FOURTEEN

It was dark and drizzling by the time the cab driver dropped Theresa and her luggage at the curb in front of Abby’s house. The driver slammed the trunk closed, pocketed his fare, and before she knew it she was standing there alone staring at the shimmering red of his taillights as they turned the corner. One of her suitcases was resting in a puddle.

“Thanks, dick head.” She got a grip and started lugging toward the front door. If she was twenty with big tits and a skirt to her crotch, the driver would have hauled them up the steps with his tongue hanging out. To Theresa, men were all the same: interchangeable assholes. It was just that she couldn’t live without them.

She trudged across the wet grass toward the small dark house with its shuttered windows and overgrown lawn. There was something not quite right with the scene she was seeing. It took her a moment, then it dawned: the front porch light was out. She remembered that Abby had made a point of mentioning it. She’d flipped it on when they left for Seattle to get Charlie’s credit card. Abby never liked to come home to a dark house. The bulb must have burned out.

She was soaked by the time she reached the porch, her coat flapping in the wind. Once under the cover of the small portico, she took the time to stop and look. There were a few cars parked on the street, but she didn’t see Joey’s truck. She figured it was safe.

She fumbled with her key in the front door. In the dark it was hard to find the right one and get it in the keyhole. When she finally did, it turned, and the door swung open.

It was pitch black inside. Terry hesitated. For an instant, she thought she saw something move at the far end of the hall. She strained her eyes and tried to cut through the dense blackness. Nothing. Must have been her imagination. Ever since the motel at the airport her nerves were frayed. There was something wild in Joey’s eyes that night, something even in his most violent moments she had never seen before, and it scared her. Theresa sensed that if Abby had not been there to stop him that night, Joey would have killed her.

She moved inside the door lugging the two heavy suitcases. She tried to get beyond the entry in order to close the door behind her. With both hands full she had no chance when her feet hit an immovable object. She went down hard on the wooden floor. Something sharp cut deeply into her knee. She felt a searing pain and lay there shaking as the cold wind from the open door blew up her skirt. Crumpled on the floor she bent to examine her knee, her feet toward the open door. It was then that she saw it: the motion of a shadow on the porch behind her.

It was a late-night session on the speaker phones juggling the numbers, Bertoli at his end, Salzman for the studio in L.A.

Bertoli had made a name for himself not because the books he picked were all successful but because he had a knack for making people remember his successes and forget his failures.

Bertoli already had his people brainstorming. “The thing with the booksellers convention,” he told Salzman. “We got an angle. If you can get your network to do a piece on one of their magazine shows to include a segment on books and how they’re sold.” The studio was part of a conglomerate that owned a television network.

“Not bad,” said Salzman. “Maybe we do something like Forty-eight Hours with cameras following our author. We could get it to air the week the book hits the stores,” said Salzman. It was a glimpse of the corporate octopus scratching its own back. Both Bertoli and the studio were heavily invested in the book, but Bertoli wanted to control the early publicity to the greater glory of the book. The studio could worry about their film later. The question was how much Bertoli could get them to pony up.

“We do television,” said Bertoli. “Fifteen- and thirty-second spots in major markets.” The ads would not be long, but they would saturate the airwaves in an opening blitz to drive the book onto the bestsellers list. Then they would pace themselves, clustering ads when the book started to slip to keep it in the public eye and on the list.

“National print ads in New York and L.A., PW, Entertainment Weekly, People, maybe Time and Newsweek,” said Bertoli. “Not once, but maybe eight or ten times. We’ll do teasers in some of the smaller papers. We hit the two coasts hard, and we do a TV satellite tour. On the day of publication we do insertions, the first two chapters into selected home editions of the New York and LA. Times.” What he was talking about was hitting the opinion makers where they lived to create a buzz. It didn’t matter if they read it, only that they talked about it falling out of their morning papers.

It was a pie-in-the-sky campaign. Why not? As far as Bertoli was concerned, L.A. was paying.

