Fear Dreams

by J. A. Schneider

  They almost argued as they stood thanking Beth on the corner of Moore Street.

  “You said sleep on it,” Liddy pleaded, “but it’s too great a deal for that.”

  Beth repeated that the place’s sad past and Liddy’s fragile state and the fact that it was a walk-up were what worried her. Paul agreed, but also admitted to not being completely thrilled with any of the places he’d seen alone with Beth.

  “You didn’t like any of them?” Beth asked Liddy.

  “Liked them, didn’t love them,” Liddy said.

  “Maybe if you saw them for real instead of just online?”

  Liddy shook her head, and Paul, grimacing, said, “I’m just afraid of jumping in too fast.”

  In the cab the pressure was palpable. Liddy looked tired, torn, and stared fretfully out. Paul hunched forward, fiddling with his cell phone.

  The cab swerved, and he said suddenly, “You know what I want most?”

  “What?” Liddy didn’t turn.

  “I want you to be happy and us to be settled, back ASAP to being able to concentrate on work. That was Carl who called while we were in the café.”

  “I heard.”

  “He’s working today, and he worked late last night. Saturday night and he was the only one in the lab.”

  “He’s obsessed.”

  “Obsessed gets the job done.”

  “So you’ll both develop a breakthrough new anesthesia drug a week later.”

  “There’s the time factor, Lids. We’re under the gun.”

  “Oh right.” Now she felt beaten. “So maybe we shouldn’t move at all.”

  “Stop.”

  In his phone Paul studied a map of Soho, scrolling to the neighborhood of NYU just to the north. “Am I crazy for hesitating? You love the loft and Prince Street is just a few blocks from the lab. I can’t even imagine being free of subways.”

  Heartened, Liddy grabbed his arm. “Oh, let’s take it! It’s a wonderful apartment! It was Hollywood that brought Charlie Bass down, destroyed him because he must have been too sensitive - but we can make it beautiful and home. Bring it back to life!”

  Paul gave in to a grin and called Beth and told her they wanted the place. He turned his phone up to blast the reaction.

  “Just in time, I checked that other couple and they were ready to bid! This is so great - after seeing Liddy’s reaction I think she really will be happy there. Lemme talk to her! I’m thrilled!”

  7

  The paperwork went fast, contracts were signed, and four days later Carl Finn came to see it. “Wow, you could flip this and make a fortune.”

  “We’re not flipping it.”

  It was Thursday. Carl was tense about Paul’s taking time off from the lab and he let it show. Liddy did her best to ignore him. She was using Paul’s measurements of the living area to make sketches of where furniture would go. Over by the arched window, Paul was busy with Charlie Bass’s executor, a solemn man in his sixties named Griffin who was pointing out things the estate wanted to sell and naming his prices, all of them low. Better than having herds of looky-loos charging in “to see where it happened,” Griffin had said when they called him. He’d cared about Charlie, didn’t want the disposal of his things turned into a circus. Charlie’s suicide had been all over the media.

  So Liddy had Carl standing over her while she sat, in her blouse and black jeans, scribbling designs on inexpensive paper. She had her regular sketchbook open next to her on the couch. Carl didn’t sit. He paced and kept peering impatiently over to Paul.

  “You’re keeping this too?” he said, reaching to touch the couch’s fabric inches from her. Once white and now soiled, the sofa would have to be re-covered but was still structurally beautiful: long and L-shaped with a matching ottoman, destined for wonderful coziness facing the television. Liddy nodded yes to Carl’s question and kept scribbling. Keep moving, Carl. Go talk to Paul, Carl.

  “Oh, these are nice.” Now he bent to her scrapbook, flipping pages: a sketch she’d started of Mr. Griffin, the dark-haired woman of days ago, the young blonde, two children playing Liddy had sketched yesterday in Riverside Park.

  “Who’s that?” he asked, pointing to the young blonde.

  “Just someone I saw.”

  “Where?”

  “In the neighborhood.”

