Home Before Dark (32 page)

the face.
He opened the cabinet, quickly removed the internal glass
shelves and worked a hand behind one of the doubled-up
sliding doors. Nothing. He slid the mirror shut and tried its
twin from the other side.
Mother of God, he felt something there, taped to the back
of the glass.
He tugged carefully and it came away in his hand – a twice
folded A4 size sheet of white Ingres sketch paper, the kind
artists use.

52

They had arranged to meet at six thirty. It was nearly that
now and here he was still stuck in traffic on the Brooklyn
Queens Expressway. Ward had offered to pick Jelly up at her
apartment but she’d insisted on going straight to the restaurant
from work.
She was being cautious, understandably. On the phone
he’d caught the note of surprise in her voice at hearing from
him so soon. As the line of vehicles inched forward, Ward
thought about how nervous she’d sounded; but that, he
suspected, had nothing to do with his asking her out to dinner.
Then the southbound lanes cleared and he was off again in
his rented VW Golf, on his way to their first date.
It was nearly six forty-five when he walked through the
foyer of Renchers Crab Inn on Myrde Avenue. He had chosen
the place because she’d told him she loved seafood, and he’d
never been there before.
'Guy Mallory. I have a reservation.’
The hostess consulted her clipboard and crossed off his name, then led him through to the bar where he spotted Jelena sitting on a stool apart from the crowd. She waved and smiled at him, looking relieved to see a friendly face.
'I was beginning to think I’d got the wrong place,’ she said, as he joined her. He apologised for being late and ordered some drinks. A Sea Breeze for Jelly, a glass of the house white for himself. He noticed that her hair was different to last night, pulled back off her face into a tight chignon, and she had on less make-up. She was wearing a matching beige linen jacket and skirt with a plain white blouse. Work clothes.
'I wouldn’t have recognised you,’ he said.
'Well, buddy, this is the real me.’
'You’re with Morgan Stanley, right?’
She laughed. 'What on earth gave you that idea? I work the phones for a shipping company in Flatbush. You heard
of McCormicks?’
He shook his head. 'You look great anyway’
'You think so?’ Her face lit up for a brief second.
Almost as soon as they got the drinks, the hostess came back and told them their table was ready. He let Jelly walk in front of him and was conscious of the other diners looking admiringly at her as they passed, which made him feel both pleased and uncomfortable with the attention.
The blue rhombus was turning slowly inside his head.
You don’t have to worry, I’m not gonna spoil this . .. I swear
I won’t breathe a word about how you spent your day. Not a word.
At the table, watching her deliberate over the menu, taking
forever to make up her mind, he smiled when finally Jelly
chose the butterfly shrimp – he couldn’t help smiling. She
picked up on his reaction and flashed him a challenging look.
'That okay with you, mister?’
'I’m just amused because, well.. .'Ward hesitated. He was
amused because he knew from eavesdropping her online
conversations with Ed Lister that shrimp was her favourite

food.
'Because it’s right up there next to fried chicken and sex
and us black folks just can’t get enough of that shit?’
'No, no,’ he protested, taken aback by her prickliness. 'It’s
just that I always have to resist choosing the shrimp myself.’
'And here I’m thinking racial slur. Shame on me.’ She
laughed. 'Damn, now I’m gonna have to let you taste one.’
Her face was prettiest when animated.
He had the wine list in front of him and ran his eye down
the whites before selecting a decent Meursault. He was having
the grilled swordfish.
Over dinner the mood changed and keeping the conversation
going became an effort. Jelly grew quieter and seemed
more subdued than last night. At the party, she’d been bubbly
and talkative to the point where he’d wished she’d shut up.
He was dealing here with a different person – like she said,
the real me. He knew he’d have to tread carefully if he wanted
to bring her out of her shell.
Ward had done his homework. From her high-school
yearbook entries to the amount of back rent she owed her
landlord, from her social security number, health insurance
plan and favourite colour to the name of her mother’s dog – there wasn’t a whole lot he didn’t know about Jelena Madison
Sejour.
He got her talking about her love of music, coaxed out of
her that she had a 'scholarship’ to study piano at the Conservatoire
in Paris.

