The Best American Mystery Stories 2012

The Bridge Partner by Peter S. Beagle

FROM Sleight of Hand

I WILL KILL YOU .

The words were not spoken aloud, but silently mouthed across the card table at Mattie Whalen by her new partner, whose last name she had not quite caught when they were introduced. Olivia Korhanen or Korhonen, it was, something like that. She was blond and fortyish-Mattie was bad with ages, but the woman had to be somewhere near her own-and had joined the Moss Harbor Bridge Group only a few weeks earlier. The members had chosen at the very beginning to call themselves a group rather than a club. As Eileen Berry, one of the two founders, along with Suzanne Grimes, had said at the time, “There’s an exclusivity thing about a club-a snobby, elitish sort of taste, if you know what I mean. A group just feels more democratic.” Everyone had agreed with Eileen, as people generally did.

Which accounted, Mattie thought, for the brisk acceptance of the woman now sitting across from her, despite her odd name and unclassifiably foreign air. Mattie could detect only the faintest accent in her voice, and if her clothes plainly did not come from the discount outlet in the local mall, neither were they so aggressively chic as to offend or threaten. She had clear, pleasant blue eyes, excellent teeth, the delicately tanned skin of a tennis player-as opposed to a leathery beach bunny or an orange-hued tanning bed veteran-and was pleasant to everyone in a gently impersonal manner. Her playing style showed not only skill but grace, which Mattie noticed perhaps more poignantly than any other member of the Bridge Group, since the best that could have been said for Mattie was that she mostly managed to keep track of the trumps and the tricks. Still, she knew grace when she saw it.

I will kill you.

It made no possible sense-she must surely have misread both the somewhat long, quizzical lips and the intention in the bright eyes. No one else seemed to have heard or noticed anything at all unusual, and she really hadn’t played the last hand as badly as all that. Granted, doubling Rosemarie’s bid could be considered a mistake, but people make mistakes, and she could have pulled it off if Olivia Korhonen, or whoever, had held more than the one single miserable trump to back her up. You don’t kill somebody for doubling, or even threaten to kill them. Mattie smiled earnestly at her partner, and studied her cards.

The rubber ended in total disaster, and Mattie apologized at some length to Olivia Korhonen afterward. “I’m not really a good player, I know that, but I’m not usually that awful, I promise. And now you’ll probably never want to play with me ever again, and I wouldn’t blame you.” Mattie had had a deal of practice at apologizing, over the years.

To her pleasant surprise, Olivia Korhonen patted her arm reassuringly and shook her head. “I enjoyed the game greatly, even though we lost. I have not played in a long time, and you will have to make allowances until I start to catch up. We’ll beat them next time, in spite of me.”

She patted Mattie again and turned elegantly away. But as she did so, the side of her mouth repeated, clearly but inaudibly-Mattie could not have been mistaken this time-“I will kill you.” Then the woman was gone, and Mattie sat down in the nearest folding chair.

Her friend Virginia Schlossberg hurried over with a cup of tea, asking anxiously, “Are you all right? What is it? You look absolutely ashen! ” She touched Mattie’s cheek, and almost recoiled. “And you’re freezing! Go home and get into bed, and call a doctor! I mean it-you go home right now!” Virginia was a kind woman, but excitable. She had been the same when Mattie and she were in dancing school together.

“I’m all right,” Mattie said. “I am, Ginny, honestly.” But her voice was shaking as much as her hands, and she made her escape from the Group as soon as she could trust her legs to support her. She was grateful on two counts: first, that no one sat next to her on the bus; and, secondly, that Don would most likely not be home yet from the golf course. She did not look forward to Don just now.

Rather than taking to her bed, despite Virginia’s advice, she made herself a healthy G &T and sat in the kitchen with the lights on, going over and over everything she knew of Olivia Korhonen. The woman was apparently single or widowed, like most of the members of the Moss Harbor Bridge Group, but judging by the reactions of the few men in the Group she gave no indication of being on the prowl. Seemingly unemployed, and rather young for retirement, still she lived in one of the pricey new condos just two blocks from the harbor. No Bridge Group member had yet seen her apartment except for Suzanne and Eileen, who reported back that it was smart and trendy, “without being too off-puttingly posh.” Eileen thought the paintings were originals, but Suzanne had her doubts.

What else, what else? She had looked up “Korhonen” on the Internet and found that it was a common Finnish name-not Jewish, as she had supposed. To her knowledge, she had never met a Finnish person in her life. Were they like Swedes? Danes, even? She had a couple of Danish acquaintances, a husband and wife named Olsen… no, they were nothing at all like the Korhonen woman; one could never imagine either Olsen saying I will kill you to so much as a cockroach, which, of course, they wouldn’t ever have in the house. But then, who would say such a thing to a near stranger? And over a silly card game? It made no sense, none of it made any sense. She mixed another G &T and was surprised to find herself wanting Don home.

Don’s day, it turned out, had been a bad one. Trounced on the course, beaten more badly in the rematch he had immediately demanded, he had consoled himself liberally in the clubhouse; and, as a consequence, was clearly not in any sort of mood to hear about a mumbled threat at a bridge game. On the whole, after sixteen years of marriage, Mattie liked Don more than she disliked him, but such distinctions were essentially meaningless at this stage of things. She rather appreciated his presence when she felt especially lonely and frightened, but a large, furry dog would have done as well; indeed, a dog would have been at once more comforting and more concerned for her comfort. Dogs wanted their masters to be happy-Don simply preferred her uncomplaining.

