Strangers, Page 2

  She had to take care of her father now, and she applied herself to that responsibility with vigor and enthusiasm. She cleaned house swiftly, efficiently, and with a thoroughness that defied her Aunt Francine’s sub rosa inspections for dust and grime. Although she was only twelve, she learned to plan a budget, and before she was thirteen she was in charge of all the household accounts.

  At fourteen, three years younger than her classmates, Ginger was the valedictorian of her high-school class. When it became known that she had been accepted by several universities but had chosen Barnard, everyone began to wonder whether, at the tender age of fourteen, she had finally taken too big a bite and would choke trying to swallow it.

  Barnard was more difficult than high school. She no longer learned faster than the other kids, but she learned as well as the best of them, and her grade average was frequently 4.0, never less than 3.8—and that was the semester in her junior year when Jacob was sick with his first bout of pancreatitis, when she spent every evening at the hospital.

  Jacob lived to see her get her first degree, was sallow and weak when she received her medical degree, even hung on tenaciously until she had served six months of her internship. But after three bouts of recurring pancreatitis, he developed pancreatic cancer, and he died before Ginger had finally made up her mind to go for a surgical residency at Boston Memorial instead of pursuing a career in research.

  Because she had been given more years with Jacob than she had been given with her mother, her feelings for him were understandably more profound, and the loss of him was even more devastating than the loss of Anna had been. Yet she dealt with that time of trouble as she dealt with every challenge that came her way, and she finished her internship with excellent reports and superb recommendations.

  She delayed her residency by going to California, to Stanford for a unique and arduous two-year program of additional study in cardiovascular pathology. Thereafter, following a one-month vacation (by far the longest rest she had ever taken), she moved East again, to Boston, acquired a mentor in Dr. George Hannaby (chief of surgery at Memorial and renowned for his pioneering achievements in various cardiovascular surgical procedures), and served the first three-quarters of her two-year residency without a hitch.

  Then, on a Tuesday morning in November, she went into Bernstein’s Deli to buy a few items, and terrible things began happening. The incident of the black gloves. That was the start of it.

  Tuesday was her day off, and unless one of her patients had a life-threatening crisis, she was neither needed nor expected at the hospital. During her first two months at Memorial, with her usual enthusiasm and tireless drive, she had gone to work on most of her days off, for there was nothing else that she would rather do. But George Hannaby put an end to that habit as soon as he learned of it. George said that the practice of medicine was high-pressure work, and that every physician needed time off, even Ginger Weiss.

  “If you drive yourself too hard, too fast, too relentlessly,” he said, “it’s not only you that suffers, but the patient as well.”

  So every Tuesday she slept an extra hour, showered, and had two cups of coffee while she read the morning paper at the kitchen table by the window that looked out on Mount Vernon Street. At ten o’clock she dressed, walked several blocks to Bernstein’s on Charles Street, and bought pastrami, corned beef, homemade rolls or sweet pumpernickel, potato salad, blintzes, maybe some lox, maybe some smoked sturgeon, sometimes cottage cheese vareniki to be reheated at home. Then she walked home with her bag of goodies and ate shamelessly all day while she read Agatha Christie, Dick Francis, John D. MacDonald, Elmore Leonard, sometimes a Heinlein. While she had not yet begun to like relaxation half as much as she liked work, she gradually began to enjoy her time off, and Tuesday ceased to be the dreaded day it had been when she first began her reluctant observance of the six-day week.

  That bad Tuesday in November started out fine—cold with a gray winter sky, brisk and invigorating rather than frigid—and her routine brought her to Bernstein’s (crowded, as usual) at ten-twenty-one. Ginger drifted from one end of the long counter to the other, peering into cabinets full of baked goods, looking through the cold glass of the refrigerated display cases, choosing from the array of delicacies with gluttonous pleasure. The room was a stewpot of wonderful smells and happy sounds: hot dough, cinnamon; laughter; garlic, cloves; rapid conversations in which the English was spiced with everything from Yiddish to Boston accents to current rock-and-roll slang; roasted hazelnuts, sauerkraut; pickles, coffee; the clink-clank of silverware. When Ginger had everything she wanted, she paid for it, pulled on her blue knit gloves, and hefted the bag, going past the small tables at which a dozen people were having a late breakfast, then headed for the door.

