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.
Amazed 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-sighcrunch 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! rei!ained 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-bluffed 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 memor
y 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 nineteenthcentury 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)
withornately 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 whore 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
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.