Blood Music (16 page)

They walked among the tables not speaking; Cheryl would run ahead and then back to him, holding aloft some little treasure: the top-hatted china robin the size of her thumb, the round brass medallion commemorating the twelfth annual running of the hundred-yard dash at Emerson High School, Illinois, in 1910. “Look, darling, I've gotten another venerable,” she'd cry, mimicking an ancient great-aunt who used to visit them at Christmastime when they were children; if John remembered correctly, Christmas dinner had always been judged “detectable.” Cheryl had been the repository not only of his childhood but of the whole of his family history, John realized sadly; without her there was no great-aunt, no Christmas, no past not entirely his own.

Madeleine picked up a battered coffeepot and held it up in her hands as though it were a living thing. She fingered fragments of lace, ran her hand over a peach-colored teacup with a rose painted on the inside bottom. “The sides are sometimes so delicate you can see through them,” Cheryl would say, holding up a cup to look through the china membrane at the sun. Madeleine did not lift the cup, but her fingers traced the rose.

Now she stood next to a glass case of odds and shining ends; something silver caught the light. John looked at her and saw for a horrible moment not Cheryl, not even a promise for his own future, but only what the man had seen. What he had seen when he tried to murder her.

She was not innocent now; she had been robbed of even the illusion of innocence, of being unknown. He thought that she must know what he was thinking, what all men were thinking all the time, now that she had been raped. A woman scratched her thigh or straightened her skirt and that was an invitation. The leg, the cowboy boot or the stiletto heel; the black tights like skin over the buttocks; the shirt that could be unbuttoned or pulled over the unresisting neck. The eye caught—an invitation. The eye aloof—a challenge. The woman walking ahead of you up the subway stairs is yours, her ass is yours, in your mouth, spread out like a sacrifice under your pumping thighs. And then you get to the top of the stairs and she disappears like mist. The woman walking toward you, her breasts bouncing gently underneath a silk blouse, is yours, the nipples between your teeth like ripe fruit and you plunge it into her and she screams and passes by and you never even saw her face.

The late-afternoon sun cut a shadow across Madeleine's throat, throwing her face into darkness and her body into sharp relief. She looked trustingly at him: a man who has just lost his sister to the monster would not be like the others, “revolting.” He lowered his eyes.

Reflected sunlight winked at him. He leaned closer: rows of silver rings on a bed of blue velvet. An untidy pile of amber glass beads, green beads, shiny silver metal beads. And next to them a winking eye: a knife. A short green scabbard, intricately designed, a heavy silver handle, the blade obscured. Madeleine followed his eyes.

“Perfect,” she said softly; she might have been in church.

“It can't be traced,” said John, and she lifted her finger quickly and brought it up to his mouth. The gut kicked, tensed and twisted and breathed, and John hated, for a moment, his sex.

The man behind the counter showed them the knife; they handled it reverently, feigning indifference. And in the sun in front of two or three hundred people they bought the knife, their talisman.

“T
here's a guy in Queens who's looking good,” said Scottie. “Three different people have called in I.D.'ing him as the Slasher. Seems he's a musician, plays the trumpet. Not jazz, classical. And he has a history of altercations with his neighbors—particularly his blond neighbors. He tried to strangle the nineteen-year-old who lives downstairs. This was after he sent her several letters—the girl's bringing those in today.”

“I want to see them.”

“I don't know who's been assigned the questioning—”

“I'll be able to get the questioning, don't worry about that. What else do you have on him?”

“He's suspected of poisoning a neighbor's cat. He complained several times to the owner that the cat was getting into his apartment and leaving blond hair all over his furniture.”

“What else?”

“An old girlfriend. She said he tried to strangle her during an argument once—almost made her pass out. And he used to write letters to the papers, one was something about the moon.”

“Have you been able to get a hold of any copies of the letters?”

“Nobody ever followed up on the original call. I was meaning—”

“Why didn't you tell me?”

“—to tell you.”

“Damn, man, I want in on this one! When did these calls come in? When—”

“We're getting hundreds of goddamn calls a day. You're answering the phones yourself. We're all answering the phones. Do you have time to interview every person who calls in?”

“I want in on the questioning of that neighbor. And pull me the name and number of the ex-girlfriend. I want to talk to her as soon as possible. And don't forget, the relatives and friends of the victims. You've held me up on that—”

“I know, I know, but I've had to input all this other crap—”

“Just hurry up and get me the name of that girlfriend.”

“P
at?” Zelly said hesitantly; she was afraid.

“What?” The restaurant, a new Italian place a few blocks from their apartment, was busy. There was a wall of brunch conversation around them; their high-backed booth was as private as a monastery cell. Pat was drinking coffee; he drank a lot of coffee, with lots of sugar. Zelly had a cup of tea in front of her but she wasn't drinking it. Mary dozed improbably in her booster seat, every moment about to topple into the bowl of mashed potatoes in front of her.

“I wanted to talk to you,” Zelly said.

“Sure, hon. What about?” The sports pages were in front of him.

“I want to talk to you about our marriage,” she blurted. The paper came down and to her surprise he was smiling.

“Our marriage? You know, I've never thought of it that way, as if it were some thing, like a pet. Our marriage Fluffy.”

“Pat.”

“It just struck me as funny. Our marriage. What did you want to say to me about our marriage?”

“Our Fluffy.”

“Yes.”

“Well. This is so hard.” Looking at her eggs, which were slicking over now. “I wanted to know—I need to know—am I a good wife to you?”

Pat put the paper all the way down, and as he talked he smoothed the edges with his palm, back and forth. “Of course you are, Zel. What do you mean?”

“I mean—do I make you happy?”

