Текст книги "The Bazaar of Bad Dreams"

Автор книги: Stephen Edwin King

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 33 страниц)

To her relief, Winnie laughed. Then he said, ‘Not murder, my dear. We won’t need to go that far.’

He talked then, as he never had before. To anyone, probably.

‘I grew up in a wealthy home on Long Island – my father was successful in the stock market. It was a religious home, and when I told my parents I felt called to the ministry, there was no puffing and blowing about the family business. On the contrary, they were delighted. Mother, especially. Most mothers are happy, I think, when their sons discover a vocation-with-a-capital-V.

‘I went to seminary in upstate New York, after which I was assigned – as associate pastor – to a church in Idaho. I wanted for nothing. Presbyterians take no vow of poverty, and my parents made sure I never had to live as though I had. My father survived my mother by only five years, and when he passed on, I inherited a great deal of money, mostly in bonds and solid stocks. Over the years since, I have converted a small percentage of that to cash, a bit at a time. Not a nest egg, because I’ve never needed one, but what I’d call a wish egg. It’s in a Manhattan safe deposit box, and it’s that cash that I’m offering you, Nora. It may actually be closer to two hundred and forty thousand, but we’ll agree, shall we, not to quibble over a dollar here and a dollar there?

‘I wandered a few years in the hinterlands before coming back to Brooklyn and Second Presbo. After five years as an associate, I became the senior pastor. I served as such, without blemish, until two thousand six. My life has been one – I say it with neither pride nor shame – of unremarkable service. I have led my church in helping the poor, both in countries far from here and in this community. The local AA drop-in center was my idea, and it’s helped hundreds of suffering addicts and alcoholics. I’ve comforted the sick and buried the dead. More cheerfully, I’ve presided over more than a thousand weddings, and inaugurated a scholarship fund that has sent many boys and girls to colleges they could not otherwise have afforded. One of our scholarship girls won a National Book Award in nineteen ninety-nine.

‘And my only regret is this: in all my years, I have never committed one of the sins about which I have spent a lifetime warning my various flocks. I am not a lustful man, and since I’ve never been married, I never had so much as the opportunity to commit adultery. I’m not gluttonous by nature, and although I like nice things, I’ve never been greedy or covetous. Why would I be, when my father left me fifteen million dollars? I’ve worked hard, kept my temper, envy no one – except perhaps Mother Teresa – and have little pride of possessions or position.

‘I’m not claiming I’m without sin. Not at all. Those who can say (and I suppose there are a few) that they have never sinned in deed or word can hardly say they’ve never sinned in thought, can they? The church covers every loophole. We hold out heaven, then make people understand they have no hope of achieving it without our help … because no one is without sin, and the wages of sin are death.

‘I suppose this makes me sound like an unbeliever, but raised as I was, unbelief is as impossible for me as levitation. Yet I understand the cozening nature of the bargain, and the psychological tricks believers use to ensure the prosperity of those beliefs. The pope’s fancy hat was not conferred on him by God, but by men and women paying theological blackmail money.

‘I can see you fidgeting, so I’ll come to the point. I want to commit a major sin before I die. A sin not of thought or word but of deed. This was on my mind – increasingly on my mind – before my stroke, but I thought it a frenzy that would pass. Now I see that it will not, because the idea has been with me more than ever during the last three years. But how great a sin can an old man stuck in a wheelchair commit, I asked myself? Surely not one very great, at least without being caught, and I would prefer not to be caught. Such grave matters as sin and forgiveness should remain between man and God.

‘Listening to you talk about your husband’s book and your financial situation, it occurred to me that I could sin by proxy. In fact, I could double my sin quotient, as it were, by making you my accessory.’

She spoke from a dry mouth. ‘I believe in wrongdoing, Winnie, but I don’t believe in sin.’

He smiled. It was a benevolent smile. Also unpleasant: sheep lips, wolf teeth. ‘That’s fine. But sin believes in you.’

