Nightlife

by Thomas Perry

  She began to walk again, this time heading for Metro. She had noticed something, and it had not quite reached her consciousness until a moment ago. Every place where the Catherine Hobbes credit card had been used had one thing in common. They were all very dim. She hoped that when the officers had gone around this afternoon they had asked the owners of the businesses to post the circulars where people could see them.

  51

  Judith was sitting at her favorite table in Underground. This was the bar where she had met Greg, and the table was the one where they had sat and talked for so long on that first night. She was drinking her second martini of the evening, and it was probably going to be the last. This night was precious, and she didn’t want to get sleepy. It felt to Judith as though she had finally managed to hold together all of the elements of the life she had always thought about when she was a child.

  She had not realized when she was eight or ten that what she was imagining was only a single evening that was repeated endlessly. She had determined that she would grow up, get away from her mother, and stop having to be Charlene Buckner. She had known exactly who she would be: a woman who wore beautiful clothes and held drinks in a manicured hand adorned with jewels that sparkled. She would dance with a tall, strong man who adored her.

  Now she was a success. Charlene had grown up, and right now she was Judith and she’d had that special evening a hundred times. She leaned close to Greg and said, “I’ve wanted to go to the ladies’ room since we were in the Mine, but I didn’t want to wait in that line. I’m going now.” Since she was that close to him, she kissed his cheek before she stood.

  Greg smiled at her and shrugged. “I’ll be here.”

  Judith walked to the back of the room near the bar, where there was a corridor. She passed the pay phone, then the door of the men’s room, and then approached the ladies’ room at the end. There was only one woman waiting ahead of her, so she waited too. She stood away from the wall, and pretended to look at the things that were written on it, glancing now and then in the direction of the telephone so she didn’t have to make eye contact with the other woman.

  She heard the door open and close, saw the girl who had been in the ladies’ room move past, and heard the one ahead of her go inside. It was a relief to be alone. Judith waited, leaning against the wall. She hated being trapped anywhere with people who might have nothing to look at but her face. It had been about three weeks since the local television stations had shown the pictures of her old driver’s licenses. People usually forgot everything quickly, but if just one person recognized her, Judith would be finished.

  The door opened again, the woman edged past her, and Judith went inside. The room was small, like a half bathroom in a house, but it was clean and private. The walls were covered with copies of old movie posters, menus from forgotten restaurants, and travel ads, all pasted there like wallpaper. She flushed the toilet, went to the sink, and stopped.

  Just to the left of the mirror, what she had thought was just another old poster wasn’t. The pictures on it were the familiar ones of Tanya Starling and Rachel Sturbridge. But now there was a third one. Her face on the California license had been given a new hairstyle by computer.

  Judith stared at herself in the mirror, then at the photograph. It had been doctored. The picture had hair like Judith’s—hair like Catherine Hobbes’s.

  A dozen thoughts competed for her attention. Had those two women a moment ago seen the picture and recognized Judith? They had been in here, and they must have looked at the mirror. Could they have missed the pictures? What did the poster say? She read the print under her face. “Wanted for questioning . . .” That didn’t sound like such a big deal. “Homicide, arson, auto theft . . .” That was worse. Maybe the women hadn’t read that far. “Armed and dangerous.” Could anyone not see those words? Could they have seen this and not connected the pictures with Judith?

  She tried to calm herself. Maybe she had been lucky. Her pictures had been all over the western half of the country, on and off, and almost nobody ever recognized her. She had not talked to either of those women, had not even made eye contact. A bathroom line was one of the places where people hardly looked at one another. Nobody wanted to get caught staring and then have to stand around with the person for five or ten minutes. And Judith had been careful.

  She pulled the wanted poster off the wall, prepared to throw it into the wastebasket, but changed her mind. Whoever had put it up could be the one to empty the basket, and they might just stick it back up. She quickly folded it three times and put it in her purse. No, that was the wrong place. It was covering the handle of her gun, just when she might need to reach for it. She pulled the folded poster out again, put it into the side compartment of her purse, took a last look at herself in the mirror, and opened the door.

  There was another girl waiting. Judith kept her head down and slipped past her, walking fast. She approached the next door, with its blue cutout symbol of a man. What if the poster was in there too? If it was in the ladies’ room, why wouldn’t they put another one in the men’s room? Judith was alone in the corridor, but her solitude might last only a few more seconds. She quickly opened the men’s-room door, glanced in to verify that it was empty, went inside, and locked the door.

  There was the poster. She tore it off the wall, folded it, and put it in the side compartment of her purse with the other one. She went to the door, opened it an inch, and saw that the corridor was still empty. She slipped out and began to walk, then heard the door of the ladies’ room open behind her. She should already be gone from this corridor, and the woman behind her knew it. Had the woman seen her coming out of the men’s room?

