Afterlife (14 page)

Julie pressed the buttons for the fifth and sixth floors, and the elevator lurched, shook slightly, and then moved upward with a slight whine.

“Do you know the people in 66S?” Julie asked, hesitantly.

“This building is the unfriendliest in the city,” the woman said, with the kind of cadence that made Julie think she’d used this line before. “I don’t even know my next-door neighbors. But you know, sometimes that’s a good thing. God knows I hear them enough. And someone on my hall has the yappiest dog alive. I love animals, but not that damn dog.”

After the woman had stepped off the elevator, she turned slightly, smiling. “I’m not saying your friends are bad. They just get noisy sometimes.”

“A herd of elephants,” Julie nodded. “I’ll tell them to take their shoes off next time.”

“Oh ha ha,” the woman laughed. The elevator door shut again. The woman’s pale round face, her dark hair, were all that Julie could see in the round window of the outer elevator door.

Julie drew the keys out of her pocket, clutching them tightly.

At the sixth floor, she got out, fully expecting a long hall with many apartments, but instead, there were only six, 66S being the very last.

At the door, she pressed the key into the deadbolt, and it turned.

She drew the key out.

She hesitated a moment, and then rapped lightly on the door. Then, she pressed the bell.

She waited for what seemed an eternity before trying the other key on the knob. It went in easily, and she turned it.

3

She stood in the doorway.

The air conditioning in the apartment was on high, and chilly. She could see a foyer that was made up of closets on either side, and a narrow hallway. The apartment must be a fairly large one—that was her first impression. The walls were white and off-white. There was an unshaded window at the very end of the foyer, allowing a smattering of light through its casementstyle windows.

“Hello?” she asked.

She stepped inside, closing the door behind her. She felt strangely comforted by the plastic bag with the book in it, beneath her arm. She felt as if she could just say that she thought it was someone else’s place, if caught. She could say something like, “I was given the keys—see? My husband gave them to me.” She felt her heart beating as if it were in her throat as she stepped across the floor. She took each step forward carefully, trying not to make a clicking sound with her sandals on the parquet.

When she got to the window, the apartment turned to the left, and beyond the wall that divided the foyer from the rest, it was enormous. It became a loft that seemed to be at least 2000 square feet or more, with exposed brick along one long wall, and a factory-like skylight above. It was oddly furnished—the lamps all seemed to be huddled at one end, while a broad leather sofa, love seat and two chairs were arranged alongside the far wall. The furnishings seemed years out of style, and pushed around as if intended for storage. Copper pots hung from the ceiling along the kitchen area, with a central marble island, and a bright rectangle of clean wall where the refrigerator should have been settled. There was a long butcher block table just under the enormous loft-length opaque window that was divided, factory-style, into several casements. A paleness to the room, as if it had not been dusted—or entered—for a long time.

For just a second, she thought she heard a noise behind her, and she glanced back for a second in case the woman who owned the apartment had come home—
what the hell are you doing here, Julie?
—but there was no one. She turned back around the corner of the hall, to the foyer, but no one had entered.

“Someone’s here,” she said aloud, as if it would make her feel safer.

What the hell are you doing here, Julie?

It was not her voice, within her mind, saying this.

She couldn’t identify it, but she had a sudden feeling as if someone nearby had whispered this.

What the hell are you doing here, Julie?

And then she smelled something. Something that became overpowering—not just a smell. A stench. It was the smell she knew from childhood when a dead animal had lain in a ditch for days. Her mind flashed on the image from Matt’s video of the dead dog in the road. It was growing—the smell was growing. She glanced at the walls of the apartment as if they held something threatening, as if she half expected to see bloody handprints.

Then she was sure she heard something move in the room beyond the living room. Someone was in the bedroom.

Something moved there.

She heard the tap, tap, tap of shoes on a floor. Someone was coming.

Her heartbeat seemed too noisy, as if it were not inside her at all, but outside of her body, a clock, ticking too fast.

The voice in her head grew louder, pounding within her mind:
What the hell are you doing here?

