Houdini Heart Read online

  All that I loved has turned into money. Even that is almost gone.

  ~

  CHAPTER ONE

  ~

  I’m down to a third of a bottle of Riesling, and there she is, walking by my door again. Is she stopping? The footsteps were there, and then they weren’t there. I’m listening with half an ear. The other half listens to the glimmer of a story, something I might write about. It’s a small idea, not yet worthy of a book, not even of a movie; but it’s the first idea I’ve had in a long time.

  There is the smallest scraping outside my door. Timid. Hesitant. If I didn’t know about the rancid old woman who wanders the halls of River House (reminds me of a movie, which movie? won’t come), and considering the mood I’m in, I might think those sounds something a spider would make. A big spider.

  Nothing for it. If I don’t answer the door, something tells me she’ll stay there, fussing, making her spider sounds. Maybe she needs help. Maybe someone else needs help. A minute of talking to me, she’ll see I’m no help to anyone, and then maybe she’ll bugger off. I set aside my laptop (on which nothing but CHAPTER ONE is written) and go to my door.

  When I open it, no one is there.

  ~

  It’s early afternoon when I awaken. With no shades, no curtains, no Venetian blinds, sunlight falls across my bed like a drunk. If there’s one thing I know about, it’s falling drunks.

  Hot, headachy, shaky, slightly dizzy, I’ll shower, then take my notebook, sit in the library for awhile. In the midst of all those books, all those words written by all those other writers, surely there’s an idea going begging. The one I had in the middle of the night looks brassy by daylight.

  ~

  I’m hungry. But it will pass. I can’t eat. Food makes me sick. Like a squirrel or a rat, or a Margaret Atwood heroine, I’m learning to live on seeds. Bread and butter sometimes. A piece of fruit. But mostly seeds. And wine.

  I’m just about to cross High Street on my way up Main to the Little Sokoki library; I’m waiting for the light to turn green, when, on a whim, I look back at River House. It’s what I used to do—stand for as long as I could down on the street, my mother’s bony impatient hand attached to my bony stubborn wrist, and gaze up at the five floors of red brick, the roof of rich purple tiles, the whimsical towers at each end of the building (but best is the tallest widest tower on the corner of River House rising above me), at all the tall windows running a third the length of Main, and half the length of High—and I do it now. There’s someone in my room. I see someone or something pass across my window, the one innocent of covering on the third floor, and sited under the tallest tower at the angled corner of High Street and Main.

  I bolt back through the large outer doors and into the lobby, ignore the elevator which is at the top of the building anyway, and run up the enclosed stairs. If someone is in my room, they’re looking at my things. I have nothing to steal, but I have everything to hide.

  I locked my door. I know I did. I have my keys in my hand. Did I forget to lock my door? Damn it. Damn it.

  My hand is shaking as I try my doorknob. It’s locked. I was sure I’d locked it, and I was right—I did lock it. So I unlock it, push open my door. No one is there. Nothing is changed. I walk to the window, look through the wavy glass down onto the sidewalk where I stood looking up only minutes ago. I half expect to see myself there. (Hello, me!)

  If someone has been in my room, they are not here now. There is only the one room, an open closet, and the bathroom. My bed is still mussed, the bottom half of my men’s pajamas (his pajamas) still hangs from the bathroom knob, my empty glass is on the floor by my pillow, the empty bottle next to it. No one has been here.

  I did not mistake what I saw in the window. So. What else? I must have mistaken the window.

  Mine is apartment 3-6. It’s the smallest of all the units in River House, fitted into the corner of the building. Having seen the floor plan posted on the wall near the manager’s office, I’ve discovered my room is not a square or a rectangle, but a chevron. High Street does not meet Main at an exact right angle. This means that the left wing of River House does not meet the right wing of River House at an exact right angle.

  Above or below, there is no other room quite like my room. How could I have mistaken the window?

  I make it to the library by three. As I did in the book store on the ground floor of River House, I look for my books. By pretending to search for an author whose last name begins with the same letter as mine, I see two of them. The Windigo’s Daughter and The White Bee. For one long moment, I come almost alive. It’s not very good (call me surprised), but writing The White Bee gave me pleasure.

