16

She came into the room, covered with snow, holding the bottle of wine in one hand, something white in the other. She was raucously alive, filling the dim living room with her presence. She took her knit cap off and shook out her hair. Parrish, just awakened, sweaty and unsettled, blinked at her and tried to field just one thought from the confusion.

“Is your wife here?” she asked. “If she is, you should ask her to leave. We have to talk privately.”

Parrish shook his head. “She left. She’s gone.”

Anna looked around the room. “I guess your wife is in charge of decorating.”

“Yes.”

“This is a big house, a mansion, I guess. Are you surprised that I knew where you lived?”

No, Anna, nothing about you surprises me, he thought, but he said nothing, waited.

“Are you going to ask me to sit down or what? You aren’t being a terrific host, you know.”

“Please,” Richard said. “Sit down. Here, on the sofa. I’ll be right back.”

Parrish went upstairs and urinated and washed his face in the sink. He studied his face in the mirror as he combed his hair. His eyes seemed devoid of intelligence. There was a numbness in his features, the flesh sullen and passive. Anna was downstairs. She had been delivered to him, as though all the fates were roaring in unison, “Here she is. Now what are you going to do about it?”

He had to act. Damn the drinking. He wasn’t awake. He opened the medicine cabinet, found the pills, swallowed two with water from the tap. Speed kills, he thought. He promised himself it wouldn’t become a habit.

As he walked back down the stairs, he imagined he was already feeling the amphetamine sharpening of focus.

She was sitting primly on the sofa. Her wet coat was thrown over the back of the sofa, and melting snow was leaking into the plush fabric. Jane would have fainted. Richard walked over to the coat, picked it up, and said, “I’ll just hang this in the kitchen.”

Returning from the kitchen, he said, “It’s good to see you, Anna. I was worried about you. And I’m sure your friends are worried about you tonight, out alone in this terrible weather.”

Anna smiled. “They don’t know I’m here. Nobody knows I’m here.”

A gift, Richard thought. It was as though, in breaking his chains, in burning his diaries, he had invoked the awesome powers of the gods of action. He had offered a sacrifice, and this was his reward.

But Anna was still talking. “You weren’t worried about me, Richard. I know that now. I’ve had a lot of time to think. If you really loved me, you would have known I wasn’t dead all those years. You would have felt it in your soul; you would have heard my heart beating in your ears.”

Richard sank into an armchair facing the sofa. He smiled at Anna. She was so beautiful. Anyone might have been led astray. The cold had reddened her cheeks, and her full lips retained the pouty sensuality of a young girl. Her eyes were the brightest thing in the room. He wanted her, felt the need for her warm and waken him.

“The worst thing,” Anna continued, “was our baby.” Her voice trembled; her thoughts had led her into violent emotions. “You didn’t care about our baby. You didn’t care that our baby was alone, frightened.”

“There is no baby,” Parrish said, and he was surprised at the softness in his voice. It angered him, this softness, as though, after all she had done, he would still seek to comfort her.

Anna said, “You don’t even know his name, do you?”

“What?” The girl was losing him, talking nonsense.

“The baby’s name is David. After a friend, a true friend. The baby can’t come over to this side. He’s frightened and confused and sometimes I hear him crying at night. He needs us, Richard.”

Parrish shook his head. Such a beauty, housing such a ravaged mind. And this girl had once been capable of overturning his career … it was unthinkable, impossible. “You’re not well,” Parrish said. “Come back to the hospital.”

Anna shook her head. “No. The hospital was bad for me. You should have seen that, but you didn’t care.”

“You need help.”

“I love you,” Anna said. “It doesn’t matter what I think about it, there it is—I love you. That love was created before I was born. It was sewn inside of me by angels. I can’t rip it out.” She was talking very rapidly now, licking her lips as she spoke, her hands moving around, touching her knees, darting away. “So I came here. They would all be mad if they knew I was here, but that won’t matter. Their anger isn’t important. I brought this bottle of wine. It is a rare wine, for special occasions. This is a very special occasion, Richard.”

“Come here,” Parrish said. He still loved her, here at the end of everything. He stood up. “It’s been too long,” he said. He reached for her, caught her shoulders and pulled her forward. On his knees, he kissed her rich mouth.