When she told him about Olivia Korhonen’s behavior at the Bridge Group, he seemed hardly to hear her. In his usual style of picking up in the middle of the intended sentence, he mumbled, “… take that damn game so damn seriously. Bud and I don’t go yelling we’re going to kill each other”-Bud Gorko was his steady golf partner-“and believe you me, I’ve got reason sometimes.” He snatched a beer out of the refrigerator and wandered into the living room to watch TV.

Mattie followed him in, the second G &T strengthening a rare resolve to make him take her seriously. She said, “She did it twice. You didn’t see her face.” She raised her voice to carry over the yammering of a commercial. “She meant it, Don. I’m telling you, she meant it.”

Don smiled muzzily and patted the sofa seat beside him. “Hear you, I’m right on it. Tell you what-she goes ahead and does that, I’m going to take a really dim view. A dim view.” He liked the phrase. “Really dim view.”

“You’re dim enough already,” Mattie said. Don did not respond. She stood watching him for a few minutes without speaking, because she knew it made him uncomfortable. When he got to the stage of demanding, “What? What?” she walked out of the room and into the guest bedroom, where she lay down. She had been sleeping there frequently enough in recent months that it felt increasingly like her own.

She had thought she would surely dream of Olivia Korhonen, but it was only in the sweet spot between consciousness and sleep that the woman’s face came to her: the long mouth curling almost affectionately, almost seductively, as though for a kiss, caressing the words that Mattie could not hear. It was an oddly tranquil, even soothing vision, and Mattie fell asleep like a child, and did not dream at all.

The next morning she felt curiously young and hopeful, though she could not imagine why. Don had gone off to work at the real estate office with his normal Monday hangover, pitifully savage; but Mattie indulged herself with a long hot shower, a second toasted English muffin, and a long telephone chat with a much-relieved Virginia Schlossberg before she went to the grocery store. There would be an overdue hair appointment after that, then home in time for Oprah. A good day.

The sense of serenity lasted through the morning shopping, through her favorite tea-and-brioche snack at La Place, and on to her date with Mr. Philip at the salon. It ended abruptly while she was more than half drowsing under the dryer, trying to focus on Vanity Fair, as well as on the buttery jazz on the PA system, when Olivia Korhonen’s equally pleasant voice separated itself from the music, saying, “Mrs. Whalen-Mattie? How nice to see you here, partner.” The last word flicked across Mattie’s skin like a brand.

Olivia Korhonen was standing directly in front of her, smiling in her familiar guileless manner. She had clearly just finished her appointment: the glinting warmth and shine of her blond hair made that plain, and made Mattie absurdly envious, her own mouse-brown curls’ only distinction being their comb-snapping thickness. Olivia Korhonen said, “Shall we play next week? I look forward so.”

“Yes,” Mattie said faintly; and then, “I mean, I’m not sure-I have things. To do. Maybe.” Her voice squeaked and slipped. She couldn’t stop it, and in that moment she hated her voice more than she had ever hated anything in the world.

“Oh, but you must be there! I do not know anyone else to play with.” Mattie noticed a small dimple to the left of Olivia Korhonen’s mouth when she smiled in a certain way. “I mean, no one else who will put up with my bad playing, as you do. Please?”

Mattie found herself nodding, just to keep from having to speak again-and also, to some degree, because of the genuine urgency in Olivia Korhonen’s voice. Maybe I imagined the whole business… maybe it’s me getting old and scared, the way people do. She nodded a second time, with somewhat more enthusiasm.

Olivia Korhonen patted her knee through the protective salon apron, plainly relieved. “Oh, good. I already feel so much better.” Then, without changing her expression in the least, she whispered, “I will kill you.”

Mattie thought later that she must have fainted in some way; at all events, her next awareness was of Mr. Philip taking the curlers out of her hair and brushing her off. Olivia Korhonen was gone. Mr. Philip peered at her, asking, “Who’s been keeping you up at night, darling? You never fall asleep under these things.” Then he saw her expression and asked, “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Mattie said. “I’m fine.”

After that, it seemed to her that she saw Olivia Korhonen everywhere, every day. She was coming out of the dry cleaners’ as Mattie brought an armload of Don’s pants in; she hurried across the street to direct Mattie as she was parking her car; she asked Mattie’s advice buying produce at the farmers’ market, or broke off a conversation with someone else to chat with Mattie on the street. And each time, before they parted, would come the silent words, more menacing for being inaudible, “I will kill you.” The dimple beside the long smile always showed as she spoke.

Mattie had never felt so lonely in her life. Despite all the years she and Don had lived in Moss Harbor, there was no one in her local circle whom she could trust in any sort of intimate crisis, let alone with something like a death threat. Suzanne or Eileen? Out of the question-things like that simply did not happen to members of the Bridge Group. There was Virginia, of course… Virginia might very well believe her, if anyone did, but would be bound to fall apart under the burden of such knowledge. That left only going further afield and contacting Patricia.

Pat Gallagher lived directly across the bay, in a tiny incorporated area called Witness Point. Mattie had known her very nearly as long as she had known Virginia, but the relationships could not have been more different. Pat was gay, for one thing; and while Mattie voted for every same-sex-marriage and hate-crimes proposition that came up on any ballot, she was honest enough to know that she was ill at ease with homosexuals. She could never explain this, and was truly ashamed of it, especially around someone as intelligent and thoughtful as Pat Gallagher. She found balance in distance, only seeing Pat two or three times a year, at most, and sometimes no more than once. They did e-mail a reasonable amount though, and they talked on the phone enough that Mattie still knew the number by heart. She called it now.

