Chapter 9

In her dream they lay side by side on a golden beach. The sun was hot, intensified by reflections off the sand and the water. Meredith had one arm thrown over her eyes, and through her eyelashes she could see the water sparkling. Cries came from where children were playing at the edge of the water. The children were shadows flitting beneath a brilliant sun.

She could not see the man but she knew he lay beside her. Her right arm was outstretched and lying limp, supported by his chest. Her arm rose and fell with the gentle rhythm of his breathing.

Meredith did not know how long they had been lying here. She wished it could always be like this, but she knew it probably would not. Darkness or some danger would come. Something would change and she would lose him.

A shadow dimmed the sparkling light. He had stopped stroking her arm and moved to lean over her. Meredith pulled her hand back and looked up. His eyes were gray-green and they seemed oceans deep; momentarily inscrutable.

“You’re awake,” he said, his lips curling slightly in amusement. “I thought you must be sleeping.”

Meredith did not speak. She let her gaze travel over his face, from the tousled light brown curls above his smooth tan forehead, over the finely chiseled nose and high cheekbones, then downward to his delicate, thin lips. She felt ephemeral, like a spirit that existed only through him.

With a vague sense of unease, Meredith remembered that she had, in some very different time, felt afraid of this man. A part of her wanted to laugh at that thought. She loved him. She had never wanted to be near anyone else. She could never fear him, not now, not ever in the future, no matter what happened.

“If we stay out much longer you’ll get burned. It’s your own fault for being blond.”

The amusing comment struck Meredith as odd. She wanted to remind him that she was not blond, that her hair was much darker than his. His hand settled onto her thigh, the palm warm and smooth, fingers closing with a gentle hint of ownership.

That was why he wanted to go inside, Meredith realized, the realization coming from what seemed like the depth of someone else’s memory. They had only a few more hours of afternoon left before they must leave and drive somewhere. If they went inside, they would make love, saying good-bye to the room the same way it had welcomed them. She wanted it, too. Yet it felt wrong for her to say so.

“Don’t you think you’ll get burned?” he said over his shoulder. The hand on her thigh moved. Meredith wished she could find words that were clever and sexy. She could make a joke, the way girls in the movies boldly teased men.

But she was not bold. She could never think of the right words. He deserved someone better than a wallflower, though for some reason he had chosen her.

He had selected her because he loved her, she reminded herself. She did not know why. And now he had given her an opening to say she wanted to go to the room. He knew she was shy.

“I must be already red,” she said at last. She immediately regretted the words.

“Red like a tomato,” he laughed, “but I don’t think it’s all sunburn.” He pushed himself to his feet and reached down to take her hands. He pulled her up. “Let me take you inside and put some lotion on that burn.”

Meredith could not resist the smile breaking over her face. “Is that all?” she asked, looking up at him from under her lashes as the shadows of children flashed in the sun.

“No, that’s not all,” he said with a laugh. His arm encircled her waist to steady their steps over the sand. “I just didn’t want to make you blush again.”

The white walls of the lodge stood out ahead of them, its majesty accented by a crisscross pattern of pale blue tiles. On the patio at the side, young men and women sat at glass tables drinking from tall pastel glasses. They wore bright summer outfits, like actors in a luxurious movie scene. Meredith wished she could wear colors that bright. They looked pretty on other people, but when she wore them it seemed that everyone stared at her. She tugged her beach coat closed as they stepped onto the porch.

“I’ll stop by the desk for a minute,” he said, holding the door for her. “You go ahead up.”

Meredith felt his presence drift away, his steps fading quickly on the soft carpet. She felt alone again, small and out of place in the immense lobby. It was more grand than anything she had ever seen, wide and high and ornate like the sky. He wanted them to have this, he had said. These were the first days of their life together.

All of which meant she belonged here, Meredith told herself. This hotel was hers for a few more hours. She ran her hand along the smooth wood of the banister and stepped on the first stair. For an instant she felt tall and graceful, like a woman gliding up a staircase in a film. She wished she could think of some bold and delightful way to surprise him when he returned to the room. If only he could walk in the door and find her waiting, lying with nothing on, stretched out on top of the white bedspread.

But she could not do it. She could think of so many things, except she never could do them. When he discovered that, when they had been together for awhile and he became bored, that was when he would leave.

