Chapter eleven

When I woke up, I heard Susannah singing. I opened my eyes.

She was sitting on the windowsill, gazing out on a sunny day, blue sky. She was wearing my shirt; she was lost and small in it. Her red hair was tousled. Her expression was sad and far away.

She was singing the Cyndi Lauper cut: “Time After Time.” She had a thin, sweet voice that trembled on the high notes.

I stirred and she turned to me. She tilted her head. Her lips curled up into that silly smile that made all her features lopsided. For a moment I saw the face I remembered, the Christmas face.

“The fog’s gone,” she said.

I sat up, ran a hand up through my hair. I looked around the room. “I don’t think I’m in Kansas anymore.”

She laughed. “Doof.”

“What time is it?”

“Eight. We slept almost nine hours.” This last she said so happily, it made my heart hurt. I wondered how long it’d been since she’d slept three hours in a row.

I started to pull the covers off me. “I gotta get dressed,” I said. “See if I can get to work before noon.” Her smile faltered. Just a little. Just in her eyes. But it was enough to let me see that she was still afraid. I paused on the bed. “You’re gonna come back with me, aren’t you?” I said.

The smile returned at once. She slid down off the sill, came over to the bed and sat on the edge of it.

“Listen,” I said. “I’ve really gotta go.”

She reached out and touched my cheek with her fingertips. She leaned over and kissed me. Then she leaned over and kissed me again.

“Here’s your shirt,” she whispered. “What’s your hurry?”

We drove down together in the Mustang. When we got back, I installed her in my apartment. Charlie was sleeping there, a white snoring lump beneath the sheet, a flash of hairy leg. Susannah looked down upon him kindly, like an old friend. I left them to each other.

I walked down to Washington Square, glad to be out in the good weather. Glad to be alone to think things over.

But I couldn’t think things over. My mind was racing.

The first shock of seeing him had not worn off. I could still see him: standing there in the fog, sprung to life from my own invention. I couldn’t get around it, couldn’t get it down to a manageable size where I could begin to make sense of it. Despite what I’d said to Susannah, I wasn’t sure I ever would.

I strolled through the park slowly. The March air was cool, and clear for Manhattan, and the place was thick and colorful with the lunch-hour crowd. Mothers pushed their strollers, students carried their books, boys dipped and swirled through the empty fountains on their skateboards, and girls in black leather pointed their hair at the sky. Someone was selling Mickey Mouse balloons. Someone was playing guitar. Plenty of guys in green jackets were peddling crack at the entranceways and corners. Most of them greeted me. Most of them knew me by name. I was glad to be here with all of them.

By the time I got to the old white building across from the park’s southeast corner, I wasn’t thinking anything much at all. I rattled upstairs in the elevator, leaning against the wall with my eyes closed. When I walked through the office door, Marianne greeted me with a drab look. I plopped myself behind the desk across from her. I put my feet up. I toyed with a pencil. I stared aimlessly into space.

I thought of Susannah. I just couldn’t focus on him. So I thought of Susannah instead. I thought of her as she’d been last night when we’d finally pumped and screamed and scratched the ghost of him out of our systems for a while. I thought of her head on my chest, the scent of her red hair. It made me think of Christmas again. It made me think of her laughing. Sledding down the hill with Kate and Kelly. How could they just have deserted her? Or had she forced them away? That must have been it. Slipping into solitude as she watched her old self slipping away, as she watched herself, helplessly, beaten into madness by a bad dream. Of the scarred man. My scarred man. I thought of her screaming: Stop it. Thought of the brandy glass slipping from her hand as I told the story I had made up. My fault. My fault. I had left her alone. Left her there so he could latch on to her like a vampire, invade her dreams, suck the life from her. But, I told myself, there are no vampires. No goblins, no ghoulies. There are only people. How could he have been there in the fog like that?

Marianne looked up sharply as the pencil snapped in my hand.

“Who the hell is, he?” I whispered.

