Nightwatcher (7 page)

Allison pokes around inside her bag, looking for her keys. “Uh-oh.”

“What’s wrong?”

“My keys . . .” Suddenly remembering where she put them, she unzips the lining pocket. “Oh, thank goodness. I thought I lost them.”

“That would not be good.”

“No, but Kristina—do you know Kristina Haines? She lives upstairs?”

“Yeah, I know Kristina.”

The bit of edge in his voice causes something to click in Allison’s brain, and she remembers what Kristina said the other day about married men.

Is it possible that Kristina and Mack . . . ?

“What about her?” Mack is asking.

As Kristina herself said, anything’s possible. Even carrying on a sordid affair right under Allison’s nose—not to mention Carrie’s.

For some reason, she’d really like to believe that Mr. Nice Guy here is happily married. Somebody has to be, right? Somebody other than her brother in Nebraska, anyway.

Brett got married right out of high school. His wife is from Hayes Township and her name is Cynthia Louise. Naturally, everyone calls her Cindy-Lou—except Brett, who calls her Cindy Lou-Who.

And Allison, who insists on calling her just plain Cindy.

Her brother lives with his wife and their kids on Cindy’s parents’ cattle farm—a fate worse than death, Allison thinks, but she’d never say it to Brett.

No, because if she did, she’s pretty sure he’d say the same thing about her living here, and she really doesn’t want to hear it.

“Kristina . . .” Mack prods.

“No, Allison.”

“No—I mean, you were saying something about Kristina?”

“Oh! Right.” Allison clears her throat. “Just—we gave each other spare sets of keys a while back, but I wouldn’t want to wake her up at this hour to get mine. Anyway . . . now that I have them . . .” She jangles the keychain and checks her watch. “Wow—it’s really late. I’d better go in. Big day tomorrow.”

“Yeah? What’s going on?”

She smiles. “You really want to know? This maternity clothes designer, Liz Lange, is doing the first Fashion Week maternity show ever and she’s actually using pregnant models.”

“That’s . . . great.” Mack isn’t smiling, and he suddenly seems very interested in tapping a nonexistent ash from the end of his cigarette.

Did I say something wrong?
Allison wonders.

She hesitates for a moment. “Well, good night. I’d better go get some sleep.”

“Wish I could do the same thing.”

“Why can’t you?”

“Insomnia.”

“Oh.” She eyes his drink and cigarette, wondering whether she should inform him that alcohol and nicotine aren’t exactly sleep aids.

Probably not. He probably already knows that, and if he doesn’t, why should she be the bearer of bad news?

“Maybe you should try warm milk or something,” she suggests.

“That would be like trying to put down an elephant with a Tylenol PM.”

“Well then maybe you should try a tranquilizer dart.”

Her quip is rewarded with an actual laugh.

“Believe me, I’ve tried just about everything. I’ve been dealing with this for as long as I can remember.”

“That stinks.”

“Yeah . . . but that’s how I’m wired. I’m used to it. Like Zevon says, I’ll sleep when I’m dead, right?”

“Zevon?”

“Warren. Warren Zevon.”

She shrugs.

“Are you too young to know that song?”

“I’m twenty-four.”

“Yeah . . . too young.” He grins and shakes his head.

“How old are you?”

“I told you—look it up. But here’s a hint: I’m old enough to have listened to Zevon’s first album as a kid. He was a friend of my dad’s. Anyway, it’s a good song. ‘I’ll sleep when I’m dead.’ And that’s my motto.”

She smiles, though for some reason, what he’s saying doesn’t sit well with her.

Ten minutes later, as she crawls into her own bed and closes her eyes, those words are still echoing in her head.

I’ll sleep when I’m dead . . .

PART II

Hell is empty and all the devils are here.

William Shakespeare,
The Tempest

Chapter Three

September 12, 2001

New York City

3:07
A.M.

T
he police officer, wearing his NYPD uniform and a bright orange reflective vest, materializes in front of Jerry the moment he rounds the corner onto West Broadway.

“Sorry, buddy. You can’t go down there.”

