Sandman (4 page)

* * *

Near dawn, Will Armstrong stood next to the bed on which his wife lay sleeping and gazed at her moonlit features.
So beautiful
, he thought, a bitter melancholy drenching his heart. His love for Nina hadn’t diminished an ounce in all the years he’d known her. If anything, it had intensified. In this soft, somehow consecrated light, she looked as breathtaking as she had the first time he’d seen her, strolling across the playing field behind Glebe Collegiate. He learned later that she’d moved to Ottawa from Pittsburgh only two weeks before, and that she’d already been accepted as a junior on the cheerleading squad. As Glebe’s star linebacker Will would be certain to meet her...but he’d known even then, as she climbed the school steps and vanished inside, that one day he would make her his own.

Swaying drunkenly, he touched her face.
What are you dreaming of?
he thought wretchedly.
Some other man? That faggot bullshitter,
Al
, maybe? Imagining his cock inside you?

Will turned away, the black heat of these thoughts making him ill and deeply afraid. Why after all these years did she suddenly need secrets? Sometimes the torment of this question pressed him to the very edge of reason.

He got as far as the bedroom door, hesitated, then returned to the bed. He reached for Nina again, his huge hand tightly fisted, uncertain of what he meant to do...

Then he was shaking her awake. “Get up,” he said in a low growl. “We’re leaving.”

Muzzy with sleep, Nina blinked up at him in the dark. “Come to bed,” she said thickly. She turned on her side and plumped her pillow. “It’s late.”

Will grabbed her arm and pulled her into a sitting position. “I said get up. We’re leaving.”

“Will, what is the
matter
with you? You’re hurting me.”

He released her arm. “Five minutes,” he said, leaving no room for discussion. “I’ll be waiting in the truck.” Then he was gone.

* * *

Still groggy, Nina switched on the bedside lamp and squinted at her watch. It was a little past five in the morning. She considered going back to sleep—her husband was drunk and she refused to be bullied—but something told her to humor him. If they were leaving, fine. But she would do the driving.

She dressed quickly in sweatshirt and jeans, stuffed their things into the vinyl suitcase she’d packed for the weekend trip, and tiptoed out of the cottage.

Will was sitting at the wheel in the turn-around, the Suburban’s engine grumbling choppily. Nina walked to the driver’s side.

“I’ll drive,” he said through the open window.

“You’ve been drinking.”

“I’m fine.” He opened the passenger door. “Now get in.”

Feeling the first stirrings of fear, Nina obeyed.

She sat tensely at first, as Will negotiated the narrow, winding cottage road, but his driving was steady and sane, and before long Nina found herself drowsing. Whatever was eating him seemed to have been forgotten, for the time being at least, and there was no way she was going to pursue it now.

Will’s drinking was a relatively recent concern—he’d downed his first weekday martini less than a year ago, right around the time she’d announced her intention to return to work—but from unhappy experience Nina knew there was little point trying to reason with him while he was under the influence. The booze only heightened the tensions between them.

As the truck rumbled along, the womb of sleep drew Nina deeper. If she was tired enough, her friends sometimes kidded her, she could fall asleep doing a handstand—

“Haven’t you got anything to say for yourself?”

Nina said, “What?” She’d caught only the tenor of Will’s question. The words hadn’t computed.

“I said, haven’t you got anything to
say
for yourself?”

There was an angry petulance in Will’s voice Nina had heard a lot of just lately, and for the second time that night she felt wary of him.

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t play dumb with—”

“Christ, Will,
look out
.”

They’d come to the junction of Cottage Road and Highway 7, but Will hadn’t reduced his speed. There was a blinding flare of light and now a transport roared past on the highway, airhorn bellowing. Will tramped on the brakes and Nina got a close-up view of the trailer’s corrugated side, close enough to make out the webwork of cracks the elements had etched into the paint. When the Suburban came to a stop, its nose jutted five feet onto the blacktop. Dust from the dirt side road swirled in the glare of the Suburban’s high beams.

Nina’s stomach did a slow rollover. She had no idea how they hadn’t been hit. She said, “If you’re trying to scare me, Will, you’re doing an excellent job.”

Will backed the vehicle off the highway and rammed the shifter into PARK. “Are you going to play dumb,” he roared, “or do I have to spell it out for you?”

