Mystery Dance: Three Novels (45 page)

Julia cleaned up the mess and put on a Natalie Merchant CD. Nothing bad could happen while Natalie Merchant was singing of motherhood and gratitude. She checked her e-mail, spam jokes from co-workers and a few posts from her St. Louis Cardinals newsgroup. The Cardinals were about twenty games out, as usual. But with the season winding down, the hot prospects were up from the minors, getting some playing time.

She deleted the messages because one of the newsgroupies was giving away the events of the day’s game. Julia had taped it and wanted to watch it free of spoilers. She sat on the sofa and flipped the remote so that the videotape rewound. She punched the answering machine and stared at the blank TV screen.

The only message on her answering machine was the one from George Webster, telling her that Walter Triplett would be out to check her locks. She reset the machine, wondering if Rick would call.

That wasn’t a date
, she reminded herself.
That was definitely “hanging out
.”
But I hope he knows that.

She didn’t want to spend all her office time fending off advances, but being noticed was always flattering. Rick was different from Mitchell. Not quite so pushy, respectful of her opinions, interested in more than just making money–

Whoa, girl. Back up a little. If you start down the road to where you compare other men to the one you’re marrying, the potholes are going to bounce you out of a happy future. That’s as bad as comparing shrinks.

And her future
would
be happy. She’d move into Mitchell’s three-story house in Colliersville, join a tennis club, maybe volunteer for a library board. Social evenings with Mitchell’s lawyer circle, the men talking shop, the few female lawyers trying to shoehorn into the conversation, the wives comparing vacation packages. She would wear pearls and heels and scan the fashion magazines to find out which perfume maker was conducting the most extravagant ad campaign. She would eventually give in and wear makeup, hiding all the damage done by time and gravity.

Mitchell would let her continue in therapy as long as she didn’t take it too seriously. His circle would view it as just one more of the fringe benefits of affluence, a way to pass idle time, the same way one passed time by taking crafts classes. Mitchell would have an affair in his forties, maybe even more than one, when the first gray crept into his hair and he thought he’d missed out on something in his youth. Julia would accept the dalliances, get a facelift and Botox injections, maybe have some plastic surgery to lift her breasts so that Mitchell could still proudly display her.

They would inherit two of the seasonal homes owned by Mitchell’s parents, the others going to his sister. He would choose Santa Monica, and would humor Julia by taking Martha’s Vineyard as well. Julia would sit on the beach in the fall, sipping margaritas and rum punch. She didn’t drink much now, but she would take up the habit in earnest, because everybody drank in Mitchell’s circle. She might even become an alcoholic, a solidly fashionable occupation for the wives of overachieving men. The new disorder might even overwhelm her current one.

And would that be so bad? The fear slowly eroding into a great gray fog, the memories growing dimmer and more distant. The past lost in the wash of years instead of being probed, mined, collected, and analyzed. The past as past only, nothing to do with the wobbling, hazy present that ended at arm’s reach, in the soft, cold bite of liquor, easy amnesia a swallow away.

A metallic click and whir brought Julia back to the blank TV as the tape finished rewinding. Tears burned in her eyes, refusing to fall. She wiped them away and pressed the remote. The screen flared to life and the tape started. Julia put her thumb on the fast-forward, ready to skip the pre-game analysis.

The game wasn’t on the tape. Instead, the screen was filled with a man’s smooth-shaven face, his eyes fevered and bright. The man was pointing at the camera as if chiding both the camera operator and the audience. At high speed, the man looked comical, making wild hand gestures like something out of an old Keystone Kops short.

Julia was positive she had set the tape for ESPN2, the network of choice for also-ran teams like the Cardinals. She double-checked the schedule lying open on the coffee table. There, Cardinals vs. Astros, 4 PM, Channel 27. VCR’s were notoriously complicated to program, but she’d taped much of the season without being thrown a single curve.

Unless her memory of setting the VCR had been a tiny little game she had played on herself, another trick to scare herself stupid. And didn’t delusional people lie to themselves?

No. I didn’t spread the blocks out on the table this morning, and I didn’t tape this… this WHATEVER
.

She stopped the tape and let it play at regular speed.

