If I Should Die (17 page)

“No need to be sorry, so long as you believe me.”

“I’m trying to.”

Hugo, his own palm damp, gave her hand one last squeeze and let go.

“Well, I feel better,” he said.

“I’m sure that’s a relief to us all,” Joanna King said, drily but not unkindly.

Hugo took no notice. “This means Lally’s really going to be okay?”

Lucas Ash shook his head. “Okay implies survival, or something merely adequate. Lally’s going to be better than okay – she’s going to go on being Lally, leading the
lifestyle she chooses – dancing, baking, whatever.”

“It’s so hard to believe,” Lally said, though a fresh and wonderful feeling of warmth and relief was stealing through her entire body and mind. “I mean, I am starting to
believe it, truly, but it was all so sudden, so
serious
, and now – ” She shook her head, impatient with herself. “I’m sorry, I’m being a real pain.”

“No, you’re not,” Bobby Goldstein said.

“No more than anyone is at this stage,” Joanna King added. “I know I’d be no different if it happened to me.”

“But you can go home now,” Dr Ash said, with finality.

“And then what?” Lally asked.

“Forget it.”

“Honestly?” This time it was Hugo who sounded disbelieving.

“I’d like you to start slowly, dance-wise,” the doctor addressed Lally, “but you can, and you should, make a start. Gentle warm-up exercises, barre work, nothing too
exerting for a week or two – not because it’s going to kill you,” he added swiftly, “or even harm you. But I don’t want you overdoing things and scaring yourself. I
want you to take it easily, and come to terms with the fact that the thing in your chest is your friend, a part of you now.”

“Think of it as a new lover,” Joanna King suggested, “who’s going to turn into the perfect husband. At first you don’t quite believe how good things are, you
can’t quite trust him, but gradually you settle down and realize that things are better than they’ve ever been.”

“And then you take him for granted.” Bobby Goldstein grinned.

“In this case, a good thing,” Lucas Ash said.

“What about check-ups?” Hugo asked.

“One month from today,” Dr Ash replied. “Then six months, and after that, it’ll be annual.”

“And the batteries?” Lally asked.

“Should last ten to twelve years.”

Lally sat back in her chair and relaxed. No more questions came into her mind. She looked around the laboratory and then at the people surrounding her. The sun had poked through the grey
outside, and its sudden yellowish winter glow illuminated the doctor’s golden head, giving him a cartoon aura that made her smile.

“How about a vacation?” Hugo asked.

“Good idea,” Dr Ash said.

“A vacation?” The word sounded good. Lally hadn’t been anywhere – other than to Chicago to visit Joe – in a long time. “What kind of vacation?”

“Any kind you like.” Ash paused. “I’d prefer you didn’t actually climb a mountain just yet, but walking or riding or swimming – like most things in life,
everything within reason.”

“Skiing?” Lally asked.

“Sure, why not?”

“I don’t really feel like skiing,” she said. “I think I’d like to get away from all this snow.”

“You love snow,” Hugo said.

“Not the last few days. I’ve hated it.”

“We could go to Florida,” Hugo suggested, then looked awkward. “Unless you want to be by yourself.”

“I don’t.”

“Or with someone else.”

Lally looked at him steadily. She knew he was thinking of Chris Webber. “There’s no one else I’d rather go with, Hugo.”

“That seems to be settled then,” Joanna King said.

“Florida?” Bobby Goldstein queried. “You don’t look like Miami Beach people to me, if you don’t mind my saying.”

“I don’t think we are,” Lally smiled at him.

“I might be,” Hugo said. “I’ve never been.”

“Me neither,” Lally said. “But I’ve always wanted to see the Everglades.”

“Go to the Keys,” Goldstein told her. “Great for creative types – get the best of all worlds. Swamps – if you like alligators – ”

“And deer,” Lally said. “And otters and thousands of birds.”

“Do you know that at least six Pulitzer prizewinners live on Key West alone?” Goldstein had a misty look in his eyes. “It’s where I’ll be heading when I write my
bestseller.”

“Don’t anyone hold their breath,” Joanna King said.

“So that’s settled.” Lucas Ash’s brisk voice broke the spell. “Lally and Mr Barzinsky are going to Florida.”

“When?” Lally asked him.

“Whenever you like.”

