Лоуренс Блок - Catch and Release

Took him a moment, but he figured out what it was. It was relief.

He took out his cell phone, thought for a moment, put it back in his pocket. The diner had a pay phone, and he spent a couple of quarters and placed a call. The girl who answered put Sully on the phone, and Colliard said, “That order you placed the other day, I wanted to tell you I’ll be able to fill it tomorrow.”

“You sure of that, are you?”

“It might take an extra day.”

“A day one way or the other doesn’t matter. The question is do you have the goods for the transaction.”

“I do.”

“It seems to me,” Sully said, “that it’s a hard question to answer ahead of the event, if you take my meaning.”

“I know it for a fact,” Colliard said. “What I did, I went and took inventory.”

“You took inventory.”

“Checked the shelves myself.”

He finished his coffee, and stayed at the table long enough to make another phone call. He used his cell phone for this one, there was no reason not to, and called his own home. The first three rings went unanswered. Then his wife picked up just before the phone went to Voice Mail.

He asked how it went at the doctor’s office, and was pleased to learn that everything went well, that the baby’s heartbeat was strong and distinct, that all systems were go. “He said I’m going to be a perfectly wonderful mother,” she reported.

“Well, I could have told you that.”

“You sound—”

“What?”

“Better,” she said. “Stronger. More upbeat.”

“I’m going to be a perfectly wonderful father.”

“Oh, you are, you are. I’m just happy you’re in such good spirits.”

“It must have been the casserole. I had some for breakfast.”

“Not cold?”

“No, I microwaved it.”

“And it was good?”

“Better than good.”

“Not too spicy? So early in the day?”

“It got me off to a good start.”

“And it’s been a good day,” she said. “That much I can hear in your voice. Did you—”

“I got the job. Well, case by case, the way I said, but they’re going to be giving me work.”

“That’s wonderful, honey.”

“It may take a while to get back where we were, but we’re finally pointed in the right direction again, you know?”

“We’ll be fine.”

“Damn right we will. And we’ll be able to keep the house. I know you had your heart set on a trailer, but—”

“I’ll get over it. What time will you be home? I should really get dinner started.”

“Let’s go out.”

“Really?”

“Nothing fancy,” he said. “I was thinking along the lines of pizza and a Coke.”

What’s going on?

I’m in my own house minding my own business, and he motions me over. That Manny, whatever his name is, but one thing I’m sure of is it’s not Manny. And that Eva of his, her name’s not Eva.

Is she even his mother? She’s old enough to be his mother, but the way they act, the way they look at each other, you’d think they were something else. Let me put it this way, it’s not something I want to say.

He calls me over, this Manny, like you’d signal for a waitress. In here, he says. Something you should see, he says. Stand here, he says. And there’s this plastic sheet spread on the carpet, like the painters put down.

I ask him what’s this, what’s it doing here. Just wait a minute, he says, and he takes this thing out of his pocket, and I’m starting to ask him what it is, and he’s saying something, who knows what, and he reaches out with the thing and before I can move he touches my neck with it, and the next thing I know I’m up in the air.

Will somebody please tell me what is going on?

I am up in the air. I am floating. One minute I’ve got both feet on the floor and the next minute I’m up at the ceiling, and...

Oh.

I’m both places. I’m up here, but I’m down there, too. Lying down, on this plastic sheet on the floor. That’s my body down there, but up here is — what?

Me. Me, myself. Irene Silverman, the same person, no different, but without a body. It’s down there. I’m up here.

It. I.

What am I, dead?

I must be dead. I don’t know what he touched me with, but it was like sticking your finger in a light socket. It gave me such a shock that it shocked me right out of my body. Like being struck by lightning, and I’m dead, and there’s my body down there.

No, wait a minute. I’m not dead. I’m out of my body, I’m here and it’s there, but it’s still alive. I could go back into my body and sit up and walk and talk.

When I’m ready.

“What are you waiting for?”

It’s her, the mother.

“Go ahead, honey. Finish what you started.”

He kneels down next to me.

“The gloves, honey.”

He puts on a pair of clear plastic gloves. Everybody wears them lately. Nurses, doctors. The girl who cleans your teeth. The clerk in the food market. In the market it’s a sanitary thing, but the others are afraid of AIDS.

So what’s with the gloves? I’m an eighty-two year old woman, does he think I’ve got AIDS?

Oh.

His hands are on my throat.

It looks so small, my body.

I was always short, but a person shrinks. You get used to being short, and then you get shorter.

Some system. What genius thought it up?

I guess I’m dead now. I feel the same way, floating up above everything, as I did before he strangled me. But my body was alive then, and he choked me, and the life went out of me like a cork coming out of a bottle. But not champagne, it didn’t pop. It just came out.

So where’s the white light? Where’s the long tunnel with the white light at the end of it? Isn’t that what’s supposed to happen?

You die and there’s this tunnel and this white light, and every dead person who ever loved you is waiting to welcome you. And so on. People come back and tell about it. It was beautiful, they say, and I wanted to stay, they say, but it wasn’t my time.

Very nice, I used to think, but personally I’d rather go to Paris.

But did somebody just make that up? If I’m dead, what happened to the tunnel? Where the hell is the light?

Maybe that only happens if you die and come back. Maybe when you die for keeps, that’s it. Lights out, end of story.

So what am I doing here?

All wrapped up.

They wrap me in the plastic sheet, stuff me in garbage bags, seal me in with duct tape. What am I, meat for the freezer?

“No body,” she’s saying. “No DNA, nothing. No trace evidence. She’ll disappear and they’ll never even know what happened to her. And if they suspect, so what?”

I’m watching while they put me in a big duffle bag and carry me out to their car. There’s another sheet of clear plastic lining the trunk, and they lay the duffle bag on top of it. The trunk lid’s electric, you don’t have to slam it. You close it gently and it shuts itself the rest of the way automatically.

They get in the car, and it pulls away, and I’m floating in the air watching them drive off with my body. And the next thing I know they’re getting out of the car at the edge of a field. The trunk’s open and he’s carrying the duffle bag.

There’s a hole in the earth. They dug the grave ahead of time. I was walking around, having my breakfast, reading the paper, and all along there was a hole in the earth, waiting for me.

The duffle bag goes in the hole. And the plastic sheet from the trunk of the car. And the gloves he wore.

The grave’s filled in now. “She’s gone forever,” she says. “They’ll never find her.”

They never do.

Time is different when you’re dead. You’re someplace and then you’re not.