Superstition (30 page)

He took another long sip of his drink, then looked at her. “We like to pretend that what we observe determines our theory, but it doesn't, not really. Einstein said that in reality it's the theory that decides what we observe. So what are we doing, we scientists? Are we chipping away at a block of stone and discovering some fossil of truth hidden inside it? Or are we carving it like a sculptor? Is the shape we end up with something that's been in the stone all along, or has it come from our imagination?”

He tipped his head back and finished his drink, then looked thoughtfully at his empty glass. “And anyway, what's the difference?”

He caught the bartender's eye for another refill, and glanced at her. “How about you—ready yet?”

“No, thanks.”

She watched as he ordered a double, then she said, “Tell me something, Roger…I've never really understood why you got into all this in the first place, or why you agreed to let your name be used.”

He sipped his fresh drink thoughtfully. “Something interesting has happened to scientists this century. We started out as the champions of reason and logic. We believed that if we just worked diligently enough, observed and measured carefully enough, nature would in the end be forced to yield up her innermost secrets. And they would be logical and rational. They would make perfect sense, because the universe, we believed, made sense. Anything that went against that belief was dismissed as mere superstition. Well, the trouble started right there. The more we learned about nature through the application of this process of reason and logic, the more we found ourselves being forced to abandon the idea that nature makes sense at all.”

She became aware that he was watching her as he paused, checking that she was listening and not growing impatient as she had the other night after Drew and Barry died.

“The idea that we can uncover the truth and find out why things are the way they are goes against all the accumulated evidence of science, of which there's now a great deal. It's not that we can't
see
what's going on. We can observe and measure with extraordinary precision—enough to calculate the distance between New York and Los Angeles to the thickness of a human hair. That's an example that Dick Feynman liked to use. He also said, repeatedly, that nature was absurd. Even though we know
how
it behaves, and can predict its behavior accurately enough to
use
it and accomplish some mightily impressive things with it, we have no idea
why
it behaves that way. It doesn't make any sense. We know that
this
happens if we do
that
. But the idea that there's a logical reason for it turns out to be the biggest superstition of all. In fact it looks more and more like just a childish emotional need to believe that our world has order and meaning and that we're secure in it.”

She thought about this for a while, then said, “I suppose that's why Sam says everybody's superstitious.”

Roger gave a wry smile. “He's right. When we cross our fingers or touch wood, we're reaching out for someplace where things happen the way they're supposed to, where there's order and rules you can play by—the way scientists thought the world was until they looked at it more closely.”

He took another long sip of his drink. Joanna noticed that he'd almost finished it already, his third since they arrived. His thought process seemed perfectly lucid, but he was starting to slur his words a little.

“So what
are
scientists?” he asked, giving the question a rhetorical flourish. “Surveyors? Stocktakers and clerks? Measuring and recording—ingeniously, I grant you—but nothing more?”

He threw back his head to finish his drink, then banged his glass down on the bar a little harder than necessary. “I suppose,” he said, swiveling to look at her full on, “I suppose that's the reason I signed on. To find out if Sam had anything new to offer. And also because you have terrific legs.”

He flashed her a rakish smile, his spirits revived by the alcohol. “Now,” he said, “how about that other drink that you've been putting off?” He looked around for the bartender.

“I have to go. And Roger, I don't want to sound like your mother, but I don't think you should have much more…”

“There I'm afraid I must disagree with you…Barman…!”

“All right, if you're determined to get drunk, I'll stay.”

“If that's blackmail, you win. Stay right where you are.”

The bartender appeared, smiling, awaiting Roger's order.

“Another large scotch and water, if you will. And…?”

He looked questioningly at Joanna.

“No, really, nothing.” She looked at her watch. “Oh, God, I really have to go. Look, Roger, at least let me arrange for a car—on the magazine—to take you back to Princeton.”

“Whatever you say, my dear. And don't worry—you're not a bit like my mother.”

She took out her phone and called the car service with which the magazine had a permanent account. If Taylor Freestone questioned the expenditure later, she'd pay for the damn thing herself, but she didn't imagine for a second that he would.

“There'll be a car outside in twenty minutes,” she said when she'd finished, and slipped off her stool. “I don't care how blasted you get now, at least I know you'll get back safely—all right?”

“All right, my dear,” he said, planting a kiss on her cheek.

She gave him a hug. “Take care, Roger. See you soon.”

“You bet!”

When she reached the door she paused and looked back. He was watching her and waved cheerfully across the crowded room.

She blew him a kiss, and stepped out into the night.

43

F
ifteen minutes later she paid off the cab that dropped her at Beekman Place. She noticed that the doorman wasn't on duty, which meant he must be doing some chore in the building, so she tapped in the code that admitted her to the lobby, and took the elevator to her apartment. She deliberately drew the blinds before putting on the lights, aware that it wasn't something she normally did. What, she asked herself, was she hiding from?

She wondered what Roger was doing, hoping he'd had only one more drink and was already on his way home in the car she'd provided. Then she wondered how to occupy herself until Sam arrived. She didn't want to talk to anybody on the phone, couldn't concentrate to read, listen to music, or watch television. She felt the kind of awful restlessness that needed to be worked off in a long walk or a vigorous physical sport. Yet she didn't want to be outdoors, exposed, unprotected. Here, in familiar surroundings, she felt at least relatively safe. She made herself a cup of herbal tea and stretched out on the sofa with that morning's
New York Times
, which she hadn't opened, willing herself to make sense of the words that swam before her eyes.

After a couple of minutes her entry phone buzzed. She got up quickly and crossed to answer it with a sense of relief, expecting to hear Sam's voice.

“Joanna, I'm downstairs. There's no doorman—can you let me in?”

It wasn't Sam's voice, it was Ralph Cazaubon's.

