Valentine (3 page)

There, on the far corner of Bedford, perhaps fifty yards away, stood the lone figure of a man. He was all in black, Jill noticed: jeans and stocking cap and leather coat and gloves. He was standing quite still,
but through the snow she could not make him out clearly. He was tall, well over six feet, and slender. The cap covered his hair and much of his face, and just as she turned around, he turned his face away to glance up Bedford, as if he were looking for a particular address. After a moment’s hesitation, he walked off in that direction, disappearing from her view.

She stared at the now empty comer where he had been standing, then she looked swiftly around at all the other comers and stretches of sidewalk visible to her. She even scanned doorways and windows, looking into the front windows of the nearest Twin Sister behind her and over at the little restaurant on the ground floor of her own building. Nobody, anywhere.

She shook her head absently and clutched her purse more tightly. What on earth? she thought. I could have sworn. . . .

No, she decided. It’s silly. But for a moment there, she was positive that someone had been watching her. She could still feel the lingering residue of an intense stare, aimed directly at the back of her head. Ridiculous: the only human being in sight had been that man, who was apparently looking for a building. . . .

Shaking her head again and smiling at her own fanciful imagination, Jill crossed the little street and walked up to her doorway next to the entrance to
the restaurant. She got ready with the first of the two keys, just as Tara and Gwen and Mary and every other woman she knew did. Self-defense classes: an unfortunate by-product of being female and living in the city. Of being female and living on this planet, she thought ruefully as she opened the unlocked outer door, peering through the glass first to make sure there was no sinister male form lurking in the shadows inside. She’d actually joined the class with her friends as research for her third novel, because the policewoman in the story had to get physical a couple of times. Now, Jill was grateful for the training, however rudimentary.

She was just about to unlock the inner door when she remembered the mailbox. She glanced over at the shiny row of brass-fronted compartments next to the intercom, debating. Mail usually meant bills, and she only checked the box every other day or so. But Mary, her agent, had said something on the phone this morning about a new paperback contract for
The Mind of Alice Lanyon
. A larger advance, which was nice. The amazing amount of money people were willing to pay her for writing always thrilled her. She was very comfortable now, as her accountant and her broker and Mary Daley were quick to remind her. God bless the
Times
bestseller list, she thought, switching from the door key to the tiny one
for the mailbox. And God bless the reading public in twelve—thirteen?—countries.

The contract was there, in a large manila envelope with the agency’s logo on the sticker above her name and address. The contract, and something else: a square, pink envelope. A greeting card, she thought, wondering what occasion she’d overlooked. A belated Christmas or New Year’s thing? Her birthday was in June, so it couldn’t be that. Her name and address were neatly typed on the front, and there was no return address.

With a shrug, she carried the mail through the inner door and down the long hallway, past the staircase to the tiny elevator at the back of the building. She rode up the seven flights, emerging in the little foyer at the top of the stairs outside her door.

The last of the late afternoon sunlight shone weakly through the large front window as she came inside. She dropped the bag and the mail on the big, heavy mahogany coffee table and went immediately into her office at the back of the apartment, next to her bedroom. Once the smaller of two bedrooms, the tiny space was now dominated by a desk, on top of which rested her computer. Next to the desk was a small table holding her laser printer, and in the corner stood a three-drawer metal filing cabinet. The walls and bookshelves were her only concessions to vanity: framed cover art for her four novels, and first
editions of all her books in several languages. Her Edgar award, received from the Mystery Writers of America three years ago for
Darkness
—that year’s Best First Mystery by an American Author—had place of pride on the shelf next to the little back window above the desk. On the filing cabinet was her telephone with the built-in answering machine. Two messages, she noticed, hitting the playback button.

