7191 (24 page)

‘I did it because I had to do it—’

‘You didn’t have to do it - you could have waited for Kaplan!’

‘I couldn’t - For God’s sake, I was there, you weren’t! Ivy was going crazy, I was afraid she’d kill herself - I had to let him in because only he could help her! Is it possible you still don’t understand that?’

‘Right, Janice - on that point we part company. To me, Elliot Hoover is no miracle man. To me, he’s a misguided nut who seems to have made a hell of an impression on my wife!’

Janice shut her eyes and flexed her hands. Her voice, kept soft, was filled with shocked disbelief.

‘You’re right, he’s made a hell of an impression on me. He’s scared me half to death; that’s what he’s done. Most of the time I’m so scared I can’t think straight. He’s got me talking to myself when I’m not talking to priests or screaming to God on my knees. He’s got me drinking in the mornings and stealing off in the dead of night to escape from him. Not because I’m afraid he’s a nut, but because I know he’s sane. Because I believe what he believes is true. Because I accept the fact that our child is the victim of some cosmic screw-up, and as long as she is near him, she’s in terrible danger of losing her life.’

Janice was trying not to cry, but could not stop the tears from coming.

‘But the most terrible and frightening thing of all is that I’m completely alone in all this … that with all you’ve seen and heard, with all the evidence clearly stated before your eyes and ears, you still choose to ignore it. Bill, we’re in trouble! Sooner or later you’ve got to come out from under that fig leaf of yours and face it!’

Janice was sobbing now, but Bill made no move to hold her or soothe her. His face took on a masklike appearance.

‘Okay, you’ve had your say. Now let me have mine.’ The voice was grave, subdued. ‘To begin with, what you believe, I can never believe. Even if Hoover took me on a personal tour through St Peter’s Gate and gave me a point-of-sales pitch, I still wouldn’t believe it. It’s not my reality. Although I will admit the day I left you and went to the airport my head was twisting and turning in every direction. I was glad to be leaving the whole mess behind me - you, Ivy, Hoover, all the sick bullshit we’ve been going through. Imagine. Me, model father, glad to be getting away from my own wife and child, whom I love more than life itself. But that’s the way I felt - glad and guilty, glad and guilty, glad and guilty, halfway across the country.

‘I tried to remove the guilt with many applications of gin and vermouth, but it didn’t work - the glow grew, my head hurt, but the pricky feeling remained. I tell you, it was pure agony, but there wasn’t a thing I could do about it. Until, somewhere over Kansas, I happened to look down and saw the nation going by, forty thousand feet below me, and I started to focus on life and all its problems from that vantage point, watching cities, plains, mountains, the Rockies, the miracle of America going by from sea to shining sea - and me, encased in another miracle, a massive hunk of steel hurtling through space at the speed of sound. And it suddenly dawned on me that these were the miracles that really meant something - not Hoover’s miracles, but the miracles that living men made: taming lands, building incredible machines. These were the real miracles!

‘And then I began to get the glimmerings of an answer. It was raining at this point, you see - we were in the clouds and rain was streaking against the window - and I said to myself, “Into each life a little rain must fall.” A helluva cliche, but that was the answer. Hoover was the rain in our lives, like heart trouble or cancer, and thinking of him in this way, as a disease, he became less ominous and more manageable. I mean, you take cancer to a doctor, and if he can’t help, you go to another doctor and then to a specialist, and you keep on fighting and fighting to the bitter end … you don’t give up. Same with Hoover … you take him to a lawyer, and if that doesn’t help, you go to the police and ultimately to court, and quite possibly that may fail too, but you don’t give up - you don’t cut and run, you don’t hand in your ticket, give up your job, your home … You don’t break up your family, Janice - you stick it out together and fight with guns, rocks, clubs, anything that comes to hand in order to keep what you’ve got and love. If all else fails, we’ve got to be the minutemen: you, me, Ivy, together as a family. And as long as we remain as a family, we’ve got a chance to beat this son of a bitch …’

‘… of a bitch, a bitch, itch…’

His voice came to a discordant halt, sending the final word echoing across the expanse of water like a rock skimming its surface. In the silence that followed, the soft wave sounds reestablished themselves. Janice stood motionless, letting the gentle noise wash over her boggled, benumbed brain. He wouldn’t understand, couldn’t understand, and she suddenly felt too weary to care any longer whether he did or not.

