The Night Gwen Stacy Died (21 page)

“This is not a dog,” Sheila said.

The man laughed, ignoring her. “Come on, Patch, girl. Get in the truck.” Sheila could
see the truck from the parking lot. It was white and covered in mud.

“I’m serious,” Sheila said. “I’m pretty sure it’s a felony to domesticate a wild animal
in this state.” She didn’t know this herself, but it sounded like it could be true.

“And what exactly were you doing putting a ribbon around the neck of a
wild
animal?” asked the man.

“And where exactly are the identification tags,” asked Sheila, “proving this
dog
belongs to you?” She looked at the man again, and saw a name stitched into the pocket
of his navy jumpsuit. She remembered Andrea saying you had to start from the middle
and work to the ends to be sure it came out even. But this stitch looked like it had
come from a machine. There was something familiar about the letters sewn there, but
she at first couldn’t place the reason. She gazed into the thread that had formed
the first letter, an
N
; it seemed slightly larger than the rest of the script, almost an oversight, an error—there
was something strange there. It took her another moment to understand the strange
thing was that she had heard the same last name spoken aloud that morning when the
radio had named her abductor: Seth Novak.

“Patch,” the man repeated. “Get in the truck.” But this time, he sounded tired when
he said it. He sounded like he wouldn’t have the strength for a fight if it came to
that. He squatted on the cement and placed his hand on the animal’s head, between
her ears. The man was studying her, suddenly; she could feel his eyes on her. Sheila
met his eyes and retracted her own hand from the animal with a start, as if a current
had passed between them.

IT WAS OBVIOUS ENOUGH
to make the heart feel sick and slow on the job. If you were deranged, if you were
mindless enough to put all your efforts in one place, on one thing, it was only a
matter of time before that thing would turn up missing. Peter sat alone in the kitchen
with a beer in his hand. It was his second beer, and he tried not to drink it all
at once. He had come home from work and made dinner; he had eaten dinner, he had cleaned
up after dinner and put Gwen’s untouched plate in the fridge, and she was still not
home. He paced in a line from the bedroom to the kitchen. He crushed the beer can
in his hand. It was nine o’clock before he allowed himself to walk down the narrow
stairs that led to Iva’s apartment and knock on the door.

Iva answered in a bathrobe. Her dark hair was gathered into a spout at the top of
her head, and she was yelling in what he assumed to be Czech into a cell phone. Immediately,
she seemed older than he first had guessed. He didn’t know why he’d pegged her as
Gwen’s age. She opened the door wider for him to step inside. “Peter!” she said. She
kissed his cheek and pulled him into the room. “This talk is finished soon,” she said,
indicating the telephone. She spoke quickly, cutting the other speaker off, then closed
the phone and dropped it on the table.

“So many girls and so lazy!” she said.

Peter knew from Gwen that Iva had an entire brigade of Eastern European women whom
she called when she had jobs. For her ability to set appointments in English, Iva
took a 10 percent cut of the women’s profits. She did not take this cut off Gwen’s
earnings.

“A glass of beer?” Iva said, making her way to the kitchen. “But where is your girlfriend?’

“I thought maybe you knew,” Peter said.

Iva furrowed her brow. “But why should I know?” she said.

“You worked together today,” Peter said.

“Yes,” Iva said. “In the morning.” She placed two pint glasses on the table and poured
from bottles into the glasses. She sat across from him at the table and studied him.
“You are worried?” she said.

“Yes,” Peter said.

Iva frowned, then nodded as if understanding. “Yes, but she loves you.” She said this
slowly, delicately. She topped off their beers. “I know this.”

“But where is she?” Peter said.

“The night is warm,” Iva said. “She can be breathing in fresh air somewhere. It would
be okay?”

“Yes,” Peter said. But he thought if she was breathing in fresh air somewhere, she
would have told him. She knew he had dreamed her drowned for four nights and counting.
He had explained that last night. He had explained to her every dream of his she’d
ever been in, as if to atone for not telling her from the start. He told her how pretty
she looked in her underwear the first time he saw her in his sleep, how he thought
of nothing else for weeks. He explained how he had dreamed she would get in the car
with him and drive east on the interstate, how after a while, the fields would give
way to skyscrapers rising up on either side of the highway like growing things; there
would be crushed metal floating up a river despite its weight; there would be a man
whose life would be spared for their effort.

Gwen had spoken quietly. “And everything so far has come true,” she said. “Like with
the girls in the car.”

“Not yet,” Peter said. “Not for sure.”

“Who’s the man?” she said.

“I don’t know,” Peter said. “I only see him in parts.”

Gwen pushed her hands into her hair. “You don’t know him,” she repeated. “So why are
we trying to save him?”

“He’s trying to kill himself,” Peter said quietly.

“And so are a million people,” Gwen said. “Are we going to chase all of them down
with a gun?”

“No,” he said. “Just this one.”

Gwen nodded. She looked at her nails.

“You need to go home, Gwen,” he said.

She stiffened. “Forget it,” she said. “I want to be where you are.”

He wanted to kiss her and he wanted to push his hands into her hair. Also, he wanted
to drag her out the door, put her in a cab, get her out of the city the way she came.
It was undeniable that he needed her help. The night at the scrap yard proved that
much. But if she were really in danger, he was ready to give up the search.

“Then we’re both leaving,” he decided.

