The Dark House (10 page)

“Not particularly.”

Marj reached down and grabbed a shoe that she'd left on the shore and flung it at him, hitting him in the ankle. He backed off and looked at her warily. At first, Rollins thought she was being playful. He got a different idea when she pitched the other one at his chest. He was lucky to block it with his forearm.

“What
is
it with you?” She hunched back down again, her eyes on the mossy ground. “All my girlfriends say, ‘What are you doing with this guy? He's
psycho
.' I tell them, no, no, no. Actually, he's kinda nice, you'd like him, blah, blah, blah. But now you do this weird shit right in front of me, and I wonder what the
fuck
is going on inside your head.”

“I wasn't sure you'd want to know.”

“Well, I don't think I do. I don't think I want to know any of this.” This time, she picked up some loose dirt and flung that at him, too. It didn't carry very far in the wind, but it made Rollins keep his distance. He watched her carefully, not knowing what she'd do next. “This weird gaunt guy, the faxes, that lady who disappeared, and now this. I don't think I want to know any of it, okay?”

Rollins was afraid she was going to cry. He wasn't sure he could
take that. He wasn't used to naked displays of emotion; he found them frightening. But he also couldn't bear to think that Marj, of all people, might be so overwhelmed—and himself the cause. He could live with his demons. He deserved them. But Marj certainly didn't. He came closer to her, with the idea that he might rescue her from them somehow. He felt like running away with her—to Scandinavia or the South Pacific, some place free of associations, where he could start fresh as a new and much better person. He and Marj would get in the car, right now, and start driving. Just go. Go and keep going until they reached the ocean, and then board a plane bound for a far corner of the earth.

He reached out for her, hoping to begin that journey. But Marj flung out an arm. “Don't touch me, okay? Just don't touch me.” Almost frantic now, she busied herself putting her socks back on, but they kept getting bunched up. Finally she balled the socks up in her hands and stuffed them in her pockets. “Okay, I'll admit it. I'm a little scared right now. I was scared last night, too. That's why I wanted you to call. Now I'm scared worse.” She swept a hand back to indicate the house across the water. “I'm not used to staring into people's bedrooms. All right? Yeah, okay, I bought you the binoculars. But I was just being nice. I thought you'd like having them.”

Rollins clutched the binoculars in his hand. “I do. I am grateful, Marj.” Sometimes, a certain arch formality crept into his way of speaking when he most wanted to be sincere. “Really,” he added.

Marj didn't seem to take that in. “This might sound strange to you, but this whole thing is not my idea of fun, okay? At first, I thought, all right, I can try anything once. But now, maybe I don't really want to know. Maybe it's all really, really fucked up.” She picked up more dirt, but this time threw it out into the water, where it scattered the reflection of Sloane's house.

She turned back to him. Even in the moonlight, he could see that her eyes were red. “And now you tell me you saw some poor woman get whacked across the face. And you watched as though it didn't bother you at all. Just—
pass the popcorn
!”

“It does bother me,” Rollins said. “Marj, I—” He stopped. He remembered his own house, seeing the way his mother looked at his
father after the separation and before the divorce. She had the same look on her face as the woman did here in Sloane's house, before the blow landed. Dazed, unbelieving. His mother's bitterness had set in later, but Rollins' own pain had hit right away. He wanted to tell her this now. But he could not.

Marj rubbed her shirtsleeve across her eyes. “I felt—okay, this is really stupid—but I felt like maybe I could find my real dad out here in one of these windows. I know, I know. It doesn't make any sense.” She tossed a hand into the air. “He's a million miles away from here, if he's anywhere.” She sniffled. “But I just thought I might see him if I got these binoculars and just, like, kept looking…. Oh, God, why am I crying? I
hate
crying.”

“I'm—Marj, I'm sorry.”

“This whole thing is so pathetic. I don't know what I'm doing here.” She stood up and without so much as a glance back at the house or at Rollins, she headed toward the park gate. Rollins watched her go. At the gate, she turned back to face him.

“Aren't you coming? You'll want the stupid license plate number, remember?”

Rollins looked back at the house. His heart wasn't much in it.

“Rollins, let's go.”

Back in the car, Marj drove in silence around to the front of the house again. The Audi was there, parked on the street. Rollins jotted down the license plate number on the bag the binoculars had come in. Then they left.

