Boundaries (18 page)

Because bees were drawn to sweat and he was sweating.

It made him afraid.

He clutched at himself and walked stiffly from the place.

He found a path through the forest and he took it; but there were hundreds of bees on it, and the light was very cold; the dust choked him.

And a ghost of the earth existed here.

At the horizon, there was a line of squat, gaily painted cottages a half mile across the lake. The lake.

It was as overpowering as fog. As near as fog. It misted his fingers. He was walking in it.

Still, there were the bees. Hundreds of bees.

He clutched at himself. He cried out, "Where am I?" He didn’t know. "Where in hell
am
I?"

This was not the place he had wanted to come to.

This was too familiar and too strange. This had the ghost of the earth on it.

It had the lake on it.

"Where
am
I?" he cried.

Then he thought he knew where he was. And he realized that he had gone nowhere, that he wasn’t naked, that the ghost of the earth which shimmered around him
was
the earth.

Because he could smell it now.

He could smell the lake that he stood in up to mid-thigh.

He looked down at himself. He saw that he was wearing his gray pants and green shirt and, off-angle through the clear water, his penny loafers.

It was dusk. The mosquitoes had gathered above the water and they were satisfying themselves on him.

He closed his eyes, put his hands over them, whispered, "I’ve gone nowhere." It made him happy. It made him unhappy.

It made him desperate to try again.

He trudged to shore and then—past the remains of a half dozen thin translucent fish—to his small green cottage.

He did not get through the side doorway. He collapsed on the narrow porch.

~ * ~

He saw the tunnel opening. It floated tiny and white in a field of darkness, like a small, dying sun. He reached for it. The image of his hand covered it and it was gone. But then he took his hand away and it reappeared.

He moved toward it as if he were caught in a vortex. It tugged relentlessly at him and made him afraid.

Shapes pushed up toward him from the darkness. He thought they were hands but they were the color and form of darkness, and their fingers were like fingers of dark earth.

And he knew that they were the hands of the earth trying to draw him back.

But the tunnel opening widened inexorably, without the passage of time—it was
this
wide, it was
this
wide, it was
this
wide.

As wide as the moon hanging in the darkness. As wide as the edges of his vision.

And it was a fragile and pale blue, like the blue that follows the red of sunset.

It engulfed him, and the darkness was no more.

He was engulfed. Swallowed. Within.

He was underwater and being tugged inexorably and endlessly toward the sun.

He was being pulled by daylight from the depths of a dream.

~ * ~

Fred Collins said to Leo Kenner, "I just can’t believe that there’s nothing to implicate him." He was talking about Brian Fisher. He had the file on Anne Case opened in front of him. There was also a small pile of personal effects—a few letters, her purse, a telephone number-address book—at the front of his desk, near where it touched Leo Kenner’s desk.

Leo Kenner nodded. "It happens," he said. "Sometimes people just don’t put things down in writing."

"But
he
would have, Leo. And
she
would have, too."

"Yes." Leo sighed. "I’m aware of that." He shrugged. "But we can’t expect that everything will be tied up neatly."

"Why not?" Collins asked. "Given the circumstances, why not? What have we got here? I mean
look
at it: We’ve got an agoraphobic who spends virtually all of her time inside her house. We know from talking to her brother that she was fond of writing poetry, which
assumes
that she also liked to write letters, and except for the agoraphobia, her boyfriend—Brian Fisher—is cut from the same mold. And we find
his
letters and
his
poetry, but we find nothing in
her
house."

"She might have kept those things elsewhere," Leo suggested; then, realizing it was a lame remark, added, "It’s possible."

"No, it isn’t," Collins protested. "If she spent all of her time inside her house, Leo—"

"
Most
of her time."

"If she spent all the time that
matters
inside her house, then
that
is where she would keep her letters and her poetry. But what do we have?" He picked up the letters on his desk. "A few notes to her brother about his birthday and his new job. It makes no damned sense, Leo."

"So search her place again," Leo said.

Collins shook his head. "I don’t want to do that. It’s been searched . . . thoroughly. I don’t want to go inside it again."

Leo looked confusedly at him. "Something’s bothering you, Fred. Why don’t you share it with me."

Again Collins shook his head. "I think . . . I merely think that it would waste our time to go through Anne’s house again.
I’ve
been through it.
Forensics
has been through it. There’s
nothing
there—nothing that pertains, anyway—that we’re not aware of."

Kenner’s brow furrowed. "Did you know her, Fred?"

"Sorry?"

"You referred to her as ‘Anne.’ "

"Did I?" He smiled a little, then caught himself. "I wasn’t . . . aware of it. I’m sorry. I guess I’ve been thinking about her . . . about this investigation, quite a bit. And when you do that, it . . . makes you believe, after a while, that you
know
a person. A victim. I’m sure I’ve done the same sort of thing before."