  Pleasure. I’ve forgotten it. Like awe or excited anticipation or love, I can hardly remember the feeling.

  At six o’clock I do not bring back an idea—instead I bring back books. Until I find myself writing, I will read. I’ve chosen tales of horror and ghost stories. Horror, laced with fairy, worked for me once. Perhaps it will work again. In truth, I chose horror because all I know has come down to that one word—wait. I lie. All that I know has come down to two words. Horror. And. Disappointment.

  Nothing is as it was. It never was as I hoped it would be. Nothing is.

  It’s one-thirty in the morning and she’s out there again, walking up and down the third floor corridor. This time there is no scraping, no spidery scratching. Only the sound of thick shoes on the thin carpet, slowly approaching and slowly receding, slowly approaching.

  This time I will ignore her. I have a book to write.

  ~

  CHAPTER ONE

  ~

  I awake to darkness. My light is off. I don’t remember turning it off. My machine is still open on the bed. Like me, it’s been asleep. I lie here for a moment, getting my bearings, feeling my way. I am not yet used to being here, not used to having no proper bed so that essentially I sleep on the floor. There is no table. There are no chairs. I am not used to where the window is, the closet, the bathroom. There is no moon outside, and only the sound of the occasional car driving in the night.

  I get up, move around, replenish my glass.

  ~

  He used to say we were stuck with each other. He said that no amount of turning or twisting could unglue us. And god knows, we both tried. Even after Kate died, we could not pry loose one from the other. Most of the time, I cannot remember his face. But now, perched on a low-slung window sill in River House, looking down on Main Street at night, gas lit and finally quiet, I see him clearly. I see him as he was the last time I really looked at him: long arms and long legs, toneless white flesh and thinning yellow hair. Manitou eyed.

  He said I had his heart. He’d given me it the moment we met. Hearing this, I thought of something Dante wrote.

  When Love appeared to me so suddenly

  That I still shudder at the memory

  Joyous Love seemed to me, the while he held

  My heart within his hands, and in his arms

  My lady lay asleep wrapped in a veil.

  He woke her then and trembling and obedient

  She ate that burning heart out of his hand.

  ~

  There is a health food co-op here in Little Sokoki. It’s very successful and very expensive. Healthy wealthy people go there. Or I imagine they do. I imagine they are healthy and hale and concerned with the poisons we are fed in the name of profit. I am already full of poison. What difference could it make to add more?

  In the early afternoon of my eighth day, I’ve made my way down Main Street to the Little Sokoki art deco department store, crossed the iron footbridge over the Blackstone Brook, passed the health food co-op, and then walked a further mile on my own two feet to Price Chopper. Price Chopper has cheaper wine. Its nuts and seeds are bagged and salted and no doubt full of toxins. Waiting in the express line, I can’t help looking through the supermarket tabloids. After all, he’s on the cover of every one of them. And so am I. But the way I look now, the clothes I wear, w
ho would know it was me? The woman behind me leans forward to cluck her tongue. I think she’s going to make some remark about him, some expression of pity or disgust. Instead she says, “I worry about Jeannie now that Brent’s left her flat for that crazy Amelie. Jeannie didn’t deserve it. You can see from the photos she’s a good girl.”

  I look at the photos again. I don’t see a good girl. I don’t see a bad girl. I see a rich ambitious woman who’s made her choice. I understand Brent’s ex down to the bone. Little kids mess with ambition, they screw with your art. Little kids are worse than men. You can’t kill your children. My heart, numb for weeks, begins to bleed. Oh, my poor little Kate, my poor little Kate. I hide my eyes so that I might hide my tears. No crying in Price Chopper. No crying. No bleeding.

  Walking the same distance back, someone speaks to me. I am so surprised I come very close to dropping my four bottles of zinfandel. It happens between the River House Theater lobby on the ground floor of River House and the shop for rent.

  “Hello,” says a voice to my left as I am shifting my plastic bag of wine and seeds from one hand to the other.

  It’s a young man. He’s sitting on a sidewalk bench provided by “The friends of Margaret O’Dell.”

