Margaret shrugged. “As long as they’re happy.”
“Big job,” he said, “not trusting anyone over thirty when you’re over forty.”
“Drugs help,” Margaret said.
“We can get some. Pot’s easy enough to get now.”
“That’s why it’s less desirable.”
“Point taken.”
“I’m a month and a half out of rehab,” she said.
“Then we won’t do drugs. Tell you the truth, I was never big on them. My brother got screwed up on them. High on meth when he drove onto a highway and discovered too late he was on an exit ramp. Van full of teenagers hit him head-on. Three killed, including my brother. Four injured.”
“God! That’s terrible!”
He shrugged sadly, elaborately, exemplar of all the grief in the world. “You learn to live with it. There’s no choice.” He forced a smile. “Tell me about you, but nothing sad, please.”
She returned his smile and her eyes held his. “First, I think we should introduce ourselves.”
He made a big deal out of slapping his cheek, not hard, but loud enough to make the hippie woman glance over. “Good grief, you’re right,” he said. “I’m Corey.”
“Margaret.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“Your mailbox down in the vestibule.”
“Of course! How sneaky of you.”
“Observant, I like to think.”
“How very you.”
“Thanks,” he said. “Now tell me about Margaret. Or is it Maggie?”
“Never. Only Margaret.”
“So let me into your past, beautiful Margaret.”
She sipped her latte deliberately, looking like a woman thinking up something for a parlor game. It occurred to him that she was probably a bigger liar than he was. But certainly less convincing.
“I grew up in Baltimore,” she began. “We were poor but didn’t know it . . .”
He stopped paying attention, figuring it was probably all a string of lies anyway.
“. . . And here I am doing proofreading for an advertising company.”
He raised his latte mug in a salute. “You’re to be admired, Margaret. Really!”
“Oh, not so much.”
“Don’t shortchange yourself. You might be pleasantly surprised by what’s in your future.”
So might you.
He finished his latte and dabbed at his lips with a napkin.
“Should we start back?”
“Back?
“To your apartment. I have to at least show you to your door. Make sure you’re safe in this big bad city.”
“I suppose that makes sense.” And it makes sense to keep you dangling. Anticipation can work wonders.
As they walked through the lowering night he kept slightly off to the side so he could observe the rhythm of her stride. Her high heels abbreviated her steps; the clicking and clacking of her shoes on the hard sidewalk was mesmerizing. Her hips rolled slightly as she walked, her body like a sensuous metronome under perfect, relentless rhythm, meting out precisely the remainder of her life. There was something amazing about it.
The things we don’t know until it’s too late.
The Gremlin glanced up at the beautiful woman walking alongside him and felt the thrill of possession. Her lithe body kept moving to the rhythm being beaten out by her shoes. He realized he was getting an erection.
Can’t have that. Not now, not yet . . .
“You a baseball fan?” he asked.
“The Yankees, when they’re the Yankees,” she said.
She half stumbled—or pretended to—and found herself leaning against him. He might be a small man but he was hard and muscular. She could feel strength emanating from him like a field of electricity. Did he do sports? Did he work out at a gym? After a few more steps they were holding hands.
They talked baseball for a few minutes and then walked silently until they came to her building. She didn’t say anything as they stood by the elevator. The Gremlin glanced around, saw that they were alone.
The elevator arrived, and as the doors opened he saw that it was empty. He kissed Margaret on the cheek. “I’d better go up with you, see you inside so I know you’re safe.”
She didn’t discourage him.
They kissed again in the elevator.
As the elevator door opened on her floor, he heard another door open and close somewhere beneath them. Then descending footsteps. Luck held. Still, no one had seen them.
He waited while she fished her keys from her purse and worked two dead-bolt locks.
The apartment door opened to darkness.
“You mind waiting while I turn on a light?” Margaret asked.
“Of course not. I’ll be right here.”
As soon as the darkness swallowed her, he crossed the threshold.
She heard him enter and turned, feeling a tingle of alarm.
But when the light came on he was staring at the clock on the table just inside the door. It was an anniversary clock. Its mechanism was beneath a glass dome and revolved a gold filigreed decoration back and forth in a regular circle and a half.
“Does that thing really never need winding?” he asked.
“Once a year,” she lied.
“How do they manage that?”
“They?”
“The people who manufacture the clock.”
Margaret shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s got some kind of perpetual motion.”
But he knew that was impossible.
Should be impossible.
She was amused by his rapt concentration as he studied the timepiece beneath the small glass dome. He was like a child encountering a new game or puzzle.
“Real gold?” he asked.
“Hardly.”
“Gold plated?”
“Not even that.”
“It doesn’t tick or make a bit of noise, yet it has the correct time. Mind if I look at it closer? See if I can make out how it works?”
She moved farther inside and laid her small brown purse on the sofa.
“Maybe when we get back,” she said.
He turned away from the clock, toward her. “Haven’t you noticed?” he asked. “We are back.”
Margaret ran regularly and worked out religiously at the gym. She was in shape. She’d taken a course in tae kwon do and knew how to hip-toss a man nearly twice her size. No one had taught her how to deal with being fixated by a stare, mesmerized by the glint of a knife blade.
No one had taught her how fear could freeze her insides and make movement impossible.
No one had taught her that she was prey.
17
Iowa, 1991
They sat at their usual assigned places. Jason Kray at the head of the table, next to him, Kent, next to Kent, Jordan. On the other long side of the table, Nora sat next to her mother.
It had been report card day. Even five-year-old Nora, who had recently started kindergarten, had come home after school with a report card. All passing marks, of course. Jordan thought he might be the only one at the table who knew the rest of Nora’s class got the same passing marks. His own grades hadn’t been so good. Not like his brother Kent’s.
Kent had gotten straight A’s in his classes, and a note from his adviser saying that he was a pleasure in class. He also earned straight A’s for good behavior. Taller than Jordan, but still of average height, he was also going to be a starter on the school basketball team.
His mother had raved when he’d shown up after school and handed the report card to her. She’d passed it to Kent’s father, Jason, who merely grunted and took in another glob of collard greens and vinegar on his fork.
“What about your dipshit little brother?” Jason asked.
Kent said nothing. He squirmed in his chair, looked at Jordan, and then looked away. He knew what would happen if he decided to defend Jordan. His father would see that it would never happen again.
Jordan was well aware of his failures as a scholar. It wasn’t that he was dumb. He knew that. He simply didn’t like studying anything he wasn’t interested in. He was curious about how things worked, which seemed to him to have nothing to do with when famous people were born or died, or who was king or queen during what era. How things worked, their inner secrets—that’s where the world’s real knowledge was to be found. The dates of ancient battles, won or lost, had little to do with it.