Hide Your Eyes (21 page)

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Authors: Alison Gaylin

Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #General, #Contemporary, #Sagas

BOOK: Hide Your Eyes
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I wondered how many people had died in this room. You could smell death here, in snaking, antiseptic fumes. ‘Please live,’ I said.
I placed my hand over his. It felt cool and dry, almost inanimate.
The two big orderlies remove the reporters from the waiting room, arms grasping their backs as if they were old, drunken friends
.
Patton turns to me and whispers, ‘I didn’t think Krull should be handling this Ariel thing, to tell the truth.’
‘
Why?
’
‘
He’s too much of a fucking sweetheart
.’
It couldn’t have happened more than fifteen minutes ago. Yet in my mind, the reporters, the orderlies - even Patton and myself - seemed as static as magazine pictures. The room, the machinery keeping Krull alive - this was reality. And it wasn’t easy for my mind to stay in it for long.
I dragged a chair up to Krull’s bedside and sat down, put my head next to his on the pillow. When I turned, I saw nothing but white bandages edged in dried blood.
One of the reporters has a pointy, pale face. He reminds me of a ferret. ‘You the girlfriend?’
Patton says, ‘Ignore him,’ but I stare anyway
.
He leans forward in his chair, smiles. His teeth are tiny. ‘What was John like?’
My throat tightens. ‘Where do you get off using the past tense, asshole?’
The Internal Affairs woman stops typing. Police Benevolent lowers his magazine and stares. Patton leaves the room
.
The reporter says, ‘Well, isn’t he on life support?’
Don’t say anything, don’t say a word
.
‘Isn’t he?’ repeats the smiling ferret, but now Patton is back with the orderlies
.
‘Hey, don’t I know you?’
I lifted my head. Standing over me was the surfer nurse from the emergency room.
‘Remember me, from last night? It’s totally okay if you don’t. They move me around all the time.’
Last night‹="3f y. It had been less than twenty-four hours. ‘How is Sal?’
‘Much better. Amy took him home this morning. She is such a sweet girl.’
‘She does a great whip impersonation.’
‘Awesome. Anyways, I’m going to have to ask you to leave. The doctor’s coming in, and we’re gonna try and wean him off the ventilator.’
I got up from the chair. ‘You think he’s ready?’
‘Ready as he’s gonna be.’
I’d hoped for a more positive response than that, which the nurse seemed to sense.
She put a hand on my shoulder, and I glanced at her name tag.
Gretchen Trask
. Such a solid-sounding name for such a frothy-looking girl.
‘Everything is going to be all right,’ she said.
 
When I returned to the waiting room, everyone had left except Boyle. Internal Affairs and Police Benevolent had presumably gone home for the day, while Patton was in the lobby, calling home. Somewhat guiltily, I mentioned I still had her phone, but Boyle said, ‘That one’s NYPD property. She’s got her own personal cell for calling her husband.’
I leaned close to Boyle, as if the reporters were still here. ‘They’re trying to wean him off life support.’
Boyle held up a hand, crossed his fingers.
‘Superstitious?’
‘Can’t hurt.’
I heard Amanda Patton’s voice asking someone where the waiting room was, and two seconds later, she walked in. ‘This place is such a friggin’ maze.’
‘How’s the baby?’ Boyle asked.
‘Sleeping. I miss him. I think I’m gonna go home.’
I started to tell Patton she might want to wait a little while, because they were weaning Krull off the ventilator, but then I realized I had no idea how long it would take. Probably hours. I wasn’t able to say or think much more than that, because Gretchen was standing behind her, shaking her frosty blond head, saying, ‘Sorry, guys. Not today.’
¢>
15
Intaglio
Since the doctor had asked for the atmosphere in Krull’s room to be as serene as possible, that meant no visitors at least until morning.
‘I guess that’s our cue,’ said Boyle, after Gretchen finished telling us as much and returned to the Žv hICU.
‘I’ll take Samantha to the hotel,’ Patton said.
I frowned at her. ‘Hotel?’
‘The NYPD has booked you a lovely, guarded room at the Days Inn on Twenty-third.’
‘Guarded.’
‘Two uniforms outside the room, just like Krull’s,’ she said.
I watched her face. Her cheeks colored slightly.
‘Do I really need that much protection?’
‘Couldn’t hurt, right?’ Boyle said. The way he avoided my eyes made my shoulders tense up.
‘You guys think he’s going to come after me, don’t you?’
‘Hey, you can never be too safe.’ Patton gave me a forced smile. ‘Plus, you can order all the room service you want, on us.’
I started out the waiting room door and followed them down the hall to the elevator, trying not to imagine my own eyes scooped out of my head and placed on the shelf of a hotel minibar.
Just as Boyle hit the ‘down’ button, though, Dead Man’s Fingers rushed up my back. I pressed my shoulder blades together, felt the pressure of the gunshot as if it had just happened.
The elevator door opened. Patton and Boyle started in.
‘Just a minute.’
Again. Another galloping chill, this time stronger, this time in italics.
Dead Man’s Fingers
. Just like Valentine’s Day. Two times in a row.
I took a step back, and once more it sliced into me. Three times. Yes, a bad premonition. Bad times three. But was it about me?
‘What’s wrong?’ said Patton.
I pictured Krull, alone in that quiet room, ventilator pulsing in and out.
It was so dependable, I figured it could keep her alive forever
.
‘I think I’m going to stay here,’ I said.
 