“Look! Look what they did!” Jerry points with a trembling hand to where flames still burn in the night, down at the far end of a dust-coated thoroughfare lined with shattered storefronts and burned-out cars, the ground littered with paper and debris. “Look at that.”

The cop says nothing, just stands there, a sentry at the fiery gates of Hades.

“I was already down there,” Jerry tells him, “earlier today. There were a lot of firemen. But I’m not a fireman.”

“Oh, no?”

“No. I always wanted to be one, but a lot of firemen died so I’m glad I’m not one, because I don’t want to die.”

“No one does, kid.”

The cop’s eyes look red and swollen, Jerry notices.

Maybe it’s the smoke in the air, or maybe he’s been crying.

On television, they said that it wasn’t just the firemen who died when the towers fell. A lot of policemen did, too. And all those people on the planes, and the people who worked in the World Trade Center . . .

“Listen, kid, you can’t go down there, so—”

“But why not?”

“Restricted zone. Go on, turn around.”

Jerry turns around and walks away. A few yards from the cop, he turns to take one last look at the massive destruction down the street, and rage builds within him.

Look what they did.

Look what they did.

L
ying in bed five blocks north of the smoldering tomb, Kristina can hear the usual wee-hour sirens . . . but not the usual intermittent sirens. These are constant.

Conspicuously absent tonight is the occasional drone of planes that have just taken off from LaGuardia or JFK or Newark. Every airport in the metropolitan area—every airport in the entire country—is closed.

But every so often—just often enough to keep Kristina’s nerves on high alert—comes the shattering roar of an aircraft flying low enough to rattle the tall loft windows.

Fighter jets.

Fighter jets over New York City.

Surreal.

Please make it stop. Please make it all go away.

She lies flat on her back with the quilt pulled taut beneath her wide-open eyes, as if to protect her from anything that might drop out of the sky. Planes . . . bombs . . . debris . . .

People
.

She saw them this morning—scores of human torches falling or jumping from the burning towers; grotesque, limb-flailing freefalls branded into her brain.

Like so many of them, Kristina greeted the day with an early alarm clock, coffee, the
New York Post
, a crowded subway ride, a short, sunny stroll to her job in an iconic Manhattan skyscraper. The city, scrubbed clean in last night’s rain, was spectacular. Now, part of it lies buried beneath a heap of debris and toxic dust.

What if the Chrysler building had been hit instead of the World Trade Center?

But it wasn’t. You’re alive.

When the second plane hit the second tower, she fled her office on the fifty-fourth floor of the Chrysler Building, not waiting for evacuation orders.

“Hey, where are you going?” one of the secretaries asked as Kristina raced past on her way to the elevators.

“Home.”

“You can’t just leave!”

She didn’t bother to respond. As far as she was concerned, she was running for her life.

She took the subway downtown and emerged to find her neighborhood blanketed in smoke. She doesn’t really remember making a conscious decision to walk all those blocks south to see what was going on; she simply fell in with other gawkers swimming against the sea of frightened tower refugees.

But after a few minutes of watching it unfold in front of her—a few minutes of seeing those desperate jumpers, hearing bystanders’ screams as they came down and the staccato death explosions when they hit the ground—Kristina was overcome. She turned abruptly and ran home, arriving right before the first tower fell, most likely engulfing the very spot where she’d stood watching.

She was one of the lucky ones. She’ll live to greet another day in a world that will never be the same. The city feels foreign to her now,
her
city—the city she loves because, as she so often says,
anything
at all can happen here.

I’ll never say that again. Never. Never!

She keeps thinking of Mack. He works in midtown. She hasn’t seen him all day or night. She went down and knocked on his door a few times, but no one was home.

Still, he must be okay; he
has
to be okay, but . . .

Carrie. Mack’s wife.

Kristina knows she worked someplace down in the financial district. Carrie might have been hurt today, or killed.

Kristina can’t bear to let her mind go there. Every time it starts to, shame sweeps over her and she shoves aside the notion of Mack, widowed and suddenly, truly, available.

