White Horse (14 page)

—that quiver as air tags them on the way out.

I’ve seen these before, in aquariums and seafood restaurants. Gills. James has gills.

DATE: NOW

It’s the noise that wakes
me, small and secret and hidden. Some sounds belong to misdeeds, and when we hear them we know something is wrong.

I keep still, eyes tight, suppressing one sense so the other can requisition its strength. The fire is dying; I no longer feel its heat raging, although there is still a gentle warmth kissing my skin that tells me not all is lost. By dawn the fire will be gone, and, soon after, so will we.

With my vision restrained, I pick through the night’s sounds for the anomaly.

Dark is louder than light. Under the guise of night, the underbelly of nature reveals itself. Creatures slither and slink so as to not attract the attention of their natural foe. Predators are less cautious. They flap and soar until some meat-object takes their fancy. Then they dive and snatch up what they can. There are the desperate cries of prey in those final moments as death rattles their bones. Chirps and clicks herald a desire to mate. And there’s the musical tinkle of water wending through the land, searching for its source … or leaving home.

Even without these things, darkness has a sound of its own that has nothing do to with silence in the same way that space has nothing to
do with emptiness. That’s an illusion that fools us all until we really pay attention.

My mind drifts until it catches on that noise that doesn’t belong. A whimper with a whisper chaser. Is it crying? Because that’s what it sounds like. There’s that same hitch between breaths.

I slowly sit, pull my body together in case I need to spring up in a hurry. Push off the ground until I’m standing.

I’m alone. Lisa and the Swiss are missing. But not for long. I find them underneath the stars and it is here I discover the source of the anomalous sound.

Even with his back to me, I know. I’ve been there. I’ve been her. The Swiss stands while Lisa kneels before him, servicing him with her mouth. I’ve seen how she turns to him with reverence and adoration, a twisted cousin to Stockholm syndrome. Worshipping a savior who is also your subjugator. He knows I’m there. He always does. He laughs at my shock. I am no prude and yet, there is a crudeness, an obscenity about him, that goes far beyond the bounds of love and sex and porn.

“Watch if you like.”

“You’re a pig,” I say. The girl tries to pull away at the sound of my voice but he holds her fast by the hair until she gags. He releases Lisa, steps back so she falls onto her hands, retching into the grass. She crawls further into the scrub, until she fades to a heaving silhouette.

“She’s sick.”

“Morning sickness.” He zips up, tucks the gun into the back of his pants like they do in the movies.

“How do you know it’s not White Horse?” I ask.

“She was stupid enough to have unprotected intercourse. Recently.” His stare is cool and laced with triumph. “She told me freely, without my asking. In a few months she will be cured. Do not think I’m the father. I’m not.” He swaggers like he has a secret worth keeping.

I know you’re not
. I keep that thought safe and sound in my head. My instincts tell me not to speak.

“It could still be White Horse.”

“She showed me her breasts. They look like road maps. Have you seen your own recently? Are the veins not more prominent? Are your breasts not fuller when the rest of your body is slackening and growing
thinner each day?” He draws up level to me, his lips curled into a cruel sneer. “You can raise your children together without fathers. Bastards.”

He can never know who the father of Lisa’s baby must be. Ever. Because behind his eyes, just beyond the cold crust he wears as a protective shell, sits a pile of broken hinges; there’s no way to gauge which way his sanity will swing.

“You’re only with us because three is safer than two,” I say.

“I’m with you because I choose to be. Whether you and that little whore like it or not.”

“Keep on thinking that.”

“You’ll die without me. Like your stupid friend almost died.”

Lisa’s shoulders heave. Not White Horse. Not going to die. Pregnant. Just like me. I know the Swiss is right; once again, I was too busy watching for death to recognize the signs of new life. Relief mixes with my fear and coagulates to the point where I can no longer distinguish the two.

What a pair we are.

The chain-link fence wears a
razor wire crown, a tiara a former beauty queen has cast aside. Its tarnish and regret do not stop it from maintaining its dignity; once upon a time, it stood for something.

We stand on the road, watching it turn to rust. After one perfect day, the rains have come again, more vengeful than ever.