The man’s face crowded the edges of the screen, the close-up so intense that she could see drops of saliva spraying from his mouth as he spoke. The man’s manic voice thundered forth as she thumbed up the volume on the remote.

“And Satan has come unto the world, the world that Satan owns, the one that he has stolen from God,” the man said. “And Satan spread his wealth, spread his lust disguised as love, spread his greed disguised as need, spread his warfare disguised as righteousness. Satan stretched his fingers out across the world, touching every man, woman, and child.”

The man pointed at the camera, at Julia, his voice softening. “Touching
you
.”

Yeah, right. The Devil touched me in the HEAD. Thanks, mister. Now I have an excuse. Here I was, all ready to accept the blame for my little problem, and now you come along and give me the greatest out of all time. I’m only a victim. Of course. Why didn’t I see it before now?

The preacher allowed a dramatic pause. “This world belongs to the devil. It’s right there in the Book ff Luke, set down by God’s own hand. ‘To you I will give all this power and glory,’ the Devil says to Jesus, as they stood on the mountain overlooking the wonders of this world. ‘For it’s been given over to me to do with as I please.’ The Lord could withstand the temptation, but you would snatch it right up, wouldn’t you? You’d take it all and still want more.

“And I don’t blame you,” the wild-eyed man continued, wiping away the sweat that was collecting on his face from the Klieg lights and exertion. “I don’t blame you for biting into the apple, into that red, shiny, sweet apple. I’ve tasted it myself, we
all
have. How can we resist?”

Julia almost clicked the screen off, but something about this televangelist’s spiel fascinated her. His hair was slick and perfectly styled, swooped up in a grand swirl that would stand in a hurricane. The man’s teeth sparkled, brighter than heavenly pearls, his jaw muscles contorted in the rapture of his delivery. She had no doubt of his utter sincerity.

“How can we resist?” he repeated, and the camera pulled back to reveal the man’s outstretched arms, as if he were offering himself up for Christ’s welcoming hug or the next UFO. “We are empty vessels, and unless we fill ourselves with the Lord, the devil will wash in”–the man arched his arms as if diving into a lake–”and drown us with sin, drown us with sorrow. He’ll steal our breath with his false promises. He’ll take us down and we won’t even fight it. We’ll hug him right back and give him thanks.”

The man paced back and forth in front of the plush purple curtain and floral arrangements that served as a stage setting. The Love Offering telephone number was emblazoned on a banner in great golden numerals.

“But the
Lord
will fight,” said the man, voice lifting, fist shaking in the air. “The Lord will burn Satan’s eyes out, the Lord will take our love and use it as a weapon, a mighty sword that will cleave down into the fire–” He made a slicing motion with his free hand “–and cut Satan’s grasping fingers and silence that nasty tongue, the one that whispers such sweet lies to us. Lies of all the pleasures we can have, if we only turn our hearts from God.”

Pause. Medium close-up. The man lowered his head in sad reverence. A perfectly scripted moment.

He pointed again. “Satan wants you,” he said, almost a caricature of those patriotic Uncle Sam posters. “He
owns
you.”

Julia pointed back, her fascination shifting to boredom. “No, he’s only borrowing me.”

She’d rather watch the Cardinals lose by six. The VCR must have jumped its memory, shut off and lost its programming. First the clock and now this. She’d have to call George Webster and have Walter check out the wiring.

Sure, blame it on mechanical failure, not operator error. Or operator insanity. Talk about God sending messages wrapped in ridiculous packaging.

She clicked the set off, the sound dying, the televangelist’s face sinking rapidly to black. After checking the front-door lock, she went to the bathroom and took a shower. She managed to shampoo and rinse without once looking outside the shower stall. No Creeps here, no Anthony Perkins wannabes, no peepholes carved in the walls, nothing but the sweat of mist on the tiles.

Before leaving the bathroom, she glanced at the figure in the full-length mirror on the back of the door. The steamy glass almost disguised the two long scars than ran up her belly and just under the swells of her breasts. Aside from the scars, she was not too bad for an old-timer of twenty-seven. Mitchell certainly found her worthy.

