Dean Koontz - From the Corner of His Eye

“Let's go down,” he insisted.

Slipping free of his embrace, taking a bite of her sandwich, managing to be beautiful even while talking with her mouth full, she said, “Well, of course, we can't go down until we see how bad the problem is."

“What problem?"

“The railing. Maybe that's the only dangerous section, but maybe the whole things rotten. We have to know the extent of the problem when we get back to civilization and call the forest service to report it."

“Why can't we 'just call and let them check out the rest of it?"

Grinning, she pinched his left earlobe and tugged it.

Ding dong. Anyone home? I'm taking a poll to see who knows the meaning of civic responsibility.

He frowned. “Making the phone call is responsible enough."

“The more Information we have, the more credible we'll sound, and the more credible we sound, the less likely they are to think we're just kids jerking their chain."

“This is nuts."

“Brazil or hazel?"

“What',"

“If It's nuts, I don't recognize the variety.” Having finished her sandwich she licked her fingers. “Think about it, Eenie. What if some family comes up here with their kids?"

He could never deny her anything she wanted, in part because she rarely wanted anything for herself.

The platform encircling the enclosed observation post was about ten feet wide. It seemed solid and safe underfoot. Structural problems were restricted to the balustrade.

“All right,” he reluctantly agreed. “But I'll check the railing, and you stay back by the wall, where it's safe."

Lowering her voice and speaking in a Neanderthal grunt, she said, “Man fight fierce tiger. Woman watch."

“That's the natural order of things."

Still grunting: “Man say is natural order. To woman, is just entertainment.

“Always happy to amuse, ma'am."

As Junior followed the balustrade, gingerly testing it, Naomi stayed behind him. “Be careful, Eenie."

The weathered railing cap was rough under his band. He was more concerned about splinters than about falling. He remained at arm's length from the edge of the platform, moving slowly, repeatedly shaking the railing, searching for loose or rotten pickets.

In a couple minutes, they completed a full circuit of the platform, returning to the spot where Naomi had discovered the rotten wood. This was the only point of weakness in the railing.

“Satisfied?” he asked. “Lets go down."

“Sure, but lets finish lunch first.” She had taken a bag of-dried apricots from her backpack.

“We ought to go down,” he pressed.

Shaking two apricots from the bag into his band: “I'm not alone with this view. Don't be a killjoy, Eenie. We know it's safe now."

“Okay.” He surrendered. “But don't lean on the railing even where we know it's all right."

“You'd make someone a wonderful mother."

“Yeah, but I'd have trouble with the breast-feeding."

They circled the platform again, pausing every few steps to gaze at the spectacular panorama, and Junior's tension quickly ebbed. Naomi's company, as always, was tranquilizing.

She fed him an apricot. He was reminded of their wedding reception, when they had fed slivers of cake to each other. Life with Naomi was a perpetual honeymoon.

Eventually they returned yet again to the section of the railing that had almost collapsed under her hands.

Junior shoved Naomi so hard that she was almost lifted off her feet. Her eyes flared wide, and a half-chewed wad of apricot fell from her gaping month. She crashed backward into the weak section of railing.

For an instant, Junior thought the railing might hold, but the pickets splintered, the handrail cracked, and Naomi pitched backward off the view deck, in a clatter of rotting wood. She was so surprised that she didn't begin to scream until she must have been a third of the way through her long fall.

Junior didn't hear her hit bottom, but the abrupt cessation of the scream confirmed impact.

He had astonished himself. He hadn't realized that he was capable of cold-blooded murder, especially on the spur of the moment, with no time to analyze the risks and the potential benefits of such a drastic act, After catching his breath and coming to grips with his amazing audacity, Junior moved along the platform, past the broken-away railing. From a secure position, he leaned out and peered down.

She was so tiny, a pale spot on the dark grass and stone. On her back. One leg bent under her at an impossible angle. Right arm at her side, left arm flung out as if she were waving. A radiant rumbus of golden hair fanned around her head.

He loved her so much that he couldn't bear to look at her. He turned away from the railing, crossed the platform, and sat with his back against the wall of the lookout station.

For a while, he wept uncontrollably. Losing Naomi, he had lost more than a wife, more than a friend and lover, more than a soul mate. He had lost a part of his own physical being: He was hollow inside, as though the very meat and bone at the core of him had been torn out and replaced by a void, black and cold. Horror and despair racked him and he was tormented by thoughts of self-destruction.

But then he felt better.

Not good, but definitely better.

Naomi had dropped the bag of dried apricots before she plummeted from the tower. He crawled to it, extracted a piece of fruit, and chewed slowly, savoring the morsel. Sweet.

Eventually he squirmed on his belly to the gap in the railing, where he gazed straight down at his lost love far below. She was in precisely the same position as when he'd first looked.

Of Course, he hadn't expected her to he dancing. A fifteen-story fall all but certainly quashed the urge to boogie.

From this height, he could not see any blood. He was Sure that some blood must have been spilled.

The air was still, no breeze whatsoever. The sentinel firs and pines stood as motionless as those mysterious stone heads that faced the sea on Faster Island.

Naomi dead. So alive only moments ago, now gone. Unthinkable.

The sky was the delft-blue of a tea set that his mother had owned. Mounds of clouds to the cast, like clotted cream. Buttery, the sun.

Hungry, he ate another apricot.

No hawks above. No visible movement anywhere in this fastness.

Below, Naomi still dead.

How strange life is. How fragile. You never know what stunning development lies around the next corner.

Junior's shock had given way to a profound sense of wonder. For most of his young life, he had understood that the world was deeply mysterious, ruled by fate. Now, because of this tragedy, he realized that the human mind and heart were no less enigmatic than the rest of creation.

Who would have thought that Junior was capable of such a sudden, violent act as this?

Not Naomi.

Not Junior himself, in fact. How passionately he had loved this woman. How fiercely he had cherished her. He'd thought he couldn't live without her.

He'd been wrong. Naomi down there, still very dead, and him up here, alive. His brief suicidal impulse had passed, and now he knew that he would get through this tragedy somehow, that the pain Would eventually Subside, that the sharp sense Of loss Would be dulled by time, and that eventually he might even love someone again.

Indeed, in spite of his grief and anguish, he regarded the future with more optimism, interest, and excitement than he'd felt in a long time. If he was capable of this, then he was different from the mail he'd always imagined himself to be, more complex, more dynamic. Wow.

He sighed. Tempting, as it was to lie here, gazing down at dead Naomi, daydreaming about a holder and more colorful future than any that he'd previously imagined, he had much to accomplish before the afternoon was done. His life was going to be busy for a while.