"It's important to me. If it seems like I'm being nosy, okay, probably I am, but... on very short notice I'm very taken with this woman, and I don't want her to be very attached. On the other hand, I don't want her to be so scared she has to go to the door with a jumbo-sized can of fruit cocktail in her hand every time someone knocks. Is any of this making any sense to you?"
"Yes," she said.
"The husband is pretty ex." And then, for no reason at all, she added:
"His name is Norman." Bill nodded solemnly.
"I see why you left him." Rosie began to giggle and clapped her hands to her mouth. Her face felt hotter than ever. At last she got it under control, but by then she had to wipe her eyes with the corner of her napkin.
"Okay?" he asked.
"Yes. I think so."
"Want to tell me about it?" An image suddenly arose in her mind, one with all the clarity of something seen in a vivid nightmare. It was Norman's old tennis racket, the Prince with the black tape wound around the handle. It was still hanging by the foot of the cellar stairs back home, as far as she knew. He had spanked her with it several times during the first years of their marriage. Then, about six months after her miscarriage, he had anally raped her with it. She had shared a lot of things about her marriage (that was what they called it, sharing, a word she found simultaneously hideous and apt) in Therapy Circle at D amp; S, but that was one little nugget she'd kept to herself-how it felt to have the taped handle of a Prince tennis racket jammed up your ass by a man who sat straddling you, with his knees on the outsides of your thighs; how it felt to have him lean over and tell you that if you fought, he would break the water-glass on the table beside the bed and cut your throat with it. How it felt to lie there, smelling the Dentyne on his breath and wondering how bad he was ripping you up.
"No," she said, and was grateful that her voice didn't tremble.
"I don't want to talk about Norman. He was abusive and I left him. End of story."
"Fair enough," Bill said.
"And he's out of your life for good?"
"For good." "does he know that? I only ask because of, you know, the way you came to the door. You sure weren't expecting a representative from the Church of Latter-Day Saints."
"I don't know if he knows it or not," she said, after a moment or two to think it over-certainly it was a fair enough question.
"Are you afraid of him?"
"Oh, yes. You bet. But that doesn't necessarily mean a lot. I'm afraid of everything. It's all new to me. My friends at... my friends say I'll grow out of it, but I don't know."
"You weren't afraid to come out to dinner with me."
"Oh yes I was. I was terrified."
"Why did you, then?" She opened her mouth to say what she had been thinking earlier-that he had surprised her into it-and then closed it again. That was the truth, but it wasn't the truth inside the truth, and this was an area where she didn't want to do any sidestepping. She had no idea if the two of them had any sort of future beyond this one meal in Pop's Kitchen, but if they did, fancy footwork would be a bad way to begin the trip.
"Because I wanted to," she said. Her voice was low but clear.
"All right. No more about that."
"And no more about Norman, either."
"That's his for-real no-fooling name?"
"Yes."
"As in Bates."
"As in Bates."
"Can I ask you about something else, Rosie?" She smiled a little.
"As long as I don't have to promise to answer."
"Fair enough. You thought you were older than me, didn't you?"
"Yes," she said.
"Yes, I did. How old are you, Bill?"
"Thirty. Which has got to make us something like next-door neighbors in the age sweepstakes... same street, anyway. But you made an almost automatic assumption that you weren't just older, you were a lot older. So here comes the question. Are you ready?" Rosie shrugged uneasily. He leaned toward her, those eyes with their fascinating greenish undertint fixed on hers. "do you know you're beautiful?" he asked.
"That's not a come-on or a line, it's plain old curiosity. Do you know you're beautiful? You don't, do you?" She opened her mouth. Nothing emerged but one tiny breath-noise from the back of her throat. It was closer to a whistle than a sigh. He put his hand over hers and squeezed it gently. His touch was brief, but it still lit up her nerves like an electric shock, and for a moment he was the only thing she could see-his hair, his mouth, and most of all his eyes. The rest of the world was gone, as if the two of them were on a stage where all the lights except for one bright, burning spot had been turned out. "don't make fun of me," she said. Her voice trembled.
"Please don't make fun. I can't stand it if you do."
"No, I'd never do that." He spoke absently, as if this were a subject beyond discussion, case closed.
"But I'll tell you what I see." He smiled and stretched out his hand to touch hers again.
"I'll always tell you what I see. That's a promise."
