The Horses of the Night (12 page)

She ran her forefinger over the lip of her crystal, and it made the slightest ringing chime. This should be the beginning of a new point in our affair. I knew that she wanted it to be, as badly as I did.

But she had a report to write, a proposal to fax to Brussels, an article to finish on neuropathology, and we both knew that this was going to be little more than an interlude between obligations. Even now, she should be in her apartment, revising her proposal.

“They're cutting back the number of beds in my ward,” she said. “There's talk of eliminating my ward totally.”

I was incredulous. “How can they justify that?”

“My kids generate publicity during the Shriners' game, and from time to time a basketball player drops by to have his picture taken with someone like Stuart. But my patients aren't going to get better. They aren't suffering dramatic illnesses. They're just kids facing death.”

Her offhand way of discussing it made her message all the more impressive. I said, truthfully, “The kids are lucky to have you.”

“There's a problem, though. I don't spend enough time with you,” she said.

I knew enough to keep silent.

“I'm always flying to Detroit, or Brussels, or Guadalajara to give a paper on dream imagery among critically injured children. Or childhood reformation of earliest memories. Or any of a dozen other subjects. They are all important. More important than people think. I think no one really understands children. I think I have a chance to open the subject to the eyes of the world. To make them realize how wise, and alive, children are.”

I took her hand.

“I know I keep promising this,” she said. “But someday we're going to have a life together.”

Someday
, I thought. That vague day, that smudge on the horizon that never arrives.

Fern drove the armored Mercedes, the big car rolling up and down the San Francisco hills. There was a blush of city lights in the clouds overhead, and the night was cool.

Nona and I kissed, and I let her slip into her apartment.

I would happily put the evening on rewind all the way back to the restaurant owner crying, “The beautiful couple! Over here—I have your special place,” in a voice so loud everyone in the restaurant turned to look. I could replay our time together over and over, tirelessly.

When Fern and I were on Nineteenth Street, he said, “There's someone following us.”

I craned, looking back. Perhaps I was out of practice. There were headlights. Municipal railway tracks gleamed in the dark.

I settled back into my seat. “It's like the old days. Kidnappers. Terrorists.”

Fern did not speak, and he did not glance into the rearview mirror.

“Maybe my ex-wife hired a private detective,” I said. “Satisfying her curiosity. Keeping track of my love life.” I could not keep a certain grit from my voice with the last two words.

Margaret would never have hired someone to follow me. On the other hand, Rick was
always
being followed. Some woman's husband had him trailed—it happened fairly often. Or else he owed people money, strong-arm Vegas types.

“Remember that time you dropped that photographer's camera at the film festival?” I said.

“These aren't reporters.”

“How do you know? You're always making these pronouncements. And of course neither of us will ever know whether they were reporters or insurance salesmen, so you end up sounding like you know everything.”

“It was a nice reception,” said Fern. “Congratulations.”

Fern drove to Lake Merced. I did not ask him to. Perhaps he knew my moods, after all these years. This was like the old days, too. I used to come here at night. The lake was a surprise to the eye, even when one expected it, and at night as at day it was a chance to look upon something not made by human beings. In the months after Margaret and I split up, Fern and I would drive here, and I would stroll to the edge of the lake and skip stones, sipping cognac from a flask, Fern waiting patiently.

But Fern did not stop the car. He drove into the neighborhood adjoining the lake. I waited for his professional opinion.

He said, “Maybe it's the police.”

“Looking after me. How thoughtful.”

He drove, his broad shoulders at ease, his head tilted sideways. “Making sure you aren't heading for the airport.”

“The idea has a certain appeal. But why should they care?”

He did not answer directly. Silence was one of Fern's devices. He was a quick man who worked slowly. “How are you going to handle DeVere?”

“The police will protect me,” I said. I meant this ironically, and Fern laughed silently.

He turned a corner. Shadows of trees rippled over us. “Maybe it's DeVere people,” he said. “Showing off.”

“What's he got to show?”

Fern said nothing.

“Are you trying to make me nervous?”

“If he hurts Nona, what are you going to do?”

I was ready to laugh. Fern was being ridiculous. Then I couldn't laugh. “That kind of thing isn't going to happen.”

When Fern did not respond to this, I continued, “Don't worry about DeVere. I can handle him. The world isn't the kind of place you think it is.”

Fern parked the car in the garage. He locked the garage and muttered something about doing a “visual” on the interior of the house.

“It's all right, Fern. You're going to make me nervous squinting around at things like that. I think you guys get most of your training watching television, I really do.”

He did not laugh.

“The kind of thing you're worried about,” I began. “That kind of violence. We don't live like that.”

“If you say so,” said Fern, and he left me.

I entered the house. I switched off the burglar alarm, locked the door, loosened my black tie.

Upstairs, I hurried through my studio, into the bedroom. I splashed a little postaward cognac into a glass, and as I slipped out of my jacket I felt something in the pocket. I was puzzled, because I could see the Milton there on its shelf.

But it was an envelope, not a feather. Inside was the award. That's all it was: paper.

This was the prize. Once I really looked at it, it did resemble one of the more elaborate stock certificates, or the sort of diploma one could buy from the University of Beverly Hills, except smaller, small enough to fit into a pocket.

All of that fuss, I told myself, all of that ambition over a little piece of paper, a wedding invitation, the announcement of a new partner.

I had been aware of something as I moved about my room. The light was not the same as it should be. My house lights are on timers, and timers can fail. But this was not too little light. Nor was it too much. I gazed about me.

And it became clear. I could not tell how I knew, but I did. Was it a trace of perfume in the air, or the weight of a presence, a special, pregnant variety of silence?

I was not alone.