‘I understand you think so … so why? It’s perverse!’

His smile widened. ‘Yes! That’s why! I want to know what it’s like to do something entirely against my nature. To need forgiveness for the act and more than the act. Do you know what doubles sin, Nora?’

‘No. I don’t go to church.’

‘What doubles sin is saying to yourself, I will do this because I know I can pray for forgiveness once it’s done. To say to yourself that you can have your cake and eat it, too. I want to know what being that deep in sin is like. I don’t want to wallow; I want to dive in over my head.’

‘And take me with you!’ She said it with real indignation.

‘Ah, but you don’t believe in sin, Nora. You just said so. From your standpoint, all I want is for you to get a little dirty. And risk arrest, I suppose, although the risk should be minor. For these things I will pay you two hundred thousand dollars. Over two hundred thousand.’

Her face and hands felt numb, as if she had just come in from a long walk in the cold. She would not do it, of course. What she would do was walk out of this house and get some fresh air. She wouldn’t quit, or at least not immediately, because she needed the job, but she would walk out. And if he fired her for deserting her post, let him. But first, she wanted to hear the rest. She wouldn’t admit to herself that she was tempted, but curious? Yes, that much she would own.

‘What is it you want me to do?’

Chad had lit another cigarette. She motioned with her fingers. ‘Give me a drag on that.’

‘Norrie, you haven’t smoked a cigarette in five—’

‘Give me a drag, I said.’

He passed the cigarette to her. She dragged deep, coughed the smoke out. Then she told him.

That night she lay awake late, into the small hours, quite sure he was sleeping, and why not? The decision had been made. She would tell Winnie no and never mention the idea again. Decision made; sleep follows.

Still, she wasn’t entirely surprised when he turned to her and said, ‘I can’t stop thinking about it.’

Nor could Nora. ‘I’d do it, you know. For us. If …’

Now they were face-to-face, inches apart. Close enough to taste each other’s breath. It was two o’clock in the morning.

The hour of conspiracy if there ever was one, she thought.

‘If?’

‘If I didn’t think it would taint our lives. Some stains don’t come out.’

‘It’s a moot question, Nor. We’ve decided. You play Sarah Palin and tell him thanks but no thanks for that bridge to nowhere. I’ll find a way to finish the book without his weird idea of a grant-in-aid.’

‘When? On your next unpaid leave? I don’t think so.’

‘It’s decided. He’s a crazy old man. The end.’ He rolled away from her.

Silence descended. Upstairs, Mrs Reston – whose picture belonged in the dictionary next to insomnia – walked back and forth. Somewhere, maybe in deepest darkest Gowanus, a siren wailed.

Fifteen minutes went by before Chad spoke to the end table and the digital clock, which now read 2:17A. ‘Also, we’d have to trust him for the money, and you can’t trust a man whose one remaining ambition in life is to commit a sin.’

‘But I do trust him,’ she said. ‘It’s myself I don’t trust. Go to sleep, Chad. This subject is closed.’

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Gotcha.’

The clock read 2:26A when she said, ‘It could be done. I’m sure of that much. I could change my hair color. Wear a hat. Dark glasses, of course. Which would mean it would have to be a sunny day. And there would have to be an escape route.’

‘Are you seriously—’

‘I don’t know! Two hundred thousand dollars! I’d have to work almost three years to make that much money, and after the government and the banks wet their beaks, there’d be next to nothing left. We know how that works.’

She was quiet for awhile, looking at the ceiling above which Mrs Reston trod her slow miles.

‘And the insurance!’ she burst out. ‘Do you know what we have for insurance? Nothing!’

‘We have insurance.’

‘Okay, next to nothing. What if you got hit by a car? What if I turned up with an ovarian cyst?’

‘Our coverage is okay.’

‘That’s what everyone says, but what everyone knows is they fuck you at the drive-through! With this, we could be sure. That’s what I keep thinking about. We … could … be … sure!’

