Woman in the Window (7 page)

“No,” Julie was saying, “I came running in because this guy browbeat me into letting him drive me home—don’t say it, I’m a fool, I admit it—and he was groping while he double-parked out front and I was trying to get the hell away. He was developing what appeared to be an apoplectic red face and it was not a pretty picture. I finally got the door open and he was talking pretty ugly by then about me and you. The I’m-going-to-stick-it-up-your-cunt-of-a-roommate-too speech, a farewell to the troops. A real charmer—and I knew you’d be pleased that your advice about my frequenting low dives was borne out yet again. …”

Natalie sat pensively, watching the glass tigers glittering. Julie wearily threw Sir’s tennis ball again and again. Natalie was disgusted and worried by Julie’s story: it fit so well into the pattern of the past few days. Upsetting. Someone out there, dirty and vicious, had been watching her. You couldn’t know, you couldn’t defend yourself.
I’m nothing special, nothing like Julie
w
ith her swagger and strut and drama. Just me. And I’m being watched. Welcome to Paranoia, just this side of Breakdown.
She couldn’t give her feelings away to Julie. Julie wouldn’t have minded being watched: she wanted to be watched, admired, reached for, because it proved everything she believed about herself as well as the men who lusted for her. For Julie romantic love was an absurdity; for Natalie it was the only kind of love worth having. No common ground, not when it came to men. Julie had no illusions about them: Natalie was committed to hers. So her disappointment and fear was the greater.

“Look, Nat,” Julie said quietly, “I didn’t mean to upset you, it was stupid to tell you after the evening you’ve had—”

“I’m not upset, really I’m not. It’s just an icky experience. I’m sorry you had to go through it. I wish to God you wouldn’t end up in places where that kind of stuff happens, that’s all.”

“Funny thing is, you’ve just about got me convinced. I should probably wait for Don the Jet to get back from the coast and start going to art galleries with him.” She stood up and stretched her arms over her head, like someone getting ready for a slam-dunk. An avalanche of bracelets cascaded down one forearm. “I’m just possibly getting too old for all this carrying-on. Time to pack it in and have babies and move to a farm. Look at all the fun Lady Chatterly had. …”

Natalie smiled to herself. She had heard the barefoot-and-pregnant speech before.

Once Julie had gone upstairs to her own apartment, Natalie was too wide awake to go to bed. Sir was back to normal, bounding around, throwing his tennis ball into the air and chasing it with utter abandon. “Poor old Sir,” she remarked to him, “hasn’t been for a real walk all week. Good idea, Sir?” He threw himself ecstatically against the front door, rattling his leash that hung from the doorknob. Natalie slipped into her old sheepskin jacket, hooked his chain through the loop on his collar, and set off.

Sir’s impatience was showing. He tugged hard, pulling Natalie behind him, heading across First, down to York Avenue, then insisting on his favorite walk—across the footbridge over the FDR Drive, with the endless streams of traffic with the headlights and tail-lights looking like solid, molten streams of brightness below, like time-lapse photography. There were some ships in the East River and steam rising like smoke from the water around them. The wind was cold and clean-smelling, like true winter. For the moment, with Sir and the biting cold and the hum of traffic, she wasn’t thinking about any of the events of the day. She felt momentarily free of all that, unencumbered, the way she wanted to feel. The walkway along the fence, with the river coursing beyond, was lit by antiseptic lights on poles separated by pools of darkness between. A man walking his Great Dane waited while the dog barked at a motor launch. Looking out over the water, she felt isolated from the city, from the lights just back across the FDR, past the hulks of darkness that were the hospitals and the condos that lined the eastern boundary of the Upper East Side.

She must have been drifting in her own thoughts because she let the leash slip from her grasp, and Sir, sensing a romp, was off like a bullet, bounding along the fence heading uptown like a dog late for a very important date.

She stood helplessly, watching him go. There was no point in chasing after him. He’d just think it was a game and run all the harder, farther, faster. She’d have to wait him out, just saunter along behind, until he noticed he was alone and began to get nervous. Sir wasn’t used to being out in the great world all by himself. Instinctive fear would begin to work its way.

