Olivia Korhonen was clearly on her guard in an instant, though her tone remained light. She set the tray of sandwiches down and said slowly, “Ah? Ulterior motives? Then you had probably better reveal them now, don’t you think so?” She stood with her head tipped slightly sideways, like an inquisitive bird.
Mattie’s heart was beating annoyingly fast, and she was very thirsty. She said, “You are stalking me, Olivia. I don’t know why. You are following me everywhere… and that thing you say every single time we meet.” Olivia Korhonen did not reply, nor change her expression. Mattie said, “Nobody else hears you, but I do. You whisper it-I will kill you. I hear you.”
Sleepless, playing variations on the scene over and over in her head the night before, she had expected anything from outrage and accusation to utter bewilderment to tearful, fervent denial. What happened instead was nothing she could have conceived of: Olivia Korhonen clapped her hands and began to laugh.
Her laughter was like cold silver bells, chiming a fraction out of tune, their dainty discordance more jarring than any rusty clanking could have been. Olivia Korhonen said, “Oh, I did wonder if you would ever let yourself understand me. You are such a… such a timorous woman, you know, Mattie Whalen-frightened of so very much, it is a wonder that you can ever peep out of your house, your little hole in the baseboard. Eyes flicking everywhere, whiskers twitching so frantically…” She broke off into a bubbling fit of giggles, while Mattie stared and stared, remembering girls in school hallways who had snickered just so.
“Oh, yes,” Olivia Korhonen said. “Yes, Mattie, I will kill you-be very sure of that. But not yet.” She clasped her hands together at her breast and bowed her head slightly, smiling. “Not just yet.”
“Why? Why do you want… what have I ever, ever done to you?”
The smile warmed and widened, but Olivia Korhonen was some time answering. When she did, the words came slowly, thoughtfully. “Mattie, where I come from we have a great many sheep, they are one of Finland’s major products. And where you have sheep, of course, you must have dogs. Oh, we do have many wonderful dogs-you should see them handle and guide and work the sheep. You would be so fascinated, I know you would.”
Her cheeks had actually turned a bit pink with what seemed like earnest enthusiasm. She said, “But Mattie, dear, it is a curious thing about sheep and dogs. Sometimes stray dogs break into a sheepfold, and then they begin to kill.” She did not emphasize the word, but it struck Mattie like a physical blow under the heart. Olivia Korhonen went on. “They are not killing to eat, out of hunger-no, they are simply killing blindly, madly, they will wipe out a whole flock of sheep in a night, and then run on home to their masters and their dog biscuits. Do you understand me so far, Mattie?”
Mattie’s body was so rigid that she could not even nod her head. Olivia’s softly chiming voice continued. “It is as though these good family dogs have gone temporarily insane. Animal doctors, veterinarians, they think now that the pure passivity, the purebred stupidity of the sheep somehow triggers-is that the right word, Mattie? I mean it like to set off-somehow triggers something in the dog’s brain, something very old. The sheep are blundering around in the pen, bleating in panic, too stupid to protect themselves, and it is all just too much for the dogs-even for sheepdogs sometimes. They simply go mad.” She spread her hands now, leaning forward, graceful as ever. “Do you see now, Mattie? I do hope you begin to see.”
“No.” The one word was all Mattie could force out between freezing lips. “No.”
“You are my sheep,” Olivia Korhonen said. “And I am like the dogs. You are a born victim, like all sheep, and it is your mere presence that makes you irresistible to me. Of course, dogs are dogs-they cannot ever wait to kill. But I can. I like to wait.”
Mattie could not move. Olivia Korhonen stepped back, looked at her wristwatch, and made a light gesture toward the door, as though freeing Mattie from a spell. “Now you had better run along home, dear, for I have company coming. We will practice our strategy for the Bridge Group another time.”
Mattie sat in her car for a long time, hands trembling, before she felt able even to turn the key in the ignition. She had no memory of driving home, except a vague awareness of impatient honking behind her when she lingered at intersections after the traffic light had changed. When she arrived home she sat by the telephone with her fingers on the keypad, trying to make herself dial Pat Gallagher’s number. After a time, she began to cry.
She did call that evening, by which time a curious calm, unlike any other she had ever felt, had settled over her. This may have been because by then she was extremely drunk, having entered the stage of slow but very precise speech, and a certain deliberate, unhurried rationality that she never seemed able to attain sober. Both Pat and Babs immediately offered to come and stay with her, but Mattie declined with thanks. “Not much point to it. She said she’d wait… said she liked waiting.” Her voice sounded strange in her own ears, and oddly new. “You can’t bodyguard me forever. I guess I have to bodyguard me. I guess I just have to.”
When she hung up-only after her friends had renewed their insistence that she call daily, on pain of home invasion-she did not drink any more, but sat motionless by the phone, waiting for Don’s return. It was his weekly staff-meeting night, and she knew he would be late, but she felt like sitting just where she was. If I never moved again, she’d have to come over here to kill me. And the neighbors would see. The phone rang once, but she did not answer.
Don came home in, for him, a cheerful mood, having been informed that his supervisor at the agency, whom he loathed, was being transferred to another branch. He had every expectation of a swift promotion. Mattie-or someone in Mattie’s body, shaping words with her still-cold lips-congratulated him, and even opened a celebratory bottle of champagne, though she drank none of her glass. Don began calling his friends to spread the news, and Mattie went into the kitchen to start a pot roast. The steamed fish with greens and polenta revolution had passed Don quietly by.
The act of cooking soothed her nerves, as it had always done; but the coldness of her skin seemed to have spread to her mind-which was not, when considered, a bad thing at all. There was a peculiar clarity to her thoughts now: both her options and her fears seemed so sharply defined that she felt as though she were traveling on an airplane that had just broken out of clouds into sunlight. I live in clouds. I always have.
Fork in one of his hands, cordless in the other, Don devoured two helpings of the roast and praised it in between calls. Mattie, nibbling for appearances’ sake, made no attempt to interrupt; but when he finally put the phone down for a moment she remarked, “That woman at the Bridge Group? The one who said she was going to kill me?”
Don looked up, the wariness in his eyes unmistakable. “Yeah?”
“She means it. She really means to kill me.” Mattie had been saying the words over and over to herself all afternoon; by now they came out briskly, almost casually. She said, “We discussed it for some time.”
Don uttered a cholesterol-saturated sigh. “Damn, ever since you started with that bridge club, feels like I’m running a daycare center. Look, this is middle-school bullshit, you know it and she knows it. Just tell her, enough with the bullshit, it’s getting real old. Or find yourself another partner, probably the best thing.” He had the cordless phone in his hand again.