Dean Koontz - From the Corner of His Eye

THROUGH THE ROSE-PATTERNED glasswork in the front door, as the bell rang again, Joe saw Maria Gonzalez: tinted red here and green there, beveled in some places and crackled in others, her face a mosaic of petals and leaf shapes.

When Joey opened the door, Maria half bowed her head, kept her eyes lowered, and said, “I must be Maria Gonzalez."

“Yes, Maria, I know who you are.” He was, as ever, charmed by her shyness and by her brave struggle with English.

Although Joey stepped back and held the door open wide, Maria remained on the porch. I will to see Mrs. Agnes."

“Yes, that's right. Please come in."

She still hesitated. “For the English."

“She has plenty of that. More than I can usually cope with."

Maria frowned, not yet proficient enough in her new language to understand his joke.

Afraid that she would think he was teasing or even mocking her, Joe gathered considerable earnestness into his voice. “Maria, please, come in. Mi casa es su casa."

She glanced at him, then quickly looked away.

Her timidity was only partly due to shyness. Another part of it was cultural. She was of that class, in Mexico, that never made direct eye contact with anyone who might be considered a patron.

He wanted to tell her that this was America, where no one was required to bow to anyone else, where ones station at birth was not a prison, but an open door, a starting point. This was always the land of tomorrow.

Considering Joe's great size, his rough face, and his tendency to glower when he encountered injustice or its effects, anything he said to Maria about her excessive self-effacement might seem to be argumentative. He didn't want to have to return to the kitchen to inform Aggie that he had frightened away her student.

For an awkward moment, he thought that they might remain at this impasse-Maria staring at her feet, Joe gazing down at the top of her humbled head-until some angel blew the horn of judgment and the dead rose from their graves to glory.

Then an invisible dog, in the form of a sudden breeze, scampered across the porch, lashing Maria with its tall. It sniffed curiously at the threshold and, panting, entered the house, bringing the small brown woman after it, as though she held it oil a leash.

Closing the door, Joe said, “Aggie's in the kitchen."

Maria inspected the foyer carpet as intently as she had examined the floor of the porch. “You please to tell her I am Maria?"

“Just go oil back to the kitchen. She is waiting for you."

“The kitchen? On myself?"

“Excuse me?"

“To the kitchen on myself?"

“By yourself,” he corrected, smiling as he got her meaning. “Yes, Of Course. You know where it is."

Maria nodded, crossed the foyer to the living-room archway turned, and dared to meet his eyes briefly. “Thank You."

As he watched her move through the living room and disappear into the dining room, Joe didn't at first grasp why she had thanked him.

Then he realized she was grateful that he trusted her not to steal while unaccompanied.

Evidently, she was accustomed to being an object Of Suspicion, not because she was unreliable, but simply because she was Maria Elena Gonzalez, who had traveled north from Hermosillo, Mexico, in search of a better life.

Although saddened by this reminder of the stupidity and meaness of the world, Joe refused] to dwell oil negative thoughts. Their firstborn was soon to arrive, and years from now, he wanted to be able to recall this day as a shining time, characterized entirely by sweet-if nervous anticipation and fly the joy of the birth.

In the living room, he sat in his favorite armchair and tried to read You Only Live Twice, the latest novel about James Bond. He couldn't relate to the story. Bond had survived ten thousand threats and vanquished villains by the hundred, but he didn't know anything about the complications that could transform ordinary labor into a mortal trial for mother and baby.

DOWN, DOWN, THROUGH the shadows and the shredded spider webs down through the astringent creosote stink and the underlying foulness of black mold, Junior descended the tower stairs with utmost caution. If he tripped on a loose tread and fell and broke a leg, he might lie here for days, dying of thirst or infection or of exposure if the weather turned cooler, tormented by whatever predators found him helpless in the night.

Hiking into the wilds alone was never wise. He always relied on the buddy system, sharing the risk, his buddy had been Naomi, and she wasn't here for him anymore.

When he was all the way down, when he was out from under the tower, he hurried toward the dirt lane. 'The car was hours away by the challenging overland route they had taken to get here, but maybe half In hour-at most forty-five minutes-away if he returned by the fire road.

After only a few steps, Junior halted. He dared not bring the authorities back to this ridge top only to discover that poor Naomi, though critically injured, was still clinging to life.

One hundred fifty feet, approximately fifteen stories, was not a fall that anyone could be expected to Survive. On the other hand, miracles do occasionally happen.

Not miracles in the sense of gods and angels and saints goofing around in human affairs. Junior didn't believe in any such nonsense.

“But amazing singularities do happen,” he muttered, because he had a relentlessly mathmatical-scientific view of existence, which allowed for in many astounding anomalies, for mysteries of astonishing the mechanical effect, but which provided no room for the supernatural.

With more trepidation than seemed reasonable, he circled the base of the tower. The grass and weeds tickled his bare calves. At this season, no insects were buzzing, no gnats trying to sip at the sweat oil his brow. Slowly, warily, he approached the crumpled form of his fallen wife.

III fourteen months of marriage, Naomi never raised her voice to him, was never cross with him. She never looked for a fault in a person if site could find a virtue, and she was the type who could find a virtue in everyone but child molesters and ...well, and Murderers.

He dreaded finding her still alive, because for the first time in their relationship, she would surely be filled with reproach. She would no doubt have harsh, perhaps bitter, words for him, and even if he could quickly silence her, his lovely memories of their marriage would be tarnished forever. Henceforth, every time he thought of his golden Naomi, he would hear her shrill accusations, see her beautiful face contorted and made ugly by anger.

How sad it would be to have so many cherished recollections spoiled forever.

He rounded the northwest corner of the tower and saw Naomi lying where he expected her to be, not sitting tip and brushing the pine needles out of her hair, just lying twisted and still.

Nevertheless, he halted, reluctant to go closer. He studied her from a safe distance, squinting in the bright sunlight, alert for the slightest twitch. In the windless, bugless, lifeless silence, he listened, half expecting her to take Lip one of her favorite songs-” Some where over the Rainbow” or “What a Wonderful World”-but in a thin, crushed, tuneless voice choked with blood and rattling with broken cartilage.

He was working himself into a state, and for no good reason. She was almost certainly dead, but he had to be sure, and to be sure, he had to take a closer look. No way around it. A quick look and then away, away, into all eventful and interesting future.

As soon as he stepped closer, he knew why he had been reluctant to approach Naomi. He had been afraid that her beautiful face would be hideously disfigured, torn and crushed.