“Hi.” Nate’s rich baritone filled the room. “I’ll be working on something this afternoon, so don’t call between three and five. Call after five, unless you want a recording. Just stopped for a sandwich with Doug, and he says nine-thirty is fine. I hope this whole match-making thing works. You and your bright ideas! Bang on the floor and tell Tara nine-thirty, dessert and coffee, or whatever you’re planning. The eligible bachelor will join us then. He even promised to put on a clean shirt. See you about seven, and I’ll be starving, so feed me or
I’ll
run off with Tara. Love ya. ‘Bye.”

She grinned down at the machine as the second message began. Already planning the evening ahead in her mind, she didn’t hear the first part of it. But as the unfamiliar voice continued, she stared down, her mind suddenly, completely blank. What? she thought. What did he—she?—say?

Slowly, she reached out to push the playback button
again. There was a whirring sound as the tape rewound, then Nate’s voice.

“Hi. I’ll be working on—” She pressed the fast-forward mechanism, and Nate’s deep voice sped up until it was a long, sustained whine. When his message was over, she removed her finger and listened.

It was a rasping, high-pitched whisper, so high and—what?—
singsongy
, if there was such a word, that she couldn’t determine the gender of the speaker. But it was the brief giggle at the end of the message that sent a chill through her.

“Hello, Jillian. Did you get my card? Beautiful, isn’t it? I’ll be in touch real soon. ‘Bye.” Then the giggle, and then the click of the receiver being replaced.

It was an automatic reaction, she later determined, but it was a mistake. In one swift move, she lunged forward and hit the erase button. There was another low whirr as the messages were destroyed, and the tape was once again pristine. She stood there, shuddering, clutching the edge of the desk.

Brian Marshall, she thought. But it can’t be: he’s—

She stopped in mid-thought. He’s what? Gone. In Cleveland, last she’d heard. Or was it Cincinnati? She couldn’t remember, couldn’t think clearly.

No, she thought. It can’t be Brian: it’s too absurd. There’s probably an explanation; somebody’s idea of a joke. . . .

The card. She hadn’t even opened it.

She switched on the lamp on the desk next to the computer, then the overhead light in the office. She walked slowly back into the living room and stood staring at the bag and the envelopes on the table. Twilight had fallen, and the apartment was in shadows. She moved around the room, pausing to turn on every lamp and wall switch she passed. Tara won’t be home yet, she thought, or I’d call her and get her up here right now. She didn’t stop at the coffee table, but continued back past the dining area into the kitchen. Click. The yellow and white tiles and appliances came to gleaming life. The bathroom across from the kitchen. Click. White tiles and fixtures, frosted-glass shower doors above the bathtub. Then the bedroom. Click, click. The overhead light and the bedside lamp went on, filling the cozy blue room with cheerful, safe illumination.

When every light in the apartment was on, she walked back into the main room. Her shoes made a loud, hollow, reassuring tattoo on the polished wood floor as she passed the dinner table, then the Oriental carpet muffled all sound. She stood above the coffee table, staring down at the bright neon-pink envelope.

Dinner, she thought irrelevantly. I have to make dinner.

Slowly, she sat on the couch facing the picture window,
reached down, picked up the envelope, and tore it open.

It was a large, heart-shaped pink card, with a design of cardboard lace around the border. In the center of the heart, in blood-red embossed letters, was the word “Valentine . . .” The ellipsis indicated a further message inside. She opened the card. The same red script read: “. . . Be Mine!”

There was something else, neatly typed in capitals below the greeting card company’s cheery message. She read the five words over and over again, her eyes slowly widening in incomprehension. After the incomprehension came disbelief, and then, at last, the first, faint thrill of horror.

I’M WATCHING YOU.

LOVE,

VALENTINE

The windows. Her gaze flew from the card to the big picture window that took up most of the front wall. The shade was up, the curtains open. It gaped darkly at her, and through it she could see the lights in the windows of the building across Barrow Street and, beyond it, the taller buildings farther uptown. Windows, thousands of them. She was vulnerable,
naked; she was being watched. She’d actually jumped up and taken a step toward the window when a new consideration struck her. She stopped, thinking, and her gaze dropped once more to the card in her hand.

