The deathstone, p.4
The Deathstone, page 4
Ron felt himself fall backward, felt hands seize him, manipulate his body until he was stretched out on a cold slab of marble.
He lay absolutely still. For an instant it seemed to him that he lay in a patch of light, something close to a spotlight. Through it he could see shadows in a susurrant cluster. Then fanning out, they moved toward him from the outer edges.
Then the house might have caved in for he was fully awake, his head stuffed into the pillow, his hands gripping the edge of the bed.
“No! It’s not true!” he pleaded.
“What’s not?” Chandal mumbled. He had awakened her, but that was not particularly unusual. He often talked in his sleep, and she often answered him.
“Nothing.” He stared at her blankly and tried not to release the pent up breath held midway in his chest. For a moment he thought he was still dreaming. Then he noticed his trousers thrown over the back of the chair, the digital clock on the nightstand.
Chandal smacked the pillow with her fist and rolled over to face the wall. “Oh,” she murmured and was instantly asleep.
Hesitantly, almost timidly, Ron breathed and waited for the dream to drift away into the darker recesses of his mind. “Del?” he whispered. He paused, hoping she would answer. But he continued to lie there silently, his face twisted into an expression of bewilderment, which was habitual with him when he was disappointed. Sleeping people made rotten company.
He swung his legs out of the bed and lighted a cigarette. He sat in the dark smoking. He inhaled deeply, let the smoke roll around inside his head, then pressed it through his nostrils. Off in the corner, the air conditioner hummed to itself gently. It was almost below the limit of hearing—a normal room sound, yet quite unmistakable and quite irritating.
Fragments of the dream flashed in his mind. A shooting star, people weeping, a huge stone. The stone around which moving is done. He shivered. As comfortable as the room was, he felt chilled. He was probably coming down with a cold. Always, midsummer, he would catch a goddamn cold. He turned to glance at the clock. It was 2:35 A.M.
For a moment, he had the annoying sensation he had forgotten something, then with a sense of relief, he remembered. The vacation. What about the vacation?
CHAPTER FIVE
THE NEXT MORNING, BLEARY-EYED AND HAGGARD, HE WAS STILL thinking about it. Defeated at smiling, he frowned, took a cigarette from its pack and lighted it. Through the pale swirl of smoke he saw Mimi’s face peering at him from the outer office. She quickly began shuffling papers around on her desk.
Ron grimaced and, shaking his head, spun his chair around and faced the window.
A moment of relief came as a huge bounteous light in the bosom of the thin white clouds above. The knots loosened; he opened up, sank deeper into his chair, the glass of the window creating an illusion, the smoke inside and the clouds outside appearing as one. He glimpsed a hard sharp region of his mind like a lone flicker of a comet, and held there, suspended. Kristy. He could not get his daughter out of his mind; her unfathomable face haunted him.
He sat in quiet amazement as he watched her face appear in the glass; a young girl’s face, no longer a baby. No, not a baby at all but his growing daughter, whom he now saw before him in a multitude of images. Images that spun around in his mind’s eye, then dovetailed.
God, she’s beautiful! the nurse had gasped. Yes, indeed— she’s beautiful. The doctor, laughing, laid the child on Chandal’s stomach. No, Ron wanted to protest. Not beautiful at all. All wet and wrinkled and unformed... But, oh God—yes, she’s beautiful. Happy birthday to you, Happy birthday to you, Happy birthday, dear Kristy... her skin pale and creamy now, her features delicate and her hair thick and black. God, those eyes, Del! Look at those eyes! Enormous deep-blue irises, inky black lashes, so thick as to seem double-fringed, creating an impression that they had been lined in black by an expert makeup artist. But it was the expression in them that created the final bit of mesmerization —some kind of smoldering fire that must be an illusion, for what child would ever...
It was hard for Ron to think now; his thoughts were tiny slivers of rippling light against the window pane, and he seemed to sag under the effort of two simultaneous and contrary actions, retention and evaluation, both of them beyond him at this moment.
