Home Before Dark (10 page)

aj: still there?
td: I’m sorry … I have to go now
aj: i know, you need to get back to the party, mister
td: wait, wait just a minute… I don’t remember mentioning any party
aj: well you did. you told me… it’s your son’s birthday
td: no, seriously, there are 150 people here, how did you know?
aj: i can 'feel’ you sometimes, the situations you’re in, what’s on your mind, like
right now, you’re thinking … your wife must be wondering where you are
td: I was actually trying to picture the expression on your face when you typed
that. It’s important, Jelly. How did you know about the party? aj: Don’t you ever listen?
YOU
TOLD
ME

I decided to check later to see if she was right. I had archived
most of our conversations. There was a pause, a longer pause
than usual, before she continued.

aj: anyway, ill be back in new york tuesday
td: good, we’ll talk about it then. Look after yourself
aj: i’m in the library of freaking congress… what can happen?
td: I was just thinking, maybe we could get together for a drink sometime
aj: well, don’t think it, ed … and don’t you dare say another word

I sat for a moment, staring at the screen, trying to imagine
her at a computer terminal in the Thomas Jefferson Building
on Capitol Hill. There was something thrilling about Jelly
being in a place I knew reasonably well: it connected our
footprints in the real world, brought us a degree closer. I’d
meant what I’d said about getting together. I wanted to meet
her now.
Before returning to the fray, I poured myself another glass
of champagne, then opened the music files she’d sent me
and sat back, eyes closed, listening through my headphones
to her playing the piano.
I’m no judge of musical talent (I was on the money side
of the business), but Jelena clearly had a gift and I hoped to
encourage her. She’d refused point-blank to let me interfere,
which was understandable. I couldn’t see the harm, though,
in letting someone who really knew their stuff hear her play.
I’d already made a few discreet calls, which resulted in my
getting an appointment at the Conservatoire for the day after
tomorrow. I planned to be in Paris anyway.
What I told Will about our relationship was the truth: Jelly
and I were friends, nothing more. But over the last few days,
I don’t know how or when exactly it happened, something
had changed. Nobody could have been more resistant than
I was to the idea of becoming involved. My life was complicated
enough, the last thing I needed was to get caught up
in some half-baked internet romance I didn’t even buy that
it was possible to fall for someone on a laptop screen. But I
couldn’t get her off my mind. Looking back I can see now
that there was a gradual, almost imperceptible escalation, an upping of the stakes – and that somewhere along the line,
crazy as it may seem, I’d fallen.

After he was gone, Jelly deleted the floor-plan and images
from the website of the Library of Congress that she’d pulled
up onscreen while they were chatting. Just to get a feel for
the place. She lingered over the view from an upper window
in the Jefferson Building. A wintry scene, looking out across
the Court of Neptune fountain to the Capitol and down the
snow-covered Mall, it was pretty enough to make her want
to visit Washington some day.
She hit 'close’ and signed off with a little sigh. What if it
occurred to Ed that the library wouldn’t be open this late on
a Saturday? She’d just have to bluff her way out of it. She
went over to the counter so she could pay what she owed.
She could hear somebody in the back office, a man’s voice,
talking on the phone in Arabic.
She tried to imagine what Ed was doing right now. She
could picture the country mansion, the floodlit lawns, dancing
. . . but couldn’t see him at all.
'That’ll be fifteen.’
The real world drifted back into focus. It was the Moroccan
guy, Hassan, the one she couldn’t stand, waving his hand in
front of her eyes like he was trying to bring her out of a
trance. 'Hello?’
'I almost fell asleep waiting.’
'Be fifteen dollars.’
“What’
'You had coffee and Danish, you were online two hours.’
'You are kidding me, right? I didn’t even leave work till
after five.’
'Fifteen, sugar.’
'Fuck the sugar shit.’
She slammed down ten on the counter, then, seeing he
was still giving her the hard stare, grudgingly, another five.
Hassan was always dogging on women; but he’d done it to
her for the last time.
She presented him with her middle finger and a sweet
smile, turned on her heel and stalked out into the heat and
traffic of Flatbush Avenue.

