In Sunlight or In Shadow

by Lawrence Block

  “Have you eaten here before?” he asks.

  “What?” she says, looking up from her book. “Oh. Yes. A couple of times.”

  “So you like it.”

  She’s a little older than he thought, early thirties, and the restaurant’s dim light softens her features so that he wonders, worries, if perhaps she’s even older. He likes them at least a decade younger than he is, though not too young, he’s no pervert.

  “You live in the neighborhood?” he asks.

  Another nod. He can see she is checking him out, wary, not sure if she wants to converse with this somewhat older man, handsome and distinguished, but still, a stranger.

  He eases up on his imaginary reel, turns away, takes out his phone, pretends to check email, the whole time watching her as she reads her book.

  Thank God her lips do not move.

  He likes them shy and naïve, easy to manipulate, but not stupid. Never stupid. What’s the fun in that? Where’s the challenge?

  That last one, Laura or Lauren, wasn’t exactly a genius, but no dummy either. Just easily duped, and younger, early twenties, and a virgin. The shock of learning that, the delight. He always takes something but that, well, that was an added gift.

  When the salads arrive, he nods in her direction and says, “You’re not from New York, are you?”

  “Salina,” she says. “I’m sure you’ve never heard of it.”

  “Kansas,” he says, and she looks surprised, but smiles.

  “Kim Novak. Vertigo.”

  “Excuse me.”

  “The Hitchcock film. Kim Novak, her character, I mean, is from Salina.”

  “Oh,” she says.

  “You’ve never seen it?”

  “No.”

  “A great movie,” he says, thinking how Jimmy Stewart remakes Kim Novak’s character, as if bringing her back from the dead. The opposite of what he likes to do. “There’s a Hitchcock festival at Film Forum right now. You should go. No, I should take you.”

  She looks surprised, eyebrows arched, but not displeased.

  “Sorry, I don’t mean to be—well, maybe you’re married, or involved. I shouldn’t have—” He adds the look, shy, slightly self-conscious, that he’s learned from watching movies.

  “I’m not involved—or married—I’m new to the city, and to be honest it scares me, a little.”

  “Nothing to be scared of,” he says, rearranging his features from shy to friendly, to compassionate.

  “I have to say it’s not easy meeting people.”

  “Hey,” he says with a big smile. “Why don’t you join me,” and before she can say no—and frankly she doesn’t look like she wants to—he sidles over to her table, carrying his salad, signaling the waiter, who moves his wineglass, and then he is across from her trying to see her as real, not just the pink lady in the night window, though the image burns in his brain.

  After another glass of wine she’s telling him her life story—from Salina high school prom queen to secretarial school in Topeka, to a job for an accounting firm where she was “bored to death, all those accountants,” she says and pulls a face.

  “Well, you won’t be bored to death here,” he says, “and I’m no accountant.”

  He orders more wine, and after another glass she is telling him how she’s thirty-two, divorced, here to start a new life, and he keeps her talking, offering little, just that he works for himself, “in finance, nothing special, but it pays the bills.”

  She laughs. Then eyes him and says, “How come a good looking man like you is single?”

  “I was married, once,” he says and adds, “I wouldn’t mind trying again,” tugging at the hook, seeing it cut into flesh, a trickle of blood down her cheek, red not pink.

  Then he’s walking her home.

  A beautiful night, not the usual Manhattan summer, breezy, low humidity, the warm air like a light mask over the mask he’s already wearing.

  “This is me,” she says at the entrance to her building.

  An awkward moment, but he won’t fill the silence, wants to see how she will.

  “Well . . .” she says, and extends her hand.

  He takes it in both of his, holds it a moment. “A real pleasure,” he says. “So what do you think?”

  “About?”

  “Film Forum. Hitchcock.”

  “Oh,” she says. “When?”

  “The festival is every night for two weeks. How’s tomorrow?”

  “Oh,” she says again, chewing her soft lower lip. “I guess. What’s playing?”

