The Witching Hour (30 page)

Done! And now nothing was going to stop him from making this journey, that’s why he was leaving the lady’s house in Tiburon and going straight to the airport where he’d doze in a plastic chair, if he had to, till the plane for New Orleans left.

“But Michael, what is the reason for all this?” Aunt Viv persisted. “That is what I simply cannot understand.” She seemed to float against the light from the hallway, a tiny woman in sagging blue silk, her gray hair nothing but wisps now in spite of the neat curls and the pins in it, insubstantial as that spun glass they would put on the Christmas trees in the old days, what they had called angel hair.

“I won’t stay long, I promise,” he said tenderly. But a sense of foreboding caught him suddenly. He had the distinct awareness—that free-floating telepathy—that he was never going to live in this house again. No, couldn’t be accurate. Just the alcohol simmering inside him, making him crazy, and months of pure isolation—why, that was enough to drive anyone insane. He kissed her on her soft cheek.

“I have to check my suitcase,” he said. He took another swallow of coffee. He was getting better. He polished his horn-rimmed glasses carefully, put them back on, and checked for the extra pair in his jacket pocket.

“I packed everything,” Aunt Viv said, with a little shake of
her head. She stood beside him over the open suitcase, one gnarled finger pointing to the neatly folded garments. “Your lightweight suits, both of them, your shaving kit. It’s all there. Oh, and your raincoat. Don’t forget your raincoat, Michael. It’s always raining in New Orleans.”

“Got it, Aunt Viv, don’t worry.” He closed the suitcase and snapped the locks. Didn’t bother to tell her the raincoat had been ruined because he drowned in it. The famous Burberry had been made for the wartime trenches, perhaps, but not for drowning. Wool lining a total loss.

He ran his comb through his hair, hating the feel of his gloves. He didn’t look drunk, unless of course he was too drunk to see it. He looked at the coffee. Drink the rest of it, you idiot. This woman is making a house call just to humor a crackpot. The least you can do is not fall down your own front steps.

“Was that the doorbell?” He picked up the suitcase. Yes, ready, quite ready to leave here.

And then that foreboding again. What was it, a premonition? He looked at the room—the striped wallpaper, the gleaming woodwork that he had so patiently stripped and then painted, the small fireplace in which he had laid the Spanish tiles himself. He was never going to enjoy any of it again. He would never again lie in that brass bed. Or look out through the pongee curtains on the distant phantom lights of downtown.

He felt a leaden sadness, as if he were in mourning. In fact, it was the very same sadness he had felt after the deaths of those he loved.

Aunt Viv hurried down the hallway, ankles painfully swollen, hand wandering, then catching the button of the intercom and holding it fast.

“May I help you, please.”

“This is Dr. Rowan Mayfair. I’m here to see Michael Curry?”

God, it was happening. He was rising from the dead again. “I’ll be right there,” he said.

“Don’t come all the way down with me, Aunt Viv.” Once again he kissed her. If only he could shake this foreboding. What would become of her if something happened to him? “I’ll be back soon, I promise you.” Impulsively he held her tight to him for a long moment before letting her go.

Then he was rushing down the two flights, whistling a little, so good it felt to be moving, to be on his way. He almost opened the door without checking for reporters; then he stopped and peered through a small round faceted crystal set in the middle of the rectangle of stained glass.

A tall gazelle of a woman stood at the foot of the stairway,
her profile to him, as she looked off down the street. She had long blue-jean legs and wavy blond pageboy hair blowing softly against the hollow of her cheek.

Young and fresh she looked, and effortlessly seductive in a tightly fitted and tapering navy blue peacoat, the collar of her cable-knit sweater rolled at the neck.

Nobody had to tell him she was Dr. Mayfair. And a sudden warmth rose in his loins and coursed through him, causing his face to burn. He would have found her alluring and interesting to look at, no matter where or when he saw her. But to know she was
the one
overpowered him. He was thankful she wasn’t looking up at the door and would not see his shadow perhaps against the glass.