They arranged to meet at Pat’s house for lunch on the weekend. She lived in a shingly, flowery, cluttery cottage, in company with a black woman named Babs, an administrator at the same hospital where Pat was a nurse. Mattie liked Babs immediately, and was therefore doubly nervous around her, and doubly shamed, especially when Babs offered in so many words to disappear graciously, so that she and Pat could talk in private. Mattie would have much preferred this, but the very suggestion made it impossible. “I’m sure there’s nothing I have to say to Patricia that I couldn’t say to you.”

Babs laughed. “That you may come to regret, my dear.” But she set out second glasses of pinot grigio, and second bowls of Pat’s minestrone, and sat down with them. Her dark-brown skin and soft curly hair contrasted so perfectly with Pat’s freckled Irish pinkness and they seemed so much at ease with one another that Mattie felt a quick, startling stitch of what could only have been envy.

“Okay,” Pat said. “Talk. What’s got you scared this time?”

Babs chuckled. “Cuts straight to the chase, doesn’t she?”

Mattie bridled feebly. “You make it sound as though I’m a big fraidy cat, always frightened about something. I’m not like that.”

“Yes, you are.” The affection in Pat’s wide grin took some of the sting from the words. “You never call me unless something’s really got you spooked, do you realize that? Might be a thing you saw on the news, a hooha with your husband, a pain somewhere there shouldn’t be a pain. Maybe a lump you’re worried about-maybe just a scary dream.” She put her hand on Mattie’s hand. “It’s fine, it’s you. Talk. Tell.”

She and Babs remained absolutely silent while Mattie told them about the Bridge Group, and about Olivia Korhonen. She was aware that she was speaking faster as the account progressed, and that her voice was rising in pitch, but all she wanted was to get the words out as quickly as she could. The words seemed strangely reluctant to be spoken: more and more, they raked at her throat and palate as she struggled to rid herself of them. When she was done, the roof of her mouth felt almost burned, and she gratefully accepted a glass of cold apple juice from Babs.

“Well,” Pat said finally. “I don’t know what I expected to hear from you, but that was definitely not it. Not hardly.”

Babs said grimly, “What you have there is a genuine, certified stalker. I’d call the cops on her in a hot minute.”

“How can she do that?” Pat objected. “The woman hasn’t done anything! No witnesses, not one other person who heard what she said-what she keeps on saying. They’d laugh in Mattie’s face, if they didn’t do worse.”

“It does sound such a silly story,” Mattie said wretchedly. “Like a paranoiac, somebody with a persecution complex. But it’s true, I’m not making it up. That’s just exactly the way it’s been happening.”

Pat nodded. “I believe you. And so would a jury, if it ever came to that. Anyone who spends ten minutes around you knows right away that you haven’t the first clue about lying.” She sighed, refilling Babs’s glass and her own but not Mattie’s. “Not you-you have to drive. And we wouldn’t want to frustrate little Ms. What’s-her-face, now would we?”

“That’s not funny,” Babs interrupted sharply. “That’s not a bit funny, Patricia.”

Pat apologized promptly and profusely, but Mattie was absurdly delighted. “You call her Patricia, too! I thought I was the only one.”

“Only way to get her attention sometimes.” Babs continued to glower at an extremely penitent Pat. “But she’s right about the one thing, anyway. Even if the cops happened to believe you, they couldn’t do a damn thing about it. Couldn’t slap a restraining order on the lady, couldn’t order her to stay x number of feet away from you. Not until…” She shrugged heavily, and did not finish the sentence.

“I know,” Mattie said. “I wasn’t expecting you two to… fix things. Be my bodyguards, or something. But I do feel a bit better, talking to you.”

“Now, if you were in the hospital”-Babs grinned suddenly and wickedly-“we really could bodyguard you. Between old Patricia and me, nobody’d get near you, except for the surfers we’d be smuggling in to you at night. You ought to think about it, Mattie. Safe and fun, both.”

Mattie was still giggling over this image, and a couple of others, when they walked her out to her car. As she buckled her seatbelt, Pat put a hand on her shoulder, saying quietly, “As long as this goes on every day, you call every day. Got that?”

“Yes, Mama,” Mattie answered. “And I’ll send my laundry home every week, I promise.”

The hand on her shoulder tightened, and Pat shook her a little more than slightly. “I mean it. If we don’t hear, we’ll come down there.”

“Big bad bull dykes on the rampage,” Babs chimed in from behind Pat. “Not pretty.”

It was true that she did feel better driving home: not at all drunk, just pleasantly askew, easier and more rested from the warmth of company than she had been in a long time. That lasted all the way to Moss Harbor, and almost to her front door. The almost part came when, parking the car at the curb, she heard a horn honk twice, and looked up in time to see an arm waving cheerfully back to her as Olivia Korhonen’s bright little Prius rounded a corner. Mattie sat in her car for a long time before she turned off the engine and got out.

Is she watching my house? Was she waiting for me?

She did not call Pat and Babs that night, even though she lay awake until nearly morning. Then, with Don gone to work, she forced herself to eat breakfast, and called Suzanne for Olivia Korhonen’s home telephone number. Once she had it in hand, she stalled over a third cup of coffee, and then a fourth, before she finally dialed the number and waited through several rings, consciously hoping to hear the answering machine click on. But nothing happened. She was about to break the connection when she heard the receiver being picked up and Ms. Korhonen’s cool, unmistakable voice said, “Yes? Who is this, please?”