  “Double feature. Vertigo and . . . Psycho.”

  “I’ve always been afraid to see Psycho.”

  “Don’t worry,” he says. “I’ll protect you.”

  He watches her disappear into her building then rushes back to his apartment in time to see her undressing in her window, white jeans pushed down, tank top up and off, and she stands there a moment, in the middle of her living room, and he wonders if she feels him watching her, the way she suddenly crosses her arms across her breasts.

  “I loved them both,” she says, as they head out of Film Forum onto the Greenwich Village street, the night hotter, the air wetter. “Take my picture, right here,” she says and hands him her cell phone.

  He snaps a shot of her in front of the Psycho movie poster, and she giggles like a teenager, takes the cell back and holds it out, snapping the two of them.

  “I hate having my picture taken,” he says, and it’s true, he never allows it. He considers grabbing her phone and smashing it against the wall. “Erase it, will you?”

  “Oh, well, sure,” she says, pushing buttons on her phone. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

  “Forget it,” he says, forcing a smile but he can feel her discomfort, needs to fix it.

  “So, Psycho, what did you think?”

  “Oh, so scary.”

  “But great. Even after multiple—” He stops to find the right word, was about to say orgasms. “—viewings.” He is as pent up as a champagne bottle. Sitting through two movies with the girl beside him, the smell of her perfume, her shrieking and grabbing his arm during the shower scene and later when the detective gets stabbed and later still when the mother’s corpse is discovered. By then he was close to losing it, seated there for so long, controlling himself while Norman Bates had all the fun.

  A taxi ride home this time, the interior frigid, the driver on his phone the whole way, jabbering.

  “I’m glad to be out of there,” he says, as he slams the cab door.

  “Me too, but too bad I can’t store up the cold.”

  “How come?”

  “No air conditioning, and I’ve been too lazy to buy a window unit, though I suppose I should.”

  “Summer’s almost over. Why bother?” Thinking how he wants her windows open, that fan whirring and blowing her hair, her slip.

  “My place is cool. Why don’t you come over?”

  She looks down at the pavement. “I don’t think so.”

  “Your place then?” he asks, and adds a laugh.

  “I hardly know you,” she says.

  “Really? I feel as if I know you.” He tries to catch her eyes but she’s still looking down. He touches her chin, tilts her face up, a studied, movie gesture, says, “It’s okay. Another time, when you know me better, when you trust me.”

  “Oh, but I do. It’s not that.” She shifts her weight from one foot to the other, flats on her feet tonight, open-toed, nails painted pink. It’s clear, she loves the color. He does too.

  “I understand, but I have to say that I like you, I do. And it’s rare that I find a woman I really like.”

  “Why?” she asks.

  “The women I usually meet are so . . . New York. Starving themselves to death and no fun. But who’s fun when they’re starving?”

  She laughs, opens her arms in a gesture that says look at me. “Clearly, I’m not starving.”

  “Thank God,” he says, taking in her curves, then leans in, a chaste peck
on the cheek though he wants to bite it, tear the flesh with his teeth. “I’ll call you.”

  “Good,” she says, turns and dashes into her apartment building.

  He watches her go, knows the hook is already in, no matter how fast she runs.

  He lets a week pass, as difficult for him as he imagines it is for her, though he has the triplex playing outside his window, the pink lady in her bra and slip, pink lady in panties, pink lady naked. The delayed time is like pulled taffy, sticky and sweet.

  Finally he calls, watching her through the window.

  “Oh,” she says, standing in her living room, cell phone to her ear. “Nice to hear from you,” though she sounds cool and distant.

  “I was busy with work, and had to travel.”

  “No cell phone service? Where were you?”

  The hook is in deeper than he imagined.

  “Just very busy,” he says. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” she says, softening, trying to unbutton her blouse with one hand while holding the phone in the other.