The hallway at the top of the stairs was brightly lit, with a rich blue rug lining the floor. It looked lonely and empty. He was not behind her. Maybe he was already gone. Maybe she had already lost him. Meredith reached a door at the end of the hall and slipped her key into the lock. She heard shower water running and steam billowed as she opened the door.

That should not be, she thought. He was still down in the lobby, settling the bill. She tried to see the room, but steam from the shower filled it and made everything fade. The steam pressed on her skin, a warm fuzziness. She lifted her hand to brush it back from her eyes. Her arm fell away against the pillow and hit the head of the bed.

Meredith’s eyelids fluttered open. The dream was interrupted. She was in her own house. From somewhere nearby she heard a swishing sound, and a haze of steam hung in the air. Richard had awakened early and was taking his shower.

Meredith jerked herself to a sitting position and glanced at the clock. Full daylight poured in the window. The dial on the clock said the alarm had already rung.

She threw back the covers, then fumbled beneath them to find her bathrobe. There had been a dream, she remembered. It had been a dream in which someone else seemed to be living her life, or she was living someone else’s life. Bizarre. Richard’s towel-wrapped figure emerged from the open bathroom door.

“Morning, sleepyhead.” He grinned, toweling his hair. “Thought you were going to sleep all day.”

“You’re up early. Why didn’t you leave the alarm on to wake me?”

“Are you kidding? You slept right through it.” Richard let the towel drop over a chair and began pulling on his T-shirt.

Meredith watched him dress, this body that was so dear to her. They had made love last night. Then the dream happened. She never overslept, yet even now her body longed to lie down again. She remembered a portion of the dream. It was sweet and succulent, promising knowledge of another man’s body. She wished she could return to that world, and then she felt both silly and disloyal.

“Just sleepy,” she told Richard. She pushed herself to her feet. “If you’re going to get any breakfast, I’d better hustle.”

Richard was buttoning his shirt. “I don’t even get a good-morning hug?”

Meredith crossed the room and lifted her arms to encircle his broad shoulders. He wanted her to hug him. Why did that suddenly make her feel shy? On her cheek, the soft fabric of his shirt felt comforting. His grasp closed securely at her back, and she smelled the freshness of laundry soap mixed with the fragrance of shampoo.

“That’s better.” He gave a final squeeze before letting go.

“A minute longer,” she whispered, and then held on, wishing she could explain. Just touching Richard made her feel more real.

An hour later, after her third cup of strong coffee, Meredith firmly and finally banished the dream from her mind. Richard’s car had long since pulled from the drive, and the breakfast dishes gleamed freshly washed in the rack. The cloying fog of the dream was gradually lifting.

For a while, drinking her first cup of coffee, she had not been sure if she was asleep or awake. There were moments in the dream she yearned to go back to, but the woman who lived those moments seemed somehow alien. She could not imagine feeling embarrassed in a bathing suit or pretending to be some actress in a movie.

Meredith shook her head, chasing the cobwebs out. Now that she was becoming alert, she felt better. The dream was only one more sign of the loneliness. The beach, the lodge, even the detailed vision of the lobby could have come from a magazine picture. At least she no longer feared him so much. In a sense, by spending beautiful time with the man, she had made friends with the loneliness. In fact, more than friends, if what she remembered from the dream was true.

She sat shocked. Horror lay behind this, and here she was thinking fondly of the man who seemed to be the source of her terror. If this was not true madness, it was surely an excellent substitute. She pushed away the shock and examined her feelings. They were still sexual. She felt a slight tightening in her belly, then laughed at herself. Dreams about sex were normal, and sex seemed to have been the aim of that particular dream.

Meredith rinsed her cup, dried it, and tossed the dish towel down the cellar stairs. It would go into the laundry. She had plenty of cleaning to do if the house was to look good for Halburton’s visit tomorrow night. She began listing the chores in her mind: laundry, kitchen floor, polish the silver. The list broke off.

In the dream the man had seemed different, and not just because he felt a little less threatening. It was something about his appearance.

She struggled to recall his face as it had appeared over her, set off against the blue sky. His skin was tan, yet that seemed explained by the setting. He had looked slightly younger, and healthier, too, whatever that meant. Then she remembered. The scar. The man’s forehead, when he leaned over her, had looked smooth and unmarred. The scar was not on it.