  I look at him, just long enough to be considered polite, but not long enough to be thought interested. There’s an open satchel on the bench by his side. In his hand, he’s holding a small camcorder.

  “Hello.” Even to my own ears, my voice sounds odd. It should sound odd. I have said virtually nothing aloud for more than a month now. No more than I must to make my needs understood. My scratchy unused voice does not stop him. But I am used to that. It happens. If I do not talk, people must judge me by looks alone. By looks alone, I am an attractive woman. But only by looks alone. By looks alone, he is an attractive young man. Exotic, even beautiful. But young. At least ten years younger than I am. Maybe fifteen years younger. Hell, he could be twenty years younger. Not that it matters. He could be exactly my age and it would not matter. I have no interest in young men. Or old men. I have no interest in men at all. Or in children. All of that has been seared away.

  He continues to speak. His voice is terrifying. “I’ve seen you before.” I sicken with fear. Here it comes. He knows me. He knows who I am, or who he thinks I am. He knows more than I do. He continues. “Near the elevator.” I would begin to relax, but the young man is raising his camcorder. He’s aiming it at me. For the first time I notice there is a dog on the bench beside him. The dog is not beautiful. He looks ragged, ill used. One eye is blue, the other red.

  I shy violently, making the bottles in my plastic bag clank together. “Don’t do that!”

  In my room a few moments later, it takes me half an hour to stop shaking.

  ~

  I forget names as soon as I hear them. I forget faces if they are not constantly in my face. I forget dates and interesting facts and things I’ve found important only a week before. I forget whether something actually happened to me, or if I only dreamed it. I forget so many things I am surprised to find I have a memory at all. If other people are like me, I am forgotten. If I am forgotten, I am safe.

  But other people aren’t like me. A killer is rare. Much rarer than books and movies and TV would have you believe.

  Leaves of old gold and wine lie scattered on the sidewalks from Cherry Street on the south to Hackmatack Common on the north, pumpkins grin on stoops, white paper ghosts flutter behind windows, and everywhere West Hackmatack goes there are tidy houses set back on tidy lawns.

  Faye’s house is a small brown saltbox on a small wooded lot snug between Mr. Hunnicutt’s white colonial and Mrs. Wheelock’s big red brick.

  As for the rest of the folks on West Hackmatack Street, they go about their business dreaming of church socials and town meetings, of fund raising for the new hospice, of the latest mess the school board’s made of the high school curriculum. Of deer season and wild turkey shoots, of husbands and wives and lovers and in-laws, of grocery bills and land taxes and the price of a cord of wood.

  And if they dream of Windigo or the little people, if they dream of Manitou or the Hidden Folk at all, they awake blessing their new god for keeping such things faraway and long ago.

  Not to mention untrue.

  ~

  For the past three nights, there’s been a ring of ice around the moon. And for each of these nights, deep under West Hackmatack Street, down near the otkon in its lair (which to the untutored eye looks merely like a possum with mange, but to one of sight looks more like a huge blue rodent of malign power), Manitou, tormented by presentiment and pestered with dreams of obvious and irritating allegory, has turned over, sighing in its sleep.

  ~

  I’m listening for the sound of her footsteps. The old woman ought to be walking by now. It’s two fifteen in the morning and I haven’t heard her yet.

  Aren’t we funny? Somewhere else, I might be worried about a woman I heard walking the corridors at night. Here, I worry that the woman is not walking the corridor. Is she dead in her efficiency unit? Did she choke on her dentures or have a hip give out, and suddenly falling, hit her head on the mantle? We don’t have mantles in River House. Maybe she’s had a stroke and even now she’s lying alone unable to cry out. Much more likely: the local sanitarium netted her—at long last.

  I don’t worry long though. I am actually writing. Nothing I am entirely sure of, but at least the words finally come. I’m writing my autobiography. Since biographies and autobiographies are the greatest fictions of all, naturally, I’m not telling the truth. Like all autobiographers, I’m creating a myth since myths are the greatest truths of all. Although someone (I can’t recall who) once said, “The biggest enemy of truth is not the lie—it’s the myth.”

