Downstairs, around three hours earlier, just around three-thirty, just after Oliver had left to find Tiffany, Zachary had opened the red bag. The minute he saw Oliver heading off toward West Fourth Street, he had hurried into the bathroom for it. That’s where the bag was, stowed under the sink in there. He had pulled it out and he had told himself: he had to move fast.

He had kept telling himself that. He had knelt on the floor in front of the bag and thought: I have to move fast. Over and over. But it wasn’t so easy. He really was sick. The aftermath of the drug. Dizziness. Flashes of light. Occasional goblins crouching at the corners of his eyes. And that diarrhea. That’s what had stopped him from dealing with the bag when he first got here. He had just finished hanging his raincoat in the closet when he was hit with yet another attack of the shits. He’d been pinned to the toilet for nearly an hour. Then, after he’d finally stashed Tiffany’s dresses in the bag and gotten out his real clothes, Oliver had come home. Nearly caught him too before he could get the bag closed again. Nearly ruined everything. All relieved and glad to see him. Pumping his hand, slapping him on the back. Zach thought he’d never be able to get him out of the apartment again.

And, now that Ollie was gone, he was sure to be back in a big hurry. Tiffany’s bookstore was only ten minutes away. Which gave Zach less than half an hour to do what he had to do.

I have to move fast, he kept thinking. He knelt in front of the red bag. His fingers moved to the bag’s zipper. But still, they just hovered there. His mind … It felt like a great balloon, massive and wobbly. Weighted down with details, sluggish with them. Fast, he kept thinking. Fast! But he was distracted by the feel of the cold tiles through the holes in his jeans. Mesmerized by the spots of brown rust on the silver pipe beneath the sink. The sting of his asshole, the liquid chill in his intestines. All of it was magnified. All of it crowded into the mind-balloon and kept it anchored soddenly to the earth.

Finally, he unzipped the bag. But it was only more of the same. More clutter. Tiffany’s skirt, the one he’d worn here. Her sweater. Her scarf. Things, things, things. He pulled all these aside. There was the skull mask underneath. The syringe. The vial of blood. The butcher knife. The stag-handled Colt automatic. He gazed at them—these things in their solidity. He couldn’t quite take them in, they seemed so meaningless and real.

He swayed on his knees. He thought: Oh Jesus. He closed his eyes and sent up yet another quick prayer for forgiveness. Could it really have been so wrong? he thought. Breaking his promise to God, taking the drug? Did he really deserve all this sickness: the oversleeping, the diarrhea, this heaviness of mind? He had only been trying to recapture the old vision, after all. To become part of the great tapestry again. And the living truth was that if he had another needleful of Aquarius right this second, he would pump it into his arm without thinking twice. Christ forgive him, but he would. Just to clear all this crap out of his system. Just to be free again, the way he was last night.

Looking down at the objects in the bag reminded him. Last night. How beautiful it had been. These very same objects—how beautiful they had been. The knife, the blood, the silver-handled gun. Now, strewn at random in the bottom of the red bag, they were just things, just its. Like the rust on the pipe. Like the little blue patch of mildew in the corner near the tub. Like his own slim fingers … So much of their magic, their truth, had seeped away.

But last night. Last night, when he had been on Aquarius … oh, he thought, the vision! Things were not only things then. Each was interwoven with them all, with everything. Like the teacup in the tapestry, each object was the center of a web of being that had stretched out from itself into the universal. And he had been part of it. Everything he touched, everything he saw, drew him from the prison of his own flesh, connected him to a vast Oneness. How could that be wrong? To be so full of joy, so full of knowing. To be, for moments on end, within the very mind of the eternal God.

That’s how it had felt, anyway. Especially when he decapitated the woman.

It had been beautiful. It had been so beautiful then. Not like now, when he could only remember it. Now, when the inner experience was gone. When he could only call up images, details, the exterior actions. All morning, all afternoon, he had kept these images at bay. He had tried to preserve the beauty of the true event intact. But now, the sight of the knife and the gun and the blood in the red bag forced it all into his mind again. He had to close his eyes again, shake his head to clear it. He had to remind himself—force himself to remember—that it had been beautiful.

She had been beautiful. Tied to the bed. His own old bed. Struggling as he approached her. Her white limbs straining, her eyes wide: the sensuality of her terror. Right there. In the mews. In the ever-strange house that was never quite home to him, that still smelled of old lady and desertion. Right there in his old room, on his old bed: the woman. Only he could see more than that. He could see the Truth within the Woman, the Woman in her Victimhood. Pleading with him for mercy: Have mercy. Please, God. Weeping—just as he had wept so often on that bed. It was like looking at himself, in fact: that was part of the Meaning of it. It was like looking at his Other Self in the past that was always present. Oh, but he had driven the great knife into her throat so slowly, with a sort of childlike fascination. And what an electric connection it was! Like a lightning bolt that touched off her orgasmic thrashing, that loosed the burbling blood, erased the words from her cries and made them nothing but choking and the whistling of air through her severed esophagus. He had felt her pulse beating against the blade, beating through the knife handle and into him, her Life into his, One Life, the Man in his Power connected to the Woman, her Martyrdom his, and he had felt like his own father with his own son’s cheek crushed down against the rough desktop and the boy’s naked ass lifted like a flirty girl’s and the father’s ruler whacking and whacking him while his mother’s face went hectic with excitement … It was all One Thing. This and that, past and present, each and all. He could see the connections. And he had leaned down to press his lips against the dying woman’s ear—and she was just shivering now, her eyes going glassy—he had leaned down, knowing she would understand him, this Great Secret, and he had whispered to her breathlessly: “He broke the typewriter.”

She had only stared at him. Her and her empty eyes.

Tears rolled down Zachie’s cheeks now. Fell on his hands as they hovered above the red bag. Sure, he thought. Sure. Her eyes. That image of her eyes. He was being punished for breaking his promise to God, even though he had only been trying to become one with the eternal. Jesus was making him forget how beautiful it had been. Was forcing him to remember only the emptiness of those eyes. How lonely they had made him feel. How furious. And the way he’d attacked her then, savagely slashing at her. The way he’d cursed her crazily, slobbering, crying out. Clutching her hair in his blood-soaked hand. Raging at her severed head … Oh, sure, from the outside, it was all ugliness.

Well, I’m sorry, okay? he thought. He let out one long, last shuddering sob. Bowed his head. I said I was sorry, didn’t I? It was just one broken promise, after all. There was no need to torture him about it forever.

It was another few moments before he got control of himself. Breathing in little blasts, his cheeks puffed. He wiped his face dry with his palms. Tightened his lips with determination. God closes a door, but opens a window. Right? It was time, he thought, to get to work.

He forced himself to move with businesslike precision. He removed the pistol first. Stuffed it into his belt. Tugged the quilted shirt down over it. Then, he took out the vial of blood. He had drawn this from the woman’s headless corpse with his syringe. He brought the syringe out and snapped the vial back into it. His hand threw frantic shadows in the light from the bare bulb above him.

He got up. Went into the living room, holding the blood-filled syringe. The lights were still off in here, but he could see his way well enough. He wove quickly and surely through the stalagmitic stacks of books. He went to the dresser. It stood by the window in a wedge of fading daylight. There were two small piles of books on top of it, a framed drawing of Whitman in between. Whitman watched as Zach opened his brother’s top drawer.

This was the underwear drawer. Zach gazed down into it, holding the syringe up in his right hand. Oliver’s Hanes briefs lay neatly folded in there, next to his balled socks. The red and white waistbands. The crotch panels. Crowding Zach’s brain. Too neat, he thought. It was all too neat—one of Ollie’s “babes” must have done it for him. The idea made Zach shiver, his stomach coiling. Goose pimples rose on his arm. He stood there, gazing, swaying, for another long moment. Then he shut the drawer hard with his left hand. Blinked. He mustn’t let himself get lost in the details. He forced himself to pull open the drawer below.

The sweater drawer. That was the one he wanted. He pulled out one of the burly woolen sweaters Nana was always knitting for Oliver. He knelt on the floor with the sweater lying between two mounds of slanting books. Carefully, he held the syringe over the sleeve. He pressed the plunger down, feeding the dead woman’s blood onto the wool. Weird, he thought dreamily. This was all too weird. He gazed at the growing bloodstain on the sweater sleeve …

And then he came to himself. Careful. Not too much, he thought. He stopped the stream of blood from the syringe. Just enough. Just like that. It looked perfect. As if Oliver had stained himself without noticing. He stood and stuffed the sweater roughly into the back of the drawer. He left the drawer ajar slightly, so that a careful investigator would notice it on his own.