Salzman whistled. “That’s gonna cost a fortune.”

“I figured you guys for a million,” said Bertoli.

“A million!” Salzman was screaming on the other end.

Bertoli reminded him what would happen if the book fell flat. There would be no film. Besides, the studio was getting by cheap. It was going to cost the studio twenty million just to get the star to put his big toe on the set. By Hollywood standards, the book promotion was chump change.

“That reminds me,” said Bertoli. “Can we use his name? A major motion picture starring . . .”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know? I thought he was committed?”

“To these people, commitment is an endless courtship. He’s a star.”

“So?”

“So they want to be perpetually wooed. The minute they sign on, all the noses in the Western Hemisphere pull out of their assholes. So why sign?”

They thought for a moment, then Salzman spoke. “Whadda you want to do?”

“We’ll use his name, but you don’t know about it.”

“He’ll sue the shit out of you.”

“Not if it works.”

“And if it doesn’t?” said Salzman.

“If it doesn’t, you and I are gonna be looking for work. What fool sues the unemployed?”

Theresa exploded in a string of expletives when she saw the cat center itself in the doorway out on the porch. Its long moving shadow cast by the streetlights took five years off her life.

It meowed in the open doorway, begging, a plaintive cry about the foul weather.

Theresa let go a huge sigh and started to scratch. She looked at the mangy thing. “Go. Scat.”

The cat took one look, then moved before she could, slipped through the door, and into the darkness down the hall.

“Shit.”

She reached down with her hand and touched what felt like broken glass. Her knee was bleeding, a jagged edge embedded in it.

She rubbed her fingertips gently over the area and the piece of glass came out. She thought she got most of it. In the dark, she couldn’t tell, but there was a warm trickle down her leg to her ankle. She didn’t dare crawl. Carefully she got to her feet, one knee bent a little in pain. Then an inch at a time, sliding her shoes on the floor, first one foot then the other, she made it to the wall. Using her hands, she felt around until she found the light switch, flipped it on. Nothing.

She shuffled with her feet down the dark hallway, the cat meowing ahead of her, a feline procession. At one point, it rubbed up against her leg and Theresa kicked at it hard. It wailed and slid halfway down the hall on the hardwood floor like a fluffy hockey puck.

Theresa left the front door open. She could feel the steady breeze down the hall. For some reason it was a source of strength, the open door, an avenue of retreat if she needed it.

Every few steps she was interrupted by objects on the floor until her feet felt like two ice-breakers moving through a heavy flow. Someone had trashed the place, and Theresa knew who. She was wondering how she would tell Abby.

A few more steps and she was in the kitchen. There was a strong foul odor here and in the dark it took Theresa a moment to place it: rotting produce like a garbage dump. To the cat it was the smell of opportunity. It disappeared.

Theresa found a broom. “Here kitty.”

A light from the house next door filtered through a window over the sink, and as her eyes adjusted Theresa could see the extent of the damage. There wasn’t a dish or a glass left that was not in pieces on the floor. Cabinet doors were pulled off their hinges and scattered. The drawers were all pulled out and dumped on the floor. The refrigerator was open, its light either smashed or out, and the contents spilled in a gooey mess. She stepped in what must have been juice. Her shoes clung to the floor like suction cups.

She felt inside the cupboard for the flashlight that wasn’t there, then looked on the floor but didn’t see it. Theresa tried the light switch on the wall. She knew it was no use. She was right. In the light from next door, she could see that the overhead fixture was still in one piece. It was the only thing in the room Joey had missed. He must have pulled the fuses or damaged the service box. But he’d also screwed up.

There on the floor on top of a pile of refuse was the box of spares, screw-in fuses for the ancient system. She picked it up and carefully stepped over the trash, around the overturned kitchen table. The place had a look of rage about it, like some crazed animal had gone on a rampage.

She kicked a few things out of the way, and the cat scurried out in front of her again. She almost threw the box of fuses at it but stopped herself.