Kenner paused. "If you have, I don’t remember it."

"Uh-huh. Well
I’m
sure I have." He smiled quickly, as if to dismiss the subject. "Yes," he went on, "I’ll take another look. Tomorrow. Maybe tonight."

"Tomorrow’s Sunday."

"It’s okay. I don’t mind. Sunday’s good. I wasn’t going to be doing anything else, anyway."

~ * ~

It’s three weeks before her murder, and Anne is talking with David in the cavernous third floor ballroom in her big house. She nods at a tall, broad-leafed plant, a
Dracena
, in the far corner of the room. "It’s dying. There’s nothing I can do about it," she says.

"Water it," David says.

She shakes her head very seriously. It’s not an emotional thing, the death of her plant, and that is clear to David.

"I’ve done that," she tells him. "It does no good. It’s dying for some other reason. Old age, probably."

"I didn’t know plants died of old age."

She smiles at him as if he has told her a joke, although his remark was serious. "Yes. Plants aren’t immortal."

They are seated together on a big couch that rarely gets used because she and her brother are the only ones who come to this room. Her moods usually prevent her from coming to the room alone because it’s so big, and although there are heavy curtains on the bay window, Oriental rugs scattered around the floor, and several heavy, upholstered pieces of furniture in the room, voices echo in it, reminding her of its bigness. But she does not mind coming here with her brother. It’s almost, she’s told him, like going for a walk in the countryside, which she hasn’t done for decades.

He has not seen her for some time because of the pressures of his job. He’s missed her. She’s intelligent and philosophical; all their lives they have enjoyed each others’ company. But he’s having trouble breaking through the barrier that time apart has set up between them. He asks her, "What have you been up to, Annie?"

She smiles. "You haven’t called me that in a very long time." She pauses, though not long enough to give him a chance to answer. "I’ve been very good. I’m happy, David. I have a lover."

He doesn’t know how to respond to this. He’s aware that he’s suddenly staring at her dumbly and he’s sure that some inappropriate look of shock or surprise is transforming his features. He knows that she requires comment, but he can think of nothing. He says lamely, "Yes?"

"Yes. He’s a nice boy," she says, and again she shakes her head and smiles, but self-consciously, now. "He’s not a boy, David. He
looks
like a boy, I think. Sometimes, anyway. He looks vulnerable, at least." Again she shakes her head, then looks down at her hands folded in her lap. "I’m handling this very, very poorly, aren’t I? I knew that my . . . revelation would be important. To you."

And it was, of course. She had rarely talked with him about the men in her life before, although there had been several, he knew. Most recently, a man with whom she had had a very brief but apparently very volatile relationship, a man she now refused to talk about, a man whom David had never met. The men in her life were just about the only things she didn’t talk to him about; where to live, how to spend her money, how best to deal with her illness, how to deal with friends and relatives who thought they knew best what she should do with her life—given the restrictions imposed by her illness—all these things and more were topics she discussed freely. Her love life had gone almost totally
undiscussed
.

"What’s there to handle poorly, Anne?" David asks. "I’m glad you feel free to talk with me about it." There is an emotion—jealously?—pushing up from deep inside him and he tries to push it back. "What’s his name?"

She shakes her head. She doesn’t want to tell him the man’s name, she says. Maybe after a while.

This makes David uncomfortable. She feels free to discuss the fact of the man with him, but not something so mundane as his name. Clearly she is holding something back. "What’s in a name?" he asks, and smiles.

"Lots," she answers.

"Is it someone I know?"

She shakes her head. He’s not sure if she’s saying no, he’s not someone David knows, or no, she doesn’t want to discuss it.

David says, "It’s not the man you were involved with six months ago, is it?"

Suddenly, Anne looks as if she’s in pain. "No," she whispers. "God, no!"

"Sorry," David says, then, smiling: "Can you describe him, Anne? That way I’ll at least have a mental picture of this man who has designs on my twin sister." Yes, he realizes, it
is
jealousy he feels; and it is one of the reasons he’s been only too happy, in the past, not to discuss with her any of the other men in her life.

"Describe him?" She grins slyly, as if to tell him she knows he’s playing a game with her, but that she’ll play along. "Yes, I can describe him. With or without his clothes, David?"

He smiles quickly at this, but too broadly, and for too long. "Well, yes," he begins, and forces his smile down so that it is merely a grin. "With his clothes, I think. I’ve seen naked men, Anne."

"Have it your way." She acts disappointed. "He’s . . . forgettable."

"Ha. This sounds like the real thing, Annie.”