She saw the shadow of the person, first, in the open doorway across the room.

Then, she saw: a man standing there, only something was wrong. Something was messed up about his eyes, because it was as if his face was a blur of movement.

4

Julie took one step backward, then another.

He stood in the doorway, his face a fast-motion blur, his hands moving in what seemed like slow motion.

Then, she turned and hurried down into the foyer, and out of the apartment, shutting the door behind her, not bothering to lock it. Her heart beat rapidly—it felt as if it were thudding against her ribcage—and she pressed her back up against the hallway, looking back at the apartment.

She didn’t feel safe again until she was out on the street, out among the throngs of people along Hudson Street, moving as if they were fish in a murky sea.

She went into the Chelsea Clearwater movie theaters, and just sat through a movie she barely noticed, trying to erase the image of the faceless man from her mind. Then she felt that maybe it had been her mind, playing tricks, that it had been her fear, within her, perhaps building something up—and she was sure that there was no man there at all. That it was like a flash of seeing someone. Not a person at all. It was impossible for it to have been a person.

“The human mind cracks more easily than we suspect,” Eleanor had told her, in her first session after Hut’s death. “You need to be aware of it. Your brain is opening and closing doors. Some of them get slammed. Some get torn off their hinges. You bottle up too much, Julie, you don’t find a healthy way to let some of this out, it’ll rupture inside you. Just be prepared for when it happens.”

5

She left the movie before the halfway point, and, feeling better, called up Joe Perrin, and they met over at the Starbucks on 8
^th
Avenue. She felt as if she’d calmed down, finally, from that awful feeling she’d had.
That face that was not a face.

And finally, she told Joe about Hut’s death.

6

“Oh my God, Julie. Julie,” he said. He brought his chair around the small round table and wrapped his arms around her. She wept into his shoulder, forgetting the world of the coffeehouse, forgetting anything but the comfort he offered. “My poor baby,” he whispered.

7

Her tears dry, she drank some of the cappuccino. “God, you’d think I’d be all cried out by now. It’s been months.”

“Tears are one of those self-renewing resources. And it’s only been a few months. Healing takes time.” He pushed a small plate with a big black and white cookie on it toward her. “Hungee?” It was their joke word from years ago.

She broke off a piece of the cookie, and took a bite. “Mmm. Reminds me of all our adventures.”

“Most of which are best forgotten.”

“Oh, Joe. I feel…I feel like I’ve lost my soul or something.”

“Well, I think your soul’s intact. It’s your mind that’s a bit scattered.” He had his head down a bit and looked up to her with those warm brown eyes that seemed both playful and a little sad to her, like a boy playing peek-a-boo.

“I’m sorry I’ve been distant. All these years.”

“It’s okay. It’s only been a few years, really. I saw you when Livy was what—two and a half? It wasn’t that long ago. Life takes over,” he said. “Rick and I are practically hermits since we tied the knot. If he didn’t get me volunteering at the Center, I’d probably just live in my little office.”

“I bought one of your books today,” she brightened. She brought the package from Shakespeare & Company up, opening it.

“Ooh, which one?”

She drew out the book.
Dr. Notorious
. On the cover, the torso of a young man, and just a sliver of his chin.

“I hate that cover,” Joe said. “The book is about a guy in the 19
^th
century who goes to the South Pacific— after becoming sickened by European society, where he was a doctor. He falls in love on the islands, and then has to choose between his love for a man and his duty to his culture, to his family. And they put a twenty-yearold gym bunny right out of the New York City Sports Club on the cover to sell it. I could write a book about measles, and they’d put a cute guy’s butt on the front of the book. But, that’s show biz, as they say.”

“Speaking of show biz—you sold a book to the movies?”

“Sure. Everyone does. They pay you a few grand and you get to say maybe it’ll be a movie. But Hollywood is never making that movie, believe me. When my friend Chris Bram wrote
Father of Frankenstein
it got turned into the great movie,
Gods and Monsters
. Why? Because it’s a great story that people can relate to, whether it’s about being gay or not. Me, I sell them
View from the Pier
and they will never make that movie because no actor is going to want to play a guy who knows he’s gay, falls in love with a guy, and then stays in a marriage to destroy his wife and children and the guy he loves. It’s too…dark, I guess. Even my editor called it unsympathetic, and she liked it. You can’t make a movie about that and expect to sell tickets.”