  Whoever said that has no idea what a myth is. Whoever said that is no artist. Whoever said that believes “facts” are “truths.” Idiot. In any case, as a natural born liar, my autobiography is coming rather easily.

  There are no footsteps this night. No spider outside my door.

  ~

  I see her the next afternoon. I am two blocks from River House, on a side street of shops which would all be on Main Street if they could afford the rent. I am here because of the thrift shop. Other than my futon mattress, a cheap summer blanket, a cheap sheet and pillowcase set, a pillow and a bath towel, all found in a factory outlet store on the edge of town, and my seeds and my wine and my notebook from Price Chopper, as well as a box of #2 pencils, I’ve bought all I’ve so far needed here. Two wineglasses (I expect no company; the second glass is in case I break the first one), one fork, one table knife, one spoon, a small cooking pot, a bowl.

  I’m inspecting a large cup. I hadn’t thought I needed a cup, large or otherwise, but this one has caught my eye. Thick buttery yellow with a small rose-red rose almost like cloisonné on its crackled side, it reminds me of something. Perhaps my mother had one like it when I was young? It couldn’t have been my father. I don’t remember a father. Looking up from the cup on its shelf of mismatched kitchenware, I see her outside the charity shop. She is about four feet away staring at me through the shop’s window. This close, I see she has what must be psoriasis. Seeming to grow out from under her damp, limp, colorless hair, angry red scales cover half her low forehead, most of her right cheek. It’s begun its attack on her neck and chin.

  She is ugly enough without the psoriasis. It’s not that her nose is particularly ugly, or her eyes, or her mouth. It’s not even that they all sit in her face at slightly the wrong angles: the thin mouth slanting up on one side, down on the other, the left eye, wet and drooping, just that much higher than the right—it’s the petulance. It’s the stamp all over of sly ill-temper and craven ill-will.

  She is younger than I thought. Quite a bit younger. She’s not a girl but she’s not an old woman either. Fifties? Sixties?

  I cannot bear to look at her. I turn away. When I turn back, she is gone.

  I really don’t need a cup. I put it back.


  ~

  There’s something odd about my closet. Lying here, my laptop on my stomach, a glass of wine on the thin brown carpet by my side, I’ve been staring at it, not really seeing it. I’ve been reading a short story from a book of Daphne du Maurier’s short stories I brought “home” from the library: Don’t Look Now, a rotten peach of a tale. All about a husband and wife whose little girl has just drowned.

  Looking up from the ill-chosen pages, I see it now. In the corner of my corner room, my closet is too big. I mean, inside—there’s too much of it. I don’t understand how there can be so much inside what is so small outside. I get up, cross the room on my bare feet, look inside. I’m right. The inside of my closet is much larger than it has a right or reason to be. I tap the wall. What would a hollow wall sound like? I keep tapping in the hopes of finding out. Sounds like me tapping a wall. It hurts my knuckles.

  I should get back to work. I’m no longer writing an autobiography. I’ve bored myself into a complete impasse. Besides, I find myself turning again and again to the woman, to the girl, who can’t keep still. I find myself constructing a story around her. It’s turning into a mystery, perhaps even a ghost story…which suits my mood—and River House. Now that I live here, now that I call it home, River House doesn’t seem quite as ordinary anymore. It’s not a palace. It hasn’t been a palace for a long time. It’s not a hotel. What is it?

  I’m not sure what I think about this question.

  ~

  I’m right. There is something not quite kosher about my closet. I push my clothes out of the way, a matter of a single second’s effort. Aside from the usual overhead shelf on which I’ve piled the few things that would ordinarily go into a dresser, there is a low shelf in the back, more like a step, rising a foot from the closet floor. I’ve placed my shoes on this step shelf: a pair of black pumps with modest high heels, sturdy brown walking shoes, an old pair of black tennis shoes. The sandals I wear daily are left on the floor. Pushed to one side are my laptop case and the large leather bag. The leather bag is unpacked, or at least most of it is. What’s still inside it, is locked inside it. I pull out both the case and the bag; take the shoes from the shelf.