Impersonal Attractions (31 page)

Over his purring she could hear the sirens draw closer and closer to her building. Any minute they would be here, and some nice man in blue, maybe even Sean, would come in and pick her up and put her back in bed.

Maybe when Samantha came she would make her hot chocolate. Tom would pull her comforter up and draw the curtains, and it would be all cozy inside, with her friends sitting on the edge of her bed laughing and soothing all the bad away, telling her bedtime stories until she fell asleep.

Annie floated, just like Mimi told them to do in her soft voice at the end of each exercise class, when they lay spent on the floor. “Imagine yourself on a white, fluffy cloud floating out over the Bay like a magic carpet, floating to wherever you want to be.” Where did she want to be? Somewhere far away from all this for a while. Somewhere with a beach, good food, a scrumptious hotel. In Italy, in Positano, perhaps, at the Hotel Siranuse.

She could start making plans any minute now, after someone put her back to bed. Along with Hudson, who had fallen asleep and was twitching. Dreaming of bacon-and-egg sandwiches, no doubt.

She heard a noise. Ah, that must be the police now. She opened her eyes.

But the noise was coming from the wrong direction, not from down the hall. It was from the other side. She turned her head.

There, crouched on her fire escape, outside her dining room window, holding a long white box in one arm, was Eddie Simms.

*

He grinned at her.

Oh, no, she mouthed. This isn’t really happening. I’ve fallen asleep here on the floor, and I just have to make myself wake up and he will be gone.

She squeezed her eyes tight, then looked again.

The tip of his silver knife winked at her as he slid it under the bottom of the window frame.

The lock will hold, she thought.

But of course it wasn’t locked. Not after Quynh had gone out through it.

The window began to rise and her body went slack. Hudson jumped off her and padded into the bedroom, taking the warm spot on her chest with him. The last breath of hope flew out that open window. It was useless. What difference did it make if it were locked or not? He still had his glass cutter. Or he could just hurl himself through. No matter what, the man was going to kill her.

Look at him. He walked right in the window and across her dining-room table. Right past her typewriter. Well, somebody else would have to write about those cute meetings. She’d never know how it all would have turned out if she’d become a rich and famous author. Because Eddie Simms, jumping off the table and landing like a cat six feet from her, was going to cut off all her words.

He stood and looked down at her.

“I brought you some flowers, Miss Anne.” He smiled.

He set the box down on her kitchen cabinet and undid the green-satin ribbon. Off came the lid, and there they were in his hands. The beautiful, long-stemmed white roses.

Beautiful white roses for her bier.

She looked up into his smile, his eyes. Those clear, bottomless, pale blue eyes. The eyes of a madman.

Once again her tongue seemed to work on its own, making no connection with her conscious mind. She heard her voice, honeydripping, revert back to its Atlanta home.

“Would you please put them in some water for me, Eddie?”

“Why, yes, ma’am,” he answered in kind. “I’d be more than happy to.” He turned and opened a cabinet, looking for a vase.

“There. Down under the china cabinet behind the table. Open that door,” she directed him.

He turned and walked back toward where he’d just come in through the window. Annie reached for the dead-bolt key still lying on the floor near her and held it tightly.

But even if I can reach the lock, she thought, I can’t get away from him. I can’t walk. And he’s not going to gallantly hand me my crutches.

She could hear voices coming down the hall. Hushed male voices and muffled footsteps. But they were too late. They were outside and she was locked in with death.

Couldn’t Eddie hear them? She looked back at him. He was standing at the sink, filling the vase with water.

She had to laugh. Her murderer couldn’t hear the police standing just outside her door because the water was running.

Eddie’d set the roses down on the cabinet and crouched down with her as she lay, still on the floor.

“What’s so funny?” He scowled.

“I’m not laughing at you, Eddie. Isn’t it funny, though, that all this time I knew who it was. It was you.”

“Did you? Did you know that it was me?” He spoke like a child proud of his accomplishments.

Keep it going. Keep it going, she thought.

“Yes, I knew all the time. You’re really famous, you know.”

Careful, careful, you don’t know where his line is.

“Well, now.” He smiled. She could smell the Picayunes on his breath. Had he sat out on her fire escape and had a smoke? She asked him.

“No,” he said, “on the roof.”
That
was it. He’d just walked up the stairs to the roof when he left her door and on down the fire escape.

“I think you’re a very big man, Eddie,” she crooned, stroking his face with her empty hand. Her fingers touched the stitches of a wound she’d made with her keys in the garage.

He drew back.

“You hurt me.” The voice was petulant.

“I didn’t mean to.” Oh, shit, it wasn’t going to work.

“But you hurt me.” He pouted. And then the little-boy voice changed to ice. “Now I’m going to hurt you.”

Could he see her heart pounding? About to thud out of her chest?

