Something familiar about the voice.
"Michael, it's me."
Dr. Richard! the stunned patient realized. Dr. Richard Kohler from Marsden!
Or was it? Careful here. Something funny's going on.
"Michael, I want to talk to you. Can you hear me?"
Hrubek opened his eyes and gazed out from between two ferns. It looked like Dr. Richard. How did those fuckers do it? Hrubek nervously scooted under a bush. His eyes flicked up and down suspiciously as he examined the man, studying the doctor's thin frame, dark-blue suit, black penny loafers and Argyle socks. His backpack the color of old blood. Sure, this looked just like Dr. Richard. Identical! Hrubek gave the conspirator credit for disguising himself so cleverly.
Smart fucker, make no mistake.
"They told me you'd run off. Michael, is that you? I thought I saw you."
The footsteps grew closer, crushing leaves beneath the dainty feet. Hrubek pulled his own backpack to his side. It was heavy and clinked with the sound of metal and chains. He froze at the noise then rummaged inside quietly. At the bottom he found the pistol.
"Michael, I know you're scared. I want to help you."
He aimed the pistol at the shadowy form that approached. He'd shoot the impostor in the head. No, that'd be too merciful. I'll aim for the belly, he thought, and let him die like a battlefield soldier, slowly, with a gut wound from a .54 Minie ball.
. . . for I love the bonnie blue boy who gave his life for me. . . .
The footsteps came closer. The beam from a tiny flashlight swept the ground, lit a patch of grass two feet from his foot, then moved on. Hrubek held the gun close to his face. He smelled oil and metal. As he gazed back into the clearing, a dreadful thought came into his mind: What if this wasn't an impostor. Maybe this really was Dr. Richard. Maybe he was a conspirator too! Maybe he'd been a traitor all along. From the first fucking day they'd met. Four months of betrayal!
"I've been looking all over for you. I want to give you some medicine. It'll make you feel better."
How do you feel better when you're dead? Hrubek responded silently. How does poison make you feel better? If I were a bettor, I'd say you were a bad bet, you fucker.
The conspirator was ten feet away. Hrubek's right hand began to shake as it gripped the gun, which was pointed directly at the belly of Dr. Richard the betrayer (or John Conspirator the impostor).
"I'm your last chance. There are people who want to hurt you. . . ."
Well, I knew that all along. You're telling me something new? How'd you like to be in the news? CNN can do a story about your blown-up guts. He pulled the hammer back. The click was very soft but inexplicably it released in Hrubek a flood of fear. He began to quiver. The gun slipped from his hand and he remained paralyzed for a long moment. Finally his vision grew blacker than the black forest around him and his mind froze, seated like a hot drill bit in oak.
When he opened his eyes again and was aware of his surroundings, some minutes had passed. The air felt colder, more oppressive, heavy with moisture. The conspirator was gone, his car too. Hrubek found the gun and lowered the hammer carefully, then stowed the weapon in his bag. As he rose to his feet, dazed and discomfited, and started jogging through the night once more, Hrubek wondered whether the entire incident had been just a dream. But he concluded that even if it hadn't been real the apparition was certainly a message from God: to remind him that tonight he could trust no one, not even those who were--or who pretended to be--his closest friends on earth.
11
She called it the Berlin Wall.
A six-foot-high stockade fence of gray cedar, surrounding most of the four acres of the L'Auberget estate. Lis now walked along a stretch of this fence on her way to the dam. To enclose the property had cost Andrew L'Auberget eighteen thousand dollars (and they'd been 1968 dollars, no less). But despite the price he was adamant about the barricade. Lis jokingly named it after the German barrier (the reference shared only with Portia and friends, never with her father) though the man's concern hadn't been the Red Peril. Terrorist kidnappings were his main fear.
He'd become convinced that he, as a successful businessman with several European partnerships, was targeted. Goddamn Basques," he railed. "Goddamn them! And they know all about me. The SDS, the Black Panthers! I'm in Who's Who in American Business. There for the whole world to see! Where I live! My children's names! They could read your name, Lisbonne. Remember what I told you about answering the door? Tell me what you'd do if you saw a Negro walking around outside the gate. Tell me!"
