Лоуренс Блок - Ariel

“Who are you? Why are you here?” She listened as the words seemed to reverberate off the walls, shaking loose windowpanes like strong wind.

The woman turned her face a little more directly toward Roberta. There was something in her eyes, something Roberta thought she ought to be able to read.

Then, like smoke, the woman melted away and was gone.

Roberta put her fingertips to her breast over her heart and felt its insistent beat. She forced herself to take slow deep breaths.

She got up.

Caleb’s door was closed. She hesitated before opening it, afraid of what she might find. Perhaps this was a dream, she thought, and she decided to be on the lookout for any inconsistencies in Caleb’s room which might indicate that she was indeed asleep and dreaming.

She opened the door. The room was undisturbed, with everything in its proper place. The only thing missing, she thought, was Caleb — and the thought, catching her at a vulnerable moment, brought a rush of grief that very nearly knocked her off her feet. She clutched the doorframe for support and managed to keep her balance.

There was no question now that she was awake. But for how long?... She left Caleb’s room, closed his door, and went back to the bedroom for her robe. There was only one cigarette left in the pack on the night table, and when she got it out she saw that it was broken in the middle. She went downstairs for cigarettes, and even before she reached the bottom of the staircase she could smell gas escaping.

She went into the kitchen. All three pilot lights were out. For a moment she worried that it might be dangerous to light a match, but the burners themselves were shut off, and how much gas could escape from the pilot lights? Not much, she was sure. David had said so. She was just extremely sensitive to the odor.

She lit the pilots, opened a fresh pack of cigarettes, smoked two of them in the living room. Why, she wondered, had the woman in the shawl appeared after all this time? What did it mean?

She crushed out her cigarette, mounted the stairs, winced at the sound they made underfoot. The house was listed for sale now, according to David, but so far nothing had happened. There’d been not a single call, no one coming around to be shown through the place.

And when that happened, she thought suddenly, would she take them through Caleb’s room? How would she explain a nursery with no baby in it?

Ariel’s light was on. She noticed it when she reached the top of the stairs, a sliver of light beneath the child’s door at the end of the hall. Had it been on before? She hadn’t noticed one way or the other.

Why was the child awake? It was the middle of the night. She started down the hall, slowed, stopped.

She turned instead to the bathroom, where she took two little blue tablets from the Valium bottle. She gazed at them for a moment, the two of them an inch apart in the palm of her hand. Without having swallowed them she could already anticipate how they would smooth things out inside her.

She filled a glass with water, swallowed the pills.

In the hallway, she glanced once again at Ariel’s door and the light that was visible beneath it. The light seemed to flicker, as if it were not an electric light at all but a gas flame, or perhaps the flame of a candle.

Maybe the Valium was already at work, she thought, distorting her perceptions. She took a hesitant step toward Ariel’s room, then changed her mind. No need for a confrontation with the child, not at this hour, not after what she’d been through already. Let her stay up all night if she wanted. Just so Roberta got some rest herself.

She returned to her room, settled herself beneath the covers. Her sense of smell, she decided, was especially acute tonight. The gas in the kitchen had been far more pungent than usual, and now the alcoholic perspiration that David gave off was stronger than she remembered it. Perhaps it was a heightened sensitivity of hers that made her see the woman in the shawl on this particular night.

She lay back, closed her eyes. A couple of thoughts began to move into her consciousness, but the Valium took hold quickly and she slid away from them.

She awoke in the morning with what felt like a hangover. Her breakfast was coffee and cigarettes, an excessive amount of each, and they set her nerves on edge. She went to the medicine cabinet, hesitated, then took a Valium. What the hell, they were medicine. Otherwise why would Gintzler have prescribed them for her?

Around ten-thirty she called Jeff at his office. He wasn’t in and she declined to leave a message. She called again at eleven and a third time at eleven-thirty, and each time his secretary assured her that he was out. The third time she said, “This is Mrs. Jardell. I’m sure he’ll talk to me.”

“But he’s not in, Mrs. Jardell,” the woman said. “He may be in shortly, or he’ll probably call in for his messages. Shall I have him call you?”

“Please.”

She had no appetite for lunch but forced herself to make a cheese sandwich and managed to eat a little more than half of it. She drank some more coffee, smoked several cigarettes, and swallowed another Valium on her way out the door.

It was cold out, and the wind had an edge to it. She drew her car coat around her and walked purposefully south and east. At the Battery, she walked through the little park and stood with her arms propped on the railing, looking out over the water. She was alone. There was no one fishing from the shore, only a few scattered persons on the park benches. A few hundred yards out on the water, a cruise boat carried passengers taking a tour of the harbor.

It was restful at the railing, restful looking out over the water. Here, away from the house, she could dismiss the pools of anxiety that floated on the edge of consciousness. She didn’t have to let herself be aware of them. Instead she could relax in the Valium’s embrace, going with the flow, letting herself relax. Sometimes she would feel her mind beginning to drift, and at those times it was necessary to drag herself abruptly away from those areas that didn’t bear thinking about. Each time she made herself return to the peace of the harbor view like a meditator returning to his mantra, embracing it with something like relief.

When she turned from the harbor view, her eyes fastened on a black woman seated on a bench halfway across the park. She was leaning way forward, trying to feed something to an apprehensive squirrel. At first Roberta thought it was the woman she’d talked to before Caleb’s death, the woman who had spoken so knowingly of haunts.

She wanted to avoid her entirely, then realized she’d come here hoping to encounter the woman. She made her way toward the bench, only to discover when she’d come within fifty yards of the woman that she was someone else altogether, a stranger, years younger and a good deal taller and more robust than the woman to whom she had spoken.

She turned from the woman and headed home.

At four o’clock she finally reached Jeff. She had called on returning to the house, thinking he might have tried her in her absence, but his secretary reported she had not heard from him. When she did reach him, he was short with her, almost brusque. She tried to tell him about the woman’s appearance in her bedroom and he didn’t seem to be paying much attention.

“I was hoping to see you today,” she said.

“I was tied up. Running around all over the place.”

“Maybe tomorrow—”

“I don’t think so, Bobbie.”

She hesitated, unable to leave it at that. “I need you,” she said. “I’m having a tough time right now, Jeff. I feel as though I’m cracking up. I’m holding myself together with little blue pills and I have a feeling there’s a point when they stop working.”