Afterlife. Part 10

She tried to remember the patterns carved into the dead person's back from the photograph the detective had shown her.

She didn't know what to say. She felt like crying but worked to hold back her tears. "I guess I'm a wreck right now," she said.

When he spoke again, after nearly a minute had pa.s.sed, his voice was gentler than it had been. "Poor you. You think I'm like my mother and I'm going to end up going crazy and hurting Livy or something."

"Matty," she whispered, touching his arm. "I don't think that."

"I'm not stupid," he said. "She's where they send crazy people. And I'll end up there, too, because I see things sometimes. I just don't tell you about them. You'll never understand."

"Do you want to visit your mother?" Julie asked, grasping for something hopeful to say. "I can drive you down there."

Then he turned over, facing the wall, drawing the sheet back up to cover himself. "Turn out the light," he said, his voice a monotone. "Go to bed. I'm sorry Dad's dead. I'm sorry you're stuck with me. I wish you weren't falling apart every five minutes. I wish everything was different. But it's not. And no, I don't want to see my mother. Ever."

She left his bedroom, soon after, and sat on the stairs in the hall, wondering if the pain and the pressure she felt in her head would ever go away.

12.

Some nights, she stared at the wall of her bedroom and began imagining things, thinking that she heard Hut in the hallway. Livy had put the idea in her head-her bad dream about a ghost of a man.

His footsteps, heavy, coming toward her.

The bedroom door, open. Darkness in the hall beyond it.

Darkness seeping in to her room.

His breath upon her face.

Do you want me inside you?

Part Two

Chapter Eight.

1.

In the city: blue sky as far as he could see above the towering buildings. The sound of laughter and shouting and even some cussing from kids getting out of school in the city. The harsh words of others, tromping along, up from the subway steam. The shadows were still cool with the very last breath of spring, the sunlight beyond them, warm and fresh. He felt a little bounce in his step as he bounded up from the subway steps into wonderful daylight.

His name was Terry West, and he'd just gotten out of Harkness' lecture on the underpinnings of Jacobean Tragedy by accepting the fact that he was going to get a "D" in the survey course, anyway. Terry was feeling d.a.m.n good, and if that a.s.shole Franklin hadn't f.u.c.ked with his head that morning-on the subject of his academic future-it would be the perfect day. He caught a bus uptown to meet Anne for a beer at her little studio apartment. When he arrived, she had on that sweater that was bright yellow that made him just want to pull it off. Beneath it, she wore nothing, and his cold hands trembled as he touched the edge of her nipples-each one, special attention from his fingers while his tongue slipped between her lips, and she giggled when she felt his hardness, and he was thinking: life is better than anyone ever told me it was going to be life is better than anyone ever told me it was going to be.

In the middle of it, when he had just slipped inside her, he whispered to her that he thought he was in love with her, but he wasn't sure if she'd heard him, and that was cool. After they had s.e.x, he showered solo while Anne flicked on cable and watched the old Match Game Match Game show on The Game Show Network. When he got out of the shower, dripping as he went from tiny bathroom to tiny living area, he sat down beside her and stroked her hair. "I have to meet my mother in thirty minutes," she said. "She can't know that we're f.u.c.king." show on The Game Show Network. When he got out of the shower, dripping as he went from tiny bathroom to tiny living area, he sat down beside her and stroked her hair. "I have to meet my mother in thirty minutes," she said. "She can't know that we're f.u.c.king."

"I thought she liked me."

"She thinks I'm still a virgin," Anne said, and squirmed a bit when he tried nuzzling her neck. "She's living in the 20th century or something." century or something."

"I guess you're going shopping?"

Anne nodded. "That's all she does. That's all she ever wants to do."

"Gee, your neck tastes good," he said, trying to kiss her one more time, but she pulled away, and pawed the ends of the sweater arms over her hands like little mitts.

"s.e.x isn't everything." She shrugged away from him, got off the bed and sauntered to the bathroom. "When I get out of the shower, you need to be gone."