But I could not focus on him.

I called home. Charlie answered groggily.

“This better be good or the whole fucking shop walks,” he said.

“It’s me.”

“I’ll kill you.”

“Is she all right?”

There was a pause. Susannah came on.

“I’m all right,” she said softly. “Let him sleep.”

“Are you really all right?”

“Yes. Really.”

“Put Charlie back on.”

“There’s a girl in here,” Charlie said.

“Don’t leave her alone.”

“Over my sleeping body.”

“Consider me reassured,” I said, and hung up.

That was how the afternoon passed. It didn’t pass quickly. I tried to work. I tried to think. I could do neither. I called home. I woke. Charlie up. He told me Susannah was sleeping. I didn’t call again.

At around four—around four hours after I’d come in—I got ready to leave.

“I’m getting out of here,” I told Marianne.

“You’ll be deeply missed,” she said.

I started to straighten up my desk. I cursed, and stopped. I strode across the room and pulled back the door.

And a man was standing right before me, sudden as a specter.

Startled, I stepped back. But then I got my bearings. It was just a lean, easy figure: a guy around fifty. A thin face stroked with friendly wrinkles. A full crown of white hair.

He nodded and smiled at me, and came through the door. He took one hand from the pocket of his brown, zippered sweater and reached it out. I shook it, looking up at his face. Even with his relaxed stoop, he had two or three inches on me, must have been at least six-four. He had damp, gentle blue eyes, but they took in everything around him. They made a sweep of the room, pausing on Marianne for a moment like a benediction, before returning to me.

Jimmy Stewart, I thought.

“My name is Howard Marks,” he said. He had a soft drawl, a rhythm to his speech like a porch swing’s. “I’m looking for Carl McGill.”

“He’s away,” I said. “He’s in Peru. Can I help you? I’m his assistant, Michael North.”

“Peru,” he said. He tugged at his ear, smiling wryly at the floor. “Well, that certainly puts him out of reach. Will he be back anytime soon?”

“About two months.”

Marks’s chin lifted a little. Then he sighed, sagging. “Two months,” he said. “Too late.”

“Well, if it’s important, I have a way of contacting him, but it’s sure to take a while. A week, ten days. If you have the time …”

“Oh, I have the time, young man,” said Howard Marks, “I have the time.” He shook his head sorrowfully. Then, he said: “Well … thank you.”

He turned for the door. Then he paused and looked up at me.

As he searched my features he drawled quietly: “But if he should happen to get in touch with you, tell him Nathan Jersey will die in the electric chair in ten days. Tell him the Turner case is finally over.”

For another moment, he seemed to study me with those gentle eyes, and for that moment, I felt as if I were being unmasked. I thought he must hear my heart pounding.

Then he smiled again, sweetly, and stepped out into the hall. I heard the rattle of the elevator as it came and went. I shut the door.

“What the hell was that all about?” I said.

Marianne shrugged.

I went back to my desk and called American Express. I left a message for McGill at their Lima office as we had arranged. But he was probably deep in the jungle by now, where coca becomes cocaine. It was unlikely I’d hear from him within two weeks, let alone ten days.

When I was finished, I left. I hit the street in a hurry. I couldn’t tell why but there was a little live wire loose in my stomach now. I was jumpy, like a man alone on a dark street. The fog that had been curling through my brain since last night seemed on the verge of clearing suddenly—and seemed to be growing denser at the same time. I wasn’t even sure I wanted it to clear. I felt if I didn’t start thinking soon, it would be too late. I felt if I ever started thinking again, it would be too soon. As I rushed across the park, I kept telling myself, “Think, damn it, man, think, think.” It did no good at all.

Evening was coming on as I reached St. Mark’s Place. The light was growing mellow, dying. The trash cans were losing their glitter. The brownstones seemed to grow one-dimensional in the twilight. When I came to our building, I took the stoop two steps at a time. At the top, I reached through the broken windowpane to open the front door from inside. I was still in a hurry as I went up the stairs.