She pushed him away. “No, Richard. That is over with us.”

Yes, Anna. All over. He yanked her down from the sofa. She hadn’t been expecting that. Her head snapped back and he spun her down, falling on top of her. They wrestled on the floor. “Stop it!” she screamed.

But she didn’t want him to stop. She liked it rough.

He took her on the living room floor, his mind free and easy and full of effortless power. Secrets bloomed within him. What would his wife think if she were to suddenly return, hot for reconciliation? The thought filled him with passionate laughter.

He came quickly, his breath ragged and magnified in his head. He crouched naked next to her and looked at the room, strewn with her cast-off clothes. They might have been the center of an explosion—a molten, deadly center.

She was looking at him with those large, serious, nocturnal eyes. It was a look of expectancy, that goddam demanding, hero-hungry look that females got. Parrish felt an urge to crush the false softness in her, to hit her until that innocence fled and the true, ruthless self erupted from the softness, showed its gleaming death’s head as it came for him. He was a match for the bitch.

He hugged his knees and stared at her. She smiled up at him. She seemed to be floating on the pale sea of her nakedness. He reached down and cupped her breasts.

He lifted her up and carried her up the stairs. He eased her onto the great bed, on top of the sheets, and then he fell upon her, ravenous again. Now they were engaged in a slow dance, something they might have rehearsed, turning in animal agreement, fast, now slow again. Parrish felt alert, aware of the room and the snow at the window, pervaded by a deep, omnipotent calm.

He entered her from behind, gazing beyond the sleek curve of her spine to the cold, steadfast snow, and, with no feeling of incongruity, indeed, with a sense of perfect timing, the way of her death was revealed to him.

Parrish climaxed again, leaned over her and hugged her shoulders.

He went into the bathroom, to the adjoining room. He tiptoed down the stairs and into his study where he quickly found what he wanted. He filled the syringe with a fast-acting sedative and hurried back upstairs. Even as he acted, his mind moved, refined the inspiration. Sedate her. He could pull the truck into the garage, cut up a garden hose. Still later, he could take the truck to some convenient location, drive it into a snowdrift, leave Anna, and walk home, confident that the falling snow would eradicate any traces of a second person.

He paused in the bathroom and put the syringe on the sink beside him. He was thirsty again and he leaned under the tap and gulped water.

He picked the hypodermic up and pushed the bathroom door open. Anna still lay on the bed, on her stomach. He entered the room quietly and walked to the edge of the bed.

“Richard?” she murmured, turning over.

He reached for her.

She spun around, her eyes fixed on the needle in his hand. “No, Richard. No!” she screamed.

She fought with frenzied strength, surprising him. He was forced to drag her off the bed and set the needle on the night table while he subdued her. He was careful not to hit her. Then, with his knees on her chest, he was able to retrieve the needle and plunge it into her left arm. She ceased struggling and glared at him.

He held her tightly. Silently, they stared at each other. Then her eyelids drooped and her body loosened, resigned to unconsciousness. He wondered what she had been thinking. Probably pissed. A giggle escaped his lips. He stood up. His arms ached and his legs felt weak and unreliable.

But he had much to do, no time for weakness.

He stood up and staggered downstairs. He gathered his clothes in the living room and dressed quickly. Then he gathered Anna’s. He cursed her as he sought a missing sock, finally finding it wedged behind a sofa leg. “Damn it,” he muttered. “Goddam you Anna.” But he found the sock and admitted that, in all fairness, it wasn’t Anna’s fault the sock had slid under the sofa. He couldn’t blame her for that.

He went back upstairs and dressed her. It was hard work, dressing an unconscious person, and he found himself cursing her again. He apologized. “I know it’s not your fault,” he said. When he was finished dressing her, he stepped back. She looked sort of unkempt. Well, an evening spent tossing and turning in a truck before finally falling asleep was going to make a girl somewhat disheveled, now wasn’t it?

He took the truck keys from her pocket, put on his coat, and went outside. The snow was still coming down, gathering reassuring momentum. The nearest house was two hundred yards away, and while someone might have been able to see him in broad daylight, he was certainly unobserved now.

He pulled the truck into the garage, got out and closed the garage door. Leaving the truck’s motor running, he went to fetch Anna.