  She held the grocery bag in her left arm, and with her free hand she tried to put her wallet back in the purse that was slung over her right shoulder. She was looking down at the purse as she reached the door, and a man in a gray tweed topcoat and a black Russian hat entered the deli at that moment, his attention as distracted as hers; they collided. As cold air swept in from outside, she stumbled backward a step. He grabbed at her bag of groceries to keep it from falling, then steadied her with one hand on her arm.

  “Sorry,” he said. “That was stupid of me.”

  “My fault,” she said.

  “Daydreaming,” he said.

  “I wasn’t looking where I was going,” she said.

  “You all right?”

  “Fine. Really.”

  He held the bag of groceries toward her.

  She thanked him, took the bag—and noticed his black gloves. They were obviously expensive, of high-grade genuine leather, so neatly and tightly stitched that the seams were hardly visible, but there was nothing about those gloves that could explain her instant and powerful reaction to them, nothing unusual, nothing strange, nothing threatening. Yet she did feel threatened. Not by the man. He was ordinary, pale, doughy-faced, with kind eyes behind thick tortoiseshell glasses. Inexplicably, unreasonably, the gloves themselves were what abruptly terrified her. Her breath caught in her throat, and her heart hammered.

  The most bizarre thing was the way every object and all the people in the deli began to fade as if they were not real but merely figments of a dream that was dissolving as the dreamer woke. The customers having breakfast at the small tables, the shelves laden with canned and packaged food, the display cases, the wall clock with the Manischewitz logo, the pickle barrel, the tables and chairs all seemed to shimmer and slip away into a niveous haze, as if a fog was rising from some realm beneath the floor. Only the portentous gloves did not fade, and, in fact, as she stared at them they grew more detailed, strangely more vivid, more real, and increasingly threatening.

  “Miss?” the doughy-faced man said, and his voice seemed to come from a great distance, from the far end of a long tunnel.

  Although the shapes and colors of the delicatessen bleached toward white on all sides of Ginger, the sounds did not dwindle as well but, instead, grew louder, louder, until her ears filled with a roar of meaningless jabber and with the jarring clatter of silverware, until the clinking of dishes and the soft chatter of the electronic cash register were thunderous, unbearable.

  She could not take her eyes off the gloves.

  “Is something wrong?” the man asked, holding up one leather-clad hand, half-reaching toward her in an inquisitive gesture.

  Black, tight, shiny... with a barely visible grain to the leather, neat little stitches along the fingers... taut across the knuckles ...

  Dizzy, disoriented, with a tremendous weight of indefinable fear pressing down on her, she suddenly knew that she must run or die. Run or die. She did not know why. She did not understand the danger. But she knew she must run or perish where she stood.

  Her heartbeat, already fast, became frantic. The breath that was snagged in her throat now flew free with a feeble cry, and she lunged forward as if in pursuit of the pathetic sound that had escaped her. Amaze
d by her response to the gloves but unable to be objective about it, confused by her own behavior even as she acted, clutching the grocery bag to her breast, she shouldered past the man who had collided with her. She was only vaguely aware that she almost knocked him off his feet. She must have wrenched open the door, though she could not remember having done so, and then she was outside, in the crisp November air. The traffic on Charles Street—car horns, rumbling engines, the hiss-sigh-crunch of tires—was to her right, and the deli windows flashed past on her left as she ran.

  Thereafter she was oblivious of everything, for the world around her faded completely away, and she was plunging through a featureless grayness, legs pumping hard, coattails flapping, as if fleeing across an amorphous dreamscape, struck dumb by fear. There must have been many other people on the sidewalk, people whom she dodged or shoved aside, but she was not cognizant of them. She was aware only of the need to escape. She ran deer-swift though no one pursued her, with her lips peeled back in a grimace of pure terror though she could not identify the danger from which she fled.

  Running. Running like crazy.

  Temporarily blind, deaf.

  Lost.