  She was filled with terrors, imagining possible disasters that demanded her attention right now. She was going to have to walk past the bar. Who had put the poster in the bathrooms? The bartender, or a waitress, or that creepy man at the end of the bar who was at least forty, too old to be anything but the owner. She couldn’t let them see her face, but she couldn’t look in the direction of the girl who had followed her up the corridor either. At least the girl had not seen the poster. No, that was too easy. Who was to say this was her first trip to the ladies’ room? If she had been in there before she would have seen it, and now she would know it had been ripped down.

  Judith came to the end of the corridor. She hurried past the bar and headed toward the table where Greg waited for her, looking pleased to see her. His happiness was an unwelcome reminder that she had been happy too, five minutes ago. Now his presence was jarring, something she had forgotten about but had to tolerate. As she approached she planned her words. It had to be better than “Let’s go.” She didn’t want to open a discussion, and couldn’t afford one. She would say something that had a finality. “I need to go home right now.” Something like that should do it.

  She saw that while she was gone he had ordered new drinks. He was sipping a scotch and water, and there was a fresh martini sitting next to the one she had not finished. It was irritating. How could he be so insensitive? A woman her size shouldn’t try to drink that much at any time, and tonight it was dangerous.

  She said, “I need to go now.”

  “What?” He put his drink down and moved his chair aside to make room for her to sit.

  “I want to leave right now.” She picked up her coat from the empty chair, then the umbrella.

  “Are you sick? Did something happen?”

  He looked so pained, so stupid and slow, that she felt herself lose her feeling for him. He might be clever about business, but he had no instinct, no intuition. If he kept that concerned expression, he was going to be noticed. He looked like a big, foolish hoofed animal, ready to join a stampede, so she started one. She took a step toward the door.

  “Wait. I’ve got to pay first.” He picked up the check, took out his wallet, selected a credit card, and tried to get the waitress’s attention.

  Judith snatched the check from his fingers, already reaching into the side pocke
t of her purse. She pulled out three twenties, set the bill and the money on the table, and kept going. At the door she slowed for a second and his long arm came over her shoulder to push the door open ahead of her. She was out.

  “What is it, Judy?”

  “I had to get out of there. I’ve had enough of that place.” She was calmer now that she was out in the night. The beautiful darkness made her feel anonymous again.

  “Did something scare you?”

  “Of course not.” She waited until he wasn’t staring at her anymore, then glanced up at him.

  He was gazing straight ahead up the sidewalk, his jaw muscles tightening and relaxing rhythmically. “Then what was the hurry?”

  “I just had a bad feeling in there.” She watched him. “I wanted to go there in the first place because it was where I met you and it was a really happy memory for me. But after we were there, it wasn’t the way I remembered it at all.”

  His face turned down toward her, and she detected that his expression was false. Was it condescension, trying to pretend to take her seriously when he thought she was stupid? Maybe what he was feigning was any interest at all in what she said. Some men would patiently listen to all of the drivel a woman could say, biding their time until the woman seemed to wear herself out, free herself of nervous energy, and be receptive to sex. Was he hiding something worse?

  Her heart stopped, then started again. How could she have forgotten? He had been in the men’s room. He had gone in there right after they had arrived from the Mine. He had ordered their drinks, then gone into the men’s room. He had come back quickly, before the drinks arrived. The waitress had accepted a tip, but begun to run a tab for the cost of the drinks. Judith tried to sort out the details, hoping to bring back a clear image of Greg’s face when he had returned. Had he been concerned? Shocked? She tried to think clearly, but the two martinis were making her brain slow and unresponsive. Even the count was wrong, she thought. She had forgotten that at dinner she and Greg had both ordered wine. Damn.

  She forced herself to concentrate. He had gone into the men’s room. There was no absolute proof that he had seen the pictures near the mirror and read the things that Catherine Hobbes had written about her. It was possible that Greg had glanced at the reams of garish nonsense plastered over the walls and seen none of it. Men stood to pee, so he wasn’t even facing the poster most of the time; he was looking at the other wall, or maybe down at what he was doing. But how could he not have seen the poster right next to the mirror? Maybe his pitted complexion made him behave differently. Maybe he was obsessed with staring at his own reflection and didn’t see things like the poster, or maybe he hated the sight of his face so much that he avoided looking at mirrors.

  She held him in the corner of her eye as she walked. “I should have known not to go back to a place like that. It was a nice memory, and I shouldn’t have tampered with it.”

  “What was the problem?”

  “It was just an impression. That creepy older guy at the bar kept staring at me. Then I went to the ladies’ room, and there were these skanky girls ahead of me, waiting. And then I thought maybe I was kidding myself. The last time I had been in there, I was the one who picked up a guy. Then I had sex with him on the first date. I wanted to remember the place as romantic, but tonight the whole mess was—I don’t know—depressing.”

  “Then I guess it was a good time not to be there.” They reached his car, and he opened the door for her.

  “Do you mind leaving?”

  “Not at all,” he said. “Where do you want to go next—home?”

  She reacted quickly, instinctively, and said, “Your place. I want to go with you,” and only then asked herself why. She realized it was because she had to stay with him, to watch him for signs. If he went off alone, she would lose control over him. She didn’t know if he had seen the poster, but if he had, then leaving him alone to think about it would be a bad idea. She could imagine him spending some time trying to decide, then making the call: “I think the person you’re looking for might be my girlfriend.”