“You mean I could go now – right away?”

Dr Ash shrugged. “Maybe go home and pack a few things first.”

The sunlight had already vanished, but the warmth continued to fill Lally. She felt good.

“I hate alligators.” Suddenly, Hugo looked apprehensive.

Lally smiled at him.

“I’ll protect you,” she said.

That evening Lally decided it was time to call Joe. She listened for a few minutes, then put down the receiver.

“What’s up?” Hugo asked.

“No one home.”

“What about the answering machine?”

“I didn’t know what to say.”

“Tell them what’s happened, but that you’re okay.”

Lally shook her head. “I don’t want to do that. Joe’ll worry unless he speaks to me direct.”

“Tell him you’re so okay that we’re taking a vacation.”

“He might not believe me.”

“Lally, you have to tell him.” Hugo sounded severe.

“No, I don’t.” Her face was stubborn. “I know my brother a lot better than you do.” She dialled again, listened to the machine picking up and raised a finger to her
lips to hush Hugo before leaving her message. “Hi, everyone, it’s Lally, just calling to say hello. I’m fine – Hugo’s fine – Nijinsky’s fine –
we’re all fine, and everything’s good, and Hugo and I are going on vacation for a few days, so don’t worry if you can’t reach us. Love you.”

“Lally – ” Hugo said.

She put down the phone.

“Hugo.”

“What?” He glared at her.

“Stop being such a bully.”

He was dozing on the couch in the room when the gecko woke him. He felt it on his chest, hardly any weight at all, just enough to bring him out of sleep, raise every hair on
his body, and open his eyes.

Fear swamped him, sickened him, but the man controlled it, remained very still, watching it. It was so small, so deceptively attractive, with its leopard spotted skin and clever golden eyes. He
remembered he’d held one of these little creatures one morning soon after he’d brought them home; he had held it up in his thickly gloved hand against the sunshine from the window, and
the light had seemed to shine right through its head, and he had quivered with excitement and fear at the gleaming display of its powers.

He had never felt it on his naked flesh before, till now. It must have climbed out of the vivarium while he had changed its water. Slowly, it began to move down towards his belly. He felt a wave
of nausea as the terror increased, and then, as he watched the spotted, pointed tail, he felt his own excitement begin to rise, saw his penis grow engorged and powerful and swordlike and, as if in
a dream – for he could not have done it otherwise – he reached down and plucked it off his belly with his bare hand. It wriggled against his palm, panicking, writhing, particles of
freshly shed skin flying into the air, and the creature’s fear strengthened the man and, carefully holding its tiny jaws closed, he sat up a little and began to rub it over his own body, over
his nipples, back down over his belly and against his testicles and penis. He felt the fire in him, felt the surging and the agony and the heat and then the shuddering, groaning release, felt the
milkiness of his semen against his skin. And the movement in his hand had ceased, and when he looked down, he saw that he had squeezed the life out of the little creature, and it was the first time
he had killed a dragon in physical combat, and the release and relief and vindication were overwhelming, and the man knew that it was a sign.

A little later, having disposed of it, he lay down again and closed his eyes and allowed himself to drift back. Past his mother’s death, past the anguish and humiliation,
back to the days and nights of pleasure and sweet pain, at her hands and in her arms, in her big bed at home, and in her own special place.

Waiting for the deaths to begin had been hard, but oh, it had been so thrilling. Like all the childhood treats Mother had made him wait for. Like the times when she’d baked his favourite
spiced cookies into letter shapes, but her rule had been that he had to spell out two names from
The Ring of the Nibelung
with the cookies before he was allowed to put the first one in his
mouth, and it had always been worthwhile for the deliciousness, but oh, the waiting had been so tantalizing.

Mother had made him wait for other delights, too. Like letting him stay up late at night till she got home from her special place, or allowing him to brush her hair – so soft and silky and
golden – or sharing her bed with him. And once she had allowed him in, then she had made him wait an eternity before she had begun to caress his back and rub his shoulders, and stroke his
chest and stomach, and then – the thing he loved most of all – to tell him stories about Father, his favourite heroic stories about the old days.