  Minutes later, when the mists cleared, she found herself on Mount Vernon Street, part of the way up the hill, leaning against a wrought-iron railing beside the front steps of a stately red-brick town house. She was gripping two of the iron balusters, with her hands curled so tightly around them that her knuckles ached, her forehead on the heavy metal balustrade as if she were a melancholy prisoner slumped against the door of her cell. She was sweating and gasping for breath. Her mouth was dry, sour. Her throat burned, and her chest ached. She was bewildered, unable to recall how she had arrived at this place, as if washed onto an alien shore by moon-timed tides and waves of amnesia.

  Something had frightened her.

  She could not remember what it had been.

  Gradually the fear subsided, and her breathing regained an almost regular rhythm; her heartbeat slowed slightly.

  She raised her head and blinked her eyes, looking around warily and in bafflement as her tear-blurred vision slowly cleared. She turned her face up until she saw the bare black branches of a linden and a low, ominous gray November sky beyond the skeletal tree. Antique iron gas lamps glowed softly, activated by solenoids that had mistaken the wintry morning for the onset of dusk. At the top of the hill stood the Massachusetts State House, and at the bottom the traffic was heavy where Mount Vernon intersected Charles Street.

  Bernstein’s Delicatessen. Yes, of course. It was Tuesday, and she had been at Bernstein’s when... when something happened.

  What? What had happened at Bernstein’s?

  And where was the deli bag?

  She let go of the iron railing, raised her hands, and blotted her eyes on her blue knit gloves.

  Gloves. Not hers, not these gloves. The myopic man in the Russian hat. His black leather gloves. That was what had frightened her.

  But why had she been gripped by hysteria, overwhelmed by dread at the sight of them? What was so frightening about black gloves?

  Across the street, an elderly couple watched her intently, and she wondered what she had done to draw their attention. Though she strained to remember, she could not summon the faintest recollection of her journey up the hill. The past three minutes—perhaps longer?—were utterly blank. She must have run up Mount Vernon Street in a panic. Evidently, judging by the expressions on the faces of those observing her, she had made quite a spectacle of herself.

  Embarrassed, she turned away from them and started hesitantly down Mount Vernon Street, back the way she had come. At the bottom, just around the corner, she found her bag of groceries lying on its side on the pavement. She stood over it for long seconds, staring at the crumpled brown bundle, trying to recall the moment when she had dropped it. But where that moment should have been, her memory contained only grayness, nothingness.

  What’s wrong with me?

  A few items had spilled from the fallen parcel, but none was torn open, so she put them back in the paper sack.

  Unsettled by her baffling loss of control, weak in the knees, she headed home, her breath pluming in the frosty air. After a few steps she halted. Hesitated. Finally she turned back toward Bernstein’s.

  She stopped just outside the deli and had to wait only a minute or two before the man in the Russian hat and the tortoiseshell glasses came out with a grocery bag of his own.

  “Oh.” He blinked in surprise. “Uh ... listen, did I say I’m sorry? The way you stormed out of there, I thought maybe I’d only meant to say it, you know—”

  She stared at his leather-sheathed right hand where it gripped the brown paper bag. He gestured with his other hand as he spoke, and she followed it as it described a brief, small pattern in the chilly air. The gloves did not frighten her now. She could not imagine why the sight of them had thrown her into a panic.

  “It’s all right. I was here waiting to apologize. I was startled and... and it’s been an unusual morning,” she said, quickly turning away from him. Over her shoulder, she called out, “Have a nice day.”

  Although her apartment was not far away, the walk home seemed like an epic journey over vast expanses of gray pavement.

  What’s wrong with me?

  She felt colder than the November day could explain.

  She lived on Beacon Hill, on the second floor of a four-story house that had once been the home of a nineteenth-century banker. She’d chosen the place because she liked the carefully preserved period detail: elaborate ceiling moldings, medallions above the doorways, mahogany doors, bay windows with French panes, two fireplaces (living room, bedroom) with ornately carved and highly polished marble mantels. The rooms had a feeling of permanence, continuity, stability.

  Ginger prized constancy and stability more than anything, perhaps as a reaction to having lost her mother when she was only twelve.

