sitcom. The public confused actors and politicians with the roles they
played. A mystery writer was supposed to be not merely like a character
in one of his books but like the cartoonish archetype of the most common
character in the entire genre. And year by troubled year, fewer people
were able to think clearly about important issues or separate fantasy
from reality.
Marty had been determined not to contribute to that sickness, but he had
been suckered. Now he was fixed in the public mind as Martin
Stillwater, creepy and mysterious author of creepy murder mysteries,
preoccupied with the dark side of life, as brooding and strange as any
of the characters about whom he wrote.
Sooner or later a disturbed citizen, having confused Marty's
manipulation of fictional people in novels for the manipulation of
actual people in real life, would arrive at his house in an old van
decorated with signs accusing him of having killed John Lennon, John
Kennedy, Rick Nelson, and God-alone-knew-who-else, even though he was an
infant when Lee Harvey Oswald pulled the trigger on Kennedy (or when
seventeen thousand and thirty-seven homosexual conspirators pulled the
trigger, if you believed Oliver Stone's movie).
Something similar had happened to Stephen King, hadn't it? And Salman
Rushdie had sure experienced a few years as suspenseful as any endured
by a character in a Robert Ludlum extravaganza.
Chagrined by the bizarre image the magazine had given him, flushed with
embarrassment, Marty surveyed the parking lot to be sure no one was
watching him as he read about himself. A couple of people were going to
and from their cars, but they were paying no attention to him.
Clouds had crept into the previously sunny day. The wind spun dead
leaves into a miniature tornado that danced across an empty expanse of
blacktop.
He read the article, punctuating it with sighs and mutters. Although it
contained a few minor errors, the text was generally factual.
But the spin on it matched the photographs. Spooky old Marty
Stillwater. What a dour and gloomy guy. Sees a criminal's wicked grin
behind every smile. Works in a dimly lighted office, almost dark, and
says he's just trying to reduce the glare on the computer screen (wink,
wink).
His refusal to allow Charlotte and Emily to be photographed, based upon
a desire to protect their privacy and to guard against their being
teased by schoolmates, was interpreted as a fear of kidnappers lurking
under every bush. After all, he had written a novel about a kidnapping
a few years ago.
Paige, "as pretty and cerebral as a Martin Stillwater heroine," was said
to be a "psychologist whose own job requires her to probe into the
darkest secrets of her patients," as if she was engaged not in the
counseling of children troubled by their parents' divorces or the death
of a loved one but in the deep analysis of the era's most savage serial
killers.
"Spooky old Paige Stillwater," he said aloud. "Well, why else would she
have married me if she wasn't already a little weird?"
He told himself he was over-reacting.
Closing the magazine, he said, "Thank God I didn't let the girls
participate. They'd have come out of it looking like the children in
"The Addams Family."
" Again he told himself that he was over-reacting, but his mood didn't
improve. He felt violated, trivialized, and the fact that he was
talking aloud to himself seemed, annoyingly, to validate his new
national reputation as an amusing eccentric.
He twisted the key in the ignition, started the engine.
As he drove across the parking lot toward the busy street, Marty was
troubled by the feeling that his life had taken more than merely a
temporary turn for the worse with the fugue on Saturday, that the
magazine article was yet another signpost on this new dark route, and
that he would travel a long distance on rough pavement before
rediscovering the smooth highway that he had lost.
A whirlwind of leaves burst over the car, startling him. The dry
foliage rasped across the hood and roof, like the claws of a beast
determined to get inside.
Hunger overcomes him. He has not slept since Friday night, has driven
across half the country at high speed, in bad weather more than not, and
has experienced an exciting and emotional hour and a half in the
Stillwater house, confronting his destiny. His stores of energy are
depleted. He is shaky and weak-kneed.
In the kitchen he raids the refrigerator, piling food on the oak
breakfast table. He consumes several slices of Swiss cheese, half a
loaf of bread, a few pickles, the better part of a pound of bacon,
mixing it all together without actually bothering to make sandwiches, a
bite of this and a bite of that, chewing the bacon raw because he
doesn't want to waste time cooking it, eating fast and with
single-minded fixation on the feast, ravenous, oblivious of manners,
urgently washing down everything with big swallows of cold beer that
foams over his chin. There is so much he wants to do before his wife
and kids return home, and he doesn't know quite when to expect them.
