The Taker (56 page)

They sit quietly and watch the traffic a dozen flights below them. The morning sun is starting to break through clouds, setting the cutlery and silver bowl on fire. Everything is white and silver and glass, clean and sterile, and everything they have been talking about—darkness, death—seems a million miles away.

Luke picks up a cigarette, rolls it between two fingers before putting it aside, unlit. “So you left Adair walled in the mansion. Did you ever go back to see if he got out?”

“I worried about him escaping, of course,” she says, nodding almost imperceptibly. “The feeling, our connection, was gone, though. I had nothing to go on. I went back once, twice—I was afraid of what I’d find, you know—to see if the house was still standing. It was. For the longest time it was used as a home. I’d circle the block, trying to feel Adair’s presence. Nothing. Then one time I went back and saw that it had been made into a funeral home, if you can believe it. The neighborhood had fallen on hard times … I could picture the rooms where they’d work on the bodies, in the basement, steps away from where Adair was entombed. The uncertainty was too much …” Lanny tamps out the spent cigarette in her hand and immediately lights another. “So I had my lawyer contact the funeral home with an offer to buy it. As I said, there was a recession; it was a better price than the owners hoped to see in their lifetime … They accepted.

“As soon as they moved out, I went in by myself. It was hard to imagine as the house I had known, so much had been changed. The part of the cellar under the front stairs had been updated. Cement floor, furnace, and hot water heaters. But the back half had been left alone. No electricity ran back there. It was left dark and damp.

“I went to the spot where—we’d put Adair. You couldn’t tell where the original wall left off and where the part Jonathan built began. It had all aged together by then. Still, no feeling from behind the stone. No presence. I didn’t know what to think. I was almost tempted—almost—to have the wall torn down. It’s like that perverse voice in your head that tells you to jump off the balcony when you get too close to the edge.” She smiles ruefully. “I didn’t, of course. As a matter of fact, I had the wall reinforced with rebar and cement. Had to be careful; I didn’t want the wall to be damaged during the construction. It’s sealed good and tight now. I sleep much better.” But she doesn’t sleep well; Luke has learned this much in the short time they’ve been together.

He needs to lead her away from the place he has left her, the dark cellar with the man she condemned. Luke reaches across the table and
takes her hand. “Your story … it’s not finished yet, is it? So you and Jonathan left Adair’s house together—what happened next?”

Lanny seems to ignore the question for a moment, studying the nub of the cigarette in her hand. “We remained together for a few more years. At first, we stayed together because it was, ostensibly, the best thing to do. We could look out for each other, watch each other’s back, as it were. Those were adventurous times. We traveled constantly because we had to, because we didn’t know how to survive. We learned to create new identities for ourselves, how to become anonymous—though it was hard for Jonathan not to attract attention. People were always drawn to his great beauty. But then it became more and more apparent that we remained together because it was what I wanted. An ersatz marriage, only without intimacy. We were like an old couple in a loveless pact, and I’d forced Jonathan into the role of the philandering husband.”

“He didn’t have to stray,” Luke objects.

“It was in his nature. And the women who were interested in him—it was relentless.” She knocks ash into the saucer they are using for an ashtray. “We were both miserable. It got to the point where it was painful to be in each other’s presence; we had wronged each other so, and said hurtful things to each other. Sometimes I hated him and wished he would just go. I knew he would have to be the one to leave because I would never have the strength to leave him.

“Then one day, I woke up to find a note on the pillow beside me.” She smiles ironically, as though used to watching her pain from a distance. “He wrote, ‘Forgive me. This is for the best. Promise me you won’t come looking for me. If I change my mind, I will find you. Please honor my wish. Your dearest, J.’”

She pauses, crushing the cigarette in the saucer. Her expression is stark and faintly amused as she stares out the tall windows. “He finally found the courage to go. It was as if he’d read my mind. Of course, his leaving was agony. I wanted to die, sure that I would never see him again. But we go on, don’t we? Anyway, I had no choice, but it helps to pretend that you do.”

Luke remembers how it feels to be exhausted by tension, recalls those days when he and Tricia couldn’t stand to be in the same room. When he’d sit in the dark and try to imagine how it would feel if they split up, the peace that would come over him. There was no question that she’d be the one to leave—he couldn’t be expected to walk away from his children or his childhood home—but when his family had left and it was just him in the farmhouse, it wasn’t like being alone at all. It was as though something had been violently taken away from him, as though a piece of him had been amputated.

He gives her a moment to fold up her pain and tuck it back in its place. “But it wasn’t over, was it? Obviously, you saw each other again.”

Her expression is inscrutable, light and dark. “Yes, we did.”

FORTY-SEVEN

P
ARIS, ONE MONTH AGO

G
ray day. I peeked from behind the curtains at the thin sliver of sky visible from the third story of my home, one in a series of ancient row houses in the fifth arrondissement. It was the start of winter in Paris, which meant that almost every day would be gray.

I turned on my computer, then stood by the desk and stirred cream into my coffee while the computer started up. I find the series of whirs and clicks subliminally comforting, like the chirping of birds or some other sign of life external to mine. I cherish normalcy and long for as much routine as I can cram into what is otherwise a free-form existence.

