Black Dahlia & White Rose: Stories (22 page)

Dusk had come quickly on this grim November day—by late afternoon the earth had darkened, only the sky remained relatively light—riddled with clouds like grimacing mouths. Mariana would ordinarily have parked her car in the circle drive at the front of the house, where a door led directly into the kitchen; now, she thought she should park inside the garage, and shut the garage doors, before she left the protection of the car and entered the house.
It
would not follow her into the garage—would it?

The garage was large enough for three vehicles. Pearce had instructed Mariana numerous times to keep all the doors shut, even if she was just going out for an hour or so—it wasn’t good to send a signal to any perspective burglar or home invader that no one was home in a house in Crescent Lake Woods where the minimum price for homes was in the area of two million dollars. Of course, Mariana often forgot, especially during the day; and so now one of the garage doors was up—(on Mariana’s side of the garage)—and the other down—(on Pearce’s side of the garage)—and she could have no idea whether the creature was already in the garage, having trotted ahead of her.

For the garage was so large, and its corners so shadowed; there was a phalanx of trash cans and recycling barrels; there were stacks of cardboard boxes, gardening tools, miscellaneous pieces of furniture; the wily creature could hide behind any of these, and Mariana wouldn’t know until it was too late—until she left the protection of her car.

And the light inside the garage, emitted from bare bulbs—if you looked directly at this light, it was blinding; otherwise the bulbs cast a grudging sort of illumination, as if through gauze.

Slowly Mariana drove her car into the garage. Unlike Pearce’s steel-colored Land Rover, Mariana’s vehicle was slender, compact. She was prepared to back up swiftly if she saw something moving inside the garage. More than once she’d scraped the right-hand side of her car driving the car inside the garage—as Pearce insisted she do—and she dreaded this happening now, in this tense situation. She could see nothing in the garage—nothing that signaled danger—but in the rearview mirror there was only a shadowy haze like a TV screen gone dead—just outside the garage there appeared to be nothing at all.

Mariana was biting her lower lip. She’d begun to perspire inside her clothes.

She was calculating: the door that led into the back hall of the house was only a few yards away, directly in front of her car. She hadn’t locked the door, she supposed—Pearce would have chided her, if he’d known—but often she forgot—or didn’t think it was so very important; now, she could make a dash for the door and get it open and get inside within a few seconds; the groceries she would leave in the car trunk. Once she believed the car was inside the garage she punched the remote control to lower the garage door and at once there came a rattling thudding noise louder and more jarring than she expected, like hammers striking the roof of her car.

Narrowly the descending door missed the rear bumper and trunk of Mariana’s car. Thank God! She’d done this correctly.

Mariana turned off the car motor. The sudden silence was unnerving.

Either she was alone in the garage now, in her car; or, the creature had slipped into the garage and was inside the garage with her.

Either she was safe. Or she was in danger.

How long should she wait? A predator could wait for a very long time for such is the predator’s nature.

“I will. I will do it. I will be all right.”

Mariana took hold of the car door handle. She was calm, determined.
He is in here with me. He is observing me. He has come for me.
She knew she must show no sign of fear, nor even of being aware of the presence in the garage; if there was a presence in the garage. She would behave as if she believed herself safe, alone—giving the predator no reason to rush at her—then opening her car door swiftly and scrambling out of the car and running to the back door where her slippery fingers fumbled at the doorknob but managed to open it—for, fortunately, the door was
unlocked,
as she’d left it.

Inside the house, Mariana shut the door quickly. She threw the bolt, and was safe. Relief flooded her veins, she felt close to fainting.

She would leave the groceries for later. When Pearce returned home she would return to the garage without his noticing, for certainly Pearce took little notice of what Mariana did while preparing dinner. She would tell him nothing of what had happened to her.

Safe inside the house! Inside the house! Thinking
So long as the door is locked, he can’t follow.

W
hy so many lights, Mariana?”

“Because—I’m welcoming my husband home.”

In a gesture of extravagance that was wholly unlike her, Mariana had switched on outside lights: lights at the front door, and at the kitchen door; floodlights on the roof of the garage; lights in the courtyard and lights illuminating the fountain in the pond and lights along the driveway to the road. Even the deck lights were ablaze, and floodlights at the rear of the house, not visible from the driveway.