Now it comes. This is it. How do you like your scared-eyed little girl, Mr. Death?

He straddled her, crushing his weight down on her bruised body. The pain in her right leg was excruciating.

She looked into those gone-gone-long-gone, pale blue eyes, and then all the color in the picture disappeared. Black and white, her whole world dependent on those eyes, suddenly reduced to black and white.

Where were they? All those men in blue? Black and white. Only black and white. Were they standing right outside her door, listening to her die?

“Oh,” she moaned.

Eddie put his face right down to hers, murmured, “Yes, yes.”

Then he leaned back and the knife flashed before her. It waved, teased, tantalized, come to poppa, little girl, just above her throat.

This is it. Last Chanceville. Now or never. Do or die.

She flung her closed hand back and released it. The bright new brass key flew toward the space where the pane had once been.

Just as the door disappeared. Poof! Vaporized as the good guys rushed in.

It was a magic show. Puff of smoke. First you don’t see them, now you do.

Blue steel pointed. Shouts. Heavy boots on hardwood floor.

“Drop it! Now! Let her go! Now, man, now!”

Then in a sleight of hand, she was levitated. Lifted. Floating. But there it was. You could see it. Not such a clever trick, supported from behind as Eddie held her, dragged her back, back into the bedroom, away from the men with the steel-blue guns.

“Shoot, shoot!” she shouted. But Sean, yes, it was Sean, she knew he would come, but what help were he and all his troops standing there watching Eddie drag her with a knife at her throat?

He inched slowly, back, back. In seconds he would be back against the wall, back against the windows. No place to run hide hide run hide there, Mr. Boogey Man. What was going to happen to her then?

Hudson watched it all from his perch atop the bureau. The men in blue frozen, like children playing Statues. Afraid to move, or they’d lose the game. Annie, in a long, white, cotton gown, clutched against the stranger. Close, as if in an embrace, dancing. In little, tiny, sliding steps, and then dancing dancing dancing a jig as Annie’s cast caught in a throw rug and the rhythm got all crazy and they started to boogie-boogie, slip and slide, Annie leaning forward, the stranger back, his eyes wild, darting.

Hudson, claws unsheathed, pounced.

Eddie never saw him coming.

But it was enough. Enough to throw him finely, finally, off balance in this world where he’d always been out of kilter, out of synch.

Annie fell forward, face down. Hudson bounced free, frightened, hissing, furious.

Eddie fell backward and he flew through the window with the greatest of ease. He soared to freedom, the freedom of darkness, of final forgetfulness and forgiveness five long stories down.

At the bottom, beneath his head, a red, red rose of blood blossomed and then bloomed out of season. And the icy light in those pale blue eyes switched off.

FORTY-SEVEN

T
hey were a jolly threesome sitting at a table outside in the February sunshine. Quynh was washing down a huge slice of chocolate cake with a glass of milk. Sam smiled at Annie, sunning her pale right leg, recently freed from its cast.

“What a day!” Sam exclaimed. It was, indeed. Yet another perfect blue sky, the air crisp and snappy after a couple of days of rain. Sweater weather, wintertime in San Francisco. It was high noon at Enrico’s Sidewalk Café in North Beach, the street filled with shoppers carrying Chinese ducks, Italian bread, businessmen with newspapers, mothers corralling their broods.

Sam nodded at the pile of travel folders in front of Annie. “How can you leave all this?”

“I’m not leaving, goose, it’s just a well-deserved vacation. A couple of weeks in Italy. Linguine. Calamari. Risotto. Great, gorgeous mushrooms. The beach at
Positano. Maybe a dash down to Sicily. Sure you don’t want to join me?”

“It’s awfully tempting, my friend, awfully tempting.”

Sitting between them, Quynh suddenly gasped. They turned to her. Quynh’s eyes were saucer wide, her mouth open.

She was staring with a gaze so intense that its object at the next table, a bald, bearded man in a crew-necked sweater and jeans, turned his head.

“Hello, small wonder,” he said to Quynh. The stranger was her hero, the poet Shel Silverstein. Her dream had come true.

“Would you like some chocolate cake?” she offered.

He roared with delight and, with a nod at the two women, scooped up both the cake and Quynh, lifted her and gave her a kiss on the cheek before he plopped her into a chair at his table. Within seconds, Quynh was reciting
her
poetry to him. He smiled and nodded and frowned in all the right places.

“After this, how do you ever convince her that fairy tales don’t come true?” Sam asked.

“You don’t.”

“Then here’s to fairy tales.” Sam raised her cup of cappuccino. “And to Italy.”

“You’re coming?”

Sam nodded.

“Can’t have my best friend in the whole, wide world going off on an adventure without me, now can I?”

Their laughter floated up into the clear, bright air, circled around the pointed top of the Transamerica Pyramid, and hung a left out over the Bay.