Koontz, Dean R. - Strangers

by Strangers(Lit)

  Humor a gunman, she thought. Don't resist. Resisters get shot.

  "Move!" he said between clenched teeth, and he shoved her again.

  When he pushed her into a recessed doorway three-quarters of the way

  along the passage, not far from the single faint bulb at the end, he

  started talking filthy, telling her what he was going to do with her

  after he took her money, and even in the poor light she could see he

  held no weapon. Suddenly she had hope. His vocabulary of obscenities

  was blood-curdling, but his sexual threats were so stupidly repetitive

  that they were almost funny. She realized he was just a big dumb loser

  who relied on his size to get what he wanted. Men of his type seldom

  carried guns. His muscles gave him a false sense of invulnerability, so

  he probably had no fighting skill, either.

  While he was emptying the purse that she willingly relinquished, Ginger

  summoned all her courage and kicked him squarely in the crotch. He

  doubled over from the blow. She moved fast, seized one of his hands,

  and bent the index finger

  backward, savagely, until the pain must have been as excruciating as the

  throbbing in his bruised privates.

  Radical, violent, backward extension of the index finger could quickly

  incapacitate any man, regardless of his size and strength. By this

  action she was straining the digital nerve on the front of his hand

  while simultaneously pinching the highly sensitive median and radial

  nerves on the back. The intense pain also traveled into the acromial

  nerves in his shoulder, into his neck.

  He grabbed her hair with his free hand and pulled. That counterattack

  hurt, made her cry out, blurred her vision, but she gritted her teeth,

  endured the agony, and bent his captive finger even farther. Her

  relentless pressure quickly banished all thought of resistance from his

  mind. Involuntary tears burst from his eyes, and he dropped to his

  knees, squealing and cursing and helpless.

  "Let go of me! Let go of me, you bitch!"

  Blinking sweat out of her eyes, tasting the same salty effluence at the

  corners of her mouth, Ginger gripped his index finger with both hands.

  She shuffled cautiously backward and led him out of the passage in an

  awkward three-point crawl, as if dragging a dangerous dog on a tightened

  choke-chain.

  Scuttling, scraping, hitching, and humping himself along on one hand and

  two knees, he glared up at her with eyes muddied by a murderous urge.

  His mean, lumpish face became less visible as they moved away from the

  light, but she could see that it was so contorted by pain and fury and

  humiliation that it did not seem human: a goblin face. And in a shrill

  goblin voice he squealed a chilling array of dire imprecations.

  By the time they had clumsily negotiated fifteen yards of the

  serviceway, he was overwhelmed by the agony in his hand and by the

  sickening waves of pain rushing outward through his body from his

  injured testicles. He gagged, choked, and vomited on himself.

  She still did not dare let go of him. Now, given the opportunity, he

  would not merely beat her senseless: he would kill her. Disgusted and

  terrified, she urged him along even faster than before.

  Reaching the sidewalk with the befouled and chastened mugger in tow, she

  saw no pedestrians who could call the police for her, so she forced her

  humbled assailant into the middle of the street, where passing traffic

  came to a standstill at this unexpected spectacle.

  When the cops finally arrived, Ginger's relief was exceeded by that of

  the thug who had attacked her.

  In part, people underestimated Ginger because she was small: five-two, a

  hundred and two pounds, not physically imposing, certainly not

  intimidating. Likewise, she was shapely but not a blond bombshell. She

  was blond, however, and the particular silvery shade of her hair was

  what caught a man's eye, whether he was seeing her for the first time or

  the hundredth. Even in bright sunshine her hair recalled moonlight. That

  ethereally pale and radiant hair, her delicate features, blue eyes that

  were the very definition of gentleness, an Audrey Hepburn neck, slender

  shoulders, thin wrists, long-fingered hands, and her tiny waist-all

  contributed to a misleading impression of fragility. Furthermore, she

  was quiet and watchful by nature, two qualities that might be mistaken

  for timidity. Her voice was so soft and musical that anyone could

  easily fail to apprehend the self-assurance and underlying authority in

  those dulcet tones.

  Ginger had inherited her silver-blond mane, cerealian eyes, beauty, and

  ambition from her mother, Anna, a five-foot-ten Swede.

  "You're my golden girl," Anna said when Ginger graduated from sixth

  grade at the age of nine, two years ahead of schedule, after being

  promoted twice in advance of her peers.

  Ginger had been the best student in her class and had received a

  gilt-edged scroll in honor of her academic excellence. Also, as one of

  three student performers who had provided entertainment before the

  graduation ceremony, she had played two pieces on the piano-Mozart,

  followed by a ragtime tune-and had brought the surprised audience to its

  feet.

  "Golden girl," Anna said, hugging her all the way home in the car.

