But Michael was frowning, to show his disapproval of Valeria Darrell.
Frowning too, to think that Lee Roy Sears must have expected to have been invited to the O’Mearas’ for Thanksgiving dinner: as if he were part of the family.
Michael said, not apologetically, simply as a statement of fact, “We had Thanksgiving with Gina’s family, in Philadelphia. It’s a tradition with us.”
Lee Roy grunted something that sounded like “Huhh!”
From upstairs in the studio there came an outburst of gay, inebriated laughter. Heavy footsteps—no doubt Vargas’s.
Valeria’s voice, high-pitched, playful, as if she were calling a child, “Oh, Lee Roy!—Lee Royyy!”
Michael turned to leave, and Lee Roy, perspiration showing on his face, blocked his way. He was clenching and unclenching his fists. His eyes had a dark, lustrous glare. He said, “You tell your sister to keep her distance!—I’m not the one! And she better not be digging up dirt about me ’cause I don’t like people spying on me, you got it?—huh? My life’s my own! My own fucking business! You, looking at me like I’m shit!—you got no right!”
Michael was about to protest, he certainly wasn’t looking at Lee Roy in any derisive way, in fact he was maintaining an extraordinary composure, when, again, there came Valeria’s wavering soprano, which grated against his nerves—“Lee Roy, where are you, oh Leee Royyy, we’re waiting!”
Another voice, Vargas’s, joined hers, calling something unintelligible, and immediately swallowed up by laughter: words insulting to Michael O’Meara, he knew.
It was this, this insult, that sparked the argument between Michael and Lee Roy, for, suddenly, Michael was saying, careless of how loud he spoke, what loathing in his voice, “Those people up there!—those creatures!—how can you allow yourself to be taken up by them! A woman like Valeria Darrell!” Michael felt his mouth twist, as he said her name.
Lee Roy said, stunned, “Huh?—what the fuck?—now you’re trying to tell me I can’t have my friends?”
For months Michael had vowed he would not say such things to Lee Roy. Yet, now, in the heat of the moment, his words came tumbling out.
“They’re not friends, Lee Roy. They’re—demons!”
“Huh?” Lee Roy leaned toward Michael, as if he hadn’t heard.
“You know very well: demons!”
Lee Roy, panting, sweaty-faced, stared at Michael for a moment in outraged silence. His nostrils were wide, dark, dilated. He seemed, in that instant, like Michael himself, relieved, no, elated, that the tension between them had at last taken a palpable shape: here was something the men could quarrel over, and hotly.
But Michael was on his way out, he’d had enough.
He started down the stairs, and Lee Roy followed after him, seizing his arm, pushing him against the railing: which was not a strong railing: saying, furiously, “who are you!—who are you to tell me what to do!—you let me down, didn’t you!—you and her!—I’m not good enough for you, huh?—Mr. Hot-Shit Lawyer!—Mr.-and-Mrs. Hot-Shit Lawyer!—Cunt!—trying to tell me who my friends are!—how to live my life!—like you give a shit about me, huh!—you and her!”
Michael tried to defend himself, to seize Lee Roy to keep from falling, but the other man was too strong, with a sudden maniacal strength, and there came springing up at him a snake: a dark-gleaming gold-spangled snake in the sinewy muscle of Lee Roy’s left forearm. Overhead, a woman screamed, as Lee Roy Sears, teeth clenched and bared, shoved Michael against the stairway railing so violently that the wooden structure broke, broke and shattered with a shriek of its own, and Michael O’Meara, suddenly helpless, utterly astonished, arms and legs flailing, fell—into space.
He didn’t mean it, it was an accident.
He meant it: my enemy: at last.
“My god, Michael!—are you all right?”
Valeria leaned over him anxiously, her aging girl’s face dead white beneath her makeup: it was Valeria, and not Lee Roy, who hurried to him, to help him to his feet.
Michael had fallen a distance of perhaps fifteen feet: to land, on his side, ignominiously, further insulted, atop a stack of used cardboard cartons on the landing below. Had he struck the bare floorboards he would surely have injured himself, but the cartons, slipping, sliding, capsizing on all sides, had broken his fall.
