by Lutz, John
Then Deirdre was bending over her, smiling down from within the soft frame of her long red hair. Veronica Lake, Christine thought inanely. That was who Deirdre reminded her of, though except for the hair, she didn’t look like Veronica Lake at all.
“Please!” Christine managed to plead hoarsely. She tried to find a foothold, frantically scraping her toes against the building, but found only rough stone. One of her shoes fell off, and her heart fell with it.
Deirdre reached down with both hands, and for a second Christine thought she was going to grip her wrists and pull her to safety. This was all a joke! A horrible joke!
Instead Deirdre pressed the palms of her hands against Christine’s knuckles, pinning her fingers to the unyielding ledge, leaning her weight down hard, pushing, swiveling the heels of her hands to grind Christine’s fingers into the tile. Christine couldn’t be sure if she was still gripping the ledge or if she remained clinging there only because of the pressure of Deirdre’s hands.
Then Deirdre suddenly released the pressure and stood up straight, grinning down at Christine and holding her own hands out as if she were about to soar like Superman.
The abrupt release of Christine’s numbed fingers caused them to slip immediately. Christine tried desperately to regain her grip but no longer had any feeling in her fingertips.
It was when she knew for sure she couldn’t possibly maintain her hold that she found her voice and screamed.
She screamed all the way to the street.
After a few seconds of paralyzing shock, everyone from the outdoor restaurant came running to see what had happened. Led by the tuxedoed waiter, they burst dramatically through the potted foliage.
By then Deirdre was gone.
3
At least four mornings a week Molly Jones ran the outermost paths of Central Park, then farther. Her distance was a little over six miles, she’d figured, after reading a Times article about running and the best kinds of shoes to buy for various athletic activities.
Her own shoes were well-worn Nikes. Not the fancy kind the kids wore, but medium-price, sensible training shoes un-mentioned in the article. She was training to live a long and able life, not to slam-dunk a basketball.
She was in the stretch now, approaching the exit onto Central Park South, near Fifth Avenue and Fifty-eighth Street, where she’d shopped for a birthday gift for Michael yesterday at F A O Schwarz. It was a few minutes past noon, and a couple of office workers on their lunch hour, guys in white shirts and brightly flowered ties, with their dark suit coats slung over their shoulders, walked by and gave her the look as she jogged past them breathing hard, her long legs kicking out and her thighs straining with effort. She was running flatfooted now, hearing and feeling the entire surfaces of her rubber soles slap on the packed asphalt. Each stride sent a jolt of pain through her ribs on her right side and stretched the tendons in her calves until they felt as if they were about to tear. The fronts of her thighs ached and threatened to cramp. She was laboring, but she’d make it. She repeated to herself that she’d make it. Her breathing was harsh and ragged, rasping with effort. A man riding a balloon-tire bicycle smiled at her struggle. An old woman dressed in rags glanced at her with gloomy hostility from where she sat cross-legged on the grass, her wispy gray hair a wild tangle, a misshapen plastic trash bag of personal possessions lying beside her like the black and foreboding burden of her life.
Molly reached the park bench where she’d decided to end her run, then made herself take a few strides past it. Discipline. Finally she stopped running and walked in a slow circle, hands on hips, a medium-height, thin woman with a heart-shaped face described as sweet more often than beautiful. She was a bit wide through the pelvis, with breasts she sometimes imagined would fit neatly into teacups. David had told her that about her breasts once, not in any way un-complimentary, while they were making love.
She spat off to the side. Not very ladylike, but she’d breathed in a gnat or some other minute insect as she’d passed the bench. Probing around the inside of her dry mouth with her tongue, she decided the insect was gone but she needed something to drink, and soon. She stood for a while bent over, still with her fists propped on her hips, then straightened up and used the bottom of her faded Phantom of the Opera souvenir T-shirt to wipe sweat from her face.