  Jacob drove, blinking back tears of pride. Jacob was an emotional man,

  easily moved. Somewhat embarrassed by the frequency with which his eyes

  moistened, he usually tried to conceal the depth of his feelings by

  blaming his tears or reddened eyes on a never-specified allergy. "Must

  be unusual

  pollens in the air today," he said twice on the way home from

  graduation. "Irritating pollens."

  Anna said, "It's all come together in you, bubbeleh. My best features

  and your father's best, and you're going places, by God, you just wait

  and see if you aren't. High school, then college, then maybe law school

  or medical school, anything you want to do. Anything."

  The only people who never underestimated Ginger were her parents.

  They reached home, turned into the driveway. Jacob stopped short of the

  garage and said, in surprise, "What are we doing?

  Our only child graduates from sixth grade, our child who thinks she can

  do absolutely anything-will probably marry the King of Siam and ride a

  giraffe to the moon, our child wears her first cap and gown and we

  aren't celebrating? Should we drive into Manhattan, have maybe

  champagne at the Plaza?

  Dinner at the Waldorf? No. Something better. Only the best for our

  giraffe-riding astronaut. We'll go to the soda fountain at Walgreen's!"

  "Yeah!" Ginger said.

  At Walgreen's, they, must have been as odd a family as the soda jerk had

  ever seen: the Jewish father, not much bigger than a jockey, with a

  Germanic name but a Sephardic complexion; the Swedish mother, blond and

  gloriously feminine, five inches taller than her husband; and the child,

  a wraith, an elf, petite though her mother was not, fair though her

  father was dark, with a beauty altogether different from her mother's-a

  more subtle beauty with a fey qualit
y. Even as a child, Ginger knew

  that strangers, seeing her with her parents, must think she was adopted.

  From her father, Ginger had inherited her slight stature, soft voice,

  intellect, and gentleness.

  She loved them both so completely and intensely that, as a child, her

  vocabulary had been insufficient to convey her feelings. Even as an

  adult, she could not find the words to express what they had meant to

  her. They were both gone now, to early graves.

  When Anna died in a traffic accident, shortly after Ginger's twelfth

  birthday, the common wisdom among Jacob's relatives was that both Ginger

  and her father would be adrift without the Swede, whom the Weiss clan

  had long ago ceased to regard as an interloping gentile and for whom

  they had developed both respect and love. Everyone knew how close the

  three had been, but, more important, everyone knew that Anna had been

  the engine powering the family's success. It was Anna who had taken the

  least ambitious of the Weiss brothers-Jacob the dreamer, Jacob the meek,

  Jacob with his nose always in a detective novel or a science fiction

  storyand made something of him. He had been an employee in a jewelry

  store when she married him, but by the time she died he owned two shops

  of his own.

  After the funeral, the family gathered at Aunt Rachel's big house in

  Brooklyn Heights. As soon as she could slip away, Ginger sought solace

  in the dark solitude of the pantry. Sitting on a stool, with the aroma

  of many spices heavy in the air of that narrow place, praying to God to

  bring her mother back, she heard Aunt Francine talking to Rachel in the

  kitchen. Fran was bemoaning the grim future awaiting Jacob and his

  little girl in a world without Anna:

  "He won't be able to keep the business going, you know he won't, not

  even once the grief has passed and he goes back to work. The poor

  lufunensch. Anna was his common sense and his motivation and his best

  adviser, and without her in five years he'll be lost."

  They were underestimating Ginger.

  To be fair, Ginger was only twelve, and even though she was already in

  tenth grade, she was still a child in most people's eyes. No one could

  have foreseen that she would fill Anna's shoes so quickly. She shared

  her mother's love of cooking, so in the weeks following the funeral she

  pored through cookbooks, and, with the amazing diligence and

  perseverance that were her trademarks, she acquired what culinary skills

  she had not already learned. The first time relatives came for dinner

  after Anna's death, they exclaimed over the food. Homemade potato rolls

  and cheese kolacky. Vegetable soup with plump cheese and beef kreplach

  floating in it. Schrafe fish as an appetizer. Braised veal paprika,

  tzimmes with prunes and potatoes, creamy macaroni patties fried in hot

  fat and served in tomato sauce. A choice of baked peach pudding or

  apple schalet for dessert. Francine and Rachel thought Jacob was hiding

  a marvelous new housekeeper in the kitchen. They were disbelieving when

  he pointed to his daughter. Ginger did not think she had done anything

  remarkable. A cook was needed, so she became a cook.

  She had to take care of her father now, and she applied herself to that

  responsibility with vigor and enthusiasm. She cleaned house swiftly,

  efficiently, and with a thoroughness that defied her Aunt Francine's sub

  rosa inspections for dust and grime. Although she was only twelve, she

  learned to plan a budget, and before she was thirteen she was in charge

  of all the household accounts.