"How about tonight? Maybe later?" he asked.

"Maybe."

None of this ruined his good mood. He got outside, and sat on the stoop of the brownstone next to her building, and lit up a cigarette. Had a good smoke, watching people walk by, checking out the pretty girls, feeling a little intimidated by some of the men in suits who looked as if they owned the world, wondering if he himself would ever own much. He grabbed a hot dog down at Gray's Papaya around two, and chowed down while calling up his buddy Rick who lived in a cool loft in Soho with four roommates (instead of at home with his mom, like Terry still did), and asked if they wanted to go shoot pool at Fat Cats on Christopher Street in about an hour.

Then, he'd gotten on the subway, and that's when he thought the man had looked at him funny. He was used to gay guys giving him looks-after all, he was athletic and trim and twenty-two-and it didn't offend him in the least. He'd always felt complimented, whether it was a girl or a guy. But this guy was looking at him differently.

It p.i.s.sed him off. He glared at the man. The man grinned, but then turned away. The man opened a newspaper and began reading it.

He wouldn't have thought anything more of this, except when he got off the train and began walking toward the exit, he accidentally dropped his keys, and when he squatted down to pick them up, he glanced back and noticed the guy was practically hovering over him.

Then, the man pa.s.sed by. Terry waited for him to continue up the steps to the outside.

Outside, Terry saw the usual crush of people-and the man he'd seen wasn't anywhere nearby. He called up Anne and left a message on her machine that he was with Rick and some others playing pool and maybe she might want to meet up after her mother left and they could grab pizza at Ray's or something. "Or maybe we can do something after Bio tomorrow. Okay? Call me ASAP babay-babay," he finished, their little injoke. When he dropped the cell phone in the pocket of his denim painter's pants, he felt around for cash. He counted up about fourteen bucks in single wadded-up bills, and that'd be enough for a couple of hours of pool and air-hockey, and with a few bucks for the kick-a.s.s jukebox at Fat Cats.

"I'm like four blocks from Fat Cats," he told Rick via cell phone. "Are you down there?"

"Yep, me and Joe and Debbie. Deb's kicking my b.u.t.t in air hockey. Want to say hi?"

"f.u.c.k. Anne'll cut off my d.i.c.k if she knows Deb's there. s.h.i.t. And I just told her to come down if she wanted."

"Maybe she won't," Rick said, and then the noise in the background rose as someone was yelling a victory yell and people were laughing. "A lot of cute girls here, dude."

"Yeah yeah," Terry said, and as he turned the corner toward Bleecker-to go get some more cigarettes-there was the man again.

As Terry pa.s.sed by him, the man said, "Terry? You're Terry West?"

He turned to face the guy, who didn't look strange or scary, just utterly normal and kind of bland.

"What's it to you?" Terry asked, and felt he sounded too wimpy.

2.

More than an hour later, when Terry awoke, the first thing he did was cough.

Something about his vision was off. He couldn't quite see. Things were blurry, and he tried to reach up to wipe his eyes clean, but his hands were tied behind his back.

He tugged at them, but they wouldn't budge.

He didn't remember a whole h.e.l.l of a lot since the man had been talking to him, talking about his mother, talking about some emergency, and talking to the point where something within Terry had felt a little tired and too confused to understand everything.

His breath returned to him, hot.

It was plastic of some kind over his face.

Tied around his neck-a cord pressed at his throat.

He tried to make out the shadowy figure that stood before him, but the light was too dim, and his own breathing had caused a fog within the plastic.

Soon, the air around his face got warmer, and when he inhaled as deeply as he could, the plastic sucked up against his mouth.

He tried kicking out, but his legs were tied to the chair.

Then, it was as if his lungs burned as he used every ounce of his energy to inhale what little air was left to him.

As he went, as he felt himself sink into unconsciousness, someone-a man's hands?-grabbed his left arm and held it as if trying to pull him back from the brink of death.