On the trip back, Marj tuned the radio to a rock station and jacked the volume up to a level that Rollins found almost painful. He had a sense of the car as some kind of massive four-wheeled boom box, drawing annoyed looks from the fellow drivers to whom he'd always hoped that he was completely indistinct. He figured this was his penance, not that he quite knew for what. He passed the trip looking out the window, his baseball cap scrunched in his hand, the cars around him an undifferentiated blur.

As they pulled up by Rollins' car, parked around the corner from Marj's apartment building in Brighton, Marj said something to him,
but, with the music pounding, he couldn't hear what it was. He reached over and snapped off the radio. His jaw ached. He must have been clenching it.

“I was telling you to keep the binoculars,” she said. “You might need them.”

“I have them right here.” He'd put them back in the box, which he carried in his hand.

He started to get out.

Evidently, she could think of nothing to add, for she let him climb out of the car in silence. When he closed the door, she was still looking at him through the window. He leaned down toward her hopefully. “Did you say something?”

She gave him a cold look. “I'm just waiting for you to move your car.”

“Oh, I'm sorry.” He stepped away from the car, then turned back. “Now, you sure you'll be safe?”

“Look, don't worry about me.” She put the car in gear. “If it gets too crazy, you might want to call the cops.”

“I'll keep that in mind.”

Rollins squeezed between a couple of parked cars to the sidewalk, and then climbed into his Nissan. He pulled out of his parking space, and, in his rearview, watched her nip into the vacant space behind him. As he waited at the first light, Rollins turned and watched Marj climb out of her car and head toward her building.

Time slowed, freighted. Rollins took a left at the next corner, then another, then pulled into a municipal parking lot. He had a straight shot at Marj's windows from there, and he was away from the streetlights. Through his driver's-side window, he stared up at her apartment—the three windows at the far end of the third floor. He wanted to make sure she was okay. That's what he told himself. He thought of using her binoculars, but feared they might attract attention. He watched intently, without moving, for over an hour. He saw Marj only once. She was wearing a thin, pale-green nightie as she crossed her windows with a glass in her hand.

Finally, her lights went out.

He slipped out of the Nissan, and made his way back to Marj's building. Every step seemed like a major commitment. Somehow, he expected that the air would resist him, but, of course, it let him slide right through. He didn't slow until he reached the front door, where he dug his keys out of his pocket in an attempt at passing for a resident returning home. This was another of Al Schecter's old tricks. Rollins had to make a couple of passes by the door, but on his third crossing, he timed it just right. A young man burst out the door to the apartment building just as Rollins pulled up with his keys in his outstretched hand. The man actually held the door for him and nodded graciously at Rollins as he stepped inside the hall.

His heart started to pump: He was in Marj's building. He'd entered where she lived. He tried to detect her perfume, that subtle sweetness of her, there in the hallway. But no, the air only smelled old. Still, it was a pleasure to suck it into his lungs all the same; it was something of her inside him.

The mailboxes were to the right. M. Simmons was in apartment 3F. Rollins almost couldn't believe that her name was listed there, in plain sight. It seemed like a proclamation of some sort.
To him,
maybe. He could feel a steady blip on the right side of his neck where an artery throbbed against his shirt collar, and another on one wrist where his pulse pressed against his cuff. He was drawing near to her.

There was an elevator past the mailboxes, but someone else might come aboard, and he didn't want to risk sharing Marj's proximity with a stranger. He continued down the hall, and he pushed through a heavy door that led to the stairs. The stairwell was harsh and bleak. His shoes clicked against the bare metal steps as he climbed to the third floor. He opened the door to a dimly lit hall, its walls a shadowy green. A threadbare carpet deadened the sound of Rollins' footsteps as he went down the corridor past 3D and 3E. His heart thudded in anticipation. 3F was at the far end, the door decorated with an anti-handgun sticker and a feminist cartoon he couldn't quite follow.

He glanced behind him to make sure no one was about, then, ever so gently, tried the door handle. The door was locked tight. He raised his hand to the wood and, slowly, slowly, he ran his hands along it, feel
ing its glossy varnish. He brought his cheek to the cool smoothness of the door. He ran a finger along one panel. He brought an ear close to the door, hoping he might hear her breathing within. The door was too thick to hear through, but he liked the thought of her asleep inside.