She blinked.

Then, all alone in her brightly lit apartment, Jillian Talbot burst into laughter. Oh, for Heaven’s sake! she thought as wave after wave of relief washed over her. Oh, Nate, how utterly tasteless! It was Nate, obviously: the only person she ever allowed to read a work-in-progress. And that is what this was.

It was the end of the first chapter of her new novel, as yet untitled. Only it wasn’t a valentine card, just an ordinary sheet of white paper in an envelope slipped under the heroine’s door. And the message in the story read:
“I’M GOING TO KILL YOU.”
The telephone message—the high-pitched, almost girlish whisper—was Nate’s own embellishment. And a good one, too, she admitted: I would never have recognized his voice, not in a million years. I’m going to kill him, she decided, echoing her own prose.

Still chuckling, she dropped the card on the coffee table and went into the kitchen to boil water for the pasta.

She didn’t bother about the window.

The little cardboard sign taped to the door of the East Village studio read:

NATHANIEL LEVIN

ARTIST

It was his little joke, he supposed. It was the first thing he’d done a year and a half ago, his first official act after walking into the large, empty storefront on First Avenue between Fifth and Sixth streets, dropping his duffel bag and his easel in the center of the room, and telling the aging hippie landlady that he’d take it. Evening (“Call me Eve”) Blanchard—whose real first name, he’d later learned, was Selma—had been delighted, so much so that she threw in the tiny apartment directly above it for less than he’d expected. In truth, she later confided over a Welcome to the Neighborhood gift of hash brownies and cheap red wine (neither of which he touched), she’d begun to despair of ever renting the space.

Not surprising, he thought, glancing around the big, brightly lit room with the front windows now covered by the permanently lowered—and permanently locked—metal gates. It was hardly an inviting place, and the two rooms and kitchenette upstairs were, all together, not much bigger than a walk-in closet. He didn’t even want to think about the apartment on the third floor, or the hairy young couple who lived there: he occasionally passed them on the
stairs, and that was enough. But he was
here
, he told himself again, putting down the palette knife and reaching for a medium brush. New York, exactly where he wanted to be. The East Village; the center, the hub of the art world. And
this
, he thought, smiling, was as
downtown
as the Downtown Art Scene got.

He wiped the perspiration from his forehead, took a swig from the large bottle of Evian next to the glass palette, and reached over to aim the little electric fan more directly at himself as he painted. He wore only paint-spattered jeans and sandals; his denim shirt had been discarded three hours ago, when he’d begun. Why is it always so hot in here? he wondered for the hundredth time. Even now, in January. It’s snowing outside, for crying out loud! Then he looked around at the gate-covered glass and up at the long tubes of industrial daylight, and shrugged. He pushed his thick, wavy black hair out of his eyes, stretched his tall, lanky frame, and went doggedly back to work.

Just finish this one, he thought. He looked over at the canvases stacked against the wall, counting them in his mind. The show, his second in New York, would consist of twelve paintings, and ten were completed. This one was the fourth of the Four Seasons series,
Summer
. The vivid patches of red, orange, yellow, and white were beginning to feel hot; perhaps another reason for the warmth of the room. When it
was finished to his satisfaction—well, not really: he was never completely satisfied—he would tackle the big one, the one he’d been saving for last. The Four Seasons would join the Seven Ages of Man and the final panel,
Life
, for the showing, which he was calling “Conditions.” Henry Jason was expecting a lot of coverage at his SoHo gallery, more than they’d gotten for the first Nathaniel Levin show last March. Jason believed in him, and Jason was one of the movers and shakers. He was on his way.

Hell, he thought with a wry smile, adding more white heat to the upper left comer of the canvas, I’m even selling now! Money, never a primary consideration for him, was certainly nicer than the alternative. He was in New York; he was succeeding in the art world; and he had an interesting new circle of friends. And, most of all, Jill.