Kneading his fingers into his back, he returned to the computer. Angelica was a good student, and for the first two years, she was excited to be in school.
He hadn’t stood once and stopped only when the front door banged. Anna appeared in a few seconds.
“Hi.”
“Hi.” Max cleared his throat. He just noticed how dry his throat was. Hi, babe.”
“Gosh, what happened to your eyes?” Anna put a grocery bag on the counter by the sink, put her bag by the computer, and bent to her husband.
“What’s wrong with them?” Max moved back.
“They’re red. You worked too much, I guess.”
Max rubbed his eyes and felt an unpleasant burning.
“How many pages?” Anna moved behind her husband’s back and looked at the screen on his laptop. “One hundred and fifteen pages already? Wow, Max! How many today?”
“Ah … I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention.”
“You always do.”
Max smiled, thinking what his wife would say if he told her the number. Almost thirty pages in one day. He didn’t think he could ever do more than ten. He couldn’t believe he had. His eyes were burning, his back was aching, his fingers unclenched with difficulty.
“Hmm.” Anna went to the counter and started to transfer groceries from the paper bag to the refrigerator and pantry. Yogurt, sour cream, salads, pasta sauce, pastries. Did you eat? Oh yeah. I see a dirty pot on the stove.”
“Sorry, I forgot to put it in the dishwasher.”
“It’s okay. I guess you’re enjoying writing in this genre?”
If I knew the genre.
“I think so. Maybe because it’s something new. I’m not going to stop writing mysteries. It’s our cow.”
“You have the right to do what you want.” Anna opened the cup of strawberry yogurt, licked the top before throwing it into the trash can, and started to eat, standing by the table in front of Max.
“How was your day?” he asked. “No more headaches?
“No, everything’s fine. As usual, nothing new. A couple of design orders for banners, some other crap. Some idiot knocked me down near my office.” Anna put the yogurt cup down, pulled her pant leg up, and studied her bruised knee. “Super. See? I can’t wear a skirt now.”
“It’s cold for a skirt anyway.”
“Who cares? We got a new guy at work. Young, pumped up. I have to wear a skirt.”
“Did he push you?” Max stared at his wife’s knee, ignoring her joke.
“No. That guy ran into me on the street. I dropped my drawings. At least he helped me pick them up before the wind blew them away. Then the guard from our building called and told me that somebody found my wallet. I guess I lost it too. So, I had to go back to get it. I would call and thank whoever didn’t steal a penny from my wallet, but he didn’t leave any info. Well, God bless him as my mom says.”
“Did I tell you that the owner of the house is an architect?” Max asked. Suddenly, he wanted to talk about his dreams, reality, and Angelica. What if Anna understood him? She had always understood. Why wouldn’t she?
“What house?” She frowned and grabbed her yogurt cup again. “Oh yeah. Your dream house. No, I don’t think so. I don’t remember.”
“He has paintings in his house. Abstract. He said it was his work.”
“You told me that. Interesting.”
“The girl is going to live near it. This house.”
“What girl?” Anna stuck the whole spoon of pink substance in her mouth.”
“Angelica. I told you.” Max twisted his face. He hated yogurt.
“Oh yes, yes. Angelica. Lica. Angel. I remember. She’s a neighbor of that family? I mean, whoever lives in that house.”
“Yes. Her house is made of red brick and she has flowers on the windowsills.” Max’s head spun and he smelled the bitter scent of the flowers. “Geraniums. They are called geraniums. She has a wonderful family. Her parents didn’t get back together yet, but they love her.”
“Are her parents separated?”
“I think her father cheated on her mother and she kicked him out. She wants a divorce, but can’t decide. It’s not easy to raise a child alone, you know? She talks to her friends all the time about it. Her husband loves her daughter, cares about her, and he promises to keep his pants zipped. He knows he made a huge mistake.”
“Why did he do it? A young secretary?”
Max wanted to answer, but realized he had no idea. “I don’t know,” he said, confused.
“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Anna scraped out yogurt from the bottom and threw the cup in the can. She made it on the third time.
“I don’t know exactly what happened. Her mother just used the word unfaithful, but …” Max scratched his head, checked the computer, and licked his lips. “He was unfaithful … because …”
“Max?”
He gazed at Anna. She twisted a dirty teaspoon in her hand and looked at him, puzzled.
“What?”
“Are you okay?”
Max rubbed his eyes then looked at the computer again, and turned it off.
“I overworked,” he said, realizing that wasn’t the case. He knew what Angelica knew. Period. But he was the writer! He created stories and characters. What the girl knew in the plot, she knew because of him. Could it be the opposite? No, nonsense. Things like this didn’t happen. He understood the difference. He dreamed about Angelica, but he created her for the book. The house … He dreamed of the house. Because …”
“Max! What? You have such fear on your face.”
“Fear? Why fear?”
“How would I know?”
“I worked too much, as I said.” Max stood, stretched, and shut the laptop cover.
