intense, breathtaking: Sarah Piper with blood all over her.
He stopped. Shaking. Waiting for more.
Nothing.
He strained. Tried to pluck more pictures from the ether.
Nothing. Just her face. And the blood. Gone now as quickly as it had
come to him.
She became aware of him. She turned around and said, “Hi.”
He licked his lips, forced a smile.
“You predicted this?” she asked, waving one hand toward the dead
woman’s bedroom.
“I’m afraid so.”
“That’s spooky.”
“I want to say .
“Yes?”
“It was nice meeting you.”
She smiled too.
“I wish it could have been under other circumstances,” he sad, stalling,
wondering how to tell her about the brief vision, wondering whether he
should tell her at all.
“Maybe we will,” she said.
“What?”
“Meet under other circumstances.”
“Miss Piper … be careful.
“I’m always careful.”
“For the next few days … be especially careful.”
“After what I’ve seen tonight,” she said, no longer smiling, “you can
bet on it.”
Frank Bollinger’s apartment near the Metropolitan Museum of Art was
small and spartan. The bedroom walls were cocoa brown, the wooden floor
polished and bare. The only furniture in the room was a queen-size bed,
one nightstand and a portable television set. He had built shelves into
the closets to hold his clothes. The living room had white walls and
the same shining wood floor. The only furniture was a black leather
couch, a wicker chair with black cushions, a mirrored coffee table, and
shelves full of books. The kitchen held the usual appliances and a
small table with two straightbacked chairs. The windows were covered
with venetian blinds, no drapes. The apartment was more like a monk’s
cell than a home, and that was how he liked it.
At nine o’clock Friday morning he got out of bed, showered, plugged in
the telephone, and brewed a pot of coffee.
He had come directly to his apartment from Edna Mowry’s place and had
spent the early morning hours drinking Scotch and reading Blake’s
poetry. Halfway through the bottle, still not drunk but so happy, very
happy, he went to bed and fell asleep reciting lines from The Four Zoas.
When he awoke five hours later, he felt new and fresh and pure, as if he
had been reborn.
He was pouring his first cup of coffee when the telephone rang.
“Hello? ”
“Dwight? “Yeah.”
“This is Billy.”
“Of course.”
Dwight was his middle name-Franklin Dwight Bollinger-and had been the
name of his maternal grandfather, who had died when Frank was less than
a year old. Until he met and came to know Billy, until he trusted
Billy, his grandmother had been the only one who ever used his middle
name. Shortly after his fourth birthday, his father abandoned the
family, and his mother discovered that a four-year-old interfered with
the hectic social life of a divorcee. Except for a few scattered and
agonizing months with his mother-who managed to provide occasional
bursts of affection only when her conscience began to bother her-he had
spent his childhood with his grandmother. She not only wanted him, she
cherished him. She treated him as if he were the focus not just of her
own life but of the very rotation of the earth.
“Franklin is such an ordinary name,” his grandmother used to say. “But
Dwight … well, now, that’s special. It was your grandfather’s name,
and he was a wonderful man, not at all like other people, one of a kind.
You’re going to grow up to be just like him, set apart, set above, more
important than others. Let everyone call you Frank. To me you’ll
always be Dwight.”
His grandmother had died ten years ago. For nine and a half years no
one had called him Dwight; then, six months ago, he’d met Billy.
Billy understood what it was like to be one of the new breed, to have
been born superior to most men. Billy was superior too, and had a right
to call him Dwight. He liked hearing the name again after all this
time. It was a key to his psyche, a pleasure button that lifted his
spirits each time it was pushed, a reminder that he was destined for a