When I met her she was making two instruments a month as well as handling repairs. She'd been written up in trade magazines and was back - ordered for four months. She was starting to make a living.
I probably loved her the first day I met her but it took me a couple of weeks to realize it.
After three months we started to talk about living together, but it didn't happen. There was no philosophical objection on either side, but her place was too small for two people and my house couldn't accommodate her shop. It sounds unromantic, letting mundane matters like space and comfort get in the way, but we were having such a good time with each other while maintaining our privacy, that the incentive to make a change wasn't there. Often she would spend the night with me, other times I'd collapse in her loft. Some evenings we'd go our separate ways.
It wasn't a bad arrangement.
I sipped coffee and eyed the pie.
"Have some, babe."
"I don't want to pork out before dinner."
"Maybe we won't go out for dinner." She stroked the back of my neck. "Ooh, such tension." She began to knead the muscles of my upper back. "You haven't felt this way in a long time."
"There's a good reason for it." And I told her about Milo's morning visit, the murder, Melody, Towle.
When I was through she placed her hands on my shoulders.
"Alex, do you really want to get into something like this?"
"Do I have a choice? I see that kid's eyes in my sleep. I was a fool for getting sucked in, but now I'm stuck."
She looked at me. The corners of her mouth lifted in a smile.
"You are such a pushover. And so sweet."
She nuzzled me under my chin. I held her to me and buried my face in her hair. It smelled of lemon and honey and rosewood.
"I really love you."
"I love you, too, Alex."
We undressed each other and when we were totally naked, I lifted her in my arms and carried her up the stairs to the loft. Not wanting to be apart from her for one second I kept my mouth fastened upon hers while I maneuvered myself on top of her. She clung to me, her arms and legs like tendrils. We connected, and I was home.
8
We slept until 10 p.m." then awoke famished. I went down to the kitchen and made sandwiches of Italian salami and Swiss cheese on rye, found a jug of burgundy and toted it all back upstairs for a late supper in bed. We shared garlicky kisses, got crumbs in the bed, hugged each other and fell back asleep.
We were jolted awake by the telephone.
Robin answered it.
"Yes, Milo, he's here. No, that's all right. Here he is."
She handed me the receiver and buried herself under the covers.
"Hello, Milo. What time is it?"
"Three a.m."
I sat up and rubbed my eyes. Through the skylight the heavens were black.
"What's going on."
"It's the kid - Melody Quinn. She's freaked out - woke up screaming. Bonita called Towle who called me. Demanded you get over there. He sounds pissed."
"Screw him. I'm not his errand boy."
"You want me to tell him that? He's right here."
"You're over there now? At her place?"
"Certainly. Neither rain nor hail nor darkness stays this trusted civil servant and all that shit. We're having a little party. The doctor, Bonita, me. The kid's sleeping. Towle gave her a shot of something."
"Figures."
"The kid spilled to her mom about the hypnosis. He wants you there if she wakes up again - to rehypnotize or something."
"That asshole. The hypnosis didn't cause this. The kid's got sleep problems because of all the dope he's been shoving into her system."
But I was far from certain of that. She had been troubled after the session on the beach.
"I'm sure you're right, Alex. I just wanted to give you the option to come down here, to know what was going on. If you want me to tell Towle to forget it, I will."
"Hold on a minute." I shook my head, trying to clear it. "Did she say anything when she woke up - anything coherent?"
"I just caught the tail end of it. They said it was the fourth time tonight. She was screaming for her daddy: "Oh Daddy. Daddy, Daddy' - like that, but very loud. It looked and sounded pretty bad, Alex."
"I'll be down there as soon as I can."
I gave the sleeping mummy next to me a kiss on the fanny, got up, and threw on my clothes.
I sped along Pacific, heading north. The streets were empty and slick with marine mist. The guide lights at the end of the pier were distant pinpoints. A few trawlers sat on the horizon. At this hour the sharks and other nocturnal predators would be prowling the bottom of the ocean floor. I wondered how much carnage was hidden by the glossy black outer skin of the water; and how many of the night hunters lurked on dry land, hiding in alleys, behind trash bins, concealed among the leaves and twigs of suburban shrubbery, wild - eyed, breathing hard.
As I drove I developed a new theory of evolution. Evil had its own metamorphic intelligence: The sharks and the razor - toothed serpents, the slimy, venomous things that hid in the silt, hadn't given way in an orderly progression to amphibian, reptile, bird and mammal. A single quantum leap had taken evil from water to land. From shark to rapist, eel to throat - slasher, poison slug to skull - crusher, with bloodlust at the core of the helix.
The darkness seemed to press against me, insistent, fetid. I pushed down harder on the accelerator and forced my way through it.
When I got to the apartment complex, Milo met me at the door.
"She's just started again."
I could hear it before I got to the bedroom.
The light was dim. Melody sat upright in her bed, her body rigid, eyes wide open but unfocused. Bonita sat next to her. Towle, in sports clothes, stood on the other side.
The child was sobbing, a wounded animal sound. She wailed and moaned and rocked back and forth. Then the moan picked up volume, gradually, like a siren, until she was screaming, her thin voice a piercing, shrieking assault upon the silence.
"Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!"
Her hair was plastered against her face, slick with sweat. Bonita tried to hold her but she flailed and struck out. The mother was helpless.
The screaming continued for what seemed like forever, then it stopped and she began moaning again.
"Oh, Doctor," Bonita pleaded, "she's going at it again. Do something."
Towle spotted me.
"Maybe Dr. Delaware can help." His tone of voice was nasty.
"No, no, I don't want him near her! He caused all of this!"
Towle didn't argue with her. I could have sworn he looked smug.
"Mrs. Quinn - " I began.
"No. You stay away! Get out!"
Her screaming set Melody off. and she began calling for her father again.
"Stop it!"
Bonita went for her, putting her hand over the child's mouth. Shaking her.