I sipped the coffee. Though I don’t really need it the way some people do to pull them into consciousness, I drink it out of habit. I’d barely been asleep, a catnap really; I’d been up until the wee hours as usual, dutifully doing research needed for the book I had been contracted to write but which now bored me to impatience. Then, tiring of that, I resumed cataloging my ceramics collection while watching reruns of American television. I had gotten to the point of thinking
I’d send my ceramics collection off to a university or an art museum, someplace where it would be seen. I’d gotten tired of having so much clutter around all the time, pulling at me like hands clawing from the grave. I felt the need to shed a few things.

My email finished loading and I glanced down the list of the senders’ addresses. Business, mostly: my lawyer, my editor at the wonky small press that had published my precious monographs on ancient Asian ceramics, an invitation to a party. What a life I’d made for myself over the past twenty years as a faux expert on Chinese teacups. My false identity was based on a collection of priceless cups my Chinese employer had pressed into my arms as I boarded a British ship to escape the ransacking nationalists. This had happened in
The Jade Pagoda
days, another lifetime ago, another story no one knew.

Then I noticed, in the list of emails, an address I didn’t recognize. From Zaire—oh, only it’s called the Democratic Republic of Congo now. I could remember when it was the Belgian Congo. I frowned to myself; did I know anyone in Zaire? It was probably a plea for charity or a scam, a con artist claiming to be an African prince who just needed a bit of help out of a temporary pecuniary dilemma. I almost deleted it without opening it but at the last minute changed my mind.

“Dear Lanny”—it read—“Hello from the one person you thought you’d never hear from again. First, let me thank you for honoring my last request by not trying to track me down at any point since we parted …”

Damn innocent words, written in flickering pixels on the screen.
Print
, I jabbed at the clicker on the mouse.
Print, damn you, I need to hold these words in my hands.

“… I hope you’ll forgive me for imposing on you like this. For all its convenience, I’ve never gotten over the feeling that correspondence by email is somehow less polite and correct than writing a letter. I find using the telephone difficult for the same reason. But I’m pressed for time, so I had to resort to email. I will be in Paris in a few days and would like very much to see you while I am there. I hope your schedule
will allow for this. Please write back and let me know if you will see me … Fondly, Jonathan.”

I scrambled into the seat quickly, fingers poised over the keys. What to say? So much bottled up inside after decades of silence. Of wanting to speak and having no one to speak to. Of talking to the walls, to the heavens, to the pigeons, to the gargoyles clinging to the spires of Notre Dame Cathedral.
Thank God—I thought I’d never hear from you again. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Does this mean you’ve forgiven me? I’ve been waiting for you. You can’t imagine how it feels to see your name on my computer screen. Have you forgiven me?

I hesitated, clenched my hands into two tight fists, shook them, unfurled them, shook them again. Hovered over the keyboard. Finally, typed “Yes.”

Waiting for that day to arrive was torturous. I tried to keep a tight rein on my expectations. I knew better than to get my hopes up, but there was still a small part of me that harbored romantic dreams where Jonathan was concerned. It was impossible not to indulge in a daydream or two, just to feel joy like that again. It had been so long since I’d had anything to look forward to.

Jonathan told me about his life in his second email. He’d picked up a medical degree in the 1930s in Germany, and used it to travel to poor and remote places to deliver medical services. When one had suspect paperwork, it was easier to get past the authorities in isolated areas where a doctor was needed and harried government officials could push your case through. He’d worked with lepers in the Asian Pacific, smallpox victims in the subcontinent. A hemorrhagic fever outbreak took him to central Africa and he had remained to run the medical clinic in a refugee camp near the Rwandan border. It’s not open-heart surgery, he’d typed: gunshot wounds, dysentery, and measles vaccinations. Whatever is needed.

What could I say in response, other than to confirm the time and place we were to meet? It thrilled and unsettled me to think Jonathan
was a doctor, an angel of mercy. But Jonathan was waiting for me to tell him about my life, and as I sat before the computer I couldn’t think what to write. What could I say that wasn’t embarrassing? Life had been difficult after we’d parted. I’d done stupid things, which I believed at the time to be necessary for my survival. Now, finally, my life was peaceful, almost a nun’s life and not entirely out of choice. But I had come to terms with it.

Jonathan would notice my omission, but I assured myself that he wouldn’t harbor any illusion that I’d changed in our time apart—at least not as dramatically as he had. Instead, my first email to Jonathan was full of pleasantries: how I was looking forward to seeing him and the like.

I couldn’t sleep at all the night before and sat up, looking into a mirror. Would I look different to him? I examined my reflection fastidiously, worried that there had been changes, as though I was like the women in commercials fretting over laugh lines and crow’s-feet. But there were no changes, I knew. I still looked like a college student with a permanently cross expression. I had the same smooth face that Jonathan had looked on the day he left. I still had the smolder of a young woman who could not get enough sex, even if in truth I’d had enough sex to last my multiple lifetimes. I didn’t want to look desperate when he saw me, but there was no way to avoid it, I realized, looking into the mirror. I would always be desperate for him.

Still staring in the mirror, I wondered if it would seem strange and maddening, when we met tomorrow. To look at each other, time might as well be standing still. How long had it been since I’d last seen Jonathan? One hundred and sixty years? I couldn’t even remember what year he had left me. I was surprised to find that it no longer hurt violently, that it had taken decades but the pain had eased into a dull throb, and was easily outweighed by my eagerness to see him.