He tried to create the same natural effect with the butcher knife. It was the knife that he had used to kill the girl. He had it in the red bag also. It was all covered in Glad wrap. He had swabbed the blade clean last night, but not too thoroughly. Just enough to remove his own fingerprints and yet leave a trail of blood and fabric for the cops to find and analyze. He brought the knife into the kitchenette now. Unwrapped it carefully, keeping his fingers on the plastic. Then he placed it in the drainer, down among the clean dishes there. That would look as if Ollie had brought the knife home and washed it, but hadn’t cleaned it quite well enough.

Like the parables of Christ, he thought, as he set the knife just right. Always a little left to the imagination. Let the cops make their own discoveries, their own deductions. Make them feel like participants, as if they were re-creating the chain of events in their minds. That would bring the whole story to life for them. It would help them convince themselves that he was innocent. Just suddenly, without knowing why, they would think: Oliver! With that pleasant shock of understanding, they would think: It was Oliver all along.

A loud fart escaped him. His stomach was finally starting to settle down a little. He blinked to keep his mind right. Then he crumpled the plastic wrap in his hand and stepped back from the kitchenette. He regarded the drainer scene. Was it all right? He couldn’t think. He couldn’t be sure. He found he was studying an opalescent water droplet on the rim of the sink. He had to concentrate. He turned away. He surveyed the entire apartment. Gray with dusk. Jagged in outline with its stacks and swarms of books. He licked his lips and smiled weakly. It was so much like Oliver, this place. He laughed a little. Oliver, he thought. The only one who could ever help him. When their mother died. When their father deserted them. When he had broken down in college. When he had collapsed at the Christian retreat in P.A. And that night—that night in the mews, when he was drugged to the gills with Aquarius … Oliver, he thought. So much history between them. He felt his love for his big brother surging up inside.

So weird, he thought. He returned to the bathroom, to the red bag. It was all just so weird. Him and Oliver. Coming to this point, reaching this stage of life together. It was hard to believe they had grown so old. There was always someplace inside Zach, someplace in his mind, where Ollie and he were still just kids. Still little children in the Long Island house with Mom and Dad around them. He knelt on the tiles, repacking the bag. Putting in the syringe and the plastic wrap. Burying the skull mask under Tiffany’s clothing. It was so weird that Oliver was thirty-one. That his hairline was starting to recede. That he himself had to shave felt strange sometimes. And then, sometimes the two of them would have these arguments, these grown-up conversations. About politics or art or religion. And Zach would say something like, “The soul could be a product, a sort of radiance, of the body, and still survive it the way a gas survives the two chemicals mixed to create it.” And Ollie would throw up his hands and cry, “It could all be illusion, man! Even self-consciousness could just be the place where the electric function of the brain can’t perceive itself anymore!” And right in the middle of the discussion, Zach would suddenly realize that all they were really saying to each other was: “You are so!” “I am not!” “You are so, ya big doody!” It was exactly the same as ever between them. That was the truth of it. Nothing really had ever changed.

Zach zipped up the red bag slowly. His neck felt limp, his head heavy. He let out a long breath. Boy, he really was tired now. His arms felt like lead. His eyes were practically falling shut. All right, he thought. The business was done. With an effort, he shoved the bag back under the kitchen sink. He worked himself to his feet. He clumped back into the living room again.

He gave a weary groan and dropped down on the mattress. He gazed up at the ceiling, which was now in gray shadow. Oliver would be home soon, he thought. Any second now. And then, all he had to do was wait it out. Wait for the right time. Good, good, good. He closed his eyes. He crossed his hands on his thin chest. He lay on his back, his feet slanting off the bed so his sneakers wouldn’t dirty the bedcovers. Nothing really had ever changed, he thought. And with his eyes still closed, he thought about Tiffany. He imagined her there. Naked. Sitting above him. Straddling him with her muscular legs. Nailing his outstretched arms to the bed with her knees. Cooing down at him. He fucked me, Zach. That night you were in the hospital. With her sweet face, dripping the words down onto his flesh like hot wax. He fucked me so hard. I screamed when I came. Zach’s jeans slowly grew tight as he lay there. He was so big I could hardly take him. Zach’s breathing grew heavier. Oliver and Tiff. He imagined them now. He imagined her bent over the desk with her bare ass lifted. Oliver behind her, thrusting with his hips. Zach’s tears started again. They slipped, cool, down over his temples. They dampened the pillow underneath his head. His jeans were very tight, his erection very hard.

Later, Tiffany had tried to tell him she had made the whole thing up. Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do? She had tried to pretend it was just part of what they did together, part of what they called his Martyrdom. I mean, you told me to say things like that. Isn’t that what you wanted? But Zach knew it was the truth from the moment he heard it. They had been together that night he was in the hospital. He imagined Oliver’s hips circling obscenely as his cock slid in and out of her. He imagined watching them from a secret place. Hidden in the dark in a secret place, watching them. Deep in the dark. Far away …

His tears had ceased. His erection was fading. He was hidden. Farther and farther away in the dark. The street sough at the window was growing distant. He was deep in the closet dark. In his secret compartment there. With the fish-eye lens in the peephole. With the camera hooked up to the lens.

Are you serious? Tiffany was all wide-eyed over it. Isn’t that blackmail? Zach, that can’t be right. It isn’t right.

You know, you look at these actions, Tiffany, and you just see actions, he explained to her. But the symbolism of an act is just as important to the mind of God as the act itself. Otherwise, why would Christ have killed the fig tree, or attacked the moneylenders. So, when you say blackmail, I mean, you’re not operating on the level where you understand the parable. The parable of my life, of our lives. I mean, when we talk about how Nana controls us with her money—and how she’s just going to put Oliver in charge of her money when she dies—I mean, that’s not just … I mean, that’s a parable of our slavery to Mammon in the world. You see? And to be free from that requires an act of martyrdom that will redeem sin.

Oh, Zachie. Oh Zach, please don’t start talking about martyrdom again. I mean, it just doesn’t make sense to me why—

Hey. Whose astro-level is higher? Yours or mine?

Well … I mean … blackmail. How can we blackmail someone? Who are we going to blackmail?

Our little friend Fernando Woodlawn.

The lawyer? But he’s been so nice to us. Ever since you took that picture of him for the magazine, he’s been so sweet. He took us out to dinner and everything …

He’s perfect. He wants to be governor, he has lots of money. And he wants you.

Zachie! I’m not just going to … go to bed with him.

Why not? You did it with Oliver.

She went quiet at that. She frowned, her eyes glistening with tears. Then slowly, in the soft, rhythmic, persuasive voice he often had to use with her, he had begun to explain. The symbolism. The idea. The concept of Martyrdom: the death on which life depends. It would be her Martyrdom this time, he said. It would redeem her from the sins she had been committing against his, Zach’s, flesh, which was, through his spiritual knowledge, the body that contained all things. Symbolically speaking. And she had said that she felt bad about the pain she had caused him, hadn’t she? Well, when this was over, he told her, the purpose of it would be clear to her. Then she would not feel bad about it anymore.

Still, even when she had agreed to it—as he knew she would, as she always agreed to everything—the tears were streaming down her face. How do you even know he’ll do it? she asked him softly.

Woodlawn? Oh, he’ll do it. He wants you. He told me so. And anyway, Zach had added with a shrug, he’s a New York City politician: he’ll fuck anybody.

Tiffany’s frown deepened. Tears spilled down her scarlet cheeks. She stamped her feet, her wrists pressed to her hips. Her face had changed. It was a child’s face. She was a crying child. She was crying because Oliver had stolen her soldiers. Oliver had stolen the soldiers and no one would believe it. Stop shrieking, her father said, you sound like a little girl. And Oliver was laughing at her, standing next to her father and laughing at her as she cried because she was a little girl.

Zach’s eyes jerked open. His heart was pounding. He sat up. The apartment was almost dark. The dark was spinning around him. There was noise outside. Voices, coming in through the window, coming up from the street. Were the police here? Jesus! What time was it? Had he overslept again? Where the hell was Oliver? He felt nauseous as the dark went round and round.

“You awake?”

“Hanh!” Zach cried out as the voice came out of the shadows. He turned and saw the shadowy figure there.

“I’m sorry.” It was a woman’s voice, thin but very warm. “Did I wake you up?”

A light snapped on. The standing lamp, rising out of the books on the floor. Zach squinted in its sudden glare. Slowly, the room began to settle down. “What time?” he said.

“Half past six, I think. I was trying to be so quiet. I didn’t want to wake you up. I’m really sorry.”

“No. No. It’s all right.” Zach brought his hand to his head. Massaged his brow. Oliver. “Where’s … where’s Ollie? Is he here?”

