“Going bowling?” he asked, pointing at her bag.
“Yes,” she replied, setting it down. “May I talk to you?”
He nodded and continued eating. “Pull up that chair.”
“Thanks, but I won’t take much of your lunchtime,” she said, smiling at him.
“Nice business suit,” he said.
“Thank you.”
“What’s this about?” he asked, setting down his sandwich.
“You are Frank Gibney?” she asked.
“Yes, I am.”
“I have to be sure,” she said, stepping forward and continuing to smile at him as she constricted her abdomen in readiness. “Detective Benek sent me to tell you he thinks he’s solved the mystery of the empties.”
“Oh?” Gibney asked. “And who are you?”
“We’ve been going out lately.”
“Good! He’s such a loner. I’m glad to hear he’s coming out of himself.” He leaned back, then smiled, looking more friendly. “He’s a good-hearted man, you know. Likes to read the ancient historians. I had no idea he discussed his work with anyone else.”
“My father’s name was Frank,” she said as he supplied her missing laugh. She reached into him with difficulty, her exertion lasting longer than expected. The old man’s brain came out hard, hanging for a moment on the outside of his skull like a skinned fruit, then hit the floor next to his chair as he slumped forward into his lunch.
She felt a moment of disappointment with her effort, then took a deep breath and picked up her bowling bag. Opening it, she took out two heavy cotton towels and threw one over the bloody mass on the floor. Bending down, she gently picked up the soft organ and put it in the bag, then cleaned up the mess with the other towel and dropped it in the bag, zipping it up quickly. In a moment she was at the door.
Opening it slowly, she saw that the hallway was still empty and slipped out, closing the door gently behind her. Ten quick steps, and anyone who might see her would not be able to tell out of which door she had come.
She hurried down the hall toward the street exit, right hand grasping the bag, smiling at how she would present it to Benek. She had made practical use of her power after all, in defense of her own future.
She was very tired by the time the taxi brought her home. She put the bag on the floor by the door, staggered to the sofa and lay down, unable to consider why her fatigue had taken hold in less than half an hour after her effort.
But sleep came quickly, renewing her, and she dreamed for what seemed an eternity, laughing occasionally as she felt her strength surge back, and she saw herself coring a dozen heads at once without fatigue. Armies fell before her on a battlefield, their brains dropping into the dust like lumps of dough into flour. “That’s not the way to do it,” Benek said, standing next to her with their two daughters on his shoulders. “Softly, subtly. No one must ever know what you can do, until it’s too late. All they need to know is that you can make people die in a strange way, without being sure how it happens, without being able to prove anything against you. No, not die, just disappear is better. Less is always more. Maybe you’ll learn how to make people simply vanish.”
Her two daughters gazed at her with love and admiration, but then hatred flashed into their father’s eyes and she felt a strange tickling in her head. “No!” she cried and sat up on the sofa, half expecting to glimpse her own brains on the rug before the darkness took her.
Shaken, she put her feet on the floor and composed herself. Benek was poisoning her thoughts, she told herself as she stood up and went over to the bag on the floor. It was time to crush his will once and for all.
She picked up the bag, went out the front door, and crept down the stairs to the basement, still feeling a bit weak, drawn by the need to humiliate Benek by showing him Gibney’s brains.
She paused at the entrance to the sub-basement and saw that the lock was broken. Pushing the door open, she hurried down the stairs, pushed open the lower door and saw the bent bars of the empty bed.
Her chest tightened with a deep breath. She went to the bed as if sleepwalking, put the bag down, and examined the broken posts. His desperation had made him strong, she realized.
Panic dissolved her anger as she imagined that she could be arrested at any moment. The house might already be surrounded. How many policemen could she core before they brought her down?
Not many. She was not yet strong enough for a prolonged battle. She had to flee the house before Benek came back with help, she told herself, grasping after what to do as she tried to estimate how long ago he had escaped, and how much time there had been since then for him to move against her. She had not been able to show him Gibney’s brains, so he might still be doubting what she could do. Just as well. He might come to her in the open and give her enough of a chance to finish him.
12
At his apartment Benek undressed and poured alcohol on his abraded wrists and ankles. He had been lucky to find his suit and escape before she came back; clearly, she had intended to bury everything at once.
He shuddered as he swabbed at his wounds, picturing the open grave in the chamber next door to the basement dungeon. Impossible as it seemed, she had planned to kill and bury him.
None of it had happened, he tried to tell himself. Well, maybe some of it, the possible parts. The rest seemed a lurid delusion, or a harmless game, but games were more fun when they were convincing.
The haggard stranger in the bath mirror brought tears to his eyes. Games also needed at least one fool. How could this have happened to him? He had reached out to someone, and had found— what? How would he be able to explain it to anybody? A crazy man coming off a three-day shack-up with a woman who’d filled him with drugs and alcohol, and made him believe that she could not be confronted directly, that she could empty anyone who threatened her—gut them like a fresh chicken or a fish. He was telling himself an insane story.