  He sees it all, knows she has just come home, watched her lights go on only minutes ago, now slipping off the blouse as she talks, the whole thing like a pantomime, her voice on the phone not really attached to the woman he is watching.

  “You free tonight?” he asks.

  “I’m supposed to meet a coworker for drinks.”

  “That’s too bad. I guess I deserve that. Last minute and all.”

  A pause. “You know, let me call my coworker. I’m sure I can see him another night.”

  “Him?” The word falls out unintentionally. “Just kidding. Who am I to be jealous?”

  “Are you? Jealous, I mean?”

  “A little.”

  “My ex was never jealous.”

  “Okay then, I’m very jealous.”

  She laughs. “Give me an hour. I need to shower and change.”

  He watches her put the cell phone down, step out of her skirt, walk to the windows, look out, then tug down the shades, one at a time.

  Did she know he was watching?

  Did she see someone else watching?

  Damn.

  He squeezes the glass of Scotch so hard it shatters, blood leeching from his palm, dropping small rosebuds onto his perfect wooden floor, spreading like water lilies.

  In his all-white bathroom he runs the wound under cold water, watches his blood swirl in the sink and pictures the Psycho scene, blood in the bathtub spiralling down the drain though he knows Hitchcock used Hershey’s syrup, a convincing double for blood in black-and-white, though hardly sufficient in life.

  Nothing serious he decides, no arteries cut though it throbs and takes three Band-Aid changes to stanch the bleeding. An auspicious beginning to the evening, he thinks: blood, pain.

  “What happened to your hand?”

  “It’s nothing,” he says.

  They sit opposite one another in the French bistro, crowded tonight, noisy. He intentionally speaks in whispers so that she has to lean forward to hear him, her face only inches from his.

  They order salads again though he wants meat, rare, pink, wants to taste blood in his mouth, but better to put it off, wait for the real thing.

  The dinner drags, interminable small talk, when all he can think about is getting her back to her apartment.

  He fingers the handcuffs in one pocket, a Swiss Army knife in the other.

  This time she invites him in. The place is almost exactly as it was a couple of months ago, the way the last one had it, she hasn’t changed a thing. He wants to ask her why, but how can he?

  “Your hand,” she says.

  He sees blood has seeped through the Band-Aid.

  “Come with me.” She leads him into the bathroom, plucks the Band-Aid off in one fast tug and he tries not to wince. “That’s quite a gash,” she says.

  “Chinatown,” he says.

  “What?”

  “That’s exactly what Faye Dunaway says to Jack Nicholson in Chinatown.”

  She looks puzzled.

  “One of the greatest films, ever.”

  “You’re quite a movie buff.”

  “I’ve watched it dozens of times. And the ending . . .” He shakes his head, pictures Faye Dunaway, eyeball blown out of her head.

  “Bad?”

  “Sometimes bad endings are inescapable,” he says, looking her up and down.

  “Wow,” she says, “that’s heavy.”

  “You should see it some time,” he says, careful not to wince again as she applies a fresh Band-Aid, smoothing it down, causing him to shiver.

  “Need a drink?” she asks, leading him into the familiar kitchenette, pouring brandy into two glasses, handing him one.

  He drinks it down in a gulp.

  She refills his glass though she hasn’t touched hers.

  “The brandy was here when I moved in,” she says.

  He almost says Right, I remember, picturing the last one who lived here, but catches himself. He gets an arm around her waist, tugs her to him, kisses her, soft then hard, harder, forcing his tongue past her half open teeth.

  She presses her hand to his chest, pushes him back. “Wait.”

  He expels a breath, about to explode. “How long?”

  “I’m not very experienced.”

  “But you were married, weren’t you?”

  “That doesn’t make me experienced,” she says, and they both laugh.

  Then she kisses him back, a long kiss, pulls away again and asks, “Do you have protection?”

  He pats his pocket.

  “You came prepared? That makes me feel way too predicable.”

  “I’m always prepared,” he says.