Gretchen gave me some pillows and blankets, and I set up a bed for myself on one of the couches in the ICU waiting room. She told me I could even order a pizza, so long as I paid for it in the lobby. ‘Sort of like a slumber party,’ she said. ‘Only . . . um . . . with just one person.’
There were at least four uniforms patrolling the hallways around me. They’d been there all day, in shifts. I’d assumed they were there for Krull, but apparently I was also part of the deal.
“l.
After Gretchen left, I sat on my makeshift bed for a few minutes, listening to the silence. There was a small TV across the room, but I didn’t feel like turning it on; I was too afraid of catching a news story about Krull, or Elmira, or the murdered children. Or me.
I looked at the newspapers and magazines on the small coffee table. All the magazines were about parenting or fitness and at least six months old.
Today’s
Times, Post
and
Daily News
were there too - probably left by one of the reporters - with follow-up Ariel stories on all three front pages. When they’d come out this morning, the girl in the footlocker hadn’t even been found. What would the headlines be tomorrow? The next day?
I picked up the
Post
, went straight for Liz Smith.
Liz’s featured photo was a headshot of a young blonde woman, lit from behind like a haloed Mary in a Christmas pageant, but dripping with lip gloss and shimmering eye shadow. Her shoulders were bare, and she smiled suggestively at the camera, so she appeared to be wearing nothing more than a long string of pearls, which hung past her prominent collarbones and out of the frame.
The picture was high drama, even for a headshot in a gossip column, and it took me several seconds to get past gawking and realize I actually knew its subject. Miranda, former supporting player in
No Tears for Addie
. Shell Clarion’s stalkee.
Under the photo, the caption read, ‘Leading Lady for
Let Live
’s Lucas.’
I read the column. Not only had
Miranda Boothe
been cast as Lucas’s long-lost love Carrington, but rumor had it she and
Nate Gundersen
were involved off camera as well. ‘At her audition, I couldn’t stop staring at her,’ the ‘scrumptious’ Nate told Liz. ‘She was wearing these outrageous mirrored contact lenses.’
‘Well, fuck me stupid,’ I said to no one.
The strange thing was, I felt nothing. No emotion at all, other than surprise at how quickly some soap operas were cast, and how quickly some actors became ‘involved.’
Amazing what a few days could do to one’s outlook on life, if they included sex, murder . . .
I dialed Yale’s cell. He sounded smooth and dreamy when he picked up; I knew he was still at Peter’s.
‘Hi,’ I said.
‘Sam!’
‘How’s Peter?’
‘Award worthy.’
‘Glad to hear it.’
‘More important, how are you? Are you still at Detective Krul“ Dent>l’s? Has he caught the killer?’
Where do I start?
‘How’d you like to have a slumber party at St. Vincent’s?’ I said. It seemed as good a place as any.
Half an hour later, Yale showed up in the ICU waiting room, wearing the same outfit he’d had on the previous night, carrying a large pepperoni pizza and saying, ‘Like I said before, screw nutrition.’
I knew it had been only a day since we’d seen each other, but to me, he seemed like something out of a time capsule.
‘What’s wrong, Sam?’ he said. The question was so well meaning and simple it made me want to laugh - or cry, I wasn’t sure which. I put my arms around Yale’s neck and hugged him tight, like he had just saved my life.
Then I sat him down on the couch, put the box of pizza on the coffee table and told him everything that had happened since he’d left the hospital the previous night.
After I was finished, he watched me without speaking for at least a full minute. Finally, he said, ‘I thought you were here because of Sal.’
‘No, he’s fine. Hermyn took him home. Or should I say Amy?’
‘My . . . God.’
I gave him a smile, put a hand on his shoulder. ‘You leave me alone for just a short time and look at what happens.’
‘Is there anything I can do?’
‘As a matter of fact, there is,’ I said. ‘You can get that morose look off your face, you can help me eat this pizza, you can tell me every single detail of your night with Peter and most important . . .’ I took out the
Post
, opened it to Liz’s column. ‘You can read this, and get ridiculously, irrationally outraged about it.’
Like any best friend worth the title, Yale did as he was told.
 