The fence, even Lis the naive child supposed, was easily breachable and less a deterrent to the bad guys than an inconvenience to the family, who had to walk three-quarters of a mile around it if they wanted to go for walks in the woods across Cedar Swamp Road. But like the builders of its namesake, L'Auberget's purpose seemed only partially to keep the enemy out; he also wanted to restrain his own citizenry. "I will not have the children wandering off. They're girls, for God's sake!" Lis had often heard this declaration, or variations on it.
As she walked along tonight Lis reflected with some irony that while its German counterpart was now dust, Andrew L'Auberget's cedar folly was still as strong as ever. She noticed too that if the water did overflow the dam, the fence would make a perfect sluice, preventing any flood from spilling off the property into the woods and directing it straight to the house.
She now approached the beach--a small crescent of dark sand. Just beyond was the dam, an old stone-and-cement slab twenty feet high, built around the turn of the century. It was against this wide lip of cement that the white rowboat she'd seen from the house thudded resonantly. Behind the dam was the narrow spillway fed by the overflow; usually dry, tonight it gushed like a Colorado rapid, the water disappearing into the creek that ran beneath the road. The dam was part of the L'Auberget property though it was under the technical control of the state Corps of Engineers, which had been granted an easement to maintain it. Why weren't they here tonight? she wondered.
Lis continued a few feet toward the dam, then stopped, uneasy, reluctant to go further, watching the white jet of water shoot into the creek.
Her hesitation had nothing to do with the safety of the dam or the ragged spume. The only thought on her mind at the moment was the picnic.
Many, many years before: a rare event--a L'Auberget family outing.
That June day had been a mixture of sun and shade, hot and cold. The family strolled from the house to this beach, and hadn't gotten more than ten yards before Father started carping at Portia. "Calm down, quiet down!" The girl was five, even then cheerfully defiant and boisterous. Lis was horrified that because of the girl's rowdiness Father would call off the picnic and she bluntly shushed her little sister. Portia tried to kick Lis in retaliation and, with a dark glance from her husband, Mother finally swept up the squirming girl and carried her.
Lis, then eleven, and her father hefted picnic baskets packed by him so efficiently that she nearly tore muscles under the weight. Still, the girl didn't complain; she'd endured eight months of her father's absence while he was in Europe on yet another business trip and nothing on earth would stop her from walking at his side. She was thrilled speechless when he complimented her on her strength.
"How about here?" Father asked, then answered himself. "Yes, I think so."
It seemed to Lis that he'd developed a minuscule accent in his recent travels. Portuguese, she supposed. She observed his dark slacks and white dress shirt buttoned at the neck, without tie, and short boots. This was hardly American fashion in the nineteen sixties but he'd have nothing to do with Brooks Brothers or Carnaby Street and remained faithful to the look favored by his Iberian business associates. It wasn't until after he died that Lis and her mother would laugh that Andrew's style could best be described as post-immigrant.
That afternoon he'd watched his wife arranging the meal and gave her strident instructions. The food was cut geometrically, cooked perfectly, sealed in containers airti
ght as the NASA capsules that so fascinated him. Mother set out expensive stainless-steel utensils and ceramic plates the shade of milky plums.
A Warre's port appeared and they each had a glass, Father asking Mother her opinion of it. He said she had an uneducated palate and for that reason was worth more than a dozen French sommeliers. Lis had never heard her mother utter a single negative syllable about any of the wines in her husband's inventory.
On the day of Lis's birth, Andrew L'Auberget was in Portugal, where he happened to drop a bottle of Taylor, Fladgate 1879 because he was so startled by the sharp ringing of his partner's telephone--on the other end of which happened to be his mother-in-law with the news that he was now a father. The story goes that he laughed about the catastrophe and insisted--there, on the phone--that they name Lis after the city in which she'd destroyed seven hundred dollars' worth of port. Two things about this incident had always seemed significant to Lis. The first was the generosity with which he treated the loss.
