Alma Katsu - The Taker

Lanny comes out of the bathroom on a cloud of warm, damp air. She’s swimming in the hotel bathrobe, which is huge on her, and has a towel over her shoulders, her wet hair falling in tendrils over her eyes. She fishes a pack of cigarettes out of her jacket. Before lighting up, she offers one to Luke, but he shakes his head.

“The water pressure is heavenly,” she says, sending a stream of smoke toward the sprinkler heads embedded discreetly in the ceiling. “You should take a nice long, hot shower.”

“In a minute,” he says.

“What’s on television? Are you looking for something about us?”

He nods, twitching his stockinged feet at the plasma screen. A flashy logo for the news program flits across, then a serious-looking middle-aged man begins reading headlines while his coanchor nods attentively. Lanny continues to sit with her back to the screen, toweling her hair. Seven minutes into the program, a head shot of Luke flashes behind the anchor. It’s the posed personnel photo they took at the hospital that appears every time his name is mentioned in the hospital newsletter.

“… is missing after treating a murder suspect for the police at Aroostook General Hospital yesterday evening, and the authorities fear that something may have happened to him. The police are asking anyone with information on the doctor’s whereabouts to call the crime hotline…”

The entire story lasts less than sixty seconds, but it is so alarming to see his face on the television screen that Luke can’t absorb what the anchor is saying. Lanny takes the remote out of his hand and turns it off.

“So, they’re looking for you,” she says, her voice breaking his paralysis.

“Don’t they have to wait forty-eight hours before they can consider you a missing person?” he asks, weakly indignant, as though an injustice has been done to him.

“They’re not going to wait; they think you’re in danger.”

Am I? he wonders. Does Joe Duchesne know something I don’t know? “They read my name on the air. The hotel…”

“No reason to worry. We registered in my name, remember? The police back in St. Andrew don’t know who I am. No one is going to put two and two together.” The girl turns away and blows another long stream of smoke. “It’ll be okay. Trust me. I’m an expert at escaping.”

It feels as though Luke’s brain squeezes against his skull, as if in a panic it is trying to get out. The enormity of what he has done hits him: Duchesne will be waiting to talk to him. Peter undoubtedly has told the police about the SUV and the email, so there’s no way they can continue to use it. In order to go back to his home, he will have to lie convincingly to the sheriff and repeat that lie to everyone back in St. Andrew, maybe for the rest of his life. He closes his eyes and fights for breath. His subconscious led him to help Lanny. If he can only fight through the alarm clamoring in his head, his subconscious should tell him what it is he really wants, why he walked out on his life and went tearing down the road with this woman, bridges aflame behind him. “Does that mean I can’t go back?” he asks.

“If that’s what you want,” she says carefully. “They’ll have questions, but nothing you wouldn’t be able to handle. Do you want to go back to St. Andrew? To your parents’ farm, the house full of their belongings, the absence of your kids? Back to the hospital to take care of your ungrateful neighbors?”

Luke’s uneasiness grows stronger. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Listen to me, Luke. I know what you’re thinking.” She slides across the bed to sit next to him, close, so he can’t turn away from her. He smells the faint perfume of soap, warmed by her skin, rise from under the bathrobe. “You only want to go back because it’s what you know. It’s what you have left. The man I saw walk into the ER looked overwhelmed and tired. You’ve been through a lot with your parents and your former wife, losing your children… There’s nothing there for you anymore. It’s a trap. You go back to St. Andrew and you’ll never leave. You’ll just grow older, surrounded by people who don’t give a damn about you. I know what you’re feeling. You’re alone and you’re afraid you’re going to be alone for the rest of your life, rattling around in a big house, no one to talk to. No one to help with the burdens of living-no one to eat dinner with, no one to listen to stories about your day. You’re afraid of old age-who will be there for you? Who will take care of you the way you took care of your parents, who will hold your hand when it’s your turn to die?” What she’s said is brutally true and he can barely stand to listen to it. She puts one arm around Luke’s shoulder and when he doesn’t push her away, she pulls him closer.

“You’re right to be afraid of dying. Death has taken everyone I’ve known. I’ve held them in my arms up to their last moment, comforted them, cried when they’ve gone. Loneliness is a terrible thing.” The words are incongruous coming from this young woman, but her sadness is palpable. “I can be here for you always, Luke. I won’t go away. I’ll be with you for the rest of your life, if you want me to be.”

Luke doesn’t pull away, but he thinks about her words. She’s not proposing love-is she?-no, Luke knows that, he’s no fool. Though it’s not exactly friendship, either. He doesn’t flatter himself into thinking that they have taken to each other like kindred souls: they’ve known each other for less than thirty-six hours. He thinks he understands what this pretty young woman is offering. She needs a companion. Luke has followed an instinct he didn’t know he had and has done well by her. She sees it can work. And in exchange, he can walk away from his old, complicated life without having to do so much as cancel his account with the electric company. And, Luke won’t ever be alone again.

He remains in Lanny’s arms, letting her stroke his back, enjoying the feel of her hand. It clears his mind and brings Luke peace for the first time since the sheriff escorted her into the emergency room.

He knows that if he thinks too hard, the fog will roll back in. He feels like a character in the middle of a fairy tale, but if he stops to think about what is happening, if he resists the gentle tug of her story, confusion will set in. He’s tempted not to question Lanny’s unseen world. If he accepts what she says as true, then what he believes about death is a lie. But, as a doctor, Luke has witnessed the end of life, stood by as life dribbled out of a patient. He accepted death as one of his world’s absolutes and now he’s being told that it’s not. Exigencies have been written into the coda of life in invisible ink. If death isn’t an absolute, then of the thousands of facts and faiths he’s been fed in his life, which other ones might be a lie?

That is, if this girl’s story is true. Even though he’s been following her in a compliant fog, Luke still can’t shake the suspicion that he’s being deceived. She is obviously skilled in manipulation, like many a psychopath. Now is not the time for such thoughts, however. She’s right: he is tired and overwhelmed and afraid of coming to the wrong conclusion, making the wrong decision.

He leans back into the pillow, faintly scented of lavender, and nestles against Lanny’s warm body. “You don’t need to worry. I’m not going anywhere just yet. For one thing, you haven’t told me the rest of your story. I want to hear what happened next.”

We went out that night, Jonathan’s first night in Boston. The event was a sedate one-a musicale, with a piano and a singer of no renown-but still I wouldn’t have thought it a good idea to take him out while he was in shock and his mind too unsettled. Secrecy was Adair’s byword-he’d impressed that on us all with tales of being suspected of witchcraft and barely escaping violent mobs, fleeing on horseback by moonlight, leaving behind a fortune that had taken decades to amass-and who knew what Jonathan might say in the state he was in. Adair would not be dissuaded, however, and we were dispatched to search through the trunks for a suite of evening clothes for Jonathan. In the end, Adair commandeered Dona’s gorgeous French frock coat (Jonathan being as tall as Dona but broader through the shoulders) and had one of the maids slave for a few hours on alterations as the rest of us powdered, perfumed, and dressed to introduce Jonathan to the city.