Darker Than Night. John Lutz
right,” Anna said absently. “Will there be a funeral?”
“Of course. He’ll be laid out at a mortuary near where he lived. Melba didn’t know exactly when or where the funeral will be.”
Anna’s father, Raoul, had left her mother only months after the rape, and in a way Anna blamed herself for their divorce. Her father had moved into a home on the edge of Queens, near the auto repair shop where he kept the books. Anna had heard the place was a chop shop, where stolen cars were taken and dismantled to be sold for parts, but she’d never believed it.
She visited her father less and less frequently in his sad and solitary home, and they’d gone out for breakfast or lunch and struggled for words, but Anna had never quite stopped loving him. His loss was an unexpected force taking root in her, entangling and weighing down her heart.
Unconsciously she crossed herself, surprised by the automatic gesture. How odd, she thought. Religion wasn’t where she’d found any solace. Her music was her religion. Her music that might not be good enough. She felt, just then, like playing the viola.
Her mother stopped sobbing. “Anna, are you okay?”
“No,” Anna said.
Marcy Graham had noticed that morning when she poured the half-and-half for Ron’s coffee that it was thinner than usual and barely cool.
She opened the refrigerator and laid a hand on jars and shelves as if checking for fever. Not as cold as they should be. When she checked the cubes in the icemaker, she found they’d melted into a solid mass. She wrestled the white plastic container out, chipped away with a table knife, and dumped the ice into the sink.
“Fridge fucked up?” Ron asked.
“Looks that way. I’ll call the repairman.”
“Nothing should be wrong with it. It’s under warranty. Don’t let anybody tell you it isn’t.”
“I won’t. Don’t worry.”
“Think it’s safe to use this cream?”
“I wouldn’t,” Marcy said. She stood back and looked at the refrigerator, less than a year old. Then she opened the door and memorized the phone number on the sticker affixed to its inside edge and went to the phone.
Which is how she found herself here in her kitchen, home early from work to meet the repairman.
He was Jerry, according to the name tag above his pocket, a grungy guy in a gray uniform. But he was young and rather handsome, and he kept his shirt tucked in. A pattern of dark moles marred his left cheek just below his eye and he needed a shave, but still he would clean up just fine. Not what Marcy had expected.
She hoped he wasn’t so young he didn’t know what he was doing. He had the refrigerator pulled out from the wall and had spent the last half hour working behind it. A stiff black cover lined with fluffy blue insulation leaned against the sink cabinets, and whenever Marcy went to the kitchen to see how Jerry was doing, she saw only his lower legs, his brown work boots she hoped wouldn’t leave scuff marks, and an assortment of tools on the tile floor.
Finally, only about an hour before Ron was due home from work, Jerry scooted backward, out from behind the refrigerator, and reached for the insulated panel. It took him only a few minutes to reattach it.
He stood up, came around to the front of the refrigerator, and opened the door so he could work the thermostat. Immediately the motor hummed. He stuck his hand between a milk carton and orange juice bottle, then turned to Marcy and smiled. “Better’n new.”
“You sure?” Marcy asked.
“Why? You wanna make a bet it’ll stop cooling?”
Marcy grinned. “No. I wasn’t questioning your work.”
“This was an easy one,” Jerry said. “There’s a belt attached to the motor that turns a fan blade, so a blower moves cold air and evens out the temperature in the refrigerator. Those belts usually last at least five years before they break.”
“My luck,” Marcy said.
“Oh, this one didn’t break, I’m sure of that.”
“What do you mean?”
“If it’d broke, I’d have found it laying there. It’s missing.”
“Underneath the refrigerator, maybe?”
“Nope. I looked everywhere for it.”
Missing? Marcy frowned. “How could it not be somewhere in the kitchen?”
The repairman smiled and shrugged, then leaned down and began tossing wrenches and screwdrivers and things Marcy didn’t recognize back into his metal toolbox. “It ain’t up to me to figure ’em out. I just fix ’em. You mind if I use your phone?”
Marcy told him she didn’t, and listened as he called his office to report he was finished and leaving for his next job.
After she’d signed at the bottom of a pink sheet of paper on a clipboard, he told her she should take care and left.
Alone in the apartment, she felt suddenly afraid. It was one thing for her anonymous benefactor to leave gifts, but why would he sabotage the refrigerator? Was that what really happened?
Would Ron have done such a thing? Had he even had the opportunity?
Unexpected presents were one thing. They were eccentric, weird, even, but flattering and not at all scary. Though they sure as hell made you wonder. She stared at the blank white bulk of the humming refrigerator. This was different. This was eerie.
She went to the left sink cabinet and opened it, then reached in through the hinged lid of the plastic trash can and felt beneath the loosely folded paper towel on top. Then she felt deeper beneath the paper towel.
Nothing. At least, not what she expected to feel despite her icy hunch.
She removed the plastic lid and looked to be sure.
The box of chocolates she’d thrown away last night was gone.
Pearl sat at her kitchen table and sipped from a bottle of water. She’d just finished a late-night snack of leftover pizza, which had been warmed and zapped of all form and structure in the microwave. It had become a kind of edible Dalí painting—surreal, like her world.
She could feel the beginnings of trouble, a gentle, hypnotic draw that could deceive and suck her into a maelstrom if she’d let it. If she fell for it.
As she sometimes did.
She found herself thinking about Quinn too often. He’d seemed at first so much older that an affair with him wasn’t an option. She wasn’t one of those helpless, hopeless women looking for a substitute father.
But he actually wasn’t that old. Besides, she had a birthday coming up.
It was the weathered look to his features that made him appear older, as if he’d spent a hard life in the outdoors and the sun had leathered and seamed his features. A difficult life, especially lately, buffeted by storms within and without. With a face that suggested character and toughness even if masculine beauty had passed with the years and hard knocks. She could imagine him slouched in the saddle on a weary horse, overlooking a windswept plain. Big white horse, since he was the hero of her imagination.
Bastard belongs in a cigarette commercial, not in the NYPD.
She finished her water and smiled at her own recklessness. She didn’t always have to be her own worst enemy. Sometimes she was like a kid who couldn’t help reaching out and touching a flame.
She leaned back and looked at the stained and cracked kitchen walls that had once been some weird yellow color. She knew what she should do now. She should paint. Everything she needed to brighten up the place—brushes, rollers, scraper, drop cloths, masking tape, five gallons of colonial white paint—was waiting in the hall closet. And she had