“No. I was sure he’d be back by now. I just came down to see if I could make you guys some dinner.”

“Dinner …” Zach stared at the floor.

“Ollie said your stomach was upset, so I made some chicken soup with rice.”

The hammering of Zach’s heart was now beginning to subside. He ran his hands up over his short hair. The room was still. He could look up, get his bearings. There was the dresser. The kitchenette. The books everywhere. Half past six. Still time, he thought. Still plenty of time.

Finally then, letting out another breath, he turned to look at the woman. She was standing in the middle of the room. She was small with a pert, pretty face. Big glasses with square frames. Short dirty-blonde hair curling around her ears. She had a slim, cute figure in her white sweater and jeans and …

Zachary’s breath stopped short. He stared at her. His lips parted.

She was holding the sweater.

She was holding it in both hands. Oliver’s sweater—the one he’d just stained with the woman’s blood. Was this another dream? She had it draped over one hand and was holding out the stained sleeve in the other. She was looking at Zach, but she was absently rubbing the bloodstain between her forefinger and her thumb.

Zach shook his head. He must be dreaming. He must still be dreaming.

But then the woman smiled, very naturally. “Hi, by the way,” she said, “I’m Avis Best from upstairs. I was just straightening up a little.”

It could be anyone, Nancy thought.

On hands and knees, she climbed across the bed. She reached out to the light switch from beneath the canopy. Flipped it down. The room—her room—snapped back into the dusk shadows.

She could hear the newcomers in the foyer, talking low. The doorman was sure to have found the broken glass from the door panel by now, she thought. He might have checked his keys and seen which one was missing. He might have come up to check on the apartment. Or he might have phoned the cops. It could be anyone out there.

A light went on in the hall. Nancy rolled back off the bed, away from the door. She heard footsteps. They were coming down the hall, coming toward her. Had she left tracks? Disturbed anything? Would they notice the shower steam in the bathroom? She glanced across the darkened room at the window, the lace curtain dancing in the breeze. There was a ledge out there. The alabaster ledge with the gargoyles under it. She could climb out, try to escape …

She hesitated. What if it was her mother? What if she could see her mother again? She glanced over her shoulder at the closet, its open door. She stepped back. She stepped into the closet. She pulled the door closed only slightly, so she could still see out. She sank back into the wafting dark of soft blouses. The scent of talcum powder. Lingering perfume. She held her breath. The footsteps came closer. The sharp click of a woman’s heels on the wooden floor. A man’s heavy and muffled tread.

And then the man’s voice, just outside the door. “Don’t, Nora. Don’t go in there. Don’t torture yourself.”

Nancy covered her mouth with her hand. Nora. Her mother’s name.

And then the woman’s voice. Heavy. Weary. “Just leave me alone, Tom. Just leave me alone with her for a little while.”

Nancy did not move. They think I’m dead, she thought. She could hear it in their sad, tired voices. They were mourning her. They really believed she was dead. Maybe I am. Her head felt light. She felt like she was floating. Maybe I really am.

Now the woman came into the room. She shut the door behind her. She did not turn on the light. A moment later, she was moving deeper into the room and Nancy could see her dimly. Nancy blinked, trying to keep steady. She peered out through the closet door.

The woman moved about the room slowly. To the dresser first. Looking into the mirror. Lifting her hand to it. Running her fingers lightly over the pictures wedged into the frame. In the darkness, Nancy could only make out the woman’s outline. Her small, plump shape. Her round head. The wedge of her long skirt. The skirt swayed as she moved away from the mirror.

Nancy lifted her other hand to her mouth. She began to cry. Mom?

The woman moved to the bed. She stood at the foot of it, looking down at the quilt under the lacy canopy. She reached down and touched the quilt with her fingers. Slowly, she came around the newel post, trailing her hand wistfully over the wood. She passed right by the closet door, right by Nancy. Nancy pressed both her hands to her mouth tightly. She was crying so hard her whole body shook. The woman in the room sat on the edge of the bed.

Oh, Mom, Nancy thought. I am so sorry.

She could hardly think for weeping—and for the sudden rush of images. The collage of memories—if they were memories—and half impressions and spoken phrases, flashing on and off and overlapping. There was her own angry face. And her mother’s features sagging with hurt and sorrow. And the face of herself as a child. And her mother’s shape at the foot of her bed. The weight of her mother on the end of the bed. The empty hallway. The terrifying dark. Because your father’s gone, because your father fell … Her mother’s lullaby. He fell into … And her own face, her face as it was now, twisted in rage. You leave my friends out of this, Mother. It’s a little late for you to be worried about people’s friends.

Your father fell …

Now, the woman in the dark, sitting at the foot of the bed, began to sing. Very softly. Nancy couldn’t even be sure at first if it was real, if it was only another of the jumbled impressions in her mind. But no. It was true. Very softly, in a whispered croon, she was stroking the coverlet and singing: “Lullaby … and good night … little baby, sleep tight … bright angels up above … will send you …”

And then, on that “you,” the woman faltered. Her hand left the quilt. Rose to her face. She bowed her head. “Oh God,” she said, her voice squeaking with tears. “Oh God, please don’t. Please. Not my little girl.”

Nancy couldn’t stand it anymore. She sobbed. The woman on the bed gave a little gasp and spun around. Aching for her, Nancy stepped out of the closet.

“Mom?” she said.

At first, the woman on the bed didn’t answer. Nancy heard her shuddering breath, saw her hand go to her chest. But she said nothing.

“Mom?” she tried to say again, but she was crying too hard.

“Who’s there? Who is it?”

“It’s me,” Nancy managed, her voice trembling. “It’s me. I’m all right. I’m here.”

“Oh God.” The woman slowly rose from the bed, both hands pressed to her chest now. “Oh God.”

“I’m sick, Mommy,” Nancy heard herself say. She was crying so hard, wanting so much. She reached both hands out toward the older woman. “I’m so sick. I don’t know what’s happening to me. If you could help me … If you could just let me stay here a little while, I don’t know … Talk to me. If you could talk to me. Mama.”

“Who are you?” the woman in the shadows whispered. She moved away. Sidled along the bed toward the wall. “Please. Who are you?”

“It’s me. I’m all right. It’s me.” Nancy took another step toward her, reaching out.

The woman made an inarticulate sound, a little cry of hope, a groan of pain, it was hard to tell which. She was at the head of the bed now. She was pressed up against the end table. The clock glowed red beside her. Her hand went out, trembling, toward the little bedside lamp.

And Nancy kept moving toward her. Crying. Confused. Her hands out. Her mind flashing and melding half memories, half phrases.

Your father fell into …

It should have been me …

You’re not Nancy Kincaid.

Step by step, she moved toward the woman in the shadows. “Please,” she whispered. “I’m sick. Help me. I don’t know where else to go. I don’t have anyone else … I’m sorry. Please …” She choked on her sobs.

“Who …?” The woman fumbled with the bedside lamp. “Oh God. Oh please God.”

“Mom?”

The light flicked on. It cast a pale yellow circle of light around the table. The two women stood in that circle, the older pressed to the wall, the younger reaching out for her. Nancy saw the older woman’s haggard face, the pinched mouth, the down-drawn cheeks, the frightened gray eyes. She knew that face. She recognized it. The face of the picture in her wallet. And yet, even as her hands went out to her, she was uncertain. She felt that floating sensation return. She felt cut adrift, like a spacewalker from his ship, whirling away, the cord severed, the infinite, engulfing black of night … She thought she was going to faint. She reached out. Her fingers brushed the older woman’s soft cheek.

And the woman recoiled, violently. Her arm flew up before her face, knocking Nancy’s hand away. Her pale eyes went wide in horror.

“You!”

Nancy tried to call to her, but her voice was slurred, her mind reeling.

“You!” And the older woman’s fingers bent like claws, her hands rose up alongside her head. “You … you murderer!”

Nancy mouthed the word: Mom?

“Murderer!” the older woman shouted. “What have you done? Look at you. All of you! Murderers!” She struck out wildly, one hand slashing, then the other, driving Nancy back. “Murderer! Murderer!”

“Nora!” It was the man’s voice. Coming from outside the room, from down the hall. “Nora! Are you all right?”

Nancy fell back, her arms up in front of her. Back from the hatred that contorted the woman’s face.

“Murderer!” The woman stalked her. Pressing her back.

“Nora! Jesus!” And there were his footsteps now. Running down the hall outside. Running toward the door.

The woman took another step forward. Nancy fell back another step. The woman’s eyes were white hot, her mouth twisted. “Murderer!”

The door flew open.