And second: why wasn't he with his wife at such a time?>
That day at the beach, sitting beside the dam, he'd lifted a silver spoon and, against Mother's protests, poured a scant teaspoon down Lis's throat.
"There, Lisbonne, what do you think? That's a 1953. Not renowned, no, but good. What do you think?"
"Andrew, she's eleven! She's too young."
"I like it, Father," Lis said, repulsed by the wine. By way of compliment she added that it tasted like Vick's.
"Cough syrup?" he roared. "Are you mad?"
"She's too young." Mother sent Lis out of harm's way and the girls went off to play until lunch was ready.
While Portia sat in a cove of grass and picked flowers, Lis noticed a motion from the state park nearby and stepped closer to explore. A boy of about eighteen stood with a girl several years younger. She was backed against a tree and he was clutching the bark on either side of her shoulders. He would ease forward and kiss her then back away quickly as she wrinkled her nose in mock disgust. He reached suddenly for her chest. Lis was alarmed, thinking that a wasp or bee had landed on her and he was trying to pick it off. She felt an urge to call out to him to leave it alone. They sting when they're scared, she nearly shouted, astonished that a high-school boy wouldn't know this plain fact of nature.
It wasn't of course a bee he was after but the button of her shirt. He undid it and slipped his fingers inside. The girl crinkled her face again and slapped his knuckles. He withdrew his fingers reluctantly, laughed then kissed her again. The hand crawled back inside and this time she didn't stop him. Their tongues met outside their mouths and they kissed hard.
An eerie radiation of warmth consumed Lis. She couldn't tell from which portion of her body it arose. Maybe her knees. Drawing some vague conclusions about the spectacle of the two lovers, Lis cautiously lifted her own hand to her blouse, beneath which was her swimsuit. She undid buttons, mimicking the young man, and eased her fingers under her suit as if his hand directed hers. She probed, with no discernible results at first. Then as she fumbled the heat seemed to rise from her legs and center somewhere in her belly.
"Lisbonne!" her father called harshly.
Gasping, she jumped.
"Lisbonne, what are you doing? I told you not to wander far!" He was nearby though apparently he hadn't seen her crime--if a crime it was. Her heart quivering madly, she began to cry and dropped to her knees. "Looking for Indian bones," she called in a shaking voice.
"How horrible," her mother shouted. "Stop that this minute! Come wash your hands."
"You should respect the remains of the dead, young lady! When you're dead and laid out, how'd you like someone to molest your grave?"
The girls returned to the picnic blanket, washed and sat down to the meal, while Father talked about the paste that astronauts would have to eat on extended space flights. He tried, without success, to explain to Portia what zero gravity meant. Lis was unable to get down more than a few bites of anything. When they finished she hurried back to the cleft in the bushes on the pretense of looking for a dropped comb. The couple was no longer there.
Then came the part of the day that Lis had been dreading. Father took her down to the dark water. He removed his shirt and slacks, beneath which he wore his burgundy trunks. He had a dense body--not strong but with fat distributed evenly, in approximation of muscles.
Her shirt came off, then her culottes, revealing the plain red swimsuit. A thin woman now, Lis was a thinner girl then, but she pulled in her stomach vehemently--not in shame at a belly but hoping, futilely, that it might inflate her chest.
They strode into the cold lake. A championship swimmer in college, Andrew L'Auberget was, he'd told his daughter on a number of occasions, troubled by her fear of the water. He never missed an opportunity to get her into a pool or river or ocean. "It's dangerous, yes. It's far too easy to drown. That's why you must learn to swim, and swim like a fish."
Nervously she flexed her knees, feeling the gracious bed of mud beneath her arched toes. Father made a stern show of these lessons. When he noticed that she was resisting putting her head under water he ordered her to take a breath and pushed her face beneath the waves. Panic finally sent her scrambling upright. As she sputtered and shivered he laughed and told her, "See, that wasn't so bad. Again, for ten seconds. I can do it for two minutes. Two whole minutes without a breath!"
"No, I don't want to!"
"You take that tone, you'll go under for twenty seconds."
She practiced her strokes, beating the water with splayed fingers, which he forced closed into paddles. He supported her and held her buoyant while she swam in place.
