The Architecture of Fear (11 page)

Tracy could hear the noise it made all the way across the room. She felt disgusted, and worse than disgusted: betrayed. He was as bad as the CRS and the rest of them.

Francois was too busy vaunting his political virility to even notice her walking past him as she left.

When she got back to the house there was a letter in her mailbox from Liz. She and Isobel were going to be in Portugal for two more months and Tracy was welcome to keep on using the apartment until they got back.

No explanations, no excuses, no apologies, but Tracy didn't care anymore. All that was important was that she was home, safe, and that she wasn't going to have to leave.

The smell of something dead and rotting in the downstairs bathroom was back again, stronger than ever, but it didn't bother her the way it had before. The smell was reassuring, its very disgustingness a shield that would hide and protect her against the world outside.

On impulse she pulled the bathroom door open, looked inside. There was a Turkish toilet there, just a hole in the tiled floor with two raised places for your feet on either side, but everything was clean, and the odor wasn't any worse than it had been in the hall.

***

She didn't leave the yard again for the rest of the week, just stayed home sketching and reading, or lying totally immobile in the nook's shadowed warmth for hours on end, listening over and over again to the records the previous tenants had left—almost all of the music strange stuff, including a half-dozen records of Tibetan temple music, with black-and-white photos on the cover of lamas blowing into huge conch-shell trumpets or playing instruments carved from what looked like ivory, but which the liner notes said was human bone. She could feel things moving inside her, like great looming shapes rising slowly from the hidden depths of some inner ocean, and she was content to let them come, wait for them to show themselves.

On Sunday, she was reworking a Peruvian mountainscape Carlos had sketched, letting the Tibetan temple music guide her hand as she filled in the missing details, when her doorbell rang, startling her. She didn't want to answer the door, but after a moment she decided she had to—it might be Isobel and Liz, back early.

She turned the music down, opened the door. Francois was standing there, holding a packet of letters. She was so relieved that it wasn't Liz and Isobel, come to steal the apartment from her, that it took her a moment to realize how furious she was to see him there, intruding on her privacy.

"What do you want, Francois?"

"You did not go to school all of last week after Tuesday, and your friends said they did not see you. I was afraid you were sick. I asked Marcelo where you lived, and he said you never came to get your mail. So Marcelo gave me the letters and I came to see if you were all right."

"I'm okay. Everything's fine."

She took the envelopes he was holding out, waited for him to go, but he just stood there, made no move to leave.

"I'm okay," she repeated. "Thanks for bringing me my mail."

"I hope I am not disturbing you." He sounded unsure of himself. "It was not only that you might be sick. I wanted to see you."

She supposed she should have been flattered to have finally attracted his interest, but all it meant was that he wasn't going to go away and leave her alone. "Come in. But I'm busy. You can only stay a moment."

"Thank you."

She led the way into the apartment, moved the metal yardstick that was leaning up against the armchair out of the way. "Sit down. Would you like some water or orange juice? I don't have anything else."

"Yes. Water would be good." He remained standing. "Tracy—"

"What?"

"Monika showed this to me." He held out a paper napkin. She recognized it as the one she'd been doodling on in the Alliance's cafe. There was a recognizable likeness of Francois on it, looking almost as ridiculously idealized as the drawings Isobel had always done of Carlos.

"It's not very good," she said, dismissing it.

"No—I mean, yes, this is quite good. I did not know you could draw like that. When I saw it I knew how much I miss you and I wanted to see you. What I want to ask you is, do you mind if I keep this?"

In other words, he had been flattered by the way she saw him and wanted to bask in it some more, feel like some sort of romantic hero sweeping her off her feet. How could she have ever failed to see how vain he was? "Of course you can keep it. Sit down."

"Do you mind if I smoke?"

She minded, but it was easier to just let him smoke than to try to stop him.

"Go ahead." She threw open the window.