Mattie drew a breath. “It’s Mattie Whalen. From the Bridge Group, you remember?”

If she has the gall to even hesitate, stalking me every single day… But the voice immediately lifted with delight. “Yes, Mattie, of course I remember, how not? How good to hear from you.” There was nothing in words or tone to suggest anything but pleasure at the call.

“I was wondering,” Mattie began-then hesitated, listening to Olivia Korhonen’s breathing. She said, “I thought perhaps we might get together-maybe one day this week?”

“To practice our bridge game?” Somewhat to Mattie’s surprise, Olivia Korhonen pounced on the suggestion. “Oh, yes. That would be an excellent idea. We could develop our own strategies-that is what the great players work on all the time, is it not? Excellent, excellent, Mattie!” They arranged to meet at noon, two days from that date, at Olivia Korhonen’s condo apartment. She wanted to make cucumber sandwiches-“in the English style, I will cut the crusts off”-but Mattie talked her out of that, or thought she had. In her imagining of what she planned to say to Olivia Korhonen, there would be no room for food.

On the appointed day Mattie woke up in a cold sweat. She considered whether she might be providentially coming down with some sort of flu, but decided she wasn’t; then made herself a hot toddy in case she was, ate Grape-Nuts and yogurt for breakfast, went back to bed in pursuit of another hour’s nap, failed miserably, got up, showered, dressed, and watched Oprah until it was time to go. She made another hot toddy while she waited, on the off chance that the flu might be waiting, too.

The third-floor condo apartment turned out as tastefully dressy as Eileen and Suzanne had reported. Olivia Korhonen was at the door, smilingly eager to show her around. The rooms were high and airy, with indeed a good many paintings and prints, of which Mattie was no judge-they looked like originals-and a rather surprising paucity of furniture, as though Olivia Korhonen had not been planning for long-term residence. When Mattie commented on this, the blond woman only twinkled at her, saying, “The motto of my family is that one should always sink deep roots wherever one lives. Because roots can always be sold, do you see?” Later on, considering this, Mattie was not entirely certain what bearing it had on her question; but it sounded both sensible and witty at the time, in Olivia Korhonen’s musical voice.

Nevertheless, when Olivia Korhonen announced, “Now, strategy!” and brought out both the cards and the cucumber sandwiches, Mattie held firm. She said, “Olivia, I didn’t come to talk about playing cards.”

Olivia Korhonen was clearly on her guard in an instant, though her tone remained light. She set the tray of sandwiches down and said slowly, “Ah? Ulterior motives? Then you had probably better reveal them now, don’t you think so?” She stood with her head tipped slightly sideways, like an inquisitive bird.

Mattie’s heart was beating annoyingly fast, and she was very thirsty. She said, “You are stalking me, Olivia. I don’t know why. You are following me everywhere… and that thing you say every single time we meet.” Olivia Korhonen did not reply, nor change her expression. Mattie said, “Nobody else hears you, but I do. You whisper it-I will kill you. I hear you.”

Sleepless, playing variations on the scene over and over in her head the night before, she had expected anything from outrage and accusation to utter bewilderment to tearful, fervent denial. What happened instead was nothing she could have conceived of: Olivia Korhonen clapped her hands and began to laugh.

Her laughter was like cold silver bells, chiming a fraction out of tune, their dainty discordance more jarring than any rusty clanking could have been. Olivia Korhonen said, “Oh, I did wonder if you would ever let yourself understand me. You are such a… such a timorous woman, you know, Mattie Whalen-frightened of so very much, it is a wonder that you can ever peep out of your house, your little hole in the baseboard. Eyes flicking everywhere, whiskers twitching so frantically…” She broke off into a bubbling fit of giggles, while Mattie stared and stared, remembering girls in school hallways who had snickered just so.

“Oh, yes,” Olivia Korhonen said. “Yes, Mattie, I will kill you-be very sure of that. But not yet.” She clasped her hands together at her breast and bowed her head slightly, smiling. “Not just yet.”

“Why? Why do you want… what have I ever, ever done to you?”

The smile warmed and widened, but Olivia Korhonen was some time answering. When she did, the words came slowly, thoughtfully. “Mattie, where I come from we have a great many sheep, they are one of Finland’s major products. And where you have sheep, of course, you must have dogs. Oh, we do have many wonderful dogs-you should see them handle and guide and work the sheep. You would be so fascinated, I know you would.”

Her cheeks had actually turned a bit pink with what seemed like earnest enthusiasm. She said, “But Mattie, dear, it is a curious thing about sheep and dogs. Sometimes stray dogs break into a sheepfold, and then they begin to kill.” She did not emphasize the word, but it struck Mattie like a physical blow under the heart. Olivia Korhonen went on. “They are not killing to eat, out of hunger-no, they are simply killing blindly, madly, they will wipe out a whole flock of sheep in a night, and then run on home to their masters and their dog biscuits. Do you understand me so far, Mattie?”