She let out a long breath and looked around. The office workers and the man on the bike were gone. The old woman was still glaring at her, as if finally she’d found the one responsible for her situation.
Molly felt a pang of pity for the homeless woman, then a thrust of fear as she saw that no one else was around.
The woman stirred on the grass, then began to rise, old bones and sinew demonstrating surprising dexterity and strength.
This was silly, Molly knew. She was a twenty-seven-year-old woman in good shape, maybe a bit winded from her run, but she could still easily outdistance this ancient and decrepit derelict. She had nothing to fear.
Yet she was afraid.
Not of the old woman, she realized suddenly, but of something she couldn’t quite identify.
A man walking a pair of black poodles on short leashes came into sight from among the trees near the lake. He was moving directly toward Molly and the old woman.
The woman gathered up her bulging plastic bag and, with a final scathing glance at Molly, began shuffling away in the opposite direction. She and the man walking the poodles passed within ten feet of each other without seeming to notice, on the same planet but not in the same universe.
When the man passed Molly, he looked over at her and smiled, then strolled on. She heard him speak sharply to one of the poodles that was interested in something in the bushes and had strained the leash pulling to the side. With a firm tug on the thin leather leash, he drew the desperately curious dog back near him and continued walking.
Molly, seemingly alone now in the sun-dappled park, was still uneasy, and still unsure why. It was as if an unremembered nightmare were plaguing her with a residue of terror. She felt isolated and vulnerable. She hurried toward the brighter sunlight and the sounds of traffic drifting from beyond the trees near Central Park South, breaking into a jog as the shadow of a cloud closed in on the trail and trees around her, darkening grass and leaves.
It occurred to her then that since beginning her morning run she’d had the vague, unaccountable sensation that something was behind her, stalking her.
She remembered the woman who’d been badly beaten while jogging in the park, the victim of a wilding, as it was called. A stockbroker or financial consultant or some such thing. Running along as Molly had been, thinking of stocks or her love life or treasury bills, maybe a friend she was meeting tomorrow for lunch—then all of that had almost ended permanently for her at the hands of cruel strangers.
Fear passed like cool air over the backs of Molly’s forearms and the nape of her neck, causing her to hunch her shoulders.
Ridiculous, she told herself. As ridiculous as being afraid of a poor, harmless old woman innocently taking in the sun, perhaps the only friend left for her.
What must it be like, Molly wondered, nearing the end of life and without a human friend?
Without love.
Then her sense of isolation ended abruptly, along with her fear. She was out of the park and on the sidewalk, surrounded by more people than she could count, within twenty feet of hundreds of vehicles streaming past, even a horse-drawn carriage heading into the park.
In the middle of New York again.
The middle of her life.
At the edge of the park, Deirdre stood watching.
4
It was hot in Manhattan, but still a glorious day. David Jones pushed open the doors of the Hand Building on Third Avenue and stepped out onto the crowded sidewalk. Horns blared as the traffic signal at Third and East Fifty-fourth flashed green, and nothing larger than a deliveryman on inline skates was able to budge because of the gridlocked intersection. David began to walk, glad not to be in one of the yel
low taxis baking immobile in the sunlight, caught in a web of progress gone mutant and mad.
He was an average-sized man, fit but not yet muscular despite his regular workouts at Silver’s Gym on East Fifty-sixth. With his lean features, unruly sandy hair, and round-lensed glasses with their fragile brown frames, he looked much more the intellectual than the athlete.
Thirty-seven his last birthday, and still the supervisor of the fee reading department at Sterling Morganson Literary Agency, he was beginning to wake up nights worrying about not progressing in life. Not to where he wanted to be, anyway. His job paid reasonably well; it was simply that David had been working at it longer than he’d planned. He’d expected that by this time he’d be an authors’ representative at the agency and positioned for an eventual executive position on the board. Morganson had promised advancement but so far hadn’t delivered. That was one of the reasons David worked out so hard and diligently at Silver’s; an extra five pounds on the bench press, an extra push-up or sit-up, gave the illusion of advancement in life, even if all he really had to look forward to with certainty was another day of overseeing the critiquing of would-be authors’ manuscripts, which were usually sent back with kind and encouraging letters explaining why they were unsalable, but maybe next time, if the author learned from his or her mistakes and built on the invaluable experience of having written a novel. Yes, maybe next time.