No skull concussion, no limbs broken, no ribs cracked, yes he was certain. No internal injuries.
Only the injury to his dignity: his O’Meara pride.
Mr. Hot-Shit Lawyer, landing on his ass, on a stack of grimy cardboard boxes.
Lee Roy Sears had pushed him through the railing without meaning to push him to his death, had he?—or had he?
And charged back upstairs.
Charged back upstairs and left Michael where he lay.
It was Valeria Darrell, breathless, terrified, smelling of bourbon and Arpège, who came to Michael to help him: teetering in her suede heels and nearly falling herself: Valeria, whom Michael had just now maligned.
She was suddenly sober, responsible. Peering into his face with a wife’s concern.
“Michael, my God!—are you all right? Is anything broken?”
Michael would recall, afterward, how, for these flurried minutes, he and Valeria Darrell, Mount Orion residents, were linked as blood kin. The animosity between them had vanished.
For Valeria knew, surely she knew, now, that Lee Roy Sears was a madman, and dangerous. As, reluctantly, some months from now, she would volunteer testimony to the district attorney, describing this incident.
Michael assured Valeria that he was all right, he was perfectly all right, his teeth clenched in fury, even as, with nervous plucking fingers, she brushed at his clothing, even at his hair, following him the rest of the way downstairs—“Oh, Michael, it was an accident, wasn’t it?”
Panting, disheveled, Valeria lurched after Michael as he slammed out of the warehouse, and strode to his car parked in a puddle-strewn driveway. She said, begging, shameless, her eyes snatching at his, “You won’t report him, Michael, will you?—will you?”
Michael said, “Lee Roy Sears can go to hell.”
My Enemy. At last.
Michael drove away from the warehouse and did not glance back; and did not report Lee Roy Sears to his parole officer.
Thinking, I’m done with the man, now. I can forget him, now.
Thinking, I need never see him again.
How strangely, ecstatically free he felt, that Saturday afternoon in late November, having narrowly escaped death, but having escaped it!—his senses alert, adrenaline coursing through his body. He felt strong, virile, as he had not felt in months. He felt as if a loathsome weight, up to now unsuspected, had fallen from his shoulders. He felt innocent as a child’s balloon lifting off into the sky.
Again he uttered these words, which must have been preparing themselves for a long time: “Lee Roy Sears can go to hell.”
VII
1
How mistaken you are, Michael O’Meara!—and what a fool.
Can you really not know how intimately, how relentlessly, I will track you?—to your very place of refuge?
2
Now, as December darkened, as winter came on, the nightmare acquired ever more palpable dimensions.
As if in defiance of Michael O’Meara’s euphoria, that day.
As if to mock him, where he was most vulnerable.
Frequently, yet in no pattern, the telephone began to ring with no one on the line: no one willing to identify himself. Very early in the morning it might ring, and very late at night. Disturbing the twins’ sleep. Disturbing Michael’s sleep.
Yet, oddly, not Gina’s: for if one of the mysterious calls came at night, and Michael was able to lift the receiver on the first ring, Gina might sleep uninterrupted, and claim, in the morning, that, surely, the phone had not rung.
Michael’s own sleep was shallow, frothy, unsatisfying. He seemed to be waiting for the intrusion, the violation. He seemed to know how the other was thinking of hi
m, and of Gina; calculating; tracking. Once, he was reaching for the telephone even as the ringing began. He sat up in bed, body tense as a bow, listening to the silence on the other end of the line, listening to his enemy’s audible, mocking breathing, which his enemy made no effort to hide. Yet Michael O’Meara did not want to accuse, still less to threaten. He knew, as an attorney, that one does not antagonize an emotionally unstable person.
Saying, softly, “Hello?—hello? Is anyone there?”
Gina stirred luxuriously in her sleep, but did not wake; when she’d had several glasses of wine before going to bed, she slept especially deeply. In any case, Michael held the receiver close to his ear and mouth, turned from the sleeping woman as if to shield her with his own solid, stocky body. Saying, “Hello?—is that you, Lee Roy?” A pause. Breathing, and a sense of that breath—humid, sticky. “Lee Roy, why are you doing this?—we only wish you well.”