Mattie’s body was so rigid that she could not even nod her head. Olivia’s softly chiming voice continued. “It is as though these good family dogs have gone temporarily insane. Animal doctors, veterinarians, they think now that the pure passivity, the purebred stupidity of the sheep somehow triggers-is that the right word, Mattie? I mean it like to set off-somehow triggers something in the dog’s brain, something very old. The sheep are blundering around in the pen, bleating in panic, too stupid to protect themselves, and it is all just too much for the dogs-even for sheepdogs sometimes. They simply go mad.” She spread her hands now, leaning forward, graceful as ever. “Do you see now, Mattie? I do hope you begin to see.”

“No.” The one word was all Mattie could force out between freezing lips. “No.”

“You are my sheep,” Olivia Korhonen said. “And I am like the dogs. You are a born victim, like all sheep, and it is your mere presence that makes you irresistible to me. Of course, dogs are dogs-they cannot ever wait to kill. But I can. I like to wait.”

Mattie could not move. Olivia Korhonen stepped back, looked at her wristwatch, and made a light gesture toward the door, as though freeing Mattie from a spell. “Now you had better run along home, dear, for I have company coming. We will practice our strategy for the Bridge Group another time.”

Mattie sat in her car for a long time, hands trembling, before she felt able even to turn the key in the ignition. She had no memory of driving home, except a vague awareness of impatient honking behind her when she lingered at intersections after the traffic light had changed. When she arrived home she sat by the telephone with her fingers on the keypad, trying to make herself dial Pat Gallagher’s number. After a time, she began to cry.

She did call that evening, by which time a curious calm, unlike any other she had ever felt, had settled over her. This may have been because by then she was extremely drunk, having entered the stage of slow but very precise speech, and a certain deliberate, unhurried rationality that she never seemed able to attain sober. Both Pat and Babs immediately offered to come and stay with her, but Mattie declined with thanks. “Not much point to it. She said she’d wait… said she liked waiting.” Her voice sounded strange in her own ears, and oddly new. “You can’t bodyguard me forever. I guess I have to bodyguard me. I guess I just have to.”

When she hung up-only after her friends had renewed their insistence that she call daily, on pain of home invasion-she did not drink any more, but sat motionless by the phone, waiting for Don’s return. It was his weekly staff-meeting night, and she knew he would be late, but she felt like sitting just where she was. If I never moved again, she’d have to come over here to kill me. And the neighbors would see. The phone rang once, but she did not answer.

Don came home in, for him, a cheerful mood, having been informed that his supervisor at the agency, whom he loathed, was being transferred to another branch. He had every expectation of a swift promotion. Mattie-or someone in Mattie’s body, shaping words with her still-cold lips-congratulated him, and even opened a celebratory bottle of champagne, though she drank none of her glass. Don began calling his friends to spread the news, and Mattie went into the kitchen to start a pot roast. The steamed fish with greens and polenta revolution had passed Don quietly by.

The act of cooking soothed her nerves, as it had always done; but the coldness of her skin seemed to have spread to her mind-which was not, when considered, a bad thing at all. There was a peculiar clarity to her thoughts now: both her options and her fears seemed so sharply defined that she felt as though she were traveling on an airplane that had just broken out of clouds into sunlight. I live in clouds. I always have.

Fork in one of his hands, cordless in the other, Don devoured two helpings of the roast and praised it in between calls. Mattie, nibbling for appearances’ sake, made no attempt to interrupt; but when he finally put the phone down for a moment she remarked, “That woman at the Bridge Group? The one who said she was going to kill me?”

Don looked up, the wariness in his eyes unmistakable. “Yeah?”

“She means it. She really means to kill me.” Mattie had been saying the words over and over to herself all afternoon; by now they came out briskly, almost casually. She said, “We discussed it for some time.”

Don uttered a cholesterol-saturated sigh. “Damn, ever since you started with that bridge club, feels like I’m running a daycare center. Look, this is middle-school bullshit, you know it and she knows it. Just tell her, enough with the bullshit, it’s getting real old. Or find yourself another partner, probably the best thing.” He had the cordless phone in his hand again.

The strange, distant Mattie said softly, “I’m just telling you.”

“And I’m telling you, get another partner. Silly shit, she’s not about to kill anybody.” He wandered off into the living room, dialing.

Mattie stood in the kitchen doorway, looking after him. She said-clearly enough for him to have heard, if he hadn’t already been talking on the phone-“No, she’s not.” She liked the sound of it, and said it again. “She’s not.” Then she went straight off to bed, read a bit of Chicken Soup for the Soul, and fell quickly asleep. She dreamed that Olivia Korhonen was leaning over her in bed, smiling widely and eagerly. There were little teeth on her tongue and small, triangular teeth fringing her lips.

Mattie got to the Bridge Group early the next afternoon and waited, with impatience that surprised her, for Olivia Korhonen to arrive. The Group met in a community building within sight of the Moss Harbor wharf, its windows fronting directly on the parking lot. Mattie was already holding the door open when Olivia Korhonen crossed the lot.

Did she look even a little startled-the least bit taken aback by her prey’s eager welcome? Mattie hoped so. She said brightly, “I was afraid you might not be coming today.”

“And I thought that perhaps you…” Olivia Korhonen very deliberately let the sentence trail away. If she had been at all puzzled, she gathered herself as smoothly as a cat landing on its feet. “I am glad to see you, Mattie. I had some foolish idea that you might be, perhaps, ill?”

“Not a bit-not when we need to work on our strategy.” Mattie touched her elbow, easing her toward the table where Jeannie Atkinson and old Joe Booker were both beckoning. “You know we need to do that.” It was a physical effort to make herself smile into Olivia Korhonen’s blue eyes, but she managed.

