Superstition (23 page)

Sam turned from the window, removing the finished roll of film from his camera. “Aren't we getting a little speculative here, Roger? Even by what you used to call the ‘liberal standards of paranormal research’?”

Roger smiled thinly. “I was merely offering an idea.”

“One that sounds uncomfortably plausible,” Ward said quietly, “and all the more reason why we have to terminate this thing.”

“But what are you saying ‘this thing’
is
?” Sam persisted, joining them.

“Basically, I share your view,” Ward said. “Adam is something we've created. A thought-form. Whether he's responsible for these deaths, I don't know. How would we prove it either way? But I do know that he or ‘it’—this ‘force’—is now beyond our control, and I think we need help if we're going to do something about that.”

Sam looked at him differently. “Help?” An edge of suspicion had entered his voice. “What kind of help exactly?”

Ward hesitated, tipping his head noncommittally. “I'd like to talk to some people.”

“May we know who?” The question wasn't put aggressively, but it implied what they were all thinking: that they were in this together and had a right to know who else he proposed involving.

Ward understood, and replied willingly. “It's really just one person. I suppose you'd call him a guru, or a kind of one.” He gave a slight laugh. “Although I don't know how many kinds there are. I've known him twenty years. He doesn't have a cult or a following—at least not one where the members know each other. I know a couple of people he's taught, one of whom passed him on to me. I don't know where he's from or where he lives. He travels all the time, can be anywhere in the world, but if you need him you'll always track him down with a few phone calls.”

“What does he do for an encore—sing a duet with himself, or perform a rain dance?” The question came from Roger, and the uncharacteristic sarcasm was jarring.

But Ward took no offense and looked over at him with a kind of dry amusement. “In view of what we've all been through recently, I'm not about to apologize for anything I say that might sound marginally superstitious. Frankly, I'd have thought we were all beyond embarrassment on that score.” As he spoke his eyes flickered to the window, where the writing was still visible, though drops of condensation were running down the glass now, making dark lines through and underneath the words.

“Like it or not,” Ward said, “something has taken root in our lives. It makes no rational sense, but we all know it's happened. Whether it killed Maggie, or Drew and Barry, I don't know. Whether it wants to kill all of us, or why…I don't know that, either. But I want to talk about it to this man, because he's the only person I can think of who'll maybe make sense of it.”

He crossed to where his overcoat lay on the back of a chair. Nobody spoke as he began to put it on.

“By the way,” he added, almost as an afterthought, “he cured me of pancreatic cancer twelve years ago—solely through diet and meditation. Of course the medical profession says that's nonsense, it was a spontaneous remission that would have happened anyway, as they do in a small percentage of cases.” He shrugged. “Who can say? I know what I believe.”

He took a step toward the door, then turned again. “I'll be in touch in a couple of days, Sam. Three at the most.”

Roger started to follow him. “I'll walk out with you, we can share a cab.”

He paused to say good night to Joanna, planting a kiss on her cheek, then carried on after Ward.

“Look, I didn't mean to belittle the idea. On the contrary, the way things are going in physics, I wouldn't be surprised if somebody discovered a new particle called ‘superstition’ any day now…”

Pete left with them. Joanna stayed behind while Sam saw them out. She could not take her eyes off those three mysterious, mocking words daubed across the windowpane, their condensation trails suddenly reminding her of trickling blood. Finally, to break their spell, she stepped forward and vigorously wiped out all trace of them, using her hand and the sleeve of her dress. When Sam returned a moment later she was gathering up her things.

“You're leaving?”

She nodded briefly, saying nothing. He saw that the window was wiped clean, but he didn't comment.

“Please stay.”

“I really need to be on my own.”

He seemed to think about arguing, then decided against it and stepped aside to let her pass. “By the way,” he said, “your editor called me this afternoon.”

She stopped. “Taylor Freestone? Why?”

“To offer funding for the department. Or at least a generous contribution. I wanted to thank you, but I haven't had a chance to until now.”