She wondered what it could mean. Perhaps it was symbol, revealing her relationship to the dreams. After all, now that she understood them, the man could be a friend, not an enemy. Perhaps the absence of the scar meant that whatever part of herself he represented, it could not longer do harm. That was possible, or perhaps it was something more complex. She would ask Gus about it if she got the chance.

As for now, it was time to get moving on the day’s work. Meredith stooped to gather up the pile of used rags that had collected under the sink. They would go into the first load of laundry, and that had better get started.

Her mind focused on the day’s work, but as she moved to straighten up, a twinge of uneasiness gripped her. She stopped in mid-crouch, her fingers tightening on the edge of the sink. There was something wrong.

It felt reminiscent of the dreams, but it was not a dream. The man was near, and yet she was not dreaming. She was not alone in the room. A flood of awareness hit her, and she felt sexual desire mixed with dread. She had felt exactly this way on Monday during her few hours alone in the house. The man had been present then, and he was near her now.

Meredith pulled herself erect slowly, every muscle straining. She gripped the edge of the sink, refusing to turn, willing herself to disbelieve. She could not. If she turned, she would not see him. She knew that. Yet the man felt as near as he had been in the dreams. He was also as far. She leaned against the sink, trying to grasp how she knew.

There were a lot of things this knowledge was not. It was not a sound or a touch. She did not smell the faint, fruitlike fragrance that had filled the air on Friday. The knowledge did not come from logic, or from the senses, or from anything she could explain. Yet it was real.

The knowledge had clarity, the way a decision felt when it was right. It came from somewhere inside, a place no persuasion or doubt could touch. It was like knowing, like the instant when she first saw Richard on those library steps, that something special could happen between them. It was an intuition, the unexplainable knowledge that someone was watching her, as if a stranger happened to be reading over her shoulder.

Meredith wanted to fight the feeling. Instinctively she knew she could not win. It felt as clear as the everyday certainty that gravity would continue to hold, that the sun would come up every morning.

If I speak, she thought, he will answer. She was not ready for that. Meredith willed herself to turn, to examine the familiar kitchen. When she did, she found nothing more than she had expected.

A pool of sunlight spread over the cloth on the table. The bouquet she had brought home stood in the table’s center. The flowers gleamed, reflected in the clean white enamel on the side of the stove. The floor showed dull spots where it needed to be cleaned. She brought her gaze full circle, back to the counter on the right of the sink. From what she could see, she was alone.

The presence remained. It did not diminish, but hovered in the air, eddying, expectant. What does it wait for? she wondered. What can it want?

A shiver of fear struck her. Suppose the man pressed closer, forcing her to acknowledge that he was there? Instantly she knew he would not. Whatever shimmered unseen in the air, it felt patient. He would wait for her to come to him. And yet there was a certainty in that waiting, a knowledge. She had no choice, and he knew that. She would eventually come.

Meredith looked down. Her hand was shaking. At the moment it did not look like the hand of anyone who was sane. It still held the bundle of rags, their raveled edges squeezing out between the white grip of her fingers. She had meant to take these downstairs and start a load of laundry. Then that was what she would do.

Willing each step, she walked to the door of the cellar and opened it. She flicked on the light and made her way down the stairs, her heels clacking reassuringly against the wooden stairs. The gray concrete cave of the cellar was empty of the awareness, as she had hoped it would be. She took a deep breath and commanded herself to continue. Perhaps if she ignored the uncanny feeling, it would pass. She lifted a pile of laundry and began sorting. Then, just as she began to feel safe, the awareness returned.

The light overhead seemed to grow dimmer. The presence gathered, making the air feel soft, erasing the chill of concrete walls. The presence did not press in on her, as she had thought it might in the kitchen. Rather, it floated sensually at the edge of her thoughts, a whisper like the sound of snow coating a window.

Meredith continued to untangle the clothes, tossing towels and blouses into the two piles. She concentrated on the task as if holding to it, not letting go, would make the feeling pass. It did not. It watched. It waited.

Controlling herself, she measured detergent into a cup and poured it over the clothes. She pulled down the lid, then twisted the dial to set the machine whirring on its first load. She made every movement carefully, as if under the watchful eye of an audience. She stood a moment, hands pressed to the cool metal top of the trembling machine. She tried to figure out what she could do.