  Still shivering even though the apartment was warm, she put away the groceries in the breadbox and refrigerator, then went into the bathroom to look closely at herself in the mirror. She was very pale. She did not like the hunted, haunted look in her eyes.

  To her reflection, she said, “What happened out there, shnook? You were a real meshuggene, let me tell you. Totally farfufket. But why? Huh? You’re the big-shot doctor, so tell me. Why?”

  Listening to her voice as it echoed off the high ceiling of the bathroom, she knew she was in serious trouble. Jacob, her father, had been a Jew by virtue of his genes and heritage, and proud of it, but he had not been a Jew by virtue of his religious practices. He seldom went to synagogue and observed holidays in the same secular spirit with which many fallen-away Christians celebrated Easter and Christmas. And Ginger was one step farther removed from the faith than Jacob had been, for she called herself an agnostic. Furthermore, while Jacob’s Jewishness was integral, evident in everything he did and said, that was not true of Ginger. If asked to define herself, she would have said, “Woman, physician, workaholic, political dropout,” and other things before finally remembering to add, “Jew.” The only time Yiddish peppered her speech was when she was in trouble, when she was deeply worried or scared, as if on a subconscious level she felt those words possessed talismanic value, charms against misfortune and catastrophe.

  “Running through the streets, dropping your groceries, forgetting where you are, afraid when there’s no reason to be afraid, acting like a regular farmishteh, she said disdainfully to her reflection. “People see you behaving like that, they’ll think for sure you’re a shikker, and people don’t go to doctors who’re drunkards. Nu?”

  The talismanic power of the old words worked a little magic, not much but enough to bring color to her cheeks and soften the stark look in her eyes. She stopped shivering, but she still felt chilled.

  She washed her face, brushed her silver-blond hair, and changed into pajamas and a robe, which was her usual ensemble for a typically self-indulgent Tuesday. She went into the small spare
bedroom that she used as a home office, took the well-thumbed Taber’s Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary from the bookshelf, and opened it to the F listings.

  Fugue.

  She knew what the word meant, though she did not know why she had come in here to consult the dictionary when it could tell her nothing new. Maybe the dictionary was another talisman. If she looked at the word in cold print, it would cease to have any power over her. Sure. Voodoo for the overeducated. Nevertheless, she read the entry:

  fugue (fyug) [L. fuga, flight]. Serious personality dissociation. Leaving home or surroundings on impulse. Upon recovering from the fugue state there usually is loss of memory for actions occurring while in the state.

  She closed the dictionary and returned it to the shelf.

  She had other reference volumes that could provide more detailed information about fugues, their causes and significance, but she decided not to pursue the matter. She simply could not believe her transient attack had been a symptom of a serious medical problem.

  Maybe she was under too much stress, working too hard, and maybe the overload had led to that one, isolated, transient fugue. A two- or three-minute blank. A little warning. So she would continue taking off every Tuesday and would try to knock off work an hour earlier each day, and she would have no more problems.

  She had worked very hard to be the doctor that her mother had hoped she would be, to make something special of herself and thereby honor her sweet father and the long-dead but well-remembered and desperately missed Swede. She had made many sacrifices to come this far. She had worked more weekends than not, had forgone vacations and most other pleasures. Now, in only six months, she would finish her residency and establish a practice of her own, and nothing would be allowed to interfere with her plans. Nothing was going to rob her of her dream.

  Nothing.

  It was November 12.

  3. Elko County, Nevada

  Ernie Block was afraid of the dark. Indoor darkness was bad, but the darkness of the outdoors, the vast blackness of night here in northern Nevada, was what most terrified Ernie. During the day he favored rooms with several lamps and lots of windows, but at night he preferred rooms with few windows or even no windows at all because sometimes it seemed to him that the night was pressing against the glass, as if it were a living creature that wanted to get in at him and gobble him up. He obtained no relief from drawing the drapes, for he still knew the night was out there, waiting for its chance.

  He was deeply ashamed of himself. He did not know why he had recently become afraid of the dark. He just was.

  Millions of people shared his phobia, of course, but nearly all of them were children. Ernie was fifty-two.

