The image was all so clear, so familiar. The ten minutes had passed, the regime complete. He stepped off the treadmill and dried his face with a towel.
Why the hell was he thinking like this?
He’d never been morbid, nor a hypochondriac; this obsession with death was totally unlike him. But for the past two weeks, he’d had dozens of such visions. They all involved his heart, a terrible cardiac arrest, and they all ended the same way—with him dying alone.
As a highly analytical man, he tried to dissect the phenomenon, but he was coming up with nothing. He wasn’t the kind of man to run to a shrink when faced with problems; his sanity wasn’t in doubt, but that didn’t allay his confusion.
Probably just the stress of moving, he told himself. It was a stressful business at the best of times, and he wasn’t exactly a spring chicken anymore.
He and Janice had agreed months earlier to sell their stately home in the suburbs; to free themselves from the labor and worries of owning a sprawling house. They looked forward to the Exeter, and the simpler life it promised. There had been a great deal to do, selling the house, packing up, seeing to the decor of the new flat. They planned extensively, but still found it difficult to pare down their possessions to fit their new home.
It had been exhausting, but not so much that he feared it putting him in the dirt.
“The hell with it,” he said aloud, running a hand through his gray hair and stepping into the warm embrace of the steam room. He sprayed a jet of cold water onto the thermostat. A plume of steam hissed into the air. He leaned back on the tiled bench and closed his eyes.
They flashed back open in a second.
Voices, seeming to come from somewhere beneath the floor. Men’s voices, several of them, their tone urgent, desperate, though he couldn’t make out what they said.
Sloane rushed out the door, followed by the spectral hiss and chatter of escaping steam.
Where the hell was he?
Janice Sloane sat fidgeting in the living room. It was 4:30 p.m. Bill had been gone for almost an hour. She smoked a cigarette, which she never did in his presence, and had already bolted two scotch and waters. She looked at the clock. 4:31 p.m.
Still no sign of him.
She rose and paced through the flat. It was a lovely place—not as regal as her family estate, but more intimate. Each of them had contributed a little of their own aesthetic to the final design. Bill’s was an eclectic collection of pop art and modern; hers the classical and traditional. The disparate styles blended well, reflecting their lives together.
She stared at the big Degas on the south wall, well-lit by the massive curved window. She took another sip of the drink and swallowed.
Her nervousness was slowly evolving into anger.
The exercise room. Yeah, right.
As if she would really believe that. Or the increasingly regular doctor’s appointments. Or the weekly “visits” to his office. Did he think she was that stupid?
She took a mouthful of Scotch, sighing.
What had happened to them?
In eight years of marriage, they’d gone through the usual ups and downs; the former mercifully outweighing the latter. Until recently, they’d made love a minimum of twice a week. And it had been good sex, fulfilling. Not the sort of thing one might expect from a man on the shady side of sixty and a woman 20 years his junior. Good, lively, nasty sex.
But she’d found a worm in the apple. It had appeared a few weeks ago, barely noticeable at first. It seemed to whisper to her; its words squirming slick and poisonous through her thoughts, slowly growing louder, and louder.
By now, she was convinced that Bill was seeing another woman. Perhaps more than one. It was obvious. She’d smelled no alien perfume, detected no trace of lipstick on his linen collars, but he no longer seemed as passionate as he used to; didn’t look at her like before. He closed his eyes when they made love, imagining someone else in her place.
He’d been her attorney when they first met; a probate case in the wake of her father’s death. Bill handled the complications remarkably well. They fell in love. He was already middle-aged at the time, and widowed. With his graying hair, trim physique and conservative but commanding demeanor, she saw her father. It was natural.
Janice had once come close to marriage, way back when she was still in her early 20s. She’d fallen head over heels in love with a man she’d have done anything for. Anything.
At least Janice felt that way. The man—she would not even think of his name now, let alone say it—apparently felt otherwise. It all ended with a surprise visit to his apartment. He wasn’t alone. Sharing his company, and considerably more than that, was her best friend—another name Janice refused to say.
She’d thrown an ashtray at the entwined lovers, then left them to their rutting.
Since that immemorial night, Janice had had gone unmarried and unattached, well into her 30s, and had grown distrustful and timid, convinced that she would remain a spinster—a word she hated but had to admit applied to her—until Bill purged those foolish and resentful illusions.
For years, she’d not even considered that other women might find Bill attractive, as she did. But the worm insisted. Sometimes it almost seemed to shout. She thought about those other women all the time now, about the attention she knew he was giving them, attention that was rightfully hers. And she imagined what she might do to each and every one of them.
The worm had even begun to suggest what she might do. She’d begun to pay attention to the call log on Bill’s cellular phone. She would go through it, calling each number on the list. Sure enough, there were calls to the doctor, his office; to restaurants where he made reservations for them, to ordinary and legitimate recipients.
But she wasn’t fooled by that.
She began to follow him, to his so-called appointments. Sure enough, she tailed his Jaguar to his office downtown, to the doctor’s clinic on the west side, to the grocery store and to the golf course. So far, he had not stopped at a swank hotel for a clandestine tryst.
But she wasn’t fooled by that either.
This man was oh so clever, she reminded herself. How shrewd, how meticulous, how deceptive he could truly be.
She was working herself up to a blind rage. She no longer cared about the drink or the Degas or the big window or her goddamned life. She was so worked up that she never noticed that her wall clock still showed 4:31 p.m.
The BMW M-3 pulled into the underground garage at the Exeter. Sleek, black and new, it was the perfect vessel for its owner, Derek Taylor, who matched its sleekness in almost every respect.
It was late, nearly 3 a.m. Taylor wasn’t alone. He opened the door for his date, a tall blonde who could easily have passed for a model. As she rose from the seat, he took her in his arms and caressed her hair. She responded by grabbing his face in her hands and planting a wet kiss on his lips.
Taylor broke away long enough to open the trunk and retrieve a large vinyl cover, custom-made to drape the curves of the M-3. Gently, and with great care, he tucked his automobile in for the night.
He looked up at the girl who stood patiently near the door. She looked hot—skintight pants, heels, a top that revealed her taut stomach and a sun tattoo on the small of her back. Delicious.
She gave a delighted cry when she took in Taylor’s flat. It was techno-industrial, lots of stainless steel, thick white carpet, furniture that looked like it came from the set of Star Trek. It screamed money, which was the part the date most appreciated.