7
She said he needn't bother escorting her up the stairs, but he insisted and she was glad. Their conversation had passed on to less personal things when their meals came-he was delighted to find out the Roger Clemens reference hadn't been a fluke, that she had a knowledgeable fan's understanding of baseball, and they had talked a lot about the city's teams as they ate, passing naturally enough from baseball to basketball. She'd hardly thought of Norman at all until the ride back, when she began imagining how she would feel if she opened the door of her room and there he was, Norman, sitting on her bed, drinking a cup of coffee, maybe, and contemplating her picture of the ruined temple and the woman on the hill. Then, as they mounted the narrow stairs, Rosie in the lead and Bill a step or two behind, she found something else to worry about: What if he wanted to kiss her goodnight? And what if, after a kiss, he asked if he could come in? Of course he'll want to come in, Norman told her, speaking in the heavily patient voice he employed when he was trying not to be angry with her but was getting angry anyway. In fact, he'll insist on it. Why else would he spring for a fifty-dollar meal? Jesus, you ought to be flattered-there are gals on the street prettier than you who don't get fifty for half-and-half. He'll want to come in and he'll want to f**k you, and maybe that's good-maybe that's what you need to get your head out of the clouds. She was able to get her key out of her bag without dropping it, but the tip chattered all the way around the slot in the center of the metal disk without going in. He closed his hand over hers and guided it home. She felt that electric shock again when he touched her, and was helpless not to think of what the key sliding into the lock called to her mind. She opened the door. No Norman, unless he was hiding in the shower or the closet. Just her pleasant room with the cream-colored walls and the picture hanging by the window and the light on over the sink. Not home, not yet, but a little closer than the dorm at D amp; S.
"This is not bad, you know," he said thoughtfully.
"No duplex in the suburbs, but not at all bad."
"Would you like to come in?" she asked through lips that felt completely numb-it was as if someone had slipped her a shot of Novocaine.
"I could give you a cup of coffee..." Good! Norman exulted from his stronghold inside her head. Might as well get it over with, right, hon? You give him the coffee, and he'll give you the cream. Such a deal! Bill appeared to think it over very carefully before shaking his head.
"It might not be such a good idea," he said.
"Not tonight, at least. I don't think you have the slightest idea of how you affect me." He laughed a little nervously.
"I don't think I have the slightest idea of how you affect me." He looked over her shoulder and saw something that made him smile and offer her a pair of thumbs-up.
"You were right about the picture-I never would have believed it at the time, but you were. I guess you must have had this place in mind, though, huh?" She shook her head, now smiling herself.
"When I bought the picture, I didn't even know this room existed."
"You must be psychic, then. I bet it looks especially good there where you've hung it in the late afternoon and early evening. The sun must sidelight it."
"Yes, it's nice then," Rosie said, not adding that she thought the picture looked good-perfectly right and perfectly in place-at all times of the day.
"You're not bored with it yet, I take it?"
"No, not at all." She thought of adding, And it's got some very funny tricks. Step over and take a closer look, why don't you? Maybe you'll see something even more surprising than a lady getting ready to brain you with a can of fruit cocktail. You tell me, Bill-has that picture somehow gone from ordinary screen size to Cinerama 70, or is that just my imagination? She said none of this, of course. Bill put his hands on her shoulders and she looked up at him solemnly, like a child being put to bed, as he leaned forward and kissed her forehead on the smooth place between her eyebrows.
"Thank you for coming out with me," he said.
"Thank you for asking." She felt a tear go sliding down her left cheek and wiped it away with her knuckle. She was not ashamed or afraid for him to see it; she felt she could trust him with at least one tear, and that was nice.
"Listen," he said.
"I've got a motorcycle-an old butch Harley softail. It's big and loud and sometimes it stalls at long red lights, but it's comfortable... and I'm a remarkably safe cyclist, if I do say so myself. One of the six Harley owners in America who wears a helmet. If Saturday's nice, I could come over and pick you up in the morning. There's a place I know about thirty miles up the lake. Beautiful. It's still too cold to swim, but we could bring a picnic." At first she was incapable of any sort of answer-she was simply flattened by the fact that he was asking her out again. And then there was the idea of riding on his motorcycle... how would that be? For a moment all Rosie could think of was how it might feel to be behind him on two wheels cutting through space at fifty or sixty miles an hour. To have her arms around him. A totally unexpected heat rushed through her, something like a fever, and she did not recognize it for what it was, although she thought she remembered feeling something like it, a very long time ago.