Watching Sir, she heard, riding on the wind behind her, someone whistling tunelessly. Suddenly she didn’t want to look back. Now she felt the fear in the belly … who was whistling? Had someone followed her? She went to the fence, tried to look casually out at the lights of Queens across the river, straining to see who was behind her.

A man in a trench coat, hands deep in his pockets, stood like Natalie, looking out across the water. Far behind her. The equivalent of a block away. Just a man. A shape. In a trench coat. She bit into her lip, proving to herself that she existed, and set off hurriedly toward Sir.

Sir had wandered to a stop, was sniffing the air curiously. He strolled slowly on, looked back at Natalie, but didn’t speed up. He was ready to be taken home, wherever the hell that was: doubt showed in his every step.

He stopped again, stared into the shadows at the bottom of another footbridge across the FDR, where the stairway curled down from above.

His leash lay on the walk behind him, like a fuse.

She looked back. The man in the coat, hands still in his pockets, was walking along the fence, a bit closer to her than before. There was something about him that seemed familiar. She shook her head: imagination out of control.
Don’t be a jerk, Nat.

She turned back, only twenty feet from Sir.
Don’t run now, you little bastard. It’s been a long day. Just wait for me.

Sir was standing staring into the shadows. She recognized the pose. Sir, asking himself if he could just possibly pee one more time.

Somehow the leash had gotten on the far side of him.

She had to go all the way to him. She knelt beside him, where he stood rooted to the spot.

“What are you doing, you silly fellow?” she murmured, hugging his head.

She blinked.

Directly in front of her, perhaps two feet from her face, were two shoes.

She looked up.

A man stood in the shadows, grinning down at her.

S
HE KNEW SHE WAS
stretched out on her back. She felt something wet on her face, then her memory began to function again. Sir was sniffing her face, licking her cheek and nose, whining with impatience. His tongue was slippery and she got a whiff of his breath and pushed his head away with a gloved hand, forced herself to open her eyes.

The man in the trench coat was leaning over her.

“Lew …”

She closed her eyes again, then opened one hesitantly, thinking maybe she was hallucinating.

“Natalie, for God’s sake, are you all right?” His heavy glasses were sliding down his nose and he jammed them back up. She nodded, tried to say something but her mouth was stuck dry.

“Natalie,” he said, as if he enjoyed repeating her name. She heard a blast on a boat’s airhorn. The low roar of traffic on the FDR was dragging her back to wakefulness. “You fainted.” He looked very worried. “Your pulse is okay. But doctors hate it when people faint. … Do you have any nausea? Try to talk to me. Please, Natalie. And get that silly grin off your face.”

She wet her lips. “I’m all right. … There was a man in the shadows.” She blinked and saw him in her mind: the grin, the eyeballs like pinpoints of light in the blackness. An impression of rags, a vile smell, stringy hair … Quickly she forced her eyes open, hating the images playing in her mind.

“Yes, there was a man, a bum, I guess.” He put his arm around her, helped her into a sitting position. He watched her closely as she took a deep breath. Her face was damp and he patted her forehead with his handkerchief. “Tell me if you feel any nausea—”

“I’m okay,” she said. The cold air off the river felt good. “I think I cracked my head—no, really, I’m all right. Just had the pants scared off me.”

“The guy took off. All raggedy and with a stiff leg. You gave him a helluva scare, too. Just a crazy. Do you feel like standing up? Here, take my arm. …”

She leaned heavily on him, felt a moments dizziness once she was on her feet, sagged back against him. He held her. There was something wrong, something at the back of her mind—Yes, of course, she had just tried to call him. Now here he was. She was starting to hate coincidence.

“What were you doing out here anyway?” It was a sharp-edged question; not very grateful, but she wanted to know: she was sure he was the man she’d seen behind her, whistling. Lew …

“Well … I was following you.”

“Why? I don’t understand.” She felt the involuntary shudder of fear running along her spine.
Why?
Why was he following her? And why should she fear Lew of all people? Or was fear becoming a constant in her life?

“I saw the piece in the
Post,
called you at the office, missed you, called you tonight, ditto, and thought I’d drop by your place. You were gone, so I remembered Sir’s favorite course. Simple.” He had Sir’s leash and they were walking back along the river, back the way she’d come. She felt normal strength returning to her legs but she clung to his arm. “And there you were, out cold.” He shrugged. “Hell, we haven’t gotten together since when, Labor Day weekend? It’s about time. And to tell you the truth I didn’t like that little tidbit in Garfein’s column—I mean, it looks to me like your privacy’s being invaded. Who told him the story, anyway? Is it true?”

