Stephen Leigh - Card Sharks

Brand took me to an office in a skyscraper down in the Financial District. Dr. Rudo was there, dressed in a different Nehru suit, a black one that made his pale skin and hair and his violet-blue eyes seem luminous in contrast. He greeted me in a way that made me shiver and shrink away.

Brand said, "I believe you wanted to speak to my wife?"

The room looked like a doctor's office, with the requisite diplomas and certifications. An overstuffed couch and cubist paintings on the walls made it a little less medical-looking.

I thought about Dr. Isaacs's office, and what he had said about stress. I wondered if I was going to die.

Dr. Rudo put me in an armchair before his big desk, saying to Brand with a glance at me, "Yes, that would be charming. But a word with you first."

As soon as the door closed and the tumblers of the lock turned over, I dumped out the pens from a pen holder on the desk and rushed over to kneel by the door. The open end of the wood cup I pressed against the wood, and on the closed end I put my ear.

I heard Brand say, "… only wounded."

"Yes. It's a shame that the upper echelon's first impression of you will be how you failed at your first major assignment."

Brand sounded desperate, angry. "I was only the messenger. He didn't use a high enough caliber weapon. That's not my fault."

Rudo laughed. "Relax. It's a head wound. The senator will be dead before morning. And if not, we can send someone in to finish him off. Your wife is the more important factor. If her detective did get shots of you with our Palestinian friend, and she's passed them on, you're at real risk."

"The bitch …"

Their voices faded to murmurs as the floor transmitted to my shins and knees the trembling of their footsteps. They had moved away from the door. I stayed crouched at the door, shivering and sweating till I could smell my own stink, and thought about the photos in the rolltop desk back home.

A moment later footsteps shook the floor again. Dr. Rudo's voice said, "… I doubt her resistance is high; this shouldn't take long."

The tumblers turned and the door opened. They looked down at me. I tried to duck between their legs, but Brandon grabbed my arm and hauled me upright — virtually off my feet.

"My dear young lady, you're showing an alarming amount of initiative," Dr. Rudo said.

"What are you going to do with me?" I felt embarrassed, apologetic, at how my voice quavered. He smiled.

"Just ask your a few simple questions. Come sit down. Relax. Nobody's going to hurt you." He took me by the elbow and led me back to the chair.

Dr. Rudo made Brandon leave the room, and then we chatted. I should have been much more on the defensive; to this day I don't know how I could have relaxed around him, given what I knew.

But the questions all seemed so innocuous. I remember his cool violet eyes looking at me, and his head nodding…. I Went on about Clara, about myself and how much I wanted another child, about Brandon's ambitions. Memories and thoughts surfaced and spilled out of my mouth that I had thought were long buried.

And when he asked me about the photos, I should have been prepared but I–I don't know why; I must have been an idiot! — but I had become convinced that the photos Franklin had taken were harmless and pointless, that I had no reason to conceal them.

And, well, I told him where they were.

Do you know, it took me years afterward to realize that it was even odd I should have told him where the pictures were? Whenever I thought about the session my mind kept slipping and sliding off the memory of the pictures, every which way. I'm still disturbed by how I could have been so foolish, so easily fooled. I wonder if he hypnotized me?

Brandon came back in at some point and took me home. I don't remember that part too clearly.

When we got home, Clara and Jessica were nowhere to be seen. I had a high fever by then, and was freezing cold, quaking like an aspen leaf. My joints ached. Brand took the pictures out of the desk, then undressed me, put me in bed and looked through the photos. He made a call on the phone, sitting on the bed.

"Pan? Brand. I found them right where she told us. Yeah, he got some shots of the exchange but nothing too incriminating. I think we can destroy them and leave it at that. I'll take care of them."

A pause. "I'll make sure she doesn't cause any more trouble. Isn't that right, Joan?" he asked me, gripping me by my sweat-soaked hair. Pain spread inward from the loci of his knuckles. I moaned.

He released me and spoke into the phone again. "OK. How about tomorrow evening? You can have supper with us." Pause. "Fine. Seven thirty. See you then."

Next he set fire to the photos, one by one, and dropped them, flaming, into a crystal serving bowl. Except for several explicit ones of him and Marilyn. Those he waved at me.

"Perhaps I'll start my own scrap book with these."

He eyed the photos for a moment, gave me a look, then threw back his head and laughed. I was struck at how honest and open that laugh sounded. He hadn't sounded so open in years.

"God, Joan. It's great to be free at last. Free to tell you how much I hate you. Your jealousies and suspicions, your pettiness, your clinging and complaining and prudishness and controlling, bitchy nature — you've made my life a living hell.

"But that's over now. From now on, you are Clara's mother and that's all. You have nothing to say to me, nor I to you. You'll be my wife to the public eye, but there's nothing between us any more. And if you ever try anything like this again," he waved the picture at me, "I swear I'll kill you."

He put them in his wallet and then picked up the phone again.

"Hi. It's me." I could tell by how his voice grew husky and by how a bulge swelled in his trousers whom he'd called.

"I arranged for our babysitter to take Clara overnight," he said. " She's sick with the flu. I need a place to stay. I need to see you."

Pause. "Can't you find a sitter?"

Another pause. "I read about it in the papers. I'm so sorry. But, you know, he is a threat to our work, with his position on the wild card."

A pause. "Who told you? Wait — don't hang up. Damn it!"

He slammed the phone down and rubbed his face, looking at me. Anguish was stamped on his face like someone's shoeprint. He really loved her. I was curled into a tight ball, riding out the fireball of pain spreading through me, and couldn't focus on him, even to taunt him.

I don't remember him leaving.

That night, I became intimate with the virus. It was the longest night, the worst pain I have ever lived through.

The next morning I awoke to Frou Frou's yaps, welcoming Jessica and Clara into the apartment.

The night's agony was fading, though a thousand aches and twinges tormented me along my body. I had that lightheaded, floating clarity one feels after a high fever breaks, and also a terrible, cavernous hunger. Morning sunlight streamed in through the sheer curtains. Jessica clattered about in the kitchen, making breakfast. Clara's voice rose and fell in a dialog with Frou Frou in the living room.

Clara. I wondered if the prior day's torture had been a dream. I wanted Clara in my arms. I propped myself up on my elbows.

Great tufts of my hair lay strewn about my pillow. With a strangled gasp I touched my scalp and felt — baldness. Brushing backward, the skin was smooth and cool and dry; brushing forward it felt like sandpaper. My arms were covered in scales, in a pattern that vaguely mimicked the roses and dark green leaves twined on the comforter.

Throwing off the comforter, I meant to put my feet on the floor. But when I tried to swing my legs out from under the sheets nothing happened. My toes were down there somewhere; I could even wiggle them, but whatever was moving in there wasn't my toes.