Nancy cried out. She was pressed against the wall now, the lace curtains dancing out around her. She covered her ears with her hands.

She could barely hear herself shrieking: “Mother!”

“I mean, look at this sweater,” Avis said. She shrugged shakily; it was almost a shudder. Meeting new men always made her nervous. “I mean I was just … I didn’t want to wake you. I’m from the apartment upstairs, Ollie asked me to come down and see if you were all right, and I was just kind of walking around wondering if I should stay and I noticed … I mean, that ker-azy, crazy brother of yours …” She launched into an imitation of an Ohio housewife on TV. “He cain’t keep this place clean for ten minutes in a row. No. Seriously. I cleaned this whole place up for him just this morning … I mean, I was just doing him a favor cause he had to … um, run out and, anyway, I come back and I just noticed his sweater drawer is all messed up and this one, I don’t know what he did to it, it’s got some kind of stain or something.” Jesus, she thought, stop babbling! You sound like an idiot.

Zachary blinked up at her from Oliver’s mattress. He nodded as she spoke, but he said nothing. He looked like a man who did not know what had hit him. Avis stole glances at his dark, sensitive eyes. His silence made her more jumpy still.

“I wish he’d take better care of his clothes.” She just had to go on. “I mean, it’s not like he’s rich and this sweater, I think your grandmother made it for him, it’s so beautiful, she does such wonderful work, doesn’t she? I’ll take it up and give it a wash tonight, but I think I may have to reknit the end of the sleeve. I wonder if Nana still has the wool, maybe I can match it, I don’t know.” She shrugged again, wishing she could shut up. “Well … As you can see, I’m compulsive.”

Zachary nodded at her another moment. Then he smiled; it rose over him like the sun. That broad, boyish smile she had seen in his photograph. It made him look lost and appealing, like an orphan at the side of the road. Like Dondi, she thought. A good role for David Kory. His baggy, crazy-quilt shirt and his torn jeans added to the effect.

“So …” she said, because these long pauses just made her twitch.

“You sure are nice,” Zach blurted out then. “I mean, wow. All this stuff you do. You sure are much too nice for Ollie, that’s for sure.”

“Oh, much!” Avis laughed and rolled her eyes. She flushed and felt herself relax a little. Zach was nodding up and down, goofy as a puppy dog. Looking down at the sweater in her hands, as if he were afraid to look up and meet her gaze. Here was a man definitely in need of being taken care of, she thought. And, hey, nurture is my life, right? “And while we’re on the subject of how nice I am …”

Zach laughed. “Ye-es?”

“I, uh, made you some soup. Genuine Jewish-mother chicken soup. Vit rrrice, dahlink. Oliver said you weren’t feeling well so … I’ll heat it up for you, okay?”

“Oh no! Oh gee!” He was sitting up on the edge of the bed now, his arms wrapped around his knees. He gave a pained grimace. “That really is really, really nice of you. But the thing is—I’m a vegetarian.”

“Agh!” said Avis.

“I know, I know. But it’s okay.”

“Oh—no it’s not, damn it. I think I knew that.” Avis popped herself on the forehead with the palm of her hand. “I think Ollie told me that and I forgot. Damn it. I must be losing my Jewish-mother touch.”

“No, really. Listen,” Zach said. He pushed himself off the mattress, got to his feet. “Listen. The thing is”—he held both hands before him as if he were shaping the thought in the air—“the thing is: Ollie will probably be back any minute now …”

“You know what I could do?” said Avis—the thought had just come to her. “I could make you a vegetable omelette. Ollie always has enough stuff for an omelette.”

“Listen …”

“No, no, it’s all right.” She was figuring it out. Green peppers. Mushrooms. Cheese. Ollie always had cheese. And she wouldn’t need onions if Zach’s stomach was off. She was laying the sweater down carefully as she thought. Draping it over the Catullus atop a tall stack of books.

Zachary stepped toward her, his hand out as if to stop her. “It’s really too much trouble.” He kicked over a small pile of paperback mysteries.

Avis was already moving away from him. Stepping over books to reach the kitchenette. Plotting out the omelette in her mind. “Are you kidding?” she called back at him. “I mean, you can’t just be a Jewish mother if you’re a Presbyterian from Cleveland. This is how I earn credits.” She moved to the refrigerator, talking over her shoulder. “When I have enough, I send them in and they send me a faded flower-print dress, big breasts, and steel gray hair. Usually I have to practice on Ollie or my …” Baby, she almost said. She was about to make a joke about her baby. But she stopped. She wasn’t sure why.

She pulled open the refrigerator door. She bent over to look in the crisper, aware that she was showing him her backside in her sleek jeans. Well, she had worked hard to get her figure back after the baby came; someone might as well admire it. She picked out plastic bags holding green peppers and mushrooms. She straightened and turned to him, the bags in her fist.

Zachary, she saw, was now standing over the white sweater she had draped atop the books. He had lifted the sleeve in his two hands. He seemed to be examining the stain on the sleeve as she had. When she turned, he glanced up at her quickly. He flashed that big smile again. “Look, I’m really not hungry,” he said. “And the thing is …”

“Sorry. You have to eat something. Otherwise, I cease to exist. I am what you eat. It’s been in Science Times and everything.” She turned back to the counter. She set the veggie bags before her, shaking her head. Why is it, she wondered, that a guy like Randall beat the shit out of you if you didn’t squeeze his orange juice by hand while these Perkins brothers, from whom something seemed to cry out to the very soul of maternity … “Anyway, you know, you have been sick all day,” she heard herself say, with even a slight touch of exasperation. She found the cutting board leaning behind the drainer. “And you’re probably going to need your strength if you have to deal with the police and …” Oops, she thought. She was setting the board on the counter with the bags. Dumb, dumb, dumb, she thought. She glanced at Zach over her shoulder. “Sorry. You probably don’t want to talk about that. I was just … Oh, hey, don’t do that.”

Zach, she found, had taken the stained sweater off the books. He had moved to Ollie’s dresser. He was stuffing the sweater back into the drawer.

“No, leave it, okay?” said Avis. “It needs to be hand washed.”

But Zach didn’t seem to hear her. He pushed the drawer in, leaving it a little ajar, as it was when she found it. He faced her, scratching his head dopily. “Uh … Look … Avis was it? Look, the thing is …”

“Mm-hm?” She had turned instinctively back to her work. Corralling the green pepper bag. Twisting off the wire tie.

“The thing is,” Zachary said behind her, “Oliver should be back any second now. And, uh, I really need to kind of talk to him kind of personally. Okay?”

“Oh, sure. Okay,” Avis said. “No problem. I’ll take off the second he gets here.” She had her hand in the bag. She squeezed first one pepper, then the other. “I’ll probably have to leave soon anyway cause my … cause, uh, I have stuff to do.” And again, she didn’t mention the baby. And why not, psychology fans? Yeah, yeah, she thought; she knew why not, all right. Because if you tell a guy you have a baby right at the beginning, his eyes go sort of flat on you, don’t they? You get one of those pained smiles. Like he’s wondering how soon he can call for a cab. And she just had to have her little fantasy, didn’t she? Her little flirtation. She pressed her lips together, squeezing her peppers. As if she were really going to be ready for another relationship anytime this millennium. And a relationship with a psychological basket case who already had a girlfriend, a drug problem, and a warrant out for his arrest? And a brother she was secretly in love with? Hey, a computer dating service couldn’t have made a better choice.

Self-destructive girl seeks emotional cripple for anguish, co-dependency, and moonlight walks …

Pepper Number One seemed firmer all around. She drew it out and set it on the cutting board. Knife, she thought. Knife, knife, knife. She pulled open the silverware drawer.

She heard Zach’s footstep behind her—and another stack of books falling over. And he might’ve started to say something too, but he stopped. Avis found herself babbling on again in the silence.

“It’s really nice that you guys are so close, you know, you and Oliver. You can talk to each other and everything when there’s trouble like this. I’ve got, like, four sisters and they all still live in Cleveland? We never talk. I go out there for Christmas or something, and it’s like all we say is ‘How’re you? How’s the swim team? How’s … this and that?’ We even joke about it, we call it ‘News of the Day.’ “ She had selected a little steak knife from the drawer. She had lifted it out. But now she spotted the butcher’s knife. A monster of a knife, a horror movie special. In the drainer, wedged down among the dishes she’d washed this morning. “Huh!” she said aloud.

“What,” said Zachary behind her.

“Oh. Nothing. Just this knife I never saw before.” She put the steak knife back in the drawer. Shoved the drawer shut with her hip. “The thing is,” she went on, “to them I’m like this big shot New York movie person, you know, I’m like too far out of their lives at this point to even, you know, comprehend their trials and troubles. I mean, if they only knew …” She reached into the drainer. The dishes rattled as she drew out the big knife. “Look at this. Where the hell did he get this?” she murmured.

