he lay still for several seconds listening. Again, there was no sound. He got back to his feet and pulled the window slowly closed.
The enormous bed had a white canopy and thick, white blankets lying disheveled. He walked silently past and held his mirror in the door’s threshold to get a look into the next room. She was on the couch, facing away from him. He couldn’t see a book from his vantage point but assumed that she was still reading. The living room opened into a foyer to his right. He stepped into the living room. Nora was sitting with her back against one of the arms of the couch. Her blond hair was pulled up and he saw the graceful lines of her neck, pink with tiny blond hairs. She had a mole on the back of her neck, and this imperfection thrilled him.
He walked slowly, taking a step, then stopping for a beat before taking the next. His heart rate was down to under forty beats a minute. His breaths were deep and infrequent. He was silent. His concern was not that she would hear him but that she would sense him. Feral controlled every aspect of his presence that he could, but his body was ninety-eight degrees and it did displace air, and his movements did alter the flow of air in a room. A person could sense these things and he knew he was vulnerable. Yet he did not allow this knowledge to escalate to apprehension. Such was his calm that he paused briefly to steal a glance at what he realized now was a copy of a Vermeer, executed by a mediocre painter. The painting was poor—lacking grace. For a horrible moment he wondered if maybe she had painted it herself. But he dismissed this. It was not possible.
He came to the foyer now and she had not moved except twice to turn the page. On a mahogany table with legs carved to be lion’s paws sat a gray ceramic bowl with three sets of three keys. Each set was identical, held by identical rings. With his thumb and middle finger he pulled one of the sets slowly from the bowl. The keys converged at the lowest point of the ring with a slight sound, and Feral froze, waiting for Nora’s scream. But there was nothing. Once the keys were clear of the bowl, he carefully cupped them in his left hand and turned back to the living room.
Nora put her book down, and Feral flattened himself against the far wall, out of her line of vision. She swung her legs off the couch, stood up, and stretched, her hands reaching for the ceiling. Feral watched, transfixed, at the intimacy of the moment. He became aware that he had prepared himself for the likelihood that up close she would not live up to the image of perfection that she projected onstage. This had turned out to be wholly wrong. The only thing imperfect about her was the mole on her neck; like the imperfection that the ancient Greeks would leave in their crafts so as not to offend the gods.
She walked around the couch and to her left, out of sight. The kitchen, he assumed. This time he moved quickly, but no less silently. He crossed the room in six long strides and was at the window. He unlocked it with his thumb. From the kitchen he heard the sound of ice dropping into a glass. He slowly pushed the window up. It moved smoothly, as if it was often opened. He stepped through and pulled it back down again, then flattened out on his back with the mirror in the air. Within seconds she had reentered the room carrying a tall glass of what looked to be whiskey on the rocks.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Red Henry did not need to know the language to sense that the Poles were coming around. There were smiles now, and an atmosphere of fraternity. Anticipating an agreement, he had arranged for a contract-signing celebration in three days’ time. He hated the events that always seemed to go along with these deals, but the foreigners loved them. It seemed to fulfill some idea they had about America, and if it helped at all, Henry was willing to grit his teeth and indulge them.
They were touring one of Block’s factories. This one made stoves. They walked up and down aisles of assembly-line laborers, the Poles chatting with the interpreter and Henry smiling