“Spell what out for me? I haven’t got the foggiest idea what you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about that punk, Al Sutton. I’m talking about the way he gawked at your tits all night. I’m talking about the way you squirmed in your seat while you were pawing his arm.
That’s what I’m talking about
.”

Nina did something then that surprised her. She laughed. It took a moment for what he was saying to sink in, but once she had the sense of it, all she
could
do was laugh.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” she started to say, but she’d barely gotten her mouth open when Will did something that surprised them both. He slapped her in the face. He pulled the blow at the last second, but Nina saw stars.

She glared at him for a moment, biting back tears. Then she said, “That tears it,” opened her door and stormed out.

* * *

His voice breaking, Will shouted, “Nina, come on, get back in the truck.” He caught a glimpse of her in his rearview, marching back along Cottage Road, then the dark swallowed her. “Shit,” he said, switched on the emergency flashers and went after her.

He ran along the soft shoulder, calling her name, still unsteady from the booze. He lost his footing at one point and slid into the ditch, his feet coming to rest in six inches of rancid water. Cursing, he clambered back up the slope and continued his pursuit, one elbow dripping blood.

He shouted, “Nina, I’m sorry—”then she was right there in front of him, moving toward him in quick strides. Will had to dig in hard to avoid slamming into her. Her eyes were flint hard.

“Nina, honey—”

Her hand flickered out and stung his face. “Don’t you—
ever
—hit me again.”

Fury, quick and hot, spilled out from the sting in Will’s face, turning the night a clotted red before his eyes. His hands tightened into fists the size of grapefruits...then he caught himself, the fury congealing into a sob in his throat.

“I won’t, baby, I promise. I don’t know what got into me.”

“You need help, Will. You really do.”

“I know, sweetheart. I know. Will you help me?”

Nina sighed. “I’ll try,” she said. “I’ll do that much.” She slung an arm around his waist. “Come on. Let’s get you home.”

She led him back to the truck, helped him into the passenger seat and belted him in. Then she climbed in herself.

Dawn broke as they cruised east along the Queensway toward their home in Orleans. Feigning sleep, Will watched his wife through slitted eyes. He wondered what she was thinking and the wondering tormented him immeasurably.

He wondered if that dimpled little prick had slipped her his phone number.

JENNY WAS UP FIRST ON Saturday morning, with the sun. She’d slept like a log, as she always did at the cottage, and looked forward to a cup of hot coffee and a few minutes’ solitude on the deck before the others got up. She was rinsing out the pot when she noticed that the Armstrongs’ Suburban was missing from the turn-around. Surprised and a little concerned, she tiptoed to the downstairs guest rooms.

The room the Armstrongs had slept in was empty, the bed unmade. Jenny looked for a note but found none. Her first instinct was to call their home, but she rejected the idea when she looked at the time. If one of them had gotten sick in the night and they’d driven home, they almost certainly wouldn’t appreciate hearing from her at this hour.

Deciding to call them later, Jenny made the bed and returned to the kitchen to start breakfast. Soon, the sweet aroma of frying bacon filled the air and, first Jack, then Al appeared, yawning and rubbing their eyes. Paul came down next and said they’d be leaving straight away, Cerise wasn’t well. “Too many Vodka Coolers,” he said, rolling his eyes. Cerise hobbled down a few minutes later looking skull-eyed and pale. She apologized at least a dozen times before Paul got her bundled into his Corvette and drove away.

Jack and Al took off for the city right after breakfast, leaving Jenny alone and a little depressed. She wished she’d brought Kim along, but Jack had insisted she stay in town. “I don’t want her skulking around while Al Sutton is there.”

She doesn’t skulk
, Jenny thought. But she hadn’t said it.

She shook off these thoughts and went out to the deck. It was a beautiful day and she was determined to make the best of it. She stretched out on a lounger for a couple of hours, reading a novel and sipping black coffee, then pulled on some hiking gear and set off with her camera along the wooded trail that encircled the lake.

* * *

Jenny got back to the cottage just after four, winded but feeling brighter. She’d gotten some great shots of a pair of humming birds feeding in a sun-dappled clearing. They hadn’t seemed to mind her presence at all—

The phone rang. It was a rare sound up here and it startled her. She picked it up and said hello.

