House Haunted (22 page)

And then—boom!—all at once. She had woke him out of a sound sleep, the first he had had in four nights, since Mr. Felligan liked to play blackjack until all hours of the morning. The old fool didn't get off work until midnight, and Gary had had to listen to stories till the sun came up about how Felligan would not be a night watchman forever. “Temporary! Temporary!” Felligan always reminded him, his bent finger in the air next to his head, his thin, balding head rigid, his foolish little dreamer's eyes lost in his dreams. “Ah, Gary, I can't tell you how wonderful it'll be, me a croupier in Atlantic City, ever since I seen that Burt Lancaster movie
Atlantic City
, Burt, that's me, me with that little redheaded piece of ass, what's her name, Sarandon—Susan Sarandon—the one in that baseball movie, yeah, that's me, Burt Lancaster, I'll be happy down there, did I tell you I was born by the saltwater, Gary, I can't tell you how much I 'ppreciate you helping me practice it and all, won't be long now, I can tell you, the money's in the bank, five hundred dollars and this time next year I'll be living off that boardwalk, one of them not too fancy boarding houses, just a few more hundred dollars if I could just stay away from the ponies, that goddamn exacta, guy that invented that should be shot for taking the money right out of my wallet, did I say five hundred in the bank? Well, maybe like two hundred or a hundred, but it won't be long, Gary, no sir. . .” It wouldn't be long before Felligan dreamed forever, the long dream. But then Bridget had woken him up out of that good sleep, his first in four nights, and told him there was work to do.

That hadn't gotten him so mad. She had done that before, always apologizing. She had this time, but there was an urgency to her that made him feel she was telling him, not asking him. That he didn't like. It was one thing for her to ask his help, another for her to tell him to drive upstate right away and get things ready.

And that was only the beginning. He drove around for her like a madman the next two days, which put Felligan completely on the back burner (“See you early next week, Burt”—
for the last time
, Gary didn't add, and Felligan had only snuffled and wheezed in the self-pitying, disgusting way he had, and said, “If you
must
, Gary, if you
must
. . .).

But the thing that had
really
gotten to Gary, had made him decide that there might be a score to settle (unless she
really
made this up to him, which, so far, she had not), was her insistence that he suddenly turn
bellhop
and
chauffeur
. It had started out easily enough, with the arrival of the strange-looking girl from Ottawa who had driven down in an old Honda that smelled like spilled beer and piss. All he'd had to do was drive the foul-smelling thing around back and park it in the weeds.

But the next day he had been back up there, just waiting like a bellhop until, about four-thirty in the afternoon, a limo half as long as the block had pulled into the drive, letting out a skinny young man in a topcoat and red scarf, speaking English with a foreign accent, with the craziest smile on his face Gary had ever seen.

Up till then he had put up with it. But the next day, after he had finally driven back down to the city, with an ache in the back of his neck, and parked out on the street, running up to his apartment to get a change of clothes before going out to meet Felligan, the phone had rung and she had told him to rent a van,
now
.

“My car's on the street. Let me just park it in the garage.”

“
Immediately
, Gary.”

That was the first time he had felt her order him to do - something, instead of ask, the first time he had ever really felt her anger. That made him mad.

But what really made him mad was that it had scared him.

So he had gotten the van and picked up the third delivery at LaGuardia Airport. It was a cripple in a wheelchair, coked out of his mind, a twenty year old with the eyes of a hundred-year-old man (okay, so Gary understood why the van, he'd never have gotten the goddamn wheelchair in the Datsun), and then after driving all the way upstate and then back to the city again, he'd found that his Datsun had been towed.

He'd almost lost it, right there on the street. What he remembered himself doing was putting big dents in the side of the van with his fists and then whacking at it with a discarded umbrella, blood rushing to his eyes—then suddenly realizing what he was doing, that a crowd was forming. He had stumbled away and into his building just before real notice was taken of him (the crowd had mostly been interested, not alarmed, these were New Yorkers, you could have sold peanuts) and up to his apartment. Mrs. Fogelman had got on the elevator with him, appearing it seemed out of no-where, her bland, self-absorbed face seeing but not registering his rage as she began her litany, “You know, Gary, your mother was a good woman. I wonder if they'll ever do something about the heat in this building. It's been a little cold the last few nights, don't you think? Your mother . . .” If Gary had had a weapon on him, he might have killed her, knifing her throat right out of her neck, just to shut her up. But he had managed to stumble out of the elevator to his apartment door, getting the key into the lock, opening the door, thinking all these bad thoughts about Bridget and the way she had been treating him—

The phone was ringing. Automatically, he picked it up, put it to his ear.

“Gary,” she said, her voice subsumed in static. “You have to go out once more, tonight. There's a ship getting in from Bermuda at the Forty-sixth Street pier, the S.S.
Eiderhorn
. A boy on it named Ricky . . .”

Gary went blind with fury. “
They took my car.
”

She laughed. “You'll have another car. All the cars you want.”

Gary's anger was undiminished. “I want Felligan. Now.”

Her voice hardened, the way it had when she had first frightened him. But he was too enraged to be frightened now. “When you've finished—”

“
I said now!
” Gary began to hyperventilate. A memory bolted through his head: himself at four years old, on the floor, face flushed red, pounding on the floor with his fists, his feet, getting up to punch the walls, his mother impassionately saying, “It will do you no good to throw a tantrum, young man,” before turning back to talk intimately with the man who sat on the sofa with her, giggling laughter at something the man said into her ear as Gary screamed and railed and beat at his own body till he wept, curling in on himself, looking out at her on the couch as the man put his hands on her, and Gary wanted her to look only at him...

