is exactly what you saw ten minutes ago, and ten minutes before that.”
He changed the subject before she could press for more details. “Any
furniture arrive yet?”
“Oh yes!” she said. “The bedroom suite.”
“And?
“Just like it looked in the showroom. And the mattress is firm but
full of bounce.”
He assumed a mock suspicious tone. “How would you know about that-what
with your husband halfway across the country? ”
“I jumped up and down on it for about five minutes,” she said, chuckling
quietly.
“Testing it, you know?”
He laughed, picturing the slim, longhaired, elfin-faced girl romping
happily on their bed as if it were a trampoline.
“And you know what, Alex?”
“What? ”
“I was nude when I tested it. How’s that strike you?”
He stopped laughing. “Strikes me fine.”
His voice caught in the back of his throat. He felt himself smile
idiotically, even though Colin was watching and listening. “Why torture
me like this?”
“Well, I keep thinking you might meet some saucy woman on the highway
and run off with her. I don’t want you to forget me “I couldn’t,” he
said, speaking beyond sex now. “I couldn’t forget.”
“Well, I like to be sure. And-hey, I think I found a job.”
“Already?
“There’s a new city magazine starting up, and they need a photographer
to work full time. No tedious layout jobs. just straight
photography. I made an appointment to show them my portfolio tomorrow.”
“Sounds great.”
“It’ll be good for Colin, too,” she said. “It’s not an office job. I’ll
be running all over the city, setting up shots. That ought to make a
pretty full summer for him.”
They talked only a few minutes more, then said their goodbyes.
When he hung up the phone, the drumming rain seemed to get suddenly
louder.
Later, in the intensely dark room as they lay in their beds waiting for
sleep to come, Colin sighed and said, “Well, she knew that something was
wrong, didn’t she?”
“YeS.”
“You can’t fool Courtney.”
“Not for very long, anyway,” Doyle said, staring at the lightless
ceiling and thinking about his wife.
The darkness seemed to swell and shrink and swell again, to pulse as if
it were alive, to press warmly down around them like a blanket.
“You really think we’ve lost him?” the boy asked.
“Sure.
“We thought we’d lost him before.”
“This time we can be certain.”
“I hope you’re right,” Colin said. “He’s a real crazy, whoever he
is.”
The shushing snare-drum music of the spring storm soon put the boy, and
then Doyle, to sleep . . .
Rain was falling as steadily as ever when Colin woke him. He stood
beside Doyle’s bed, shaking the man by the shoulder and whispering
urgently. “Alex! Alex, wake up. Alex!”
Doyle sat up in bed, groggy and somewhat confused. His mouth felt furry
and stale. He kept blinking his eyes, trying to see something, until he
realized it was the middle of the night and the room was still
pitch-black.
“Alex, are you awake?”
“Yeah. What’s the matter?”
“There’s someone at the door,” the boy said.
Alex stared straight at the voice but could see nothing of the boy. “At
the door? ” he asked stupidly, still not clear-headed enough to
understand what was happening.
“He woke me up,” Colin whispered. “I’ve been listening to him maybe
three or four minutes. I think he’s trying to pick the lock.”
Ten Now, above the background noise of the rain, Alex could hear the
strange fumbling noises on the other side of the door. in the warm,
close, anonymous darkness, the sounds of the wire probing back and forth
in the lock seemed much louder than they really were. His fear acted as
an amplifier.
“You hear him?” Colin asked. His voice cracked between the last two
words, leaping up the scale.
Doyle reached out and found the boy and put one hand on his skinny
shoulder. “I can hear him, Colin,” he whispered, hoping his own voice
would remain steady. “It’s okay. Nobody’s going to come in here.
Nobody’s going to hurt you.”
“But it must be him.”
Doyle looked at his wristwatch, which was the only source of light in