“Sure they will. It sounds wonderful. Joe, I’m so happy for you, for all this. And I can’t wait to read this one. I haven’t kept up with your career as much as I should’ve.”

He shrugged. “It’s not exactly a career. What’s the other book?”

“It’s some psychic book. My mother pushed it on me, and in a weak moment I ordered it.”

“You believe in that stuff?”

“Not really.”

“I do,” he said. “Since my dad died. The day he died, I dreamed that he came to me and told me that he loved me. He had never said it before. Not in real life. He was a military bruiser, basically. He didn’t want to have a kid like me. Even when I was on the football team in high school, he thought I was too soft. He blamed mom’s family—because there was another gay guy—my uncle. He said it ran in families. But in the dream, he said he loved me.”

“Oh.”

“No, not ‘oh.’ When I woke up, I saw him. I saw him as clear as day. He was at the foot of my bed and he said, ‘I’m glad you found love, Joe. You have a lot to give. I love you, Jojo.’ And then, he faded.” His voice cracked a little, and she thought she caught a glimmer of a tear in his eye, but his smile belied any sadness. “Maybe it was, you know, a cobweb of wishful thinking. Or one of those hypnogogic things, where you’re still half asleep and a dream seems real even when you’re awake in your bedroom. But it was some kind of gift. I believe it. Maybe I choose to, because it makes it all easier. It didn’t change my core beliefs. But it showed me that there’s something else out there. Something we don’t yet understand. He was as real as you are, right here. I think maybe we have these kinds of experiences all the time, only we don’t know how much of a gift they are. And it made me remember all the good things. All the things about him I’d pushed aside because of our differences. All the wonderful things he had been to me, despite his worst nature.” Then, he gave her a look she thought of as his “wait a second!” expression. “You must’ve had some kind of…unusual experience…or you wouldn’t be picking up books on the afterlife, right?”

“No,” she said. Thinking of what she saw in Apartment 66S. The face that was not there. The blur of movement that was the figure of a man. Only not a man.
But I am losing it now. I am seeing things that are not there. I won’t mention this to Joe. Not yet. He’ll look at me sweetly and sadly and tell me that it’s normal to see faceless men after a tragic death.
“Nothing. I think mom wants me to feel better. She’s got the hots for this psychic.” She brought
The Life Beyond
out and showed the cover to him, with Michael Diamond on it.

“Oh, him,” Joe said. “He’s so serious looking, isn’t he? Like the Professor from
Gilligan’s Island
. I guess I’ve caught his show a couple of times. He’s a complete fake. He has to be. His stuff is too good. When a psychic’s that good, there’s some trick going on. I don’t think psychic stuff is like a McDonald’s or something. I don’t think one psychic can serve a billion customers. I think it’s more personal. You should have a psychic reading sometime. They can be really good. I know this woman who does them. It’s not creepy at all, believe me.”

8

After coffee, they walked through the old neighborhood. Joe updated her on each window, who lived there before, who had moved, who was turning into the cat lady, who had become the Neighborhood Watcher, and what had happened to the little old man in the fedora who used to feed pigeons on the rooftop, thus pissing off everyone who lived on the block because of the increased birdshit on the street. They wandered over to a bakery that was renowned for its cupcakes, and split one, and then went over to another bookshop nearby, called Three Lives & Company. It was a small, quaint bookshop packed with books. “Remember this place?”

She drew a blank. “Sure.”

He made a face that she could only classify as dimwitted. “
Julie.
It’s where we met.”

“Oh,” she said, clapping her hands together. “How could I forget
that?”

“Yeah, some strange chick coming up to me telling me that I shouldn’t read Mary McCarthy because she claimed she was a fascist, when in fact it was Cormac McCarthy’s
Blood Meridian
I had in my hand.”