“
You won't get me to do ANYTHING for you! Not ANYTHING!
” he screamed into the phone.

He continued to scream.

There was silence on the other end of the phone when he stopped screaming. He didn't know how much time had passed. He looked out the window, through the slatted blinds. It was dark. He stretched the phone cord to the hall and looked at the round clock on the wall: eight o'clock.

He walked back into the living room, easing the phone cord, and now registered the ripped carpet in the center of the living room, the scratches on the china hutch (his mother's china hutch) net to the phone. The wall around the phone was scored, chunks of plaster gone. On the floor under it was the tiny pocketknife he carried as a key chain. The blade was bent.

“Gary?”

Her tone had changed. She sounded the way she had when she had first called him. She sounded like a friend, someone who understood him.

“I treated you badly, Gary, and I'm sorry.”

“It's all right,” he said.

“Will you forgive me?”

How could he not forgive her? How could he hold anything back from her, who understood him, knew what was in him? “Yes.”

She sighed, as if she had been afraid he would refuse her. “Are you all right, Gary?”

“Yes, I'm all right.”

“These past few days. . . I've been very thoughtless, selfish. I've just had so much to do. I don't want you to think that I ever don't appreciate the little things you do for me, Gary.”

“Sometimes I do.”

“That's why I'm sorry. You don't know how happy I was that day you broke into the house and I was able to talk to you. You don't know how long I had waited for someone like you. You have to admit you didn't recognize your greatness, your invincibility, until I told you of it. You're a great man, Gary.”

He was silent for a moment. “Yes.”

“Sometimes I forget that. Selfishness is a terrible thing.” 'It is.''

“You're invincible, Gary. Just like I told you. I may have been busy, but I haven't forgotten that.”

“Yes.”

“Are you very upset about your car?”

“No. It's all right.”

“You could get it back tomorrow, you know.”

“Yes, that would be all right.”

“After tonight, Gary, I won't need you again. You'll be free to do whatever you want. I
want
you to do whatever makes you happy.”

Gary was silent.

“Tonight is the last thing I'll ever ask of you.”

“All right.”

“Gary.” The way she said his name, with pride, as if it meant something—formed a lump in his throat.

“I'll leave now,” he said.

“Thank you, Gary. Thank you.”

He heard her voice fade into the static, and he put the phone down. Felligan could wait one more night.

He put his change of clothes away, put his duffel bag back into his closet. He straightened the living room, sweeping the pulls from the carpet, putting the furniture back into place. By the time he got down to the van in the garage, he was whistling.

Invincible.

Maybe he wouldn't have to kill Bridget after all.

The Forty-sixth Street pier was jammed with traffic. He could see why: the huge, brightly lit S.S.
Eiderhorn
was just nosing in. But Gary was lucky. A minibus from an earlier arrival shot out of a parking space right next to the debarking area just ahead of him. He pulled immediately into it. He was whistling again as he got out of the van and slammed the door.

Huge ship, huge passenger list. There were families lined up like Noah's animals against the railing, smiling in the artificial light, searching for a sign of their newly tanned loved ones.

Gary waited next to the open door of the van. He wished the damn thing had a tape deck so he could listen to some good jazz. A momentary flash of anger bolted through him; all of his tapes were in his impounded car. He balled his fist, then relaxed it, slowing his breathing. He'd get the car tomorrow, no problem. He'd get the fucking car, and soon he would have any car he wanted, just like she said. He was invincible, and soon, very soon, he could have anything he wanted.

He saw someone that looked like his pickup.

At the top of the ramp, a young boy was leaning over the railing looking down at the pier. He looked confused. He moved in place, mingling with a group of tourists debarking the ship, disappearing in the midst of their bags and hats and loud laughing voices .

At the bottom of the ramp, just past the steward, he appeared again when the laughing group, gaily dressed, carnival in the sodium-vapor lamps, moved on, leaving him behind, staring into space.

Gary left the van and moved up close to him. This was the one. The kid stared up into his face as Gary took his arm, registering little. “Come on,” Gary said, pulling him toward the van. He followed. He seemed weak, ready to stumble, light as a feather.

Whistling, Gary let go of the kid's arm at the side of the van and slid open the cargo door. “Get in,” he said. The kid followed meekly, stumbling on the second step up into the cab. “Whoa,” Gary said, laughing, and caught him under the arm, lifting him up onto the seat. The kid stared at him for a moment.

“Who are you?” he asked tepidly.

Gary shrugged, then laughed. “Maybe I'm your worst fucking nightmare.”

The kid lay down on the bench seat of the van and stared glassily through the window as Gary slid the door shut with a bang.

Gary pulled out onto Forty-sixth Street and headed across town. He flipped on the digital radio, finding an all-talk show. He dialed up and down, looking for something listenable on the AM band, and finally gave up in disgust, leaving the radio on a country-western station.

They hit Broadway and Gary turned downtown as Bridget had directed. She'd told him to drive through the theater district. The lights got brighter. He felt a rustling from the backseat. When he checked the rearview mirror, the black kid was sitting up, staring out the window. They were crossing Forty-second Street now, and the sex show signs and movie marquees brightened and then gave way to theater marquees—The Shubert, the Nederlanden

Gary looked into the rearview mirror again and then turned around in his seat. The black kid had his face pressed against the glass of the side window. He was trying to clutch at the glass. Tears streamed down his face. He was making low moaning noises.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Gary snapped. He reached back, slapping at the kid's knees with the flat of his hand. He swerved back into the middle lane, just avoiding a taxi that had shot out of Thirty-fourth Street into his path. The moaning noises continued in the back.