The Glass Harmonica (39 page)

Falling, and it was already too late to do anything about it.

She ran through all the options in seconds—all the big things she could do, the fighting back, the screaming (and with the windows open, they'd hear her all over the neighbourhood, sure they would). Evelyn thought about it all, and then thought better of all of it, too.

Everything would get so complicated—that was her first thought. She would think about that later, wonder why the first thing she thought about was that resisting would create all kinds of complications she wasn't ready to deal with. That it could be fast and uncomfortable and awful, but that then it would be done.

She thought about it being done, and she thought about it more as he muscled her back against the wall like he was moving a mannequin into position in a store window. And she let her arms hang down at her sides as if she couldn't move them at all.

Glenn was pushing up her skirt, eager and fast, his other hand undoing his pants, pushing her back hard against the wall, driving a bit of her breath out through her lips like a sigh. And the only thing she could find to think about was how to make the whole thing smaller and farther away from her, crumpling it up small like a sheet of old tinfoil.

Glenn was breathing hard, his mouth next to her ear, his hips thrusting against her. His breath sounding angry—his hands rough and scraping, reaching under her clothes, tearing fabric away from her when it didn't slide fast enough.

“You like it, don't you? You want it. You know it. You all high and mighty. Looking down your nose at everyone. Looking down your nose at me,” he said, his hands clenching behind her, pulling her hard against him.

Evelyn tried to remember if she'd ever said anything of the kind, tried to make sense of whatever it was he was talking about, all the time feeling somehow that she was really in another room, watching everything from a distance, from out in the trees.

Except for the pain of his rough hands on her skin. The feeling of him. The way it felt like her own skin was pulling away from his, revolted.

It was, at least, quick. She felt the wet on the insides of her thighs, and he was leaning into her, still and breathing heavily. Thinking that it was almost over, and that then there would be the soft of him, he would shrink inside her and his need would too, and then there might even be apologies, even if he didn't get around to actually saying them.

Her clothes were rumpled up against her skin and damp, and she realized that she was breathing heavily too, physically aroused and hating herself for her body's response, a sharp pinprick of disgust poking at her from inside.

The weight of him leaning against her. Making her stomach roil like she was going to throw up.

Outside, the world was continuing, oblivious.

“You'd better get going,” she said, feeling as if she were dismissing a guest who'd foolishly stayed too long, freeing herself from the drape of his arms. At the same time, feeling all at once different. “You wouldn't want to be here when Keith gets home.” Saying it made her a little bolder and she kept going. “You wouldn't want me to have to explain just what it is you're doing here.”

But she realized that she'd let her voice drop a note with the last word, giving the sentence a declining pitch in its last few words, realized the failing strength of her voice, from the definite to the tentative. And she knew as well that he had heard the change.

“What do ya mean?” Glenn said. “That he's going to find out? That what? That you're going ta tell Keith 'bout this?” Glenn laughed then, the laugh turning into a smoky, rich cough.

Glenn pulled away from her, and she felt her body almost sag reflexively towards him as he moved away.

“You go right ahead,” Glenn said. Pants back up to his hips, zipper being zipped, door unlocked again, snicker-snack, the door yawning open. Glenn away from her and moving into the rectangle of the door frame and somehow changing, going back to being all too familiar, everyday Glenn, time itself turning suddenly into single frames, every movement fragmenting as she watched.

“You go ahead. Go ahead and tell him. Hey, maybe he knows already. Maybe he can guess. And maybe he owes me anyway, so even if you do tell him, he'll just keep quiet. Up to you.”

Evelyn, unable to shed the thought that something critical had changed, that she was different. Her balance completely gone, her hands turned backwards and pressed hard against the wall behind her, desperate for the familiar support.

When Glenn left, when the door was closed and the room was once again just the room, she let her breath come out in a long gasping rush that turned into a shuddering sob, staggered into the bathroom, where she found she was bleeding. There were long, deep scratches, scarlet, on the backs of her thighs, scratches that she'd have to find some way to hide from Keith.

And by the next morning she began to wonder if there was something else she'd have to keep hidden from him, at least until she was far enough along to go down to the doctor and get a test done. A test for something she wondered if she knew already.

Her Majesty's
Penitentiary

BART DOLIMONT

OCTOBER 4, 2006

T
HE COPS
come in when Dolimont asks for them, both leaving their guns at the guardhouse desk at the front of the prison. The two of them come up together, Ballard and another one, and Ballard's known Bart Dolimont for almost as long as anyone on the force. Ronnie's pleaded guilty, and Bart can't help how much he likes the kid, so it's time, he thinks, to play the last card.

“So what have you got for us that's so damned important this time, Bart?”

Inspector Ballard looks at home sitting at the small table, his legs thrown out wide, one hand up on the flat wood top, fingers tapping. Notebook thrown open, pen lying beside it, cap still on and waiting. Ballard's partner edges in tight to the table, eager, Bart Dolimont staring silent at him until he leans back too.

“This better not be a waste of our time, or we might come up with a real good reason to tell the guys to put you into segregation,” Ballard says.

“Something to get off my chest,” Dolimont says, and starts talking.