Outside our door, I could hear Charlie singing to a theme song from the TV.

“… Heidy-heeeeey, freebasing nasal spraaaaaay, gonna staaaaaay, where I can aaaair myyyyyy feeeeeeet …”

I went in.

Charlie was on the move. He was getting ready to go to work. As I came through the door, he was just disappearing, shirtless, into the bathroom.

Behind him, the TV was on. Susannah was sitting on the edge of his bed, staring at it dully. Her red hair framed her face in uncombed curls. Her hands dangled down between her knees.

Charlie kept singing more or less along with the set: “Zippee-yaaaaaay … Baby, come kneel and praaaaay … I think this is gonna be the one,” he shouted, “where the bird loses his teddy bear, man, and he goes to the Missing Bears Bureau, and all the while the cowboy guy’s got it under his hat, dig? It’s a gasser.”

Susannah smiled wanly. Then she looked up and saw me.

“Hi,” I said.

She stood. She came to me. Wearily, she leaned against my chest. I put my arms around her.

Charlie sang: “You can eeeeeeeat my meeeeeeat …”

I kissed Susannah’s hair. I felt my shirt getting wet. I heard her sniffle.

“My favorite is when these beetles come out and sing, ‘Letter B, letter B,’ man, see, cause they’re really bugs …”

Charlie stepped into the bathroom doorway, shaving cream on his chin, the razor half lifted. He saw us. We exchanged a glance. He shrugged and went back inside.

“Did you get any more sleep?” I asked her.

She shivered. “A little.”

“It’s going to be all right,” I said. I felt the live wire snaking in my belly. I didn’t ask her anything else.

When Charlie left for work, I took Susannah down to Ingmar’s for dinner. It was a good night for it. There was old time rock n’ roll and it was loud. There was liquor and it was good. There were friends who saw me with her and came by to chivaree. When we were alone, I told her stories: about her father, about the city streets, about anything I could think of.

But after a while the band sat down. The liquor was too much. The friends began to drift back to their tables. And as for me, I looked into her eyes where she was making the desperate effort, and I just didn’t have it in me anymore.

I looked down into my drink. She touched my hand.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “You really are good, though.”

I snorted.

“The North and Charlie show. You could sell tickets. Really.”

“If I could just get it clear in my mind,” I said.

“I know. But you never can. How can you?” She smiled. I didn’t like the way she smiled. “The more you think about it, the more bizarre it is. The more bizarre it is, the more it takes you over.” She leaned toward me. “Sometimes … sometimes I think that what he is is some kind of incubus.… You know? Not … not like in some horror movie, but a real kind … an idea … an evil idea that takes you over … that becomes more real while you start to fade away. I’ve read about it, Michael. It’s like … like what they call a doppelgänger.…”

I looked at her carefully. “A doppelgänger …”

“Yes, you see, technically, technically, it’s a double of a person, but the point is—”

“He’s not a double, it’s not—”

“No, no, but the point, the point is, it can take you over, replace you, you see.…”

“Susannah—”

“I’m just saying—”

“Susannah, stop it.” I took tight hold of both her hands.

“I’m just … I’m just … saying …” She lowered her head.

I sat there for a moment, speechless. A doppelgänger. She had read about it. She had gone to the library to look it up.

“Susannah, listen to me—”

“Michael, I’m so scared.”

“No, no, it’s all right, I was thinking the same kind of thing this afternoon, it’s just …”

She stared at me wildly. “Now he’s doing it to you.”

“He’s not doing anything, he’s just a man, he can’t—”

“Michael, you’re hurting me.”

“What? Oh …”

“My hands …”

I let her go. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right.” She shook her head sadly. She touched my cheek. “I know it’s hard,” she said. “You’re just beginning to understand.”

“Understand?”

She smiled again. I didn’t like it any better this time.

She said: “There really is no other explanation.”