With a giddy laugh Mariana came to her frowning husband, to kiss his cheek that was cold from outdoors. Pearce was too startled to kiss Mariana in return, or to embrace her; nor did Mariana embrace him, in the rough-textured dark woolen overcoat he hadn’t yet unbuttoned and flung off.

And that night preparing for bed Mariana stared from the bedroom window down at the lawn that was sheathed in darkness now, and indecipherable. Her breath steamed the cool windowpane as she leaned near. Was there—something below? She stared until her eyes blurred with moisture but saw nothing, no one.

“Mariana? Where the hell are you? Come to bed.”

“Yes! I’m coming.”

“ . . . at least, turn out the light.”

Mariana turned out the light.

It was like Mariana to linger in the bathroom, before joining Pearce in bed. Often, by the time she came to bed, Pearce had fallen into a heavy sleep.

Though the bed was an enormous king-sized bed yet Pearce took up most of it, a dark hulk amid the bedclothes. Like a beached sea lion he snuffled, snorted, whinnied in his sleep; often he flung his legs about; by the morning he would have pulled out most of the bedclothes, dragging them to his side of the bed; his face loomed like a large moon, riddled and rippled. In his sleep he frowned, grimaced, and often muttered—words Mariana couldn’t decipher except to recognize as
legalese.

Her poor husband! Litigator by day, litigator by night. Yet Pearce Shutt was so very successful, you had to concede that the effort of his professional life was worth it.
In law, winning is all. Coming in second is not an option.

So Pearce often observed. This was not boastfulness but fact.

At the bedside Mariana heard a sound somewhere in the house—a creaking floorboard? a stealthy indrawn breath? Cautiously she went into the corridor—the carpet beneath her bare feet was thick, consoling—she made not the slightest sound, she was certain—there was a guest room at the end of the corridor—in the doorway she stood and saw in the shadowy interior—was it
him
?—or
it
?
—
an upright creature, on hind legs—no, it was a man—a man with an angular head, a snouted face—covered in something like fur, and the fur was sand-colored and speckled—spotted—the ears were oddly rounded though yet pricked-up, alert—his very fur shivered—an electric sort of life thrummed through his limbs that were lean but hard-muscled as his body was lean, angular, tense. Though Mariana stood less than ten feet away from him the creature—the man—didn’t seem to be aware of her—unless he was pretending not to be aware of her; in a semi-crouch he stood beside a bookcase, and in his right hand he held a book, which he now quietly closed and replaced on the shelf.

The nape of his neck was dense and springy with fur—sandy-silvery-speckled fur—Mariana felt a sudden powerful urge to reach out and stroke that fur—and he seemed to be sniffing rapidly—sniffing
her—
though not turning to confront her, strangely—as a predator would have done by now. Mariana caught just a glimpse of his face, glittery mica-eyes veiled from her as if in—shyness?—slyness?—subterfuge?

He has come for me—has he?

Then, abruptly the figure was gone.

Mariana switched on the light but saw no one, nothing—the guest room was undisturbed, or seemed so; not only had the windows not been opened, but the curtains hadn’t been disturbed; a small woven rug laid upon the carpet appeared to be untouched, though there were indentations—footprints, pawprints?—in the woven fabric. In the bookcase a single book jutted out—a paperback copy of Darwin’s
Origin of Species
.

This had been one of Mariana’s cherished books, from her undergraduate years at the University of Pennsylvania. She’d been a biology major—she’d intended to continue her studies in graduate school and get a Ph.D.—for the phenomenon of organic life fascinated her, with its myriad manifestations and seemingly inexhaustible permutations. She’d hoped to pursue a course of study in environmental biology though she’d been somewhat daunted by the fierce and fractious competition from pre-med students in required courses like organic chemistry and by the newer, computational sciences like molecular biology that had seemed to reduce the mystery of
animal life
to its most elemental and seemingly lifeless components . . . And there was the disappointment of her first year in graduate school, also at Penn, that had ended abruptly.

The paperback
Origin of Species
was still warm, as if the furry man had been breathing on it. There was a smell—a distinct, acrid, animal smell—like the smell of the other evening—in the guest room.

