From the Chrysalis (49 page)

“Listen, Liza,” Gold shouted, his voice so loud she could hear him even though she was almost halfway out her door by then, heading for the back stairs. “If he comes to you,
and you know he will,
do the right thing. Turn him in. That’s all you can—”

Her legs felt so stiff.
Run,
she told herself,
run! Down nine flights of stairs, out behind the garbage cans, then follow the stream to the other side of town. Careful, careful, watch your step. The baby …
 

By herself, she had walked along the stream many times, dreaming, so she knew how to get to the highway from there. It might take a while, but there was no other way.
 

Luckily the only person she encountered in the stairwell was a lonely, drunken foreign student on the fifth floor landing who looked like she’d have trouble describing her own kin, let alone a white girl on the run. A fugitive. My God, she and Dace were now fugitives from the law. What if there was a shootout?
Don’t be stupid,
she told herself. It would never come to that. This wasn’t television or the movies. It was just her life, her crazy life.
 

Run, just run. Don’t stop. Watch your footing, you fool.

It was a long way down, but she made it to the bottom of the stairs and slipped out the back door. She heard somebody whistling and saw a plainclothes policeman approach the rear of the student residence from the opposite side. He missed her by inches in the dark. She crouched behind the closest dumpster, watching him. If he glanced in her direction, he would see her eyes glowing like a feral cat’s in the dark. Her hamstrings started to ache. At the entrance to the residence, the policeman looked both ways then slipped a credit card into the lock.
 

Joe Accardo would probably phone later on, looking for the scoop, but by then she was on her way to Trenton in a National Grocer truck, clutching her scarf around her throat, listening to the driver complain about his wife. The burly, black-haired man was about forty with sideburns and a moustache, and he thoughtfully shared the sandwiches his wife had packed, white turkey on rye with lots of mayo. He even offered her a beer from a six pack under his seat.
 

He told her she looked a little peaked. An old fashioned word, she thought, glancing at him with surprise. A pretty girl shouldn’t study so much, ha, ha. Shouldn’t hitchhike either. Where was her boyfriend on Christmas Night? She had one, didn’t she? He knew what little co-eds were like. Long hair, hot pants, like to dance …
 

Yeah sure, Liza said, playing along. By now she was too paralyzed with anxiety to even think up an excuse for her flight.
Please God,
she thought, trying to look past the man’s lewd idea of jokes.
Please be all talk and no action.
 

At her pace, it took almost an hour to hike along the river to the highway. The ride to Trenton should have only taken another hour or so, but an accident near Belleville held her and her rescuer hostage, taking too much time. Time she didn’t have.

Chapter 35

Shelter

Sleep, my darling
,
sleep;

The pity of it all

Is all we compass if

We watch disaster fall.

Put off your twenty-odd

Encumbered years and creep

Into the only heaven,

The robbers’ cave of sleep

*[ MacNeice, Louis, “Cradle Song”]

Thank God, thank God, thank God!

Dace stepped out of the shadows when she arrived at Mel’s late that night. Apparently he’d been waiting for hours, though he’d occasionally snuck into the basement of the house to get warm. Well, why the hell not?
 

He was there!
 

Breathless, wild-eyed, her bell-bottom jeans sodden with snow, she stood frozen for a moment, staring, slightly shocked to see him standing next to a blue fir, dead centre on the Melvilles’ lawn. Behind him the windows of the Melvilles’ red brick split level house glowed, competing with the multicoloured Christmas lights outlining every door frame, every eave. Besides being cold, he had a three-inch-long cut on his chest. He had lots of penicillin so it would be all right, he assured her. He opened both his cotton doctor’s shirt and his thin jacket to show her. He was coatless. High spots of red blazed on his cheeks.

She’d only had to walk a block from where the truck driver dropped her off, but she’d forgotten her boots and her running shoes were soaked. Her nose was dripping. She found a crumpled kleenex in her pocket and blew into it, still staring at his face. He looked much older, but so dear, so …
 

She lunged forward, trying to hug him without pressing too hard against his hurt chest. She could barely stop herself from sinking her fingers into the lank hair curling at the back of his neck. Although she had hoped to find him here in Trenton, she hadn’t really expected him.
 

“The basement door was unlocked, wasn’t it?” She took his face in her hands. It was slick with sweat, although his teeth were chattering. My God, it had been months since she’d touched him, except in her dreams. But he still smelled the same and oh, he would taste so good. She fell on him, kissing him over and over, wanting to swallow him whole. He held onto her like he would never let go.

When her bag slipped from her shoulder to the ground, she stopped kissing him long enough to kick it under the fir tree with one foot. “Mel said it’s always unlocked. Nothing bad ever happens to them.”
 

Glancing in both directions, she grabbed his arm and tugged him, wanting to take him somewhere—anywhere but out here in the open where all the neighbours could see. “Let’s get inside. You look like a bum even in the doctor’s clothes.”

“Thanks, lady.”
 

She stepped back a little and took another look at him. “Why are you sweating? And your hair—what have you done to your hair?” she asked, her voice rising. “It’s all slicked back, kind of Mohawk style. Looks almost black.”