He sucked in as much air as he could, and kept inhaling, inhaling, inhaling, inhaling.

Chapter Nine.

1.

Julie arranged a little memorial service in May, just for close family and a few friends.

2.

They had no body to bury-it had officially been stolen, according to McGuane, and they suspected the killer himself had some access to the morgue that they'd been trying to pinpoint.

Julie felt for the children's sake, at least, there needed to be a service. She got Father Joe from Mel's church, St. Andrew's, to run through a liturgy just because Mel insisted on something religious, and Hut's parents had made it for the weekend, and her mother had brought her boyfriend, and even two of Livy's teachers had shown up.

Hut's mother and father flew in, and when Julie had a moment alone with Joanne Hutchinson, she asked her about Hut being an orphan 'til he was in his mid-teens.

"Steve wanted a son badly," she said. "I can't tell you what it was like for us. We had tried to have children for years. And then when our son died. Our first boy. Before Jeff." She called him "Jeff," not the nickname, "Hut," that Julie had only known him by. Even hearing the word, "Jeff," sounded like a different person. She could imagine him as a sweet kid. Helpful. Generous. "Well," Joanne said, "when the opportunity to take him in-Steve had been working with Big Brothers, and then got a call from a friend about some group home for kids who had been orphans all their lives...well, something got in us. It was like a gift from G.o.d, we thought. Steve loved working with teenage boys. He loved teaching them, and guiding them. He's a man's man, I guess, and he loves camping out and woodworking, and getting out with a football. Well, when he heard about Jeff's situation-about having lived as an orphan his entire life-he insisted we adopt him. Steve was raised in foster care. He knew the routine. When they met, they bonded immediately. You couldn't keep them apart." As she said this, Julie felt that Joanne Hutchinson was leaving something out. But it wasn't the time or place to ask. Yet, Julie got the distinct sense that Joanne had something more to say about Jeff.

Before they left on Sunday, Julie managed to get a few minutes with Joanne alone, while her husband was showering in their hotel room.

"I'm sorry to even bring this up," Julie said. "But there's so much about Hut I didn't know."

"He was quiet about his life, wasn't he?" Joanne said.

"I know this is a strange thing to bring up now, but when you adopted him, did you know much about where he'd been?"

"Somewhat. He had been in a group home for a year or so at that point," and then the tone of her voice changed-as if Joanne had guessed what this was about. "You mean the fire."

"Fire?"

"He never told you," she said.

"No." But even as she said this, Julie remembered his nightmares. He didn't have them often, but he had woken up more than once, early on, in the middle of the night, soaking the sheets with sweat. All he would tell her was that he had dreamed of something that happened when he was a boy, but he had never let her beyond that wall.

"I can't say I'm surprised. It must have been awful. He had been trapped in a building when a fire broke out-that another student had set-perhaps a year before we adopted him. He got out in time, but some of his cla.s.smates died. He wasn't burned, but had to spend time in the hospital for smoke inhalation."

"His asthma," Julie said.

"Yes, that and those night fears he had."

The mention of "night fears," reminded her of Hut, waking up in the middle of the night as if he were a Viet Nam vet experiencing post-traumatic stress syndrome. He'd nearly leap out of bed, and not be sure where he was. But it had only happened once or twice.

"Was it some kind of government program he was in, as a boy? Some special school that tested him?"

"I'm not really sure. He got a good education, though. He was smart as a whip, and was a lot smarter than either of us," Joanne said. "Sometimes, well, sometimes it was like he knew what I was thinking. He was perceptive. My goodness, he probably told you more than he ever told us. He never talked about those years. We loved him so much, Julie. More than was probably healthy for Steve. When our son turned away from us...well, it's all in the past. None of it really matters, does it? He was our son, we loved him. Please, let's not lose touch."

Julie hesitated asking the next question, but felt she had to, even though it seemed a betrayal of trust with Hut. "Can I ask you something that might be painful?"

"Go ahead."