'I’m impressed,’ he said. 'They only take the best.’ He was
about to tell her that his mother played the piano, not very well, then decided that the less she knew about his family the
better. 'When do you go?’
'I haven’t decided yet if I am going. I’ve always dreamed of living there, but now … I dunno, it seems like a big step.’
'So what’s holding you back?’
She shrugged. 'Never been abroad before. Don’t know a soul in Paris. Not sure that I’m good enough musically. I’d be leaving behind two hopeless dependants, my cats, and then there’s Mom . . . take your pick.’
'I spend quite a bit of time over there,’ he said. 'So you’d have at least one friend, Jelena. A friend who’d love to show you Paris.’
'Always good to know’ She nodded, but didn’t return his
smile.
You nearly called her 'Jelly’ then, didn’t you? It was on the tip
of your tongue. She didn’t invite you to yet, or even mention that
others call her that. A slip-up now, Ernster, and you could blow
this whole thing clean out of the water . . .
Their desserts came and they ate in silence. He studied her without making any attempt to conceal the fact: sometimes she’d glance up and catch him looking at her, and he’d just
smile. He didn’t care if his gaze made her uncomfortable.
He could see now that Jelly was more than pretty, she was beautiful. She had those wild-creature eyes set almost too far apart, the wide mouth and long graceful neck to go with them and a flawless honey-coloured hide. He didn’t desire her. He might have done, but Ward was no slave to his sexual impulses. He considered himself lucky to have gotten that monkey off his back early on in life. He could see that the girl had at least half a brain – charm, and warmth too – which helped him to understand how someone like Ed Lister might have fallen for the package.

The perfume she was wearing, fresh and unsophisticated,
had for Ward the shape and texture and heft of a glass paperweight.
He let the silence between them grow beyond
awkward, then asked Jelly if everything was all right.
She frowned at him and said, 'Why do you ask?’
'You don’t seem quite yourself.’
'Compared to? How I was last night? It was a party, dude.’
He nodded. 'We had a good time, didn’t we?’
'Not too good I hope.’ She arched an eyebrow. “I’d had a

skinful.’
'You think I’d take advantage of you?’ He smiled and looked
down at his hands. 'You said you were drinking to forget.’
'I did? The drama queen talking.’ She gave a laugh, then
took a deep breath and let it out slowly. 'No, you’re right. I
guess I am feeling a little down . . .’
He could tell she wanted to confide in him. He’d been
grooming her, using his knowledge of her likes and dislikes
to make it seem like they had a lot in common. He just hadn’t
expected her to drop her guard so quickly. 'You feel like
talking about it?’
She shook her head. 'Not really.’
'Still raw … I understand. You don’t know me that well.’
He sat back in his chair and smiled. 'Sometimes it’s easier to
talk to a stranger.’
He saw her hesitate, considering his offer. 'You seem like
a nice person. Really you do, but. . . oh, what the hell.’
It was familiar stuff, only interesting for what she chose
not to disclose. She didn’t use Ed’s name, but told him she’d
been having trouble fending off the attentions of an older
married man. If he hadn’t known the truth he wouldn’t have
believed it possible she was talking about somebody she’d
never met.
Ward was a good listener, he knew how to put her at her
ease, when to ask questions, when to hold back. He told her
he could relate because he’d been down a similar road himself – he was 'still getting over someone’. She showed concern.
He’d had to learn how to do empathy, but Ward found it
came easily enough; it was, like an old movie star once said
about the profession, just a question of reacting.
'Where did the two of you meet?’
She said, 'I know this is going to sound crazy.’
'Don’t tell me.’ He smiled, touching two fingers to his temple,
as if the idea had just occurred to him. 'You met online.’
'What the . . . how did you guess?’
'Isn’t that where you got married to Mr Darcy?’
'And divorced him.’ She made a face and wiped her brow
with the back of her hand. 'As from this morning, I’m a free
woman.’
'May I be the first to congratulate you.’ He raised his glass
in a mock toast and they both laughed. Now that they had

established a rapport, he felt confident that she wouldn’t
refuse the offer of a ride back to Manhattan.
After that, Ward decided, he’d just have to play it by ear.

