He had talked about going away. True. But this—
It was too weird.
She washed the dishes. George had given her the evening off. She watched Entertainment Tonight, followed by a game show and a detective show. The images slid on past, video Valium. One day, she thought, we’ll get cable. Then maybe there’ll be something good to watch.
But the “we” made an odd hollow sound in her head.
She went to bed alone. Deep, brooding, dreamless sleep, and then she woke up—still alone. Well, that happened sometimes.
You couldn’t predict with Benjamin. Obviously, he had problems. It was not as if he could entirely control … what he was.
She forced herself to make the trek to the bathroom, cold these mornings. She looked at herself in the minor, naked and shivering, and she didn’t like what she saw. Small breasts, pinpoint nipples, a mouse-brown thatch of pubic hair. A ratty little body, Amelie thought. Someone, probably Sister Madelaine from the Ecole, had called her that. “Amelie, you are a ratty thing.”
Ratty little me, Amelie thought.
She went to work without thinking about Benjamin.
It was an ordinary day at work, and that was good. She thought maybe she was projecting some kind of aura, because nobody bothered her much. Even her customers were polite—even George was polite. At the door, as she was leaving, he put his hand on her shoulder and said, “Are you okay?”
“Just a little down,” Amelie said … regretting it instantly; because, in a strange way, saying so seemed to make it true.
“Some woman thing,” George diagnosed.
Yeah, she thought, I’m getting my period. George could be such a moron sometimes. But he meant well. “Something like that.”
“So cheer up,” he said.
Thank you a whole lot for that terrific advice, Amelie thought.
She walked home in the cold dark. When she reached the apartment, the note was still attached to the cupboard.
She looked at it harder this time. Forced her eyes to track it. Blue Bic hieroglyphics. Really, what language was this?
And at the back of her head, where impossible thoughts were nevertheless sometimes pronounced, she heard:
I am alone now.
Oh, no.
Screw that He’d be home. He would! It was only a matter of time.
She poked through the dresser drawers looking for something to smoke, something that would soothe her to sleep. This turned out to be a bad move, because she discovered that Benjamin’s clothes had been pretty much cleared out. The vacant space was a signal to her, more comprehensible than the note and more final. This sad empty drawer. She slammed it shut. As it turned out, there was a joint hidden at the bottom of her purse—something she’d bought from Tony Morriseau a while back.
It got her stoned enough to enjoy a William Powell Thin Man movie coming fuzzily over the border from a network affiliate in Buffalo … but not so stoned that she didn’t leap up from the sofa when the telephone rang. Benjamin, she thought, because it was late now and he must be thinking about her and who the hell else would be calling her at this hour?
Her hand trembled on the receiver. “Hello?”
But it wasn’t Benjamin. It was Roch.
She couldn’t understand him at first. He was speaking thick, muddled, obscene French. He’s drunk, she thought. She said, in English, “What do you want?”
There was a long pause. “I need a place to stay.”
“Oh, no … hey, come on, Roch, you know that’s not a good idea.”
“Oh, it isn’t? Isn’t it?”
Amelie wished she hadn’t smoked. She felt suddenly feverish and sweaty. She felt her brother’s attention focused on her like a heat-ray through the telephone.
“They fucking kicked me out of my apartment, Amelie. Nonpayment. Bitch landlady calls me a deadbeat. You know? This …toad, with a dress like a burlap sack. Looks at me like I came out from a crack in the plaster. You are a deadbeat, she says, I’m locking you out. I told her, I have stuff in there. She says, you have trash in there and you can pick it up from the side of the road. I should have fucking killed her.”
Amelie, who was tired of this, said, “So why didn’t you?”
“Because she had some goddamnned pit bull or something on a leash beside her. One of those killing dogs.” He emitted a high, drunken laugh. “It even looked like her! But I should have … you know … I should have fucking killed her.”
So do it sometime. Just do it, and then they’ll lock you up and I won’t have this problem.
She said, “There must be someplace you can stay.”
It sounded like pleading.
“You’re it,” Roch said. “You’re my sister. You owe this to me.” He added, “What’s the problem—that shithead you’re living with? Well, you can just fucking ditch him. This is an emergency. I mean, I’m family, right? So tell him to get the hell out or I’ll kick his ass.”
You didn’t have much luck last time you tried, Amelie thought—but then she remembered that Benjamin was gone. Maybe because she was stoned and frightened now, his absence became abruptly real. She really was alone here. All by herself in these broken-down rooms.
She didn’t want to give in to Roch. But if she refused, odds were he’d be over here anyway. He would want a fight; and she couldn’t face that … not now…
So she told him, “Just tonight. Just until you find something. Okay? Just tonight.”
He was instantly soothed. “That’s my girl.”
“I’m not your girl, Roch.”
“You’re there when I need you. That’s what counts, right? That’s what family is for.”
“Sure. That’s what family is for.”
In the aftermath of his call, the silence in the room was stunning. She turned down the volume on the TV but she could still hear a high-pitched whine radiating from inside the set. A leaky tap ticked in the kitchen.
She turned away from the phone, then turned back as a flutter of motion attracted her eye. A slip of paper had been tucked under the phone; now it slipped to the floor. She picked it up and unfolded it.
A phone number. A name.
Susan Christopher.
The woman who had come looking for John Shaw.
Maybe Susan Christopher knows where Benjamin is, she thought. It was possible. But the Christopher woman might be out of town by now. Probably was. There was a hotel address written under the fold of the paper. Probably she would have checked out. Still—
No, Amelie instructed herself. Don’t think about it now. Save it.
She tucked the note into her purse, down deep between her wallet and her make-up case—a safe place. She might want it, she thought. Later.
10
Susan stayed an extra month over schedule in Toronto, living frugally on the money Dr. Kyriakides had wired her and waiting for the phone to ring.
She developed a schedule. Her mornings were her own, and she used them to explore the city, on foot or by public transit. There was always the possibility that John might try to contact her during these hours, but it was a calculated risk: she could not simply sit in her room and wait. So she would wake up, shower, buy breakfast in the hotel coffee shop. She had left standing instructions with the switchboard to take her messages—which must have amused the telephone staff, since there weren’t any messages, ever—and she was careful to get back no later than one o’clock in the afternoon, a stern rule that served to assuage her guilt.