“Listen, uh, Avis?” Zach said quickly. “Ollie’s gonna be back any second. Really. And the thing is … Um. Um …” He really sounded a little nervous now.

“It’s okay. Really,” she said over her shoulder. “I promise I’ll do this so fast I’ll be out of here before you know it. It’ll lose some of my customary brilliance but …” She decided to try this monster out. She steadied the green pepper in one hand. Held the butcher knife in the other. “What I was saying, though, is that if they knew this job I had. This reader’s job. I mean, you write these reports.” She let the pepper go then. She had noticed some kind of goo on the edge of the knife’s blade. She reached out and turned on the faucet. Water hissed loudly into the sink. She had to raise her voice to go on. “No one ever reads them. It’s like sending them into a black hole.”

“What are you doing?” Zach said with a little laugh.

“You begin to wonder if you even exist,” Avis called. “There’s just some weird … yuch on this knife. I gotta wash it off.” She lifted a yellow sponge from the sink counter and held it under the running water. “I mean, I sometimes think I’m a daydream in the mind of some movie executive, you know?”

Zach said something, but she didn’t catch it over the hiss of the water. “What?” She examined the blade of the knife in the light. “I swear your Nana spoiled you boys,” she said.

“I said, can I see that for a second?” Zach repeated, more loudly.

She glanced back at him. “What?”

He was standing in the center of the room. Standing as if he were frozen there, surrounded by Ollie’s piles of classics, the pinnacles and steeps. He had his legs akimbo, his hand out to her, one hand. He was smiling eagerly. There was a bright light winking in his black eyes. “The knife,” he said. “Could I just see that knife for one second?”

“Oh,” said Avis, “sure, let me just wash it off.”

“No, I meant before.”

“What?” She squeezed the excess water from the sponge.

“Before you wash it off.”

“Wait, I can’t hear you over the water. Hold on.” Avis brought the sponge to the blade of the butcher knife.

“Could you put the sponge down?” Zach said.

“What? Hold on just a …”

“Would you put the sponge …”

“I just want to …”

“DROP THE FUCKING SPONGE, YOU STUPID BITCH!” Zach screamed.

Avis looked around quickly and saw the gun. She spun then, her back against the counter. Zach was standing straight as a steel rod. He was clasping the pistol clumsily in both hands. Sticking it out at her. Waving it back and forth so that the bore crossed and recrossed her forehead.

Avis gave a bewildered laugh. “Uh, wha …?” she said. The water hissed into the sink behind her. She stared at the gun. “Oh God, Zachary …”

Zachary’s eyes were wide. He waved the pistol at her. “I said drop the sponge, drop the sponge, damn it.”

Avis nodded quickly and dropped the knife. It clattered loudly on the floor.

“The sponge, the fucking sponge!” Zach shouted. “Oh Christ, it doesn’t matter now.”

All the same, she let the yellow sponge fall from her other hand. She heard it squish as it hit the floor. Avis stared into the wavering bore of the gun.

He is a murderer, she thought. She could see it when she glanced up at his wide, bright, frightened eyes. That’s why the police were after him. They were no fools. He really was a killer. “Oh Jesus,” she whispered. “Oh Jesus Christ.” On the instant, she was thinking about the baby. The little lump of him asleep in his crib upstairs, his cheek against the mattress. The thought was like an ice bath. A painful, paralyzing chill over her whole body at once. What would he do without her? “Please,” she said. “Just don’t hurt me, all right?”

“Well, I mean, shit!” said Zach. His cheeks were getting very red, apple red. He looked from side to side once, as if he were trapped, as if he were searching for the way out. “I mean, I’m telling you to get out, I’m telling you to give me the knife. I mean, what the fuck’s the matter with you? What if I have to kill you too now?”

“Please …” Avis couldn’t get the word out of her throat. She knew Zach couldn’t hear it over the hiss of the water. Please, God, she thought, please, Jesus, don’t let him. Don’t let him. Think about the baby, God, my sweet baby … She felt as if her legs would not support her. As if her whole body had gone soft inside.

“Huh?” said Zach, and Avis jumped. “You see what I’m saying?”

“I’ll do anything you want,” she managed to stutter. “Really. Please. Don’t hurt me, don’t kill me, it’s important, I’ll do anything at all …”

Zach’s hands trembled violently. He let go of the gun with his left and ran the palm up over his short hair. “Oh Jesus, it must be close to seven now. Oliver’ll be back any minute,” he said softly, almost to himself. “Now what am I supposed to do?”

“Please,” Avis whispered. Her eyes filled with tears. Please, God. What would happen to her baby? Who would take care of her baby? Please. Please.

“All right,” said Zach. His voice was suddenly like a tinker’s hammer: a finite and decisive sound. Avis looked into his distorted, terrified, and still somehow boyish face. She was unable to speak. Too weak to do anything but pray and wait. She waited, praying, Please, God, please …

And Zach said again: “All right.” And then he said: “We’re going up to your place.”

They were still screaming at her when Nancy threw herself out the window. Her mother was screaming: “Murderer! Murderer!” Her father was screaming: “You! Get out of here! I’m calling the police! I’m reporting this to the police right now!” And in her mind: chaos. Flashes of memory beyond knowing. Faces flashing at her. Half phrases. Evocative, vanishing smells. She had her ears covered with her hands. She was shrieking wildly for her mother. She was watching herself shriek as if from a distance and thinking: This family visit is not going very well. And meanwhile, these two people, the woman and the man, were closing in on her. Stalking her, shoulders hunched, faces jutting at her. Screaming and screaming. And, well, the window happened to be right beside her, already half open. And the lace curtains were rising in a cool fresh evening autumn breeze. And she had to get out …!

She threw the window up, threw it wide. Her mother wailed. Her father cried out, “What are you doing?”

Without thinking, Nancy ducked under the sill. She set her two feet on the thin, alabaster ledge. She stood up, facing the building, holding on to the raised stone around the window recess, clutching it with her nails.

And in that moment, everything became suddenly quiet, suddenly cool. A stream of autumn air trailed along the building’s brickwork. Traffic hushed and grumbled in the distance somewhere, three stories below. The lights of Lexington Avenue ran uptown, brilliant and still in the dark. She tasted the faint tang of exhaust fumes. And heard no voices. No human voices.

Nancy clung to the building. Leaned her face against the cold stone, panting, staring along the brick facade. The stone gargoyles squatted under the ledge on the floor above her. Squatted with their hairy thighs splayed, their horny heads protruding, their arms lifted and their armpits to the world. All gaping grins, all teeth, all saucery eyes …

Whoa! Nancy thought, breathless, clinging to that wall. Whoa-de-yo-do!

“What the hell are you doing?”

The sudden bark of her father’s voice nearly sent her over the edge. She tilted backward. Her hands fluttered off the stone. Then she fell forward. Got her grip again. Her father must have stuck his head out the window, but she couldn’t turn her head to look down at him. She just leaned her cheek on the stone and panted, wide-eyed.

“Did you hear me? What’re you doing?”

What am I doing? Nancy thought. What am I doing? What the fuck are you asking me for?

“I’ve called the police. Do you hear me?” the man barked. “They’re coming now.”

Nancy stared along the face of the building. About ten yards ahead of her it ended, just disappeared. No, wait. There was a small, one-story structure after that. A connecting structure with a flat roof. It linked one wing of the building with another. Oliver, Nancy thought, mouthing the word. Oliver Perkins. I have to be there.

“You might as well come in from there. You’re going to fall,” said her father. If he was her father. Wasn’t her father dead? Didn’t he fall into something and leave her with that empty hallway. Her mother’s lullaby. The scary dark at night.

A horn honked somewhere below. People shouted laughter from a car window. The voices faded as the car whisked past. Nancy lightly thumped her head against the stone, closing her eyes. Oliver, Oliver Perkins, she thought. That was all she knew. Oliver Perkins was going to die. The lonely-eyed poet. With those descriptions of twilight that made her feel sexy and melancholy like a schoolgirl. Someone was going to murder him at eight o’clock. In just about an hour from now.

She had to be there.

She started to sidle along the ledge.

“Wait a minute! Where are you going? What the hell are you doing?”

Don’t know. Don’t know. Don’t know, thought Nancy. She slid her right foot along the narrow edge. Her left foot inched up after her. Her fingertips danced over the rough brick. Clung to the lines of mortar. In the whisper of air around her, in the whisper of traffic that rose and fell below, she heard her own breath. Harsh pants. Huff, huff, huff.

