In the Middle of the Night (14 page)

“Where downtown?” Denny said, controlling his voice.

“I dunno. Kenton’s Department Store.”

Denny didn’t say anything for a few seconds. He did not want to appear too eager, sensing that Dracula would shut up if he thought Denny was really interested. Finally, he said: “What was she doing there?”

Dracula looked at him with suddenly innocent eyes. “In the department store?” He knocked Son of Frankenstein to the pavement.

“Yes,” Denny said patiently. A twelve-year-old James Cagney but the cold eyes of a forty-year-old hit man.

“She was working, I think. She was standing behind the counter. The perfume counter. She looked great. She has big bazooms.”

Denny shot him a look of disgust. “You sure it was her?”

“What do you think, I’m stupid or something?” He turned away scornfully. Then shot Denny a glance over his shoulder. Smirking, he said: “Hey, Denny, if she’s your sweetheart, how come you didn’t know she was working at Kenton’s?”

The bus appeared out of nowhere, belching and lurching like some kind of movie dinosaur, saving Denny the embarrassment of responding.

The moment she saw him, a big happy smile lit up her face and she beckoned him to the counter. He went straight to her and found himself immersed in a haze of smells, all kinds of perfume and cologne filling the air, making it seem as if she herself exuded the scents.

Her hair was pulled behind her head in a ponytail.
She was still beautiful, her smile radiant, just as he remembered.

“I’m so glad to see you,” she said. “I was hoping someday I’d look up and there you’d be …”

“I’ve been trying to find you,” he said. “I don’t know your last name, only Dawn. I don’t know where you live. So I couldn’t call you. I hung around Barstow High one day after school trying to find you. I never did.”

“I called you a few times,” she said. “After school. But nobody answered. I even called from here once, on the pay phone in the mall. But the phone only rang and rang …”

All those calls he had not responded to in the afternoon, thinking it was that woman or the reporter and all the time—at least some of the time—it had been Dawn.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

They stood looking at each other across the counter, the perfume surrounding them, too heavy and too cloying, but he didn’t mind. A woman coughed, one of those attention-getting coughs, at the other end of the counter and Dawn made a small frown of apology at him and rushed off to serve her.

After a while, he grew uncomfortable standing at the counter—a perfume counter, of all places. Denny had a feeling customers passing through were eyeing him, either with suspicion or amusement. Suddenly conscious of his hands, he didn’t know where to put them. He dared not look around to see who was looking at him. Without realizing it, he picked up one of the sample bottles of cologne and somehow pressed the little thingamajig, releasing a blast that smelled like lilac into his face, his eyes, blinding
him momentarily and bathing his face. Blinking his eyes, he met Dawn’s blue-gray eyes and they both laughed, even though he felt stupid.

Before a new customer could interrupt them, she told him her last name. Chelmsford. Scribbled her telephone number on a sales slip. “Call me,” she said.

He left the store in a cloud of perfume, inhabited by scents he could not even identify, overpowering scents that made him slightly nauseated. Outside the store, he paused before crossing the street to the bus stop. Felt … what? He wasn’t sure. He had her telephone number in his wallet. He could call her tonight.

He wasn’t as happy as he had anticipated—he felt empty, in fact.

Glancing at his watch, he saw that it was almost three-thirty. Disappointment accompanied him as he waited for the bus that would bring him home too late for Lulu’s phone call.

He didn’t call Dawn Chelmsford that night.

Too much homework.

More than that: the telephone was next to the chair where his father watched television.

It wouldn’t be possible to have a private conversation with Dawn Chelmsford within earshot of his father.

He’d wait to call her in the afternoon, when he got home from school and would be alone in the apartment.

But the next afternoon, he didn’t call her, either.

“Would you like to know what I look like?” Lulu asked.

“Yes,” he said, suddenly experiencing the usual leaping pulse and hammering heart.

“I’m taking a chance, you know,” she said. Tentative now, almost teasing.

“What kind of chance?”

“Well, you might not like how I look. I might be tall and blond and you might not like tall and blond girls. Or I might be short and dark. And you might not like girls who are short and dark.”

Taking a deep breath, he said: “I would like you, whether you were blond or dark …”

“Guess,” she said. “Guess what you think I look like.”

Another game, but a delicious one.

“Guess the color of my hair.”

He thought of her smoky voice and said: “Black hair. Long black hair.”

“Right,” she said. “See? I think we were meant for each other, Denny. Now, what else? Do you think I’m tall or short? Or just about your height? When you dance with a girl and hold her in your arms, do you like her to be a bit shorter or as tall as you are?”

He’d only danced with a girl that one time, with Chloe at Bartlett. She was shorter than he was, fitted nicely into his arms. She was also the only girl he had ever held in his arms.

“A bit shorter than me,” he said.

“Wonderful,” she said. “That’s me—just a bit shorter than you.”

“Wait a minute,” he said. “How do you know how tall
I am? Have you seen me?” A possibility he had not pondered in all his thoughts about her.

“Of course I’ve seen you. You may not like the way I look, but I love the way you look, Denny.”

Thrilled again by her voice, her words, his body responded sweetly again. He was glad he was alone in the apartment, that she could not see him in all his confusion.

“Where? Where did you see me?”

