John Saul - Perfect Nightmare

Yet I have to be patient. After all, it will only be a few days.

In a few days, I shall get the address.

And in a few days, she will still be there…

Still, I’m not used to being patient.

I hate being patient.

But soon… soon I shall see her, and touch her, and smell her.

And she will know all the feelings I knew so long ago.

But this time it will be different.

This time all the feelings will go on forever.

M anhattan is impossible, Kara thought. Traffic was unaccountably snarled, there were no places to park, and if there was a parking lot anywhere in this part of town, neither she nor Steve had seen it.

“Is something going on?” Lindsay asked from the backseat. “Why is everything so messed up?”

Kara could feel Steve’s nerves starting to fray as everywhere he turned the streets were barricaded and traffic hopelessly snarled. She turned on the radio, and Lindsay’s question was instantly answered.

“The vice president’s motorcade has the entire West Side gridlocked from Forty-second Street north to 125th,” a soothing voice intoned. “Motorists are advised to—”

Steve snapped it off. “Who asked the vice president to come to town today?” he grumbled. “I don’t recall his office calling to see if it was convenient for me.” He scowled, funneling his frayed nerves into a comically exaggerated mask of anger. “And if they had, I’d have told them to keep him in Washington! Who needs him? Especially on Sunday in Manhattan?”

“Bad luck,” Kara sighed. If the motorcade didn’t hurry up and get where it was going, they were never going to make their appointment with the agent who claimed she had the perfect apartment.

“We should have taken the train,” Steve said through clenched teeth, and Kara sighed again, knowing he was right.

And knowing it was her fault they hadn’t done it. After all, she was the one who’d thought a drive in the family car would be a better idea.

“I’m sorry,” she said, sighing again.

Steve’s thin-lipped expression didn’t change.

“This sucks,” Lindsay muttered from the backseat.

Kara sighed a third time, silently agreeing with her daughter, and checked her watch. Their appointment was in five minutes. The agent wouldn’t wait around for long if they were late.

Miraculously, a car pulled out of a parking space just in front of them, and Steve quickly slid their Toyota SUV into it, ignoring the blare of the horn from a Ford Focus whose driver seemed to think he was the rightful heir to the slot. “There is a God,” Steve muttered. “C'mon, we’ve got to hurry.”

Just in the nick of time, Kara thought, certain that if the parking space hadn’t seemingly dropped from heaven, Steve’s temper would have given way.

He locked the car and they hustled along the sidewalk, threading through the pedestrian traffic far faster than they’d been able to maneuver through the car-jammed streets. In less than five minutes they made the three short blocks uptown and the two long ones over and found themselves in front of a tall brownstone. Steve checked the address. “This is it,” he said, pressing the bell.

Kara eyed the building and decided it looked presentable, if not perfect. She checked her watch again when there was no response to Steve’s buzz. “We’re not late. She couldn’t have left, could she?”

Steve took a deep breath but said nothing, and Lindsay dropped onto the front step and put her chin in her hands.

“Ring again,” Kara said.

Silently, Steve pressed the buzzer a second time.

Still nothing.

Then Kara saw a tall, thin woman in a long black coat striding around the corner, a folio clutched tightly in one hand, a set of keys in the other. “Mr. and Mrs. Marshall?” she asked as she came abreast of the building.

Thank God, Kara thought. She smiled and nodded in response. “This is our daughter, Lindsay,” she said as Lindsay stood up.

“I’m Rita Goldman,” the agent said, her hand coming out to grasp first Kara's, then Lindsay's, and finally Steve’s hand. “I’m so sorry to be late. The traffic—”

“We know,” Steve said, his mood lightening as finally something seemed to be going right. “It almost made us late, too. In fact, we were afraid we might have missed you.”

The woman opened the front door and held it for them. The building seemed well-maintained, with a clean marble floor in the foyer and contemporary art on the walls. But the dark mahogany moldings and vaguely Victorian light fixtures made it seem older than it was. Still, the elevator moved smoothly and looked modern, with mirrors on the walls.

Kara began ticking items off her mental checklist. So far, so good.

She glanced at her reflection in the mirror, decided her makeup had survived the drive into the city, then noticed Lindsay’s unhappy face. Leaning over, she whispered, “Thai salad,” which made Lindsay smile.

The fourth floor hall was carpeted and nicely lit.

Two more check marks on her mental list.

The agent, chatting with Steve, walked them down to 409 and used three keys to open the door.

A black mark on the checklist.

Then the door opened, and suddenly Kara felt better. Light. Lots of light, let in by lots of windows.

And hardwood floors and nine-foot ceilings.

Things were looking up.

The living room windows looked down over Amsterdam Avenue, which was okay. Not Central Park, but there was no way they could afford that.

“There’s a rooftop garden,” she heard the agent tell Steve. “I won’t pretend it has the best view, but it’s quite charming.”

Kara caught Steve’s eye, and they nodded at each other. So far, so good.

Then they came to the kitchen. It was barely big enough for one person to maneuver in, the stove had only two burners, and the tiny countertops were covered with Formica in a particularly ugly shade of brown. It was nothing like the enormous, custom-designed kitchen with granite countertops that Kara had lived with so long that she’d almost forgotten there was anything else. Now the ugly truth hit her.

You can get used to it, she told herself. But even if she could adapt to the size, she knew the kitchen would still need a complete remodeling.

A remodeling they’d never be able to afford if they bought the place.

So she’d just have to get used to it, she decided, hustling Lindsay down the hall, hoping her daughter hadn’t noticed quite how bad the kitchen was. “Let’s take a look at the bedrooms.”

The master bedroom seemed almost as small as the kitchen, but at least it had windows. On the other hand, the windows faced another building, which was barely ten feet away. If the neighbors hadn’t had their shades drawn, Kara realized, she would be looking directly at them and see whatever they were doing.

And they could look back, which meant she’d have to keep her shades drawn, too.

The master bath looked like it belonged in an old motel.

A cheap old motel.

It’s the city, she reminded herself. This is how people live here. Modern plumbing is not an option.

“Two blocks to Central Park,” the agent was saying as she and Steve followed Kara and Lindsay into the bedroom end of the apartment.

“Hear that?” Steve said to Lindsay. He turned back to Rita Goldman. “What about the schools?”

Lindsay, obviously uninterested, wandered away, and Kara followed her into the other bedroom.

Small.

Tiny closet.

Saying nothing, Lindsay turned, walked out of the bedroom and headed for the front door. Kara, Steve, and Rita Goldman followed. As they left the apartment and moved toward the elevator, no one said anything at all. The silence stretched until the elevator arrived, its door slid open, and they all entered.