It was a war of nerves, was it?—but the other could not see how Michael O’Meara’s hand trembled.
Finally, quietly, Michael would break the connection and leave the receiver off the hook for the remainder of the night.
Shortly, Michael would leave the receiver off the hook every night before he and Gina went to bed.
Why not change their number and get a private listing with the phone company?—Michael wanted to do so, but, for weeks, Gina resisted, for the sheerly practical reason that the O’Mearas had so many friends and acquaintances, so very many, it would be a nuisance to give out a new number. Gina said, petulantly, “If it is Lee Roy, acting so meanly, why should we give in to him?—I’m not afraid of him, and I resent him manipulating us.”
Michael said, “It’s Lee Roy. It’s no one but Lee Roy. And I think it would be best for us all if we changed the number.”
“I almost can’t believe he would turn against us, so quickly!” Gina said. “It’s so somehow selfish and short-sighted of him.”
“But he hates us, now, Gina, don’t you understand?” Michael said.
Gina shook her head, slowly. Her expression was one of vexed incomprehension, not fear; not alarm. She said, “Oh, I doubt that he hates us, Michael. Aren’t you exaggerating?”
Gina was so beautiful and so poised a woman, so admired by men, she could not seriously grasp the possibility that there might be a man who, though admiring her, might hate her too.
For which reason, Michael had to protect her.
That very ignorance, that vanity—Michael had to protect.
And his sons?—Michael had to protect them too.
Michael had told Gina about the scene with Lee Roy in the warehouse, but, in his telling, to minimize her upset, he’d softened the details. In this version, Lee Roy had pushed him accidentally, and he’d fallen because the stairway railing was so old and rotted, it had given way at once. In this version, Valeria Darrell was not present. Lee Roy himself had hurried down to help Michael.
In this version, Michael presented himself as a somewhat comic character, a cartoon oaf, falling onto a stack of cardboard boxes that went tumbling and sliding about. He’d even succeeded in making her laugh.
Not that it was entirely funny: for, now, Michael walked with a slight limp, favoring his right leg.
His knee. He’d banged his knee. That was all.
Was there something evasive in Gina’s eyes, when he spoke to her of Lee Roy Sears?—was there, or had there been, a secret connection between them?
No. These are works of the imagination. Fantasies.
What comes out.
If the crank calls came when Gina was home, and if she dealt with them in her own way, Michael could not know, for, at such times, he was likely to be at work. He was well aware of the fact, of course that, popular as she was, involved with numerous charitable organizations, luncheon groups, country club and tennis club friends, and intensive bouts of shopping in both Mount Orion and New York, Gina was out of the house most days, and, in her absence, the answering service was on. Thus, she was spared: for when the caller got Michael O’Meara’s recorded message, he hung up abruptly.
One morning, however, when Michael was at Pearce, Inc., and knew that Gina would probably still be home, he telephoned his house, experimentally, to see how Gina would respond. When she lifted the receiver and said, “Hello?—hello?” his heart pounded, but he said not a word, the palm of his hand pressed tight over the mouth of the receiver. She will think it is Lee Roy Sears, what will she say to Lee Roy Sears? Gina was unexpectedly curt, fearless, saying, “Who’s there? Is this who I think it is?” A pause. Then, “If it is, then shame! Shame! An adult man, like you! Behaving so childishly, like this!” Michael listened with painful intensity, gripping the receiver tight, seeing Gina’s face, those fierce eyes, contemptuous mouth. “I’ve told you, if this is who I think it is, that I can’t see you again and I won’t see you again and I am not going to be intimidated do you understand!” And she hung up the receiver with such passion, Michael winced.
Michael spent much of that morning, at his desk, his head in his hands. Not knowing how to decode what he had heard—or whether to decode it, at all.
In any case, not long after this, in mid-December, Gina at last agreed to having their number changed to a private number. For suddenly the calls had started coming at times when Joel and Kenny might answer the phone, and sometimes did, though they were instructed not to.