  On Friday afternoon, the day after Thanksgiving, he worked alone in the motel office because Faye had flown to Wisconsin to visit Lucy, Frank, and the grandkids. She would not be back until Tuesday. Come December, they intended to close up for a week and both go to Milwaukee for Christmas with the kids; but this time Faye had gone by herself.

  Ernie missed her terribly. He missed her because she was his wife of thirty-one years and his best friend. He missed her because he loved her more now than he had on their wedding day. And because... without Faye, the nights alone seemed longer, deeper, darker than ever.

  By two-thirty Friday afternoon he had cleaned all the rooms and changed the linens, and the Tranquility Motel was ready for its next wave of journeyers. It was the only lodging within twelve miles, perched on a knoll north of the superhighway, a neat little way station on a vast expanse of sagebrush-strewn plains that sloped up into grassy meadows. Elko lay over thirty miles to the east, Battle Mountain forty miles to the west. The town of Carlin and the tiny village of Beowawe were closer, though from the Tranquility Motel Ernie had not a glimpse of either settlement. In fact, from the parking lot, no other building was visible in any direction, and there was probably no motel in the world more aptly named than this one.

  Ernie was now in the office, working with a can of wood stain, touching up a few scratches on the oak counter where guests signed in and checked out. The counter was not really in bad shape. He was just keeping busy until customers started pulling in from Interstate 80 in the late afternoon. If he did not keep his mind occupied, he would start thinking about how early dusk arrived in November, and he would begin to worry about nightfall, and then by the time darkness actually came, he would be as jumpy as a cat with a can tied to its tail.

  The motel office was a shrine to light. From the moment he had opened at six-thirty this morning, every lamp had been burning. A squat fluorescent lamp with a flexible neck stood on the oak desk in the work area behind the check-in counter, casting a pale rectangle on the green felt blotter. A brass floor lamp glowed in the corner by the file cabinets. On the public side of the counter was a carousel of postcards, a wall rack holding about forty paperbacks, another rack full of free travel brochures, a single slot machine by the door, and a beige sofa flanked by end tables and ginger-jar lamps equipped with three-way bulbs—75, 100, and 150 watts—which were turned up all the way. There was a frosted-glass ceiling fixture, too, with two bulbs, and of course most of the front wall of the office featured a large window. The motel faced south-southwest, so at this time of day the declining sun’s honey-colored beams angled through the enormous pane, giving an amber tint to the white wall behind the sofa, fracturing into hundreds of bright erratic lines in the crackled glaze of the ginger-jar lamps, and leaving blazing reflections in the brass medallions that ornamented the tables.

  When Faye was here, Ernie left some of the lamps off because she was sure to remark on the waste of electricity and extinguish a few of them. Leaving a lamp unlit made him uneasy, but he endured the sight of dead bulbs in order to keep his secret. As far as he knew, Faye was not aware of the phobia that had been creeping up on him during the past four months, and he did not want her to know because he was ashamed of this sudden strangeness in himself and because he did not want to worry her. He did not know the cause of his irrational fear, but he knew he would conquer it, sooner or later, so there was no sense in humiliating himself and causing Faye unnecessary anxiety over a temporary condition.

  He refused to believe that it was serious. He had been ill only rarely in his fifty-two years. He had only been laid up in the hospital once, after taking a bullet in the butt and another one in the back during his second tour of duty in Vietnam. There had never been mental illness in his family, and Ernest Eugene Block was absolutely sure-as-hell-and-without-a-doubt not going to be the first one of his clan to go crawling and whimpering to a psychiatrist’s couch. You could bet your ass on that and never have to worry what you would sit on. He would tough this out, weird as it was, unsettling as it was.

  It had begun in September, a vague uneasiness that built in him as nightfall approached and that remained until dawn. At first he was not troubled every night, but it got steadily worse, and by the middle of October, dusk always brought with it an inexplicable spiritual distress. By early November the distress became fear, and during the past two weeks his anxiety grew until now his days were measured—and almost totally defined—by this perplexing fear of the darkness to come. For the past ten days, he’d avoided going out after nightfall, and thus far Faye had not noticed, though she could not remain oblivious much longer.