The fatty meat is cloying, so periodically he dips into a wide-mouth jar
of mayonnaise and scoops out thick wads of the stuff, sucking it off his
fingers to lubricate a mouthful of food that he finds hard to swallow
even with the aid of another bottle of Corona. He concludes his meal
with two thick slices of chocolate cake, washing those down with beer as
well, whereafter he hastily cleans up the mess with paper towels and
washes his hands at the sink.
He is revitalized.
With the silver-framed photograph in hand, he returns to the second
floor, taking the stairs two at a time. He proceeds to the master
bedroom, where he clicks on both nightstand lamps.
For a while he stares at the king-size bed, excited by the prospect of
having sex with Paige. Making love. When it is done with someone for
whom you truly care, it is called "making love."
He truly cares for her.
He must care.
After all, she is his wife.
He knows that her face is good, excellent, with a full mouth and fine
bone structure and laughing eyes, but he can't tell much about her body
from the photograph. He imagines that her breasts are full, belly flat,
legs long and shapely, and he is eager to lie with her, deep inside of
her.
At the dresser, he opens drawers until he finds her lingerie.
He caresses a half-slip, the smooth cups of a brassiere, a lace-trimmed
camisole. He removes a pair of silky panties from the drawer and rubs
his face with them, breathing deeply while repeatedly whispering her
name.
Making love will be unimaginably different from the sweaty sex he has
known with sluts picked up in bars, because those experiences have
always left him feeling empty, alienated, frustrated that his desperate
need for true intimacy is unfulfilled. Frustration fosters anger, anger
leads to hatred, hat
red generates violence--and violence sometimes
soothes. But that pattern will not apply when he makes love to Paige,
for he belongs in her arms as he has belonged in no others.
With her, his need will be satisfied every bit as much as will his
desire. Together, they will achieve a union beyond anything he can
imagine, perfect oneness, bliss, spiritual as well as physical
consummation, all of which he has seen in countless movies, bodies
bathed in golden light, ecstasy, a fierce intensity of pleasure possible
only in the presence of love. Afterward, he will not have to kill her
because then they will be as one, two hearts beating in harmony, no
reason for killing anyone, transcendent, all needs gloriously satisfied.
The prospect of romance leaves him almost breathless.
"I will make you so happy, Paige," he promises her picture.
Realizing he hasn't bathed since Saturday, wanting to be clean for her,
he returns her silken panties to the stack from which he had plucked
them, closes the dresser drawer, and goes into his bathroom to shower.
He strips out of the clothes he took from the motorhome closet of the
white-haired retiree, Jack, in Oklahoma on Sunday, hardly twenty-four
hours ago. After wadding each garment into a tight ball, he stuffs it
into a brass wastebasket.
The shower stall is spacious, and the water is wonderfully hot.
He works up a heavy lather with the bar of soap, and soon the clouds of
steam are laden with an almost intoxicating floral aroma.
After drying off on a yellow towel, he searches bathroom drawers until
he finds his toiletries. He uses a roll-on deodorant and then combs his
wet hair straight back from his forehead to let it dry naturally.
He shaves with an electric razor, splashes on some limescented cologne,
and brushes his teeth.
He feels like a new man.
In his half of the large walk-in closet, he selects a pair of cotton
briefs, blue jeans, a blue-and-black-checkered flannel shirt, athletic
socks, and a pair of Nikes. Everything fits perfectly.
It feels so good to be home.
Paige stood at one of the windows and watched the gray clouds roll in
from the west, driven by a Pacific wind. As they came, the earth below
them darkened, and sun-mantled buildings put on cloaks of shadows.
The inner sanctum of her three-room, sixth-floor office suite had two
large panes of glass that provided an uninspiring view of a freeway, a
shopping center, and the jammed-together roofs of housing tracts that
receded across Orange County apparently to infinity.
She would have enjoyed a panoramic ocean vista or a window on a lushly
planted courtyard, but that would have meant higher rent, which had been
out of the question during the early years of Marty's writing career
when she'd been their primary breadwinner.
Now, in spite of his growing success and impressive income, obligating
herself to a pricier lease at a new location was still imprudent.
Even a prospering literary career was an uncertain living.
The owner of a fresh-produce store, when ill, had employees who would
continue to sell oranges and apples in his absence, but if Marty became
ill, the entire enterprise screeched to a halt.