Michael happened to lift an upstairs receiver one evening when the phone rang, and Joel, or was it Kenny, had just answered downstairs, “H’lo?” in a child’s expectant voice, and, to his astonishment and horror, Michael heard a responding voice, the silence of weeks was broken by a male voice, obviously disguised, thick, gravelly, lewdly cheerful, “Hey!—hey there! L’il fucker, huh? That’s you, huh? Which one of you, l’il fucker? You hear me, huh? You’re hearing me, huh? You know who this is, huh? L’il fuckers—”
Yet more horribly, Joel giggled.
Giggled as if he were being roughly tickled.
Michael interrupted, shouting, furious, “Get off the phone! I know who you are, Lee Roy Sears! God damn you, you pervert, you sick son of a bitch, leave my sons alone!”
The next morning, with no further reluctance on Gina’s part, Michael made arrangements for a new, unlisted number.
And the loathsome calls stopped. For the time being, at least.
Winter came on, the days slid skidding into night, the holidays were a promising distraction, so many parties, so many presents, so many meals, so much good cheer, yet Michael O’Meara’s dread deepened.
For, knowing that his enemy was there, forever there, in the world, in fact not many miles from him, how could he escape?—how could he protect his family?
His right knee ached, he walked now with a conspicuous limp, thus he had reason to think of Lee Roy Sears almost constantly.
When friends first noticed the limp, they professed surprise, sympathy—“Michael, what on earth happened to you?—are you actually limping?” Michael made light of it, saying, “Oh, it’s nothing—I banged it the other day,” or, “Oh, it’s nothing—an old football injury, acting up.” Asked if he was seeing a doctor, Michael shrugged and said, “Oh, maybe. When I have time.”
Gina too urged him to see a doctor, for such problems only got worse, didn’t they?—as one grew older?
Michael laughed and said, “It’s just that, you know, I hate to give him the satisfaction.”
“Him? Who?”
Gina stared at Michael, perplexed. Had she forgotten the source of his knee injury?
Michael said, relenting, “Of course I’ll see a doctor, Gina. When I have time.”
How intimately, how relentlessly I will track you.
To your very place of refuge.
One evening, returning to his car in the high-rise parking garage adjacent to Pearce, Inc., Michael discovered that the tires of his Mazda had been slashed. And no other cars, anywhere in the garage, had been touched.
One bright winter morning during Christmas rec
ess Joel and Kenny came running up to the house, screaming that “something dead” was on the iced-over pond—the carcass of a dog that had been struck by a car, and was mangled, and very bloody.
In early January, Gina received a telephone call from the principal of the Riverside School, who told her, worriedly, that Joel and Kenny were disobeying school rules by wandering off school grounds at lunchtime and recess. Sometimes they returned late and refused to say where they’d been; if pressed, they grew angry, insolent. One of the Riverside teachers had seen them walking in a park a short distance away, in the company of a “dark man,” but, asked about the man, they denied him entirely.
As they denied him, entirely, to their parents.
And there was the mystery of Marita, who quit, suddenly, over a weekend, and refused to return to the O’Mearas’ house, and refused to say why.
“It’s as if we are in a boat, with no engine, no sail, no rudder, being drawn by the current along some river we don’t know,” Gina said, her angry agitation giving her a poetic flair not usual in her, “and we’re going faster, and it’s dark, and—what are we to do?”
Michael said, quietly, “What are we to do? As long as he’s alive, he’s dangerous.”
When Michael’s car tires were slashed, he had notified the police, of course, and told them who he believed the perpetrator was; but, with no witnesses, and no evidence linking Lee Roy Sears to the scene of the crime, nor even to its general vicinity, the police were powerless.
The same held true with the dog carcass. The O’Mearas called the police at once, and the police came over, and investigated, and, yes, the dog had been dragged to the pond already dead, it had not staggered there on its own, but how could it be proved that Lee Roy Sears had dragged it there, if no one had seen him, and if there was not the slightest shred of evidence linking him to the mischief?
The police detective who spoke with Michael and Gina was sympathetic, and incensed, on their behalf, at this shock to their household, but he could only advise them what Michael already knew: they had better not make any formal accusations, without proof. He said, “In these harassment cases, it’s best to wait it out. Sometimes the guy will make a mistake and get caught, but lots of times they just lose interest, and it peters out. Either way, you have to wait.”