On nights that she couldn’t distract herself by reading, Ann would spend hours listening to the street sounds coming from outside. James thought it was strange when she’d told him about it-of how she’d imagine plotlines based each passersby, see them come to life like films projected in her mind. Sometimes she heard people singing and that always made her think of home, of being down near the docks on a clear dawn where the older fishermen still knew songs from their grandfathers. And then there were nights she wished she could erase from memory-popping gunfire, screaming derelicts and the footfalls of demons scratching the sidewalk as they passed below her apartment window.
Two nights before James had come home bleeding and they’d returned to Traitor, Ann had left work early with a migraine. She’d turned out almost all of the lights to see if she could coax it into backing off. Her neighbors across the hall were having a party and so far their noise hadn’t bothered her. It was the street outside that caused tension the most, but somehow she’d managed to fall asleep despite the random shrieks of police cars and ambulances, people carrying on conversations that she couldn’t hear clearly enough to understand, yet loud enough that her mind would conjure its own interpretations. In the middle of the night she’d awakened to the sound of someone at the door. She’d reached out and turned on the bedside lamp, fully expecting James to moan at her and roll over, except that his side of the bed was empty.
When James didn’t open the door right away, she worried that maybe he’d left his key again in his bellman’s uniform. The hotel was a twenty minute walk away and he probably was in no mood to wade back through the army of crazies that roamed the streets at this hour. Blurry from ineffective migraine pills, Ann got out of bed and half-sleep walked to the door and automatically reached for the chain to unlatch it before her eyes were drawn down toward the doorknob turning back and forth, the tumblers of the old brass mechanism inside grinding like knives being sharpened.
It took her a moment to find her breath again, to direct it through her trembling mouth. She’d asked who it was but got no answer, and when she’d squinted through the peephole, there was a man she didn’t know standing in the yellowed hallway. She didn’t think she’d seen him before, but she was never sure. She did know it wasn’t James because the man had a much more imposing frame, with massive shoulders that stretched to both ends of the fisheye. The doorknob stopped.
“I hear you.”
Ann had held her breath. He’d looked directly at her and she’d seen a cool malevolence she’d never encountered before. Later she would remember the misshapen contours of his face, as if it were a melted mass of cooled steel. When she didn’t say anything, he’d put his ear up against the door and puffed on a cigarette.
“I know you’re there.”
She’d edged back from the door and squeezed the fire in her temples with both palms, willing herself not to cry, feeling the sting start at the corners of her eyes. Cigarette smoke curled up from under the door and invaded her room. Who was he? What did he want?
Her mind flashed on a shoebox were she’d hidden the.38. She hadn’t told James that she’d brought it-he would have thought she was nuts. How would you know who you’re really shooting at-he’d asked her once when she’d taken him outside to target practice at her grandfather’s house-when you don’t remember faces like the rest of us? He was still trying to understand how her system worked, and at the time she wasn’t even sure either until she’d met the specialist in Portland. Later she’d tried to explain her condition to him, of how she’d trained her mind to pick out details most people would miss and how her memory organized them.
The doorknob began to move more frantically. She’d heard a deep grunt, and then the door shuddered as the man threw his weight into it until the wood made cracking sounds.
She was about to get the.38 before the outside hall was suddenly filled with music and drunken laughter. The neighbor’s party was breaking up. She’d looked through the door again and saw that the man was gone. When James got back, she’d told him about what had happened and watched the blood drain from his face. He’d paced the apartment, asking her dozens of questions that she was unable to answer.
When she asked him if he knew who had been at the door he’d switched gears, had told her the guy was probably a drunk from across the hall who thought it would be fun to mess around, that it was only her imagination must have made it seem more than that. She was in no shape to argue. She’d gone back to bed and cried while James sat by the window drinking from a bottle of stolen hotel wine until dawn.
I should have realized how much you and Duane were alike. How selfish you were, how easily you could put me in danger and not seem to care.
And here I am. Alive I guess, only because the throbbing in my leg tells me so. If I was dead I wouldn’t be feeling any pain. Right?
Wrapped in a moth-eaten wool blanket, she spread her hands next to a fire and let the warmth travel up through her fingers and into her core. Except for her bra and panties, her clothes and boots had been set out to dry. She wondered who’d removed them, who’d left a nearly full bottle of mineral water next to her head. She could remember a man’s voice and nothing more.
Other than sporadic flashes of phosphorous in distant waves, the beach was dark. There were no other fires, no vacationers roasting marshmallows. She looked for the glow of town far over the ridge of dunes and saw nothing but a few stars pinned above the contours of Cougar Mountain.
She had no idea what day it was. Judging by the position of the moon, she guessed the night wasn’t more than a few hours old. What was she going to do? James was probably halfway to Portland by now. She no longer cared. He could keep the money so long as he never came back again.
The first thing you need to do is go home and check in on Aunt Kate. She must be worried sick.
She gathered her clothes from the logs and dressed. They were almost dry and felt better than the scratchy blanket that smelled faintly of motor oil. Before she pulled on her jeans, she took a moment to examine her leg. The bandage she’d put on earlier had fallen off and the wound was an angry red at the edges and not even close to scabbing over. She had nothing to protect it with and sliding her jeans over it was torture.
When she stood up to walk her leg screamed and buckled, causing her sit on a log and rest. A few moments later she gathered enough strength to get up again. She forced herself to move past the pain, one wincing step at a time.
This is pathetic. There’s no way you’re going to be able to run if you need to.
She scanned the ground for a piece of driftwood. She picked up various shapes and sizes and tested them in her hand until she found one that felt good. She found a branch leaden with seawater, about the size and shape of a femur bone. She swung it down on a bulb-head of kelp and saw it split open.
As she made her way north she tried to imagine the pain in her leg was an old wasp sting. She’d received plenty of them from her wanderings in the forest during late summer. But it didn’t work. This hurt far worse, like a rusty nail scratch that had gotten infected.
Maybe you should go back the way you came? It’s not as far as this is going to be. If James’ boat is still there you could take it up the bay and get back to your car.
She stopped when she saw the body.
At first she thought it might be a log or a large tangle of kelp. But as she got closer she saw that it was the body of a man. She started to back away.
What if it’s James?
She raised her driftwood club and stepped closer, saw flashes of pale flesh where moonlight broke through the clouds. He was lying on his back, arms and legs splayed open in the shape of an X. His face was turned toward her. When she tapped his chest with the end of her stick, pink sand fleas shot out of his open mouth like a shower of ground glass. Ann’s stomach heaved and she turned away.
It was one of the Russians. Not the one she’d shot at, but the other one. She waited for the nausea to pass before forcing herself to take another look. She’d seen her share of drowning victims-the swollen, bright blue bodies being packed into ambulances. Perhaps the only thing he had in common with them was that his clothes were soaking wet, because when she was close enough to see his neck she knew something was wrong.
Someone had slit it open. Down to the bone.