Then he tells them where to find the purse. Sketches in how it happened: “I panicked. Wasn't supposed to be like that. I thought she was going to scream.” He's careful—not too much detail, not enough to trip himself up. Keep it simple. Shrug when the questions are too detailed. Nothing for them to hang him up with.

“So where's the body?” Ballard asks. His expression says he's unconvinced. “There's a lot of ocean,” Bart says. Leaves it at that. “Told you I did it. Enough for you, isn't it?”

Afterwards, “I don't get you as a murderer,” Ballard says. “Lots of little stuff, sure. Any kind of robbery, absolutely. But murder? I just don't see it. And you would have been—what? Nineteen?”

Dolimont shrugs. “I was more of a hothead then. You know what kids are like. Go and check it out if you don't believe me. Purse is in a footlocker in the crawl space under my mom's old place, just like I told you. You know I've been in here for months, no chance to set anything up. I'm getting older, gentlemen. Just want to clear my conscience.”

Ballard unconvinced, staring steadily across the table.

“You don't want to solve this one, don't want it off the books, then fine by me,” Bart says. “But you know you do, and this is your only chance. You got the purse, got a confession, and you know I'm going to plead guilty, first chance I get. Slam dunk for you.”

Ballard doesn't move, hasn't taken the cap off his pen.

“You might want to write it up so I can sign it, or take me someplace where you can record it all,” Bart says, chiding. “What's a guy got to do to get you guys to take a confession?”

Later, Ronnie looks at him in amazement when Dolimont tells him that they'll end up serving time in the same prison, probably, because it's murder, at maximum security in Dorchester. Then Ron says just three words:“But you're innocent.”

“Innocent? Don't know about that. We're just talking guilty and not guilty here,” Bart says. “I think I'm guilty enough.”

Victoria Airport,
British Columbia

VINCENT O'REILLY ,
FAITH MONAHAN

JULY 17, 2006

F
AITH
was at the airport early, well before the flight was supposed to get in, drinking black coffee and watching two sparrows that somehow managed to live inside the great glass arch, flying from seat to seat, picking up crumbs left by people eating pastries with their coffee.

The roof rose so high that when she looked at it, her breath caught in her throat, and she couldn't decide whether it was wonder at the great sweep of the dome, or whether she was afraid someone somewhere had done something wrong, and that at any moment, the whole thing might come crashing down on top of her, the wrong pieces all coming together at once.

Out on the apron, she had watched a small plane roll up and stop, and now it was sitting, one propeller still turning, as a pair of slow-moving grounds crew slid fat chocks under the wheels and rolled the stairs up to the door. Out behind the airplane, the land was brilliant green bushes and leaves bursting out in a frenzy, an uncontrolled orgy of plants.

Soon, she thought, the passengers will start to file out—and it will be time for practice, a dry run, just looking at them and trying to decide which one looks the most like him. That, and the simple game of looking at the passengers and trying to decide just what each one does for a living, whether there is someone coming to meet them, whether they're expecting laughter or tears. But mostly trying to decide if any of them reminds her enough of Vincent to bring his face back into sharp relief in her head.

Faith looked at each one of them in turn. At the last minute she had resisted the urge to bring his picture along, still in the frame, so that she could take one last look when the plane did arrive, like cheat notes at an exam that she would then stuff back into her purse before he got out through the security doors.

Just one careful look, she thought. I could really use it now, just to be absolutely sure.

And she wasn't sure why she felt she had to. After all, she knew every inch of him, how he looked, how he smelled, how he felt to the touch—and she was absolutely sure that he would be as obviously Vincent as anyone could possibly be. But all through the drive to the airport, alone in the taxi as the driver chattered on and on about his children, Faith staring out the window at the wall of lush green on the side of the road, she wondered if, somehow, she had just managed to make it all up in her head. If, instead of being the Vincent she remembered, this would be someone else entirely, and she'd realize as soon as they spoke that she had spent the last few months fooling herself, making it all out to be something much bigger than it actually was. By the time she had reached the airport, she wondered again if he was going to tell her that he was moving out, that it had all been some kind of giant mistake.

And then his plane came swooping in, a silver dart against the distant white-topped mountains at first, then a plane, and then Vincent coming down the stairs, and she was absolutely certain the second she saw him.

When she told him about her fears later, when they were lying in the dark, naked, Vincent laughed quietly and said, “I guess Faith wasn't enough. You should have had a little Hope in there too.” Then he laughed again. “Who knows? Maybe soon you will, now.”

And she hit him in the ribs, gently, the same old reaction for the same old joke, and he laughed a long, deflating laugh, and stared up at the ceiling for a long time, his eyes not even blinking.

“You all right?” she asked.

“It's not ever the way you remember it, going back,” Vincent said. “Nothing is. You think you've got it all down cold, think that you know where every single piece fits, and then someone turns around and gives you a new piece you didn't expect, and it just doesn't fit anywhere at all. And you start all over again, building it up and half afraid it's all a house of cards anyway.”

They were quiet for a minute.

“Maybe it's better if it's just you and me,” Vincent said, his arms wrapped tight around her back, talking softly into the hair by her right ear. She bent into him, loving the warmth of his skin against hers, and almost missed the rest.

“It's better if we just start from scratch. All new. Otherwise, it gets too crowded.”