stood. His head reeled and he felt himself swaying. He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them and moved alongside the bed. His boots stood on the floor. He sat on the foot of the bed and pulled them on. His head pounded as he bent to tie the laces. He straightened, closed his eyes again, and had a vision of bills fanned out near the dashboard lights. He reached for his wallet. It was gone. He was chilled. He stood, moved, and turned down the hall. He felt like a sleepwalker. He stopped at the children's ajar door and looked in. They lay under the blankets on the two beds, one very small shape—Andy—and the other longer—Tricia.
He couldn't see their faces, only their narrow, absolutely still bodies under the covers. They looked dead. The chill of fear ran deep into his blood and he heard a distant howl—Nicole!—then details came at him, but slowly at first and clumsily like beetles dragging themselves out from the dark. He remembered being bumped into the truck by one man, then grabbed by the other. He remembered the darkness of the cab, the blunt, masked heads, the bodies pressing against him, the blows to his face, the one man talking, something about a cage…. and now he wondered, Why?
He remembered wishing to blame Blaylock, and now felt himself wishing it again out of an obscure anger, a resentment. He heard Andy and Tricia breathing, the tender rise and fall of their breath, and felt easy for them, for their safety, and he ached for their loss—their sister, himself.
He moved to the kitchen. The fluorescent light in the stove panel was on and he saw the time—five-thirty. He looked at his watch. It said the same thing exactly and he stared at it in confusion because he didn't know what it meant. He glanced around. The linoleum floor shone dimly. The stainless-steel coffeepot stood where it had always stood on the counter. Next to it was the yogurt maker, then the can opener. Those things were just as they should have been, but other things were different: a new soap dish next to the sink, new towels, a new blender to replace the old one that had to have its buttons struck with the butt of a screwdriver to make it work, a microwave oven, a new cloth on the old table. The old kitchen knives were stuck into a new holder. He looked through stunned eyes and for a moment everything seemed to be a figment. A thought gripped him: He was the figment. He was dead. He was a passing spirit. He rocked back on his heels and felt tempted to yield to the world of such thinking, which was religion, steamy and psychic, and which tapped out its own crooked and powerful telemetry. He caught himself just there on the edge of an abyss and touched the tile of the counter, then made his legs carry him into the living room, where he found Penny curled up under a blanket on the couch. He stood over her. He felt cold. She opened her eyes and looked up at him with a startled expression.
“Damn curious,” he said.
“Where are you going?”
“To work, I guess,” he said. The words activated his brain and he thought: That's right, the job in Rome.
Penny stretched. Her rib cage and hip rose under the blanket. Her bare feet appeared from beneath the hem. “What happened?”
“Somebody beat the shit out of me.”
“Who?”
He couldn't answer that.
“You've got a nasty bump,” she said.
“Bump?” He touched the bandage on his head. Pressing lightly, he felt the tenderness on the right side of his forehead, then his jaw, the back of his head. “Yes,” he said.
Against the dark blanket, Penny's arms looked white. Her face was white. Her eyes were dark as holes. Her voice was clear. “You were out cold. How you managed to drive here is beyond me. Were you at Zymanski's?”
“Yes. Loading up.”
“You should see a doctor.” He looked away. At the end of the couch stood a dressmaker's dummy draped with cloth. Penny was a seamstress and designer. She and a friend had opened up a custom shop downtown. Thick and headless, the dummy looked like a stump with a sheet drawn over it in the shadowy light. Behind the dummy were drapes, drawn to cover the window. She probed him softly with his name: “Hank?” He turned to her. He didn't want to see a doctor. She pulled herself up so that the small of her back rested against the arm of the couch. She raised her knees under the blanket and drew the blanket up to her shoulders. He thought that she had lost weight.
“There were two. They were like junkies.” Saying that, he thought it to be true—nothing to do with Blaylock. “I guess they were just junkies.”
“Oh, Hank,” she said.
“They took cash,” he said, and he went on to tell her about the big man vanishing and reappearing, how the big man seemed to be playing cat-and-mouse with the watchman, how the other man came out from the front of his truck, how the big one was in there, how they wore black ski masks, how they held him and beat him, how they seemed crazy like junkies, how the one on his left had the shakes, how they took two hundred dollars cash and left him. When he finished he was weak. He closed his eyes and felt the room tipping to and fro.
“Sit down,” she said.
He did. He sat down in an easy chair across from the couch. “I'm glad I had the cash,” he said, and then as he went on he heard the fright moving into his voice: “They were pissed when I asked them to get out of my truck. Can you believe it? My truck.” He heard a whisper within him—not yours—which subtly increased his fright. “If I hadn't had the cash, I don't know what they would've done.”
“You need to see a doctor,” she said. “No doubt you have a concussion.” Her voice was husky and motherly. He wanted to yield, to sit next to the warmth of her body. He looked sideways past the dressmaker's dummy at the window drapes, and took a deep, shuddering breath. Reddened morning light seeped around the edges of the rust-colored drapery. “I'll drive you downtown,” she said.
He didn't want to see a doctor. “You heard about the partnership?” he asked.
“Yes, Hank,” she said, smiling faintly.
He smiled, too, faintly, for he knew that she knew his way of playing tricks, such as changing the subject, whenever the question of his visiting a doctor came up. “It'll mean more money in the long run, I guess,” he said. Since he and Penny were not talking, he'd asked Jewel to explain the partnership to her, but now they were here talking, and without rancor, too. She looked directly at him and her face grew alert. It seemed extraordinary to Lafleur that she was there, and for a moment it seemed as though the months of not talking had not happened, or the trouble before that, or as if they had entered the imbroglio as into the heart of the woods and come out again, but separately, on their separate adventures, out through the thinning trees to the other side where they met, where everything was different. They were going on, now, like old partners sojourning in the bright air who in the dark clarity of their memory recalled all the old things that were so utterly changed. He grew hopeful. “I'm sorry,” he said abruptly.
“Sorry?”
“I didn't mean to come here.”
“No,” she said. “I know.” They held one another's eyes and the very air in the room seemed to grow taut as a drumhead. It became too much to bear and they both looked away at once.
He stared back at the drapery and felt himself filled with despair. “Don't tell Jewel about this, me getting beat up. She doesn't need another worry.”
“No,” Penny said.
“I'm just glad I didn't end up at her place.”
“Yes.”
“I'm all right.”
“You should report it to the police.” When he didn't respond at first, she added, “You have to.”
“Dave,” he said. “Dave Petra, the watchman. I don't know what happened to him. He was there, then he wasn't.”
“You have to go to the police.”
“All right. Yes,” he said, glancing at her, then he turned his head and looked into the kitchen and thought about how he'd felt like a dead spirit. It seemed silly, now, the whole thing