She didn’t want Carrie to
die
. Jesus. She didn’t conjure today’s nightmare like some crazy voodoo curse.

Of course she didn’t.

And this isn’t about her. This is a global catastrophe. This was, as President Bush said in his televised speech earlier, an act of war.

War
. Here. In New York.

Kristina keeps thinking of her mother, in London during the blitz sixty years ago. Mum used to talk about lying terrified in the dark basement shelter as planes buzzed the skyline; about pulling her blanket over her mouth and nose to help blot the smell of burning rubble.

Did it work for you, Mum? Because it isn’t working for me. The windows are closed, and so are the vents; the fire is a mile away and the wind is blowing south, but I can still smell it.

Kristina’s mother died of lung cancer. Never smoked a cigarette in her life.

But all those nights in London during the air raids, lying awake, breathing toxic fumes . . . maybe, in the end, the enemy bombs got her after all.

Will the same thing happen to me?

Another fighter plane roars over Manhattan.

Please make it stop.

Please let me fall asleep.

Sleep, she knows, is the only way to escape this nightmarish world.

But sleep won’t claim her, not when her thoughts won’t stop and her mind’s eye keeps replaying unbearable images and her entire body is clenched: her jaw, her fists, the muscles of her legs . . .

A spasm seizes her right calf and she squeezes her eyes shut, flexing her toes.

Please make it go away.

When at last it subsides, she opens her eyes to a sight more horrific than anything she’s seen in the last eighteen hours.

Jarring as a plume of toxic smoke in a clear blue September sky, a long human shadow has fallen on the wall beside her bed.

She’s home alone; she lives alone, and yet . . .

She’s
not
alone.

And she was wrong. Sleep isn’t the only way to escape this world. Before she can escape it, though, the worst moments of her young life are yet to come.

T
he water runs red with blood, spiraling into the drain.

Blood in water.

Blood . . . everywhere.

Blood on Jamie’s hands, and the white sheets of Kristina’s bed, and the wall beside it.

Blood in the streets of Manhattan . . .

Blood everywhere. So much blood.

I still can’t believe it.

Right before Jamie’s eyes, on a beautiful September morning, the very images that had been pure fantasy for so long blazed to life—although “life” seems to be the wrong term. The polar opposite, really—it was
death
that was all around.

Disembodied limbs, a head whose eyes were fixed in horror, a stranger’s severed torso spilling entrails . . .

Or was that Kristina Haines?

Jamie can’t remember, exactly, what happened outside during the day and what happened later, much later, in the middle of the night in Kristina’s apartment.

Bloody guts on the streets . . . or bloody guts on the sheets?

Grinning broadly, Jamie repeats the thought aloud, in a singsong whisper, like a recitation from a Seuss-gone-wrong children’s picture book.

“Bloody guts on the streets . . . bloody guts on the sheets . . . I do not like them, Sam I am.” Grinning, Jamie looks up into the mirror above the sink. “Oh, but I do. I do like them, Sam . . . I . . . am . . .
not
.”

Funny how you manage to forget; how you can look in the mirror and be caught off guard by your own reflection.

But this is me.
Jamie turns off the tap and reaches for a towel.
This is me, for the time being.

The sink has to be wiped down. When it’s dry and clean, not a trace of blood, Jamie checks to make sure that nice little souvenir is still safely wrapped in a plastic bag. Yes. Good. No one would ever know it was there: no visible back pocket bumps, no telltale stains oozing through the fabric.

It’s time to leave the bathroom; time to rest. It’s been such a long day that it’s hard to remember what it was like before everything went crazy . . .

Before fantasy melded with reality; before the grisly chaos so long pent up inside Jamie’s head exploded in the real world, before the exhilarating realization that it was okay to finally act on another long-forbidden urge.

It was okay, though. Punishing Kristina was the right thing to do.

But it’s not just that. Maybe it started out that way—teaching her a lesson because she was mean to Jerry—but it was more than that.

On this particular day . . . night . . . morning . . . the old rules don’t matter anymore.