He stayed there for as long as he dared. He shut his eyes, the better to imagine her. Finally, he stepped back again and reached into his back pocket and took out his wallet. He removed his Johnson business card and pulled a stubby pencil from his shirt pocket. On the back of the card, in block letters, he wrote,
SLEEP WELL, MY DARLING,
the only words he'd ever heard his parents say with any affection. He wished that, someday, he might be able to say them to Marj. He slipped the card under the door. He stood there for a moment, pondering the gravity of that act. Then he returned the way he had come.

S
omeone was banging on Rollins' front door. At first, the noise wove itself into the disturbing dream he was having about the fight at the Sloanes'. Then suddenly he was awake, searching nervously about the room. Yellow light from a courtyard high-intensity lamp seeped in around the edges of his window shades, barely illuminating the wooden chair in the corner—the binoculars and Red Sox cap hung over its back—and the few framed prints of vintage cars that adorned his walls. He checked his bedside clock—3:14. The knocking persisted, louder and more rapid, with an insistent, metallic sound.

“Open up,” came a shout. “Would you please?”

The voice was female, and all he could think was that it was Marj: She had read his note and come to him. He jumped out of bed, threw on his bathrobe, and hurried to his front door. He moved as if in a
dream, the sideboard, sconces, and other familiar furnishings of his sitting room somehow liquefied around him. He frantically unlocked the bolts and swung open the door, bringing a rush of cool air up inside his pajamas, ready to take Marj into his arms with a shout.

But it wasn't Marj. It was a slim, dark-eyed woman in a loose, gray shift that nicely revealed the soft contours of her body. She had thick brown hair, slightly wavy, that spilled down over her shoulders.

“Excuse me, Mr. Rollin—I'm terribly sorry—I know it's late—”

“Do I know you?” Rollins interrupted. In a weird vestige of his dream, he thought, briefly, that this was the woman Sloane had hit. But she was younger and slimmer, and she didn't seem nearly so helpless. He squared his shoulders, instinctively trying to screen off the view into his apartment. As he did, he realized his father would have done exactly the same. He would have risen up, tall and imperious, to protect the sanctity of his castle from the prying eyes of a stranger.

“Oh, sorry. Tina Mancuso.” The woman extended a hand, which Rollins shook awkwardly. “Didn't Mrs. D'Alimonte tell you?” She smiled fetchingly, despite the hour. “I just moved in with my daughter.” She glanced back toward an open door down the hall. “I'm your new neighbor.”

Rollins rubbed his eyes. There were cardboard boxes inside 2A, he could see now. “Oh, yes, right,” he said sleepily. He supposed she must want something from him, but he couldn't imagine what. He raked his hair with his fingers, dutifully trying to rouse himself to greater wakefulness.

“My five-year-old is sick, and I really don't know what to do.” She tugged anxiously at her fingers.

“Have you called a doctor?”

“I don't have one yet. We just moved and…”

Rollins waited, but she didn't elaborate. “Well, isn't there some sort of HMO you could call? Some emergency room?” Rollins knew little about such things. He avoided doctors, himself. The nosy questions, the roughness of their hands on him, the chill of the stethoscope.

“I—we—don't have a health plan anymore. I'm, well, I'm kind of between jobs.”

“I'm sorry.” He felt groggy; this whole encounter was too confusing. “What did you say your name was again?”

“Tina. Tina Mancuso.” She smiled determinedly.

“Right. Look, Tina. It's very late. I'm not sure what you want from me.” He still had a hand on the doorknob. He was tempted to close the door and to push Tina and her troubles out of his life. But she had stepped across the threshold, blocking him.

A desperate tone came into her voice. “I have a sick daughter. Mrs. D'Alimonte said that if I had any problems, I should ask you. She said you were a nice person.”

“Isn't she around?” Rollins asked.

“She had to go to Baltimore. A baptism, I think she said.”

“But what am I supposed to
do
?”

“We need a ride to the emergency room.”

“You don't have a car?”

She shook her head. “Mr. Rollin, you know how it is after a big move like this. I'll be honest with you. I'm flat broke.”