“Tony.” She sighed. “They’re pals and I don’t suppose he thought it would wind up in the column. Yes, it’s true, it happened.” They had reached the footbridge she’d crossed earlier and she realized she was a little slow going up the stairway. At the top, on the bridge, he said he thought they ought to stop for a few minutes.

Leaning on the railing, watching the traffic, he scrutinized her clinically. “Feeling bushed? Lightheaded?” She nodded. “You really shouldn’t be out down here this late … certainly not now when there’s a guy who might be looking for you. Did you see his face?”

“God, don’t you start too. Everyone acts like I’m the only living witness to an ax murder. No, I didn’t see his face. And I certainly cannot spend the rest of my life hiding from this guy. Who is probably long gone by now.” She watched his breath making little balloons of steam before him. He smiled grudgingly, sighed and pulled her away from the rail, set off walking again.

“Oh, Lew—I don’t mean to bite your head off. It’s only because I know you’re right, I should be more careful. Stupid bravado. I hate admitting I’m scared; it makes it worse. Whistling past the graveyard. I’m very lucky you were there. Who knows what that guy would have done if you hadn’t come running—”

“Oh, I think he was mainly interested in getting away. Really.” But he squeezed her arm through his, as if he really was her hero.

She asked him what he’d been up to and he said he was still doing his act with the couch and the photograph of Freud. At her house he stopped and gave her the leash.

“Listen, you’d better go right to bed. Fainting really does take a lot out of you. It’s surprising. Are you sure you feel okay? Well, I guess I’ll head for home, Nat—”

She laughed. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Lewis, we’re not a couple of strangers. Come on in and have a coffee or a Scotch. Let me tell you the kind of night I’ve had—before I went out for Sir’s walk.”

“Are you sure?”

“Well, I’m not going to beg.” She opened the door and Dr. Goldstein followed her inside.

An hour later she’d told him about the burglary and the discovery of the gun on the construction site. She rattled on and he listened, nodding, seldom taking his eyes from her face. Finally she said, “You poor guy, you may not be my analyst, but you still seem to have to do all the listening.” She bit her lip and frowned. “I seem to be on some kind of ghastly roll. … Oh, and Julie—I didn’t tell you what happened to Julie at Scandals. …”

That story left him shaking his head. “It’s sort of strange,” he said, pouring himself another cup of coffee, “but I don’t think men generally have any idea of the weird experiences women—particularly working women in these big labor-intensive urban areas—have on an amazingly frequent schedule. Most sort of moderate, vaguely normal—I know, what’s normal?—vaguely normal men, who don’t do a lot of coming on to women they don’t know, don’t have a clue about this other world that women are prey to. I hear things from patients all day long, and a lot of this social activity I can’t even begin to relate to. …” His voice trailed away and he looked into his coffee cup.

“Well,” Natalie said slowly, “one of the more surprising things that happened to me ever since I saw the man with the gun—” She heard herself stop speaking as a series of images, psychic flashbacks, suddenly imprinted themselves on her mind: the man darting between cabs in the rain, the cement-encrusted gun on her desk, MacPherson capping his fountain pen, the white teeth gleaming like polished bones in the darkness above her. …

“Yes? Go on—” He was watching her closely again, as if she might be showing symptoms of something.

“I’m sorry,” she said quickly, shaking her head. “I’m feeling a little scattered, after all.” She closed her eyes, blinked them open to confront his. “You’re right, Lewis. I am bushed all of a sudden.” She felt as if the room, the sound of her own droning voice, Lew’s steady gaze—she felt as if they were all closing in on her. She got up from the stool at the tiny kitchen counter and went into the living room, put on a Villa-Lobos tape and sat on the end of the couch. She told him he should sit down and finish his coffee.

“See how cleverly my plan has worked? I came over here to talk to you over coffee, and by God I’m doing it.”

“Fairly circuitous route,” she said.

He settled back in his chair, looking around. “Look, exactly how scattered are you feeling? You’re pale—”