At the front gate, Lee punched in the directory number to buzz his own house, as if he were a visitor.
"So use your key," said Walter. "You have one, don't you?"
"Sure. I just wanted to let Jen know I'm home." I want to hear her voice, he thought. Somehow that was very important to him just now.
"She probably went out." Walter scraped the soles of his baby crocodile loafers on the jute mat outside the main entrance to the complex. "I talked to her a couple of hours ago, after it went down."
There was no response. Lee gave up on the buzzer and dug in his pocket for the keys. "What happened, Walter?"
"Tip got his head caved in by a carjacker. That's what the police say."
"I mean before. At the meeting." Lee aimed his key at the gate.
"That's what's so ironic," Walter stopped Lee's hand and pushed the gate. It swung open. "Some security."
Someone had failed to pull it shut all the way. The hinges were spring-loaded, but sometimes a resident left it ajar long enough to check the mailboxes. This time there was no one in sight. Lee held the gate for Walter, then locked it firmly behind them.
"I thought it was Dave Edmond's decision."
"It was, till Tip came aboard."
"It's just as well I wasn't there," Lee said flatly. "The way I feel, I would have blown it."
"Jenny thought she did," said Walter, following him through the underpass and along the flagstone path.
"Did she? What did she say?"
"You should have heard her. She laid it on them. The network is full of shit, everything they know is wrong. A speech!"
"That doesn't sound like Jen," said Lee.
The path took them around the pool. "You're damn right it doesn't! Whatever got into her, I say we all need some of that. She read them the fucking riot act. Then she walked out. It was so quiet you could hear everybody's ulcers bleeding."
As they walked the path from one circle of light to another, the wind at their backs, Lee saw the progression of his life stretched out before him: a journey interrupted from time to time by brief bright spots before leading inevitably into darkness again. Darkness was the norm, with the bright moments few and far between and no guarantee that you would ever make it to the next one; and if by some miracle you did, there was the certainty that it would not last. The wind shook the trees, rearranging the leaves into patterns that warned of unknown and undefined dangers. One must stick to the path regardless, he thought. It was the only possible hope.
"So," Lee said, "we go to another network and start over. Fox?"
"Are you kidding? They loved it! Tip and Dave Edmond both! They gave it the green light!"
Now, hearing the news he had waited so long for, Lee should have felt the sweet rush of victory. Instead he felt nothing.
"I talked to Dave an hour ago. He wants Liz to kick off the new season, the Big Event for Sweeps Week. You can't buy publicity like this. 'Producer of axe-murder telefilm found hacked to death!' It's the best thing that could have happened. Except for poor old Tip, of course…"
So there it is, Lee thought. One minute everything is lost. The next minute…
"The trades will splash it all over the front page in the morning," Walter continued. "When they call, you have no statement, except for what a horrible, senseless act it was, blah blah. A couple of days from now, get ready for the interviews. I'll arrange everything. You'll be on A Current Affair, E! Entertainment…Jenny, too, if she wants."
Lee raised his hand, holding Walter off. "That's enough. I don't like it. Jenny won't, either. There's a limit."
"How do you mean?"
"Have you ever lost anyone, Walter?"
"What kind of a question is that? You have my sympathy—absolutely. But now it's time to get with the program. Ride this out and you can parlay it into your own production company, first-run indie syndication, 'created by' credits…"
Lee walked on, leaving Walter alone and babbling to the trees that whipped violently now as the wind gained strength. A fogbank blew across the moon, masking its light. Somewhere a dog was barking, not blocks away this time but nearby. The residents were not allowed pets. Paulino had said something about dogs finding a way into the grounds, going for the garbage. But tonight the garbage was already outside the fence.
Suddenly the barking changed into a yowl.
"What's the matter with that mutt?" said Walter, catching up.
"He's in pain," said Lee.
It was true. The yowl rose in pitch, then ceased abruptly, cut off. It was very close by.
On the other side of the trees, a door creaked open. Footsteps sharp as pistol shots ran down a suspended stairway.
Then there was a scream.