There was a mini-mart on the corner and she had to dive
in there to get a soda, or die of thirst. Her plan had been to
go around to her mama’s place after work so she could
practise the Schubert piece on her piano for Monday’s lesson.
Only it was a ten-block hike and she was meeting Tachel at
seven – damn nearly that now.
It would have to wait till tomorrow.
She went by the house most days to practise and more
often than not stayed to dinner – the lure of her mama’s
cooking sometimes giving her the extra motivation she needed
to keep up her music. Jelly dreamed of one day owning her
own piano – not some cheap upright, but a fine old instrument
like the Chas M. Stieff baby grand she’d grown up with which
had a tone modern pianos couldn’t touch.
She walked slowly on, listening to the Andante on her MP3
player, following the score’s intricate phrases in her head,
knowing exactly when to turn the imaginary pages. It was
her fingering that needed work – exercises, scales . . . not
playing around on a goddamned computer. She was still mad
at herself for blowing the fifteen bucks – half the money she’d
set aside to pay Mrs Cato, her piano teacher.
In a roller-coaster mood, Jelly felt light-hearted one
moment, down the next. She’d only stopped by the cyber
cafe to check her e-mail, but then the man had shown up,
they got talking and somehow she’d lost track of time. Shit,
the whole point of pretending she’d gone away to DC was
to give herself a break from the Ed situation, which any fool
could see wasn’t healthy.
She unplugged her earphones and smiled. She’d spotted
Tachel a couple of blocks ahead, standing at the entrance to
the subway, trying to keep her distance from some Jamaican
kids playing loud dub-mix on the stereo of an old TransAm
parked at the kerb. A tall, dark-skinned woman, generously
upholstered and proud of it, 'T’ had on tight white jeans and
a fuchsia halter-top, accentuating a rack that was already like see-what-happens-when-you-pray-for-boobs. She looked
sizzling hot.
As she caught up with her friend, Jelly did a little Caribbean
dance-hall routine on the sidewalk, laughing and acting crazy.
She wasn’t sure why but the scene struck her as funny and
beautiful.
'What the hell’s wrong with you?’
'Just happy to see you, I guess.’
Tachel rolled her eyes. 'What kept you? We’re gonna be late for the show.’
'I was playing piano at Mama’s, forgot the time.’
It surprised Jelly how easily the lie rolled off her tongue.
She’d been friends with Tachel since high school and they
could say almost anything to each other. She hadn’t gotten
around to admitting she was still chatting to the English
guy she’d told her about early on, who wouldn’t leave her
alone, who was becoming more persistent, who wanted to
get face to face now in real time – afraid T would laugh at
her – but neither of them had ever managed to keep any
secret for long.
She knew the best solution would be to delete Ed Lister,
just take him off her buddy list. Only she couldn’t quite bring
herself to do it. She felt sorry for him on account of his tragic
loss and, though there was really nothing she wanted from
him – Ed had brought up Paris again, hinted at being able
to help with her musical career – she enjoyed hearing about
his glamorous millionaire life.
She told him she was going to succeed by her own efforts,
or not at all.
While they were on, she’d checked out the Hotel Cipriani
in Venice. She liked the look of the suites, even if they weren’t
huge and the site didn’t show bathrooms.
Tachel shot her a suspicious glance. 'If I didn’t know better,
I’d say you were seeing someone.’
Jelly just shook her head, afraid a verbal denial, even though
it was the truth, would come out sounding all wrong. T could
read her like a book.
'Well, if it ain’t love,’ her friend observed as they descended
into the stifling gloom of the subway, 'then, girl, you need to
get laid.’
They could hear the rumble of an approaching train.
'Oh shush.’ Jelly, hand on hip, took a last look round above
ground. 'It’s nothing that a pack of batteries won’t fix.’
The Jamaican boys and their rusty TransAm were gone,
rolled up into the sunset that was dragging its gaudy ass like
a carnival float down Ocean Boulevard.
'By the way,’ Tachel announced as the doors of the
Manhattan-bound D hissed open, 'guess who’s back in
town? Asking about you.’

Sam Metcalf had locked herself into a cubicle in the station
washroom so she could be alone.’ Sitting on the toilet fully
clothed, laptop on her knees, she was peering at the image
that filled the screen. A classic vacation shot, taken two hours
ago in Vienna’s Stadtpark, it showed Fern and Balfe Rivers
blithely assuming the waltz stance in front of the city’s monument
to Johann Strauss.
They made an unlikely couple: Balfe, tall, handsome in a
hawkeyed, Sam Shepard kind of way; Fern, little and dainty,
with a scrunched-up face like a Pekingese. But Sam wasn’t
looking at her travelling companions, or at the gold-painted
statue of the composer chinning a violin under an arch
adorned with twirling nymphs. Her attention was riveted by
a figure in the background.
Sam slid the cursor over the tour group standing in shade
on the far side of the monument and zoomed in on a blurred
human form moving away from the edge of the group. It
was the furtive stance that had caught her eye. At 200 per
cent, the image fragmented into unreadably large pixels; she
pulled back to 150, settling for a pointillist effect. A male
figure, half hidden by the statue’s pedestal, head turned aside,
out of focus . . . she couldn’t see the face.
Something about him, though, looked familiar.
On their leisurely drive through Northern Italy and into
Austria, Sam had taken tons of photographs, downloading them
each evening into files labelled 'Treviso’, 'Padua’, 'Asolo’, 'Graz’ – all the places they’d stopped to explore along the route.
She pushed her hair back out of her eyes and clicked on
the first album and selected the 'carousel’ mode. She didn’t
have much time. The overnight train to Paris left in thirty
five minutes and the Rivers would already be starting to fuss.
But if someone was following her, hiding in plain sight – she
felt her gut clench and release as the slides flickered past there
was a remote chance that she’d caught him before on
camera.
If he really was there at the Stadtpark just two hours ago,
it raised the question she didn’t want to think about: where
was he now?