“Joanna? Are you there? Hello?”

She froze, unable to speak.

“Joanna, it's me, Ralph.”

She hung up. But she missed the cradle and the handset clattered noisily down the wall, bouncing at the end of its cable. She could hear his voice still coming thinly and distantly from it, like the sound of Pete's voice earlier. She reached out for the thing, hesitating as though half afraid it would give her an electric shock, finally snatching it and slamming it back in place.

This time it didn't fall, but it buzzed again, insistently, repeatedly. She backed away, her gaze fixed on it, struggling to control her mounting panic. Thoughts chased each other through her mind, each one wilder than the last. Wildest of all was the one insisting there was nothing to be afraid of—that there was just a man downstairs who had stopped by to see her, and she was behaving hysterically.

Yet she had met him only two days ago. Nobody in a city like New York went to the home of somebody they barely knew and expected to be let in just casually. Maybe there was some special reason. She hadn't even asked. What was so terrible about a man ringing her doorbell in the early evening, a man she had met and who had been perfectly charming and courteous and normal in every way? Was she going insane? Would she be running in fear for her own shadow next?

Yet nothing on earth would have persuaded her to pick up that entry phone again and speak to him. She stepped around and past it like someone skirting a chained but vicious dog. Its continuing, staccato, ear-jabbing buzz growing more unbearable each second.

She ran to the door and checked the locks. She was safe, but trapped. What could she do? She could call down to the lobby and see if the doorman was back from whatever he'd been doing.

Or call the police? And say what? She would worry about that if and when she had to—she had no sane reason to call the police yet.

Call Sam? Yes, call Sam—that made sense. Sam would understand why she was terrified. She began to dial the number of his cellular and prayed that he was carrying it. Maybe he was on his way to the apartment now and would arrive any minute. She must warn him of possible danger from whoever or whatever was down there waiting in the street.

The noise from the entry phone stopped. In the silence she could hear only her own breathing and the sound of her heart beating. She realized she was halfway through Sam's number, but forgot how many digits she'd dialed, and hung up.

She listened to the silence. Had he gone away? He knew there was someone in the apartment because she'd answered, but she hadn't spoken. It could have been a friend, a colleague, a cleaner—anyone—who had picked up the phone.

Cautiously she moved to the edge of one of her windows, pulled back a drape, and peered out. There was no sign of anybody in the street. She couldn't see the door from where she was, so he could still be there, but at least he'd given up trying to get in.

Unless, of course, the doorman was back and had opened it for him. But the doorman wouldn't let him up without calling. That was the rule, stated plainly on a sign in the lobby:“All Callers Must Be Announced.”

“Joanna…?”

She spun around with a cry of alarm. The voice had come from just behind her. His voice. In the room with her.

For a second she saw nobody, and told herself she had hallucinated it. Then a shadow moved in the hall beyond the open doorway of her living room. Ralph Cazaubon stepped into view.

“Joanna, will you please tell me what's wrong?”

His expression was earnest, his tone of voice concerned. Except for the fact that he was dressed more formally now, he looked exactly as he had the previous day. Yet something in his manner had changed. There was a familiarity in it, an intimacy even, that had no place between them.

“How did you get in here?” she managed to gasp in a shaky voice.

His frown of consternation deepened. He took a step toward her. “Joanna, what's wrong…?”

She backed away. The corner of a table jabbed into her hip, a lamp tipped over and crashed to the floor.

“Don't come near me!” Her hands groped behind her, whether to find something to defend herself with or to avoid further collisions she wasn't sure.

“Will you stop this, please!” There was a note of anger in his voice now, and in the way he reached out to grab her by the shoulders, as though wanting to shake this nonsense out of her.

She spun away from him and over to her desk. There was a paper knife somewhere there, a long steel blade sharpened to a point. Her fingers scrabbled among the scattered books and papers until they closed on the carved ivory handle. She held it out before her like a dagger.

“Don't come near me. I'll use this if I have to.”

He looked alarmed now and held up his hands. “All right, all right…I'm not moving, calm down…just tell me what's the matter and let me help you…please, Joanna…”

Her breath was coming raggedly in gasps, breaking, close to turning into sobs. She made an effort to control herself, fight back the fear, stay in control. Keeping the knife out and ready to thrust, she began moving sideways, edging crablike toward the tiny hallway, not for a second taking her eyes off him.

He turned, following her movement, his hands still up, but less in surrender now than in a readiness to defend himself, even attack her if he saw a break in her concentration.

But there was no break. She wiped her free hand across her face and discovered she was bathed in perspiration. She blinked and then stretched her eyes wide to clear the cloudiness from them. And all the time kept moving, one careful step after another, toward the door of her apartment and escape. When she began to walk backward the few last steps, he followed her, but held back when she raised the knife a threatening inch or so.

“I warned you—don't come near me.”

She had to transfer the knife from one hand to the other in order to undo the locks. First the main lock, then the lower one. They were locked just as she had left them when she came in.

Her eyes flickered sideways for a second as she sought the handle to pull the door open. Out of the corner of her vision she saw him move.

“No!”

He froze.

“Joanna, please, this is insane. What's happened? Are you ill? How could you imagine that I'd want to hurt you?”

Her fingers found the handle and pulled. “How did you get in here?”

“The same way I always do. What's wrong with you?”

She didn't answer or argue or press the question further, just pulled the door open and stepped through. She slammed it shut and hurried the few yards to the elevator. She pushed the call button, but saw that the “in use” light was on. In the distance she could hear the hum of machinery. It stopped and the elevator doors slid open.

Not thinking how she might look to an outsider walking into the scene, she kept her eyes on her apartment door, which remained closed, but suddenly became aware of a figure stepping from the elevator. Before she could turn to look, she heard, “Jesus Christ, Joanna, what's going on?”