This is the woman who brought me back, he thought, quite literally, vaguely thrilled by the warmth building, by the raw feeling of submissiveness mingling in him with an almost brutal desire to touch, to know, perhaps to possess. The mechanics of the rescue had been described to him numerous times—mouth-to-mouth, alternating with heart massage. He thought of her hands on him now, of her mouth on his mouth. It seemed brutal suddenly that after such intimacy they had been separated for so long. He felt resentment again. But that didn’t matter now.

Even in her profile he could see dimly the face he remembered, a face of taut skin and subtle prettiness, with deep-set, faintly luminous gray eyes. And how beguiling her posture seemed, so frankly casual and downright masculine—the way she leaned on the banister, with one foot on the bottom step.

The feeling of helplessness in him grew oddly and surprisingly sharper, and just as strong came the inevitable drive to conquer. No time to analyze it, and frankly he didn’t want to. He knew that he was happy suddenly, happy for the first time since the accident.

The searing wind of the sea came back to him, the lights flashing in his face. Coast Guard men coming down the ladder like angels from fog heaven.
No, don’t let them take me!
And her voice next to him. “You’re going to be all right.”

Yes, go out. Talk to her. This is the closest you’ll ever get to that moment; this is your chance. And how delicious to be so physically drawn to her, so laid bare by her presence. It was as if an invisible hand were unzipping his pants.

Quickly he glanced up and down the street. No one about but a lone man in a doorway—the man in fact at whom Dr. Mayfair was staring rather fixedly—and surely that could not possibly be a reporter, not that white-haired old fellow in the three-piece tweed, gripping his umbrella as if it were a walking stick.

Yet it was odd the way Dr. Mayfair continued to stare at the man, and the way that the man was staring back at her. Both figures were motionless, as if this were perfectly normal when of course it was not.

Something Aunt Viv had said hours ago came back to Michael, something about an Englishman come all the way from London to see him. And that man certainly looked like an Englishman, a very unfortunate one who had made a long journey in vain.

Michael turned the knob. The Englishman made no move to pounce, though he stared at Michael now as intently as ever he’d stared at Dr. Mayfair. Michael stepped out and shut the door.

Then he forgot all about the Englishman. Because Dr. Mayfair turned and a lovely smile illuminated her face. In a flash he recognized the beautifully drawn ash-blond eyebrows and the thick dark lashes that made her eyes seem all the more brilliantly gray.

“Mr. Curry,” she said, in a deep, husky, and perfectly gorgeous voice. “So we meet again,” She stretched out her long right hand to greet him as he came down the steps towards her. And it seemed perfectly natural the way that she scanned him from head to toe.

“Dr. Mayfair, thank you for coming,” he said, squeezing her hand, then letting it go instantly, ashamed of his gloves. “You’ve resuscitated me again. I was dying up there in that room.”

“I know,” she said. “And you brought this suitcase because we’re going to fall in love and you’re going to live with me from now on?”

He laughed. The huskiness of her voice was a trait he adored in women, all too rare, and always magical. And he did not remember that little aspect of it from the deck of the boat.

“Oh, no, I’m sorry, Dr. Mayfair,” he said. “I mean I … but I have to get to the airport afterwards. I have to make a six
A.M.
plane to New Orleans. I have to do that. I figured I’d take a cab from there, I mean wherever we’re going and, because if I come back here—”

And there it was again;
never live in this house again.
He looked up at the high bay windows, at the gingerbread millwork, so carefully restored. It didn’t seem to be his house now, this narrow, forlorn structure, its windows full of the dull gleam of the colorless night.

He felt vague for a moment as though he were losing the thread of things. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. He
had
lost the thread. He could have sworn he was in New Orleans just now. He was dizzy. He had been in the midst of something, and there
had been a great lovely intensity. And now there was only the dampness here, the thick overhanging sky, and the strong knowledge that all the years of waiting were finished, that something for which he’d been prepared was about to begin.

He realized he was looking at Dr. Mayfair. She was almost as tall as he was, and she was gazing at him steadily, in a wholly unself-conscious way. She was looking at him as if she enjoyed it, found him handsome or interesting, or maybe even both. He smiled, because he liked looking at her too, suddenly, and he was so glad, more glad than he dared tell her, that she had come.

She took his arm.

