CHAPTER 3

Our Lord God is like a printer, who sets the letters backwards.

Martin Luther

The door was at street level. There were no steps. Alan put his head into the entry, then walked in, carrying the baby.

There was an inner door, but it too was open, and then a large hall with another open door and a staircase. A small blanket lay in the doorway.

It was like a moment in a dream—the open doors, the silence, the blanket glowing in the light from the street lamp outside.

Boldly Alan walked into the apartment, calling, “Is anyone here?”

There was no response, only a slight humming noise. Light streamed from an inner room. Shifting the baby in his arms, Alan shut the door behind him and walked into the living room. At once he found the source of the humming, a pair of old-fashioned audiocassette recorders lying on a shelf.

He switched them off. The humming stopped. Someone must have been recording from one to the other.

Turning, he looked around the room. “How about it?” he said to the baby. “Is this where you live?”

The baby looked at him solemnly. But it was surely the right place. There was a playpen in the middle of the spacious room, and when Alan went exploring he found a crib in a small bedroom at one side.

The baby’s parents must have mysteriously gone away, leaving all the doors open. The baby had crawled out of the house to seek its fortune in the wide world.

It was squirming again and whimpering. What did it want? Babies had two famous physical needs. You put milk in at one end and changed a diaper at the other. Bravely he took on the diaper problem. In the baby’s room he found a table covered with a flannel blanket. On the floor lay a big package of paper diapers.

Alan lowered the baby to the table and laid it on its back. It began to howl. For the next five minutes he wrestled with the task of disrobing, cleaning and diapering a small heaving animal. Fortunately the shape of the diaper corresponded more or less to the shape of the child, which was, he was interested to observe, a boy.

Next? Wash the boy’s face. Alan took him to the bathroom and mopped at his grubby cheeks with a washcloth. The baby submitted to this indignity with hiccuping sighs, emerging clean and pink. Alan looked at him proudly. Now that he had an investment in this infant’s care, he felt a sense of possessiveness. Bonding, it was called.

He felt possessive too about the empty apartment. For the moment it was Alan Starr’s own pleasant Back Bay residence. It was many degrees finer than his own small place on the wrong side of Beacon Hill. There were dark high walls, a ceiling with a molded pattern in the plaster, and large windows looking out on a small brick-walled garden.

The furnishings too were handsomer than his own homely collection of castoffs from his mother’s house in Brunswick, Maine. A harpsichord with a painted sounding board stood beside the playpen. There were bookcases all over one wall, a shining table with Hitchcock chairs, a desk piled high with papers, a yellow sofa beside the fireplace. On the mantel lay an enormous conch shell.

As a desirable dwelling Alan could imagine nothing better. The baby was lucky. His parents must be rich. Apartments on Commonwealth Avenue did not come cheap.

The baby was jiggling restlessly in Alan’s arms, driving down its fat legs, making small unhappy noises. He felt a rush of concern. The poor thing was probably hungry.

“All right, little guy.” He carried the baby into the kitchen and flung open the refrigerator door with a proprietary flourish. On the top shelf he found a baby bottle full of milk, ready to his hand. He had known it would be there. It was almost as if he had put it there himself. He took out the bottle and started for the living room, intending to settle down on the sofa with baby and bottle and decide what to do next.

Only then did he see the stain on the kitchen floor. It was a long streak, as though something had been dragged across the white quarry tiles, leaking a reddish-brown fluid.

Holding the baby carefully, Alan bent down to look. Most of the stain had dried, but there was a puddled place that was still wet, and it was a bright purplish red.

It was blood, decided Alan with dismay. The streak was somebody’s life blood.

“For Christ’s sake, didn’t you hear me kick the door? Where the hell have you been?”

“Asleep! I was asleep! Oh, my God, what’s the matter with her? Here, put her down, put her down. Is she dead? My God, Sonny, what happened?”

“Christ, I don’t know what happened. She fell. Quick, take her feet. Wait till I turn her on her side.”

“Oh, my God, her head! We’ve got to call an ambulance!”

“You can’t call a fucking ambulance. You’ve got to do something. It’s up to you. Shock, right? She’s in shock?”

“Oh, Sonny, I don’t know. I don’t remember. It’s been years. Oh, my God, she looks bad.”