“You've got nothing to thank me for. This is the first I've heard of it.”

“He said you'd told him about Barry and Drew. He wanted to offer his sympathies—and, apparently, make sure we stayed in business. He must really like what you're writing.”

“I suppose he must.” She started out again.

“I'm not in denial. You're wrong about that.” He had turned to keep her in view as she moved to the door, but he didn't follow her. “I'm as disturbed by all this as you are.”

Again she stopped and turned to look back at him. “But you're not afraid, are you? You're cool and detached. That's what I'm finding a little hard to live with.”

“I'm just refusing to jump to conclusions. I'm sorry if that upsets you.”

The protest in his voice was matched by the impatience of her reply. “If this ‘thing’
is
responsible for those deaths, it's
our
fault. Why do I feel that doesn't worry you? You just accept it. The only question you ask yourself is how does it
work
?”

“The only question I ask is what
evidence
we have for believing that—”

“We don't have any evidence for anything!” Her anger boiled up again, but she controlled it with an effort. “You said it yourself the other night! We're not a court of law. We're not repeating some experiment and confirming a result. We're caught up in something that none of us understands, and I'm afraid, Sam. Can't you understand that?”

“Of course I can,” he said, his tone conciliatory. “I am too. We shouldn't be quarreling like this. There's no reason.” He took a step toward her, but she backed away.

“No, don't…not now…”

She saw the hurt in his eyes, but there was nothing she could do about it. In a way that she couldn't change or as yet even get used to, she was coming to see him as the opposite of everything she'd thought he was. From being a lone visionary fighting against prejudice he had become a skeptic, splitting every hair and exploiting every loophole until all certainty dissolved into a cloud of doubt and ambiguity. She was weary of it all.

“Perhaps Roger's right,” she said. “What we believe doesn't matter. There's no final theory.”

“It doesn't mean that what we believe is unimportant…”

“Tell me, Sam, what do you believe?”

“Believe?” He looked faintly surprised at the question. “You mean about life, death, the universe, and everything?”

She ignored the faint sarcasm in his voice and waited for an answer.

“I suppose,” he said after a moment, “I believe, like Socrates, that the unexamined life is not worth living.”

“What about good and evil? Do you believe in them?”

“As opposing forces in constant war with one another?” He shook his head. “No.”

She accepted the reply impassively.

“You know what I can't get out of my head?” she said. “What Pete said about witches—how it happens.” She paused. “But you'd call that just superstition, wouldn't you?”

He shrugged and offered another apologetic smile. “Yes.”

They stood motionless, eyes locked across the space that separated them.

“Stay with me,” he said.

It was a plea, touching in its simplicity. But she shook her head.

“Not tonight. I'm going to take a pill and gamble on eight hours of oblivion making me feel human again.”

They kissed chastely at the elevator, but she refused to let him ride down with her. The rain had stopped and taxis, she insisted, would be plentiful this time of night. It wasn't so much that she wanted to get away from him, just that the need to be on her own was urgent now. She needed to think her own thoughts—or not think at all. Another presence, any presence, would be painful to her raw nerves.

“Christ,” she thought, as she counted off the floors through the gate of the descending elevator cage, “what a mess. What an ugly, fucking, total mess.”

33

T
he funeral was three days later. Joanna and Sam went, and Pete with them. Roger was speaking at a conference, an obligation to which he'd been committed for several months. Ward had left a message on Sam's machine the previous day, saying he was in Stockholm, where he had found the man he was looking for, and he would be in touch again soon.

Over a hundred family and friends turned out. Father Caplan, a short, plump, totally bald man in his sixties, gave an emotional address. There was a reception afterward, but Joanna, Sam, and Pete didn't go. They took a cab back to Manhattan, saying little. Their presence at the ceremony had been accepted without question. No one had wanted to know how they had known Barry and Drew or what their association had been. The three of them had agreed beforehand that if they were questioned they would tell the truth. The fact that it didn't happen only strengthened Joanna's uncomfortable sense of being part of a conspiracy, cut off from the world by secrets she could never share.

