Ring of Years Read online

  Ring of Years

  A novel

  Grant Oliphant

  Edited by

  Exciting Press

  For Aradhna

  whose belief makes all the difference

  Contents

  Prologue

  1. Fish in a Barrel

  2. Daddy Dearest

  3. That Was All A Long Time Ago

  4. Goodbye With A Vengeance

  5. Night-night, Bright Light

  6. Voices From the Other Side

  7. Love Ripens into Something Awful

  8. Wouldn’t You Like to Know?

  9. Noises in a Prison

  10. Your Basic No-No Combo, Supersized

  11. Guess!

  12. Triumph of a Lesser God

  13. The Girl inside the House inside the Box

  14. Someone Else’s Miseries

  15. A Scream of Dust

  16. Prisoners of Small Things

  17. Reunion

  18. A Dead and Lonely Place

  19. The Wishing Space

  20. Butterflies

  21. Do What’s Right

  22. How Jackie Kennedy Must Have Felt

  23. Awakening

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  A Note from the Publisher

  “Daylight leaks in, and sluggishly I surface from my own dreams into the common dream and things assume again their proper places…”

  Jorge Luis Borges

  (Translated from the Spanish by Alastair Reid)

  Prologue

  No one thought to protect the girl. Why would they? From their perspective, what they have so slanderously labeled her “nightmare” is over. Nightmare. Like they even know the meaning of the word. The visitor shakes her head bitterly.

  She and the girl understand what real nightmares are. Or at least they are beginning to.

  The visitor walks up the long corridor from the parking garage, easily blending in with the stream of relatives and friends coming to visit their ailing loved ones. A cop ambles past, and she feels her breath catch. The cops and the feds and the whole sorry murderous lot of them weren’t happy about having to let her go so quickly. They would just love it finding her here.

  The corridor spills out into the hospital’s main lobby, where she steps into a crowded elevator. The button for the fifth floor is already lit, so she slides to the back and waits. When the doors open again, she lets a young couple and their child step off first. One of the nurses behind the central desk glances up with a perfunctory smile and turns her attention back to her work. During visiting hours, everyone is welcome.

  The girl’s room is midway down the corridor on the right. The visitor checks her watch and slows her pace. At precisely half past one a nurse emerges from the room, scribbles something in a chart and heads back up the hall. With a casual glance behind her to make sure no one’s watching, the visitor slips inside.

  The girl will be alone for at least twenty minutes.

  The lights in the room are out and the shades are partially drawn, admitting just enough light to see by. From what the visitor has been able to learn, the girl has been slipping in and out of consciousness since the attack. Her recovery has not been helped by the fact that she already knows what happened. A mistake, supposedly. A mistake. As if she believes that. The truth is they just couldn’t wait to start putting their vile spin on the whole tragedy, to start filling her brain with lies.

  The visitor feels her knees weaken when she sees the girl. She is lying on her side, curled up in a surprisingly tiny ball, her eyes clamped shut, her clenched fists propping up her cheek. Her skin seems to be drawn too tightly over her face, which is unnaturally thin and gray, and her lips are pressed hard together like she’s trying to keep something unpleasant out of her mouth. She was always an especially beautiful child, and when she slept she could shame the angels. But the angels would feel only pity and sorrow for her now. Pity over what she has lost, sorrow over what it has done to her.

  The visitor kneels beside her and runs her fingers gently through the girl’s long hair. She whispers her name but gets no answer and can tell from the slow pace of the girl’s breathing that she won’t. The visitor’s eyes blur, and she wipes away a tear just as it’s about to fall onto the girl’s face. “What have they done to us?” she whispers.

  She pries open the girl’s hand and interlaces her delicate fingers with her own, then leans forward and gently kisses her lips. If only she could make the pain go away like this. If only this was all it took.

  “It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” she says, resting her wet cheek against the girl’s. “But don’t you worry, precious one. I’ll make it right for us. I will, I promise.”

  1

  Fish in a Barrel

  Natalie shifts, trying to find a comfortable perch on the narrow barstool. The dirtball leans in toward her, bringing his face closer to hers, so that she can smell the Wild Turkey on his breath. And cigars. He isn’t smoking one now, but the odor clings to him, bitter and heavy. Some things you just can’t get rid of. Like the faint white band around his finger where his wedding ring undoubtedly was until maybe twenty minutes ago, when he walked into the nightclub looking for some action.

  It took him all of a minute to zero in on her, an attractive young woman sitting alone at the bar. She’s dressed like someone who works in an office, but with style-a flash of thigh, a hint of cleavage. There’s a loaded martini in front of her, the glass sweat sparkling in the light, and a lipstick-stained cigarette smoldering in a mock crystal ashtray. Everything’s code. The work attire says respectable, the cigarette says experienced, the martini says party girl. And the subtle gold stud in the right side of her nose says exotic.