After all, what had he really seen? A few magician’s tricks did not make her immune to simple arrest. The charge? Drugging and kidnapping a police officer, assault and torture. It was enough.
He slept late into the next afternoon, then tried to sort out his thoughts from his feelings.
His noisy black phone rang, making him jump. He hurried to it, grabbed the large receiver, and held it without answering.
“Hi,” Dierdre said with a laugh. “Let’s talk.”
He hesitated, then said, “So talk.”
“Not on the phone,” she said. “Know the Italian restaurant on East 50th Street? I forget the name.”
Her friendly tone was startling, unbelievable, making him doubt his memory. Without it his whole life might be a delusion, for all he knew.
“Meet me there tonight,” she said.
Had it all been a gag gone wrong? He waited, seeing the open grave and loose earth in the basement chamber. Had he misinterpreted some kind of repair work in progress?
“We—ll?” she said, dragging the word across his mind. “Oh, it’s called Juliana’s.”
“Yeah, that’s the name,” he said, grateful for the memory.
“Well?” she shot into his ear. “I’ve made a reservation.”
“Okay,” he heard himself say, and was about to ask her another question, but she hung up, and he knew that he would go. What more could happen? The game was over, but what was the game? Maybe not knowing was part of the charm. A test—because it was a game between men and women, in the selection of worthies...
As he showered, his wounds did not seem so bad; she had not really hurt him, so why should he fear her? It was part of the game to have fooled him into believing that she could work wonders...
He showered and dressed in a new suit, telling himself that she would be civil in a public place, and maybe he would find out what this had all been about. There were people, he knew, in groups, who played all sorts of games, always raising the ante to increase thrills. Maybe she wanted him in such a group. Was he such a loner to have attracted her interest? Maybe this was the end of the game.
By the time he went out the door he was no longer sure of anything.
She was sipping water at her table. Wearing jeans, a sweater top, without makeup, she looked up at him as if apologizing as he sat down, then reached over and covered his hand.
“You think you’re safe here,” she said, stroking his scratched hand, “in a public place, but you’re not.”
Her words pushed him back into the delusion she wanted him to have, but he pulled his hand away and asked, “What have you to
tell me?”
She did not answer.
He looked around the restaurant. The room was brightly lit with electric candles set below the red velvet trim of pink walls. The diners were older couples, well dressed, probably just come down from the theaters, or even the music hall. They smiled and frowned, ate and drank, and paid no attention to him and Dierdre, or much to each other. It was a good restaurant. The food was performing.
“Look at them,” Dierdre said, smiling. “So snug in their bras and panties and manly briefs, tight in their chairs, so oblivious.”
Benek said, “So what was that all about at your place?” He felt slow-witted as she sipped some more water.
“Let’s order,” she said.
“Tell me,” he said.
“After we eat,” she said.
“Now,” he said, feeling pain in his jaw.
“Exactly what you saw, exactly what I told you. But I suppose you’ve explained it all away to yourself by now.”
He said, “None of that could have been real.” He stared at his glass of water as if it had become his only anchor to reality.
“I do what you saw. Look around you. No one here would know what was happening. No one would connect it with me. I’d have to explain and demonstrate for a while, and even then they wouldn’t believe, just like you.”
“I don’t,” he said.
“You do, way down deep,” she said, “and the rest of you will catch up.”
He picked up his glass but did not drink, imagining that the glass would be empty when he tried to drink from it.
“What do you want from me?” he asked, feeling more confident. She was a mental case, or maybe a scam artist of some kind, but she had picked a poor mark. “Do you want money? I have none.” He drank some water, and it went down cold and real, then set the glass down. “What’s the point of convincing me, of fooling me?”
She laughed gently, as if he had just swallowed poison but was expecting to live. “Lying to yourself is bad for you,” she said.
The waiter brought their menus and laid them down briskly, as if he could not be bothered whether they intended to order or leave. She glanced at him with contempt as he floated away.
“Come home with me,” Dierdre said, “and we’ll start over.
I’ll tell you everything then.” She picked up her menu.
“No kidding,” he said, picking up his menu and realizing that he had no appetite. The prices appalled him. He didn’t have enough money with him and didn’t want to use his credit card. His salary was never enough, at least not for places like this one, but he had not come here to eat, he reminded himself, but to peel back the surface of a delusion and find the reality behind it.
“No kidding,” she said angrily. “I need you,” she whispered as if everyone were listening.
“For what?” he said.
“You do attract me,” she said softly, “much as I don’t like you. But maybe I will someday.”
“Then go away,” he said. “Leave me out of your phony fun and games.”
She bared her teeth in an angry smile. The waiter came back and stood over them.
“I’ll have the Caesar salad and the veal Parmigiana,” she said.
“Any wine?” the waiter asked.
“The house red.”