In a lowered voice Mariana spoke urgently, pleadingly—“Who are you? What do you want? Why—now?”

At the far end of the corridor, her husband slept in their bed, oblivious. And in this room, there was no one to hear.

*

“You will ‘feel’ the drill—and some ‘tingling,’ Mrs. Shutt—but at a distance. It will be like hearing voices in another room—when you can’t distinguish individual words.”

Dr. Digges’s warm brown eyes, above the surgical mask that covered his mouth and nose, exuded an air of genial paternal authority.

Mariana was at the dentist’s, for a complicated and costly dental-surgical procedure involving crowns on several upper front teeth. Dr.
 
Digges had suggested both nitrous oxide—“laughing gas”—and novacaine; the first, to prepare her for the needle injecting novacaine into her gum, as the novacaine prepared her for enduring a procedure that would require as long as ninety minutes.

Dentistry for Cowards!
was Dr. Digges’s specialty. Mariana was grateful for as much anesthetic as she could get. Her pain threshold was not high. She was not a stoic. Even with nitrous oxide she was likely to be tense, anxious. Nor did she laugh. Not once, in the past, in Dr. Digges’s chair, under the influence of nitrous oxide, had she even come close to laughing.

Dr. Digges’s assistant Felipa, a buxom child-sized young woman with a brightly made-up face, said sweetly, “Mrs. Shutt, I will be tipping you back just a bit.”

The dentist’s chair was tipped back at a sharper angle than Mariana recalled. Her feet were raised, her head was lowered. Blood rushed to her brain. When Felipa placed the mask on Mariana’s lower face, to administer the nitrous oxide, Mariana instinctively stiffened as if frightened to breathe deeply and give herself over to the curious, oddly distancing and depersonalizing narcotic.

She found herself staring at a glossy travel photograph on the ceiling directly over her head. The rugged coastline of the Greek island Santorini.

Dr. Digges’s office was filled with brightly colored photographs of the dentist’s numerous trips. Nowhere to look that wasn’t glossy-gorgeous like a tourist’s brochure: the Eiffel Tower, a Venetian canal, Roman ruins, the Acropolis, the Tower of London. The cliffs of Santorini against a ceramic-blue sky were jagged like teeth—like incisors—primitive—cruel-seeming—yet beautiful, romantic—Mariana stared, and her senses seemed to float—a wonderful airiness suffused her veins.

She smiled. Amid the cliffs of Santorini were wolf-like creatures, lean, lithe, just barely visible—but visible—their eyes glittering like mica and their tongues lolling as they trotted singly, in pairs, and in a small furry-speckled pack; some were adults, and some were cubs with the upright rounded ears and round eyes of children’s stuffed toys.

Mariana must have smiled. She must have laughed aloud.

Felipa said, “Mrs. Shutt, this is good! Good to relax. Would you like your magazine? Dr. Digges is with another patient and will be a few minutes.”

National Geographic
had slipped from Mariana’s fingers to the floor. Felipa picked it up and handed it to Mariana who’d been reading an article about a strange ritual—young Chinese women “betrothed” to dead men—for what bizarre reason, Mariana couldn’t comprehend.

Why would one want to marry a dead man? Was it to be spared marrying a living man? Could one inherit property if a husband was already dead at the time of the wedding? Did the young Chinese brides want to be married to dead men or was this custom the wish of their families? And what of the “groom’s” family? Mariana was trying to make sense of columns of print but her thoughts flew in all directions, her mouth kept smiling, she thought it was just so—funny . . . She began laughing as if she were being tickled though the gas—the nitrous oxide—hadn’t yet begun—had it?—even as Felipa took the magazine from her fingers as it was about to fall to the floor again—“Mrs. Shutt? Are you sleepy?” Mariana stumbled on steps she hadn’t seen—her eyes were shut—she was dazed, dizzy—falling, and clutching at something—someone. She’d fallen to her knees—her hands, and her knees—scrambling amid rocks . . . The face looming above her was one she knew well though she hadn’t seen it in a very long time—a boyish face, somber and lean-cheeked, with a freckled skin and prominent ears.

“ ‘Robb Gelder.’ ”