Лоуренс Блок - Ariel

“No.”

She lit a cigarette, glanced at the portrait through a haze of smoke. The woman’s eyes had been painted in such a way that they seemed to follow one around the room. They held Roberta’s eyes now.

“Who’d you buy the house from, Bobbie?”

She had to think for a moment. “A young couple,” she said at length. “Why don’t I remember their names? I could look it up.”

“Don’t bother. Had they lived here long?”

“Less than a year. He was transferred to Charleston and they bought the house, and after nine or ten months they transferred him out again so they sold it. They wanted a fast sale and we got a good price. Traphagen, that was the name. Carl Traphagen, and her name was Julie. I don’t remember where they were transferred. Somewhere in the midwest, I think.”

“It doesn’t matter. Do you know who had the house before them?”

“No.” She frowned, grappling with a shred of memory. “She was pregnant,” she said. ”Julie Traphagen. Not enough to show, but she happened to mention it. I wonder.”

“You wonder what?”

“I wonder what would have happened to her baby,” she said. “If she’d had it in this house.”

“That was him,” Ariel said. Erskine looked at her. “The funeral man, the lawyer, you know.”

“Channing?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I didn’t see him. Where?”

She pointed down the street. “In his car,” she said. “In fact all I really saw was the car. He just drove on by. I don’t think he even saw us. Maybe he was at my house.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe Roberta asked him over to check out the stove.” She hefted the flute. “It’s a shame he couldn’t stop and say hello. I could have played for him.”

“You still haven’t played for me.”

“I told you,” she said. “Today’s your lucky day.”

She had brought the flute and the tape recorder to school with her that morning in order to save time. Now she was anxious to get to Erskine’s house. As soon as they were settled in his attic room she opened her flute case and fitted parts together, then set up the tape recorder.

“I taped this last night,” she said. “Then when I played it back I accompanied myself. Listen to this.”

She started the tape, sat back on her heels, put the flute to her lips. After the tape had run for a few bars she joined in, hesitantly at first, then with confidence.

It was just so much fun playing along with herself this way. She didn’t even have to think about what she was doing. She had played against this particular tape twice the preceding night, and now she was doing it again, but playing entirely differently from the way she had played then. Her musical mood was different, just as it differed from the track on the tape recorder, but all the same everything seemed to fit together just right. Her fingers automatically selected the notes that would fit into the right places, as if all the music was happening simultaneously in her brain and she could sit back and decide what spaces to fill in and what spaces to leave empty in order to make the musical picture take whatever shape she wanted it to have.

She continued playing for ten minutes or so. Then the intensity of her concentration became painful. Her head ached and she had to put the flute down at her side. Erskine reached to stop the recorder.

“That’s really far out,” he said. “You played two completely different things and made them go together, so that they wound up being parts of the same thing.”

“You could tell.”

“Sure. I don’t understand music, but I could hear what it is that you do.” He frowned. “This is no good. We need another tape recorder. Then you could tape back and forth and lay one track on top of the other the way they do when they make records. Of course you wouldn’t get professional quality because the surface noise would pile up but at least the music wouldn’t just run off in the air and get lost. You see what I mean?”

She nodded. “I don’t know if there would be room for a third track,” she said. “Let me think.” She closed her eyes. “Maybe it would fit in,” she said.

“The thing is you could experiment.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Plus we could keep one recorder here and one at your house instead of dragging them back and forth all the time.” He thought it over, then nodded decisively. “What we need is another tape recorder,” he said. “I’ll get one.”

“How?”

“I’ll tell them I need one.”

“Your parents?”

“Who else, Santa Claus?”

“You just tell them you need something and you get it?”

“Sure. What do you do when you want something?”

“Nothing.”

“Does that work?”

“I don’t want many things,” she said.

The next day he told her everything was taken care of. “They’ll get the tape recorder. You can keep the other one in the meantime. I told them you needed it for a project.”

“And that’s all you had to do?”

“Sure. When I was younger I used to have to throw tantrums, but after you do that a certain number of times you get them trained. I didn’t have to scream or kick my feet or anything.”

“No carpet-chewing, huh?”

“Nothing like that.” He looked up at her. “So we’ve got you a tape recorder, Jardell. Now what are you going to do for me in return, my proud beauty?”

She giggled.

“Nothing in return, Ariel?”

“I took care of Graham for you, didn’t I?”

He stared at her.

“You think he just happened to get hit by a car,” she said. “That kind of accident doesn’t just happen all by itself, you know. I had to arrange it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Well, I concentrated very hard, and I said a little prayer to the woman we found in the attic, and look what happened.” She dilated her nostrils, widened her eyes, hit him with an out-of-focus stare. “I have special powers,” she announced.

“You’re really weird, Jardell.”

“Special weird powers.”

“You’re spooky, did anyone ever tell you that?”

“Weird spooky powers. You said you wanted to kill Graham, so I thought I’d help you out. After all, you’re getting the tape recorder. I figured I owed you a favor.”

“He wasn’t killed, anyway. Just hit by a car.”

“My powers aren’t fully developed yet,” she said. “I’m only a child.”

“A weird child.”

“Look who’s talking.”

“Graham got a broken leg and three broken ribs and a ruptured spleen. What’s a spleen?”

“Something gross. Something yucky and disgusting.”

“It’s good people have skin,” Erskine said, “or all that stuff would show.”

That night she hadn’t planned to write in her diary. Roberta had gone out after dinner and David was in his den with the door closed, and she’d planned on doing her homework and then watching television. But the homework didn’t take long and when it was finished she didn’t feel like watching anything on television. Without really being aware of it she got her spiral notebook and her pen and sat down on her bed.

For a while she wrote about her music, about the tape recorder Erskine was going to get. Then she wrote:

We didn’t see Mr. Channing today. I kept expecting to see him. I would look around for him on the way to school and on the way to Erskine’s afterward. And on the way home from Erskine’s I kept looking around for his car. There is something about him and I don’t know what it is. I’m scared of him but at the same time I like seeing him. I don’t understand it.

Graham Littlefield was hit by a car yesterday. He is in the hospital and is not going to die. Broken legs, broken ribs, and a ruptured spleen, whatever that is. I looked in the dictionary and it says the spleen is a ductless gland at the left of the stomach in man, and near the stomach or intestine in other vertebrates. People used to think that the spleen caused low spirits, bad temper and spite.