‘Two hundred thousand dollars makes my financial hopes for the book seem kind of small, though, don’t you think? Why even bother?’

‘Because this would be a onetime thing. And the book would be clean.’

‘Clean? You think this would make the book clean?’ He rolled over and faced her. Part of him had grown hard, so perhaps part of this was about sex. On their end of the bargain, at least.

‘Do you think I’ll ever get another job like the one with Winnie?’ She was angry, although with him or herself she couldn’t tell. Nor did she care. ‘I’ll be thirty-six in December. You’ll take me to dinner for my birthday and a week later I’ll get my real present: a past due notice for the last car loan payment.’

‘Are you blaming me for—?’

‘No. I’m not even blaming the system that keeps us and everyone like us treading water. Blame is counterproductive. And I told Winnie the truth: I don’t believe in sin. But I also don’t want to go to jail.’ She felt tears growing in her eyes. ‘I don’t want to hurt anyone, either. Especially not—’

‘You’re not going to.’

He started to turn over, but she grabbed his shoulder.

‘If we did it – if I did it – we could never talk about it afterward. Not one single time.’

‘No.’

She reached for him. In marriages, deals were sealed with more than a handshake. This they both knew.

The clock said 2:58A and he was drifting to sleep when she said, ‘Do you know anyone with a video camera? Because he wants—’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Charlie Green.’

After that, silence. Except for Mrs Reston, walking slowly back and forth above them. Nora had an image – half a dream – of Mrs Reston with a pedometer attached to the waistband of her pajama pants. Mrs Reston patiently walking off all those miles between her and dawn.

Nora fell asleep.

The next day, in Winnie’s study.

‘Well?’ he said.

Her mother had never been a churchgoer, but Nora had attended Vacation Bible School every summer, and had enjoyed it. There were games and songs and flannelboard stories. She found herself remembering one of the stories now. She hadn’t thought of it in years.

‘I wouldn’t have to really hurt the … you know, the person … to get the money?’ she said. ‘I want to be very clear about that.’

‘No, but I expect to see blood flow. Let me be clear about that. I want you to use your fist, but a cut lip or bloody nose will be quite sufficient.’

In one VBS story, the teacher put a mountain on the flannelboard. Then Jesus and a guy with horns. The teacher said the devil had taken Jesus up on top of a mountain and showed him all the cities of the earth. You can have everything in those cities, the devil had said. Every treasure. All you have to do is fall down and worship me. But Jesus was a stand-up guy. He’d said Get thee behind me, Satan.

‘Well?’ he asked again.

‘Sin,’ she mused. ‘That’s what’s on your mind.’

‘Sin for its own sake. Deliberately planned and executed. Do you find the idea exciting?’

‘No,’ she said, looking up at the frowning bookshelves.

Winnie let some time pass, then said for the third time: ‘Well?’

‘If I got caught, would I still get the money?’

‘If you lived up to your part of the agreement – and didn’t implicate me, of course – you certainly would. And even if you were caught, the very worst to come of it would be probation.’

‘Plus court-ordered psychiatric evaluation,’ she said. ‘Which I probably need for even considering this.’

Winnie said: ‘If you continue the way you are, dear, you’ll need a marriage counselor, at the very least. In my time in the ministry, I counseled many partners, and while money worries weren’t always the root cause of their problems, that’s what it was in most cases. And that’s all it was.’

‘Thank you for the benefit of your experience, Winnie.’

He said nothing to this.

‘You’re crazy, you know.’

He still said nothing.

She looked at the books some more. Most of them were on religion. Finally she turned her eyes back to his. ‘If I do this and you fuck me, I’ll make you sorry.’

He showed no discomfiture at her choice of language. ‘I’ll honor my commitment. You may be sure of that.’

‘You speak almost perfectly now. Not even a lisp, unless you’re tired.’

He shrugged. ‘Being with me has trained your ear. It’s like learning to understand a new language, I suppose.’

