“Yes, Roark.”
He walked across the room he had designed for her, he sat down, facing her, the width of the room between them. She found herself seated too, not conscious of her own movements, only of his, as if his body contained two sets of nerves, his own and hers.
“Next Monday night, Dominique, exactly at eleven-thirty, I want you to drive up to the site of Cortlandt Homes.”
She noticed that she was conscious of her eyelids; not painfully, but just conscious; as if they had tightened and would not move again. She had seen the first building of Cortlandt. She knew what she was about to hear.
“You must be alone in your car and you must be on your way home from some place where you had an appointment to visit, made in advance. A place that can be reached from here only by driving past Cortlandt. You must be able to prove that afterward. I want your car to run out of gas in front of Cortlandt, at eleven-thirty. Honk your horn. There’s an old night watchman there. He will come out. Ask him to help you and send him to the nearest garage, which is a mile away.”
She said steadily, “Yes, Roark.”
“When he’s gone, get out of your car. There’s a big stretch of vacant land by the road, across from the building, and a kind of trench beyond. Walk to that trench as fast as you can, get to the bottom and lie down on the ground. Lie flat. After a while, you can come back to the car. You will know when to come back. See that you’re found in the car and that your condition matches its condition–approximately.”
“Yes, Roark.”
“Have you understood?”
“Yes.”
“Everything?”
“Yes. Everything.”
They were standing. She saw only his eyes and that he was smiling.
She heard him say: “Good night, Dominique,” he walked out and she heard his car driving away. She thought of his smile.
She knew that he did not need her help for the thing he was going to do, he could find other means to get rid of the watchman; that he had let her have a part in this, because she would not survive what was to follow if he hadn’t; that this had been the test.
He had not wanted to name it; he had wanted her to understand and show no fear. She had not been able to accept the Stoddard trial, she had run from the dread of seeing him hurt by the world, but she had agreed to help him in this. Had agreed in complete serenity. She was free and he knew it.
The road ran flat across the dark stretches of Long Island, but Dominique felt as if she were driving uphill. That was the only abnormal sensation: the sensation of rising, as if her car were speeding vertically. She kept her eyes on the road, but the dashboard on the rim of her vision looked like the panel of an airplane. The clock on the dashboard said 11:10.
She was amused, thinking: I’ve never learned to fly a plane and now I know how it feels; just like this, the unobstructed space and no effort. And no weight. That’s supposed to happen in the stratosphere–or is it the interplanetary space?–where one begins to float and there’s no law of gravity. No law of any kind of gravity at all. She heard herself laughing aloud.
Just the sense of rising….Otherwise, she felt normal. She had never driven a car so well. She thought: It’s a dry, mechanical job, to drive a car, so I know I’m very clearheaded; because driving seemed easy, like breathing or swallowing, an immediate function requiring no attention. She stopped for red lights that hung in the air over crossings of anonymous streets in unknown suburbs, she turned corners, she passed other cars, and she was certain that no accident could happen to her tonight; her car was directed by remote control–one of those automatic rays she’d read about–was it a beacon or a radio beam?–and she only sat at the wheel.
It left her free to be conscious of nothing but small matters, and to feel careless and…unserious, she thought; so completely unserious. It was a kind of clarity, being more normal than normal, as crystal is more transparent than empty air. Just small matters: the thin silk of her short, black dress and the way it was pulled over her knee, the flexing of her toes inside her pump when she moved her foot, “Danny’s Diner” in gold letters on a dark window that flashed past.
She had been very gay at the dinner given by the wife of some banker, important friends of Gail’s, whose names she could not quite remember now. It had been a wonderful dinner in a huge Long Island mansion. They had been so glad to see her and so sorry that Gail could not come. She had eaten everything she had seen placed before her. She had had a splendid appetite–as on rare occasions of her childhood when she came running home after a day spent in the woods and her mother was so pleased, because her mother was afraid that she might grow up to be anemic.
She had entertained the guests at the dinner table with stories of her childhood, she had made them laugh, and it had been the gayest dinner party her hosts could remember. Afterward, in the drawing room with the windows open wide to a dark sky–a moonless sky that stretched out beyond the trees, beyond the towns, all the way to the banks of the East River–she had laughed and talked, she had smiled at the people around her with a warmth that made them all speak freely of the things dearest to them, she had loved those people, and they had known they were loved, she had loved every person anywhere on earth, and some woman had said: “Dominique, I didn’t know you could be so wonderful!” and she had answered: “I haven’t a care in the world.”
But she had really noticed nothing except the watch on her wrist and that she must be out of that house by 10:50. She had no idea of what she would say to take her leave, but by 10:45 it had been said, correctly and convincingly, and by 10:50 her foot was on the accelerator.
It was a closed roadster, black with red leather upholstery. She thought how nicely John, the chauffeur, had kept that red leather polished. There would be nothing left of the car, and it was proper that it should look its best for its last ride. Like a woman on her first night. I never dressed for my first night–I had no first night–only something ripped off me and the taste of quarry dust in my teeth.
When she saw black vertical strips with dots of light filling the glass of the car’s side window, she wondered what had happened to the glass. Then she realized that she was driving along the East River and that this was New York, on the other side. She laughed and thought: No, this is not New York, this is a private picture pasted to the window of my car, all of it, here, on one small pane, under my hand, I own it, it’s mine now–she ran one hand across the buildings from the Battery to Queensboro Bridge–Roark, it’s mine and I’m giving it to you.
The figure of the night watchman was now fifteen inches tall in the distance. When it gets to be ten inches, I’ll start, thought Dominique. She stood by the side of her car and wished the watchman would walk faster.
The building was a black mass that propped the sky in one spot. The rest of the sky sagged, intimately low over a flat stretch of ground. The closest streets and houses were years away, far on the rim of space, irregular little dents, like the teeth of a broken saw.
She felt a large pebble under the sole of her pump; it was uncomfortable, but she would not move her foot; it would make a sound. She was not alone. She knew that he was somewhere in that building, the width of a street away from her. There was no sound and no light in the building; only white crosses on black windows. He would need no light; he knew every hall, every stairwell.
The watchman had shrunk away. She jerked the door of her car open. She threw her hat and bag inside, and flung the door shut. She heard the slam of sound when she was across the road, running over the empty tract, away from the building.
She felt the silk of her dress clinging to her legs, and it served as a tangible purpose of flight, to push against that, to tear past that barrier as fast as she could. There were pits and dry stubble on the ground. She fell once, but she noticed it only when she was running again.