"Rosie? What do you say?"
"I... Well..." What did she say? Rosie touched her tongue nervously to her upper lip, glanced away from him in an effort to clear her mind, and saw the pile of yellow fliers sitting on the counter. She felt both disappointment and relief as she looked back at Bill.
"I can't. Saturday's the Daughters and Sisters picnic. Those are the people who helped me when I came here-my friends. There's a softball game, races, horseshoes, craft booths-things like that. And then a concert that night, which is supposed to be the real moneymaker. This year we're having the Indigo Girls. I promised I'd work the tee-shirt concession from five o'clock on, and I ought to do it. I owe them such a lot."
"I could have you back by five no sweat," he said.
"Four, if you wanted." She did want to... but she had a lot more to be afraid of than just showing up late to sell tee-shirts. Would he understand that if she told him? If she said, I'd love to put my arms around you while you drive fast, and I'd love for you to wear a leather jacket so I could put my face against the shoulder and smell that good smell and hear the little creaking sounds it makes when you move. I'd love that, but I think I'm afraid of what I might find out later on, when the ride was over... that the Norman inside my head was right all along about the things you really want. What scares me the most is having to investigate the most basic premise of my husband's life, the one thing he never said out loud because he never had to: that the way he treated me was perfectly okay, perfectly normal. It's not pain I'm afraid of; I know about pain. What I'm afraid of is the end of this small, sweet dream. I've had so few of them, you see. She realized what she needed to say, and realized in the next moment that she couldn't say it, perhaps because she'd heard it in so many movies, where it always came out sounding like a whine: Don't hurt me. That was what she needed to say. Please don't hurt me. The best part of me that's left will die if you hurt me. But he was still waiting for her answer. Waiting for her to say something. Rose opened her mouth to say no, she really ought to be there for the picnic as well as the concert, maybe another time. Then she looked at the picture hanging on the wall beside the window. She wouldn't hesitate, Rosie thought; she would count the hours until Saturday, and when she was finally mounted behind him on that iron horse, she would spend most of the ride thumping him on the back and urging him to make it gallop faster. For a moment Rosie could almost see her sitting there, the hem of her rose madder chiton hiked high, her bare thighs firmly clasping his hips. That hot flash swept through her again, stronger this time. Sweeter.
"Okay," she said, "I'll do it. On one condition."
"Name it," he said. He was grinning, obviously delighted.
"Bring me back to Ettinger's Pier-that's where the D and S thing is happening-and stay for the concert. I'll buy the tickets. It's my treat."
"Deal," he said instantly.
"Can I pick you up at eight-thirty, or is that too early?"
"No, it's fine."
"You'll want to wear a coat and maybe a sweater, too," he said.
"You might be able to stow em in the saddlebags coming back in the afternoon, but going out's going to be chilly."
"All right," she said, already thinking that she would have to borrow those items from Pam Haverford, who was about the same size. Rosie's entire outerwear wardrobe at this point consisted of one light jacket, and the budget wouldn't stand any further purchases in that department, at least for awhile.
"I'll see you, then. And thanks again for tonight." He seemed briefly to consider kissing her again, then simply took her hand and squeezed it for a moment.
"You're welcome." He turned and ran quickly down the stairs, like a boy. She couldn't help contrasting this to Norman's way of moving-either at a head-down plod or with a kind of spooky, darting speed. She watched his elongated shadow on the wall until it disappeared, then she closed the door, secured both locks, and leaned against it, looking across the room at her picture. It had changed again. She was almost sure of it. Rosie walked across the room and stood in front of it with her hands clasped behind her back and her head thrust slightly forward, the position making her look comically like a New Yorker caricature of an art gallery patron or museum habitue. Yes, she saw, although the picture's dimensions remained the same, she was all but positive that it had widened again somehow. On the right, beyond the second stone face-the one peering blindly sideways through the tall grass-she could now see what looked like the beginnings of a forest glade. On the left, beyond the woman on the hill, she could now see the head and shoulders of a small shaggy pony. It was wearing blinkers, was cropping at the high grass, and appeared to be harnessed to some sort of a rig-perhaps a cart, perhaps a shay or a surrey. That part Rosie couldn't see; it was out of the picture (so far, at least). She could see some of its shadow, however, and another shadow as well, growing out of it. She thought this second shadow was probably the head and shoulders of a person. Someone standing beside the vehicle to which the pony was harnessed, maybe. Or maybe-Or maybe you've gone out of your mind, Rosie. You don't really think this picture is getting bigger, do you? Or showing more stuff, if you like that better? But the truth was she did believe that, she saw that, and she found herself more excited than scared by the idea. She wished she had asked Bill for his opinion; she would have liked to know if he saw anything like what she was seeing... or thought she was seeing. Saturday, she promised herself. Maybe I'll do it Saturday. She began to undress, and by the time she was in the tiny bathroom, brushing her teeth, she had forgotten all about Rose Madder, the woman on the hill. She had forgotten all about Norman, too, and Anna, and Pam, and the Indigo Girls on Saturday night. She was thinking about her dinner with Bill Steiner, replaying her date with him minute by minute, second by second.