She returned her eyes to the books. One of them was called The Problem of Good and Evil. Another was titled The Basis of Morality. That was a thick one. In the hall, an old Regulator clock was ticking steadily. Finally he said it again: ‘Well?’

‘Isn’t just putting this in front of me sin enough to satisfy you? You’re tempting us both, and we’re both considering the temptation. Isn’t that enough?’

‘It’s sin in thought and word only. That will not satisfy my curiosity.’

The Regulator ticked. Without looking at him, she said: ‘If you say well again, I’ll walk out of here.’

He didn’t say well or anything else. She looked down at her hands, twisting in her lap. The most appalling thing: part of her was still curious. Not about what he wanted, that cat was out of the bag, but about what she wanted.

At last she looked up and gave her answer.

‘Excellent,’ he said.

With the decision made, neither of them wanted the actual act hanging over their heads; it cast too big a shadow. They chose Forest Park in Queens. Chad borrowed Charlie Green’s video camera and learned how to use it. They went to the park twice beforehand (on rainy days when it was mostly empty), and Chad video’d the area they decided on. They had a lot of sex during that period – nervous sex, fumbling sex, the kind teenagers have in the backseat of a car, but usually good sex. Hot, at least. Nora found her other major appetites dwindling. In the ten days between her agreement and the morning when she executed her part of the bargain, she lost nine pounds. Chad said she was starting to look like a college kid again.

On a sunny day in early October, Chad parked their old Ford on Jewel Avenue. Nora sat beside him, her hair dyed red and hanging to her shoulders, looking very un-Nora-like in a long skirt and an ugly brown smock top. She was wearing sunglasses and a Mets cap. She seemed calm enough, but when he reached out to touch her, she shied away.

‘Nor, c’mon—’

‘Have you got cab fare?’

‘Yes.’

‘And a bag to put the video cam in?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Then give me the car keys. I’ll see you back at the apartment.’

‘Are you sure you’ll be able to drive? Because the reaction to something like this—’

‘I’ll be fine. Give me the keys. Wait here fifteen minutes. If there’s something wrong … if anything even feels wrong … I’ll come back. If I don’t, you go to the spot we picked out. Do you remember it?’

‘Of course I remember it!’

She smiled – showed her teeth and dimples, at least. ‘That’s the spirit,’ she said, and was gone.

It was an excruciatingly long fifteen minutes, but Chad waited through every one of them. Kids, all of them wearing clamshell helmets, pooted past on bikes. Women strolled in pairs, many with shopping bags. He saw an old lady laboriously crossing the avenue, and for one surreal moment he thought it was Mrs Reston, but when she passed by, he saw that it wasn’t. This woman was much older than Mrs Reston.

When the fifteen minutes were almost up, it occurred to him – in a sane and rational way – that he could put a stop to this by driving away. In the park, Nora would look around and not see him. She would be the one to take the cab back to Brooklyn. And when she got there, she would thank him. She would say, You saved me from myself.

After that? Take a month off. No substitute teaching. He would turn all his resources to finishing the book. Throw his cap over the windmill.

Instead, he got out and walked to the park with Charlie Green’s video camera in his hand. The paper bag that would hold it afterward was stuffed in the pocket of his windbreaker. He checked three times to make sure the camera’s green power lamp was glowing. How terrible it would be to go through all this and discover he’d never turned on the camera. Or that he’d left the lens cap on.

He checked that again too.

Nora was sitting on a park bench. When she saw him, she brushed her hair back from the left side of her face. That was the signal. It was on.

Behind her was a playground – swings, a push merry-go-round, teeter-totters, bouncy horses on springs, that sort of thing. At this hour, there were only a few kids playing. The moms were in a group on the far side, talking and laughing, not really paying much attention to the kids.

Nora got up from the bench.

Two hundred thousand dollars, he thought, and raised the camera to his eye. Now that it was on, he felt calm.