  “Pretty, looks familiar.” Besides sailing when he got himself away from work, Carl’s other hobby was women. They couldn’t keep track of his girlfriends.

  Peripherally, Liddy saw him straighten and look again to Paul and Mr. Griffin. “Going to buy that telescope too?”

  “Yes, Paul likes it. Go check it out.”

  Carl moved away, tall and well built in his preppy chinos and blue polo shirt, running a hand through his dark hair as he bent to the ‘scope and looked in. Spent maybe two minutes engrossed in the views of windows across the street until Paul turned and introduced him to Charlie’s executor.

  They were both from Connecticut and had been friends for years, Paul and Carl…which was only a bit unusual because Carl had been a rich kid from wealthy Greenwich, and Paul had been his boat boy. Scrubbed the hull, bartended his parties, cleaned his messes, even drove his drunk girlfriends home. Through family pull Carl got Paul a great scholarship, and Paul still felt indebted to him. Paul was now forty; Carl was forty-one, and had grown some surprise hang-ups in the intervening years. His father had lost his money in investments; Carl wasn’t rich anymore and had lost his boat. Paul inherited his boat – his smaller boat - from his father, and they resumed their best buds bond of sailing. It was actually Carl who’d had the idea for the research they were doing, and snagged the grant – again, through family pull - and brought Paul in figuring two working feverishly could win the race to Big Pharma. Carl was still mad at his banker cousins who’d scoffed when he opted for med school instead of finance. He was going to win bigger than them, oh yes – he was driven - and he’d done Paul another huge life favor with this research thing. He could have asked someone else.

  “I owe Carl everything.” Liddy hated hearing Paul say that. He was brilliant too. He could have done okay on his own…

  So forget them and their B.S., she thought, peering around, feeling her happy quotient rise, and then rise more. Wow, this was really happening.

  She got herself up, aching only a little, appraising the emptiness and imagining the antique furniture they’d crowded into their old apartment moved to there and there - and those gouges in the wall - ugh, she thought, moving to one of them, reaching up to touch it. Construction people would be coming to fix it, also finish tearing down the interior wall poor Charlie Bass had taken a sledge hammer to. They’d restore the flooring and then painters would come and patch, spackle, prime and paint while Con Ed came too, and upholstery people to pick up the couch, ottoman and two other items…

  “Lids?”

  Uh-huh.

  How well she knew Paul’s regretful tone. She turned, knowing what was coming and went to them: to Paul looking sorry and Carl already eyeing the door and Mr. Griffin half turned away pushing papers back into his briefcase.

  “Ah…” Paul started to say, and because she felt happy and he looked so guilty she waved a hand as if nothing.

  “Let me guess,” Liddy said. “Work’s fallen behind and you really should leave now and may have to work late tonight.”

  “Well it is a week day,” Carl said with a quick smile. He had quick eyes, too; quick and blue.

  “I understand,” she smiled, to Paul’s clear relief. They had planned dinner out tonight, to celebrate their first day of owning the place and starting the refurbishing.

  Paul spread his hands as if to say, What can I do? Carl smirked and dude-punched Paul’s arm. “Right there,” he said with his other hand pointing to Liddy, “is why I’m divorced and you’re not. Cassie wouldn’t tolerate my hours and that was that.”

  Cassie wouldn’t tolerate…?

  What a phony. Like a flash, Liddy remembered trying to help
Paul with the rigging, and she was cold, it was gloomy and windy and she wanted to run below for her sweatshirt but Paul looked troubled. “They’re down there.” Carl and his current squeeze were down in the berth having their tryst, on Paul’s boat, so she couldn’t go for her damned sweatshirt. When was that? Last April? No…last fall maybe, there’d been other women since. He’d taken the boat out alone lots too. Said it helped re-charge his batteries.

  There was a sudden movement toward the door, first saying good-bye and thank you to Mr. Griffin; then, with Carl already out in the hall, a quick hug from Paul with hurried promises to celebrate soon.

