor.”

  “Lucky her,” Trish replied. “Come visit me if you can. If not, I’ll see you tomorrow when you spring me from this joint.”

  “Hang on, Trish,” Kay laughed. “You’ll be at Cliffhanger in no time.”

  “Please, God!” Trish said. “Ciao.” She put down the receiver and tried to make herself somewhat comfortable while she waited for someone—anyone—to answer her summons.

  Making the best of a bad situation: that cliché had occurred to her a hundred times in the last few days. She had always relied on her excellent sense of humor to see her through the worst times, and it had been working overtime of late. If she were honest with herself, she wo
uld have to admit that she was still very frightened.

  That awful moment when she’d reached for the light switch in her darkened apartment, aware of the unnatural silence. The creepy feeling that had washed over her, the feeling of being watched. The spicy, vaguely familiar scent that had filled her nostrils in the second before she heard, rather than actually felt, the thud as something heavy smashed down on her skull. The horrible pain she’d awakened to here in the hospital, with Kay and Jerry and some doctor crowded around the bed, staring down at her.

  She moaned, feeling the dull throb in her head as she remembered. I came close, she realized again. I came very close to death. Some grotesque, twisted, evil human being stood in the darkness in my house, in my home, waiting for me.

  Somebody tried to kill me.

  The door opened and a young native woman in a white uniform came into the room. Seeing her, Trish sighed with relief, pushed away her dark thoughts, and smiled, reverting to the famous hearty humor that no longer came naturally to her.

  “Oh, honey, am I glad to see you! I can’t get this bed to work. Can you possibly raise me to a normal human position?”

  “I’ll try, Miz Manning,” the girl said, reaching for the button. Nothing happened. “Oh, deah. Well, I best be gettin’ de custodian to come hab a look at dis ting.”

  Trish stared at the ceiling and groaned theatrically. “I shouldn’t be here. I should be out sailing with Robert Taylor.”

  The nurse leaned over her. “Robuht Tayluh?”

  Trish shifted her gaze from the ceiling to the girl’s face, wondering why she looked so surprised.

  “Not the movie star,” she explained. “No relation.”

  To Trish’s surprise, the nurse burst into laughter.

  “I know,” she replied. “He jus’ be tellin’ me dat hisself a few minutes ago, when I took him his lunch. I di’n’ know you knew him, Miz Manning.”

  It was Trish’s turn to look surprised.

  “There’s a patient here named Robert Taylor?” she asked.

  The girl nodded, grinning. “Right down de hall.”

  “And he said that? ‘No relation’?”

  “Yeah, dat’s what he say.”

  Trish stared at her for a moment. She turned her head and stared at the telephone. Then she threw off her covers and stood up, wincing at the sudden stab of pain. She pushed past the astonished nurse and walked out into the corridor.

  The dog was already asleep under the table, and Kay Prescott was giving every indication of soon joining her. Twice in the last five minutes she’d dropped tiles onto the floor, and she’d almost lost a turn by misspelling a simple word. Every few seconds her brows shot upward in an effort to keep her eyes open.

  She sat across the table from Kay, hands in her lap, waiting. It won’t be long now, she mused, watching in fascination as the drug slowly overwhelmed the other woman. Soon.

  Two more turns and it was over. Kay picked up two tiles, stared vacantly at the board for a moment, and slowly put them down again. She pushed back her chair and rose unsteadily to her feet.

  “Sorry, Diana,” she muttered. “I just can’t go on another min . . . I . . . I have to lie down. . . . Adam . . . Adam will be calling at two o’clock. . . . I . . .”

  She jumped up and ran around the table, grabbing Kay’s arm as her body began to sag. Within seconds she had walked her over to a couch and lowered her onto it. By that time Kay had lapsed into unconsciousness.

  She straightened up over the woman’s inert form and pushed her hair back out of her face. Twenty minutes to twelve, she noted. Start with the dog. . . .

  She managed to pull Jumbi out from under the table and lift her in her arms. Staggering under the animal’s surprising weight, she made her way through the kitchen and utility room to the pile of blankets in one corner of the garage. She lay the dog down and came back into the house, locking the garage door just to be sure that Jumbi—in the unlikely event that she awoke anytime soon—could not get back inside. Step One completed: she had gone to the trouble of getting herself on friendly terms with the dog just for this, so that she would accept the drugged meat from her hand.

  It hadn’t been easy: Jumbi, alone among them, had been wary of her from the moment she first saw her. The dog disliked Adam, and her canine resources had immediately informed her of the primal link between Adam and the young woman. The trust, the friendship that had so carefully been built up had gone against the dog’s basic instincts. Yet it had been vital to the plan. If Jumbi were to bark or attack or be in any way underfoot at two o’clock this afternoon, it could prove to be disastrous.