His eyes cleared, Kristy’s image faded, and he turned again to face his desk. He was instantly aware that Mimi was covertly watching him. Snuffing his cigarette, he watched her watching him in silence, unsmiling. Beyond their eyes the noon traffic began to squeeze into the city.
“All right,” he finally bellowed. “What’s next?”
“Lunch. My treat.”
“Right.”
Landell’s was a good restaurant. Small enough so that one received personal service. Large enough so that one didn’t have to speak with the waiters. So while Ron and Mimi ate at their usual table, Ron made only one comment; that he suddenly felt like he’d fallen into a black hole. Then he found a dark spot on the tablecloth and kept his eyes lowered.
“I’ve read about black holes,” Mimi said helpfully. “They’re rethinking the whole theory about the creation of the earth. Just because of black holes.”
“Jesus,” Ron said weakly. “Why is that?”
“Because now they’re saying they aren’t black holes. They’re nothing. Just void. A bottomless, empty nothingness. And somehow or the other—I don’t understand it—that affects the whole concept of how the earth was created.”
“Mimi,” Ron said sarcastically, “I want to thank you. You’ve cheered me up enormously. I’m leaving now to get looped. Not sloppy drunk. Just a little looped. I’ll pick up my car later.”
“By the way,” Mimi said and stopped.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“No, it’s something or you wouldn’t have stopped like that.”
“Tarasco called,” Mimi said. “From the Sinclair. He said Dwayne Clark hasn’t filled the room worth a damn. He’s opting out on the last half of the commitment.”
Ron felt the veins of his eyes constrict as murder rushed through his blood. “He’s a lying, no-good son of a bitch. Call him and tell him I said that. Tell him I was there a week ago and the goddamn room was packed.”
“Paper,” Mimi said. “He said he’s been papering the place ever since Dwayne opened to those rotten reviews. You want me to call him anyway?”
Ron hesitated, feeling his senses smart with the all too familiar fear. The way business was lately, there was no point in agitating one of the few contacts who still gave some of his clients work. Although he knew damn well that Dwayne Clark was filling that room. He knew paper when he saw it. Tarasco had probably fallen under the charms of another young female singer.
“Forget it,” he said, not looking at Mimi. “Call Dwayne.” He knew it was a call he should make himself, but he couldn’t face the man’s disappointment. He shuddered to think of that sadness.
“I’ll call him,” Mimi said softly. “Go on home. Skip the booze. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Ron nodded. “Are you and Dwayne...”
“Yeah,” she smiled.
“I’m glad.” Ron paused for a moment, then turned and passed quickly through the tables. After a slight, sociable nod to the maitre d’, he punched his way into the sunlight.
Twenty minutes later he found himself loitering along Sunset Boulevard, eating chocolate Haagen-Dazs out of a cup and peering into travel agency windows. London, impossible. He figured he could afford to fly approximately halfway over the Atlantic. Mexico, too close and too dull. Kristy would be highly indignant if the decision was to be Mexico. Forget New York. Forget Hawaii, New Orleans, forget flying anywhere, he finished, his eyes on the colorful poster that promised to take you away for only $600 per person.
A flicker of relief spasmed in his belly and he was forced to acknowledge that he was damned glad not to be flying anywhere. It was a secret phobia he’d developed, starting God knew when, but fairly recently, he believed. Flying had never bothered him, but now all of a sudden it did.
It wasn’t the idea of dying. It was the idea of falling to earth inside of millions of pounds of heavy metal. Of knowing at some point or the other you were going to crash, that there was nothing you could do about it and that, Jesus Christ, you had better be saying good-bye to your wife and daughter who were also going down in the big bird in the sky.
Yes, he was just as glad he had decided he couldn’t afford to fly.
That left him with Kristy’s not-so-terrific plan. A car trip through the Old West. Thousands of miles of wandering desert and plains through sweltering heat. In a flurry of masochistic pleasure, he decided he’d do it.
The last spoonful of Haagen-Dazs burned ice cold against the pit of his stomach. He shivered. To counteract the sensation, he conjured a mental image of the Painted Desert smoldering hot before his gaze.