“This is about when you went to your mother's a week and a half ago,” he said.

“Yes.” All slicked over shiny, the way they get after you're done. Zelly couldn't stand the sight of food after she was done eating. They had not talked about their marriage that night. Pat had held Zelly while she cried, and then they had made love, very gently. They had not talked the next morning. Pat had been neither angry nor unapproachable, but he had not been chagrined either; he had not behaved like someone whose actions had driven his wife and baby from their home. He had played with Mary on the living room floor, and when he looked up at Zelly standing in the kitchen doorway his eyes were innocent, and Zelly could think of nothing to say. As afternoon stretched into evening and into night and the next day and she said nothing, it became impossible to say anything. It had taken twelve days to screw up her courage.

“About the panties,” she said now.

“I told you about those.”

“I know. I know, it's just—”

“You think I'm having an affair.” There was something in his voice almost like pleasure. Mary let out a little snore and they both laughed. When she met Pat's eyes they were both still smiling.

“I'm not having an affair,” he said.

“I guess—I guess I knew that. But you've been away so much—nobody has their house rewired at eleven o'clock at night.”

“Actually people do, sometimes. But you're right. Not about the affair—but a lot of times it's true that I just don't come home. I can't explain it—I need to be alone, to be outside, to drive. It's a male thing. I don't drink, and believe me, I don't fool around with other women. But I need my freedom, and I need my privacy.”

“I know that. But the money hasn't been coming in—”

“The money! Is that what this is about, the money?” His fingers came up off the paper like a mime creating a glass wall.

“No. It's not about the money. Pat, you haven't had a real conversation with me in months. It's about that. And—just you're being gone, and not talking. And then I found the panties and I thought—”

“Zelly, those were Karen's panties. I told you.”

“And you've been carrying them around for eight years like old love letters?”

“Let's say more like library books I forgot to return. Come on, honey.” His anger passed just like that. He was all conciliatory now. “Why would I carry around some woman's underwear?”

The paper was smooth under his fingers. They were talking about the one thing he could never forgive her. She had touched the lavender silk.

“—in the back of one of those magazines,” she was saying. She looked sincere. He could not imagine how she thought his magazines were any of her business. He would have gotten angry again but he could see that would be inappropriate.

“Zelly honey,” he said softly—she was, after all, his wife, and “wife” was a word with meaning and reverence—“those magazines have nothing to do with you. With us.” (How utterly truthful he was being!) “Nothing at all.”

“But you don't know how they make me feel,” she said. He had never thought about how they would make her feel. He could not even imagine her looking at them. Her reality was limited to the time he spent with her. When he was gone she didn't exist. Her thoughts, her suppositions, were of limited interest to him; he needed her to be there when he got home.

He never thought that her fascination with serial killers was any danger to him. Even after she found the panties he was not afraid. Angry, but not afraid. She thought he had mailed away for them from someplace at the back of one of his magazines! She thought he was having an affair! He was quite safe. Now he listened from inside himself while he made quieting noises. That part of his life and this, the baby's head tipping farther over perceptibly now with each sleeping breath, and the memories of resisting muscle and unresisting flesh, were not connected in any way.

“—member when we met?” Zelly asked wistfully.

“Yes, I do.”

“You asked for clear nail polish.”

“I'd been there three times in one week and I couldn't think of anything else to ask for.”

“I thought you wanted it for your grandfather. I thought you had an old Italian grandfather who played boccie ball and painted his pinkie nails with clear polish.”

“I was desperate. I kept coming back and you just weren't getting the hint. I thought if I asked for something stupid you'd realize I didn't want anything except to see you.”

“I did. But you could have just asked me out.”

Pat smiled into his coffee cup. “Not my style,” he said, and Zelly felt a rush of love for him; it hurt. Imagine if he knew what she'd been thinking!

Pat was the only man Zelly had ever slept with. Sometimes she was embarrassed about that and sometimes she was proud.

“You're everything I know about love,” she said suddenly. His palms stopped smoothing the paper. “I just want to be a good wife,” she said. “That's all I've ever wanted. You know that, I never wanted a career for myself, really—just to be a good wife and have lots of babies.”

“Having babies is a career.”

“I think so. But, lately I've been feeling like I've failed you.”

“Because of the underwear?”

“Because—because we haven't been close.”

“That time I put my hands around your neck—that was just something I was trying out. I thought you might like it.”

“I didn't like it.”

“I know. And I'm sorry.”

“That's not even it. It's the communication. I guess I think you should have known I wouldn't like it—or you should have asked me. We haven't really talked for a long time. Not since before—” the first Slasher killing, she almost said, and stopped herself.

“Since I started my business, I know.”

“What do you want out of our marriage?” she asked him. He looked down at the table for a long time. Then he looked at her and the depth of sadness on his face frightened her.

“Peace,” he said.

“P
at wants to go to the Philharmonic concert in Cunningham Park on Friday, I forgot to tell you,” Zelly said to her mother on the phone. Her mother called her often; sometimes for days on end the only person Zelly spoke to other than Pat was her mother. In the two weeks since Zelly had taken the baby to her house Mrs. Thuringen had called even more often. Each time she asked gently after Zelly's health and each time Zelly said, “I'm fine, Mama.” Once her mother had asked her if she “had sorted out that problem with Pat” and Zelly said she thought they'd worked it out. Her mother didn't probe; she knew her daughter would come to her when she needed her.

“You're not going to drag the baby to that?” Mrs. Thuringen asked now. “It's been in all the papers that the Symphony Slasher practically said he was going to murder some poor woman at that concert. It's going to be a madhouse, with policemen every two feet and the press all over the place and every weirdo in New York out there under the stars with the music. Why does he want to go to that?”