  “Every night once we’re done with this damned thing,” he said, suddenly more emotional with Carl’s footsteps pounding down the stairs. “The deadline for that presentation’s in five weeks. It’ll blow ‘em away.” He pushed a strand of hair from Liddy’s brow. “Our copyright-sharing with the U will be assured and we’ll be in clover. Sound good?”

  “Heaven.” She smiled and stood back from him, not unhappy at all at the thought of coming silence. “At least it’s summer and neither of you have to teach.”

  That didn’t cheer Paul. “Yeah, well y’know how fast September’s going to be here? There’s that pressure too; get as much done before we have to work teaching around it.”

  “Go. I’ll be fine and busy here.” Liddy held up her list of things to do.

  “Cab home.”

  “Of course.”

  “Call me when you get there.”

  “Yes, yes.” She hugged him again. “Soon here will be home, imagine! Everything’s under control.”

  8

  She closed the door and breathed a sigh of relief. So much to do… She turned back to the room, and her feeling changed.

  The place seemed suddenly cavernous, echoing with voices and footsteps no longer there. She tried to shake off the feeling. Went to get Paul’s measuring tape from where he’d left it by the telescope. Knelt to measure the space between the couch and the wall where the flat screen would go – joy, the cozy place where they’d unwind and cuddle and forget the day’s pressures…

  On her knees, Liddy looked up. The compulsion she’d been resisting finally seized her. It was still there, the bent pipe where Charlie Bass had hung himself. Breath stopped as she stared at it, feeling a slow, cold dread overtake her. Have them fix that first. Make it disappear…

  She rose and backed away, still staring at the pipe. Looked down and forced herself to turn. Get busy with something else, yes, that’s the ticket. Now she faced the big arched window, ablaze with late sun shining through - and frying the leaves.

  She hurried over and started to spray. Up, down, squirt, squirt, the ficus and the ferns, the lemon tree too. Her finger hurt from pulling the spray trigger; the bottle emptied fast. She knelt to the small hose and turned it on, started to refill the spray bottle.

  Her phone rang, startling her. “Oh!”

  Beth, sounding hyper. “I remember where I’ve seen that girl! The one you sketched in the café? She’s that missing NYU coed.”

  Liddy was confused.

  “I mean I think it’s her, they just showed her photo on the news and it’s been bugging me, like something it was important to remember.”

  Still kneeling, Liddy turned off the hose, put down the plastic bottle. Her sketchbook was a few feet away on a stool. She reached for it and opened it; found the page as Beth’s voice continued.

  “Blond and pretty, you said; walked past us only I didn’t see her. I’ve been racking my brain thinking - wait, she’s missing but suddenly she’s seen just sauntering down a Soho street?” A pause; the sound of Beth’s wheels turning almost audible.

  “Then it occurred. Maybe you saw her picture in the hospital. You’d had a concussion and your leg was up in that sling thing but you were getting better, so maybe they turned on the TV - they were showing her in the news – and maybe that’s where you saw her and remembered.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Sasha Perry. Disappeared in early June.”

  “I’ll google her. Wait a sec?”

  “I’m here. Tearing around putting out crackers for an open house but I’ll put you on speaker phone.”

  Liddy exited the call, went online on her phone and searched and there was Sasha Perry, her picture and thousands of hits. Her heart lurched in her chest; for long seconds she couldn’t breathe.

  She looked back up to the arched window. The leaves dripped. The sun glared hot through the glass.

  Shakily she went back to her call. “You there?”

  “Yup, I’m here.” Beth’s voice was yards away and then closer.

  “It was her.” Liddy’s voice caught as she immediately doubted herself. “I mean, I think it was, it looks like her.” She rubbed her brow. “God, my mind is scrambled. So many things I don’t remember right.”

  Beth’s voice turned soft, encouraging. “But it’s coming back, you said, right? Different memories are coming back?”

  “Yeah.” Liddy gave a mirthless laugh. “Stuff’s filling in. I’m not mixing up my drawers anymore or leaving the fridge door open or forgetting how to tie my shoelaces. Alex said I’m getting better.”

