Escape the Night (20 page)

A heavy-set man brushed against their table and then glided away so quickly that Carey saw only his back moving toward the bar. Noelle's startled upward glance became a stare. Sharply, Carey asked, “Is something wrong?”

She shot a last quick glance toward the bar. “Poor man wasn't very attractive, that's all.”

“You seemed spooked …”

“Look, Peter, if you don't
want
to talk, it's okay.” Noelle stopped, softening her impatience. “It's just when you get so miserable, it's hard not to ask why.”

Carey began twirling his wineglass; he finally spoke, without looking up. “Maybe part of it's that I don't know who or what I am if not a Carey, publishing like my father and grandfather. The firm is what they've left me.” He hesitated. “I suppose I feel that if I lose it, I'm not anyone at all.”

“But I'm not with you because you're a
Carey
, Peter—it's what we have when you're
not
living all that out that keeps me here.” Noelle leaned toward him. “Okay, I understand that you need it, like I need photography to keep from waiting for some man to pull my life out for me. What you don't need is this endless shit with Phillip.”

“You act as if it's voluntary.”

“I'm not saying that. But you've got to ask yourself why his every breath takes so much out of you. Why blame Phil because Barth made him an offer?”

“All right, dammit.” Carey looked at her; his voice was staccato. “For you, Noelle—the truth, as clear as I can make it. Ever since my father died, I've known that Phil would steal my inheritance. No matter that I feel guilty—the point is that I
believe
it, like other people believe in God or horoscopes or Sigmund Freud. Now that Barth's arrived to help him, I'm afraid, more deeply than I can ever tell you, I'll lose the firm.”

“Like you lost your father?”

“Jesus Christ, Ciano, let's put on hipboots and wade in the Freudian slime. On second thoughts,
you
go.” The hurt on her face stopped him; tiredly, Carey raised his glass. “Anyhow, why hassle about this when we can toast your retirement from psychiatric practice. This morning I called Ruth Levy.'s brother.”

Noelle stared at the glass in his hand; Carey felt the sudden fear that she would leave. Then she asked, quite softly, “Did you talk about remembering?”

“Uh-huh.” The thought made Carey feel vulnerable; lightly, to cover this, he added, “Maybe I'll remember how much I owe to Phillip.”

Phillip Carey stood in the semidarkness, facing Barth's desk. “Peter
did
promise me he'd think about it.”

“That's hard to believe.” Barth remained seated, Phillip guessed, to conceal his shortness. “Do
you
believe it?”

Phillip resolved to answer and leave quickly; he disliked this memory of darkness, being alone with another man. “I can only hope …”

“You should do better, Phillip. Your fate's in Peter's hands.”

“As is yours. Like it or not, I've assumed the responsibility of trustee.”

“No, Phillip; you foolishly saved a child. The humiliating role you're playing was John Carey's doing.”

“Look, Barth …”

“So the only question is what you can make of it
now
, should Peter choose not to deal with me.” Barth's voice grew harsh. “Time's running out. You're worthless goods in five more months.”

“What's my penury to you? If Peter won't bite, you can buy another publisher.”

“No.” Phillip watched Barth's profile, turning toward John Carey's building. “I was meant to own Van Dreelen and Carey.”

Phillip still could not grasp Barth's motives. “Manifest Destiny?” he inquired.

“Social Darwinism,” Barth snapped. “I'm much more like Black Jack Carey than you or Peter or even the late, great Charles …”

“Stop exhuming him.”

“Why?” Barth's voice softened abruptly. “Did Charles make you unhappy, Phillip?”

“That's enough.” For a fearful instant, Phillip wondered what he knew, then snapped back. “I wouldn't play these games with Peter, Barth.
His
unhappiness is not a joy to live with.”

Barth turned to face him. “Nor is mine.”

Once more Phillip felt this strange man frighten him. Retreating, his mind fixed on the woman who was waiting for him; new and young, she still held the teasing promise that, somehow, this time, he might truly feel. More evenly, he answered Barth, “I'll keep trying to persuade him. As you point out, I need the money.”