  In the bedroom he watches her undress. She’s wearing the pink slip and the bra. He almost gasps when he sees them, up close, lace trim he couldn’t see from a distance.

  He thought she’d be shy, like the others, that he’d take the lead the way he always does, but she’s already on the bed, naked. “Aren’t you joining me?” she asks, sounding almost irritated.

  “Sure,” he says, feeling for the handcuffs in his pocket, but before he can get them she’s pulled him onto the bed, tugging his pants down, her hands on him, her mouth practically devouring him, and he can’t control her, can’t control himself and he forgets the cuffs and the idea of blood, his head spinning, practically delirious, so that she has to stop him and remind him to put on the condom and then it’s over and he’s embarrassed at his loss of control, can’t believe it, after all of his planning.

  The girl’s already out of bed, shimmying into her slip. She nods at his withering cock, the condom hanging off it, and hands him a tissue.

  He’s flushed with embarrassment.

  How did she turn it around?

  “The bathroom?” he asks, as if he doesn’t know where it is.

  “Through there. Oh, and don’t flush that thing or it will stuff up the toilet.”

  He stares at himself in the familiar bathroom mirror, all this build-up and nothing, no cuffed girl, no ignored safe word, no screams, no begging. He wants to go back in, show her who’s boss, force her into the cuffs, but that’s not his style. He’s a gentleman; he needs them to comply, at first, or it’s no fun. He crumples the tissue with the used condom and tosses it into the trash along with his hopes for the evening.

  Maybe this one was a mistake.

  She’s fully dressed and playing with the handcuffs when he comes back in the room.

  “Look what I found,” she singsongs.

  He can feel his mouth open, but he struggles for words. “It’s just—a toy.”

  “You weren’t planning to use them on me, were you?”

  He manages to say “Would you like that?”

  “Maybe next time,” she says and hands them back to him.

  “Your finger,” he says, noting a spot of blood.

  “I snagged it on my zipper. It’s nothing.” She sucks on it. “I’m going out for some milk, can’t drink my morning
coffee without it.” She shifts her weight from one foot to another, impatient.

  He stands there, naked, shivering, though the room is hot, pictures himself at eight or nine, refuses to remember that he was almost fourteen, in his mother’s bedroom after wetting his bed and the way she’d wash him then bring him under her covers to spoon, her soft body wrapped around his, engulfing him, smothering him, the smell of her perfume, suffocating.

  He hurries into his clothes.

  On the street, he just wants to get away, but it’s she who says goodbye first, gives him a quick kiss, then turns and hurries down the street leaving him there feeling like a fool.

  A day passes. Two. He can’t concentrate, can’t think about anything but his failure to act and the way the girl took charge, controlled him. He never lets it happen like that, can’t bear the idea that he’s wasted weeks and didn’t go through with it, didn’t reduce her to whimpering and begging. That he is the one who has been reduced.

  He has to correct this.

  The shades are drawn in her windows but he knows when she comes home and he is ready this time.

  He sits in the armchair, drink at his side, cigar burning, waiting.

  The shades go up and there she is, the way he first spotted her, in her pink bra and slip.

  He tugs the cell phone from his pocket and is about to call her when she leans out the window—and waves.

  What?

  He pulls back, a reflex, drops his phone, which clatters along the hard wood floor. When he picks it up the screen is cracked.

  “Fuck!”

  The girl waves again, calls out “Come over,” at least he thinks so though he can’t believe it, her words drowning in the city’s early evening drone.

  Had she known he was watching all along?

  He stands in the middle of his dark room, clutching his broken cell phone trying to make sense of it. Then he dares a few steps closer to the window and sees she is waving to someone else, someone just . . . below him? But who?

  He has to find out.

  He squashes the cigar out, downs the rest of his Scotch.

  Just outside her apartment building, he hovers, his brain hammering, body practically vibrating. But there’s no one there.

  Maybe they are already inside.

  He presses the bell to her apartment and she buzzes him in, no words exchanged.