And Marty was ill. Perhaps seriously.
No, she wouldn't think about that. They knew nothing for sure.
It was more like the old Paige, the pre-Marty Paige, to worry about mere
possibilities instead of about only what was already fact.
Appreciate the moment, Marty would tell her. He was a born therapist.
Sometimes she thought she'd learned more from him than from the courses
she had taken to earn her doctorate in psychology.
Appreciate the moment.
In truth the constant bustle of the scene beyond the window was
invigorating. And whereas she had once been so predisposed to gloom
that bad weather could negatively affect her mood, all of these years
with Marty and his usually unshakable good cheer had made it possible
for her to see the somber beauty in an oncoming storm.
She had been born and raised in a loveless house as grim and cold as any
arctic cavern. But those days were far behind her, and the effect of
them had long ago diminished.
Appreciate the moment.
Checking her watch, she pulled the drapes shut because the mood of her
next two clients was not likely to be immune to the influence of gray
weather.
When the windows were covered, the place was as cozy as any parlor in a
private home. Her desk, books, and files were in the third office,
rarely seen by those she counseled. She always met with them in this
more welcoming room. The floral-pattern sofa with its variety of throw
pillows lent a lot of charm, and each of three plushly upholstered
armchairs was commodious enough to permit young guests to curl up
entirely on the seat with their legs tucked under them if they wished.
Celadon lamps with fringed silk shades cast a warm light that glimmered
in the bibelots on the end tables and in the glazes of Lladro porcelain
figurines in the mahogany breakfront.
Paige usually offered hot chocolate and cookies, or pretzels with a cold
glass of cola, and conversation was facilitated because the overall
effect was like being at Grandma's house. At least it was how Grandma's
house had been in the days when no grandma ever underwent plastic
surgery, had herself reconfigured by liposuction, divorced Grandpa to
Vegas with her boyfriend for the weekend.
Most clients, on their first visit, were astonished not to find the
collected works of Freud, a therapy couch, and the too-solemn atmosphere
of a psychiatrist's office. Even when she reminded them that she was
not a psychiatrist, not a medical doctor at all, but a counselor with a
degree in psychology who saw "clients" rather than "patients," people
with communication problems rather than neuroses or psychoses, they
remained bewildered for the first half an hour or so.
Eventually the room--and, she liked to think, her relaxed approach--won
them over.
Paige's two o'clock appointment, the last of the day, was with Samantha
Acheson and her eight-year-old son, Sean. Samantha's first husband,
Sean's father, had died shortly after the boy's fifth birthday.
Two and a half years later, Samantha remarried, and Sean's behavioral
problems began virtually on the wedding day, an obvious result of his
misguided conviction that she had betrayed his dead father and might one
day betray him as well. For five months, Paige had met twice a week
with the boy, winning his trust, opening lines of communication, so they
could discuss the pain and fear and anger he was unable to talk about
with his mother. Today, Samantha was to participate for the first time,
which was an important step because progress was usually swift once the
child was ready to say to the parent what he had said to his counselor.
She sat in the armchair she reserved for herself and reached to the end
table for the reproduction-antique telephone, which was both a working
phone and an intercom to the reception lounge. She intended
to ask
Millie, her secretary, to send in Samantha and Sean Acheson, but the
intercom buzzed before she lifted the receiver.
"Marty's on line one, Paige."
"Thank you, Millie." She pressed line one. "Marty?"
He didn't respond.
"Marty, are you there?" she asked, looking to see if she had punched
the correct button.
Line one was lit, but there was only silence on it.
"Marty?"
"I like the sound of your voice, Paige. So melodic."
He sounded . . . odd.
Her heart began to knock against her. ribs, and she struggled to
suppress the fear that swelled in her. "What did the doctor say?"
"I like your picture."
"My picture?" she said, baffled.
"I like your hair, your eyes."
"Marty, I don't--"
"You're what I need."
Her mouth had gone dry. "Is something wrong?"
Suddenly he spoke very fast, running sentences together, "I want to kiss
you, Paige, kiss your breasts, hold you against me, make love to you, I
will make you very happy, I want to be in you, it will be just like the
movies, bliss."
"Marty, honey, what--" He hung up, cutting her off.
As surprised and confused as she was worried, Paige listened to the dial
tone before returning the handset to the cradle.