  At fourteen, three years younger than her classmates, Ginger was the

  valedictorian of her high-school class. When it became known that she

  had been accepted by several universities but had chosen Barnard,

  everyone began to wonder whether, at the tender age of fourteen, she had

  finally taken too big a bite and would choke trying to swallow it.

  Barnard was more difficult than high school. She no longer learned

  faster than the other kids, but she learned as well as the best of them,

  and her grade average was frequently 4.0, never less than 3.8-and that

  was the semester in her junior year when Jacob was sick with his first

  bout of pancreatitis, when she spent every evening at the hospital.

  Jacob lived to see her get her first degree, was sallow and weak when

  she received her medical degree, even hung on tenaciously until she had

  served six months of her internship. But after three bouts of recurring

  pancreatitis, he developed pancreatic cancer, and he died before Ginger

  had finally made up her mind to go for a surgical residency at Boston

  Memorial instead of pursuing a career in research.

  Because she had been given more years with Jacob than she had been given

  with her mother, her feelings for him were understandably more profound,

  and the loss of him was even more devastating than the loss of Anna had

  been. Yet she dealt with that time of trouble as she dealt with every

  challenge that came her way, and she finished her internship with

  excellent reports and superb recommendations.

  She delayed her residency by going to California, to Stanford for a

  unique and arduous two-year program of additional study in

  cardiovascular pathology. Thereafter, following a one-month vacation

  (by far the longest rest she had ever taken), she moved East again, to

  Boston, acquired a mentor in Dr. George Hannaby (chief of surgery at

  Memorial and renowned for his pioneering achievements in various

  cardiovascular surgical procedures), and served the first three-quarters

  of her two-year residency without a hitch.

  Then, on a Tuesday morning in November, she went into Bernstein's Deli

  to buy a few items, and terrible things began happening. The incident

  of the black gloves. That was the start of it.

  Tuesday was her day off, and unless one of her patients had a

  life-threatening crisis, she was neither needed nor expected at the

  hospital. During her first two months at Memorial, with her usual

  enthusiasm and tireless drive, she had gone to work on most of her days

  off, for there was nothing else that she would rather do. But George

  Hannaby put an end to that habit as soon as he learned of it. George

  said that the practice of medicine was high-pressure work, and that

  every physician needed time off, even Ginger Weiss.

  "If you drive yourself too hard, too fast, too relentlessly," he said,

  "it's not only you that suffers, but the patient as well."

  So every Tuesday she slept an extra hour, showered, and had two cups of

  coffee while she read the morning paper at the kitchen table by the

  window that looked out on Mount Vernon Street. At ten o'clock she

  dressed, walked several blocks to Bernstein's on Charles Street, and

  bought pastrami, corned beef, homemade rolls or sweet pumpernickel,

  potato salad, blintzes, maybe some lox, maybe some smoked sturgeon,

  sometimes cottage cheese vareniki to be reheated at home. Then she

  walked home with her bag of goodies and ate shamelessly all day while

  she read Agatha Christie, Dick Francis, John D. MacDonald, Elmore

  Leonard, sometimes
a Heinlein. While she had not yet begun to like

  relaxation half as much as she liked work, she gradually began to enjoy

  her time off, and Tuesday ceased to be the dreaded day it had been when

  she first began her reluctant observance of the six-day week.

  That bad Tuesday in November started out fine-cold with a gray winter

  sky, brisk and invigorating rather than frigidand her routine brought

  her to Bernstein's (crowded, as usual) at ten-twenty-one. Ginger

  drifted from one end of the long counter to the other, peering into

  cabinets full of baked goods, looking through the cold glass of the

  refrigerated display cases, choosing from the array of delicacies with

  gluttonous pleasure. The room was a stewpot of wonderful smells and

  happy sounds: hot dough, cinnamon; laughter; garlic, cloves; rapid

  conversations in which the English was spiced with everything from

  Yiddish to Boston accents to current rock-and-roll slang; roasted

  hazelnuts, sauerkraut; pickles, coffee; the clink-clank of silverware.

  When Ginger had everything she wanted, she paid for it, pulled on her

  blue knit gloves, and hefted the bag, going past the small tables at

  which a dozen people were having a late breakfast, then headed for the

  door.

  She held the grocery bag in her left arm, and with her free hand she

  tried to put her wallet back in the purse that was slung over her right

  shoulder. She was looking down at the purse as she reached the door,

  and a man in a gray tweed topcoat and a black Russian hat entered the

  deli at that moment, his attention as distracted as hers; they collided.

  As cold air swept in from outside, she stumbled backward a step. He

  grabbed at her bag of groceries to keep it from falling, then steadied