Time Out of Mind (8 page)
Authors: John R. Maxim
Tags: #Horror, #General, #Psychological, #Suspense, #Memory, #Thrillers, #Fiction, #Time Travel
“
While I think of it, Mr. Lesko, I'll want those original
notes.”
cowhide notebook, leaving one finger to mark its place, and
showed his perfect teeth. ”I don't think so, Mr. Dancer.”
”
I want them, Mr. Lesko. I believe I've paid for them.”
“
You paid for information, which is what I'm feeding
into that little tape recorder in your briefcase. The notebook
is my property.”
”
I don't choose to get into a discussion with you, Mr.
Lesko.” The little man held out his palm. “I'll take it
now.”
“
Behave yourself, Mr. Dancer.” Raymond Lesko's eyes
turned hard.
Corbin had told her everything. All that he could. All that
he knew. Gwen had helped him from the tub and wrapped
him in a white terry robe and laid him down on the shag
rug in front of the fire she'd built in her living room. There
she sat astride his back, her fingers gently kneading the
muscles of his shoulders as he talked, encouraging him, listening, trying hard to understand. She'd put on a loose nightdress that now rode up high on her thighs and she'd
brushed out her hair. The room's only light came from the remains of three birch logs. The fire's warmth, her body's
warmth, made the snow seem far away.
He could not speak at first. He would try a few words
but then a catch would form in his throat and he would
hold his breath until it left him. Gwen was patient. She
reached for his third double Scotch of the evening, brought
it to his lips, and waited.
Hardest of all for Corbin was knowing where to begin.
He told her first of the woman he'd stalked through the
snow, of the things he'd seen and heard that night, of the elevated railway station in which she'd tried to find refuge,
the same elevated railroad that had begun to materialize
again as he and Gwen ran for the BMT subway that after
noon. He told her of the first time it snowed, the first time
the city began to change. It was three months earlier. No
vember. He'd stayed late in the city, a sales department
meeting followed by drinks at the Warwick Bar. The next
morning, that time at least, he was able to tell himself it
was the work of an overtired imagination and
one Scotch
too many. His brain had merely replayed a street scene
from some forgotten movie.
Gaslight. The Magnificent Am
bersons.
But then it snowed again. And again.
“
Tell me about Connecticut,” she whispered. “It began
there, didn't it?”
It did. And it didn't. It began, he thought, with the other
woman. Margaret. It was true that the name had only just
come to him, and that she'd only just begun to take shape
and form, but it seemed that she had been there all his life.
She was there when he was a boy. He would have a boy's troubled dreams and nighttime fears and at the end of the
worst of them he would feel her holding him, rocking him, in her slender arms. She was there when he was in college
but she was different by then. Where before she'd been a
wraithlike but comforting mother or aunt, she was now a
young woman, his own age or close to it, and she was
everything a young woman should be. Loving, giving,
bright, and gay. Jonathan had known many girls while he was in college. A few were special to him. But none who
even began to be so wonderful as this woman whose name
he did not know.
Margaret. Her name is Margaret.
Looking back, Corbin realized that he might never have
come to New York if it were not for Margaret. He would
have stayed in Chicago because Gwen would have stayed. She would not have left him after two good years of living
together. Two very good years. We should think about get
ting married, Gwen had said. Just think about it. Jonathan
had said yes. Yes, we should think about it. And more time
passed.
“
If I'm going to have babies,” Gwen said, “one at least,
it should be soon.”
“
Sure.” Corbin smiled. He liked that idea, having a
child with Gwen. A son. Especially a son. ''We’ll have to
start thinking about that.”
“
We've been thinking about it.”
“
Soon. We'll decide something soon.”
You like to dream about it, Jonathan, but you always
start to squirm when we talk about actually making it hap
pen. Do you want children or don't you?”
”
I do. Very much.”
“
But not if marriage is part of the bargain, I take it. What
is it, Jonathan? Perhaps you think I'd be an unfit mother? P
erhaps I've tarnished myself forever by living in sin with
you.”
“
Oh, for Pete's sake, Gwen.”
“
Jonathan, do you want to marry me or not?”
“
Gwen”—:he took her hands—”I love you. I do. But I
can't. I mean, I just need a little time.”
She had pressed him for a decision he could not bring
himself to make. And for reasons he couldn't bring himself
to say aloud. They were too stupid. Childish. How could he tell her of this fantasy woman that he could not push
out of his mind? It would sound so dumb. And it would
have hurt her. But Gwen, being Gwen, would have been
willing to deal with it. She would have pointed out to him that all men probably have fantasy lovers at one time or
another. Women, too. Nothing wrong with that.
But there was another ghost. A man. Not the man he
became when it snowed but someone else. This one was
tall, taller than Corbin, and very thin. He was dressed like an undertaker. Like the green-eyed woman, this one had
lived in a distant corner of his mind for as long as he could
remember. Unlike the woman, this man hated him. He
hated Corbin, and if Corbin had had a wife and children,
he would have hated them, too. Enough to kill them. All
of them.