  Alex Minton was the psychiatrist Liddy was seeing. You’re doing well for having gone through a traumatic experience, he’d said on her last visit. It’s normal, totally human to struggle with forgetfulness, upsetting emotions, frightening dreams or a sense of danger. But you can speed your recovery with the right treatment, support and self-help strategy.

  She had pretty much memorized his words, which was odd: she seemed able to remember what she wanted to remember. Beth was babbling emotionally as Liddy peered around, thinking desperately that here – oh please, here - was going to be her self-help strategy.

  “I could kick myself for getting you upset,” Beth was saying. “I only called because the news said they’re about to close the case and declare Sasha Perry a runaway, and if you had really seen her I was gonna say call the police? On the other hand it could have been someone who just looked like her.”

  “I don’t know...”

  Liddy’s heart thudded as she looked up at the plants. The leaves dripped. Condensation on the glass formed a woman’s face. Liddy gaped at it.

  “You sound funny. You okay?”

  The woman was young. Golden hair in the sun, woeful eyes that begged.

  “You there? Liddy?”

  “I’m here,” she breathed, blinking. Stood to touch the face that wept, then melted into sliding tears. Liddy’s heart rocketed. This is crazy, she told herself. Say nothing, you’re just seeing things, Beth will fret you shouldn’t have taken the loft. “I just feel bad, that’s all,” she finally managed. “It’s so sad.”

  “You’re sensitive. Sorry to sound like an amateur shrink, but that girl’s face probably stuck in your subconscious because it’s…another trauma and you identified. Maybe you saw her on this morning’s news too?”

  “Maybe. It was on but Paul turned it off.”

  “Well there you go. Hey, my mind plays tricks all the time.”

  “What would I do without you?”

  “You’re a survivor. Besides, you have Paul too.”

  “Yes. Paul too.”

  9

  They had ninety minutes. Just ninety bleeping minutes to grab a roach burger or even a halfway decent lunch but instead were doing this. Alex Brand sighed wearily, which made Kerri feel worse. The air conditioner in her six-year-old Bronco was only half working, they’d both been up most of the night with a drive-by shooting, and the traffic was barely moving under the broiling sun.

  “This girl just got back from where?” Alex sighed again.

  “Nigeria,” Kerri said, driving, alternating between pressing a chilled Coke to her brow and wiping her sweating neck with an old T-shirt and cursing the whole month of August. “Her name’s Becca Milstein. She’s a first year med student, was a friend of Sasha Perry and just spent six weeks helping stop the spread
of hepatitis B. Wound up getting sick. Wouldn’t even be back already if she hadn’t gotten sick.”

  “What kind of sick?”

  “Fever of some sort.”

  “She say anything about ebola?”

  “Didn’t mention it.”

  “Did you ask?”

  “Damn. Forgot.”

  They’d reached Greenwich Village. Alex glared out as Kerri swung east at Washington Square, heading past the lawn-surrounded, soaring water plumes of the Square’s Fountain Plaza. When she hit Mercer and turned south again, he groaned for her to take him back to the fountain, whining waaaater like a movie cowboy crawling through the desert. He used cop humor a lot. They all did; it helped some of the time. It also helped the feeling of uselessness to this trip downtown, since they were homicide cops and Sasha Perry had never been declared a homicide and the investigation done by others was hours from closing. Then that call had come from this med student. Despite sleep loss Kerri was newly excited. Volunteered her lunch hour. Had nearly run out alone when Alex who hated seeing her wreck her health over this volunteered to go with her.

  He’d been more than supportive of her obsession with the case, but this was it - no more, Kerri, please? Others had done so much canvassing and interviewing and gathering witness statements. When he could and up till now, Alex had helped. Today was the first time he’d started to grumble.

  “This med student – what’s her name again?”

  “Becca Milstein.”

  “Okay Becca. What are we doing, really? She didn’t say anything concrete – just that she’d known Sasha and felt bad, felt she should call. That’s sweet – but the oldest story is runaways who finally called home after months.”