8
She lay in bed, slipping toward sleep, listening to the sound of crickets coming from Bryant Park. As she drifted she found herself remembering-without pain and seemingly from a great distance-the year 1985 and her daughter, Caroline. As far as Norman was concerned, there never had been a Caroline, and the fact that he had agreed with Rosie's hesitant suggestion that Caroline was a nice name for a girl didn't change that. To Norman there had been only a tadpole that ended early. If it happened to be a girl-tadpole according to some nutty headtrip his wife was on, so what? Eight hundred million Red Chinese didn't give a shit, in Normanspeak. 1985-what a year that had been. What a year from hell. She had lost (Caroline) the baby, Norman had nearly lost his job (had come close to being arrested, she had an idea), she had gone to the hospital with a broken rib that had lacerated and almost punctured her lung, and, as a small extra added attraction, she had been cornholed with the handle of a tennis racket. That was also the year her mind, remarkably stable until then, began to slip a little, but in the midst of all those other festivities, she barely noticed that half an hour in Pooh's Chair sometimes felt like five minutes, and that there were days when she took eight or nine showers between the time Norman left for work and the time he came back home. She must have caught pregnant in January, because that was when she started to be sick in the mornings, and she missed her first period in February. The case which prompted Norman's "official reprimand"-one that would be carried in his jacket until the day he retired-had come in March. What was his name? she asked herself, still drifting in her bed, somewhere between sleep and waking, but for the time being still closer to the latter. The man who started all the trouble, what was his name? For a moment it wouldn't come, only the memory that he had been a black man... a jiggedy-jig, in Normanspeak. Then she got it.
"Bender," she murmured in the dark, listening to the low creak of the crickets.
"Richie Bender. That was his name." 1985, a hell of a year. A hell of a life. And now there was this life. This room. This bed. And the sound of crickets. Rosie closed her eyes and drifted.
9
Less than three miles from his wife now, Norman lay in his own bed, slipping toward sleep, slipping into darkness and listening to the steady rumble of traffic on Lakefront Avenue, nine floors below him. His teeth and jaws still ached, but the pain was distant now, unimportant, hidden behind a mixture of aspirin and Scotch. As he drifted, he also found himself thinking about Richie Bender; it was as if, unknown to either of them, Norman and Rosie had shared a brief telepathic kiss.
"Richie," he murmured into the shadows of his hotel room, and then put his forearm over his closed eyes, "Richie Bender, you puke. You f**king puke." A Saturday, it had been-the first Saturday in March of1985. Nine years ago, give or take. Around eleven a.m. on that day, a jiggedy-jig had walked into the Payless store on the comer of 60th and Saranac, put two bullets in the clerk's head, looted the register, and walked out again. While Norman and his partner were questioning the clerk in the bottle-redemption center next door, they were approached by another jig, this one wearing a Buffalo Bills jersey.
"I know that nigger," he said.
"What nigger is that, bro?" Norman asked.
"Nigger rob that Payless," the jig had replied.
"I was standin right over there by that mailbox when he come out. Name Richie Bender.He a bad nigger. Sell crack out of his motel room down there." He had pointed vaguely east, toward the train station.
"What motel might that be?" Harley Bissington asked. Harley had been partnered with Norman on that unfortunate day.
"Ray'road Motel," the black man said.