  They got into the car and Greg pulled out onto the street. “My place? That’s great. Of course, if I’d known you were coming, I would have cleaned up a little. You’ll have to be tolerant.”

  “I’m reasonably tolerant. But if I find a girl in the bed eating potato chips and waiting for you to get home, we might have something to talk about.”

  “Nope. No potato chips.”

  “Then we’re fine.” She had been watching him, and she was almost certain that they really were fine. He wasn’t a good enough actor to lie to her about anything this important, and she didn’t think he had the audacity to try. He seemed perfectly normal now that she had told him why she had wanted to leave Underground. He had not seen the poster in the men’s room; if he had, he had simply let his eyes pass over it without having anything register in his mind. If he had actually recognized her and read the text, what he would have done was lead her outside the bar, and say something stupid very slowly. He would say it staring straight into her eyes, holding her shoulders so she couldn’t look away, talking with that maddening ponderous slowness that dumb men used when they were being serious. He would make some promise to stand by her.

  What he wouldn’t know, because people like him never seemed to know it until it was too late, was that his standing by her now was worth nothing. It was holding her hand while a tidal wave approached, its frothy top rising to a crest a hundred feet above them, bearing things like the hulls of ships and the splintered timbers of wharfs aloft for an awful final second.

  One of her mother’s boyfriends had been like that. His name was Michael. He had watched Charlene endure her mother’s shrieking fits and whimsical punishments, and had tried to befriend her. He had said, “If you’d like to talk about it, I’m here for you.” Charlene had been about ten, so she had taken him seriously. No grown man had ever offered her anything before, so she had assumed he meant he would hear what her problem was and then solve it. But he had only meant what he had said. He would listen to her for a while, then shake his head and say, “That’s too bad.” He had never intended to imply that he would, or could, make her mother stop.

  Greg would be like the rest. The way she would learn he had found out about her troubles was if he told her he was here for her. It would mean he was here to shake his head in sympathy while she got crushed and ground up by Catherine Hobbes and the cops.

  She gave herself more time to make up her mind about Greg. He was a gentle, affectionate person, and he had not seen the pictures yet. It occurred to her that she should appreciate his plight, because he was living in the perfect, fragile moment, just as she was. But he was going to know eventually. He lived in Portland, went to an office every day, talked to people, shopped, watched television, read the papers. The only reason he didn’t know already was that Judith had been taking up so much of his time. He and his friends all worked sixty hours a week, and every second that wasn’t occupied with work, Judith had claimed. She had made him come to her straight from work, and today she had not let him go to work at all.

  Judith had kept him in an artificial vacuum with her, where no information had reached him. But as each hour went by, the barrier that had kept out the news became more brittle. He would have to go to work. He would have to open his newspaper, turn on his television. She couldn’t save him forever. How long, then? If she tried hard, she might be able to preserve him until tomorrow morning. That was all.

  She stared out the window of the car, watching the people on the street through the streaks of water. She wondered about them. If her picture had been in Underground, it had probably been in other nearby places. These people had seen her picture, and a lot of them had read all of the things that horrible Catherine Hobbes had written about her. Were they thinking about her right now, or had they just acknowledged that there was a poster—what was it this time, a missing woman or a woman who had taken off with her own child?—and gone on with their live
s? She couldn’t know. They were all potentially dangerous, all threatening to Judith. If they saw her face now, their knowledge might kill her.

  She watched Greg, saw his eyes moving in their sockets, focusing on cars slowing ahead, cars rushing past him, the mirrors, the road. He was going to see the poster. He was going to recognize the pictures. He was going to be a problem. “You know, Greg, I think I haven’t been as open with you as I should have been.”

  “Yeah?” He looked at her in horror. It probably sounded to him like the preamble to a breakup speech.

  She was beginning to hate him. “I’m in love with you,” she said.

  He glanced at the road, then turned toward her and said, “I’ve been thinking that for a long time. I wanted to tell you.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “I was afraid it would seem too pushy, and turn you off.”

  Afraid, she thought. It was pathetic. He was so big and muscular. His flat, hard stomach and his thick hands and his success in business didn’t seem to help him. He couldn’t face the risk that if he dropped his protective timidity, he would find himself alone. “I’m not turned off. I think it’s sweet.”

  “I should have said it first,” he said. “I wanted to, but I thought I should wait a long time so you wouldn’t think I was rushing you, or that it was too soon for me to love you.”

  “It’s okay,” said Judith. “Maybe I said more than I should have because we had such a beautiful day, or because the martinis loosened my tongue. But I’m glad I did.”

  “Me too.”

  Of course he would say “Me too.” It was absolutely inevitable. Imagining him not saying it was like imagining him drumming only three fingers and keeping the fourth from tapping.

  Judith let him drive to his apartment. She had been there only twice before, both times late at night like this, when they had been out all evening and his place was closer than hers.