There had been no specific incident, nothing you could
pin down, but ever since arriving in Vienna yesterday Sam
had felt tense and ill at ease. Vienna was where she and
the Rivers were due to part company – they were driving
north through the Alps; she was travelling on to Paris by
train.
She had gotten used to being looked after by the earnest,
good-hearted American couple. Semi-retired academics, they
reminded her a little of her own parents. Balfe had an irritating
habit of calling her 'kid’ or 'kiddo’, but it was a generational
thing and she’d been wrong about the louche gleam. He was
harmless.
Last night, as a farewell treat, they’d taken her to Mozart’s Don Giovanni at the State Opera House and, transported
by the singing, the sets, the sumptuousness of the production,
Sam had had a simple revelation – she really didn’t
want to go home to the
USA
. She’d come to Europe to
learn about art, and discovered that what was missing from
America was the layered understanding they had here of
how life should be lived – but it was too late now to change
her mind.
Supper after the opera was at Landtmann’s, which Balfe
told her had been a favourite haunt of Sigmund Freud’s.
Outside the landmark cafe, Sam checked to make sure there
was nobody watching from a parked car, or lurking in the
shadow of a doorway across the street. In a heightened state
of awareness, she saw the bland, jovial faces of the Viennese
as sly or even sinister, felt their eyes everywhere.
She’d left the Toshiba locked in the hotel safe.
'What better place to celebrate our last night,’ Balfe said,
gallantly holding the door for her, 'with H.L. Metcalf’s
daughter!’
She managed a weak smile. Her dad was a psychiatrist.
The slow, precise ceremony of dining at Landtmann’s, with
its marble tables, velvet banquettes and Viennese worthies
reading newspapers under the floor-to-ceiling windows, only
increased the tension. Fern asked her if anything was wrong,
and she nearly burst into tears. She wanted to confide in
them about the Florence murder and her fears of being
pursued, but she held back. She already felt guilty enough
about using the Rivers as a shield, taking advantage of their
kindness. When Fern suggested over their Schlagtorte and melanges that she and Balfe change their plans and travel on
to Paris with her by rail, it seemed to come out of nowhere,
and was like an answered prayer.
In the morning, she gratefully let them upgrade her ticket
from a couchette to a first-class sleeper so they could stay
together.

Sam glanced at the clock on the computer’s toolbar. Eight
twenty. They would be on board the train by now, fretting.
The serial trawl through her photos had produced a couple
of possible sightings, nothing definite.
Then she saw him. She halted the carousel at the market
square in Asolo. Still no face. But she was pretty sure it was
the same guy. Sam stared despairingly at the shadowy figure
onscreen a second longer before starting to shut down her
laptop.
Under the visor of her hand, she saw the door-handle of
her cubicle being slowly turned from outside and felt a wave
of nausea rush over her.
She gave a choking cough.
A woman’s voice muttered, 'Entschuldigung.’ Sam heard
footsteps moving away – she hadn’t heard them approach then
the door of another cubicle bang shut, two, maybe three
doors along from hers. It was nothing, she told herself, just
bad timing.
Fear made her want to pee. She closed the lid of the
Toshiba, and tugged down her jeans. The relief she felt was
only momentary. There was no escape from her instincts: she
knew now she was being followed.
Her first thought was to go to the police. She’d noticed
a booth marked Polizei in the station’s main concourse. But
the reality of dealing with blockish Austrian officials, trying
to make them understand, daunted Sam. What proof did
she have that anyone was stalking her and, even if she was
able to persuade them that a couple of fuzzy images
amounted to a threat, without a description, what could
they do?
Maybe it was all in her imagination. She remembered the
panic she’d gotten into when she was lost in the calling of Venice.
Maybe she was flipping out again over nothing. She decided
to call Jimmy. He’d texted her at the restaurant later that
evening to say he was going down to the Amalfi coast for a
few days and would be in touch when he got back. She’d
heard since then from a mutual friend in Florence, who’d
spoken to him more recently. Jimmy sounded like he was
having a good time, he’d reported, a little drunk maybe, but
fine … he had Chuck Berry’s 'You Never Can Tell’ going
full blast in the background.
Listening to old rock and roll? Jimmy? She’d laughed.
She keyed his cell number. No service.