“Hi, Jen.” It was Nina. “Just wanted to thank you for last night. And apologize for leaving so unexpectedly. Will got sort of...”

“You don’t have to explain.”

“Well, it was pretty rude.” There was a brief silence, then: “Can I buy you lunch on Monday? As a peace offering?”

“No need for that. But sure, lunch sounds great.”

They agreed on a new Bavarian spot in the Byward Market.

Nina said, “One-thirty okay?”

“Sounds perfect.”

“Good. See you there.”

Jenny pressed the cut off button and dialed the Goodmans’ number in Ottawa, thinking how nice it would be to hear Kim’s voice. Sam Goodman, Tracy’s dad, was a supreme court judge, a humorless little man Jenny had spoken to only briefly on the few occasions he’d been home when she stopped by to pick up Kim. He looked strict and intolerant.
Small man syndrome
, Jenny thought. No wonder his daughter was so outrageous.

No answer at the Goodmans’.

Jenny hung up and looked around the cottage, feeling lonely now and a little unnerved. She’d never been completely comfortable with her own company and the huge silence up here only made it worse. At least at home she had her darkroom to putter around in, and her garden.
And chores
, her mind continued unbidden,
and grocery shopping and laundry and meals, and tiptoeing around like a timid house girl in search of things the master might disapprove of. No sense buying that lovely bunch of lilacs, Jack will just complain about the blossoms dropping on the floor. No point showing him the photos I took in the park
. “What good are pictures of a bunch of winos, Jen? If you’re going to take pictures, find something useful to shoot.”

Jenny pulled herself out of the quicksand of these thoughts. It was a pointless process, and if she let it take her she’d wind up in a blue funk all evening.

She dined on leftover pasta, then went upstairs and lay down. She was tired from the day of hiking and before she knew it she was fast asleep.

* * *

The phone woke her a few hours later. It was Jack, saying he and Al Sutton had been touring the hospital that afternoon when a gunshot victim came in through the ER. The guy on call had been tied up doing a craniotomy, his backup doing a C-section. The gunshot victim had been critical—a would-be armed robber shotgunned by the proprietor of the convenience store he’d been trying to rob—and Jack and Al had been handy. Al had barely made his plane back to Atlanta and Jack was exhausted. Did Jenny mind if he stayed in town overnight and joined her in the morning? Jenny told him that would be fine. If she needed anything she’d go down the road to the MacLaines’.

Her sleep was restless after that. She dreamed Kim had died and for some reason she, Jenny, had slept through the whole thing: Kim’s death, the funeral, all of it. Jack told her about it when she woke up, and even after he took her to the graveyard and showed her the headstone, Jenny still didn’t believe him.

* * *

Jenny awoke the next morning to the sound of a savage cry. Startled, she whipped the bedroom curtain open and saw Jack’s Mercedes in the turn-around. Feeling stiff and unrested, she wrapped herself in a housecoat and hurried downstairs.

Jack was out on the deck, dressed in a black
gi
and performing kata, with each strike shouting the savage
keeaii!
that had awakened her.

Jenny watched him from the shadows of the living room, his grace, as always, amazing her. She still found it difficult to connect the dreamy, almost hypnotic movements he performed with their swift and lethal potential.

What a grand adventure meeting Jack Fallon had been, Jenny reflected as she watched him, unseen. On their first date he’d taken her to an obscure Japanese restaurant in Ottawa’s Asian district. The proprietor, an ancient little guy with thick bifocals and a soiled bib-apron, had greeted Jack warmly, and Jack had returned the greeting in Japanese.

“That’s neat,” Jenny said, assuming Jack knew only the few sing-song syllables he’d spoken. She pointed furtively at the owner. “Did he teach you that?”

“Oh,” Jack said with a coy smile, “I know a few tricks.”

Someone showed them to their seats then and a waiter brought menus. Jenny opened hers and was amused to find it was in Japanese.

“Jack,” she said, “he brought us the wrong menus.”

Jack made a show of examining his menu. Then, to Jenny’s pleased astonishment, he ordered their entire meal in Japanese. Not only that, he laughed and chatted with the waiter, had a regular old chinwag, explaining later that he’d merely been inquiring about the man’s well-being, and that of his family. Over dinner, he told her his life-long interest in the marital arts had taken him to Japan at the age of sixteen.