"I don't suppose you happen to know which room?" Harley had asked. "does your knowledge of the purported miscreant stretch that far, my brown-skinned friend?" Harley had almost always talked that way. Sometimes it cracked Norman up. More often it'd made him want to grab the man by one of his narrow little knit ties and choke the Kokomo out of him. Their brown-skinned friend knew, all right, of course he did. He was undoubtedly in there himself two or three times a week-maybe five or six, if his current cash-flow situation was good-buying rock from that bad nigger Richie Bender. Their brown-skinned friend and all his brown-skinned jiggedy-jig pals. Probably this fellow currently had some sort of down on Richie Bender, but that was nothing to Norman and Harley; all Norman and Harley wanted was to know where the shooter was so they could bust his ass right over to County and clear this case before cocktail hour. The jig in the Bills jersey hadn't been able to recall the number of Bender's room, but he'd been able to tell them where it was, just the same; first floor, main wing, right in between the Coke machine and the newspaper boxes. Norman and Harley had bopped on down to the Railroad Motel, clearly one of the city's finer dives, and knocked on the door between the Coke machine and the newspaper dispensers. The door had been opened by a slutty high-yellow gal in a filmy red dress that let you get a good look at her bra and panties, and she was obviously one stoned American, and the two cops could see what looked like three empty crack vials standing on top of the motel television, and when Norman asked her where Richie Bender was, she made the mistake of laughing at him.
"I don't own no Waring Blender," she said.
"You go on now, boys, n get your honky asses out of here." All of that was pretty straightforward, but then the various accounts had gotten a little confusing. Norman and Harley said that Ms Wendy Yarrow (known more familiarly in the Daniels kitchen that spring and summer as "the slutty high-yellow gal') had taken a nailfile from her purse and slashed Norman Daniels with it twice. Certainly he had long, shallow cuts across his forehead and the back of his right hand, but Ms Yarrow claimed that Norman had made the cut across his hand himself and his partner had done the one over his eyebrows for him. They had done this, she said, after pushing her back into Unit 12 of the Railroad Motel, breaking her nose and four of her fingers, fracturing nine bones in her left foot by stamping on it repeatedly (they took turns, she said), pulling out wads of her hair, and punching her repeatedly in the abdomen. The short one then raped her, she told the IA shoofiies. The broad-shouldered one had tried to rape her, but hadn't been able to get it up at first. He bit her several times on the br**sts and face, and then he was able to get an erection, she told them, "but he squirted all over my leg before he could get it in. Then he hit me some more. He tole me he want to talk to me up close, but he did mos of his talkin with his fists." Now, lying in bed at the Whitestone, lying on sheets his wife had had in her hands, Norman rotted onto his side and tried to push 1985 away. It didn't want to go. No surprise there; once it came, it never did. 1985 was a hanger-arounder, like some blabby ass**le gasbag neighbor you just can't get rid of. We made a mistake, Norman thought. We believed that goddam jig in the football jersey. Yes, that had been a mistake, all right, a rather big one. And they had believed that a woman who looked so much as if she belonged with a Richie Bender must be in Richie Bender's room, and that was either a second mistake or an extension of the first one, and it didn't really matter which, because the results were the same. Ms Wendy Yarrow was a part-time waitress, a part-time hooker, and a full-time drug addict, but she had not been in Richie Bender's room, did not in fact know there was such a creature as Richie Bender on the planet. Richie Bender had turned out to be the man who had robbed the Payless and wasted the clerk, but his room wasn't between the soda machine and the newspaper boxes; that was Wendy Yarrow's room and Wendy Yarrow had been all by herself, at least on that particular day. Richie Bender's room had been on the other side of the Coke machine. That mistake had almost cost Norman Daniels and Harley Bissington their jobs, but in the end the IA people had believed the nailfile story and there had been no sperm to support Ms Yarrow's claims of rape. Her assertion that the older of the two-the one who had actually gotten it into her-had used a condom and then flushed it down the toilet was not provable. There had been other problems, though. Even their greatest partisans in the department had to admit that Inspectors Daniels and Bissington might have gone a little overboard in their efforts to subdue this one-hundred-and-ten-pound wildcat with the nailfile; she did have quite a few broken fingers, for instance. Hence the official reprimand. Nor had that been the end of it. The uppity bitch had found that kike... that little baldheaded kike... But the world was full of uppity, troublemaking bitches. His wife, for instance. But she was one uppity bitch he could do something about... always supposing, that was, he could get a little sleep. Norman rolled over onto his other side, and 1985 at last began to fade away.