  Back in the living room, she walked over to the telephone, lifted the receiver from its cradle, and put it down on the table. Then she went over to the couch and gazed down at Kay Prescott. The woman looked so peaceful in repose—so harmless, so completely innocent. Sleep, Kay, she thought. Sleep. . .

  Now for Step Two.

  With a massive effort, more than had been required with the dog, she leaned down and picked up the unconscious woman in her arms. Dead weight, she realized: the worst kind. Slowly, stepping carefully, she began her long, arduous journey.

  The flight attendant adjusted the scarf at the top of her attractive blue and red uniform and walked briskly up the aisle to the last row of the First Class section. She leaned over seat 6B and gently shook the sleeping passenger’s shoulder.

  “Rise and shine!” she sang. “Welcome to St. Thomas. You’re on terra firma now. Feels good, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes. Yes, it certainly does.”

  “The other passengers have gone already. Come with me and I’ll take you into the terminal where we can get your luggage.”

  “I don’t have any other luggage,” the passenger replied. “Just the bag up there.”

  The hostess reached up to the overhead compartment and pulled down the shoulder bag. “Here you are. Now, follow me and we’ll get you off this nasty plane!” She’d had a great deal of experience with this. Noting the passenger’s pale complexion and dilated pupils, she added, “Will you need some assistance?”

  The passenger surprised her by quickly unbuckling the seat belt and standing up.

  “No, thank you. That won’t be necessary.”

  The young woman walked slowly up the hill, across the lawn, and in through the front door. It was done: there was no going back now. Soon Adam would come, and all the rest would follow.

  She shut the door, leaned back against it, and closed her eyes, listening to the peculiar silence in the empty house—peculiar in that the crashing of the surf and the crying of the birds on the cliff made it anything but silent. Yet it seemed to her that nothing in her harsh, violent existence had ever been as still, as peaceful as Cliffhanger was at this moment.

  The love she’d felt for Margaret and Carson Fleming and Juana Velasquez had come close, but even that fell short of this. And everything else in her life had been lies, illusions. The nuns, the classmates, the professor at Harvard and her other occasional partners: they had not loved her. Dr. Stein and his legion of colleagues: what was she to them that they should weep for her? The people in San Francisco, including the father of her almost-child: beneath the fringe and the beads, behind the endless talk of love and peace, they had been vapid, selfish children. And Adam—well, her love for him had been the strangest, cruelest paradox of her entire sad, ridiculous, meaningless existence.

  Her gaze traveled slowly, lingeringly around the room. Funny, she reflected. It had seemed like a perfectly ordinary place when she first arrived here, nearly four weeks ago. Beautiful, yes, but ordinary. Yet in these four short weeks, how everything had changed! This house, she realized, had been transformed, and she with it, as if the two of them were by some enchantment merging, becoming one. This was what she had been forever seeking: this strange, elusive sensation, this calm. This was home.

  Home, she thought. At last. The feeling coursed through her body, tingling, tantalizing, oddly familiar. The thrill was exqui
site, voluptuous, and yet she knew—as she had always suspected—that it was temporal. This will not last, she told herself. It never does. I have spent a lifetime dreaming of today, praying for it, needing it as I have needed nothing else. But now that the day has finally arrived, I am aware merely of how quickly it is passing. Perhaps my dream—Antigone’s dream—is a false illusion. Perhaps the gods are wise in denying certain wishes. . . .

  Then, pushing these thoughts from her mind, she moved. She walked resolutely across the room and up the stairs and down the hall to the bedroom.

  “Are you sure that’s what Mrs. Prescott said?” Bob Taylor asked.

  Trish nodded and sat back in the chair next to his bed. “Yes. She said that Diana was going sailing with you. Now you tell me Diana was with you when you fell off the balcony—please notice that I’m not asking any questions about that! So the question is, why hasn’t Diana told Kay that you’re here in the hospital?”

  The young man leaned back against the pillows and shook his head. “I don’t know. . . . Mr. Prescott’s in Florida, right?”

  “Yes. Some race or something. Why do you ask?”

  “I’m not sure,” he replied. “Why don’t you try Cliffhanger again?”

  Trish nodded and reached for the telephone. She looked down at his leg, swathed in bandages and elevated by pulleys. That can’t be very comfortable, she thought as she dialed. God, it’s almost funny: his leg in a cast and my head in a—

  Her head. The darkness, and the silence, and reaching for the light switch. The cracking sound, and the pressure at the back of her skull, and the spicy, sweet smell of—

  “Bay rum,” she said. She had spoken without thinking, involuntarily, and Bob Taylor stared at her blankly: he obviously did not comprehend. Neither, yet, did she.

  “It’s still busy,” she said, placing the receiver back in its cradle next to his bed. “It’s been busy for nearly an hour now. I don’t understand any of this.”

  “I do.”

  The two of them stared at each other, wondering which had spoken. Then they both turned, startled, toward the figure standing in the doorway of the hospital room.