Early in the morning, I woke up on the waiting room carpet with a rollicking cramp in my neck and Yale snoring into my ear.
Gingerly, I got up and headed down the hall to ICU. The cramp was just an inch or so above my left collarbone - the exact same place where Krull had been shot - but I tried not to think of it as an omen.
I picked up the wall phone outside the unit. A nurse answered, her voice flat and businesslike, more or less the opposite of Gretchen’s coconut-oil lilt, and sure enough when I asked for Gretchen, the new nurse told me her shift had ended an hour ago.
‘What is John Krull’s condition?’
‘Critical.’
‘Oh . . .’
‘Of course, this is critical care, so
everybody’s
critical. After we finish transfusing him, we’re gonna attempt weaning again.’
Krull was still not allowed visitors, but the nurse promised she’d let me know about any change in his condition.
‘By the way,’ she said, ‘did you know he has a heart murmur?’
‘It . . . uh . . . never came up in conversation.’
‘Well, he does. It’s very slight.’
I hung up the phone, thinking about all the other things that hadn’t come up in conversation. So many facts left to know about Krull - his birthdate and his favorite food, his political affiliation and his blood type and the strangest place he’d ever made love.
Back in the waiting room, I found Yale awake, folding blankets and stacking them on the couch. ‘How’d you like me to take your class this morning?’ he said. ‘I’ve got a few new show tunes I’d like to try out on the kids.’
‘Sure. I’ll okay it with Terry.’ My mouth was dry. And between the lingering pain from the gunshot bruise and the brand-new pinch in my neck, my whole body felt pummelled. ‘John Krull has a heart murmur.’
‘Really? So does Peter.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘He told me. I think we were talking about the forms you have to fill out at the dentist’s, and it just . . . Hey, what’s the matter?’
‘Well, let’s see. The first guy I’ve been able to care about since Nate is hooked up to life support. My downstairs neighbor was slaughtered in my apartment with my knife. Oh yeah, and did I mention there’s a fucking serial killer out there who’s either going to murder more kids or me - or most likely both? And I can’t go to my apartment or my job or even a goddamn deli and I haven’t had a fucking shower in two days and . . .’
‘Ssssh. It’s okay.’ Yale put his arms around me. He smelled like clean laundry.
‘My life sucks. And . . . and there’s probably not much more of it left.’
‘Please don’t say that.’
The faint, blond stubble on his chin picked up the light as he spoke. It reminded me of the glitter my class had used to make valentines. ‘Can you please sing to me?’
We sat down on the couch, and quietly, Yale started to sing ‘There’s a Place for Us,’ from
West Side Story
, which, although he had no way of knowing, made me cry as a kid. I used to put the soundtrack on our record player, pretend it was my dad singing to me.
Yale’s voice reminded me of dark, polished wood, but I was too tired to tel“oo heil him that. So I just sat and listened, feeling the soft vibration of it, until I fell asleep in his arms like a baby.
 
The next time I awakened, it was around 11 a.m. Yale was long gone, teaching my class (having okayed it with Terry himself, according to the note he’d left.)
Amanda Patton was sitting on the couch across from mine, reading the Halloween issue of
Child
magazine. ‘Good morning,’ she said.
She put the magazine down and handed me a bag with a café chain logo on it. ‘Brought you coffee and a doughnut, but the coffee’s probably cold by now.’
It was lukewarm, but the doughnut was chocolate covered, and I loved her for that.
‘So,’ she said. ‘We’re getting closer to Mr. Freakshow.’
I stopped eating.
‘Remember when Art was talking about the paint on the magazine ad? He said it was called Liquitine, and I asked if it was used by artists?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well it is, but more commonly, it’s used by hobbyists.’
‘Hobbyists?’
‘I don’t know if Krull told you, but the first victim, Graham—’
‘Made intricate model airplanes.’
‘Exactly.’
‘So you’re thinking he’s a model builder?’
She nodded. ‘They usually find some activity that puts them closer to their victims. Lots of kids like to build models.’
‘But Sarah Flannigan was only three. I seriously doubt she—’
I was interrupted by a ringing and noticed, for the first time, the wall phone across the room.
I picked it up. ‘Um . . . Waiting room?’
‘Hi, honey.’ The ICU nurse, her voice flat and unemotional as ever.
‘Yes?’
‘We have consciousness.’
‘Consciousness of what?’
She laughed a little, and then I knew.
Krull
had consciousness. Krull was awake.
Smiling so hard it hurt, I rushed across the room and threw my arms around Patton. ‘Thank God,’ we bo“ankeigth kept saying, over and over again. ‘Oh, thank God.’
 
‘I can sneak one of you guys in,’ warned the nurse through the wall phone outside the ICU. ‘But it has to be brief as all get-out or his doctors will kill me.’
Patton insisted it should be me: ‘You were the one who spent the night in the waiting room.’
I walked her to the elevator. ‘Give your baby a big kiss for me,’ I said.
Patton winked. ‘Right back at ya.’
‘He’s not my baby. I’ve only known him four days,’ I said. But the elevator doors had already closed.
 
The nurse buzzed me into the ICU, and I started to panic. What if I’d built this relationship up in my mind to be much more than it was? What if he was just a nice guy, a sweetheart like Patton said, and he’d been protecting me because that was his job? What if he’d told me about his dead mother and his furniture-stealing ex-girlfriend and his AC/DC tribute band to get my mind off Mirror Eyes? What if he’d fucked me for the same reason?

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