She went to bed and read some Jefferson Spence and was carried away to a land where the protagonists always drew upon inner reserves to overcome evil obstacles. The clock was still behaving itself, so she set it to wake her early. As she turned off the bedside light, she went over a checklist in her head.

Doors locked. Windows locked. Curtains pulled closed. Mace in the living room. Baseball bat under the bed, the commemorative Louisville Slugger her adoptive parents had given her for her sixteenth birthday.

All set.

Nothing but darkness and the quiet settling of the house. The leaves flapped a little on the trees outside, one of them occasionally brushing against the window screen. The neighbors had cut the music. They were pretty considerate about that, except during their weekend parties.

She lay in the dark thinking of the morning’s episode of paranoia, the wooden blocks, the session with Dr. Forrest, the Satanic murder, Rick. Dr. Forrest. Something during the hypnosis. A memory, crawling from its slumber, fingers reaching from the damp murk of the cellar. Clawing its way out.

The bad people, around her, touching and hurting her.

No.

That memory was for Dr. Forrest’s office, where it could be bound by walls. Not here, not in Julia’s house, where it could slither out of her ears and under the bed to lie in the beggar’s velvet and wait. Wait for just that right moment when Julia was asleep, tangled in the sheets of nightmare. Then it would grab her ankle, open its slathering jaws and–

She sat up and flicked on the bedside lamp.

The digital clock moved on, counted its way from the past or toward the future, however you wanted to look at it. Julia watched it for a while, and then picked up her book. Julia read until after midnight. By that time she was thoroughly irritated with Spence’s too-perfect heroine and his libertarian worldview, not to mention the obligatory dog chuffing here and there among the pages and occasionally bloated, pompous prose. But the book had helped her forget her troubles. Spence was reliable for that, as solid as a dictionary.

She tried the pillow again.

Not so bad this time. She was almost ready to try the dark, but decided to sleep with the light on. Just once more wouldn’t hurt.

She thought of the tape, tried to remember setting the VCR. She
could
remember. She could see herself punching the buttons, Channel 27. And she’d gotten the hair-oiled preacher from hell.

Oh, well. Everybody made mistakes.

Her thoughts spilled into nonsense, Rick’s face, the lake at the club where she’d met Mitchell, her dead adoptive parents, a teacher she’d had in the sixth grade who had worn green suspenders, Mickey Mouse, images skipping by faster and faster on the preview screen of dreams.

She was nearly asleep when she heard a crack outside the window. The sound of a damp stick breaking.

She held her breath, kept her cheek against the pillow. Listened. Listened.

A scrabbling sound on the outside wall. How close was the baseball bat?

It’s nothing, Julia. Probably the neighbor’s boxer, leaving you a stinky present for tomorrow. Or a raccoon. You live right by the WOODS. Remember wildlife?

A swashing across the window screen. The boxer couldn’t reach six feet off the ground.

It’s a Creep.

Should she pretend that she hadn’t noticed, turn off the light as if preparing to sleep? In the darkness, she could reach the bat unobserved. She could roll to her feet and wait by the window for the Creep to come through. Then–

What?
Whammo
, like a steroid-stoked Mark McGwire in his prime feasting on a rookie pitcher’s fastball?

No. She could call the cops.

The cops.

First cop: “You see anything?”

Second cop (playing his flashlight beam on the ground outside the window): “Hmm. Looks like some kind of animal tracks.”

First cop: “What kind of tracks?”

Second cop: “Damn. I just stepped in dog crap.”

Sometimes a cigar was just a cigar.

Sometimes noises were only noises.

She reached out, switched off the light without looking at the window.

Swash
against the screen.

She couldn’t resist looking.

Eyes.

A scarce glint of fire on them from the distant streetlight, weak between the curtains.

But
eyes
.

And a face behind them?

She eased one hand off the bed, tensing, ready to scream, to reach for the Louisville Slugger, the phone, anything.

The eyes were gone.

She lay in her own sweat, trying to convince herself that she’d imagined the eyes, that she was safe as milk. Dr. Forrest warned her about letting her fantasy world intrude on reality. Dr. Forrest wasn’t going to like hearing about nonexistent eyes at her bedroom window.