53

The intermittent creak of a rusty hinge coming from his
laptop was beginning to get on Campbell Armour’s nerves.
It reminded him of toose screensavers with irritant sound
effects like bubbling noises or fanfares or lonely static from
outer space. The creaking – from the homebeforedark website
~was caused by a screen-door on the back porch of the
virtual Skylands swinging gently in the breeze.
The laptop was on the table under the window of his
room at the Mountain View, half-hidden by the styrofoam
box containing the remains of the cheeseburger deluxe he’d
brought back from the diner in Canaan. It was now almost
nine thirty and pitch-dark out. Campbell had tried several
times during the course of the evening to get back inside
the replica Seaton home, but without success. Ward must’ve
decided to block him again, probably just for the hell
of it.
A loud sudden banging startled him. He glanced around
the room – he hadn’t forgotten the hiking boots in the hallway
of the real Skylands – as the screen-door effect on his laptop
escalated to a more persistent screech, slam … screech, slam.
He wondered how safe he was here at the motel.
Maybe Ward could read his thoughts. Shaking his head,
Campbell aimed the remote at the television to kill the competing
sound of Wimbledon, then went over to investigate. Since he
last looked, twenty minutes ago, the homebeforedark graphics
had caught up with real-time and gone over to nightscape
mode.
Pinned to the listiess screen-door was a note that said,
'COME’.
Campbell cleared the table-top of debris and sat down. He
clicked on the invitation and found himself inside the dismal
mansion, instantly transported to the second-floor landing.
He gave a little grunt of satisfaction.
Ahead of him stood the four identical doors. He tried each
of them in turn, directing the cursor by the dim light of the
chandelier hanging over the stairwell. As before, only the door
to Ernest Seaton’s bedroom opened.
It swung back to reveal a small boy in pyjamas, curled up
on the bed with his hands over his ears, tossing from side to
side as though in torment. Campbell imagined at first that
'Ernie’ (the boy’s avatar, a generic snub-nosed, freckle-faced
lad) was trying to block out some loud noise or music that was odious to him.
But there was no sound – at least, not on the soundtrack.
Then Campbell noticed, seeping onto the landing from
under the door of the adjacent bedroom, what looked like a
wisp of fog or smoke. As he watched, the whitish mist billowed
and transformed itself magically into a solid 3-D word-shape –
LYING
– quickly followed by another that spelled out,
BITCH
. He caught on that the boy was trying to escape the
ugly din of his parents arguing.
The graphics floated out over the stairwell, silently filling
the screen with’snatches of June and Gary Seaton’s venomous
dialogue, their words making phrases and broken sentences
that jostled and bumped against each other in a syncopated
collage of hate.

YOU
LYING
BITCH
You’re
just
NEVER
LOVED
YOU
YOU
CAN’T
EVEN
GET
IT UP
GARY
SEATON
trash … you little cock-sucking whore . . .
WHORE
I’M
LEAVING
you really think I give a shit?
fucking any guy even looks at you
GOD
,
YOU
PATHETIC
LITTLE
MAN
MR
FLOPPY
,
HA-HA
Can’t live without him? You’re so in lovel You’re planning to leave us, Junebug? Lets see how I can NO . . .
GARY
, YOU’RE
TOO
DRUNK
help with that. Here, try some of this you cunt

It was so effectively done, seeing him bury his head under his pillow, Campbell felt almost sorry for the boy. Suddenly,
as if he couldn’t take it any longer, 'Ernie’ jumped up off the
bed and ran out onto the landing. Walking right through the
floating words and coming out the other side, he tiptoed past
the door to his parents’ room. Then, avoiding the telltale
floorboards, crept downstairs.
Looking over the banister, Campbell (grudgingly admiring
of Ward’s technical skills) saw the boy get down on hands
and knees and crawl into the broom closet and pull the door
shut behind him. He used his mouse to try to follow, but found himself barred. The fragments of dialogue dissolved,
suggesting that in the master bedroom, where he had no
doubt the night’s traumatic events would soon unfold, things
for the moment had quietened down – the house was still.
All he could hear was the ticking of the clock in the hall.
He thought of calling Ed Lister and telling him to log on
to the website, so they could both witness what was about
to happen. When they’d spoken earlier, he’d updated his client
on the interview with Grace Wilkes and his suspicion that
she was covering up, either out of loyalty or fear. Ed had
seemed distracted, almost uninterested. He remembered him
saying he was going out for the evening.
A whirring sound drew his attention to the hands of the
hall clock. He watched them fly around the dial, the speeded-
up chronology reminiscent of how they showed time passing
in old black-and-white movies. The hands slowed and came
into land at precisely four thirty-six. The regular ticking
resumed.
Using his cursor, Campbell looked around the hall. A
couple of suitcases had appeared by the front door. He could
hear music, the faint ominous strains of 'Fur Elise’ – and, as
the piano notes carried through the house, other noises now,
coming from the bedroom, hard to identify at first. He recognised
the sounds of furtive but urgent lovemaking, the gasps
and whimpers of a man and woman approaching climax then,
in the midst of their stifled paroxysms, a sudden change.