In the night room Page 0,72
on my wrist. “Listen, I’m probably falling apart.”
“This started happening a couple of days ago?”
Another prolonged backward look. “I think so. But you know? Maybe it’s been going on for a long time, and I just became aware of it. It’s like having whole parts of my life skipped over—it’s not like they were deleted, but like they never happened.”
“We could take you to a doctor, have you examined.”
“It’s not happening now, though, and this is just a transition, isn’t it? We’re going to pick up your car, that’s all. Maybe you cured me!”
If a bloodstain fades away in about an hour, how long does it take a human being to disappear?
“Oh my God, I have to tell you about how I really got this money—and the picture of Jim Patrick’s body—and how I escaped from the house on Guilderland Road—and my poor baby—and the Baltic Group—and . . .” She fell back against the seat and leaned her head on my arm. Her mouth was open, as if she had been struck dumb by the immensity of all she had to tell me.
“In time, Willy. I already know some of it.”
“That’s so, so strange,” she said. “Of all the writers in all the bookstores in all the world . . .” Willy held out her hand, and I took it. “And I had this terrible feeling of being manipulated, of being shoved around like a marionette and forced to do all these things I wouldn’t really do. Can you imagine?”
She turned around again, pulling her hand from mine, looked out at the traffic, and gasped. Her head went down, and she slid to the edge of the seat to peer out. “I think I saw them! Tim! They’re back there!”
“Did you see anything?” I asked the driver.
“Not a thing,” he said. “But I can’t be lookin’ in my rearview mirror all the time.”
Willy moaned. “Ooooh, I can’t be sure. How could a car like that be blown through a wind tunnel, anyhow?” She slipped to the floor and kneeled in the seat well, with her arms resting on the cushions. “Tim, I know this isn’t fair, but what we’re doing now makes me feels like a puppet, too. I mean, why am I here, in the back of this limousine—with you? I never met you before tonight, and the second I lay eyes on you, it’s like you’re the most important person in my world. It makes a lot more sense that Giles and Roman Richard should be looking for me than for you to be helping me get away from them. But here I am, and there you are, and we’re about to drive to Millhaven!”
“Doesn’t that seem the right thing to do?”
“That’s what’s so screwed up!”
“That it seems right?”
“That it seems right because you said it was what we were going to do. It’d be the same thing if you said we were going to, I don’t know, anywhere. Charleston. Kraków. Chicago. My sense of agency seems a lot more doubtful than it should be. And you? You seem to take all this for granted!”
My sense of agency? I wondered. This is not the sort of expression I ever use.
“Willy, I have never taken anything, at any time, less for granted. The whole world seems like one vast confusion, and everything is out of place.”
“Mr. Underhill,” said the driver. “I’m pretty sure that Mercedes you asked me to look for just cut in, about four cars back.”
“Oh, crap.” Willy grabbed my hand and tried to shrink down into invisibility.
“Get rid of them,” I said, and the driver squeaked through the last of a yellow traffic light at the next corner and for ten minutes zigzagged from street to street until he came to Ninth Avenue, where he turned south again. He drove with the bravado of a getaway man, shouldering his big car through gaps that did not exist until he created them and shooting through red lights at clear intersections. Every now and then Willy peeked out at our wake, and I kept a steady lookout. The Mercedes ducked into view a couple of times, always in the midst of an awkward spot—caught in gridlock, blocked from a turn by a huge double-jointed bus, stalled by a wave of people moving across the street.
When we got to Canal Street, the driver said, “I think we’re winning, Mr. Underhill. I haven’t seen them for ten, twelve blocks.”
Willy thanked her god, and I thanked mine. When we pulled