‘So forget about boarding schools for Ivy. Tomorrow morning we’re going to return to our home. As a family.’

The words were uttered softly, but with Biblical obstinacy and determination, closing off all channels of discussion.

So be it.

‘All right,’ Janice said.

*

They returned to the city in the late afternoon of November 13, a Wednesday.

Janice’s eyes quickly scanned the solitary, shadowy parts of the street as the car pulled up in front of Des Artistes.

Bill, she noticed, did the same, though less obviously.

There was no sign of Hoover.

Janice watched Ivy kick listlessly at the kerbside drift of blackened snow as Mario and Ernie helped Bill carry the suitcases into the lobby. There was a swiftness to Bill’s movements that betrayed his anxiety to get off the street as quickly as possible.

‘Better get her inside,’ he told Janice, and climbed into the car to return it to the Hertz people.

Janice complied.

The bottle of scotch was where she had left it, open and half consumed on the sewing table next to the rocker. The cork was nowhere in sight.

The entire living-room seemed slightly tipsy, furniture, draperies, pillows, askew or out of place - victims of the nightmare.

Janice restored order while Ivy watched TV.

Upstairs, the basin of water was on the bedroom floor, a sediment of brownish grit formed on the bottom. Janice thought of Hoover’s hands washing her legs as she emptied the soiled water into the toilet and rinsed the basin clean.

Ivy’s room was at the epicentre of the cyclone - furniture upended, blankets and bedsheets coiled together in twisted, knotted balls, the Chinese screen, still at a slight angle, covering the window, the subtle motif of the centre panel torn and mutilated beyond recognition.

Janice spent the better part of an hour returning the room to its normal state, but could do nothing with the screen since it was stuck solidly behind the radiator. She and Bill together finally prised it loose and carted it back to their bedroom.

Upon first seeing the screen, Bill had asked her what the hell had happened. She told him. His face blanched.

They ate sandwiches from the Stage Delicatessen (Bill had picked them up on his way back from the car rental), along with beer and milk. As they were finishing their meal, the house telephone rang.

Bill calmly ate the last of his sandwich before rising to answer it. His composure was too calculated to pass for indifference.

Russ. Mario had told him they were back. Did they need anything? Carole had baked a large lasagne and they were welcome. Bill thanked Russ and told him they had just finished dinner and were making an early night of it as they were all beat.

Which was partially true, Janice thought worriedly, observing Ivy’s heavy-lidded eyes and drawn, pale face - she seemed ready to flake out at the dinner table. Her milk glass was empty, but her sandwich had been hardly touched. Janice reminded herself to make an appointment with Dr Kaplan in the morning. Unless, she bleakly reflected, we have need of him sooner.

The bath forgone, Janice tucked Ivy into bed just shy of eight o’clock, and almost immediately she fell asleep. She stayed with her child for a long time, listening to her soft, even breathing, before leaving the room and quietly closing the door.

She found Bill in their bedroom, lethargically unpacking his suitcase, lingering over the disposition of each item as though reluctant to complete the task. Janice snapped open her own suitcase. There was only one exchange between them.

‘Is she asleep?’ he whispered.

‘Yes,’ she whispered back.

They both continued to unpack in a silence that was charged with tension and expectancy.

They didn’t have long to wait. Audrey Rose arrived at eight fifteen.

‘Mommydaddymommydaddymommydaddyhothothothot—’ Bill snapped his finger at the telephone… ‘Kaplan!’

… and dashed out of the room. Janice dashed to the telephone (teamwork).

- snatched it up and, the number burned in her brain, quickly dialled it from memory…

‘HOTHOTHOTHOTHOT hothothot—’

Agony rose and fell as the bedroom door opened and closed …

‘Yes?’ Kaplan, thank God!

‘Doctor, it’s Janice Templeton, please come right away!’

‘I’ll be right over.’

Janice stumbled forward into the hallway, zooming towards bedlam—

‘Hothothothothotdaddydaddydaddy—’

- opened the bedroom door— ‘HOTHOTHOTHOT—’

-saw Ivy, head thrown back, howling up at Bill, standing staunchly between her and the window, arms akimbo, legs outstretched, the Colossus of Rhodes, the human barrier to her ravening need—

‘HOTHOTHOTHOT—’

-bandaged fists flailing and pelting him, ripping at shirt and trousers with a strength fhat brought beads of sweat popping to his face—

‘Kaplan’s coming!’ Janice encouraged.