"When you least expect it, Rose," he murmured.
"That's when I'll come for you." Five minutes later he was asleep.
10
That slutty gal, he called her, Rose thought in her own bed. She was close to sleep herself now, but not there quite yet; she could still hear the crickets in the park. That slutty high-yellow gal. How he hated her! Yes, of course he had. There had been a mess with the Internal Affairs investigators, for one thing. Norman and Harley Bissington had escaped from that with their skins intact-barely-only to discover that the slutty high-yellow gal had found herself a lawyer (a baldheaded kike ambulance-chaser, in Normanspeak) who had filed a huge civil suit on her behalf. It named Norman, Harley, the entire police department. Then, not long before Rosie's miscarriage, Wendy Yarrow had been murdered. She was found behind one of the grain elevators on the west side of the lake. She had been stabbed over a hundred times, and her br**sts had been hacked off. Some sicko, Norman had told Rosie, and although he had not been smiling after he put the telephone down-someone at the cop-shop must have been really excited, to have called him at home-there had been undeniable satisfaction in his voice. She sat in at the game once too often and a wildcard came out of the deck. Hazard of the job. He had touched her hair then, very gently, stroking it, and had smiled at her. Not his biting smile, the one that made her feel like screaming, but she'd felt like screaming anyway, because she had known, just like that, what had happened to Wendy Yarrow, the slutty high-yellow gal. See how lucky you are? he'd asked her, now stroking the back of her neck with his big hard hands, now her shoulders, now the swells of her br**sts. See how lucky you are not to be out on the street, Rose? Then-maybe it had been a month later, maybe six weeks-he had come in from the garage, found Rosie reading a romance novel, and decided he needed to talk to her about her entertainment tastes. Needed to talk to her about them right up close, in fact. 1985, a hell of a year. Rosie lay in bed with her hands under her pillow, slipping toward sleep and listening to the sound of the crickets coming in through the window, so close they sounded as if her room had been magically transported onto the bandstand in the park, and she thought of a woman who had sat in the corner with her hair plastered against her sweaty cheeks and her belly as hard as a stone and her eyes rolling in their shock-darkened sockets as the sinister kisses began to tickle at her thighs, that woman who was still years from seeing the drop of blood on the sheet, that woman who had not known places like Daughters and Sisters or men like Bill Steiner existed, that woman who had crossed her arms and gripped the points of her shoulders and prayed to a God she no longer believed in that it not be a miscarriage, that it not be the end of her small sweet dream, and then thinking, as she felt it happening, that maybe it was better. She knew how Norman fulfilled his responsibilities as a husband; how might he fulfil them as a father? The soft hum of the crickets, lulling her to sleep. And she could even smell grass-a husky-sweet aroma that seemed out of place in May. This was a smell she associated with August hayfields. I never smelted grass from the park before, she thought sleepily. Is this what love-infatuation, at least-does to you? Does it sharpen your senses at the same time it's making you crazy? Very distantly, she heard a rumble that could have been thunder. That was strange, too, because the sky had been clear when Bill brought her home-she had looked up and marvelled at how many stars she could see, even with all the orange hi-intensity streetlights. She drifted, sliding away, sliding into the last dreamless sleep she would have for some time, and her final thought before the darkness claimed her was How can I hear crickets or smell grass? The window's not open; I closed it before I got into bed. Closed it and locked it.
Chapter V. CRICKETS
1
Late that Wednesday afternoon, Rosie almost floated into the Hot Pot. She ordered a cup of tea and a pastry and sat by the window, slowly eating and drinking as she watched the endless river of pedestrians outside-most of them office-workers at this hour, headed home for the day. The Hot Pot was actually out of her way now that she was no longer working at the Whitestone, but she'd come here unhesitatingly just the same, perhaps because she had had so many pleasant after-work cups of coffee here with Pam, perhaps because she wasn't much of an explorer-not yet, at least-and this was a place she knew and trusted. She had finished reading The Manta Ray around two o'clock, and had been reaching under the table for her bag when Rhoda Simons had clicked through on the speaker. "do you want a little break before we start the next one, Rosie?" she had asked, and there it was, as simple as that. She had hoped she would get the other three Bell/Racine novels, had believed she would, but the relief of actually knowing could not be matched. Nor was that all. When they'd broken at four, already two chapters into a lurid little slash-and-stalk thriller called Kill All My Tomorrows, Rhoda had asked Rosie if she would mind stepping down to the ladies" bathroom with her for a few minutes.