"Calm down, girl! Water won't kill you. Calm down!"
She rested on his palm, trying to coordinate her legs and arms. Just as she struck a rhythm that approximated a breaststroke, a wave rolled in and lifted her from his hand. For a moment she was actually swimming on her own. Then the crest passed and lowered her once more. But when she drifted back down, she'd moved forward a foot or so and she came to rest with her groin on his fingers. For a tense moment neither father nor daughter moved and--compelled by an urge she understood no better today than then--Lis pressed her legs together, capturing his hand in that spot.
And then she smiled.
Lisbonne L'Auberget looked at her father and gave him a slight smile--not one of seduction or power or pride. Least of all physical pleasure. No, just a smile that sprang spontaneously to her cold, blue lips.
And it was for this transgression, Lis later speculated, rather than the fluke contact of bodies, that she was so ruthlessly punished. The next thing she recalled was being dragged from the water, her arm almost popping from its socket, and being flung to the hard ground, where she lay on her belly, as her father's hand--the same hand that had moments before cradled the most enigmatic part of her body--now rose and fell viciously upon another.
"Don't you ever!" he roared, unwilling to give a name to the offense. "Don't you ever! Don't you ever!" The raw words kept time with the loud slap of his palm upon her wet buttocks. She felt little sting from the powerful blows--her skin was numb from the cold--but the greater pain was in her soul anyway. She cried of course and she cried hardest when she saw her mother start toward her then hesitate. The woman refused to look then turned away, leading her sister from the shore. Portia looked back once with an expression of cold curiosity. They disappeared toward the house.
Nearly thirty years ago. Lis remembered those few minutes perfectly. This very spot. Except for the level of the water and the height of the trees, the place was unchanged. Even the darkness of night was somehow reminiscent of that June. For though the picnic had been at lunchtime, she had no memory of sunlight; she recalled the whole beach being shrouded, as murky as the water in which her father had dunked her.
Tonight, Lis finally managed to push the memory aside and walked forward slowly over the gray sand of the beach to the dam. The lake was already pouring over a low portion of it--a cracked corner on the side ne
arest the house. Some of this spillage made its way into the runoff and the creek beyond but much of it was gathering in the culvert that led to the house. She leapt over this flood and walked to the wheel, set into the middle of the dam.
It was a piece of iron two feet in diameter, its spokes in graceful curves like wisteria vines, the foundry name prominently forged in some Gothic typeface. The wheel operated a gate, two by three feet, now closed, over which flowed the water that gushed into the spillway. Opening it all the way would presumably lower the lake by several feet.
Lis took the wheel in both hands and tried to twist it. Rose breeders develop good muscles--from twenty-five-pound bags of loam and manure if not the plants themselves--and Lis strained hard. But the whole mechanism was frozen solid with rust.
She found a rock and pounded on the shaft dully, chipping paint and sending a few sparks flying like miniature meteorites. She tried the wheel again without success then drew back and hammered the mechanism once more, hard. But the rock dipped into the spume of water and was ripped from her hand. It bent back her fingers as it catapulted deep into the culvert. She cried out in pain.
"Lis, you all right?"
She turned and saw Portia climbing cautiously over the slippery limestone rocks. The young woman walked up to the gate.
"The old dam. Still here."
"Yup," Lis said, pressing her stinging fingers. She laughed. "But then where would a dam go? Give me some muscle here, would you?"
They tried the wheel together but it didn't move a millimeter. For five minutes the sisters hammered at the worn gears and the wheel's shaft but were unable to budge the mechanism.
"Been years since anybody opened it, looks like." Portia studied the gate and shook her head. She then gazed at the lake. It stretched away, a huge plain of opaque water at their feet.
"You remember this place?" Lis asked.
"Sure."
"That's where we were going to launch the boat." Lis nodded at the beach.
"Right. Oh, is this it? The same boat?" Portia touched the gunwale of the rowboat.
"That? Of course not. It was that old mahogany sail-boat. Father sold it years ago."
"What were we going to do? Run away? Sail someplace? Nantucket?"