She looked incredulous. “Miss?”
He shrugged.
“Why the sunglasses?” she asked.
“I've been to Hell.”
“What's that supposed to mean?”
“Hell is cold, dark.”
“That so? I still don't get the sunglasses.”
“Over there, you learn to see in total darkness.”
“This is an interesting line of bullshit.”
“So now I'm sensitive to light.”
“A real different line of bullshit.”
He said nothing.
She drank some beer, but her eyes never left him.
He liked the way her throat muscles worked when she swallowed.
After a moment she said, “This your usual line of crap, or do you just make it up as you go?”
He shrugged again.
“You were watching me,” she said.
“So?”
“You're right. Every asshole in here is watching me most of the time.”
He was studying her intensely blue eyes. What he thought he might do was cut them out, then reinsert them backward, so she was looking into her own skull. A comment on her self-absorbtion.
In the dream Hatch was talking to a beautiful but incredibly cold-looking blonde. Her flawless skin was as white as porcelain, and her eyes were like polished ice reflecting a clear winter sky. They were standing at a bar in a strange establishment he had never seen before. She was looking at him across the top of a beer bottle that she held — and brought to her mouth — as she might have held a phallus. But the taunting way she drank from it and licked the glass rim seemed to be as much a threat as it was an erotic invitation. He could not hear a thing she said, and he could hear only a few words that he spoke himself: “… been to Hell … cold, dark … sensitive to light…” The blonde was looking at him, and it was surely he who was speaking to her, yet the words were not in his own voice. Suddenly he found himself focusing more intently on her arctic eyes, and before he knew what he was doing, he produced a switchblade knife and flicked it open. As if she felt no pain, as if in fact she was dead already, the blonde did not react when, with a swift whip of the knife, he took her left eye from its socket. He rolled it over on his fingertips, and replaced it with the blind end outward and the blue lens gazing inward—
Hatch sat up. Unable to breathe. Heart hammering. He swung his legs out of bed and stood, feeling as if he had to run away from something. But he just gasped for breath, not sure where to run to find shelter, safety.
They had fallen asleep with a bedside lamp on, a towel draped over the shade to soften the light while they made love. The room was well enough lit for him to see Lindsey lying on her side of the bed in a tangle of covers.
She was so still, he thought she was dead. He had the crazy feeling that he'd killed her. With a switchblade.
Then she stirred and mumbled in her sleep.
He shuddered. He looked at his hands. They were shaking.
Vassago was so enamored of his artistic vision that he had the impulsive desire to reverse her eyes right there, in the bar, with everyone watching. He restrained himself.
“So what do you want?” she asked, after taking another swallow of beer.
He said, “Out of what — life?”
“Out of me.”
“What do you think?”
“A few thrills,” she said.
“More than that.”
“Home and family?” she asked sarcastically.
He didn't answer right away. He wanted time to think. This one was not easy to play, a different sort of fish. He did not want to risk saying the wrong thing and letting her slip the hook. He got another beer, drank some of it.
Four members of a backup band approached the stage. They were going to play during the other musicians' break. Soon conversation would be impossible again. More important, when the crashing music began, the energy level of the club would rise, and it might exceed the energy level between him and the blonde. She might not be as susceptible to the suggestion that they leave together.
He finally answered her question, told her a lie about what he wanted to do with her: “You know anybody you wish was dead?”
“Who doesn't?”
“Who is it?”
“Half the people I've ever met.”
“I mean, one person in particular.”
She began to realize what he was suggesting. She took another sip of beer and lingered with her mouth and tongue against the rim of the bottle. “What — is this a game or something?”
“Only if you want it to be, Miss.”
“You're weird.”
“Isn't that what you like?”
“Maybe you're a cop.”
“You really think so?”
She stared intently at his sunglasses, though she wouldn't have been able to see more than a dim suggestion of his eyes beyond the heavily tinted lenses. “No. Not a cop.”
“Sex isn't a good way to start,” he said.
“It isn't, huh?”
“Death is a better opener. Make a little death together, then make a little sex. You won't believe how intense it can get.”
She said nothing.
The backup band was picking up the instruments on the stage.
He said, “This one in particular you'd like dead — it's a guy?”
“Yeah.”
“He live within driving distance?”
“Twenty minutes from here.”
“So let's do it.”
The musicians began to tune up, though it seemed a pointless exercise, considering the type of music they were going to play. They had better play the right stuff, and they had better be good at it, because it was the kind of club where the customers wouldn't hesitate to trash the band if they didn't like it.
At last the blonde said, “I've got a little PCP. Want to do some with me?”
“Angel dust? It runs in my veins.”
“You got a car?”
“Let's go.”
On the way out he opened the door for her.
She laughed. “You're one weird son of a bitch.”
According to the digital clock on the nightstand, it was 1:28 in the morning. Although Hatch had been asleep only a couple of hours, he was wide awake and unwilling to lie down again.
Besides, his mouth was dry. He felt as if he had been eating sand. He needed a drink.
The towel-draped lamp provided enough light for him to make his way to the dresser and quietly open the correct drawer without waking Lindsey. Shivering, he took a sweatshirt from the drawer and pulled it on. He was wearing only pajama bottoms, but he knew that the addition of a thin pajama top would not quell his chills.
He opened the bedroom door and stepped into the upstairs hall. He glanced back at his slumbering wife. She looked beautiful there in the soft amber light, dark hair against the white pillow, her face relaxed, lips slightly parted, one hand tucked under her chin. The sight of her, more than the sweatshirt, warmed him. Then he thought about the years they had lost in their surrender to grief, and the residual fear from the nightmare was further diluted by a flood of regret. He pulled the door shut soundlessly behind him.
The second-floor hall was hung with shadows, but wan light rose along the stairwell from the foyer below. On their way from the family-room sofa to the sleigh bed, they had not paused to switch off lamps.
Like a couple of horny teenagers. He smiled at the thought.
On his way down the stairs, he remembered the nightmare, and his smile slipped away.
The blonde. The knife. The eye.
It had seemed so real.
At the foot of the stairs he stopped, listening. The silence in the house was unnatural. He rapped one knuckle against the newel post, just to hear a sound. The tap seemed softer than it should have been. The silence following it was deeper than before.