Joanna got out first, on the corner of the block that housed the
Around Town
offices. She waved briefly but didn't look back as they drove off. She was thinking about the decision she had made that morning, which she now had to carry through. She had made up her mind to tell Taylor Freestone that she couldn't go on with the assignment. If it wasn't for the fact that he had demanded to see and had kept the drafts that she'd already written, she would have destroyed all of them. This was not, she had decided for reasons that she did not fully understand, something that people should read about.

Taylor's secretary told her on the phone that the editor was in a meeting, but she would pass on the message that Joanna wanted to see him as soon as he was free. Twenty minutes later he walked into her office. It was a habit of his, whenever he wished to be sure of having the last word, to come to people instead of having them come to him. She wondered how he had guessed that this might turn into one of those conversations, and what last words he had carefully prepared to end it.

“I understand you wanted to see me,” he said, regarding her owlishly over his reading glasses.

She took a breath. “I'm sorry, Taylor, but I want to drop the story.”

He looked at her for a while without expression.

“
You
want to drop the story?” he said eventually, injecting a note of mild irony into his voice.

She corrected herself. “All right—
you
will decide whether the story is dropped or not.
I
, however, have decided that I cannot continue with it.”

“Do you mind telling me why?”

“I would have thought that was obvious,” she said flatly. “You know what's been happening. Do
you
mind telling
me
why you gave Sam that money?”

He shrugged. “I thought it seemed like a good cause, so I suggested it to the board's charity fund.”

“I just wondered why you hadn't asked me to convey your interest in Sam's work to him personally, since I'm the one who's been working with him. Or at least why you hadn't told me you were going to call him, instead of letting me find out from him. It made me look as though I hardly work here.”

He shrugged his shoulders again, this time apologetically. “You're right. I really didn't think about it. I just wanted him to know that the magazine was behind him.”

“I suppose you imagine that if you pay him enough, he'll go on with this until we've all been killed? Is that your idea?”

“Let's just say I know a good story when I smell one. I'll ignore the rest of your question as being in morbidly poor taste.”

“Three people dead isn't poor taste, Taylor. It's a statistic that points in a depressingly obvious direction. Aren't you just a little afraid that this thing might reach out and touch
you
if you get too close? Giving money to keep things going like this,” she sucked in a breath through her teeth, “you could be tempting fate.”

She saw a flash of uncertainty behind his eyes, suppressed at once, but not fast enough. She gave him a broad smile of triumph. “But then you're not superstitious, are you, Taylor?”

He pursed his mouth and lowered his eyelids to indicate that he was growing bored with the conversation.

“Look,” he said, “if you want off the story—all right. I'm not impressed by your professionalism—you wanted this assignment, but I can't force you to finish it. But I'll find someone who will.”

“Who?” It was a prospect that for some reason had not crossed her mind, and she asked the question in spite of every instinct shrieking at her not to, because she knew it gave an opening for Taylor Freestone to start undermining her decision and subverting her will, something for which he had a particular and sinuous gift.

“I don't know yet, I haven't decided. But whoever it is, I can tell you one thing that they'll have to put right.”

“What's that?” There was a note of defensive indignation in her voice that told him she had taken the bait.

“I think it's a mistake,” he said equably, as though discussing nothing more dramatic than some fine point of grammar, “that you don't mention anywhere that you're going to bed with Sam Towne.”

Although the remark was unexpected, she managed to neither flinch nor blush and blinked only once. “What makes you think I am?”

“Darling, I know when anybody's having an affair with anybody. It's one of the reasons I am where I am.” He continued to fix her with a languid stare. “I'm not going to say it's unprofessional, exactly. It's not as though you're a doctor or a lawyer, somebody abusing a position of trust, though there are those who might question your judgment under the circumstances. Anyway, whoever takes over the story is going to have to write about that relationship—and speculate on the role it played in your decision to quit.”