She hadn’t always been gentle with him. Her work had wearied her, and often, when she’d come home bone-tired, her temper had flared, and she’d had to punish him with her
cigarettes or with her hands, but that harshness had only made the tender moments more precious to him. He had never been able to resist asking her about her work, and often his questions had
elicited a slapping or worse, but sometimes, lying in bed with him, she’d given in and told him about it, and shown him, too, and then the room in which they’d lain had seemed almost to
disappear as brand new, fascinating mysteries unfolded and became exquisitely clear to him.

Mother had taken him, once, to her special place, and he’d been awed by its magnificence. By the crystal chandeliers and red velvet drapes, tied in flounces with thick, braided ropes, by
the bedrooms with their canopies and ceiling mirrors, and by the strange, haunting paintings and tapestries that had depicted the ancient German myths and legends that Mother had made so much a
part of their lives. One painting in particular, called
Siegfried, the Dragon Slayer,
had been his favourite, and after his mother had died and her special place had closed its doors for
ever, he had gone there before the auction and had arranged for one of the chandeliers and that painting to be set aside for him.

Now that he had time on his hands, the man permitted himself to dwell in the past for more hours each day than he had allowed himself in years. There was too much time, in a
way. It made the waiting harder, made the need for self-control even greater. He found that he had revelled in his acting ability, in the factory and at the apartment. The lieutenant had left on
Sunday morning without a shred of doubt that he was a sick man. It hadn’t been too hard feigning the flu, not nearly so taxing as the role he’d been playing for so many years, and if he
was honest with himself, this past two weeks had been the most fun he’d ever had. Watching them all squirm and thrash around, the way the little gecko had before it had died. It was almost a
pity to be out of the centre of things, away from the focus of the investigation. Safer of course, but less absorbing.

He came to the room twice daily now and stayed for longer than he had in the past, sometimes watching his little captive dragons, sometimes reading his logs, the records of his work, other times
just resting or thinking or remembering. The cops weren’t likely to return too quickly, not without calling first, and he kept his answering machine switched on most of the time, the way a
sick man might, and even if the good lieutenant did grow suspicious, as he surely must, given enough time, he was ready for him.

This was a new phase of waiting, perhaps the hardest and the most tantalizing yet. Waiting to be caught. To play a different kind of game with them. Face to face.

Lally and Hugo had spent Tuesday night on Key Largo, the first and largest of the islands strung together by Route 1, the great Overseas Highway. Any ideas that Lally might
have had about camping, canoeing or hiking in any of the Everglades wilderness areas, had been firmly stamped on by Hugo before and during their flight to Miami.

“We’ll go camping, we’ll hire a boat, we can swim or snorkel or walk or fish, or do whatever you damn well please,” he’d told her on the plane, “but wading
around in a swamp with a bunch of mosquitoes and alligators is just plain unhealthy.”

“It’s winter,” Lally said. “You don’t get many mosquitoes.”

“You always get mosquitoes in that kind of climate.”

“You get jelly fish in the ocean too,” she taunted him.

“Then you’ll swim and snorkel alone.”

“You’d leave a sick woman to snorkel alone?”

“You’re healthy as a horse, you told me so.”

“I’m still a little fragile.”

“Then you can lie under a parasol and sip exotic drinks.”

“For one day,” Lally consented.

“How about five?” Hugo had never been an outdoorsman.

“One. Then we go snorkelling.”

“Anything to please a sick woman.”

“And camping?”

“Whatever.” Hugo settled back in his seat and shut his eyes.

“Hugo?”

“What?”

“How do you feel about bats?”

He didn’t open his eyes. “I hear they only go for women’s hair.”

The Keys were a subtropical necklace of islands off the southernmost tip of Florida, marking a narrow dividing point between the Atlantic Ocean to the south and east and the
Gulf of Mexico to the west. Their history was full of tales of piracy and shipwrecks, but even today, in spite of modern communication and the inevitable fast-food and motel chains along Route 1,
the Keys still smacked of freedom and romance, and Key Largo was its gateway. Parking the rental car they’d picked up at Miami airport and heading for the stores in town, Lally and Hugo had
found everything they’d forgotten to pack in their haste to leave the New England snow – insect repellent, sunblock, film and sandals – and then they’d checked into a modern
hotel overlooking the bay, partly because Hugo wanted to be sure of at least one night with a comfortable bed and bathroom, and partly because it was the only hotel they could find with two vacant
rooms.