Shiver

16

Wendy didn’t feel really safe until she was inside Jeffrey’s house with the door shut and locked to keep out the darkness.

Aimlessly she circled the living room, grateful for the table lamps blazing everywhere. Like the rest of the rented house, the room was small and musty and cluttered. The white walls were covered with photographs, some framed, most simply tacked up with pushpins, all of them Jeffrey’s own work and all of them in black and white, a medium he preferred for complex, idiosyncratic reasons he’d once explained to her at tedious length. A few sticks of worn, mismatched furniture were scattered across a lusterless hardwood floor patterned with an intaglio of decades-old scratches. The floorboards creaked under her restless motion.

“All right,” Jeffrey said briskly, clapping his hands once. “The first thing to do is get you into something dry to wear. Sound okay?”

“I think I’d like to freshen up a little. Wash my face. I want to

… feel clean.”

He looked at her, his face an unasked question.

“No,” she said quietly. “I wasn’t raped, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“I’m not sure what to think.”

“I just feel dirty. Like I’ve been touched by”- death-“something bad.”

“You can take a shower.”

“Uh-uh.” She touched her neck. “The doctor said I can’t get the bandages wet for twenty-four hours. Just a washcloth and a sink full of water will be fine.”

“Well, I believe I can arrange that. Follow me.”

“Oh, wait a second. I want to check on something.”

She peeled back a corner of the window shade and peered out through the security bars. She saw Sanchez and Porter slamming the doors of the squad car. As she watched, the car reversed out of the driveway, then parked in a weedy lot across the road.

“What is it?” Jeffrey was right behind her.

“Those policemen who brought me here-they’re going to watch the house.”

“Watch it?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What for?”

“It’s just a precaution.”

She expected him to press her for details, as anybody would; but strangely he didn’t. When she turned away from the window at last, she read distance in his eyes, distance and what might have been pain.

He seemed to realize she was staring at him. His expression cleared.

“Ready to get cleaned up now?” Jeffrey asked, his voice normal, too normal.

“You bet.”

He led her down the hall. More photographs glided by, interrupted by the doorway to the half-bath Jeffrey had converted into a darkroom, then the closed door of the guest bedroom, which, Wendy knew, contained no furniture, only cartons of junk he’d never bothered to unpack. In the one-car garage he used as his studio, still more boxes were piled high against the walls. He’d once told her, while working on his third bottle of beer, that he saved all his notes and conceptual sketches because he believed his photographs would make him famous someday, and then his papers would be of historical value.

At the end of the hall Jeffrey opened the door to the master bedroom and showed her inside. The bed was scattered with tangled sheets and blankets hastily thrown aside.

“Sorry I had to call so late,” Wendy said pointlessly. “You must have been sound asleep.”

“Actually, no. I got a wrong number just about five minutes before you called me. That’s what woke me up.”

Adjacent to the bedroom was the master bath. Jeffrey opened the bathroom door and switched on the overhead light. The ceiling fan came on simultaneously with a rattle and whir.

“Your wash basin, madam. As for a change of clothes, I’m afraid the selection of outfits available at Chez Pellman is limited, basically, to blue jeans or pajamas.”

“Pajamas, I guess. I’m not sure I can sleep, but I’d better try.”

“One pair of clean, dry, much-too-large men’s pajamas coming up.” He removed a folded pair from a dresser drawer and handed them to her with ceremony. “Followed by one slightly ratty bathrobe.” He plucked a robe, not ratty at all, from a hanger in the closet. “And slippers. No, that won’t work. They’ll be way too big for you. How about thick wool socks?”

“Perfect.”

He found a pair. “Anything else?”

“I think you’ve got me covered. So to speak. I’ll be right out.”

“Take your time. And, Wendy… like I said on the phone, I really am glad you’re okay.”

“Me too,” she answered, using the same words she’d spoken earlier.

He hesitated, as if feeling the need to say something more, then apparently decided against it. He shut the door behind him. Wendy heard his footsteps recede down the hall.

She kicked off her one slipper and stripped out of her robe and pajamas, then hung them from the shower head. Turning to the bathroom mirror, she studied her face. The new hard glint in her eyes, which she’d first detected at the hospital, was still there.

She filled the sink, then methodically ran a damp washcloth over her legs, arms, breasts, face. The cool water felt like a process of healing. She dried herself, enjoying the towel’s rough texture. Finally she wetted, dried, and combed her hair. Jeffrey had always said she ought to let it fall around her shoulders. She wondered how he liked it this way.

Returning to the bedroom, she unfolded Jeffrey’s pajamas, a pair of blue cotton trousers and a matching long-sleeved shirt. With difficulty she pulled them. He was right: they were much too large. They hung on her like a clown’s baggy suit. She rolled up the pant legs and sleeves till she felt marginally less ridiculous, then donned the robe and belted it tight. The socks came last; they warmed her feet instantly.

“Want something to drink?” Jeffrey asked when she returned to the living room.

“No, thanks. I’ve had enough stimulation for one night.”

“It doesn’t have to be a drink — drink. I’ve got fruit juice, coffee, probably some hot chocolate somewhere, mineral water, the works.”

“I’m okay. Really.”

“All right.” He sat on the edge of a battered armchair, under a grainy close-up of a half-crushed beer can. “So.”

“So.”

“I guess it’s time we talked.”

“I guess.” She thought about taking a seat, didn’t. She stood before him, putting her hands in the pockets of the robe and taking them out, shifting her weight restlessly. “Look, Jeffrey, I know this is going to sound hard to believe…”

“It was the Gryphon, wasn’t it?”