“Goddamn it!” she heard her father yell. And then he must have pulled his head in because his voice grew fainter. She heard him talking to her mother inside. She couldn’t make out the words. She slid forward. Right foot out again. Left foot following. Fingertips like spiders on the brickwork. Huff, huff, huff. Her lips parted. Spittle on her chin, cold in the wind.

“Nancy …”

The harsh sound of her breathing stopped then, stopped cold. She stopped cold on the ledge over Lexington Avenue. Her name.

“Nancy …”

Someone was calling her name!

Her fingernails bit into the mortar lines. Her breasts flattened against the brick. Her sweater buckled around her in the breeze. She cocked her ear.

“Nancy, Nancy …”

It was not her father’s voice. It was too high, too thin. Whispery, like silk sliding over silk. Like breezes in the night forest; something she remembered … Beckoning voices, voices in corridors, voices behind doors …

Afraid, she lifted her head. She had to raise it by increments to keep steady. Bringing her chin up inch by inch. Bringing her eyes up.

“Nancy …”

The gargoyle just above her grinned down. His hands hung before him like an ape’s. His tongue darted out between his gaping lips.

“Nancy,” he whispered.

“Oh …!” She looked down so fast she scraped her cheek on the brick. Her arms and legs had turned to water. She was going to lose her balance. Her heart was beating so hard against the brick that she felt it might knock her off …

But she managed to keep her place there, her eyes closed, her mouth open. Her panting breaths coming again, little cries in them.

“Nancy …”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” she whispered.

She opened her eyes. She braced herself. She began to sidle forward again. More quickly. Toward the end of the wall. Right foot, inch by inch. Left foot after.

“Nancy. Naaaanceeeeee …”

She had reached the next window. Stepped into its recess. Resecured her grip on the decorative stone. She had to stop there, catch her breath. Steady her head. Close her eyes and tell herself: I don’t hear those voices. I do not hear them. I do not.

But she did. Wheedling, airy, ghostly whispers. Beckoning to her. Taunting her. Slipping her name into the wind, blowing it to her like a kiss. And something else now. Another sound. Starting, stopping. Chiggachiggachiggachigga … A sort of scratching noise. Scrabbling. Like a cat clawing for purchase.

I do not … she thought. And then her will broke: She had to look up. She craned her neck recklessly, swiveling her head back and forth until she caught sight of something. Another gargoyle. A horn-headed devil with a cocked eye. But this one was upside down. Showing his ass to heaven. His fingers reaching below him, right over Nancy’s head, clutching the brick. And then, suddenly … he was moving! Like a cockroach on the wall. Scrabbling down over the bricks suddenly. Just a foot or two toward her, closer to her. Pausing there. Grinning at her, bright-eyed. Then—again—chiggachiggachiggachigga—spindly arms and hairy feet quick as an insect’s on the brick. Closer. Scrabbling toward her.

“Hello, Nancy,” he whispered.

Nancy screamed. Twisted her head around even farther. Yes, the other one, the one who had waggled his tongue at her before. He was also upside down now. He was also pausing like a wary bug. And then—quick!—he started crawling down the brick face. Coming at her on the diagonal. Pausing. Lifting his head up to grin and wink.

“Nancy!” And he laughed and stuck out his tongue.

Nancy burst out laughing. Great, just great, she thought. She closed her eyes and giggled. She rested in the window nook, holding on to the stone. Her shoulders shook with laughter. Tears squeezed out from under her lashes and rolled down her cheeks. Simply terrific.

She opened her eyes and saw the others. The ones up ahead. Two more of the white stone creatures angling down at her in fits and starts. Their lancet nails, their simian feet, made that insidious scratching noise on the brick. Their twisted lips shaped her name. Their whispers were in the wind all around her.

This is not, is not happening. You are experiencing an episode of … of weird … gargoylemania … But she had stopped laughing. She was all heartbeat and nausea and tears. The wall was undulating beneath her fingers. She was ready to let herself fall—to throw herself to the street below—just to stop them, just to make them disappear. The bastards. Terrifying her, crawling down at her.

“Nancy. Oh, Nancy.” Calling to her.

She gritted her teeth in defiance. Oliver, she told herself. Oliver Perkins.

The wind lifted a moment. It played at her hair. She forced herself to squint into it. To look forward along the wall toward the place where the wall ended. She could jump down to the connecting building from there, to the flat roof. From there, she could probably climb down to the street. She made an angry noise, shaking her head. Trying to get those giggling whispers out of her ears. The scrabbling of those nails …

But they were getting louder. Closer. She had to move—she had to move right away. She didn’t care if she fell. She hoped she did fall, it would serve the little stone shitheads right. Her right foot darted forward—she really was careless now. Her lead foot was moving again even as her left foot trailed to keep up. Her fingers danced over the brick. Her nipples dragged chillingly, painfully over the stone. Her eyes were tearing in the wind.

And they kept calling her. She could hear them. Their voices were trapped in her head. Their whispers were like tendrils of smoke twisting and coiling around each other. Their scrabbling on the brick seemed so loud to her now it almost drowned out the soft honks and distant rumbles of the cars below on Lexington.

Mewling, she forced herself to keep sliding along the ledge. The end was coming closer: the wall’s sharp corner, the curl of the ledge. She could see the flat roof of the connecting building one story below. The gray asphalt lifted up to her out of the dark. She watched her foot, her sneaker as it stretched out to the curve. And she was there. She was coming around the bend. One hand around the corner now. Her cheek against the sharp edge of the wall. She ignored everything else. The whickering sounds. The high, soft, insinuating voices. She looked down at her sneaker.

And from down there by her foot, there came a deep chuckle. Heh heh heh. A low voice said:

“Nancy.”

And a gargoyle rocketed up at her from underneath the ledge. Its white hand of chipped stone shot into sight and grabbed her ankle. Its wildly grinning face, cracked jaggedly down the center, gaped and gibbered at her. It shrieked with laughter.

Nancy screamed. She clutched her hair in terror. Tried to pull her leg free of the rock-hard clammy grip.

For another second, she seemed to hang there like that, reeling backward on the ledge. And then she lost her footing. Reached out for purchase—but too late. Toppled over, pitched backward.

Tumbled down into the night.

So he was not going to be spared this either. Everything, Zach thought, everything was going to be taken away.

He had the girl—this Avis—pressed against the wall beside the door. Her face flat against the plaster, her arms raised. He noticed the way her hands trembled. The way the shiny nail of her right middle finger just touched a long crack in the plaster. Her red knuckles. The open pores on the back of her hand. The downy white hair just beneath her wrist …

Damn it! he thought.

He shoved the stag-handled pistol into her back hard, making her whimper. He blinked—once, twice—to clear his head of all this garbage, all this stuff. He grabbed the doorknob. Pulled the door open. Peeked out into the corridor. Light bulbs on the wall etched every line of grain on the mahogany balusters …

“All right!” he whispered. “Go.”

“Please,” said the girl. She moved reluctantly, her hands over her head. She was crying now. Clear tearstains on her cheeks, no mascara. Water pooling at the bottom of her big glasses. “Please.”

“Go, would you! Make another noise and I’ll kill you.”

He grabbed her by one slender arm and flung her out into the hall. He went after her quickly, closing the door behind him.

His teeth were gritted, his eyes burned angrily into her back as he marched her to the stairs. He was not going to be spared this, damn her. Damn her! He was going to have to kill her without the drug, without the vision. It was going to be all these details. All this stuff crammed into his eyes. Blood spattering. Whining for mercy. All the beauty of last night ruined. Just ruined. This finally was his punishment from God.

His eyes burned angrily into the back of her hair. Her hair curled above the collar of her sweater. There was a mole on her neck. Her neck looked thin and fragile. She just had to clean up, he thought, she just had to cook for me, had to this, that … Jesus! The idiot. Well, now she knew everything. Now he had no choice. He had to kill her.

The woman sobbed, her body buckling, as he shoved the Colt in her back to force her up the stairs. He grabbed her shoulder, marched her up quickly.

The baby oh God my baby … she thought. She was crying hysterically now. She could hardly see through her fogged glasses. Her mind was swimming. How could he be like this? How could this be happening? She couldn’t think of anything else …

have to think my baby think

Zach was gripping her shoulder hard. It hurt, his fingers digging through her sweater, into her flesh. The steel-hard gun was pressed against her spine. And she felt his hot eyes.

How can he how can he my baby …

He shoved her against the wall outside her apartment. The impact jolted her. She coughed, bent over, helpless with crying. How could anyone be like this, do this?

Think!

“Open it,” said Zach.