He nodded then. It was a mental agreement with himself, a sort of handshaking ceremony.
The thing that amazed him was how comfortable he felt in the decision. Even though he was sure to regret it long hot hours from home, at the moment he felt rather triumphant. It was a curious reaction because a long car trip wasn’t his style at all. Not at all. Yet he simply could not change his mind.
CHAPTER SIX
RON SPENT THE NEXT FEW WEEKS BROWSING LEISURELY OVER literature pertaining to the Old West. It was as though an unseen pressure had removed itself, leaving him at last able to relax. During the days he managed to get in some tennis. Evenings Chandal and he ate simple healthy dinners. Grilled steak, baked potatoes and plenty of green salad. After dinner they merely talked over brandy. Endless, easy talk that always ended with enthusiastic chatter about the upcoming vacation. They were incredibly happy.
“I don’t suppose,” Ron said one night across the table, “that you ever think much about having another child?”
“Well, no,” Chandal answered doubtfully.
Ron said no more about the subject that night. But the next night he did; and on the next night, while dining out, after drinking his fair share of wine and after he had acknowledged that he was a little soused, he said: “Baby time!” Then grinned like a gargoyle. A wise ass gargoyle.
“You are pie-eyed, aren’t you?”
“And feeling sexy.”
“These things aren’t mutually exclusive.”
“You’ve been pondering these matters?”
“I believe—”
“It’s time to go.”
“Is that a memorandum of intent?”
“Uh-huh.”
Leaving the restaurant Ron slipped his arm around Chandal’s shoulder. It felt good. The evening air had cooled some and the moon shone bright between the branches of the palm trees lining the drive. A chorus of insects sang in the darkness, reminding Ron of July nights from his childhood. It was a warm memory.
It had been weeks since Chandal and he had made love. He could not imagine how they had allowed all that time to go by without coming together physically. Incredible, he mused, and glimpsed Chandal’s legs briefly as she entered the car. He felt a tremor of desire, the suddenly quick heartbeat. When all was said and done, Ron still found Chandal a very exciting looking woman to be married to.
“Ironic, isn’t it?” asked Ron, starting the engine.
“What is?”
“That we—” He stopped himself. “Forget it.”
“No, I want to know.” Chandal looked at him questioningly.
“Forget it,” he said and pulled away from the drive and accelerated toward home.
When they entered the house, they found the babysitter standing frozen in the hallway. She drew back, then gasped: “Oh, thank God you’re home! Kristy... Kristy is...” Her eyes bored into Ron’s eyes. Terror engulfed him immediately.
Ron couldn’t feel his legs. But they moved. He was in the hallway, then up the stairs. He knew nothing except he had to reach his daughter. He found Kristy sitting motionless in her rocking chair.
“Kristy, are you all right? Kristy?”
Chandal was beside him. Holding his arm. Saying something. Ron quickly picked Kristy up in his arms. She looked pale. Her eyes were dulled and sluggish and her movement passive, almost as if she were in a trance. “But then who would be Queen?” she murmured and her eyes closed.
“Del, call the doctor. Hurry!”
The rest of the evening passed in a series of painful lulls and confusion. The doctor’s examination was tediously slow. Ron stood frustrated in the corner of the room with his arm around Chandal. He could feel that her body was trembling. “She’s going to be okay, Del.” He hugged her closer to him and they continued to await the doctor’s pronouncement in silence; always more and more fearful, glancing nervously at Kristy, then to the doctor, who finally said: “She has the flu. Pretty bad case of it, I’d say.” He turned then, and smiled. “But she is going to be all right.”
“Thank God,” Ron breathed and Chandal began to cry.
In the morning the bathroom stank of vomit. Ron had been up most of the night, helping Chandal care for Kristy. He had a headache, his stomach was sour, and the sourness had begun to flood his entire body. He felt poisoned. Even the saliva in his mouth had thickened from the fear. A fear worse than anything he had known since Kristy’s birth. And he had the thought: people take such a risk when they have children. They take the risk that if anything happens to them, they simply won’t be able to go on.