  Perfect jerk bait.

  She’s hot and she knows it, not because she sees herself that way – she doesn’t place much stock in looks – but because it’s her job to be hot. You want to use an attractive lure when you go fishing for creeps.

  Phil’s opening gambit was some lame line about her making the place more radiant. Guys like this, she normally cuts off at the knees. But Phil is her designated sweetheart for the evening, so she humored him, flashed him a slight smile. And now here they are, bar chums talking about the usual nothing.

  His whiskey-softened eyes stare into hers, too close. She edges away, and he laughs. He taps his nose, nodding at hers. “You’re into piercing?”

  She takes a long, slow drag on her cigarette and parts her lips to release a thin white curlicue. Do it right and men will think they see angels in the smoke.

  Phil watches appreciatively as the vaporous wisp curls up past her face. She knows what he’s asking. He wants to know what other parts of her body she’s had pierced, like her nipples or her clit.

  Absently, the way people push a book of matches or a coaster around, she nudges her purse a few inches down the bar in his direction. Almost like an offering, an expression of trust.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” she asks playfully.

  “As a matter of fact I would.”

  “You have something in mind?”

  “How about we go someplace quiet just the two of us, have some fun?”

  Smooth guy, this Phil.

  Not bad looking, though. Tall, athletic, full head of hair, just the right touch of gray at his temples. Dressed nicely enough, if you like suits, which Natalie doesn’t. Not that she cares much either way. Guys in blue jeans can be assholes, too.

  She points to the shadow on his ring finger. “But you’re married,” she protests in a light-hearted girl-squeak that is meant to suggest that she finds it amusing, that she doesn’t really mind.

  “Oh that.” Annoyed, he looks down at his finger as if it has betrayed him, as if it isn�
�t really his. He sighs and shakes his head sadly. She can tell he’s working out his story, praying fervently to the gods of getting laid that he doesn’t screw this up. “You usually so observant?”

  “Only with married men.”

  “I qualify in name only.” His voice wavers between somber and elated; he’s not sure what’s appropriate. “We’re getting divorced. The whole relationship is so over it doesn’t even count anymore, believe me.” He pats her knee as if he’s consoling her.

  She lifts his hand away and guides it up onto the bar. “So it wouldn’t be like cheating?”

  “Exactly!” he beams. “No one gets hurt. Just two adults having fun.”

  God, how romantic. She wonders about the women who find this kind of pitch alluring.

  “You have a place in mind?” she asks.

  “The Hilton. I’ll get us a room.”

  He is so focused on her, so intent on her answer, that it looks like he’s stopped breathing. His whole body is paralyzed by its craving for her reply, its need to know whether this woman that he met only twenty minutes ago is ever going to stop asking him stupid questions and just agree to sleep with him.

  Natalie has what she needs, but there’s one other thing she wants to know, a detail she’s curious about. “You’re safe, aren’t you?” she asks. “I mean, I hate to ask, but these days, well, you know.”

  “I know exactly,” he reassures her. “And I’m glad you asked because otherwise I would have.”

  Probably a lie. “So you are safe?”

  “Totally. I haven’t really been with anyone, to be honest.”

  Definitely a lie. She waits, twirling her glass, giving him a chance. But he doesn’t ask whether she’s safe, just keeps staring at her, waiting for her to say she’ll go with him, and she has her answer—in addition to everything else, Phil is careless. Suddenly she feels sad and doesn’t want to be there anymore.

  “Let me just run to the ladles’ room first” she says, picking up her purse and flashing the kind of smile that promises exactly what he wants.

  He’s so excited he can barely contain himself. “Hurry, “ he urges hoarsely.

  The bar is separated from the nightclub’s dance floor by a tableau of naked nymphs etched into a wall of frosted glass. It’s the perfect artistic expression for a place like this, not as a matter of culture but as a matter of commerce. All those tits frolicking around them make the male patrons horny, which inspires them to drink more. The drinking makes them all the more certain that they’re sex gods on the verge of conquest or rejects doomed to another dreary night with Mr. Hand. Either way, they drink more and stare at the tits, subliminal progenitors of the whole vicious but very lucrative cycle. Natalie has no doubt what Phil will be ogling in her absence.

  Until, of course, he realizes what’s happened.

  Natalie turns a corner and the nymph orgy gives her cover as she heads quickly to the nightclub’s entrance and out into the cool evening. Another woman, a sliver of tough flesh in black jeans and a puffy black-and-gold Starter jacket, is waiting for her just outside. “Get him?” she asks, extinguishing a cigarette.