17

The light in the room had changed. It was brighter, each object glowing. There was a sweet flavor in my mouth.

I let myself linger at the door to my bedroom, and to my amazement the jamb gave at my touch. It was impossible. Surely it was only in my mind. But the doorway was alive, composed of sensate flesh, taking pleasure as I brushed through it and hurried to the top of the stairs.

It was a rare moment: I wished I owned a gun.

I told myself to go back this moment and call Fern. Tell him—

Tell him what?

There was a fluttering, and a waft of air touched me as I stood, gazing down the almost perfect darkness of the stairwell.

I told myself to stay right where I was and think for a moment. Think about what was happening. Too much champagne? Or something else. Something chemical slipped into the victory bubbly, a little hallucinatory juice to speed the revel?

But there was no question about it. There really
was
someone downstairs. Were they stealing something? I listened, but there was only the whisper, as of a blanket shaken, a flag rippling. Perhaps it was not a person at all, but some creature.

I began my descent.

There was a source of light preceding me, slipping down each gleaming stair. I stopped. I clung to the banister. I told myself to stay where I was.

Call someone, I thought. Get Fern on his car phone and tell him he was right. Call the police.

I glided to the doorway of the study. The light was in there. Why wait, I asked myself. Why stand here in your own house, afraid to make a move? Go on in.

Someone is looking for the family treasure. Everyone assumes that's what you have here, I told myself. Platinum and the kind of old gold that reminds the eye of sunset. Everyone knows that's what you have, in a wall safe, or just sitting on shelves, so much bric-a-brac.

If there were thieves I wanted to confront them myself.

I stepped into the room.

The light was only a fire in the fireplace. Nothing more. Flames snapped. The shivering light made the shadows of the shrouded furniture tremble. Perhaps Collie had lit a fire, and left it. The floor seemed to tremble.

My feet crunched the glaze of plaster dust on the koa-wood boards. A plastic dust cover crackled as I leaned against a bookshelf. The woodsmoke was fragrant, the scent of mature cedar.

Just as a feeling of domestic calm was beginning to allow me to enjoy the fire, there was a gentle movement against a wall.

I turned, ready to seize the poker.

There in the shadows was the figure of a woman. Her gown rustled across the dust floor. She was easier to see as she approached the firelight and stood before me, looking into my eyes. I recognized her. She was the remarkable woman who had attended the reception. I was happy enough to see her, and at the same time felt that she should not be where she was.

Her eyes were dark. They reflected the fire.

My voice startled me. “How did you get in?”

She offered only silence. She was stunning, and as awestruck as I was at the sight of her I was also aware of a mild sense of outrage. She was trespassing. The thought had the weight of moral authority—she should not be here.

I took a step back to get a better view of her, and to sense whether she had any companions. I had the further sensation that we knew each other well, as though this woman were an old and treasured friend whom I had forgotten until this night.

I heard only the snap of the fire. “Are you alone?”

She still kept her silence, but her gaze was searching, and there was another impression I had as she looked upon me, studying me.

“Forgive me for being blunt,” I said, my voice calm now. “But now and then I meet someone who means harm. There are people who for one reason or another are dangerous.”

I did not have to ask the question explicitly: What sort of person are you?

Her hand was on my arm. “You must believe in me now,” she said.

I hesitated for an instant. She had answered my question, perhaps without knowing it. I knew how to handle this: I would humor her. She must be an eccentric, or deranged. She was unsettling, but there was no need to be unkind. “I never doubted,” I said.

“You must begin to understand what I can do for you.”

I realized that I had not entirely understood her first remark. Or perhaps I had. It is wise to be polite until it's clear that courtesy is useless. “I can't tell you how happy I am tonight,” I said, attempting to keep the conversation on solid footing.

“This does change everything for you, doesn't it?”

I tried to turn away and stir the fire, but she kept her hand on my arm. “It does indeed.”

“It gives you—a future.”

She used the word
future
as though she did not quite believe in it herself. I agreed that I supposed it did accomplish just that, but she lifted a finger to silence me and smiled.

I continued my course of using hospitality as a form of self-defense, at least until I figured out what else to do. “May I offer you something?” I said. When she did not make a sound, I added, “A drink?”

“I see that you don't quite understand me.”

My eyes must have communicated a question, for she answered what I had not asked. “I am an old friend,” she said.

For an instant I believed her. Then I wished that I had Nona with me to overhear such an outrageous and yet strangely plausible remark. “I'm sorry this room is such a mess,” I said.

“You got my gift.”

I watched the firelight in her eyes.

“The feather,” she said.

Some power in me kept me steady. I laughed, self-consciously, but I was not at all comfortable. I made it sound easy. “Who are you, really?”

“But surely you have guessed by now,” said the charming woman, both elegant and oddly out-of-date in her gown.

“I'm afraid,” I said, “that you are the most puzzling creature I have ever met.”

She laughed. I had once known a soprano, one of my first loves, with such a laugh, only perhaps not as musical. “You are happy, aren't you?”

I glanced around, hoping to be rescued by some idle activity, sweeping ash from the hearth or arranging a book on a shelf.

She said, “Of course you're unsure of yourself.”

There was something else going on here, something I could not guess. Perhaps she intended us to be lovers. I found it hard to breathe. “I wish that I could say I understand what you are talking about.”

“It's not difficult to comprehend.”

Deepest puzzlement kept me from speaking for an instant. “I really must have had too much champagne.”

“You have to decide what you are going to do next.”

I tried to caution myself against talking to her. “Regarding what?”

“You can't leave things as they are.”

Ask her to leave. Now
. “I'll begin getting real commissions,” I said. “I'll have a career, not just a string of minor contracts. Things will be fine.”