“No,” whimpered Avis. But she was already obeying him. Going into her pockets for the keys. And she thought of her baby stirring in the crib. And his first soft cranking noise as he awakened. What would he do? What would he do when he saw the baby? How could this be happening?

Zach snatched the keys from her hand as she brought them out of her pocket. He held the automatic on her—she stared into its bore. He unlocked the door. He glanced furtively up and down die empty hall.

Scream, she thought. Maybe if I just scream …

But he grabbed her shoulder again. Threw her into her own apartment. She stumbled toward the center of the room. She heard the door shut behind her, trapping her inside. Her whole body shook with crying. Zachary snapped the light on.

Avis blinked. She ran her hand under her nose, wiping away the snot. She tried to force down her sobs.

Look! she thought. Look! Think!

She looked around through her tear-fogged lenses. She lifted her eyes to the bare walls. Those white walls with their spiraling water stains. With their plaster cracks like bolts of jagged lightning. The Spartan card table. The canvas chair …

Look! Look!

There was no sign of him! She hadn’t thought of that. There was no sign of the baby anywhere. Every single thing the baby owned was in the nursery and the nursery door was closed. And she hadn’t mentioned him either. Downstairs, when they’d been talking, she hadn’t mentioned the baby once. Zach didn’t even know there was a baby.

Think

If she could keep him out of the nursery, if she could distract him …

think think think!

Oh, if she could think! If she could just think!

Zachary grabbed the canvas chair with one hand. Swung it around into the center of the room. He was squinting. His head was swimming. The room. Every little detail of the room. All the bits and pieces of it … Jesus, they swarmed on him like maggots on a corpse. They crawled into his eyes, they ate at his brain. The walls, the whiteness of the walls. The rectangular window with the blue of evening there. Water stains like fingerprints. Parquet blocks set in puzzle patterns on the floor.

All empty. Why is it all so empty?

He felt dizzy. He couldn’t think. “Sit, sit down …” he said quickly. He jabbed the gun at her urgently. His eyes kept darting from place to place. So empty. He forced himself to look at the girl.

She was backing away from him toward the chair. He really did have to force himself to look. Her face … God, it was in his eyes, it filled his vision. The yellow mucus above her lips. The creases at the corners of her eyes, behind her glasses. Lavender framed glasses. Big pores on her nose. Everything seemed enlarged before him. He could barely look at her. All right, Jesus, please.

He would have sold his soul for one injection of the drug.

“Sit down, would you?” he said. He was really annoyed with her. He was annoyed that he was going to have to kill her and see her face and hear her cries. That she would twist and shake her head and call for her mother, just like the other one did at the end, when she finally realized it was really happening, that there was no escape and she started babbling please mommy mommy mommy … A grown woman. He could not stand to look at it, to hear it. Not without the vision, not without the drug. Damn her. I’m sorry already! his mind cried out to heaven. “Look,” he said aloud, “this isn’t easy for anyone, okay? Just do what I tell you and it’ll work out much better.” Avis nodded quickly, that giant, magnified face going up and down. The square glasses, pooling with tears. The mottled skin. She lowered herself into the chair. Her hands came slowly down. Her fingers fidgeted on her knees.

All right, thought Zach. All right. He had to think this through. It wouldn’t all just fall into place like last time. Last time, after it was over, he had sort of blacked out. Gone into some sort of visionary mode of self-preservation. Drawing the blood with the syringe. Cleaning the knife. Making the phone call: Eight o’clock. You have to be there. It would not be so easy this time. This time, he had to plot out the details. Like where the hell was Ollie? It was practically seven o’clock. Like what if he didn’t fucking come home in time …

You can’t worry about that now, damn it. Just think! Think it through!

He was getting frantic. He couldn’t keep still. He moved deeper into the room, his heart pounding. He kept the gun trained on the woman as he went around behind her. Her head swiveled to watch him. That face—following him. A pimple on one cheek. The ridges in her orange lipstick.

“Don’t hurt me please,” she said. “Okay?”

“Just. Face. Front,” he growled at her. He was trying hard to keep from losing control. “All right? Just face front. I can’t … I don’t …”

Flinching, she turned around. Sniveling. Lifting her shoulders. Crying. He ought to just shoot her. Blow that face into a blank mask of blood. But he had to plan this out, he had to pin this on Oliver too.

Think!

And what if he couldn’t, what if Oliver didn’t come back in time? How could he work it all out now, for Christ’s sake, with all this shit in his head? All this face of hers and everything … He felt like he was going crazy.

“Would you face front pleaser he squealed as Avis stole another glance at him. “Please! Jesus, I’m asking you. I mean, this is hard for me too, you know.”

“Just please …” she said. But she forced herself to turn away from him. “Don’t hurt me.”

Think! he thought.

He was in the kitchenette now. The gun trained on the girl’s back. He had to keep swiveling his head, taking peeks at the kitchen. The white cabinets. Silver sink. Knives—there they were. Hanging from hooks under one of the cabinets. He grabbed hold of a black-handled cook’s knife. Wrestled it from its hook. Moved back into the living room quickly. Turned the blade in the light. Good. He would cut her throat with that. Quiet. Then the neighbors wouldn’t know when it happened.

He wondered what that much blood would look like now. Without the vision. Without the drug.

She wondered what a woman would do in a movie. A heroine in a movie—trapped in a chair with a gun in her back—how would she get out of this?

Think. If I could just …

She strained backward in her chair, both her fists in her teeth. Biting her knuckles. The tears were drying on her cheeks. Her glasses clearing. She was shuddering with every breath. She kept glancing, wide-eyed, across the room, at the door to the nursery.

He’ll check in there. To make sure we’re alone. He’ll check. He’ll find the baby. Think …

Like the girls in the movies.

It’s a good part for Debra Winger.

No, no, no, she thought. Think, think, think!

But these images crowded her mind. Of sharp-eyed brunettes with their hands tied. Of open-mouthed blondes running down hallways. She read these books all day. These screenplays, treatments for would-be films. All these resourceful women, these smart heroines, thinking, always thinking …

And here she was … and what fear had done to her, what it did to you really! She just felt sapped of will. All dazed, trembly and passive as a piece of paper. Her mind was full of static and half images. Why didn’t somebody come? Somebody had to come. Ollie would come. God would bring Ollie. She imagined God: a sort of St. Bernard made of wind, whooshing off to get Ollie. He would come through the door now! Now! He would save her. This couldn’t happen.

Avis! Think!

She kept staring at the nursery door. Biting her knuckles. Turning to catch quick glances of Zach. Where was he? At the window now. Perched on the windowsill. Peering out the window. Then back at her.

“Face front. Goddamn it,” he whined at her. “You’re making everything harder on me.”

She faced front, trembling. Looked at the nursery door. Thought of the baby in there. Turning his head on the mattress maybe. Sleeping under the elephant mobile. Working his lips as if sucking her breast. Starting to wake up. That first soft crank. She had hung over the crib rail sometimes, watching him. Watching him wake up slowly to find her there. To smile up at her his big hello baby grin.

Oh God. Oh God please. Let him sleep. Let him stay asleep. Ollie would come before he woke up. Ollie would have to come. God would not let Ollie not come to save them, to save the baby. If the baby could just stay asleep till then. If she could just stay alive …

Avis glanced around quickly. Zach was still at the window. Peering out. His lips working, as if he were talking to himself. He glanced at her angrily and she faced front at once. Trembling. Looking at the nursery door. She wanted to talk. She wanted to plead with him to let her be. To …

Stall him!

That’s what they’d do in the movies, she thought. Stall him. Distract him till the hero showed up …

Her lips parted. But no words came. Her mind was blank. Heavy. As if it were too much of an effort for her to make words. She felt she had no will to speak, to think. There was only fear. She was only a piece of thin paper. Just trembling, just sitting there …

Zach glanced out the window, looking for Ollie. The little lane was crowded now. Demons under street lamps, their tails curling behind them. Phantoms in black capes going arm in arm, reflected in the plate-glass window of the café. A man in leather hot pants walked with a man in a blonde wig. They all moved together, a single flow toward Sixth Avenue. Toward the Halloween parade.

And where was Oliver? Zach thought. Where the hell was he? He rubbed his forehead. He couldn’t think. His brain was so cluttered … The burnt wood letters on the café sign … The lampblack under a vampire’s eyes … The white web netting in the part of the blonde wig …

He shook his head. Turned away. Caught the woman in the chair sneaking a glance at him. He saw the blackheads at her nostrils. The pink splotches on her cheeks from crying. It was driving him crazy.

“Look,” he said, getting off the windowsill. “Look. Look. Just face front, okay? I can’t stand it anymore. Just face front.”