"What the hell…?" Walter began.
A tree branch broke loose and sailed end-over-end into the lamppost they had just passed. The opaque fixture shattered with a pop and bits of curved glass, frosted white and thin as eggshells, fell around them on the stones. Walter ducked and covered his head, as the rest of the light fixtures on the path went out.
They must be wired in circuit, Lee thought, as they were plunged into darkness.
"Jesus Christ!" yelled Walter. "What— ?"
Lee heard someone crying and left the path. "Over here…"
Through the descending mist he saw the windows of the condos, and the vague, diffused movements of stick figures behind yellow blinds. Was what he had heard the soundtrack of a TV show?
Walter hobbled over, brushing off his expensive slacks. "Great. These are Italian wool."
"Shh."
The wind subsided and the crying became clearer. It was hard to make out but there seemed to be someone squatting down on the walkway in front of the next building, a grainy commotion of some sort in the thick shadows.
Was someone hurt?
As Lee approached, a face looked up at him and he realized that it was a child. The Becker boy, the fifth-grader Jenny had tutored in English last year.
"Philip?"
The face sharpened as the mist fell away and he saw the wide eyes and quivering chin.
"What's wrong, Philip?"
"It's Pokey!"
Lee had no idea who Pokey was, but he guessed that the Beckers had broken the rules by bringing an animal into their unit. They had certainly succeeded in keeping it out of sight until now.
"What happened?"
"Somebody hurted him!"
Mrs. Becker came down the stairs in a flowered housecoat, her arms out as if for balance.
"Philip! Are you all right?"
Lee knelt and reached with Philip to the shadowy mass on the sidewalk. He felt the dog's belly jerking, panting for air, then Philip's tiny hand moving against his, stroking the fur. The boy's fingers were wet.
"That thing! I told you not to feed him!" Mrs. Becker bent over the boy, grasping his shoulders roughly, dragging him to his feet. Philip resisted, crying louder.
"Does somebody have a flashlight?"
"Who's there?"
"It's Lee Marlow. Do you have—?"
"Joseph, come quick!"
Mr. Becker jiggled downstairs in his undershirt.
"Here. Use this." Walter flicked a slender, gold Dunhill lighter.
Lee took it and looked at the dog.
The animal lay on its side, in the middle of a dark spot. When Lee moved the lighter the spot remained; it was not a shadow. The boy combed his fingers through the black labrador's short hair where it was matted around the collar. The hand came away covered with blood.
The boy wailed.
"Come!" said Mrs. Becker. She tried unsuccessfully to drag him away.
"Call a vet," said Lee.
"Tm not paying for no vet!" said Mr. Becker. "It ain't ours!"
Lee twisted the collar, looking for a tag, but there was none. Under the orange teardrop flame the dog's head lolled at an unnatural angle as he placed his fingers under the neck. The back of the neck opened like a pink mouth, revealing a cut that had almost severed the dog's head from its body.
"Forget the vet," Lee told them. "Take the boy inside."
The dog's sides spasmed, then did not move again.
Mr. Becker hauled off and struck the boy across the head. "I told you to leave that goddamn fleabag alone! Didn't I? Didn't I?"
"Now," Lee said.
"What are you doing?" said Walter.
Lee picked up the dog in his arms and carried it toward the apartment as the wind keened again through the trees. At the Beckers' door, he set the dog down on the welcome mat, under the porch light.
As Mrs. Becker hustled the boy indoors, Lee got a better look at the dog.
The cut was unmistakable. The animal had suffered a single powerful blow from something like a butcher's cleaver. Even the vertabrae at the top of the spinal column were chopped through; white gristle and spongy bone marrow shone under the oozing blood.
"Must've got in a dog fight," said Becker.
"The kind of animal that did that," Lee told him, "has two legs."
"No way! A coyote, maybe…."
In the front room, Philip was inconsolable. Lee could not bring himself to look in at the boy, at the red, swimming eyes, the contorted mouth, the desolated posture as his mother dragged him by the armpits across the room.