“I’m going there,” the Swiss says. There’s a capillary road that bleeds off this one and walks right up to the structure’s front door.

I turn away, pick up my stride. “We don’t have time. The land is completely flat. That could be miles away.”

“Maybe in America, but not here. Italy is made of mountains.” He waves a hand at the landscape. “In Italy, spaces do not go on forever.”

I stop, sit on the blacktop with the rain forming shallow puddles around me.

“Go, then,” I tell him. “But if you’re not back in an hour I’m leaving.”

“What is it?” Lisa asks.

“It looks like a military facility,” I say.

She aims her question at the Swiss. “Is that true?”

No answer. He stands there, legs spread, arms folded, maybe daring the fence to come closer, or—more likely—trying to choose the perfect insult for this occasion.

“Stay or go, it makes no difference,” he says.

Her body coiled in tense knots, Lisa trembles as she struggles to choose a side of the fence. Stay or go. With me or with him. She’s going to be a mother, forced to choose between far more dismal options than this. I cannot help her with one so simple. Questions form on her face, fall away, form anew. She’s a desperate kaleidoscope searching for a pattern that both asks her questions and answers them with words that will yield comfort.

Stay. Lisa decides to stay. So we stand together as I watch the Swiss trash-compacted by distance.

“I’m not pregnant. I’m not.”

“If you are, at least you know that’s why you’ve been sick.”

“I’ve got White Horse. I’m gonna die.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I do. I am.”

“Were you on birth control?”

“I’m going to die. You’re wrong.”

“He says you are. You believe him, don’t you?” It’s cruel but necessary. Denial won’t do anything but damage.

She stares sightlessly.

“I didn’t want to believe it, either, when I found out about my baby. There was a war limping along and half the world was already dead. Old life was disappearing and there I was with the nerve to create new. Like getting a new puppy too soon after your old dog dies.”

“Are you happy?”

Happy. What does that even mean? I can’t recall, but I think it has something to do with ice cream cones hastily licked at the beach before the butter pecan melted all over my fingers. Once your fingers get ice-creamed, they’re done for. All the rinsing in the world doesn’t wash away those last vestiges of stickiness. But you smile because the ice cream taste still lingers, reminding you that happiness comes in double dips pressed into a sugar cone with a wet metal scoop.

But am I happy because I’m carrying a child? My hand rests on my abdomen. It’s a shadow of its preapocalyptic self, but there’s a fullness there now, like I’ve indulged in a too-big meal.

Am I happy? Even the sound of the word rolling around in my head sounds foreign. More than anything, I’m scared. Terrified we won’t make it. Horrified at the possibility that I won’t be able to protect my child from the monsters that cling to the shadows. Happy is for when I reach my destination. Then and only then.

“You can’t tell him, you know,” I say gently. “Who the father is.”

She stares straight ahead. Her cheek twitches.

“Don’t let him take advantage of you. He’s not—”

“He’s not like them.”

“You don’t—”

“He’s not like them.”

“You’re right. He’s something else. There’s something inside his head that’s not right. I don’t know if it’s from before or after all this, but it’s there. He’s dangerous, Lisa. Be careful.”

“That’s not what I meant,” she says.

“Then what?”

She’s done talking, at least about this.

“I’d be happy,” I say, “if I could stop being terrified.”

An invisible force jerks Lisa’s head up. The Swiss walks this way.

DATE: THEN

“I’m sorry,” the woman says
. “I don’t know who you are.” She’s a pencil wrapped in a black nylon tracksuit. She has Raoul’s look, only on her his strong jaw looks heavy.

Over her shoulder, I see Raoul’s apartment is inexpensive chic. He likes beige, although that’s probably too generic a term. He’d probably call it toasted almond, ecru, potsherd powder. Something more interesting than beige, which implies a lack of imagination.

When I tell the woman who I am, her kohl-rimmed eyes sink further into her skull and harden.

“My brother was not homosexual. He was a good man.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” I say. “I liked your brother.”

“Nobody knew him better than me. Nobody. He never told me about this person.”

