In the night room Page 0,88
I couldn’t have learned from Tom Hartland, who was, by the way, another fictional character of mine.”
Willy sat back in the booth, her hands in her lap, looking like a schoolgirl about to enter the principal’s office.
I closed my eyes and tried to remember what I had written about her. The events of the previous two days had made some of the details recede. “You almost broke into a produce warehouse, but the thought of Mitchell Faber snapped you back into the real world. You realized that Mitchell Faber and your daughter couldn’t exist in the same world because your daughter was dead, so she couldn’t possibly be in that building.”
Her eyes widened.
“And it’s a good thing you changed your mind, because shortly after you got back into your car, a young policeman drove up behind you. He didn’t believe how old you were until you showed him your driver’s license. He told you that you couldn’t have too many worries—to look so young, he meant. And when he saw your address on Guilderland Road, he knew your house right away. When you tried to thank him, he told you to thank Mitchell Faber instead.”
“How do you know that?”
“I wrote it. I put that part in to indicate that the police were not going to be very helpful later on, when you escaped into Manhattan. In this book, you were supposed to be hunted by the police as well as Faber’s goons. Which is exactly the situation you’re in now, except I’m with you.”
“What was the name of this book?”
“In the Night Room.”
She absorbed that silently.
“There is a real night room,” I said with a sudden recognition. “It’s in Millhaven.”
“A real night room. I don’t even know what that means.”
“It’s a room where it is always night. Because of the terrible things that happened there.” I took a leap into the dark. “To you.”
“When was this supposed to happen?”
“In your early childhood—the years you can’t remember. You don’t really remember anything that happened before you were sent to the Block. All you have of your first six or seven years is the sense that your parents loved you. That is a fantasy, a false memory. You use it to conceal what your life was actually like in those years.”
“That’s a goddamn lie.”
“Willy, none of this happened in real life. I made it all up. It’s fiction, and I know what I wrote—I don’t blame you for not believing me, and I can’t blame you for getting angry, but I know your history better than you do.”
She took that, too, in silence. For the first time in our conversation, I had used the word “fiction.”
“What else can I tell you? When you started to rearrange things in the house on Guilderland Road, sometimes an expression on Coverley’s face reminded you of Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca.”
She was concentrating so hard that she didn’t notice the arrival of our waitress, who to get her attention had to say, “Excuse me, miss, your hamburgers are ready.” The woman put the plates on the table, and the glasses, and a bottle of ketchup, and Willy did not take her eyes from me for a second.
When the waitress had left, Willy immediately picked up one of her hamburgers and took an enormous bite out of it. She groaned with pleasure. Then she glanced at me and spoke a mushy, “Sorry.”
I watched her eat for a time, unwilling to make further demands on her attention. It was like watching a wolf devour a lamb. Every now and then she pushed French fries into her mouth; every now and then she sipped at her Coke.
After vaporizing the first hamburger, Willy wiped her mouth with her napkin and said, “You can’t imagine how much I needed that. I need this one, too.”
“How’s the lightness?”
“I don’t think I’m going to start disappearing anytime soon. We’re just talking about hunger now, basic hunger.” She attacked another batch of French fries. “Look. Part of me thinks it’s really creepy that you know these things about me. It’s like you went around peering through the windows and rummaging through the drawers, like you listened to my phone calls. I don’t like it. But another part of me, the part that loves you, is thrilled that you know so much.”
She bit into the second hamburger. Chewing, she said, “You shouldn’t know these things. But your face shouldn’t be on that money, either, and there it is.” She leveled a French fry at my handsome