She made her way across the kitchen, and opened the door to the basement. The stairs down were pitch black. She flipped the switch on at the head of the stairs. Sure enough, Joey got them all. She looked back one more time toward the kitchen in hopes that maybe she would see the flashlight or at least a box of matches, anything to light her way down the staircase. There was nothing. She stepped down into the black void, a few more steps, clinging onto the hand railing. She was halfway to the bottom when she looked back and saw the silhouette of the cat staring down at her from the top step.

She felt with her feet as she went, counting the steps. At twelve she hit the landing. She felt her way around the turn and it hit her. There, she could see something, a glow like a red beacon. Theresa froze. At first she thought it was a cigarette. She stared in stark silence for a moment. But it didn’t move, and the glow was steady. She couldn’t tell how far away it was. She reached out to touch it. In the pitch darkness, with nothing else but the beam of red light, there was no sense of depth.

Then she realized, took a deep breath. It was the tiny light on the lid to the old chest freezer. Joey hadn’t gotten all the fuses after all. It didn’t illuminate the basement, but still it was a comforting glow.

She felt her way along the concrete wall, and then down again, another smaller flight of stairs. Finally she reached the cement floor of the basement.

Now that she was around the turn in the stairs she couldn’t even see the scant light from the open door to the kitchen up top. The electrical service box was mounted somewhere on the wall of the basement near a small wooden workbench. She’d helped Abby change a fuse during a lightning storm a few months earlier.

She felt with her hands, iron tools, a saw hanging on a nail over the bench. She was close. She moved along the bench, ran into the vise bolted to the edge and it drove into her side. Theresa groaned.

She rubbed her ribs, then suddenly felt something press against her leg. She jumped to one side, threw herself against the edge of the workbench, and felt it again. The cat meowed.

“Son of a bitch.” Her heart was pounding. She lashed out with her foot but missed the cat. They could see in the dark. Or was that a wives’ tale?

She worked her way to the center of the workbench one more time, leaned over and felt a sharp metal edge with her fingers, a corner. Maybe it was just another tool. Then she felt the small hinged door. She’d found it. It was open.

Blind in the darkness she was afraid to feel inside the box with her hands. She couldn’t quite reach. If Joey had removed fuses, her fingers might find an empty socket. Knowing Joey, it was probably what he had in mind.

She felt along the top of the bench. It was clear. Carefully she put one knee onto it and boosted herself up. She opened the box of fuses and removed one. Then, using it like a probe, she found an empty hole and screwed it in. A solid stream of light flickered on somewhere above. It wasn’t much, but now she could see the gray outline of the box.

She grabbed another fuse and threaded it in.

The phone rang. She could hear it up in the kitchen. She had just found another empty socket.

Second ring. Third ring. Theresa wondered why the answering machine didn’t pick up. Then she realized its fuse must still be out.

The door above at the head of the stairs suddenly slammed closed.

Plunged into darkness, the noise of the slamming door echoed through the empty basement, the ringing phone upstairs. She nearly fell off the bench. Theresa was shaking, terrified. For an instant, before all light vanished, she actually thought she saw Joey. Tricks the mind will play.

She knelt stone still on top of the bench for several seconds, her hand glued to the fuse already one full turn into the socket. She listened but heard nothing.

It was the wind. It had to be. She should have closed the front door. She could go back up now and do it, but she was so close. The phone stopped ringing. A few fuses and the lights in the basement would come on.

She turned and it seated out, but nothing. She tried another, still no light in the basement. She picked one more fuse. Now she had to reach to the top of the box on the wall. It was awkward from the wooden workbench. Abby could have done it standing on the floor, but Theresa was several inches shorter. She sprawled with her stomach at the edge of the bench, legs dangling, her feet a few inches off the floor. She seated the fuse in the socket. The cat was at her again rubbing against her feet.

She lashed out kicking, slipped on the wooden bench. The electric flash lit up the basement with an eerie blue glow, the smell of ozone, and the odor of burning flesh.