Time After Time (42 page)

But Liz should've come
clean. She
would
come clean. The very next chance she got.

****

By the end of the day, Liz
was punchy. Sailing through the crowded waters of late-August
fund-raisers took all her wits and nerves of steel. The
gala-competition for the weekend Jack wanted was fierce: two cruise
party benefits, two balls, a champagne tasting, a dedication, a
rededication, an antique yacht race, a visit by a tall ship, and a
benefit film premiere. Add to that the usual blistering pace of
noncharity parties, and Liz had to wonder who the heck in the state
was left to invite.

Still, by the time Jack
called her at home, she was feeling pretty good and winding down
with a glass of wine while she tossed a salad big enough for two to
go with the pizza she planned to order.

"Hel-lo,"
she said in warmly shy greeting at the sound of
his voice. It was their third phone call that day. "I have good
news, sir: I think we'll be able to get Katie's Katerers for the
costume party. And Victoria tells me she knows a four-piece band
that's loud and cheap."

"Not
too
loud," Jack said with a grimace
in his voice. "Not if we're having the event at East Gate. I have a
neighbor I'm trying to impress."

Liz laughed and said,
"Anyway, what I need from you now is a proposal outlining the terms
of the shipyard's sponsorship, and then I'll get the director of
Anne's Place to send you a letter of confirmation on their
stationery."

"Sure. It'll go off
tomorrow. Meanwhile, I should be at your house in, oh, half an
hour."

"I'll order the pizza for
then. How's the round of meetings going?"

She knew they were
important: Jack was courting a couple of venture capitalists,
hoping to get them to back the manufacture of a small but seaworthy
powerboat at the shipyard. It was all part of Jack's plan to hold
on to the help. If he could keep the yardhands doing paying work in
the off- season, he could keep the yard turning a steady profit —
and his father would be less inclined to entertain offers from
ambitious developers of uncertain morals.

Jack seemed to think that
the talks with the investors were going well. The yard had a lot of
things going for it, he told Liz, not the least of which was a
location in Rhode Island, a state that was trying hard to attract
the boat-building industry.

"We've got the men, and
we've got the space, and we've got a generally friendly bureaucracy
and a tax break going for us. In the meantime this dude is faxing
stuff like crazy to his partner from the other office. I guess
that's a good sign."

"Great. Maybe we can
really celebrate tonight."

"I plan to do that," Jack
said softly, "in any event."

An hour later, however,
they still hadn't begun their celebration. The pizza was cold, the
salad was warm, and the bottle of wine Liz had opened to breathe
was about to give up the ghost.

And speaking of
ghosts,
Liz thought, petulant now,
where the hell is he?
When things were going well, there he was, making a pest of
himself. But now, when she could use a little divine intervention
.....

"Christopher?" she said
aloud, feeling foolish. He'd told her he didn't speak unless he was
asked to. Maybe the same held true for simply showing
up.

She waited. "Fine," she
said at last when no one appeared. "Two peas in a pod." This was
what happened when you began to count on someone. When you allowed
yourself to look forward to things. When you ... in a fit of pique
she took the pizza box — still with the pizza in it — and folded it
over in two.

Which of course was when
the phone rang.

It was Jack, repentant.
"We got into a conference call with the partner, and I couldn't
break away to call you," he said.

"I understand."

"I'll be there as soon as
I can. Hopefully in about an hour. Maybe a little more."

"I understand."

"Liz — this is a good
development. A
great
development," he said in a confidential voice, obviously not
wishing to be overheard. "I think they're gonna go for
it."

"Jack, really, I'm
delighted for you. Honest. It's just that—" It was just that she
had only one more free night before Susy would be back. But how
could Jack possibly understand?
All
his nights were free. "It's just that I miss you,
that's all. And I'm being a dope. And I'm sorry."

"Wait up for me. Please.
There's no one in the world I'd rather share this with than you. No
one."

"I'll wait," she said in a
startled, pleased voice. "Of course I'll wait."

"And
if
for some reason I'm held up —
say, to get something down on paper—"

"I'll leave the key under
the back-door mat."

"Not under the mat! That's
the first place they look!"

She laughed. "Okay, in the
bird feeder, then. But I'll be up, Jack," she said reassuringly.
"Count on it."

****

By eleven o'clock and
despite a shower, Liz couldn't keep her eyes open. She was like
Susy on New Year's Eve: the spirit was willing, but the flesh was
sleepy. The TV sounded unbearably loud to her, and the lights hurt
her eyes. She put the key in the bird feeder, locked up, turned
everything off, and curled up on the down-filled sofa to catnap
until Jack came in.

It's the stupid
wine,
she told herself. The euphoria part
never lasted as long as the tired part. What a dumb
aphrodisiac
.

She meant only to rest her
eyes. But the night was cool — one of those July cold fronts had
whizzed through that evening — and it was perfect for sound
sleeping. In a few minutes she dropped off into deep, untroubled
slumber, the kind that usually left her refreshed and raring to
go.

If only this had been one
of those times.

When Liz woke up, it was
by force: a hand — rough, foul-smelling, horrific in its
strangeness — was clamped over her mouth.

"One word and you die," a
voice growled in her ear.