He was looking around the room curiously. "This is very strange. I never came here before. Isobel and I did not get along. Really, I did not mind Isobel. It was Carlos who I could not... could not support?"

"Stand."

"Yes. I could not stand him. He was living here with her all the time. Before he killed himself. You know that he killed himself?"

"That's why Isobel and Liz are down in Portugal. I'll get you your water."

While she was getting the bottled water out of the refrigerator Francois stood up again, went to the window and leaned out.

"It is so nice here. Like in the country, not like Paris at all..."

He trailed off and she heard him moving around. Feeling vaguely alarmed—he had no right to rummage around in her things, spy on her—she looked up, saw him leaning out the window with the yardstick gripped in both hands like a baseball bat.

"What are you doing?"

He didn't look back at her. "There is a nest of insects..." He swiped at it, grunted with satisfaction, then pulled the yardstick hurriedly back and closed the window.

He turned to her, very pleased with himself. St. George clubbing the dragon to death and delivering the damsel in distress. "You will not have to worry about them anymore."

His smug satisfaction irritated her anew. "I didn't have to worry about them at all. They never bothered me."

She reached past him, opened the window again, leaned out to look at the nest.

"Be careful! They are going to sting you!"

"No, they won't." She didn't know why, but she was sure.

Most of the wasps' nest was lying in the driveway below, with wasps buzzing angrily around it, but a fragment was still hanging from the drainpipe, like what was left of some gray fruit that had been devoured by birds while still on the tree.

In some of the ripped-open cylindrical cells she could see metamorphosing pupae that would never complete their transformations into adult wasps; in others, half-eaten caterpillars, still alive and twitching feebly in the sudden light, with the wasps' blind, maggotlike larvae crawling over them. She stared at them, sickened and fascinated.

Francois reached for the broom again. "They are disgusting. I will kill all of them for you."

"No. Leave them there."

"Leave them? Why?"

"They belong there." She saw he didn't understand. "I want them there."

"You like them? How can you like wasps?"

"Just leave them alone."

He finally realized that she meant what she was saying. "All right." He hesitated a moment, abruptly ill at ease again. "Well, so long as you are certain you are all right—"

"I already told you. I'm fine."

"I must leave now. Are you coming back to school this week?"

"I'm not sure. I've been pretty busy lately."

He gestured at the drawings on the table. "You are drawing all the time?"

"Yes."

"They are very good." He studied them a moment longer, suddenly frowned. "It is very clever, the way you make faces hidden in the mountain, but you must go out more." He looked so self-important, as though he were imparting the wisdom of the ages to her. He probably thought he was. "You are looking too thin. Just like Isobel. It is not good to pass too much of the time alone. Isobel was always here all alone or with Carlos, and this was not good for her. You must see more of Paris."

"I'm sure you're right, Francois," she said, dripping sincerity. "Maybe you can show me more of Paris soon, when I have a little more time?"

"I would like that." Equally sincere, giving her a long, meaningful, soulful look with his large brown eyes. Reassured and preening himself again.

"I'll walk you downstairs."

"All right."

The wasps' nest was lying on the driveway, the larvae and caterpillars all spilled out of it and writhing on the ground while the adults swarmed around above it in an angry cloud.

"You must not go too close!" He grabbed her by the wrist, tried to hold her back.

She shook him off, suddenly so furious with him for the smug, paternalistic way he kept treating her that she didn't really even care if the wasps stung her or not, and walked deliberately over to the nest. It would be worth getting stung just to shock him out of his self-satisfied superiority.

She bent down and picked up the nest, stood there holding it cradled gently in her hands while the wasps buzzed angrily around her but left her alone.

"You see?" She grinned back at Francois, delighting in the real fear she could see on his face, taunting him. "As long as you're not scared of them they won't sting you."

"Put it down! Please!"

She looked around, then carried the wasps' nest carefully over to the ruined shed, stretched up onto her tiptoes and put it on the sagging roof. Francois was still watching from the driveway.