He shot it like a pro.

II

Back at their building, Chad raced up the stairs. He felt sure that she wouldn’t be there. He had seen her go skimming away at a full-out run, and the mothers had barely given her a look – they were converging on the child she had chosen, a boy of perhaps four – but he was still sure she wouldn’t be there and that he would get a call telling him that his wife was at the police station, where she had collapsed and told everything, including his part in it. Worse, Winnie’s part in it, thus ensuring it had all been for nothing.

His hand was shaking so badly that he couldn’t get the key in the slot; it went chattering madly around the keyplate without even coming close. He was in the act of putting down the paper bag (now badly crumpled) with the video cam inside it, so he could use his left hand to steady his right, when the door opened.

Nora was now wearing cut-off jeans and a shell top, the clothes she’d had on beneath the long skirt and smock. The plan had been for her to change in the car, before driving away. She said she could do it like lightning, and it seemed she’d been right.

He threw his arms around her and hugged her so tightly he heard the thump as she came against him – not exactly a romantic embrace.

Nora bore this for a moment, then said, ‘Come inside. Get out of the hall.’ And as soon as the door to the outside world was closed, she said, ‘Did you get it? Tell me you did. I’ve been here for almost half an hour, pacing around like Mrs Reston in the middle of the night … Mrs Reston if she was on speed, that is … wondering—’

‘I was worried too.’ He shoved his hair off his forehead, where the skin felt hot and feverish. ‘Norrie, I was scared to death.’

She snatched the bag from his hands, peered inside, then glared at him. She had ditched the sunglasses. Her blue eyes burned. ‘Tell me you got it.’

‘Yeah. That is, I think so. I must have. I haven’t looked yet.’

The glare got hotter. He thought, Watch out, Nor, your eyeballs will catch fire if you keep doing that.

‘You better have. You better have. The time I haven’t been pacing around, I’ve been on the toilet. I keep having cramps—’ She went to the window and looked out. He joined her, afraid she knew something he didn’t. But there were only the usual pedestrians going back and forth.

She turned to him again, and this time grabbed his arms. Her palms were dead cold. ‘Is he all right? The kid? Did you see if he was okay?’

‘He’s fine,’ Chad said.

‘Are you lying?’ She was shouting into his face. ‘You better not be! Was he all right?’

‘Fine. Standing up even before the mothers got to him. Bawling his head off, but I got worse at that kid’s age when I was clopped in the back of the head by a swing. I had to go to the emergency room and have five sti—’

‘I hit him much harder than I meant to. I was so afraid that if I pulled the punch … if Winnie saw I pulled it … he wouldn’t pay. And the adrenaline … Christ! It’s a wonder I didn’t tear that poor kid’s head right off! Why did I ever do it?’ But she wasn’t crying, and she didn’t look remorseful. She looked furious. ‘Why did you let me?’

‘I never—’

‘Are you sure he’s all right? You really saw him getting up? Because I hit him much harder than I …’ She wheeled away from him, went to the wall, knocked her forehead against it, then turned back. ‘I walked into a playground and I punched a four-year-old child square in the mouth! For money!’

He had an inspiration. ‘I think it’s on the tape. The kid getting up, I mean. You’ll see for yourself.’

She flew back across the room. ‘Put it on the TV! I want to see!’

Chad attached the VSS cable Charlie had given him. Then, after a little fumbling, he played the tape on the TV. He had indeed recorded the kid getting to his feet again, just before shutting the thing off and walking away. The kid looked bewildered, and of course he was crying, but otherwise he seemed fine. His lips were bleeding quite a lot, but his nose only a little. Chad thought he might have gotten the bloody nose when he fell down.

No worse than any minor playground accident, he thought. Thousands of them happen every day.

‘See?’ he asked her. ‘He’s fi—’

‘Run it again.’