Gwen shook her head. “Where would we go? Home? We can just ask for our old jobs back,
right?” She let out a nervous laugh. “I’m not going back there, not yet. We’re better
off here than anywhere else. You know that.”

“If anything happens to you,” Peter said.

“Nothing will,” she said.

But certainly something had. This is what they had fought over last night. This was
what he was afraid to say aloud to Iva as she poured more beer for him and tried to
make him laugh. After they finished their beers, Iva explained the only thing to do
now was go back upstairs and get some sleep. Peter walked back up the stairs that
led to his apartment, but he did not sleep. He did not go near their bed. He was afraid
to dream. Instead, he pulled a kitchen chair to the front window. He sat in the chair
and turned out the lights. He faced the park. He thought he could make out the hind
legs of animals running, rushing toward something, but they were always just in his
periphery and never there when he turned his head. He watched the park until the sun
abandoned the other side of the world and showed up in Chicago, and only then did
Peter stand up from the chair and give up his watch with the understanding that Gwen
was not coming back.

The next morning, the onslaught of spring rested heavy in the breathable air. Spring
was hideous. It was a season of everything trying, relentlessly, to come back to life,
and while there were always a few small victories, for the most part, the general
effort was pathetic. In Chicago, as in Iowa, the first nice day, everyone wore shorts.
Eventually, the frost would show up again and put any gesture toward renewal in its
place. This, however, was one of the nice days. There was the smell of dew. There
was the smell of cut grass. Skateboarders descended on the parks in packs, like another
life form—the most inexperienced freshly hatched in kneepads that bulged about the
delicate joints. Birds sang. Bikers signaled. Dogs sniffed up trees. Peter sat on
a bench at the lakeshore and held his face in his hands.

He hadn’t slept, and that choice was taking its toll. All that he perceived was bright
and oversaturated. He saw shapes, colors, forms, but everything hurt to look at. After
sitting upright all night to discourage dreaming, morning brought the decision to
come to the lake. That was where Gwen had been when she eluded him in his dreams.
He didn’t know where else to begin. Then there was the fact of the comic books, a
fact he was working hard to forget but was exceedingly aware of: in the Spider-Man
comics, Gwen Stacy dies falling toward a body of water. In light of this fact, it
now occurred to Peter that it was nothing short of irresponsible to use this name
to address the woman he loved. What exactly had been wrong with her real name? Sheila
was a lovely name, Peter thought now, and he began to repeat the name under his breath,
as if to attract attention, so any bystander looking in on the situation would understand
that in fact there had been a mistake. While the girl who was trapped underwater in
his dreams may have been referred to as Gwen, the whole rest of the world called the
girl a different name—her real name, and Sheila was wholly unlike Gwen Stacy. Did
Gwen Stacy speak French in Spider-Man comics? No! Did she have very light freckles
on her cheeks and across the bridge of her nose that could only be detected in sunlight,
and even then, only if you were right beside her? Of course not! Gwen Stacy had a
pasty complexion with no natural variation in skin tone whatsoever, and the more that
he thought about it, the more Gwen Stacy’s complexion made him feel a little sick
to his stomach. Gwen Stacy was a fraud. She was stuck up and she wore hideous outfits
to parties. She was nothing like Sheila. Really there was no way in which one could
be confused for the other. You would be hard pressed to find two women who were more
staggeringly different in every way, Peter decided. He sat on a bench and watched
the waves make contact with the rocks along the shore until he convinced himself he
had come to the wrong place. He wouldn’t find her here, near the rocks or under the
water as he had in his dream, and comforted by this knowledge, he made his way back
home, where it was only a matter of time before she would show up.

Someone had been in the apartment. Someone had been searching for something quickly,
violently, and left the place in ruin. Their drawers had been turned out, the contents
spread onto the floor. The CD player and been removed from the wall, and Gwen’s CD
snatched from it. His duffle bag lay half empty on its side, but nothing of his seemed
to be stolen. The kitchen cabinets were open, and their boxes of cereal and cans of
soup sat sideways on the counter and in the sink. They had so little, it made Peter’s
eyes smart to see all they had accumulated together so easily upended.

When he turned from the mess in the apartment, he felt someone standing there in the
hallway behind him before he heard her speak.

“Peter,” she said.

He felt his stomach rise and fought to temper his breathing. “Jesus, Iva,” he said.
He held his hand to his chest.

“What is this?” she said.

Peter stepped back from the mess. He shook his head. “Did you see anyone come into
the building?” he asked.

“I was working,” she said. She looked at the floor, which Peter understood to mean
that Gwen had not shown up at work. Iva would have said so if she had.

Iva took a step into the apartment and stared. “But why this?” she said. “Like
COPS
on television.” She shook her head.

“Iva, you watch
COPS?
” Peter asked.

“Yes, sure,” she said. “If there is nothing else to see.”

He nearly laughed before it occurred to him that Iva was right. She meant nothing
by it; she had no reason to think that her neighbors had done anything to attract
such attention. But once she had said it, the thought took root in his brain and settled
there, like a confirmed fact. Someone had been here poking around for a reason. It
wasn’t so unthinkable that a cluster of poor decisions made during their exit from
Iowa had caught up with them by now. It wasn’t safe to stay in the building anymore.

“I need your help,” he said to Iva. “I need to find another place to sleep.”

Iva nodded and asked no questions. She looked from the opened cabinets to Peter. She
placed her hand on his arm. “No problem,” she said.