“Shhh. It’s Doc’s Brylcreem.
A little dab will do ya
…,” he sang off-key. “I took that and his scissors, too,” he said, stopping to kiss her again. “God, I’ve been wanting to kiss you for so long—all through that frigging trial while you sat there looking like you were at a public hanging and I was next.”

“Great. So that’s what Gold meant when he said you were armed. Are they big scissors?” she asked, steering him through a rose arbour to the yard behind the house. He stopped her just before they collided with a bird feeder on a pole. “Oh, yeah, well, they’re pretty big. Put them away for now,” she ordered, then gasped, startled by a fake deer. The swimming pool must be covered. She couldn’t see it in the dark under the snow.
 

Ah, good. There was the basement door. She felt a bit like Dorothy trying to escape the tornado in
The Wizard of Oz
. “Hurry, Dace. If anybody sees us, they’ll think it’s Mel’s father, that he’s having some kind of romantic assignation! His grandmother … oh, there’ll be hell to pay. Oh my God, I just heard somebody come out on the front porch.”

“Shh, it’s just some neighbours. They’ll be gone in moment,” he said, his arm around her shoulders, his dead weight almost drilling her into the frozen ground. “Big shebang here tonight, a drop-in affair. Everybody’s half-corked, but it works for me. If anybody saw me, and I don’t think they did, they probably thought I was with somebody else. There are lots of strangers in town, people with out-of-town guests. Stop pulling me, Liza. I can’t hang around here much longer, skulking in shadows. Even the cops aren’t that stupid. If they don’t find you in rez, they might think about coming here next.”

“All the more reason to get into the basement. Quick. This way,” she said, bending to lift the storm cellar door off the lawn. The latch slipped in her cold hands, but he came forward and grabbed it.

“I know, I know. Jesus, I’ve been alternately boiling and freezing my ass off for the last two hours, running in and out. I’ve got chills, I guess. Where the hell have you been? I spent half an hour in payphone at a gas station, calling collect.”

“My God. How many people saw you?”

“I dunno. Not too many people; the gas station was closed.
Merry Christmas
, I kept saying, like I was making a bunch of Christmas calls. There was no answer at the rez. I couldn’t even raise the switchboard, so I called our parents. They were all wrecks, although I don’t think your mother even realized who I was. Your father—fuck, I’m sorry, darling, but is that redneck really related to you and me?
I won’t accept the charges,
he said. Then I called Mel’s.
Guess who?
I said and somebody goes,
Oh, don’t try to fool me, Howard. Patty said you’d be calling for directions
and they told me how to get here. Good people, the salt of the earth. Little darling, you could do much worse.” He stopped, his teeth chattering again.
 

Liza looked at him in amazement. He had never talked so much. “Slow down, Dace, slow down. It’s okay.”

“I probably could have waltzed right in the front door, but then I wouldn’t have been able to watch for you. Mel’s with a hot little number in a blue velvet dress, but she doesn’t hold a candle to you. Have you slept with him yet?”

“What did you say?” she asked. She didn’t move quickly enough to avoid a smack on her rear.

“You heard me,” he said with some difficulty. His voice, with each little exertion he made, had begun to come in short gasps.

“No, of course I haven’t. I’m like you. I don’t like doing what I’m told,” she lied, edging down the wooden steps as quietly as she could. He closed the heavy door stealthily over their heads, and she felt as if he were sealing them in a tomb. “There’s another exit from down here. A side door. This house is corner lot so it goes out onto a different street.”

“I …” he tried to say, going down a few more stairs.
 

“Dace, for God’s sake, stop trying to talk. You’ve been practically babbling! It’s hard to understand you when your teeth keep making that noise. And it’s annoying besides. Are you all right? You should have been at the border by now! It’s almost a four hour drive to Niagara Falls, even from here. The Peace Bridge …”

“Baby, I know that’s what we talked about, but I can’t go that way.”

“What do you mean? You can’t cross at Thousand Islands. It’s much too close.”

He paused for a moment at the bottom of the stairs, resting his hot face against a cool cinder block wall and breathing hard. “It won’t work,” he managed. “The trucker who gave me a ride had a CB radio. They had a description, but fortunately it didn’t match mine. Still, they say I’m armed and dangerous. All major checkpoints are closed. The moment they sober up and get the right picture, I’m screwed.”

She reached out a hand towards his shoulder but there were obstacles in the dark. She’d only been in the place once before. “Oops. I forgot how much junk there is down here,” she whispered, bending down to nurse a bruised shin. “The Melvilles don’t throw anything away. It foils intruders, I suppose. I can’t see—did you find a flashlight?—oh, good. Be careful, don’t flash it around like that.”

“Would you stop telling me what to do?”

“There’s a bomb shelter in here someplace. Mel showed me. They almost never use it. Behind some tools on a fake wall.”

“I already found it,” he said, pointing proudly. “There was a razor there, so I had a shave in the laundry tub or you might not have recognized me. Cut a bit of my hair, too.”

“You didn’t!” Liza dashed over and stared in horror at the deep tub on the right, thickly coated with his reddish dark hair. “My God,” she scolded, scooping large clumps up and stuffing them in her pockets before turning on both taps to rinse the rest of the evidence away. “You left hair in the sink!”