His musing had soured his mood, and it was too beautiful a day for that. He decided to eat lunch at a sit-down deli three blocks away.
It was a nice walk. No one tried to sell him a Rolex watch or stuck a beggar’s cup in his face, burdening him with the guilt of the healthy and employed. A man with a huge dog wearing a kerchief around its neck was holding a sign asking for donations to buy booze for the dog. David thought that one was worth a dollar. It had to be a soul-smearing experience, begging in New York, even if you were working a scam.
He’d finished building his salad and was standing in line to pay the deli’s cashier, when a woman spoke to him as if he were an old friend and she was surprised, though certainly not shocked, to run into him here.
“Well, David! Hello!”
The amazing thing was he didn’t know right away who’d spoken. Not quite recognizing the voice, though it was disturbingly familiar, he turned around, smiling, ready to bluff recognition if necessary.
It wasn’t necessary.
“Deirdre…” He said her name softly, his breath snatched away by whatever he was feeling. What was she doing here? Deirdre, his ex-wife, who lived in Saint Louis, a thousand miles away. You shouldn’t be here, was all he could think. He almost actually uttered the words.
But there she was, standing behind him in line, wearing a gray, businesslike blazer and black skirt, slightly older now, but still, he had to admit, attractive. Almost as tall as his five-foot-ten, her head a mass of red hair he knew was unnatural, her smile bright and wide in a face that had grown somehow stronger. Her green eyes were sparkling with pleasure and something else beneath brows that seemed lighter than when she and David had lived, slept, and made love together. Her wide, full-lipped mouth was exactly the same as he remembered, a feral mouth that seemed always ready to bite, her upper lip sliding sensuously like the sheath of daggers over perfect, large white teeth when she smiled. He found himself staring at her lips and quickly returned his gaze to her eyes. A stranger’s eyes, a lover’s eyes.
“It’s been…what, five years?” he asked, still stunned.
“Closer to six,” she said. “You never did have a good sense of time.” She stepped back, gazing at him with obvious pleasure and disbelief. “This is amazing, running into you here! In a city the size of New York!”
David couldn’t quite regain his mental equilibrium; he didn’t want to believe this was happening. “What on earth are you doing here?”
“Hey, David!” she said. “You don’t seem glad to see me. We were a married couple once, remember? We can at least talk to one another. Don’t be afraid. You know me. I never did bite.” She smiled. “That is, unless you asked me to.”
A bearded man in a gray business suit, standing ahead of David in line, had apparently been eavesdropping and turned to stare. Deirdre ignored him, holding her smile.
David forced a return smile. “It’s not that I’m afraid, Deirdre. I’m just…well, surprised.” He tried to summon cheer that wouldn’t seem forced. “How long are you going to be in town?”
“Only about a week. I’m an interior designer for a shoe company in Saint Louis, laying out their stores for maximum efficiency and eye appeal.”
This wasn’t the Deirdre he remembered. He was amazed and must have shown it.
“Don’t look so astounded, David,” she said with a grin. “I went back to school after our divorce. There are things we don’t know about each other. After all, six years is a lot of water through the dam.”
“‘Over’ the dam, you mean.” Oops! He recalled how she habitually mangled maxims and distorted platitudes. His corrections used to infuriate her. Maybe they still would.
She laughed. “Oh, David. You’re still correcting me. I still say things like that a little bit wrong, get them tangled up. It’s just like we were still married.”
The bearded man turned around again. This time Deirdre glared at him and he turned away.