His breath stank: drink,
rot, tobacco, she couldn't begin to guess what else. She'd been
dropped into some pit of hell. Her mind shut down completely except
for one thought —
does he have a gun, a
knife, a gun, a knife —
playing
over and over.

All of this took no more
than a second.

"Where are they? Where
the
fuck
are they
now?"

Her eyes were wide open.
The streetlight outside filtered through the shutters, throwing him
into dim relief. He was a tall man, and not a young one. His hand,
gross and filthy, still held her pinned to the sofa, leaving her
unable to speak. She shook her head, trying to convey that to
him.

He misinterpreted her.
Lifting his hand away, he brought it back down in a vicious swing.
Liz averted her face, but he caught the side of her jaw. She let
out a stifled cry of pain — if she screamed, she was sure he
would
kill her — and
tried to rally her senses.

"Where's what?" she said
desperately. "You mean the—"

"—letters,
bitch. The shoeboxes."

"Up-upstairs ... I hid
them."

He stood up, grabbed her
wrist, and grunting like an animal, yanked her upright. "Let's
go."

This
isn
't
happening
...
this can
't
be happening ....

The one place she didn't
want to go was into her bedroom. Not with him.
Stall,
she told herself.
Jack will be here. Jack will be here.

"You can have them — all
of them," she said as she stumbled over her own furniture toward
the stairs. "But please — please don't hurt me."

"Shut up!" he said,
grabbing her by the back of the neck and forcing her
forward.

Something about his action
triggered resistance in her. It was repugnant, an act of
domination; he was treating her like a dog or a cat. Involuntarily
she began digging in her heels. She was thinking of the women in
the shelter, the ones who became all quiet and meek and got beaten
up anyway.

She twisted her head back
toward him. "Why do you want them?" she said. She was trying to
engage him on some level, to get him to remember that he was a
human being and so was she.

"What do you care?" he
said in a low growl. At the same time he brought something out of
his pocket. She heard a click. He had something long in his
hand.

"I—"
Oh, damn.
He
did
have a knife. Briefly she closed
her eyes against the sight, then opened them again when she felt
the its cold, hard edge on her warm, soft neck. Nothing in her life
had prepared Liz for this moment. It was all she could do not to
pass out.

"We'll talk
upstairs.
Move."

Despite her terror, the
question remained:
why.
Why did he want the letters so badly that he'd
risk her life for them?

He'd let go of her and was
nudging her up the steps with the knife poking the small of her
back. The prod kept her moving at a quick ascent while she racked
her brain for a way out of her horror.

Mace. It was her only
hope. But how to get at it?

At the landing he said,
"Which way?" and she pointed weakly into her room.

"Where in the
room?"

"They're ... in the
closet. In two cardboard boxes. Under the photographs," she said,
amazing herself by her reluctance to tell him.

The shutters were still
open to the view. She could see the silhouettes of her neighbors'
houses, and the harbor with its twinkling lights below them:
serenity, downhill from terror.

He dragged Liz over the
threshold and shoved her across her bed, then backed up to the
windows and began closing the shutters top and bottom behind him.
She saw the knife clearly, poised and ready to go.

"Turn on a light," he
commanded as he closed the last pair.

Liz had one and only one
chance to elude him; and that meant
not
turning on a light.

"Okay ... just ... let me
do it," she said. She made a big deal of crawling back to the
nightstand side of her bed, then reached down for the canister of
Mace that she now kept alongside.

He saw that she was up to
something and lunged for her. At the same time she began spraying
wildly in his direction. Somehow, some way, she got him. He
screamed much louder than she had and dropped the knife. Liz
scrambled out of bed and went flying down the stairs, still
gripping her canister, with him screaming in agony behind her. But
she stubbed her toe

on a rearranged table so
violently that she went hurtling to the floor.

The intruder fell on top
of her.

New horror! She felt as if
she were trapped under some writhing, putrid snake. With cries of
disgust she shoved and pushed at him, infuriating him still more.
He was still making ghastly sounds of pain, animal sounds; he sat
on her, then grabbed her hair with one hand and slammed her head to
the floor.

She was knocked nearly
unconscious from the blow. She groped half-heartedly at the floor
around her, searching for the canister. No use: it must've rolled
out of reach. She felt like a swimmer going down for the third
time.
Jack, Jack, Jack,
she thought, as if by invoking his name she could
invoke his presence.

What happened next was as
bizarre as it was abrupt: the intruder suddenly leaped up from her
and clapped his hands on his ears, then began bending over in more
excruciating agony than before. Liz was only semiconscious and it
was mostly dark, but that was what she saw: the man was covering
his ears — not his eyes — and howling with pain.

Only then did she become
aware of the chime-sound, louder than usual, clearer than ever, a
sound of awesome power and phenomenal beauty. If an archangel had a
sword of heavenly tempered steel and he slammed that sword against
the gates of hell, that was what it would sound like.

Christopher,
she thought, slipping further into a stupor, more
deeply into confusion.
Not Jack,
then.

Another surprise: she
heard the back door burst open — explode, really — and heard Jack
yell out her name. She wanted to answer him, to say,
"You
took your sweet
time," but that was so many words ... so many syllables ... so many
vowels.

****

When she opened her eyes,
the lights were on, the police were at the open door, Jack was
holding her, and the intruder — a filthy-looking derelict — was
lying, out cold, on the living-room floor.