Rollins wondered how she could swing the $1,200 monthly rent, but he said nothing. Her accent, her pattern of speech, her brassy style—all this suggested to him that she was definitely not one of his. He detected little education, no culture, no “class,” in the sense that his parents might have meant it. Yet she did have a certain animal appeal, something that emanated from her wide, confident hips and full breasts. This was a woman who rarely lacked for boyfriends, he was sure.

“Can I give you money for a taxi?” he offered.

To his surprise, Tina's face fell. “I shouldn't have bothered you.” She stepped away from the door.

The way she moved away, so defeated, tugged at Rollins. Clearly, her pushiness had just been a brave front; at heart, she was simply a young single mother in a panic. “No, please, I insist. I'd drive you myself, but…Wait just a moment while I get my billfold.” He went to grab his wallet off his bedroom dresser. When he returned, she was standing inside his foyer.

“You've done the place up nice,” she told him quietly. “You a collector?”

“No, no. This is all just family stuff.” He quickly plucked out two twenties and a ten, and stuffed them into the woman's open hand, hoping that would end the matter. Money did have its uses.

She didn't look at the cash. “I shouldn't take this.”

“Please,” Rollins told her. “I want you to.”

“Well, okay then.” She smiled and brought her other hand lightly against his chest. It was only the briefest contact, but something about it caused a change, as he sensed they both knew. A sort of molten heat surged within him, and he nearly reached for her, despite himself, despite Marj. The whole encounter seemed so dreamlike, as if she didn't really exist, and therefore wouldn't mind if he touched her, even if he touched those full lips of hers, or between her prominent breasts, so smoothly outlined by the folds of her shift. Only an overwhelming desire existed. Shameful, unexpected, inappropriate, but undeniable. But before he could think this through, she had retreated back down the hall, her skirts swishing.

Rollins was sitting in his leather chair, trying to calm himself and regain a fix on things, when he heard her come down the hall a few minutes later. She spoke quietly—to her child presumably—as she started down the staircase, the carpeted steps creaking under her. “It's all right, Heather,” he heard her say. “Don't you worry.”

Rollins was suddenly afraid for them, stumbling out into the dark, where so many hazards lurked. At the last moment, he opened the door and rushed after them. He must have made a bit of a racket on the stairs.

“Oh, God, it's you, Mr. Rollin,” Tina exclaimed. “You scared me.” The little girl, Heather, was in her arms. She seemed to be about four or five, her round face was pale and sweaty, her dark blond hair sticking to her temples. Rollins reached down to her and swept a few damp hairs off her forehead.

 

Stephanie on the tile floor, stone cold. He could tell by the color—pale blue—around her mouth, and at the tips of her fingers. A pale blue, like a shadow.

 

“I'm terribly sorry,” Rollins said. “I shouldn't have been so unhelpful before.”

“It's all right, Mr. Rollin. The taxi is here. We'll be fine.”

“Please, let me carry her,” he said, reaching for the child.

“I've got her. It's okay.” Tina continued on down the stairs, Heather's head rocking uneasily with each step. Rollins couldn't bear the idea that something might happen to the little girl. He trailed after them, not knowing what to do. “At least let me get the door,” he said finally, and lurched toward the door handle.

“Sure,” Tina said.

Rollins drew open the front door for them, and stepped out ahead of them onto the front stoop. A fine mist was swirling, dampening his bathrobe and pajamas. He looked out into the wet gloom: The taxi was waiting by the sidewalk, its headlights bright, its wipers beating. Before he let Tina and Heather pass by him, he checked around the sidewalk and the street beyond. No sign of Sloane or the gaunt man.

 

Stephanie's hair in ringlets where she lay dripping. Nothing moving but the water off her. And all his fault.

 

“Let me go with you,” he told Tina.

She looked at him and laughed. “Like that?”

Rollins had forgotten he was still in his pajamas. “It'll just take a moment to change.”

“We'll be fine. Thank you, Mr. Rollin, really.” This time, she sounded truly grateful.

Rollins opened the taxi door for her, although the rain was beginning to seep through his nightclothes to his shoulders. She slid inside the car, the child on her lap.

He leaned down toward them. “The name is Rollins, actually. With an
s
. That's what people call me, just Rollins.”

She smiled up at him as though she had accomplished something. “All right. Rollins.”

Rollins turned to the front of the cab. “Go to the MGH,” he told the driver. “And hurry—please.”