“I see.” Anna licked her lips. “Want to watch a movie this weekend?”
“Huh?” A sharp change of subject pulled Max out of his fantasies. “A movie?”
“Tomorrow is Saturday. What do you want to do?”
Max looked at his laptop.
“Don’t tell me you plan on working tomorrow.” Anna arranged her hands on her hips.
“Well.” Max scratched his chin. He worked on weekends when he had a deadline or was simply bored. It didn’t happen often, but this time, he didn’t want to take two days off. Angelica wouldn’t be happy.
Angelica wouldn’t be happy? What the hell are you thinking?
“What do you want to watch, Ann?”
“I don’t know. Maybe a thriller? Supernatural? What do you think? Actually, you know?” Anna opened the refrigerator, and took out a pack of frozen ravioli with cheese. “You figure all this stuff out and then we’ll talk. I can’t communicate with you when you’re like this.”
Max wanted to ask what she meant, and then argue that there was nothing special about the situation, but instead, he nodded and went to the bathroom to take a shower and push this book somewhere far away. It had started to take over his mind. He was the owner of a book—never the opposite.
“I am,” he said as he had gotten under the cold flow. He convulsed when the water touched his skin, but his body adjusted fast. He thought about his wife and about their plans for this weekend. Turning the water off and drying his body with the towel, he gazed at his face and the dark circles under his eyes, so uncharacteristic for him. He had gotten used to a full night’s sleep and always looked fresh. He swayed and gasped when, instead of his face in the mirror, he saw Angelica. Just for a moment. A hallucination.
Max wiped steam from the mirror and put on his clothes. No more Angelica for today. Enough. Otherwise, there was a chance he might go crazy.
CHAPTER 25
Anna didn’t just put her wallet in the bag; she put it in the middle pocket and zipped it up. That was a good lesson. She could lose something important without even noticing. She told Max that she lost it, but it didn’t appear he had heard her. It wasn’t the first time. Sometimes he didn’t hear anything she told him when he was on a roll.
Anna studied her husband, his every move, every gaze. Like a cat watching an imprudent sparrow. She knew her husband too well and could see that his cheerfulness was an act. She could see that behind his careful façade was a puzzle. He was with them but he was far away.
Her parents, of course, didn’t notice anything and didn’t understand. He was his old self to them. Kind, attentive and funny. Her mother loved her son-in-law, and since he didn’t quite remember his mother, he treated her as his own. He kissed her cheek as a greeting, he made kind jokes, and he let her stroke his hair when he acted like a good boy. Anna’s mom called both of them her babies, and sometimes acted as if they were. It was her favorite joke. She loved Max, but didn’t notice the changes in him. Anna, with each passing hour, was getting more nervous.
“Anna, what are you doing? Is it a new style, dear?” her mother asked, and Anna looked at the table. She kept putting napkins by the plates and each one already had five.
“Mom, you have to admit, you’re old school,” she joked, pretending to be careless.
That’s how we’re going to live until he finishes this book, she thought. He’s on one side of the bridge and I’m on the other. We’ll yell to each other, pretending that we hear and understand each other well, when in reality we don’t understand most of the words. He has to finish this book fast, because I hate it already.
Anna shuddered at the sound of her name. The office receptionist, Katy, stood beside her, dressed as always in something she couldn’t afford on her salary, with her hair styled and sprayed. She looked at Anna through expensive glasses despite having perfect vision. She held an order in her hand.
“New design?” she asked as she handed Anna the paper.
“Yes,” Anna said. “What else would I be doing?”
“I don’t know. Looking at you, I thought you wanted to kill someone. Hubby?”
Anna twisted her lips, but nodded.
“Men. Don’t even try to understand,” the wise twenty-year-old said.
A nod again.
The girl turned away from Anna with her butt covered in a tight skirt. Anna showed her tongue then turned to her computer with a sigh. Maybe she should quit and make callouses on Max’s eyes. Especially now, when he wanted to be one-on-one with his book. With Angelica.
Anna felt jealousy toward an abstract and unreal character, and heard her own uneasy giggle.
“Great. That’s something new.”
She picked up an order form and, after a few seconds, focused her attention on it.
“Work, work, work. I think I’m starting to hate it.”
CHAPTER 26
Max was not planning to go to Watervliet when he went to bed. However, when he woke up, he realized he was going to do just that. One more trip to the tiny town. He wasn’t planning to see the architect. The man wasn’t exactly excited to talk to Max, and he didn’t feel that he needed to. At least for now. Everything had started with the architect’s house, but he couldn’t find anything to explain his affinity for the red brick house. It was even more difficult to understand his hope to talk to the older woman who lived there. For some reason, he thought she would help him. He didn’t know how or why, but expected to find out after meeting her again. If he did meet her again. She had shown interest in speaking with him, unlike her neighbor, but she might have changed her mind. The questions he had could easily unsettle her, but he felt the need to speak with her again.