"There," she said, still grinning contemptuously at him, enjoying her triumph. "You see? They didn't hurt me."

"You were very lucky, Tracy. I hope you will come back to school. It is not good to pass all your days alone here."

"Bye, Francois. Maybe I'll see you at school."

"Good-bye." He scurried off, more like some frightened little rodent than the elegantly cosmopolitan man of the world he was always trying so hard to convince her he was.

Standing there grinning at his retreating back, she suddenly realized what she'd just done—how strange it was, how insane. That was why he had been so frightened, not just because of the wasps, but because what she was doing was insane.

But I was right, so it wasn't insane, she told herself. I knew I didn't have any reason to be scared of the wasps, and I was right. They didn't sting me.

Tracy went back upstairs. The letters Francois had brought her were on the drafting table. There were four or five from Robbie, a dozen others from various friends in Downer's Grove she'd forgotten until their names recalled them to her.

She picked a letter at random, opened it, read a few lines: Betty Michaelis gushing on about how wonderful her life as a freshman at the University of Wisconsin was, all the exciting people she was meeting.

Tracy crumpled the letter up, threw it away. She couldn't imagine going back to those people, that life.

She went into the bathroom, studied her reflections in the full-length mirror.

There was only a faint gray-white discoloration, like a fleck of dirty paper in her reflected image's eye where the nail hole had been. She grinned at herself, at Carlos and Jean-Luc and all her other selves, showing her teeth, and they grinned back at her.

Isobel's image was filling in rapidly, getting sharper.

***

The next day the wasps were back outside her window, crawling over what remained of the nest on the drainpipe, rebuilding it. Some of them were cementing grayish fragments of what could only be the old nest into place, but she could already tell the rebuilt nest was going to be much bigger than before. She moved her table over by the window, where she could lean out to get a look at them without getting up, got out a fresh sheet of paper and started work on the mountainscape again, trying to work Francois's face, the nest's structure and forms, into the underlying contours of the rock.

By Tuesday morning, the nest outside her window was complete again and she was ready to go back to school. The day was already hot. She put on tight black jeans, a clinging T-shirt that emphasized her breasts. On her way out, she took a look at the broken nest on the shed. What cells remained were empty and deserted, the whole thing surrounded by a ring of dead larvae and pupae. The adults must have dragged them all out and killed them when they'd cannibalized the old nest.

Class that day was even easier than usual, though she hadn't spoken French or opened her textbook for a week. She found Francois in the cafe and sat down across from him, smiled half-mockingly at him.

"Hello, Francois." She put a throaty Scarlett O'Hara tone in her voice.

"Hello, Tracy." He seemed nervous, shifty; he wouldn't meet her eyes.

"You ran off so fast, I didn't get a chance to tell you how glad I was you came to see me."

He looked up sharply, started to say something angry, then came to a halt, finally blurted out, "Why did you do it?"

"You mean the wasps?"

"Of course I mean the wasps!"

She waited an instant, still smiling that mocking smile, then said, "Because I knew they wouldn't hurt me. They only sting you if you're scared of them or attack them."

"That's crazy." He downed his coffee, got up to go.

"If it's crazy, Francois, then why didn't they sting me?"

"I don't know why!"

"Anyway, that's not what you really wanted to ask, is it? What you really meant was, why did I want to do it?"

He nodded, said in a much quieter voice, "Why?"

"Because I wanted to see if you'd be worried for me."

"That's even crazier. Listen, I have to go. I have class now."

"Bye, Francois. Maybe I'll see you later. Or come by the apartment again."

She stayed in the cafe the rest of the afternoon, her new self-confidence making it easy to grab the center of attention for herself, so that her classmates were hanging on her every word, laughing with her when she wanted them to laugh.

Near the end of the afternoon Francois came in. He sat down alone at a table in the corner, ordered a coffee. She acted as though she hadn't seen him.

A few minutes later he pretended to notice that she was there, picked up his coffee and came over to join the group at her table.