She wasn’t terribly surprised to find herself unconvinced. What did surprise her was the thought which followed: The woman in the picture wouldn’t be afraid of this; the woman in the rose madder chiton wouldn’t be afraid of this piddle at all.
The idea was ridiculous, of course; if the woman in the picture were real, she would have existed in an ancient world where comets were considered harbingers of doom, gods were thought to dally on the tops of mountains, and most folks lived and died without ever seeing a book. If a woman from that time were transported into a room like this, a room with glass walls and cold lights and a steel snake’s head poking out of the only table, she would either run screaming for the door or faint dead away.
Except Rosie had an idea that the blonde woman in the rose madder chiton had never fainted dead away in her entire life, and it would take a lot more than a recording studio to make her scream.
You’re thinking about her as if she’s real, the deep voice said. It sounded nervous. Are you sure that’s wise?
If it gets me through this, you bet, she thought back at it.
‘Rosie?’ It was Rhoda Simons’s voice coming through the speakers. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes,’ she said, and was relieved to find that her voice was still there, only a little croaky.
‘I’m thirsty, that’s all. And scared to death.’
‘There’s a cooler filled with Evian water and fruit juices under the left side of the table,’
Rhoda said. ‘As for being afraid, that’s natural. And it will pass.’
‘Give me a little more, Rosie,’ Curtis invited. He had a pair of earphones on now, and was tweaking a row of dials.
The panic was passing, thanks to the woman in the rose madder gown. As a calmative, thinking of her even beat fifteen minutes of rocking in Pooh’s Chair.
No, it’s not her, it’s you, the deep voice told her. You’re on top of it, kiddo, at least for the time being, but you did it yourself. And would you do me a favor, no matter how the rest of this turns out? Try to keep remembering who’s really Rosie around here, and who’s Rosie Real.
‘Talk about anything,’ Curtis was telling her. ‘It doesn’t matter what.’
For a moment she was utterly at a loss. Her eyes dropped to the sides in front of her. The first was a cover reproduction. It showed a scantily clad woman being menaced by a hulking, unshaven man with a knife. The man had a moustache, and a thought almost too fleeting to be recognizable
(wanna get it on wanna do the dog)
brushed past her consciousness like a breath of bad air.
‘I’m going to read a book called The Manta Ray,’ she said in what she hoped was a normal speaking voice. ‘It was published in 1951 by Lion Books, a little paperback company.
Although it says on the cover that the author’s name is . . . have you got enough?’
‘I’m fine on the reel-to-reel,’ Curtis said, foot-powering himself from one end of his board to the other in his wheeled chair. ‘Just give me a little more for the DAT. But you’re sounding good.’
‘Yes, wonderful,’ Rhoda said, and Rosie didn’t think she was imagining the relief in the director’s voice.
Feeling encouraged, Rosie addressed the mike again.
‘It says on the cover that the book was written by Richard Racine, but Mr Lefferts — Rob
— says it was actually written by a woman named Christina Bell. It’s part of an unabridged audio series called “Women in Disguise,” and I got this job because the woman who was supposed to read the Christina Bell novels got a part in a — ‘
‘I’m fine,’ Curtis Hamilton said.
‘My God, she sounds like Liz Taylor in Butterfield 8,’ Rhoda Simons said, and actually clapped her hands.
Robbie nodded. He was grinning, obviously delighted. ‘Rhoda will help you along, but if you do it just like you did Dark Passage for me outside the Liberty City, we’re all going to be very happy.’
Rosie leaned over, just avoided whamming her head on the side of the table, and got a bottle of Evian water from the cooler. When she twisted the cap, she saw that her hands were shaking. ‘I’ll do my best. I promise you that.’
‘I know you will,’ he said.
Think of the woman on the hill, Rosie told herself. Think of how she’s standing there right now, not afraid of anything coming toward her in her world or coming up behind her from mine. She doesn’t have a single weapon, but she’s not afraid — you don’t need to see her face to know that, you can see it in the set of her back. She’s . . .
‘. . . ready for anything,’ Rosie murmured, and smiled.
Robbie leaned forward on his side of the glass. ‘Pardon? I didn’t get that.’
‘I said I’m ready to go,’ she said.
‘Level’s good,’ Curtis said, and turned to Rhoda, who had set out her own Xeroxed copy of the novel next to her pad of paper. ‘Ready when you are, Professor.’
‘Okay, Rosie, let’s show ’em how it’s done,’ Rhoda said. ‘This is The Manta Ray, by Christina Bell. The client is Audio Concepts, the director is Rhoda Simons, and the reader is Rose McClendon. Tape is rolling. Take one on my mark, and . . . mark.’
Oh God I can’t, Rosie thought once more, and then she narrowed her mind’s vision down to a single powerfully bright image: the gold circlet the woman in the picture wore on her upper right arm. As it came clear to her, this fresh cramp of panic also began to pass.
‘Chapter One.
‘Nella didn’t realize she was being followed by the man in the ragged gray topcoat until she was between streetlights and a garbage-strewn alley yawned open on her left like the jaws of an old man who has died with food in his mouth. By then it was too late. She heard the sound of shoes with steel taps on their heels closing in behind her, and a big, dirt-grimed hand shot out of the dark . . .’
3
Rosie pushed her key into the lock of her second-floor room on Trenton Street that evening at quarter past seven. She was tired and hot — summer had come early to the cit y this year —
but she was also very happy. Curled in one arm was a little bag of groceries. Poking out of the top was a sheaf of yellow fliers, announcing the Daughters and Sisters Swing into Summer Picnic and Concert. Rosie had gone by D & S to tell them how her first day at work had gone (she was all but bursting with it), and as she was leaving, Robin St James had asked her if she would take a handful of fliers and try to place them with the storekeepers in her neighborhood. Rosie, trying hard not to show how thrilled she was just to have a neighborhood, agreed to get as many up as she could.
‘You’re a lifesaver,’ Robin said. She was in charge of ticket sales this year, and had made no secret of the fact that so far they weren’t going very well. ‘And if anybody asks you, Rosie, tell them there are no teenage runaways here, and that we’re not dykes. Those stories’re half the problem with sales. Will you do that?’
‘Sure,’ Rosie had replied, knowing she’d do no such thing. She couldn’t imagine giving a storekeeper she had never met before a lecture on what Daughters and Sisters was all about . .
. and what it wasn’t all about.
But I can say they’re nice women, she thought, turning on the fan in the corner and then opening the fridge to put away her few things. Then, out loud: ‘No, I’ll say ladies. Nice ladies.’
Sure, that was probably a better idea. Men — especially those past forty — for some reason felt more comfortable with that word than they did with women. It was silly (and the way some women fussed and clucked over the semantics was even sillier, in Rose’s opinion), but thinking about it called up a sudden memory: how Norman talked about the prostitutes he sometimes busted. He never called them ladies (that was the word he used when talking about the wives of his colleagues, as in ‘Bill Jessup’s wife’s a real nice lady’); he never called them women, either. He called them the gals. The gals this and the gals that. She had never realized until this moment how much she had hated that hard little back-of-the-throat word. Gals. Like a sound you might make when you were trying hard not to vomit.
Forget him, Rosie, he’s not here. He’s not going to be here.