“Just bring him here.”

“Give me time.” Phillip looked away. “All that I suggest is that you not meet with him quite yet. It would be desirable if Peter didn't start off disliking you …”

“Three more weeks,” Barth cut in, “to produce this terror in person.”

“And if I can't?”

“Then you're out eight million dollars.” Barth paused, dropping his voice. “Unless you sell me Peter's stock.”

Phillip looked up at him. “I can't do that, I'm afraid.”

In the darkness, Phillip sensed, rather than saw, Barth's slow, incredulous smile. “You're afraid of him, aren't you?”

“Shut up.”

Barth gave a quick, barking laugh and then his voice went flat. “This isn't scruples at all. There's something in young Peter that scares you to your very soul.” With terrible gentleness, he smiled again. “Perhaps, Phillip, I should find out what that is.”

His father screamed
…

Carey turned to Noelle. “Pardon?”

They stood beneath the awning of her apartment. Carey hardly remembered their subway ride, or the walk that followed; as he looked around for a man he would not recognize, his mind had been drawn into the vortex of his dream. Too late, he realized that they had not spoken until now.

“Earth to Mars,” Noelle was saying. “I asked you to call me when you can handle conversation.”

Her eyes were luminous and probing. Streetlights cast dark hollows beneath her cheekbones; all at once her animal presence pierced him as deeply as the night he had first entered her. Yet he knew that now she wished to sleep alone: it was the melding of thoughts, and not their bodies, that made them lovers. He touched her face. “I'll be back from Mars tomorrow.”

“Okay.” She kissed him; her mouth was soft and moist in the bitter night. “I'm glad about Levy, Peter.” She brushed snow from her hair, and was gone.

He watched her disappear, walking quick and straight and proud; against his will, Carey's memory snapped this like a photograph, of a lover he would never see again …

Glancing around him, Carey saw no one. He turned back toward the subway.

The wind felt colder.

Martin watched him from the shadows.

He did not follow. He did not wish to be seen; the woman had already seen his face. The small man was too anxious to hear voices; his orders had brought Martin much too close for anything but killing. Following them in SoHo had been awkward enough. Curious that it
had
been SoHo …

A coincidence, surely: Peter Carey was a rat in a maze. But that they had led him there, and she had seen him, felt like an invasion of the privacy, inviolate and intact, from which he stripped the privacy of others.

Perhaps she was undressing …

He hunched against the cold, the picture growing until it crawled across his skin. He had been angry when Carey left; imagining their sex might have salved this feeling of exposure. But their parting betrayed some fissure which the small man might yet use. And now he could imagine her, alone.

Perhaps, alone, she felt him. In SoHo, waiting for them to finish, he had drifted to the poster which had stopped her; reading it, he grew excited.

He saw litheness in her walk, in her slim hips …

Stroking the tapes still hidden in his pocket, he shivered. The Village was much colder than midtown; no giant buildings warmed the sidewalks with their heat, or cut the wind that sliced in from the Hudson.

In Corfu the breeze was warm and smelled of lemons …

She wore no bra beneath her sweater.

He looked up at the roof of the darkened warehouse across the street.

For reasons he could not yet define, he was troubled by the small man's motives; his mentor's absence of emotion, so different from Martin's own, had always made him feel safe. He was troubled by this lapse in judgment.

He needed something to appease him until the climax of his drama.

Some night he would watch her.

Alone in the darkness, he began counting windows, upwards from the first floor.

Her light went on.

Six.

Flicking on the lamp, Noelle glanced through her window. There was nothing but the warehouse …

She peeled off her sweater. Wool brushed her nipples.

Damn Peter.

Folding her sweater in the drawer, she wondered what had happened.