Playing worse than even she ever had, with foolish bids, rash declarations of trumps, scoring errors, and complete mismanagement of her partner’s hand when Olivia Korhonen was dummy, she worked with desperate concentration-manifesting as lightheaded carelessness-on upsetting the woman’s balance, her judgment of the situation. How well she succeeded, and to what end, she could not have said; but when Olivia Korhonen mouthed I will kill you once again at her as she was dealing a final rubber, she fought down the ice-pick stab of terror and gaily said, “Ah-ah, we mustn’t signal each other-against the rules, bad, bad.” Jeannie and Joe raised their eyebrows, and Olivia Korhonen, very briefly, almost looked embarrassed.

She left hurriedly, directly after the game. Mattie followed her out, blithely apologizing left and right, as always, for her poor play. At the car, Olivia Korhonen turned to say, evenly and without expression, “You are not spoiling the game for me. This is childish, all this that you are playing at. It means nothing.”

Mattie felt her mouth drying and her heart beginning to pound. But she said, keeping her voice as calm as she could, “Not everybody gets to know how and when they’re going to die. If you’re really going to kill me, you don’t get to tell me how to behave.” Olivia Korhonen did not reply, but got into her car and drove away, and Mattie walked back to the Bridge Group for tea and cookies.

“One for the sheep,” Pat said on the phone that night. “You crossed her up-she figured you’d be running around in the pen, all crazy with fear, bleating and blatting and wetting yourself. The fun part. And instead you came right to her and practically spit in her eye. I’ll bet she’s thinking about that one right now.”

On the extension, Babs said flatly, “Yes, she sure as hell is. And I’m thinking that she won’t make that mistake again. She’s regrouping, is what it is-she’ll be coming from another place next time, another angle. Don’t take her lightly, the way she took you. Nothing’s changed.”

“I know that.” Mattie’s voice, like her hands, was unsteady. “I wish I could say I’ve changed, but I haven’t, not at all. I’m the same fraidy cat I always was, but maybe I’m covering it a little better, I don’t know. All I know is I just want to hide under the bed and cover up my head.”

Pat said slowly, “I was raised in the country. A sheep-killing dog doesn’t go for it just once. This woman has killed before.”

Babs said, “Get in close. You snuggle up to her, you tail her around like she’s been tailing you. That’s not part of the game, she won’t like that at all. You keep coming at her.”

Pat said, “And you keep calling us. Every day.”

It took practice. All her instincts told her to turn and run the moment she recognized the elegant figure on the street corner ahead of her or heard the too-friendly voice at her elbow. But gradually she learned not only to force herself to respond with equal affability, but to become the one accosting, waving, calling out-even issuing impromptu invitations to join her for tea or coffee. These were never accepted, and the act of proposing them always left her feeling dizzy and sick; but she continued doggedly to “snuggle up” to Olivia Korhonen at every opportunity. Frightened and alone, still she kept coming.

She had the first inkling that the change in her behavior might be having some effect when Eileen mentioned that Olivia Korhonen had diffidently sounded her out about being partnered with a more skilled player for the Group’s upcoming tournament. Eileen had explained that the teams had already been registered, and that in any case none of them would have taken kindly to being broken up and reassigned. Olivia Korhonen hadn’t raised the subject again, but Eileen had thought Mattie would want to know. Eileen always told people the things she thought they would want to know.

For her part, Mattie continued to make a point of chattering buoyantly at the bridge table as she misplayed one hand after another, then apologizing endlessly as she trampled through another rubber, leaving ruin in her wake. She announced, laughing, after one particularly disastrous no-trump contract, “I wouldn’t blame Olivia if she wanted to strangle me right now. I’d have it coming!” Their opponents looked embarrassed, and Olivia Korhonen smiled and smoothed her hair.

But once, when they were in the ladies’ room together, she met Mattie’s eyes in the mirror and said, “I will still kill you. Could you hand me the tissues, please?” Mattie did so. Olivia Korhonen blotted her lipstick and went on, “You are not nearly so bad a player as you pretend, and you have not turned impudently fearless overnight. Little sheep, you are just as much afraid of me as you ever were. Tell me this is not true.”

She turned then, taking a single step toward Mattie, who recoiled in spite of her determination not to. Olivia Korhonen did not smile in triumph, but yawned daintily and deliberately, like a cat. “Never mind, dear Mattie. It is almost over.” She started for the restroom door.

“You are not going to kill me,” Mattie said, as she had said once before in her own kitchen. “You’ve killed before, but you are not going to kill me.” Olivia Korhonen did not bother to look back or answer, and a sudden burst of white rage seared through Mattie like fever. She took hold of Olivia Korhonen’s left arm and swung her around to face her, savoring the surprise and momentary confusion in the blue eyes. She said, “I will not let you kill me. Do you understand? I will not let you.”

Olivia Korhonen did not move in her grip. Mattie finally let her go, actually stumbling back and having to catch herself. Olivia Korhonen said again, “It is almost over. Come, we will go and play that other game.”

That night Mattie could not sleep. Even after midnight, she felt almost painfully wide awake, unable to imagine ever needing to sleep again. Don had been snoring for two hours when she dressed, went to her car, and drove to the condominium where Olivia Korhonen lived. A light was still on in the living room window of her apartment, and Mattie, parked across the street, could clearly make out the figure of the blond woman moving restlessly back and forth, as though she shared her observer’s restlessness. The light went out presently, but Mattie did not drive home for some while.