After taking a shower and dressing up in a suit, white shirt, even a tie, Max left the house. All the way to Watervliet, he tried to make sense of what was going on. Per usual, he found reasons for it, but not reliable ones. It wasn’t important though. Not anymore. It seemed paradoxical, but not much depended on his understanding or decisions. Something he refused to accept yesterday—today became a reality. He accepted it; he couldn’t do otherwise. He probably wouldn’t tell Anna, or anybody else, about his reconciliation with the idea that a little girl named Angelica, even though she hadn’t materialized, was running his mind. He wrote under her command. She told him what to do or where to go. No, he didn’t hear voices in his head—thank God for that. It made him glad. The information transferred to him on some inaccessible level. He didn’t understand it, didn’t see, and didn’t hear. It oozed through like frost on the windows.
It had happened before when he wrote, but now he felt it almost physically. The first line lay on his brain like a furrow. Then, the second one gently joined the first. The snowflakes of thought landed on the page, bearing the story. Angelica’s story. Max knew what his wife would say if he said that Angelica wasn’t a fictional character. She existed. A beautiful, redheaded girl. Now she was a teenager. A little clumsy, but charming. Sometimes she rebelled, but her mother, Wilma, couldn’t dream of a better child.
For her mother, Wilma. Her mother’s name was Wilma.
Max squeezed the wheel with all his might, fighting the cynicism and skepticism that had been his faithful friends for so many years. They tried to bring him to his senses, explain to him that nothing like this was possible. He had to collect himself and start thinking rationally. He just knew that they were no match for Angelica; she would win. She had won already, even though they didn’t hurry to admit defeat.
He drove slower than he would have liked, stuck in traffic for an hour because of an accident. There was white snow on the roadsides, and gray mixed with dirt on the road and in the sky.
He parked near the red brick house, but didn’t leave the car immediately. He sat inside and gazed at the house, hoping the woman would come out. He didn’t want to knock on the door and distract her from her work. Not just that, he didn’t want to scare her with his unexpected visit. He hadn’t called because Angelica decided he had to go.
He didn’t know how long he’d sat like that, buried in his monotonous thoughts, when the door opened and the woman came outside. She spotted the car and stopped, narrowing her eyes, trying to see the driver. He stepped out too, and waved his hand.
“Max Stevenson?” the woman gasped, and tucked the stray wisps of hair under her hat. The hat was blue, like her eyes, surrounded by thin wrinkles.
My mother didn’t live long enough to get wrinkles, Max thought.
“Me again. Hi. Sorry, I came without calling first.”
“Oh! Don’t say that. I told my friend all about you, but she didn’t believe me, just as I thought. Would you give me an autograph for her?”
“Auto … Sure, if you … Sure.”
“I was going to the Walgreens, but it can wait. It’s around the corner. I usually walk. Don’t like to drive in weather like this. Would you like to stop for a minute? I can make you hot tea. I don’t drink coffee. High blood pressure. I made blueberry muffins this morning. I sound silly. Sorry.”
“No, no. It’s not … silly at all.” Max wanted to get inside the house, but he wasn’t ready. It wasn’t the right time, and he didn’t know when the right time would come. “I promise, next time. Promise. I have to be somewhere soon … today.” Max stopped. The woman had such a kind face. If Max turned red easily, it would definitely happen now. He didn’t like lying to her. He wanted to sit in her kitchen and watch her make food. Something his mother had never done. “I have a question for you. Can I?”
“Did you come all this way to ask me one question?”
“I circled the town, looked around.”
“Of course you can ask.” The woman approached, observing Max.
“Do you know, by chance, a girl who may live here? Angelica?”
Max became panicky when the w
oman lost all color from her face, and put her blue gloved hand to the left side of her chest.
“Angelica?”
“I’m sorry. I …” Max took hold of the woman under her arm. “Did I say something wrong?”
“My daughter … My daughter’s name was Angelica.”
Max couldn’t hide his shock. He expected anything. A neighbor, a friend, but daughter … He hadn’t seen the whole picture. “Why was? You said it was her name?”
The woman looked down then back at Max. She had tears in her eyes.
“She’s … gone. It happened more than thirty years ago. She was sixteen. Went to the store and never came back. You hear stories like this in the news all the time. You had it in one of your books. She left the house and never came back. That’s what happened to my Angel. We couldn’t find her.”
“I am so sorry,” Max said sincerely. “No trace?”
The woman shook her head.
“I’m still waiting for my baby. Maybe she will come back one day.” She looked at Max with hope.
“It does,” he said. In his books, missing kids never came back. He wasn’t surprised the girl disappeared, but didn’t understand why he dreamed about her. If it happened so many years ago, he couldn’t have seen her. He didn’t believe this theory anymore though. It existed for other people. Who wouldn’t understand. “What did she look like?”
The land of dead flowers: (A serial killer thriller) Page 13