For a chilling moment he felt the depth of the child's loss acutely, knew exactly what Philip was experiencing as he was locked in his room and inside himself. A great sadness hung in the air, rendering it heavy, like a thunderhead pendulant with tears and lightning in search of a target. A part of Lee wanted to get away, as far away as. he could from the death he had carried in his arms, that now lay at his feet; but the stains on his hands and his clothes would remain, a mark that would not easily wash off.
He remembered the old saw about deaths in Hollywood always coming in threes. It was a superstition that seemed to run true to form, as if any death had an attraction for other deaths, a negative charge as real as static electricity. When a celebrity died, reporters watched like vultures for another and another to complete the pattern The greater truth, Lee now realized, was that death could be found everywhere. The pattern was not so simple, except to journalists who sought to complete it for the sake of a story. Each day many people in the industry went to their final rest, most of them not stars and so unnoticed; and beyond this town, in ever-widening circles, hundreds, thousands, millions more deaths in a wave that was unstoppable, each one merely a single point in a schematic too large and too inclusive to know or to bear.
The very earth itself was soaked in blood, and the stain would spread until it dissolved all boundaries. The attention paid to a specific passing, the sadness and regret, the grieving and consoling, was only a way of delaying a confrontation with the larger reality, substituting an illusion of'manageability in the face of absolute powerlessness. It could not be put off forever. Death was the final purpose of everything that lives, the innermost essence of life itself.
Lee touched the dead dog one last time, measuring its dimensions in his hands, a body that had moved and would move no more, that had found its fulfillment and its destiny. He had not known the dog in life except for its howling at the moon from the next block, but he wanted to know it now in its truest, most natural state.
"Oh no, not inside! It's bleeding like a stuck n pig…."
Lee pitied Mr. Becker almost as much as he pitied the boy, who had never before looked death in the face and was at the beginning of a journey of understanding that would take a lifetime. He wiped his hands on his shirt and stood.
"May I use your phone?" he said.
"Who you gonna call now?" said Becker. "Animal Control?"
That's a good idea, thought Lee. "Yes," he said.
"Tell them to get this mess outta here! And tell 'em I ain't payin' for it! They can bill the owner, whoever that is."
"I will," said Lee. "But first, I want to talk to my wife."
To tell her not to be afraid, he thought, no matter what.
Jenny backed away from her front door.
She grappled blindly for the lamp and finally found it
Libby stood there, her hair blowing wild.
"Are you all right, Jen?"
Jen. That was what Lee called her.
"I—I think so."
"Thank God. The way you sounded on the phone…I had second thoughts about leaving you alone. Look at you! You were sitting here in the dark, weren't you?"
"Tm okay." Jenny heard her own voice quavering, about to break. "Lee's still not here. It's been hours."
"Well, stop worrying," Libby said. "We'll get through this."
She heard the cool detachment in Libby's voice. Libby was always in control, her life and her emotions all neatly in place. Maybe it would help to have a friend here, after all.
And yet Jenny wondered about the anxiety in the pit of her stomach, why it was stronger now. The pain pills were beginning to work, but she felt nauseous.
"I just don't know," she said.
"I do."
"How?"
"Have the police contacted you?"
That was what Walter had asked. "Why should they?"
"Well, you were one of the last people to see him alive. Tipper or whatever his name is. Was. With the baseball cap."
"How do you know that?"
"They showed a picture of him on TV." Libby was restless. "How about a drink? You look like you need one."
"That bad, huh?"
"As a matter of fact, you look great. Like the woman in that movie. The fantasy. She played Venus on the Half-Shell."
Jenny retied her robe self-consciously and closed it at the throat. "Lee doesn't keep any liquor in the house."
"What a drag." Libby sloughed off her heavy coat and draped it over the end of the couch; without it she seemed much smaller, less formidable. "A real Type A personality."
"What's that?"
"The type that doesn't know how to relax. Workaholics. Sometimes they get heart attacks, if they're not careful."
"Lee's not a workaholic!"
"Whatever. Nothing personal."