She did the same thing the next night, and for several nights thereafter, establishing a pattern of leaving the house when Don was asleep and returning before he woke. On occasion it became a surprisingly close call, since whether the light stayed on late or was already out when she reached the condo, she often lost track of time for hours, staring at a dark, empty window. She continued to check in regularly with Pat and Babs in Witness Point; but she never told them about her new nighttime routine, though she could not have said why, any more than she could have explained the compulsion itself. There was a mindless peacefulness in her vigil over her would-be murderer that made no sense, and comforted her.

From time to time, Olivia Korhonen came to stand at her window and look out at the dark street. Mattie, deliberately parking in the same space every night, fully expected to be recognized and challenged; but the latter, at least, never happened.

She took as well to following Olivia Korhonen through Moss Harbor traffic whenever she happened to spot the gleaming Prius on the road. In an elusive, nebulous way, she was perfectly aware that she was putting herself as much at the service of an obsession as Olivia Korhonen, but this seemed to have no connection with her own life or behavior. She could not have cared less where the Prius might be headed-most often up or down the coast, plainly to larger towns-or whether or not she was visible in the rearview mirror. The whole point, if there was such a thing, was to bait her bridge partner into doing something foolish, even coming to kill her before she was quite ready. Mattie had no idea what Olivia Korhonen’s schedule or program in these matters might be, nor what she would do about it; only that whatever was moving in her would be present when the time came.

When it did come, on a moonless midnight, she was parked in her usual spot, directly across the street from the condominium. She was in the process of leaving a message on Pat and Babs’s answering machine-“Just letting you know I’m fine, haven’t seen her today, I’m about to go to bed”-when Olivia Korhonen came out of the building, strode across the street directly toward her, and pulled the unlocked car door open. She said, not raising her voice, “Walk with me, Mattie Whalen.”

Mattie said into the cell phone, as quietly as she, “I’ll call you tomorrow. Don’t worry about me.” She hung up then, and got out of the car. She said, “The people I was talking with heard your voice.”

Olivia Korhonen did not answer. She took light but firm hold of Mattie’s arm and they walked silently together toward the beach, beyond which lay the dark sparkle of the ocean. The sky was pale and clear as glass. Mattie saw no one on the sand, nor on the short street, except for a lone dog trotting self-importantly past them. Olivia Korhonen was humming to herself, at the farthest rim of Mattie’s hearing.

Reaching the shore, they both took their shoes off and left them neatly side by side. The sand was cold and hard-packed under Mattie’s feet, this far from the water, and she thought regretfully about how little time she had spent on the beach, for all the years of living half a mile away. Something splashed in the gentle surf, but all she saw was a small swirl of foam.

Olivia Korhonen said reflectively, as though talking to herself, “I must say, this is a pity-I will be a little sorry. You have been… entertaining.”

“How nice of you to say so.” Mattie’s own odd calmness frightened her more than the woman who meant to kill her. She asked, “Weren’t any of your other victims entertaining?”

“Not really, no. One can never expect that-human beings are not exactly sheep, after all, for all the similarities. Things become so hasty at the end, so hurried and awkward and tedious-it can be very dissatisfying, if you understand me.” She was no longer holding Mattie’s arm, but looking into her eyes with something in her own expression that might almost have been a plea.

“I think I do,” Mattie said. “I wouldn’t have once.” They were walking unhurriedly toward the water, and she could see the small surges far out that meant the tide was beginning to turn. She said, “You’re more or less human, although I’ve had a few nasty dreams about you.” Olivia Korhonen chuckled very slightly. Mattie said, “You feed on the fear. No, that’s not it, not the fear-the knowledge. Fear makes people run away, but knowledge-the sense that there’s absolutely no escape, that you can come and pick them, like fruit, whenever you choose-that freezes them, isn’t that it? The knowing? And you like that very much.”

Olivia Korhonen stopped walking and regarded Mattie without speaking, her blue eyes wider and more intense than Mattie had ever noticed them. She said slowly, “You have changed. I changed you.”

Mattie asked, “But what would you have done if I had run? That first time, at the Bridge Group, if I had taken you at your word and just packed a bag, jumped in my car, and headed for the border? Would you have followed me?”

“It is a long way to the border, you know.” The chuckle was deeper and clearer this time. “But it would all have been so messy, really. Ugly, unpleasant. Much better this way.”

Mattie was standing very close to her, looking directly into her face. “And the killing? That would have been pleasant?” She found that she was holding her breath, waiting for the answer.

It did not come in words, but in the slow smile that spread from Olivia Korhonen’s eyes to her mouth, instead of the other way around. It came in the slight parting of her lips, in the flick of her cat-pink tongue just behind the white, perfect teeth; most of all in the strange way in which her face seemed to change its shape, almost to fold in on itself: the cheekbones heightening, the forehead rounding, the round chin in turn becoming more pointed, as in Mattie’s dreams.

… and Mattie, who had not struck another person since a recess fight in the third grade, hit Olivia Korhonen in the stomach as hard as she possibly could. The blond woman coughed and doubled over, her eyes huge with surprise and a kind of reproach. Mattie hit her again-a glancing blow, distinctly weaker, to the neck-and jumped on her, clumsily and impulsively. They went down together, rolling in the sand, the grains raking their skins, clogging their nostrils, coating and filling their mouths. Olivia Korhonen got a near stranglehold on a coughing, gasping Mattie and began dragging her toward the water’s edge. Breathless and in pain, she was still the stronger of the two of them.