“Come on, Mr. Curry,” she said. She turned long enough to throw a slow and slightly hard glance at the distant Englishman, and then she tugged Michael after her uphill to the door of a dark green Jaguar sedan. She unlocked the door, and taking the suitcase from Michael before he could think to stop her, she heaved it in the backseat.

“Get in,” she said. Then she shut the door.

Caramel leather. Beautiful old-fashioned wooden dashboard. He glanced over his shoulder. The Englishman was still watching.

“That’s strange,” he said.

She had the key in the ignition before her door was closed.

“What’s strange? You know him?”

“No, but I think he came here to see me … I think he’s an Englishman … and he never even moved when I came out.”

This startled her. She looked puzzled, but it didn’t stop her from lurching out of the parking place and into a near impossible U-turn, before she drove past the Englishman with another pointed glance.

Again, Michael felt the passion stirring. There was a tremendous habitual forcefulness in the way she drove. He liked the sight of her long hands on the gear shift and the little leather-clad wheel. The double-breasted coat hugged her tightly and a deep bang of yellow hair had fallen over her right eye.

“I could swear I’ve seen that man before,” she said half under her breath.

He laughed, not at what she’d just said but at the way she was driving as she made a lightning-speed right turn and plummeted down Castro Street through the blowing fog.

It felt like a roller-coaster ride to him. He buckled up his seat belt because he was going to go through the windshield if he didn’t and then realized as she roared through the first stop sign that he was getting sick.

“Are you sure you want to go to New Orleans, Mr. Curry?”
she asked. “You don’t look like you feel up to it. What time is your plane?”

“I have to go to New Orleans,” he said. “I have to go home. I’m sorry, I know I don’t make sense. You know it’s just these feelings, they come at random. They take possession. I thought it was all the hands, but it isn’t. You heard about my hands, Dr. Mayfair? I’m wrecked, I tell you, absolutely wrecked. Look, I want you to do something for me. There’s a liquor store up here, on the left, just past Eighteenth Street, would you please stop?”

“Mr. Curry … ”

“Dr. Mayfair, I’m going to get sick all over your gorgeous car.”

She pulled in across from the liquor store. Castro Street was swarming with the usual Friday night crowds, rather cheerful with so many lighted barroom doorways open to the mist.

“You are sick, aren’t you?” she asked. She laid her hand on his shoulder, heavily and quietly. Did she feel the raw ripple of sensation passing through him? “If you’re drunk they won’t let you on the plane.”

“Tall cans,” he said, “Miller’s. One six-pack. I’ll space it out. Please?”

“And I’m supposed to go in there and get this poison for you?” She laughed, but it was gentle, not mean. Her deep voice had a nappy velvet feel to it. And her eyes were large and perfectly gray now in the neon light, just like the water out there.

But he was about to die.

“No, of course you’re not going to go in there,” he said, “I am. I don’t know what I’m thinking.” He looked at his leather gloves. “I’ve been hiding from people, my Aunt Viv’s been doing things for me. I’m sorry.”

“Miller’s, six tall cans,” she said, opening her door.

“Well, twelve.”

“Twelve?”

“Dr. Mayfair, it’s only eleven-thirty, the plane doesn’t leave till six.” He fished in his pocket for his money clip.

She waved that away and strode across the street, dodging a taxi gracefully and then disappearing into the store.

God, the nerve of me to ask her to do this, he thought, defeated. We’re off to a dreadful beginning, but that wasn’t entirely true. She was being too nice to him, he hadn’t destroyed it all yet. And he could taste the beer already. And his stomach wasn’t going to quiet down for anything else.

The thudding music from the nearby barrooms sounded too loud suddenly, and the colors of the street too vivid. The young passersby seemed to come much too close to the car. And this
is what you get for three and half months of isolation, he was thinking. You’re like a guy out of a jail cell.

Why, he didn’t even know what today was, except it was Friday because his plane was Saturday, six
A.M.
He wondered if he could smoke in this car.

As soon as she put the sack in his lap, he opened it.

“That’s a fifty-dollar ticket, Mr. Curry,” she said, pulling out. “Having an open can of beer in a car.”

“Yeah, well, if you get one, I’ll pay it.” He must have drunk half the can on the first swallow. And now for a moment, he was all right.