"I know it sounds weird," she said, "but I'm dying for a smoke and it's the only place in the whole damned building I dare to sneak one. Modern life's a bitch, Rosie." In the bathroom, Rhoda had lit a Capri and perched on the sink-ledge between the two basins with an ease that bespoke long familiarity. She crossed her legs, hooked her right foot behind her left calf, and looked at Rosie speculatively.
"Love your hair," she said. Rosie touched it self-consciously. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing she'd had done in a beauty-shop the previous evening, fifty dollars she could not afford... and had been unable not to spend.
"Thanks," she said.
"Robbie's going to offer you a contract, you know." Rosie frowned and shook her head.
"No-I don't know. What are you talking about?"
"He may look like Mr Pennybags on the Monopoly Community Chest cards, but Robbie's been in the audio-book biz since 1975, and he knows how good you are. He knows better than you do. You think you owe him a lot, don't you?'
'I know I do," Rosie replied stiffly. She didn't like the way this conversation was going; it made her think of those Shakespearian plays where people stabbed their friends in the back and then reeled off long, sanctimonious soliloquies explaining how unavoidable it had been. "don't let your gratitude get in the way of your self-interest," Rhoda said, tapping cigarette ash neatly into the basin and chasing it with a squirt of cold water.
"I don't know the story of your life and I don't particularly want to know it, but I know you did The Manta Ray in just a hundred and four takes, which is f**king phenomenal, and I know you sound like the young Elizabeth Taylor. I also know-because it's just about taped to your forehead-that you're on your own and not used to it. You're so tabula rasa it's scary. Do you know what that means?" Rosie wasn't entirely sure-something about being naive, she thought-but she wasn't going to let on to Rhoda.
"Yes, of course."
"Good. And don't get me wrong, for Christ's sake-I'm not trying to cut in on Robbie, or cut my own piece out of your cake. I'm rooting for you. So's Rob, and so's Curtis. It's just that Rob's also rooting for his wallet. Audio-books is still a brand-new field. If this were the movie business, we'd be halfway through the Age of the Silents. Do you understand what I'm trying to say?" "sort of."
"When Robbie listens to you reading The Manta Ray, he's thinking of an audio version of Mary Pickford. I know that sounds crazy, but it's true. Even the way he met you adds to that. There's a legend about Lana Turner being discovered in Schwab's Drugstore. Well, Robbie's already making a legend in his own mind about how he discovered you in his friend Steiner's pawnshop, looking at antique postcards."
"Is that what he told you I was doing?" she asked, feeling a surge of warmth for Robbie Lefferts that was almost love.
"Uh-huh, but where he found you and what you were doing there doesn't really matter. The fact is that you're good, Rosie, you're really, really talented. It's almost as if you were born to this job. Rob discovered you, but that doesn't give him a right to your pipes for the rest of your life. Don't let him own you."
"He'd never want to do that," Rosie said. She was frightened and excited at the same time, and also a little angry at Rhoda for being so cynical, but all of these feelings had been suppressed beneath a bright layer of joy and relief: she was going to be all right for a little longer. And if Robbie really did offer her a contract, she might be all right for even longer than that. It was all very well for Rhoda Simons to preach caution; Rhoda wasn't living in a single room three blocks from an area of town where you didn't park your car at the curb if you wanted to keep your radio and your hubcaps; Rhoda had an accountant husband, a house in the suburbs, and a 1994 silver Nissan. Rhoda had a VISA and an American Express card. Better yet, Rhoda had a Blue Cross card, and savings she could draw on if she got sick and couldn't work. For people who had those things, Rosie imagined, advising caution in business affairs was probably as natural as breathing.
"Maybe not," Rhoda said, "but you could be a small goldmine, Rosie, and sometimes people change when they discover goldmines. Even nice people like Robbie Lefferts." Now, drinking her tea and looking out the window of the Hot Pot, Rosie remembered Rhoda dousing her cigarette under the cold tap, dropping it in the trash, and then coming over to her.