She might speak to it. And if she did, he would surely reply. She remembered the reality of Friday afternoon’s vision and knew she was not ready for that. No, she could not handle that yet.

She considered leaving. On Monday, the moment she had stepped from the house, the illusion dissolved. Yet the man was doing her no harm. If he suddenly disappeared, if he dissolved as inexplicably as he had arrived, she might even miss him.

Meredith turned and surveyed the empty cellar. She studied the furnace, the shelves lined with Richard’s tools, the staircase. The man was only part of her mind, after all. If she could accept that he was her own creation, then maybe she could come to understand what she had created. The fear might pass.

She stepped back from the whirring machine and lifted the pile of white clothes into a basket for the next load. She would go about her chores, trusting the security of her daily routine. If the illusion stayed, she could live with that. To run away, or try to fight it, would only disrupt her life.

The illusion dogged her steps through the remaining hours of the morning. It waited as she passed from room to room picking up things that needed putting away. Whenever she paused for a moment, folding dish towels into a drawer by the sink or selecting silver from the felt-lined box in the dining room, the presence gathered.

Each time it began as a faint hint, a stirring like the first breeze before a change of weather. If she ignored the feeling, it remained formless, a mood, a murmur, eddying close until she moved to the next room. If she focused on it, the illusion grew. It gained shape and solidity, though always lingering on the far side of the tangible. It was never more certain than a cloud or a tune played barely out of hearing.

Throughout the morning, her feelings wavered, rising and falling. Bewilderment washed over her, tinged with awe that she could accept this presence. When she relaxed, her mind chattered on as if engaged in mental conversation with the man. He felt near. Suddenly she would catch herself believing that he was actually there. She pulled back and rubbed her hands over her eyes to dispel the ghostly sense of reality. In that instant the presence withdrew. It would wait, he seemed to tell her. He would always be waiting. He would be ready when she came to him. He would be ready.

It was this sense, more than the wavering moods, that persisted throughout the morning. At noon, sitting in the kitchen to eat a light lunch, Meredith reviewed the intuitions of the last few hours. The man seemed warm and tolerant. It seemed he loved her. Why, then, did she feel this occasional cold rushing of fear? He would welcome whatever terms she proposed.

Meredith debated whether to speak. The morning hours had been a strain. She drained the last swallow of milk from her glass and remembered she had meant to walk the three blocks to the store to buy another carton. Beyond the window, the day was warm and lovely, but she did not want to leave.

Then she remembered that in this neighborhood women did not walk to the grocery. She remembered that there had been rapes, at least one in daylight; a young girl going to school. She had not thought about them because so much time was spent concentrating on this stranger. She shivered, imagining the shame and fear that schoolgirl must have felt. Then she experienced a real and practical terror that had nothing to do with imagination. She was trapped in this house. The only way she could safely leave was by automobile. She could neither walk away, nor run. There was darkness in this neighborhood, and it was real, not ghostly.

There was a box of powdered milk in the closet. She would mix a quart of that for dinner. She would not go to the store.

Meredith picked up her glass and rose from the table. “Time to polish the silver,” she said. The words hung unanswered in the air. She was surprised to realize she had spoken them aloud.

His presence seemed to advance, pressing closer. He was there and as real, for her purposes, as the sunlight beyond the window. He was as real as a solid weight of the glass in her hand.

“Yes,” she said aloud, but softly. She picked up her plate and carried it along with her glass to the sink. “Time to polish the silver.”

Her back was turned, but she knew he was watching. When he spoke she steeled herself not to turn.

“Mind if I watch?” It was the same voice that had spoken in her dream, gentle and lighthearted.

“Not at all.” She paused, fighting the impulse to scream. To doubt him now would only make him withdraw. She must display courage, must understand what it seemed her mind had created. “In fact, I think I’d like that.”

“Good.”

The word echoed in the air, or in her thoughts, she could not be certain. It did not matter because she did not want to know.

Meredith tucked the plug into the drain. She turned on the faucet to begin filling the sink with warm water. She felt strangely and fearfully glad. The gladness came from a tiny corner of her mind that seemed to belong to someone else, but fear rode the logical part of a mind that belonged only to her. She and the man would be together, and alone, in the house all afternoon.