The feeling was getting worse. It was more than the underlay of an anxiety that was almost always with her, the perpetual edginess she had learned to live with. An awareness was dawning inside her. It had been a long time coming. There were still no words for the feeling, but now it was causing her heart to beat dangerously fast.
"There's nothing you can do here," she said. "Really."
"No?" Libby picked up the remote control and aimed it at the TV. "You know what I think? I think you need a friend tonight."
Onscreen, shadows gathered and took on color, sharpening into focus. It was another shot of the Home Show Channel building and the ramp to the underground garage.
"That's where Walter and I parked today," Jenny said. "It could have been either one of us."
"I don't think so."
"Why not?"
"You're too—lucky."
"I don't feel very lucky right now."
"You are. You have someone who watches over you, even when you don't know it."
"A Companion?" Now, at last, Jenny identified the source of the growing unease. "Libby, I want you to tell me again what Rose said."
"I told you, I don't recall her exact words."
Libby tapped the remote control, bringing the sound up in small steps until they could hear the reporter's words. The police had made no arrests yet and there were no clues, except that the victim was killed with a sharp, heavy instrument.
"'The blade,' " Jenny said, remembering now. "'The blade that falls.' Libby, what did that mean?"
"You'll have to ask Rose."
"Tm not asking Rose. I'm asking you. Why don't you want to talk about it? You're my friend, aren't you?"
"You know that. But Rose is the channel."
"Then call her." The phone was no longer on the table. She ran to the kitchen, snatched it from the wall and returned. She stood in front of the couch and held it out, moving the switch to ON.
"What..?"
"I want to know!"
"You don't need that. Rose is already here."
Jenny backed away, the red LED on the handset glowing like a warning light.
"She'll always be with you now," Libby said. "We all will. The Sisters are here to help."
Jenny did not like the sound of that. "What are you saying?"
"I told you, I don't understand it, either. But—"
"Don't you? Libby, what do you know about what happened today?"
"I was with you, remember? Jenny, who am I?"
Jenny met her eyes. They were turned up at the corners, perpetually amused, the eyes of one who refused to take life too seriously, the perfect balance for Jenny's own insecurities. This was the same person who had helped her through the rough spots, after Rob left and later, when she met Lee and thought she was falling in love and was terrified. It was Libby who had stayed on the phone with her for hours night after night, seeing her through it, the one who was always there for her. Husbands and lovers had come and gone, but her friend remained.
"You're my friend," said Jenny.
"That's right. And I can see that you need to get out of here. You're starting to fester, Jenny. This whole house is. I can smell it. Your life here, and all that goes with it. Your mind is caught in a tape-loop. You've got to break the sequence."
"I can't. I have to wait for Lee."
"I'll bet you haven't eaten since this afternoon."
"I'm not hungry."
"Because you're trapped here in Misery Central! Look, tomorrow you're going to have to deal with reporters, the whole bit. The police, too—maybe tonight. You don't want to be here for that, do you?"
"I have to be here for Lee."
"Well, he's not here, is he?" Libby grabbed her coat. "Get dressed. We'll split a Chinese chicken salad at Hampton's."
"Well…"
"'Then at least take a walk with me. Anything, before it's too late. Come on."
Jenny went upstairs as if sleepwalking, as if she no longer had a will of her own. It was easier this way. She was definitely not accomplishing anything by staying here. She pulled on a sweater, jeans and socks and toed into her tennis shoes.
As they left, Jenny felt a combination of guilt and release. Just for a while, she thought. That's all right, isn't it? I guess I have to eat. Even if I'm not hungry….
On the sidewalk, she heard a chirping ring from inside the house.
"The phone," she said, starting back.
"What phone? I don't hear anything."
"It could be Lee…."
Libby caught her elbow and led her away, as if she were a child.
"It's the wind."
"Are you sure?"
"Listen."
It swished in the trees and whistled down the buildings, moaning in the hollows of stairwells and doorways, rattling screens and stirring leaves into a frenzy.
"Let's get gone," Libby said. "This place gives me the creeps."