“James. My friend’s name was James.”

“James.” She says it like his name is a disease. “Did your friend leave something here? What do you want?”

So I explain.

“I gave it away. Filthy animals spreading disease.”

“To who?”

“The animal shelter. It’s their problem now. I have to deal with burying my brother.”

“James died, too,” I say quietly.

The animal shelter has never
heard of Raoul’s sister, nor have they seen the cat.

“Probably she let him go. People do that all the time. Sometimes they move and accidentally on purpose forget to tell the cat or dog, if you know what I mean,” they tell me.

I do. I wish I didn’t.

There are many noises that
cause a human heart to want to gallop up and out of the throat: a child’s scream, the one that play cannot evoke—only pain; unexplained mechanical noises on a plane thirty-five thousand feet aboveground; the screech of wheels seconds before a concrete median leaps up to kiss you; the wail of an ambulance too close to your home.

Ambulances are nothing new around here. Typical for a healthy-sized city. But my building is filled with people too proud to announce sickness. They drag themselves to the next block instead and suffer quietly outside the apartments there, where they are surrounded by fast-walking strangers instead of familiar faces. They wait for the paramedics where they are not known. Such is life—and death—in the apartment Sam and his mother left to me.

It’s after ten. Just me and the jar watching each other. Ben is dead. Raoul is dead. James is dead. That can’t be a coincidence. I can’t be that unlucky. What are the odds?

Three people dead. All three the only ones who came into contact with the jar. All three with cats. A building with forty-one cats, none of them seen for days. The natives have been whispering in the corridors.
It’s that Chinese restaurant down the block
, they say.
No, it’s that Indian place
, says another.
Hell, maybe it’s that barbecue place with the ribs everyone goes crazy for
. No one can agree on anything except that their cats have disappeared into the ether and no amount of rattling a spoon inside a tin can rally their interest.

Then there’s me. I’m fine. Physically fine. Not even a blip of nausea. Shouldn’t I be dead, too?

My hands shake as I flip through a magazine.
Buy me and your life will be prettier
, the ads whisper like would-be seducers.

In some dark distance, an ambulance announces its search. I picture it hurtling through the city street until it nears its destination, slow crawling as it ticks off the addresses:
Not you, not you, nope, not you, either. Ahhh, there you are. Found you
. Until the relentless wah-wah, wah-wah cuts mid-wail. The dead siren leaves an empty space my heart hurries to fill because it’s stopped on my street, on my block, on my front doorstep. I imagine Mo, the night doorman, setting aside his
Reader’s Digest
, the one he keeps open on his lap while he watches Nick at Nite, shambling to the front door, where he’ll open it just a crack and say, “What can I do ya for?”

Blood rushes through my ears. They’re hot to the touch, which strikes me as odd, because I’m shivering.

Curiosity slithers through my fear. Who’s dead? I need to know. I snatch up my keys and phone and bolt down the stairs. The only thing faster than my heart is my feet. When I throw open the lobby door, I know how I must look: the wild-eyed woman obviously too crazy to bother with polite accoutrements like shoes or a coat thrown over my pajamas.

Mo is already back behind his desk, book in lap, eyes fixed on the small screen. The ambulance loiters at the curb, blocking the entire front view.

“Miss Marshall,” he says. “What can I do—”

I slap my hands on the counter. “Who are they here for?”

“Who?”

I want to reach over the counter and shake him until the answers spill out his mouth.

“The paramedics. They stopped here. Who for?”

He grunts as he sits upright, reaches for the leather-bound ledger that holds the names of guests. He makes a Busby Berkeley production of running his thick ink-blackened finger down and across the page until it sticks on the final entry. Clears his throat.

“Mrs. Sark in seventy-ten.”

The woman with four cats masquerading as one. My fingernails are cut back to the quick, so there’s just a soft pat-pat-pat as my fingers drum the polished countertop. It’s do this or scream, and I don’t want to scream.

“Do you know why?”

He shrugs. “Who knows? A lotta people here been sick lately. Porkchop was telling me how the Jones boy painted the door with his lunch last week. Waste of a good Reuben.”