David was embarrassed. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I had no business—”
“It doesn’t matter now,” she interrupted with a shrug. “I know I used to drive you crazy with my little flaws.”
“Well, I wasn’t perfect myself.”
“Almost, though.” She blatantly looked him up and down. “You look good, David. Bigger than I remember. You’re lifting weights, right?”
He felt a rush of pleasure at the compliment. “Now and then. How’s your husband?” he asked quickly, to assuage his guilt over what was skirting the edges of his mind. “What’s his name? Sam?”
“Stan,” she said. “Stan Grocci. He’s a building contractor. Puts up houses but does some commercial work, too.”
“Any children?”
“I’m afraid not.” She paused, looked down, then back up into his eyes. “David, Stan and I are divorced.”
He was unsettled by the knowledge and didn’t know how he should react. What do you say when you find out your ex-wife is divorced again? “I’m, uh, sorry.” He was staring at her mouth.
“Me, too. Stan’s a great guy, really and truly, but his business was his life. Is his life, I mean. He’s alive and healthy and doing well. I don’t want to make it sound as if he’s standing with one foot by the grave.”
“‘In’ the—No, sorry, never mind. It’s my job making me do it, I guess. Bad habit, editing people when they talk.”
The line at the cashier’s booth had edged forward. The bearded man in front of David paid the Oriental woman at the register and walked away carrying his lunch in its foam container.
David balanced his own foam plate of salad and his soda can and reached for his wallet. Before he could draw it from his pocket, Deirdre had stepped forward and handed the cashier a twenty-dollar bill. “For both of us,” she said.
“No, Deirdre,” David said, “really, let me—”
“Lunch is on me, David,” she cut him off. “For other times’ sake. I’m an independent woman now.” She accepted her change from the cashier then stood up on her toes and peered across the deli. “Oh, there’s an open booth. Come on, let’s strike before the iron is hot.”
She strode away, elbowing her way through the people still loading their foam plates at the long serving bar.
David hesitated, then followed.
They sat down across from each other in one of the wooden booths that lined the long, paneled walls, their lunches on the table before them. There were framed sports photographs on the walls. The one near their booth was an old black-and-white of Joe DiMaggio swinging mightily at a waist-high pitch, the muscles in his arms corded, his eyes trained calmly and intently o
n the blurred point of impact where bat met ball.
Deirdre didn’t begin to eat, but instead stared as intently at David as DiMaggio stared at the baseball. David was getting uneasy.
Then she looked away from him and began using a white plastic knife to spread mustard on her sandwich.
“So,” she said, “you’re an editor.”
“Not exactly,” David said. “I supervise fee readers at a literary agency. People send in manuscripts, and we’re paid to read them then write and tell the authors why their work isn’t salable.”
Deirdre opened her mouth wide and attacked her sandwich in a way that was almost primal. “But you do sell them sometimes,” she said as she chewed.
For a crazy moment he wondered if she fancied herself a writer and had a manuscript she wanted him to give special attention. Maybe that was what this was about; such things happened in his line of work. “Sometimes,” he said, “but not very often.”
“Is it a big agency?”
“One of the biggest.”
She swallowed her bite of sandwich and licked her lips. “Well, I am impressed. All your reading in bed has paid off, and now you’re a big executive. I always knew you had brains, David.”
“You never mentioned it at the time.”
She reached across the table and touched the back of his hand with just the tips of her red-enameled nails. The touch felt like a brand. “No,” she admitted, “but I wish now that I had. I wish things had been different for us.”
David felt a lump form in his throat. He had to swallow, so he took a sip of his soda to conceal his emotion. “I never did understand why you left me, Deirdre.”
She shook her head slowly, as if in admonition. “That girl, David. She was barely out of her teens.”
Marci, she was talking about. A twenty-two-year-old law student at Saint Louis University who’d lived in the same apartment building. David had always regarded their affair as more a result than a cause of his problems with Deirdre.