“Yes, the MGH. Of course. Thanks,” Tina told him.

“You're entirely welcome.” Rollins shut the door.

As the cab roared off, little Heather shot Rollins a wave through the back window.

Rollins watched the taxi go down Hanover Street. When it was out of sight, he checked around again for the gaunt man, or Sloane, or any other fury that might be pursuing him. But, once again, the street and sidewalks were empty. Rollins climbed up the stairs and closed the door, then glanced behind him once more from inside, just to be sure. Then he hurried back up the dark stairs.

 

Rollins arrived at Johnson the next morning on the stroke of eight-forty-five, which should have qualified him for an award. When he entered his office, he lowered the venetian blinds and lay his head on his desk to rest for a moment. He had not been able to get back to sleep after the lunacy of the night before. He'd kept waiting for Tina's tread on the stairs. Just to make sure that the little girl was all right, he assured himself. And he did fear for Heather, she seemed so hot. But he'd heard nothing the whole night. Afraid he might have nodded off and missed them, he'd listened at Tina's door first thing this morning. Again, nothing. He'd held off knocking, though, for fear of waking them in case they were home after all. Besides, what would he say? Hello? Good morning? Everything all right? He was sure he'd made a complete fool of himself last night, first with his absurdly lustful thoughts (which he feared had been only too transparent), and then with all his belated, unwanted offers of help.

As he lay there at his desk, his nose buried in the sleeve of his jacket, the stiff material pressing against his cheeks, Rollins heard a light tread on the wall-to-wall carpet. He knew it was Marj. He might have been a heat sensor: She was a steady warmth that was moving toward him down the hall. Now that she was so close by, he was mortified that he could have let his thoughts stray from her, even for a moment. And after he'd seen Marj just a few hours before. It was appalling! Would he end up like his father, flitting like an insect from one woman to the next and the next? He should have turned to face Marj, but he couldn't right then. He sensed her slowing as she passed his door, then resuming her pace again as she moved on down the hallway.

He saw her later that morning when he passed her desk on his way to the bathroom. She was on the telephone, coiling the cord around her index finger. Their eyes met for a moment, and he thought he heard her voice catch as he went by.

In the men's room, he washed his face with cold water, trying to bring down a slight puffiness around his eyes. When he returned, she wasn't in her cubicle. An e-mail message from Msimm@jinv was waiting for him back at his desk.

Rollins didn't know quite what she meant at first. Then he figured she'd seen him resting. He sent back:

Another e-mail from her came a few minutes later:

Rollins' fingers trembled as he typed his reply:

It rained for the next three days, a steady drizzle punctuated by several terrific downpours that flooded the narrow North End streets and caused colossal traffic jams downtown. Now, the time seemed like the rain itself—interminable, pointless. He kept checking for signs of Tina and her daughter, but saw nothing of them. More agonizing, he wasn't sure if he actually
wanted
to see them or just wanted to know where they were, the way one wants to know where a loaded gun might be.
He asked an upstairs neighbor, a tall man he knew only as Pete, if he had seen them, but Pete knew nothing, and Rollins quickly dropped the subject, lest Pete begin to wonder why he was so interested. Still, the Mancusos had taken up residence in Rollins' head, and he felt the need for the sense of liberation that he normally found in his pursuits. But, after the scary experience with the Chrysler, he had vowed not to venture out onto the road for at least another eighty-six hours.

That first night, a Friday, Rollins tried to lose himself in talk radio, a relatively new vice. He had an old Stromberg-Colson radio that his mother had always listened to while she brushed her hair before bed. And while it didn't measure up to the current standards of high-fidelity, talk shows came through fine. The subject this evening was the difference between love and friendship. For some reason, the show was not attracting the usual quantity of earnest callers, which left the host with a lot of airtime to fill. Rollins was tempted to call himself, to offer his opinion that love was not a matter of degree, as the host had argued, but of kind. Rollins was ransacking his memory for some wisdom from the ancients that would back up his point that love was rare and exalted beyond anything offered by mere buddyhood. (He liked that phrase, “mere buddyhood,” and was sure it would go well over the air.) He even thought he might consult his Latin texts, sure that he'd find something from Horace or Catullus that would drive his point home, and, for the first time in a while, he started pulling those tiny red volumes off the shelf, running his eyes along the much interlineated verses.