She felt her jaw drop, actually drop. “How did you know?”

“Oh, Jesus, Wendy. Oh, Jesus.”

“Come on, tell me. How did you know?”

His glasses were in his hand. He rubbed his eyes, wincing, shaking his head.

“Jeffrey. How?”

With effort he answered her. “After you called, I had nothing to do except wait. So I turned on the radio. The news came on. They were reporting that the Gryphon went after two women in the same apartment building tonight. He killed one; the other one got away. They didn’t give the address, but the neighborhood sounded like yours. Of course I wasn’t sure. When you told me those cops would be watching the house, I thought… But I couldn’t really believe… I mean, it sounds so insane…”

“It is insane. All of it. So insane I still can’t believe it myself.”

Jeffrey sat looking down at his glasses, the wire frames glinting in the lamplight. Then he tossed the glasses aside and rose to his feet in one crisp motion. He must have crossed the room to her, but Wendy didn’t see him do that; she knew only that one moment he was standing by the sofa and the next moment he was holding her in his arms, rocking her back and forth, kissing her forehead, her cheek, her mouth.

“Wendy. Wendy. Wendy…”

She swayed with him, hugging him tight, then buried her face in his chest, needing the warmth she found there, needing to be close to his heart. Distantly, past the buzzing haze filling her brain, she heard a quiet, emotionless voice-her own-telling her she’d been wrong about Jeffrey, terribly wrong. He might not have shown it, but he did care for her, cared a great deal, far more than she’d known, perhaps more than she’d wanted to know.

“Wendy,” he said again, the word whispered like a prayer.

After a long time they parted. She looked at him through a prism of tears. When he spoke, he made an effort to sound casual, almost businesslike, as if nothing had happened between them; but his voice was hoarse and cracked, giving the show away.

“Look, you don’t have to tell me the details tonight. Unless you want to talk about it.”

She’d thought she did, but in that moment she knew she’d been wrong. She couldn’t go over it again, couldn’t relive the experience as she’d relived it in Delgado’s office. She felt worn through, like old cloth.

“No,” she answered. “I don’t want to talk about it. Not right now. In the morning, maybe. It’ll be easier for me-everything will-in the morning.”

“Would you like to get some rest or stay up for a while?”

“Rest, I think.”

“You take the bed. I’ll sleep on the sofa.”

“I’m sorry to put you out like this.”

He laughed. Low helpless laughter that had no hilarity in it. After a startled moment she joined him.

They were still giggling softly as Jeffrey accompanied her down the hall to the bedroom. His arm was around her waist, and her head was resting on his shoulder. For the length of the walk, Wendy hoped the hallway would be endless, the bedroom forever receding, this moment stretching like elastic and never breaking.

At the doorway they stopped. She lifted her head from his shoulder, and felt his hand glide free of her body. The last of their laughter dribbled out and was gone. Then they were just two people standing there.

“If you need anything during the night, holler,” Jeffrey said.

She smiled up at him. “I will. Good night.”

He kissed her again, then hesitated, his hand brushing her hair. She wondered if he would try anything.

1 won’t mind if he does, she thought. I won’t try to stop him.

Now that was a new attitude, wasn’t it? Not in keeping with the old Wendy at all. But the old Wendy, the one who was always a victim, was not the Wendy she’d seen in the hand mirror at the hospital or in the bathroom mirror just minutes ago. She was not the Wendy birthed in bloody trauma tonight.

His fingers lingered in her hair for another moment, then vanished, leaving only the memory of their touch. He took a step back. She knew he would not try anything, would not take advantage of her when she was tired and confused and perhaps willing to do something she might later regret. As always, he was a gentleman.

“Good night,” he echoed softly, then turned with involuntary abruptness and walked too quickly toward the living room, where the sofa was.

Wendy’s heart was beating fast, and her face felt flushed. She stepped into the bedroom, shut the door, and leaned against it, drawing rapid, shallow breaths. Though Jeffrey was gone, she could still see him behind her closed eyelids, gazing down at her with sympathetic concern. “Are you all right, Wendy?” she heard him ask, his calm baritone edged with a hint of an accent…

She blinked. It was not Jeffrey she was imagining. It was Delgado.

Why would she be thinking of him now?

A tremor danced lightly over her shoulders like a shrug. She dismissed the question.

Carefully she draped the robe over a chair, then climbed into bed. Lying on her back, her hands folded on her belly, she stared up at the ceiling with its cobwebbed corners. One of those gray fuzzy things that floated perpetually before everybody’s eyes drifted across the white blankness of the ceiling like a cell on a microscope slide.

After a while she heard the creaking of the sofa and realized Jeffrey had settled down for the night. She wondered if he’d turned off the lights in the living room. Of course he had.

Oh, God, he shouldn’t have. She ought to tell him-

Then she remembered Sanchez and Porter, her guardians. She felt better. Nobody would get inside the house or anywhere near it as long as they were posted across the street.

To prove she was no longer afraid, she switched off the bedside lamp. Darkness pressed down on her. She listened to the faint, regular sound of her own breathing. Images flashed in her mind like heat lightning, silent, vivid, fragmentary. A wisp of curly brown hair behind the armchair. Gloved hands flying past her face as the garrote was tossed over her neck. The crimson thread ringing her neck where the wire had bitten and fed.

She shivered and rolled onto her side, crushing the pillow to her face.

Forget about it, she ordered herself. Sleep.

But I’ll have nightmares, another part of her mind protested in a child’s frightened voice.

No, you won’t, she answered soothingly. You already had a nightmare, Wendy. A bad one. The worst you’ll ever have.

And it’s over now.