This was still another thing that caused Corbin to main
tain a distance between Gwen and himself. It was not so
much that Corbin feared the hatred of the man in black. To
fear him would be to acknowledge that he was real. And
to do that would be to acknowledge what Corbin had long begun to suspect, that in the same dark corner of his mind where this man lived, a certain madness had taken root and
was growing by degrees. He could not ask Gwen to share
that. Corbin would fight it by himself. One on one. The way he used to do in the boxing ring. Except in the ring
you didn't have far to look for the enemy. He was right
there and he couldn't hide.
each other
al
most as much as ever, but a cloud had formed. A few
months later a job opened up in New York. Gwen was
perfect for it. Her salary would nearly double. Her boss,
reluctantly, said she'd be crazy to pass it up. Gwen asked
for a month to decide. She was given ten days. On the ninth
day she took Corbin out to dinner.
”
I have to ask you again, Jonathan.” Her hand was in his across the table. “Do you want to marry me or not?”
“
The job, right?” Corbin dropped his eyes. “You're re
ally thinking about taking it?”
“
I'd be a full producer. Of course I'm thinking about
it.”
”
I do
want
to marry you, sweetheart.”
“
But?”
”
I still need some time.”
“
Perhaps you need some time by yourself.”
“
Maybe. Maybe I do.”
Corbin didn't mean that the way Gwen heard it. What
he meant was that if he could be alone for a while, ,just a
while within himself and with no distractions, the ghosts
might take another step or two out of the shadows. He'd
either know who they were, or he'd know they weren't real.
What Gwen heard was, I care about you, but not quite as
much as you'd like me to. And I'm not sure I need you.
“
I'll miss you, Jonathan.” Gwen was gone a week later.
By the second week after that, Corbin realized he'd made
a disastrous mistake. So great was his sense of loss that it
crowded out both his angel and his devil. They did not
come further out. They were gone entirely. He called Gwen every day on the network WATS line and again most eve
nings to say goodnight. He flew in for weekends with her
as often as he could. Gwen remained loving and caring but
a touch more guarded than before.
Suddenly, in mid-August, another job opened at network
headquarters. Ben Tyler, the senior producer for sports programming, had suffered a massive heart attack while play
ing tennis in the Hamptons. Doctors gave him a
better-than-even chance for survival but almost no chance
of returning full time for at least a year. The network asked Corbin to fill in, beginning immediately. He leaped at the
opportunity. Gwen pretended to be surprised when he
called her with the news. But his new boss, Bill Stafford, had already told him how hard Gwen had pushed for him.
He moved to New York over Labor Day weekend. The network needed him there in time for the fall football sea
son. Gwen flew to Chicago to help him pack. They made
love on the floor among cardboard boxes after Corbin told
her what an ass he'd been and thanked her for being so
patient with him.
“
Was
it...Is it
another woman, Jonathan?”
Corbin shook his head and kissed her.
“
If it is, Jonathan, I want to know. I'll try to give you
room to work it out but I won't be made a fool of.”
“
There is no other woman.” He looked into her eyes.
“There's never been another woman.” It was not exactly
a lie.
After Corbin’s first weeks in New York, he allowed him
self to believe that he was winning. The woman with the
gold-flecked eyes and the man in black had retreated to
their dark corners. He was too busy to think about them. The job was going even better than he'd hoped. He had
moved into Gwen's apartment in the East Seventies but
only, she insisted, until he could find a proper place of his
own. One breakup was enough, thank you. Their feelings
had some more settling to do before they decided on any longer-term arrangements.
Meanwhile, Corbin and Gwen, who saw little of each
other during their business days, were spending virtually all
their free time together. Most evenings and weekends
they'd spend hunting down apartments and negotiating
bribes with rental agents. Otherwise they'd shop, explore restaurants and museums, see Broadway shows and caba
rets, happily sampling all the pleasures of the city in au
tumn. In late October, on a Thursday, Corbin placed a
deposit on a one-bedroom in a high-rise near the East River just above the Queensboro Bridge. It would be available in
three weeks' time. Wouldn't it be fun, Gwen suggested, to
celebrate by getting out of the city for the weekend? The
leaves up in Connecticut were just at their peak of color
and she knew of a lovely old inn in Greenwich that was
easily reached by a New Haven Railroad train and taxi. The
inn was called the Homestead. It was a marvelous old Victorian house, she told him, formerly a private estate bearing the same name, and totally restored with genuine period furnishings. Which gave her another idea. Let's do it right,
she said. You go and buy a straw boater and a pair of white
duck trousers. I have a long, frilly, light blue tea dress and
perhaps I can find a parasol someplace. We can play croquet on the lawn and take quiet walks along country lanes
and push each other into leaf piles.