She knew that Peter's mood was much darker than the words he'd used. He concealed himself through acts of misdirection: tonight, merely to divert her, he had even played on a resentment of her father she had admitted to him alone. It was cheap, a betrayal of friendship—she disliked him for it. Coming home, he would not talk; she could not take him inside her with the passion so far gone, from some stubborn desire to retrieve it …

She stripped off her jeans.

His head had tilted as she said goodbye, eyes open as a child's: too late, he had seen
her
, and not his fear. Unguarded, Peter Carey was the most sensitive man she knew; his betrayal was a measure of what troubled him.

Perhaps it was his call to Levy: she had pushed him much too hard about it, and then probed and psychoanalyzed until he had withdrawn.

She frowned. She could not keep things going by rationalizing his moods, and asking too little for herself. She
did
resent her father: for the words he'd never spoken to her mother; for the things she'd never asked; for all the oppressive years of silence Noelle had witnessed in their home.

She could not live like that. Perhaps she was not right for Peter Carey …

Yet she would lie with Peter after making love, her forehead resting on his temple, limbs and bodies touching like kittens in a litter.

She thought back to waiting at the Lion's Head. It seemed days ago—feeling so many things so quickly made her tired. She was used to taking the world straight on, defining it through her own expectations and not through what others might give to her. Her father had taught her that.

She almost smiled: she did not think well when she was tired, no one could. They would talk in the morning.

Noelle slid out of the rest of her clothes; instinctively, she turned to the window …

She stopped, staring out at nothing until she could identify the other thought which troubled her.

The man.

She began hastily laying out her clothes for the next day, a habit left over from college, when she had risen early to work in the cafeteria before classes. After they had given her the Pulitzer, she had examined herself for changes, hoping they were not too great: that they were in fact so paltry had almost disappointed her, and she had resolved at least to end this practice of picking out her blouse and slacks, the remnant of financial desperation. To her amusement, she could not: to cast off habits which had gotten her this far made her feel as superstitious as the thought of Peter's money. The guilt of Catholics, she thought: at least her clothes were better, she could buy them just for fun.…

The man had turned so quickly.

There was an odd brilliance in his face, strange cravings in the too-bright eyes and pendulous underlip like those she imagined in a mother's boy festering in his room, nursing fantasies of revolvers and naked women. She had sensed this curious
intimacy
…

She searched her memory.

She
was
tired, she concluded, nerves taut from Peter's nerves and the stabbing of a woman and the poster of a bloody scalp, until she felt threatened by the sad ugliness of a stranger.

She drew down the blind.

Still naked, she crawled between her sheets …

Peter's mouth would feel warm on her nipple, his tongue moving slowly downward …

She drew her legs up: the bed felt empty and too cold. She wanted to feel him quiver with the sensuality coiled inside, hear him cry out.

And afterwards, know his feelings.

It was strange: she could imagine this moment no more clearly than the future they might share together.

She was not that sure they would. Peter's psyche was a tangle: a dream he would not tell her, a weekend he could not remember.

If only this man Levy could find reasons.

She tossed and twisted, too tired to sleep.

Phillip Carey stood staring into the empty room which had been the child Peter's.

“There's something in young Peter,” Barth had said, “that must scare you to your very soul.”

In his mind, Phillip Carey heard a seven-year-old child scream himself awake, from a nightmare of his father.

Behind him, with no goodbye, the woman left.

Peter Carey bolted upright, torn from the nightmare by his scream. He reached for Noelle.

The bed was empty.

Damp with sweat, he struggled to retrieve fragments of his return home. A collage of strobe-lit images pierced the fog of his depression—the blank faces of night prowlers and secretaries riding the subway like automatons on an endless treadmill, then the beams of passing headlights as he reached the sidewalk, two lovers kissing …

He had turned from them, like a child who was caught …

The woman's long black hair spilled into his father's lap
…

Maybe he had imagined that as well.

Night thoughts, getting worse.

Paranoid.

Perhaps he
was
insane: tonight he saw nothing but more solitude, running from the death of Charles Carey to his own. He picked up the telephone to call Noelle.