She turned around. She let out a sob. Her shoulders sagged. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m just afraid. Are you going to hurt me?”

He looked at her. Flyaway strands of her yellow hair caught the light. Her head was bent forward and her fragile neck was bared. The slope of her shoulders struck him as particularly womanish …

“Do you fuck Oliver?” he asked her. The words came out before he could stop them. He didn’t even think them, he just said them.

The woman’s head came up. “What?”

“Never mind,” said Zachary quickly. He waved his gun hand in front of him, as if to erase the thought. “Nothing, I … It was stupid … I mean, everybody fucks him, right? All the girls just love old Ol.”

“No …” she said. “No. I never … I wouldn’t … Really. I’m serious.”

“Ssh,” he said. He knew she did. They all did. He slipped the pistol into his belt again. He put the knife in his right hand. All the girls just loved that crazy old Oliver. He started walking toward her.

He might as well get it over with, he thought. He might as well do it now. He couldn’t stand that face of hers anymore. And the suspense, the anticipation of what would happen when he cut her throat. All right, he thought. All right. It was his punishment. It was his fate. He sighed with resignation as he moved toward her. His stomach was churning. How could you tell, he thought, what was fate and what was your own decision? How could you know the difference between what God demanded and what you wanted? And who was going to clean up all that omelette shit downstairs?

Christ, what if Ollie is back already?

He couldn’t think. He couldn’t think of anything. There was too much clutter. Too much of her stray hairs. The crescent glimpses of her cheek as she tried to steal a glance at him. And now: He saw his own hand. He was reaching out to grab her. He had never noticed before how the blue veins on the back of his hand looked like rivers running from the mountains of his knuckles …

Avis turned in her chair. He saw the lavender frames of glasses. He saw one brown eye. The almond shape.

And then the eye went wide, circular with terror. She had seen the knife.

She gasped. Her hand came up.

“Face front!” he hissed.

“Please!”

“Now! Or I’ll kill you. Face front!”

She did it. She had to. Reluctantly, she turned her back on him. That was better. Much better. He breathed a little easier, although he could still hear her sobby little voice.

“Are you going to kill me now? Are you going to cut me with that? Please don’t, okay? I won’t tell anybody anything. I swear. I swear I won’t.”

He reached out. He felt her hair soft on his fingertips. He was going to grab her hair, pull her head back and plunge the knife into her throat. He could do that. He knew he could do that. His fingers curled around the hair to grab it …

And then something … a noise … somewhere.

Zach looked up. Across the room. The door. Behind that door, there’d been a noise. It sounded like a voice almost. Like a human voice.

Zach stood still, bent over, reaching out. He listened. The sound didn’t come again. But he had heard it. He was sure of it.

Someone was in there!

The baby! Avis felt the strength flow out of her like blood. The baby was waking up! That was his first soft sound. His little head turning on the mattress. His tiny fist rubbing at his eye. The noise went through her like a lance. Pierced her through. All the strength flooded out of her.

Go to sleep, baby! Stay asleep!

By some powerful act of mind, she managed not to turn in her chair. She forced herself not to look at the door.

Stay asleep!

She forced herself not to gasp. She held herself rigid. She faced front, the way he wanted her. She kept her hands down on her knees. Maybe he hadn’t heard …

“What was that?” he said behind her.

“What?” Avis said—she felt as if someone were inside her, doing the talking for her. All she did was move her lips. “Wh-Wh-What was what?”

“That noise. That sound. Didn’t you hear it?”

She allowed herself to turn slightly, to look up at him. He was crouched behind her, the knife in his hand. His eyes, hot and white, were fixed on the nursery door.

“I didn’t hear anything,” Avis whispered.

“Someone’s in there.” He turned on her angrily, his teeth showing. “Is someone in there?”

Avis shook her head. Think! But she couldn’t think. She spoke automatically. “No. In there? That’s my bedroom. I live alone.”

“Damn it!” said Zach. And he started marching to the door.

He went with long strides, his hand reaching for the doorknob even as he moved. The seconds it took him to cross the room seemed longer than forever. Avis stared at him.

Scream. The baby! Scream.

But she opened her mouth and the scream stuck in her throat. If she screamed she would wake him up for sure. That would be the end of it. He would kill them both. She knew it. She had to stop him and she couldn’t think and now he was there. He was at the door. He was reaching for the knob in the long, long quarter-seconds. His hand was on the knob.

Do you fuck Ollie? she thought.

The seconds were almost frozen now, so slow they were almost still. And yet he was turning the knob. She heard the latch clicking. The nursery door was coming open.

All the girls just love him.

“Don’t go in there,” she said. “I do fuck Ollie. I do fuck him.”

“What?” Zachary’s head came around toward her. The moments broke into full speed. It was as if time, like a carny ride, had reached the top of the loop, stopped for an instant, and now swooped down. The nursery door opened a crack. She could see the shapes of a Muppets mobile. Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy. Just their dangling silhouettes through the opening, in the dark.

But Zachary had turned away from them. He was looking back at her with a sidelong glance. His eyes were so white, so wide. His hand, his left hand, slipped from the doorknob. In his right hand, he held the knife. He pointed the knife at her. Its blade glinted in the top light.

Stay asleep, baby, Avis thought. Just stay asleep.

“What did you say?” said Zachary.

“That’s my bedroom,” she blurted out, thinking Stay … “I fuck Ollie in there. Don’t go in there. He says things in there. You shouldn’t go in. He says things about … about you … about, uh … about your penis.”

“What?” He looked at her as if she were crazy.

Avis thought she was crazy too. She didn’t even know what she was saying. She was blabbering without thought, going on instinct. She was thinking, Don’t wake up now, baby. Lull-a-by. Lull-a-by and good night, little baby. And she said, “That’s right. He always says these things, he tells me things about your penis and he fucks me. He fucks me and we laugh about your limp dick, what a girl, he says, what a girl you are in bed …”

The words tasted like dirt in her mouth but she ignored it. She kept talking and she kept thinking, Lull-a-by and good night, little ba-by, sleep ti-ight …

“What a limp dick and he fucks me,” she babbled.

Zach took a step closer to her. He cocked his head. “Are you shitting me? Are you …? What else did he say? Really. I’m just curious. Is this for real?”

“Real?” Avis’s eyes darted to the open nursery door. Kermit and Miss Piggy and Gonzo bear turned softly in a cool breeze in the dark. “Real. Yes. Every day and he fucks me. And we laugh.” Bright angels up above will send you down their love, she thought.

Zachary frowned. He looked like a little boy about to cry. “Goddamn it,” he said. “I knew it. I knew it.” He took another step toward her. “What did he tell you? What else? Did he say anything about Tiffany, about me and Tiffany?”

Avis clung to the wooden frame of her chair. She leaned back, away from him as he came closer. “Tiffany?” she said, her voice cracking. “Tiffany yeah. He told me about her and that was, yeah, we really laughed and he fucked me a lot …”

Zach took another step and he was standing right over her. He was hanging over her like a vulture and yet she was hardly aware of him. Her eyes, fixed on the nursery door, had glazed over. The whole force of her mind was concentrated on keeping her baby asleep. Lull-a-by … The whory words kept pouring out of her.

“I fucked him and his big dick, his big hard dick, you can’t even with that knife but he laughed about Tiffany …”

“All right!” Zach barked suddenly. “Shut up!”

Go to sleep, go to sleep … Little baby, good night … “You can’t even get it up but he fucks me and he laughs …”

“You bitch! I can’t believe this! Goddamned Oliver! I didn’t ask to live, you know. I didn’t ask him to save me! I’m the one who suffers with it …”

“Laughing fucking dick …”

“Stop it!”

“Laughing at you, girl, girl …”

“Stop!”

“Laughing.”

“Stop!”

He gave a wild cry and leapt at her. The movement brought her from her trance. At the last second, she tried to roll away from him, to roll off the chair. But he got her. He grabbed her hair in his fist. She fell to the floor, her knees cracking on the wood. He ripped her backward, ripped her head back over the chair arm, baring her throat.

Avis bit back her scream. She saw his face looming above her, filling her vision, his eyes black. She heard his hoarse panting and saw the flash of the knife as he lifted it in the air. She clutched at his arm, staring up at him.

Lull-a-by, lull-a-by …

Zach, holding her hair in his fist, hissed down at her in triumph. Just as he had hissed at the woman last night. Just as he had hissed into the glazed eyes of her severed head when finally in his rage he had stuffed it into the toilet. It was the same sound of triumph. They were the same words.

“You’re not alive!” he told her.

Bright angels up above, she thought, will send you down their love!