"I know you're in a situation where job security is very important to you, and I'm not saying Robbie's a bad man-I've been working with him off and on since 1982 and I know he's not-but I'm telling you to keep an eye on the birds in the bush while you're making sure the one in your hand doesn't fly away. Do you follow me?"
"Not entirely, no."
"Agree to do six books to start with, no more. Eight in the morning to four in the afternoon, right here at Tape Engine. A thousand a week." Rosie goggled at her, feeling as if someone had stuck a vacuum-cleaner hose down her throat and sucked the air out of her lungs.
"A thousand dollars a week, are you crazy?"
"Ask Curt Hamilton if he thinks I'm crazy," Rhoda said calmly. "remember, it's not just the voice, it's the takes. You did The Manta Ray in a hundred and four. No one else I work with could have done it in less than two hundred. You have great voice management, but the absolutely incredible thing is your breath control. If you don't sing, how in God's name did you get such great control?" A nightmarish image had occurred to Rosie then: sitting in the corner with her kidneys swelling and throbbing like bloated bags filled with hot water, sitting there with her apron held in her hands, praying to God she wouldn't have to fill it because it hurt to throw up, it made her kidneys feel as if they were being stabbed with long, splintery sticks. Sitting there, breathing in long, flat inhales and slow, soft exhales because that was what worked best, trying to make the runaway beat of her heart match the calmer rhythm of her respiration, sitting there and listening to Norman making himself a sandwich in the kitchen and singing "daniel" or
"Take a Letter, Maria" in his surprisingly good barroom tenor.
"I don't know," she had told Rhoda, "I didn't even know what breath control was until I met you. I guess it's just a gift."
"Well, count your blessings, keed," Rhoda said.
"We better get back; Curt'll think we're practicing weird female rituals in here." Robbie had called from his office downtown to congratulate her on finishing The Manta Ray-just as she was getting ready to leave for the day, this had been-and although he hadn't specifically mentioned a contract, he had asked if she would have lunch with him on Friday to discuss what he called "a business arrangement." Rosie had agreed and hung up, feeling bemused. She remembered thinking that Rhoda's description of him was perfect; Robbie Lefferts did look like the little man on the Monopoly cards. When she put down the telephone in Curtis's private office-a cluttery little closet with hundreds of business cards stuck to the cork walls on pushpins-and went back out into the studio to collect her bag, Rhoda was gone, presumably for a final smoke in the ladies". Curt was marking boxes of reel-to-reel tape. He looked up and gave her a grin.
"Great work today, Rosie."
"Thanks."
"Rhoda says Robbie's going to offer you a contract."
"That's what she says," Rosie agreed.
"And I actually think she might be right. Knock on wood."
"Well, you ought to remember one thing while you're dickering," Curtis said, putting the tape boxes on a high shelf where dozens of similar boxes were ranged like thin white books.
"If you made five hundred bucks for The Mania Ray, Robbie's already ahead of the game... because you saved maybe seven hundred in studio time. Get it?" She'd gotten it, all right, and now she sat here in the Hot Pot with the future looking unexpectedly bright. She had friends, a place to live, a job, and the promise of more work when she had finished with Christina Bell. A contract that might mean as much as a thousand dollars a week, more money than Norman made. It was crazy, but it was true. Might be true, she amended. Oh, and one other thing. She had a date for Saturday... all of Saturday, if you counted in the Indigo Girls concert that night. Rosie's face, usually so solemn, broke into a brilliant smile, and she felt a totally inappropriate desire to hug herself. She took the last bite of her pastry and looked out the window again, wondering if all these things could possibly be happening to her, if there could actually be a real life where real people walked out of their prisons, turned right... and walked into heaven.
2
Half a block away, DON'T WALK went out and WALK came on. Pam Haverford, now changed out of her white chambermaid's uniform and into a pair of trim red slacks, crossed the street with two dozen other people. She had worked an extra hour tonight and had no reason on earth to think Rosie would be in the Hot Pot... but she did think it, just the same. Call it woman's intuition, if you wanted. She glanced briefly at the big lug crossing beside her, who she thought she had seen at the Whitestone newsstand a few minutes ago. He might have qualified as someone interesting if not for the look in his eyes... which was no look at all. He glanced briefly at her as they stepped up on the far curb, and the lack of expression in those eyes-the feeling of some absence behind them-actually chilled her.