The cold water on her bare feet revived Mattie a moment before her head was forced under an incoming wave. Panic lent her strength, and she lunged upward, banging the back of her head into Olivia Korhonen’s face, turning in the failing grip and pulling her down with both hands on the back of her neck. There was a moment when they were mouth to mouth, breathing one another’s hoarse, choking breath, teeth banging teeth. Then she rolled on top in the surf, throwing all her weight into keeping the struggling woman’s bloody face in the water. The little waves helped.

At some point Mattie finally realized that Olivia Korhonen had stopped fighting her; she had a feeling that she had been holding the woman under much longer than she needed to. She stood up, soaked and shivering with both cold and shock, swaying dizzily, looking down at the body that stirred in the light surf, bumping against her feet. There was a bit of seaweed caught in its hair.

In a while, in a vague sort of way, she recognized what it was. Something glinted at the edge of a pocket, and she bent down and withdrew a ring of keys. She walked away up the beach, stopping to slip on her shoes.

She did not go back to her car then, but went straight to the condo and walked up the stairs to the third floor, leaving a thinning trail of water behind her. Entry was easy: she had no difficulty finding the right key to open the doorknob lock, and Olivia Korhonen had been in too much of a hurry to throw the deadbolt. Mattie wiped her shoes carefully, nevertheless, before she went inside.

Walking slowly through the graciously appointed apartment, she realized that it was larger than she recalled, and that there were rooms that Olivia Korhonen had not shown her. One took particular effort to open, for the door was heavy and somewhat out of alignment. Mattie put a bruised shoulder to it and forced it open.

The room seemed to be a catchall for odd gifts and odder souvenirs-“tourist tchotchkes,” Virginia Schlossberg would have called them. There were no paintings on the walls, but countless candid snapshots, mostly of women, though they did include a handful of men. Their very number bewildered Mattie, making her eyes ache. She recognized no one at first, and then froze: a photo of herself held conspicuous pride of place on the wall facing her. It had obviously been taken by a cell phone. Below it, thumbtacked to the wall, was a gauzy red scarf that she had lost before Olivia Korhonen had even joined the Moss Harbor Bridge Group. Mattie pulled it free, along with the picture, and put them both in her pocket.

All of the photographs had mementos of some sort attached to them, ranging in size from a ticket stub to a pair of sunglasses or a paper plate with a telephone number scrawled on it in lipstick. None of the subjects appeared to be aware that their pictures were being taken; each had a tiny smiley face drawn with a fine-tipped ballpoint pen in the lower right corner. An entire section of one wall was devoted to images of a single dark-eyed young woman, taken from closer and closer angles, as though from the viewpoint of a shark circling to strike. These prints were each framed, not in wood or metal, but by variously colored hair ribbons, all held neatly in place by pushpins of matching hues. The central photo, the largest, was set facing the wall; there were two ribbons set around it, both blue. Mattie took this picture down, turned it around, and studied it for some while.

Hurt, still damp, bedraggled, she was no longer trembling; nor, somehow, was she in the least exhausted. Still cold, yes, but the coldness had come inside; while a curious fervor was warming her face and hands, as though the pictures on the walls were reaching out, welcoming her, knowing her, speaking her name. Still holding the shot of the dark-eyed girl, she moved from one new image to the other, feeling with each a kind of fracturing, a growing separation from everything else, until the walls themselves had dimmed around her and the photos were all mounted on the panelings of her mind. She was aware that there were somehow more there than she could see, more than she could yet take in.

The police will come. They will find the body and find this place. They’ll call her the Smiley Face Killer. The photographs were pressing in around her, each so anxious to be properly savored and understood. Mattie put the dark-eyed victim into her pocket next to her own picture, and reached out with both hands. She did not touch any of the pictures or the keepsakes, but let her fingers drift by them all, one after another, as in a kind of soul-Braille, and felt the myriad pinprick responses swarming her skin, as Olivia Korhonen’s souvenirs and trophies joined her. It was not possession of any sort; she was always herself. Never for a moment did she fancy that she was the woman she had killed on the beach, nor did any of this room’s hoarded memories overtake and evict her own. It was rather a fostering, a sheltering: a full awareness that there was more than enough room in her not for Olivia Korhonen’s life, but for what had given that life its only true meaning. Aloud, alone in that room filled with triumph and pride, she said, “Yes, she’s gone. Yes, I’m here. Yes.”

She walked out of the room, leaving it open, and did the same with the apartment door rather than pull it shut behind her.

Outside the stars were thin, and there were lights on in some of the neighboring condos. Mattie got in her car, started the engine, and drove home.

As chilled as she still was, as battered and scratched, with her blouse ripped halfway off her shoulder, there was a lightness in her, a sense of invulnerability, that she had never felt in all her life. The car seemed to be flying. With the windows down her damp hair whipped around her face, and she sang all the way home.

Reaching her house, she ran up the steps like an exuberant child, opened the door, and stopped in the hallway. Don was facing her, his face flushed and contorted with a mixture of outrage and bewilderment. His pajama jacket was buttoned wrong, which made him look very young. He said, “Where the fuck? Damn it, where the fuck? ”

Mattie smiled at him. She loved the feel of the smile; it was like slipping into a beautiful silk dress that she had never been able to afford until just now, this moment. Walking past him, she patted his cheek with more affection than she had felt in a long while. She whispered, hardly moving her lips, “She killed me,” and kept on to the bedroom.