“You’re a moth? I guess you are. Moths are blinded by their fascinations, right? They fly too close to the flame, right? You’re burning now and you can’t even smell the smoke on your wings.”
“You’ll regret saying that someday,” she said.
“He’s not going to get better, Gillian. That was a lie. He’s going to spend the rest of his life like this.”
“No! You’re lying now!”
“I think you know I’m not. Look at him. He’s empty,” I said. “Just like you are.”
She stared at him in horror.
“You can’t empathize with anyone, can you? Of all the things your mother destroyed in you—”
“Who cares?” she said. “I take care of myself.”
“All that time, I thought you were being stoic — you aren’t stoic, you’re heartless.”
“Whatever.” She lowered her head on to her hands. “You’re giving me a headache.”
“You can’t pity anyone, can you? Not even him.”
She bent over, and I thought perhaps she really wasn’t feeling well. But then she calmly reached beneath her skirt in a most unladylike fashion and removed a revolver. She stood as she pointed it straight at me. If she heard the commotion outside the room, where one gun after another was suddenly being trained on her, she gave no sign of it.
“Am I the one who misled you?” I asked. “Or did the all-powerful Nicky?”
“Mmmaah!”
She spun toward Parrish. I tackled her from behind. We went sprawling onto the floor, crashing into chairs. The gun went off, a deafening sound that kept me from hearing anything for a moment.
We were in a dog pile within seconds — and someone in a uniform had wrestled the gun away from her.
The air was full of the smell of gunpowder, and I felt a strong pair of hands helping me to my feet.
“Are you all right?” Frank asked.
“Yes.”
I heard someone reading her rights to her. I turned to look. As they marched her off to the elevator, she looked back at me. She gave me that same pleading stare that had haunted me for four years.
The one that had fooled me for four years.
“Don’t do that to yourself,” Ben said, walking up to us.
“What?” I asked.
“Don’t blame yourself.”
I didn’t answer — a woman officer came into the room just then to take the wire off me. She started telling me what a great job I had done; Frank, watching my face, told her — in his polite way — to hurry up and take the equipment and leave me alone.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” he asked when she left.
I nodded.
“How about you, Ben?” he asked.
“Not so great at the moment,” he said.
“One of us is lying,” I said. “I think it’s me.”
Parrish gurgled.
I walked over and looked down into his face. His eyes were bright with something like laughter.
“Don’t take too much joy in that, Nicky. I’ll get over whatever is bothering me.”
His face twitched.
“Ten years from now, when you’re still staring at the ceiling, wishing you were dead — or maybe just wishing someone would come in and scratch your nose for you — I want you to remember what I did on behalf of your victims. I saved your life.”
“Mmmaah! Mmmaaaahh!”
“So long, Nicky. I hope you live to be a hundred.”
62
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 18, MIDNIGHT
The Roof of the Wrigley Building
Three weeks later, I was up on the roof of the Express at midnight, looking out at the city. I was still working part-time, odd hours. I had canceled several of my appointments with Jo Robinson and told John not to hassle Wrigley about changing my hours.
I liked the slow shifts, I told him. They weren’t really slow; I had a lot to catch up on.
That was true — but I never seemed to get around to catching up.
There was a restlessness in me. I found myself looking at the travel section instead of reading my mail. I started looking at real estate ads, too. I wondered if I could talk Frank into moving somewhere else, doing something else for a living.
Frank would listen to my suggestions, say, “That’s a possibility, but maybe this isn’t a good time to make that kind of decision.”
I don’t like to think of what might have happened to me in those weeks if I hadn’t been married to Frank Harriman. He didn’t push or nag; he spoiled me rotten. I guess I needed a little spoiling. With him, I felt as if there were no secrets that couldn’t be told, no fears that couldn’t be voiced. There were evenings of confiding in him; they kept me from losing whatever balance I had.
The days consisted of routines of avoidance. I knew I couldn’t continue treading on the surface of life, knew that I needed to dive back in. Easy to say.
Up on the roof that night, the autumn breezes were warm. “Mild Santa Ana conditions,” the weather forecasters called it. That meant that the smog was blown away by desert winds, the days were a little too hot, but most people wouldn’t feel as crazy as a true red wind would make them. It meant the view was better than usual. I could see Catalina, the distant lights of Avalon.
I should go back down to my desk and work, I thought, taking another long pull from my water bottle. But that would mean being indoors. Didn’t want to be indoors, not just yet.
I heard the access door open and tensed. Probably just Jerry or Livy, maybe Leonard. Jerry and Leonard always greeted me with the same joke — each would say that he was just making sure I hadn’t jumped. Livy never said that, but I think she was more certain that I wouldn’t end up on the pavement in front of the building. Not my style. I refuse to do anything that will force anyone else to use a hose to clean up my departure.
Tonight’s visitor to my aerie rounded the corner — I was surprised to see Ben Sheridan.
“Up late, Professor?” I said when he came nearer.
“Up high. Mind if we move a little farther away from the edge?”
“Not at all. Come have a seat at Café Kelly. We no longer feature helicopter floor shows, but the water is fine.”
“Sounds good to me.”
We sat down and propped our feet up, both original and replacement models.
“You owe me something,” he said, taking a drink of water.
“I haven’t forgotten. If you really want to hear it, I’ll tell it.”
“Yes, I do,” he said.
So I told him what had happened in the mountains that morning, when Parrish had threatened Bingle and shoved my face into the mud, and chased me through the woods.
“My God,” he said when I had finished. “Jesus, I wish I could have helped you. I feel terrible about it. If you hadn’t been worrying about keeping him away from me, you wouldn’t have even been near him. And I know you were worn out because of—”
“Stop it! If you want the truth, that’s the reason I never told you about what Parrish did that morning. I knew you’d feel this ridiculous sense of guilt, as if you could have done anything about it, as if it were your fault that it happened, instead of Parrish’s.”
“Oh?” he said. “You mean, I’d feel the way you do about my having to undergo an amputation?”
I was dumbfounded. “I don’t feel that way,” I said at last.
“Bullshit. You hide it better than you did at first, but you still blame yourself.”
I started to deny it, then changed my mind and rushed headlong into the fray. “As a matter of fact, I do! Talk about shielding! You know it’s my fault.”
“What? I know no such thing. I know Parrish shot me. I painted that bull’s-eye on myself, as I recall — in fact, I distinctly remember that you called out to me, tried to prevent me from running into that meadow.”
“Yes, yes,” I said impatiently. “But who took forever to find you out there? Who didn’t know how to properly care for the wound? Who didn’t give you enough Keflex?”