“Someday I’ll tell you that. But not now, Denny. Right now, we’re finding out what I look like. For instance, am I pretty? Haven’t you wondered about that?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. But it did, of course. He wanted her to be pretty—beautiful, in fact. As beautiful as her voice, as beautiful as the way she formed words with that voice.

“It matters, Denny. Because I want to be pretty for you. I want you to love my eyes, and my lips. I want you to love everything about me, Denny. I want you to love my body …”

That word conjured up wild thoughts and he was caught in a hurricane, gripping the phone fiercely, his palms wet.

“Want to know about my body?”

Unable to respond, he wondered whether she could hear his rapid breathing or his accelerating sheartbeat.

“I have all the necessary parts. Some parts are better than others …”

“What parts?” he, astonished, heard himself asking.

“You’ll find out,” she said.

He wanted to ask more. But could not bring himself
to say the words, glad she could not see him at this moment, flustered and hot-cheeked.

“Next time I call, I’ll have a surprise for you,” she said.

He knew it was crazy, of course.

He was in love with a voice, with someone he had never seen, did not know at all, someone who might be a girl or a woman. Loved someone who was completely unknown to him, like someone in a dream.

Dawn Chelmsford was not a dream. She was real. She was beautiful. For a while, Dawn Chelmsford had been like a dream, out of reach, like all the other girls he had worshipped from afar—cheerleaders, girls in their bikinis on the beach or at a pool, lovely girls walking down the street who did not know he existed. Dawn had said, Call me. She’d said, I tried to call you. She’d said, I like the way you worry about the trees.

But Dawn Chelmsford was not the voice on the telephone. Dawn Chelmsford did not do things to his body and his mind the way Lulu did.

Am I some kind of crazy person? he wondered.

But all doubt was cast aside, postponed, as he lay curled up in bed, not wondering or worrying about middle-of-the-night phone calls now but holding himself, caressing himself, remembering her last words.

“Next time I call … I’ll have a surprise for you …”

Later, in the far reaches of the night, the world hushed all around him, he could not sleep as those words echoed through his mind.

Hurrying into the driveway, running late, detained after classes for tutoring in math, Denny groaned audibly when he spotted the reporter from the
Wickburg Telegram
sitting on the steps of the porch, reading a newspaper.

A glance at his watch told him it was already after three-fifteen, that the telephone might be ringing at this moment.

The reporter glanced up and saw him.

Denny came forward, frowning, trapped.

“The story’s all written,” Les Albert announced, tucking the newspaper under his arm. “Except for the lead …”

Denny envisioned big black headlines, that old picture of his father on the front page. And everything that would follow.

“Know what a lead is, Dennis? Especially on a story like this? A lead determines the tone of the story, the mood, the theme. You don’t have much choice with a straight news story. Like: twenty-two children dead. That’s how a news story has to be written. But a feature story, now, that’s entirely different. Know why?”

Denny did not answer, thinking:
twenty-two children dead.

“Because, in a feature, you can control the story. Sure, you need the facts and the figures. I’ve done all that. It’s all in the computer. When I have my lead, I can shift things around. Your father has got to be the lead, of course. Everybody else is gone. But how am I going to show your father? Still a suspicious figure after all these years? Still an
unknown quantity? Or is he a good guy, after all? A family man, concerned for his wife and son? A martyr, sort of … It’s up to you, kid.”

“I’ve got to go in,” Denny said. “I’m expecting an important call.” Knew that sounded phony but couldn’t help it.
Next time I call I’ll have a surprise for you.

“Tell you what, Dennis. I can give you, say, two more days. Then the story goes and I think all hell’s going to break loose. Understand?” He reached into his pocket, brought out another card, a quarter Scotch-taped to it. “This is all you need. Today’s Wednesday. Okay, Friday afternoon, call me collect at, say, three o’clock. We’ll set up an interview. If I don’t hear from you …” He sighed, tremulously. “I’m tired, kid. I work the night beat and I came all the way out here from Wickburg and my editor’s on my ass.” Denny was aware now of the gray face, the eyes bleary, probably with lack of sleep. “I’m not one of the bad guys, Dennis. I’ve got a wife and kids to feed. But I’ve also got a story to write.”

The telephone was ringing as he opened the door to the apartment. He slammed it shut, racing for the phone, but the ringing stopped a moment before he reached it. He picked it up anyway and heard only the dial tone.

H
er hand is on the telephone and I say,
Are you calling him again, Lulu?

Why not
, she answers.
It’s all part of the plan, isn’t it?

It’s more than just the plan, Lulu. It’s what you’re saying to him.

What am I saying to him, Baby
? But she takes her hand away from the telephone, at least.

All those words. You’re toying with him, Lulu, and he’s just a boy. You’re leading him on.

But I have to lead him on. To make him want to meet me, make him come to me.

Her hand is on the telephone again.

I think it’s more than that, Lulu. I think you’re having a good time. I think you’re enjoying yourself saying all those things to him.

At first, anger flares in her eyes, then she slumps a bit and her face changes and it’s long with sadness.

Is that a sin, Baby? To have a little fun, a bit of make-believe? Look at me. I’ve never had real love. Never had somebody hold me, caress me, feel my breasts. No one ever placed his tongue in my mouth. I’ve never lived, Baby. Never drove a car or held a job. Never took a taxi. Or went shopping for a spring outfit. Nobody ever winked at me across a room or asked me to dance.