Had she invited him in after deciding he was — probably — safe as long as she kept insurance in her pocket? Mace? Pepper spray?
Did she ever open the door without it in her hand?
He felt utterly at a loss, which made him feel stupid and vulnerable.
The coffee cup had shattered somewhere. Half its contents were spreading across the table, beginning to drip into his lap. Reflexively he squirmed.
“Don’t move!” High, thin, a voice like a wind through wire. Her face was the color of bleached bone, her eyes dark caves of nightmare.
He said in an uncomprehending whisper, “What...” and then forgot what he’d been going to say. For a long time neither moved or said anything.
And then at last her lips began to quiver. A little at a time she even got her mouth closed. Fear began draining out of her eyes, leaving them bereft.
“I’m sorry.” Her voice was bodiless, hopeless. “I’m so sorry.” She lowered her can of safety.
He said cautiously, “Maybe you could use a little jolt of brandy yourself...”
But she was already talking before he got the words out.
“... I thought it was... getting better. I mean, I thought I’d soon be able to... shake hands, things like that, with a little warning, time to get ready. Some people are afraid of heights. Open spaces. With me it’s... touching. Being touched. By anyone.”
He thought automatically, Since when? and then realized with a feeling of deflation that her clothes would have to stay on after all.
She went on in the same hopeless voice, “Except Barbara. No one else. Not even Jeff. Poor Jeff. I’m a terrible, hopeless, hopeless wife. Because I got raped. Four guys broke in and raped me on my kitchen floor and all I could think of was Barbara, watching cartoons on TV next-door with the little neighbor girl, all I could think of was, God, sweetheart, don’t come home, don’t, stay away—!”
When she stopped, he said woodenly, “Here? In Eugene?”
Her head shook, hardly more than a tremor. The stiff half-crouch began to ease.
“New York. Now even Jeff stays away most of the time, in a little apartment close to the campus. Our excuse is his work. Maybe only Barbara believes that.”
She looked down at the canister in her hand, with a grimace of revulsion threw it into the sink. Then stood looking at it, and after a while, looking embarrassed, scooped it back into her pocket.
Dave heard himself say, “Hang onto that. All I can promise is that around me you’ll never need it.”
The words echoed weirdly in his head. He hoped they were the right ones. He was rather surprised to find that he meant them.
She was standing almost straight now. She tried to smile. Her lips jerked and flopped like spastic butterflies. She put hands over her mouth and whispered, “I’m sorry.”
“You needn’t be.” Was that the right thing to say? He was awkward at giving sympathy. He could fake real feeling better with the help of a clasped hand, a gentle hug. He made his face relax. “Is it okay if I move now?”
“Oh yes. Please. Do.”
“You’ll have to tell me what next. Do you want me to go, and will you be all right?”
“... This is awful... but yes, would you? I’ll be fine. Is there a phone over there?”
“There is.”
“I’ll call you. Or you call me. Please.”
Outside, through the thickness of the door, he heard Jan slide the security chain into place.
It had rained again and the fog had closed in. An ordinary wet day looked like it could turn dramatic. The wet patch of spilled coffee on his jeans leg was cold and clammy.
He crossed the street at a diagonal. The elm tree sounded its irregular rattle. The untended lawn was a green swamp and the house was unwelcoming. The shaded windows had the flat shine of dead eyes.
He crossed the porch and let himself into pleasant warmth. He’d also left the overhead light on. Heat and light made the front room less forbidding, but it was still a room from another era presided over in Professor McLaren’s absence by stern, immobile chessmen, on duty till the old guy returned to make the next move in one of his games-by-mail.
Dave thought suddenly, How do I tell the chessmen that their vigil is over, that all they’re doing is collecting dust?
Surprised, he sneered inwardly. Sentimentalizing inanimate objects wasn’t his style. Getting mawkish over his grandfather’s chess pieces, for God’s sake! He must have been jarred off course by what had happened to Jan in New York, and by her response to the casual touch of his hand. Which was absurd. Jan hadn’t been important to him since he was fifteen. Her problems were her own, but obviously involved a lot of pain. He didn’t know much about pain. He’d spent most of his life avoiding it.
What he had to endure now was boredom.
The desk in the corner didn’t take long. He had found a bunch of keys on a plain ring — no spare front-door key among them — in the shallow belly-drawer, along with a couple of ballpoint pens, a pencil, a box of rubber bands, and a pocket pencil sharpener he recognized as his own from grade school. The topmost of the tier of drawers was devoted to neat bundles of chess correspondence. The two drawers below it were empty except for dust.
He looked up the old man’s lawyer’s number and called him on the phone.
“Law office, John Lowndes.”
“Hi, Mr. Lowndes. David North here, calling from my grandfather’s house.”
“Oh yes, David, good, I’m glad you called.” Amazing how the brisk professional telephone voice could drop into that of the bereaved fellow-mourner so fast. “I tried to reach you earlier, just to make sure you had heat and light and the roof wasn’t leaking.”
“Everything’s fine. I was over at a neighbor’s I hadn’t seen in years. Now I’m going through where my grandfather used to keep his household accounts...”
“Got all that,” the old lawyer said. “That’s one of the things an executor does, makes sure the financial affairs are in order. One thing that wasn’t in the desk, though, was his checkbook. Canceled checks and bank statements through to the middle of October, but no record of checks written since that time.”
“It will probably turn up somewhere around the house. I’ll look,” Dave said.
“Bills were all paid around the end of the month. Gas, power, phone, the housekeeping team that came in every two weeks to keep the place civilized... Then of course he had a few small but nice investments, and a quite surprising amount in savings.”
“Did you take the spare key from the keyring in the desk?”
“No. I have the set he had in his pocket. Incidentally, when you said you’d be staying there I cleaned out the refrigerator and left you half a dozen eggs and some bacon. I’m pretty sure there are some cans of soup in the cupboard over the sink.”
“If I can find coffee, too, I’ll be in pig heaven.”
“I think I saw some. And tea. Your granddad was a bear for good tea — especially first-flush Darjeeling.”
“I remember,” Dave said, politely faking fond enthusiasm. How to get John Lowndes to shut up? Of course: abruptly. He said firmly, “Thank you, Mr. Lowndes.”
“Uh, sure, you’re welcome,” Lowndes said, as though taken aback. “Any more questions, you call.”
Dave promised, and hung up.
He massaged his face roughly. It was stiff from the effort of keeping a smile in his voice. He was definitely on edge. It was this place, these people, his grandfather’s friends — or “friends” — who expected him to be bereaved and to act in a certain way when all he wanted was a brisk settling of accounts. And it was Jan, too, of course, whose clothes he couldn’t even try to get off, and the quiet narrow little streets and the cold and the low clouds and the enveloping fog and the unsettling sense of ghosts muttering invisibly of forgotten crimes and derelictions...