David Wiltse - The Edge of Sleep

Karen sat down at the table again and waited for Becker to return from wherever he had wandered in his mind. She remembered having found him in the middle of the night in the living room of the hotel suite they had shared in New York on the Bahoud case. He had been sitting with the lights out and when she asked him why, he had said because he was afraid of the dark. His face was wet with tears. She had thought he was the strangest, most exciting man she had ever met. That night she had comforted him with her body, and the next day he had killed the murderous Bahoud in a prolonged struggle in the pitch-black subbasement of the apartment building where he had been hiding. Becker had killed the man-who was armed with two weapons-with his bare hands in utter blackness, and Hatcher had said they had located Becker at last only by the screams he emitted. Yet he had wept again when he sat beside her hospital bed and she knew that he was crying as much for himself as for her.

She had lied earlier when she told Becker she had been half in love with him. She had been totally in love with him, and just about as frightened of all that he represented and of the great danger he posed to her control of herself. Ten years later, she still could not look at his hands without wanting to feel them on her body.

“This is going to hurt,” he said, jolting her out of her reverie as he came out of his own.

She understood that he was talking about himself.

“I don’t think I can do it without you,” she said. “He’ll keep on doing this until we get dumb lucky. We don’t have much time.”

“You don’t have any,” Becker said. “He’s snatched another kid already.”

“Are you sure?”

Becker shrugged. He wasn’t certain, but it made no difference. If Lamont hadn’t struck again, he would at any moment.

“Why shouldn’t he? He’s hungry, he’ll eat.”

He looked directly at her for the first time in several minutes.

“It’s going to hurt a lot,” he said.

“I know.” She touched his hand with hers. “I do know, John.”

Karen paused, realizing that it was not enough. “I have sole custody of my son,” she said at last.

“Your husband fought it.” It was not a question.

“Bitterly,” she said.

“And?”

She knew he was way ahead of her already, but there was sometimes a necessity to go through the formalities.

“And I wasn’t sure I should have custody at all. I’m not sure I deserve it… I’m not sure I want it…”

Becker waited, looking at her.

After a moment she said, “It scares me, John. Having complete control over him. I’m… I’m sometimes afraid of what I might do.”

Becker nodded slowly. He gripped her hand with his own, squeezing briefly.

“You won’t,” he said. Becker pulled the file toward himself. “I’ll need to look at everything as soon as you can get it to me,” he said. “But first I need to be alone with these.”

She knew he meant the photographs of the dead boys and she thought she saw him shudder.

Dee was feeling good; she couldn’t remember when she’d been in such good spirits. She felt so good she didn’t even object to the sight of Ash eating tacos.

She saw the man watching her from his solitary table in the corner where he sat nursing a cigarette and a cup of coffee. He couldn’t take his eyes off of her. She knew she was fascinating. A vibrant, attractive woman, full of energy and high spirits. Who wouldn’t watch her? Who wouldn’t want her?

She said something to Ash and then laughed, tossing her head back, filling the place with her ringing merriment. Dee loved her laugh; it was so free, so honest. She hated people who tittered behind their hands. Dee let the whole world know she was amused, god damn it, and if it was too loud for some people, then to hell with them. They didn’t know how to have a good time. If there was anything Dee did know, it was how to have a good time. She was even having a good time right this minute, watching Ash spill taco and salsa on himself. She knew the secret of joy. Some book had come out with a title like that The Secret of Joy. and Dee had read it to see if the author was someone like herself. But she hadn’t known what she was talking about, and after a few pages Dee had thrown the book across the room in disgust. The real secret, the only secret, was to just let yourself. If you wanted to laugh, then laugh, god damn it. Laugh as if you meant it and screw all the poker-faced killjoys like that toad of a cashier who was looking at Dee as if she had her tit caught in the cash register. The man in the corner knew what she was laughing about. She could see him smiling from the corner of her eye. She could tell he was caught and mesmerized by her.

“Dee,” Ash said, sounding worried again. He looked at her with concern, bits of tomato and shredded lettuce spilling from the taco.

There was a bar at the restaurant just a few doors down. Dee had made note of it as soon as they entered the mall.

“Ash, I want you to walk home,” she said.

His eyes went wide.

“You work your face like a clown,” she said lightly.

“Sorry,” Ash said.

“Don’t apologize. I like it; it makes you easy to read.” She patted him on the cheek.

“Walk home?”

“Don’t act like you’ve never done it before. You know how to do it. Go out of the mall and turn left.”

“Left,” he said, concentrating.

“Turn left and just keep walking until you get to the motel. You know the name of our motel, don’t you?”

“Okay,” said Ash.

“Okay nothing. What is it?”

Ash furrowed his brow and she laughed again. “You wouldn’t even have to paint the creases and lines on the way clowns do,” she said merrily. She glanced to see if the man in the corner was appreciating her good humor. He smiled and inclined his head slightly. Dee looked at him as if he had startled her with his familiarity, as if she had only now become aware of him and wasn’t at all certain how to take such boldness.

Ash saw the exchange and knew why he was walking home. He would be spending another night outside the room, listening to Dee and some stranger. But mostly to Dee, her laughter, her shouts of exuberance, her ecstatic screams at the end. It hurt him so much to listen to her, to see her behaving this way for the benefit of the strange man in the corner, to know she was giving herself to someone else.

“What is it?” she was saying.

“Nothing,” he said, thinking she was inquiring about his thoughts. She would figure it out on her own soon enough. She always did, but it hurt him even more to tell her how much it hurt.

“Nothing? That’s a strange name for a motel.”

“Oh.” So she was not reading his mind. That happened sometimes when she was this happy. She seemed to lose her magical wisdom when she was this way.

“Days Inn?” he guessed.

“Daybreak,” she corrected him. “Daybreak Motel. Got it?”

Ash nodded.

“Say it.”

“Daybreak Motel. Daybreak. I turn left and stay on the highway till I get to Daybreak Motel.”

“That a boy. You’ll do just fine. Now pop the rest of that muck into your mouth and off you go.”

Ash rose dutifully and let her swipe once at his face with a napkin.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Never better,” she said. “Don’t worry about a thing; we’ve got the world by its ying-yang.”

Ash smiled. He thought the word was funny even if her mood frightened him.

“Now scoot,” she said.

“Daybreak?”

“Stop stalling and go on.”

Ash shambled out the door, looking back at her once with that face of a mourner, and Dee waved goodbye to make sure the man in the corner understood that she was now alone.