He did. And when she asked him to run it a third time, and a fourth, and a fifth, he did that too. At some point he became aware that she was no longer watching to see the kid get up. Neither was he. They were watching him go down. And the punch. The punch delivered by the crazy red-haired bitch in the sunglasses. The one who walked up and did her business and then took off with wings on her sneakers.

She said, ‘I think I knocked out one of his teeth.’

He shrugged. ‘Good news for the Tooth Fairy.’

After the fifth viewing, she said: ‘I want to get the red out of my hair. I hate it.’

‘Okay—’

‘But first, take me in the bedroom. Don’t talk about it either. Just do it.’

She kept telling him to go harder, almost belting him with her upthrusting hips, as if she wanted to buck him off. But she wasn’t getting there.

‘Hit me,’ she said.

He did it. He was beyond rationality.

‘You can do better than that. Fucking hit me!’

He hit her harder. Her lower lip split open. She dabbed her fingers in the blood. While she was doing it, she came.

‘Show it to me,’ Winnie said. This was the next day. They were in his study.

‘Show me the money.’ A famous line. She just couldn’t remember from where.

‘After I see the video.’

The camera was still in the crumpled bag. She took it out, along with the cable. He had a little TV in the study, and she connected the cable to it. She pushed Play, and they looked at the woman in the Mets cap sitting on the park bench. Behind her, a few children were playing. Behind them, mothers were talking mommyshit: body wraps, plays they had seen or were going to see, the new car, the next vacation. Blah-blah-blah.

The woman got up from the bench. The video zoomed jerkily in. The picture shivered a bit, then steadied.

That was where Nora hit the Pause button. This was Chad’s idea, and she had agreed to it. She trusted Winnie, but only so far.

‘I want to see the money.’

Winnie took a key from the pocket of the cardigan sweater he was wearing. He used it to open the center drawer of his desk, switching it to his left hand when the partially paralyzed right one wouldn’t do his bidding.

It wasn’t an envelope after all. It was a medium-sized Federal Express box. She looked inside and saw bundled hundreds, each bundle secured with a rubber band.

He said, ‘It’s all there, plus some extra.’

‘All right. Look at what you bought. All you have to do is push Play. I’ll be in the kitchen.’

‘Don’t you want to watch it with me?’

‘No.’

‘Nora? You appear to have had a small accident yourself.’ He tapped the corner of his mouth, the side that still turned down slightly.

Had she thought he had a sheep’s face? How stupid of her. How unseeing of her. Nor was it a wolf’s face, not really. It was somewhere in between. A dog’s face, maybe. The kind of dog that would bite and then run.

‘I ran into a door,’ she said.

‘I see.’

‘All right, I’ll watch it with you,’ she said, and sat down. She pushed Play herself.

They watched the video twice, in complete silence. The running time was about thirty seconds. That amounted to about sixty-six hundred dollars per second. Nora had done the math while she and Chad were watching it.

After the second time, he pushed Stop. She showed him how to eject the small cassette. ‘This is yours. The camera has to go back to the guy my husband borrowed it from.’

‘I understand.’ His eyes were bright. It seemed he’d actually gotten what he’d paid for. What he wanted. Incredible. ‘I shall have Mrs Granger buy me another camera for future viewings. Or perhaps that’s an errand you’d care to run.’

‘Not me. We’re done.’

‘Ah.’ He didn’t look surprised. ‘All right. But … if I may make a suggestion … you may want to get another job. So no one thinks it odd when those bills begin getting paid off at a faster clip. It’s only your welfare I’m thinking of, my dear.’

‘I’m sure.’ She unplugged the cable and put it back in the bag with the camera.

‘And I wouldn’t leave for Vermont too soon.’

‘I don’t need your advice. I feel dirty and you’re the reason why.’

‘I suppose I am. But you won’t get caught and no one will ever know.’ The right side of his mouth was drawn down, the left side lifted in what could have been a smile. The result was a serpentine S below his beak of a nose. His speech was very clear that day. She would remember that, and ponder it. As if what he called sin had turned out to be therapy. ‘And Nora … is feeling dirty always a bad thing?’