He could feel the inward flinching at the thought and then he pushed past it and he was all right. He took an Alka-Seltzer, spent some time in the bedroom, then went looking for Chandal. She was standing by the kitchen window watching the children play in the next yard. As he moved closer, he realized the window was closed, yet he could hear the children’s voices distinctly.
There was a small hallway in the rear corner of the room. He went to it and saw the back door, with the pane of glass nearest the top smashed and lying in fragments on the floor.
“Del? How did it happen?”
“I don’t know,” she said without looking at him. “I don’t know,” she repeated.
He met Chandal’s eyes—vast and blue in her white face— and was able to smile reassuringly. “Hey, she’s okay, you know. That kid’s tough.”
“Tough,” Chandal repeated and left the room.
The next few days passed quickly, with Kristy growing stronger, until finally she arose one morning, jumped from her bed and ate a large breakfast. After that, she disappeared into the garden to play.
“Two more days,” Ron said, sipping his coffee.
“What?” Chandal had been watching Kristy play out back.
“We leave for vacation Monday. Finally!”
“I don’t know,” Chandal said. “Do you think Kristy is up to it?”
“Of course. Look at her out there.” Ron knew what Chandal was feeling; he felt it too. Yet, for the first time in days he also felt positive about something. Really sure. He felt omnipotent at the prospect of his new calling. Adventure. It was what they both needed. Though he still dreaded the driving part of the vacation, he knew he would be happier on the road than sitting around the office waiting for the boom to be lowered. If his agency was going to go under, he wanted to be well away from it when it sank to the bottom.
“The question,” he said whimsically, “is whether or not we should ever come back again. With that kind of jump on our creditors, maybe we should just disappear into the setting sun.”
“Are we in that much trouble?”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
When Chandal spoke again, her voice was remote. “We could put off the trip if you like.” She shrugged. “I know you’re worried about the agency, and—”
“Hey, we’ve been all through that.”
“I know,” Chandal said, staring at nothing. “But, if—”
“Del, stop worrying. You’ll see, once we’re away from here, everything will look different.” He got up suddenly, took Chandal by the waist. “Del, face it. It’s about time we said to hell with everything and everybody and enjoyed ourselves.” Gently, persuasively, he added: “I know I’m ready to.”
Chandal looked into his eyes and smiled. “You’re a very courageous person in your own way,” she said thoughtfully. Then she reached up and kissed him, a warm kiss, a kiss for the long journey ahead.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE DAY CLOSED IN, AND DIED THAT NIGHT, LIKE A FLOWER LEFT to wither in a current of hot air. Another moon turned in the sky and then another; in the full moon of vacation eve Ron wondered if he hadn’t been possessed even to consider such a vacation. When Kristy had come up with the idea, it had caught him off-balance, tickled him somewhat. Now it filled him with dread.
He took a deep shuddering breath and began to strip off his clothing. Whenever he felt despondent he always seemed to gravitate toward the shower. Lately, he’d become a fervent shower taker. He liked his showers long, hot and steamy.
The brisk spray punched holes into his flesh and began to draw the tension from his body one drop at a time. When he stepped out, his anxiety had evaporated, his vision had cleared. Toweling off, he moved to the steamed-over medicine cabinet. He looked at himself cautiously in the circular design he’d rubbed onto the glass. He nodded approvingly.
If he wanted to be a nitpicker, he could still detect a slight restlessness in his eyes, a faint frown on his lips, just the merest sag of skin under his chin, but all and all, he was relieved that he wasn’t looking at a stranger. It was him all right. Good old Ron Talon, smiling now and thinking about the vacation.
It would solve a myriad of small problems. Four weeks alone together. No pot-smoking parties, no uncomfortable silences, just—please, God—a whole new outlook on life.
Confidently now, he squeezed toothpaste onto the brush, watched the green snake slither across bristle, then humming silently to himself, he began running a last minute checklist through his mind.