‘HOTHOTHOTHOTHOT—’

- Ivy’s face a raging mask of fear and anguish, fists pummelling Bill with maniacal force and accuracy; thudding impacts collecting him in sensitive regions of belly and groin, causing him to wince in pain and seize the thin arms to stay the vicious hammerblows—

‘HOTHOTHOTHOT—’

Janice gasped as Ivy’s teeth sunk into the soft flesh of Bill’s arm.

‘Janice! Help me!’ he croaked, wrenching his arm from her bloodied lips.

Janice charged towards her daughter’s back, arms extended, and threw herself at her legs, engulfing them in a vicelike embrace.

Bill grabbed Ivy’s arms.

Wriggling, struggling, squirming, they carried her screaming to the bed, eased her down, and lay upon the small, convulsing, jerking body to still it.

Gradually, the volcano abated, the body relaxed, the screaming imprecations became soft, plaintive cries, childlike: ‘Mommy-daddytnommymommydaddyhothothot—’

Gently conveying the relaxed arms to the strong grip of his left hand, Bill grasped the sheet with his free hand and quickly bound her wrists. His face was dripping sweat, and he was breathing hard. Clinging to the legs, Janice watched the shocked face of her husband as he tied the end of the sheet to the scrollwork of the carved headboard, then rose to repeat the same process with her legs.

Shortly, their daughter, in all her pale perfection, lay trussed and suspended between the two corded sheets firmly secured to the bed. Both sheets were bespeckled with Bill’s blood.

For a long time, neither spoke. They stood by the bed gazing down at the gently twisting body, in mute horror.

‘My God,’ Bill groaned hoarsely.

The doorbell rang.

Kaplan!

‘Stay with her,’ Bill ordered brusquely, and bounded out of the room and down the stairs, flicking on light switches in living-room and hallway … twisting two locks … removing the chain bolt… opening the door to—

Hoover. Standing pale, smiling nervously, hand extended in a semi-offering gesture, noting the bleeding arm and the sweated face filled with shock—

‘Hello,’ he ventured unsurely.

‘H-how the hell did you get up here?’ Bill choked out in a haggard whisper.

‘I—’ Hoover began,

‘Who allowed you up?

‘I… live here.’

Stunned, stupefied silence.

‘What?’ breathed Bill.

‘I sublet a small apartment on the fifth floor - while you were gone. We’re neighbours.’

A film of red drew a veil across the pale face as Bill felt the throb of blood in his temples and a spasm of rage gorge his throat…

‘You son of a bitch!’ Bill exploded, and thrust his hands at the thin neck, seeking to enclose it, to squeeze it, to tear it apart—

‘No, please—’ the face begged, falling away from Bill’s grasping, flexing fingers, falling backward, downward, floating -causing Bill’s hands to grapple with air, a mirage, unattainable. A foot in Bill’s groin, assisted by his own forward momentum, sent his hulking body into the air in a gentle arc, suspending it in space for a fleeting instant, then dropping all one hundred and eighty-two pounds of it on to the hard tile floor with a sickening, brain-rattling thud.

Bill felt his head bursting and knew there were broken parts inside him. Tricky bastard, he thought in his agony, vaguely aware of doors opening and closing down the hallway.

‘I’m sorry, Mr Templeton.’ Hoover’s voice came through an echo chamber. ‘Here, let me help you—’

Bill felt a steel-like grip on his arm, as Hoover assisted him to a sitting position. The sight of Mrs Carew’s round face, watching solicitously from a distance, completed the indignity, sending a jolt of adrenalin pumping through his damaged body, rekindling energy, recharging rage.

‘I’ll kill you, you prick,’ he groaned, and with a sudden lunge and cry, grabbed Hoover’s legs, wrenched him off his feet, and pulled him down on top of his own body. Rolling about on the floor, Bill’s arms encircled the lean, hard waist in a tight ham-merlock and started to apply pressure, when a sudden electrical shock coursed up his spine, immobilizing his body and sending star bursts shooting across his darkening vision. He sensed Hoover’s strong fingers digging into the nape of his neck, impinging on a particular artery. Totally paralysed, Bill felt himself slipping from consciousness, as Hoover’s agitated voice begged, ‘Please, Mr Templeton - I hear Ivy—’

‘DADDYDADDYDADDYDADDY-‘