She had no idea how to answer this. Which, she supposed, was an answer in itself.

‘I only ask,’ he said, ‘because the second time you ran the tape, I watched you instead of it.’

She snatched up the bag with Charlie Green’s video cam inside and walked to the door. ‘Have a nice life, Winnie. Make sure you get an actual therapist as well as a nurse next time. Your father left you enough to afford both. And take care of that tape. For both our sakes.’

‘You’re unidentifiable on it, dear. And even if you weren’t, would anyone care?’ He shrugged. ‘It doesn’t depict a rape or murder, after all.’

She stood in the doorway, wanting to be gone but curious. Still curious.

‘Winnie, how will you square this with your God? How long will it take to pray it off?’

He chuckled. ‘If an outrageous sinner like Simon Peter could go on to found the Catholic Church, I expect I’ll be fine.’

‘Yes, but did Simon Peter keep the videotape to watch on cold winter evenings?’

This finally silenced him, and Nora left before he could find his voice again. It was a small victory, but one she grasped eagerly.

A week later he called the apartment and told her she was welcome to come back, at least until she and Chad left for Vermont. He hadn’t hired anyone else, and if there was any possibility she might change her mind, he wouldn’t.

‘I miss you, Nora.’

She said nothing.

His voice dropped. ‘We could watch the tape again. Wouldn’t you like to do that? Wouldn’t you like to see it again, at least once?’

‘No,’ she said, and hung up. She started toward the kitchen to make tea, but then a wave of faintness came over her. She sat down in the corner of the living room and bent her head to her upraised knees. She waited for the faintness to pass. Eventually it did.

She got a job taking care of Mrs Reston. It was only twenty hours a week, and the pay was nothing like what she had been making as Reverend Winston’s employee, but money was no longer the issue, and the commute was easy – one flight of stairs. Best of all, Mrs Reston, who suffered from diabetes and mild cardiac problems, was a feather-brained sweetie. Sometimes, however – especially during her endless monologues concerning her late husband – Nora’s hand itched to reach out and slap her.

Chad kept his name on the sub list, but cut back on his hours. He set aside six of those newfound hours each weekend to work on Living with the Animals, and the pages began to mount up.

Once or twice he asked himself if the weekend pages were as good – as lively – as the work he had done before that day with the video camera, and told himself that the question had only occurred to him because some old and false notion of retribution was lodged in his mind. Like a kernel of popcorn between two back teeth.

Twelve days after the day in the park, there was a knock at the apartment door. When Nora opened it, a policeman was standing there.

‘Yes, Officer?’ she asked.

‘Are you Nora Callahan?’

She thought calmly: I will confess everything. And after the authorities have done to me whatever they do, I’ll go to that boy’s mother and stick out my face and say ‘Hit me with your best shot, Mama. You’ll be doing both of us a favor.’

‘Yes, I’m Mrs Callahan.’

‘Ma’am, I’m here at the request of the Walt Whitman branch of the Brooklyn Public Library? You have four library books that are almost two months overdue, and one of them is quite valuable. An art book, I believe? Limited circulation.’

She gawked at him, then burst out laughing. ‘You’re a library policeman?’

He tried to keep a straight face, but then he laughed too. ‘Today I guess I am. Do you have those books?’

‘Yes. I forgot all about them. Would you care to walk a lady to the library, Officer—’ She looked at his nametag. ‘Abromowitz?’

‘Happy to. Just bring your checkbook.’

‘Maybe they’ll take my Visa,’ she said.

He smiled. ‘Probably will,’ he said.

That night, in bed.

‘Hit me!’ As though it wasn’t lovemaking she had in mind but some nightmare blackjack game.

‘No.’

She was on top of him, which made it easy to reach down and smack him. The sound of her palm hitting the side of his face was like the report of an air gun.

‘Hit me, I said! Hit m—’