  Natalie reaches into her purse and pulls out a tape recorder. “Fish in a barrel,” she says, popping the tape into her employer’s hand.

  “Damn.”

  Maureen Flanagan stares briefly at the tiny black cassette before pocketing it. The crisp night air swallows her exclamation in a flash of vapor, and Natalie is grateful that Maureen has thought to bring along her coat. She doesn’t like carrying one herself—it makes the ditch more difficult. You can’t tell a guy you’ll be right back, you just have to powder your nose, it’ll only be a minute, and then just idly pick up your jacket. Even the dumbest ones would see through that; most of them, at least.

  The two women start up the narrow Pittsburgh street. This isn’t a place to linger. Any minute now, Phil will catch on to the fact that his sure thing has taken a walk on him, and that with her has gone the promise of getting laid. Men with major hard-ons don’t react well to that sort of disappointment—nothing makes a guy surlier than a busted erection. He’ll come looking for her, and when he does it’ll be courtesy of a nasty testosterone meltdown.

  “Why damn? You’re not rooting for the guys now, are you?” Natalie chides as Maureen, walking as briskly as a lifetime of Camels will allow, struggles to keep up.

  “That’ll be the day.” Maureen cups a match in her hand and lights another cigarette. “Just once, though,” she sighs, exhaling a thick plume of dazzling white smoke, “I’d like to have one of the little shits turn out to be innocent.”

  “Give it up.”

  “A girl can dream. Listen, I need a favor. You got a few minutes right now?”

  Natalie’s plans are flexible, same as always. School, work, life, all of it’s fudgeable, except maybe the work part, and even with that the timetables are up for grabs. Cheaters really are like fish; they feed at certain times, in certain places. You miss them one day, you can always catch them the next. Just study their habits and eventually you’ll reel them in.

  What she really wants right now, though. is some time alone. And she has to stop by home first to check on her aunt. Still, Maureen never asks her for a favor, so she agrees. ”A few, shoot.”

  Maureen grabs her elbow and leads her against the light across Penn Avenue. “Phil’s wife,” she says hesitantly. “I promised to deliver this tape to her right away. She wants to meet you.”

  Natalie freezes a few steps shy of the curb. “No way.” she spits. “That isn’t part of the deal. I’m just the bait, remember?”

  That was the understanding when she was hired: no making her meet with the clients. Her job is the sting; delivering the bad news, being scrutinized, going under the microscopes of wives who wonder what it is their husbands find appealing in another woman, that’s Maureen’s business. Natalie wants no part of it.

  The driver of a pickup truck leans on his horn as he swerves past, and she flips him off. “Look, I know this isn’t what we agreed,” Maureen says, pulling her out of the street, “but this client, she’s paying a lot of money, and right now I need it. I know you don’t like to get dirty like this, but it would really help me out.”

  Some kids from the Art institute go by, two guys and a girl, not much younger than Natalie, a half dozen years maybe. They’re tall and thin, dressed in baggy black, and except for the youthfulness of their faux seen-it-all faces they look like crones, stooped and world-weary. One of the boys is carrying a sculpture, a shapely female nude with a blood-red clock for a head, and Natalie thinks it’s not bad if that’s how your tastes run. The other boy checks out her breasts as they pass, and when he sees she’s looking at him, smiles shyly and turns away. A second later he mutters a comment Natalie can’t make out, but his companions laugh and she knows he’s atoned for the smile and any vulnerability it implied.

  She wants to refuse, but Maureen has become something like a friend, and this is as close as she’s ever seen her come to pleading. “You want me to feel your pain, don’t you?”

  Maureen smiles. “Misery loves company. Please?”

  “His wife really wants to do this right now?”

  Maureen nods.

  “Jesus. Fine, OK, but just this once. Agreed?”

  “Agreed.”

  A few steps down they enter a restaurant popular with the theater-going crowd. “You mean his wife was here the whole time?” Natalie asks.

  “She says she doesn’t want to wait” Maureen explains.

  It’s a bizarre thing, Natalie thinks. Who the hell stands vigil just a few doors down from the nightclub where her husband is trying to play the field?

  The restaurant is like most semi-fancy places, dark and overdone. There’s a bar to the left, mirrors and chrome, and stairs carpeted in a wishy-washy blue leading to an upstairs seating area. Up on the balcony somewhere, a man is attempting a lounge lizard act with a piano. The theaters are dark tonight so the place is empty, except for a couple g
uys at the bar talking in the hushed tones of pub conspirators.

  The hostess leads them around the stairs into a small back room. Four tables, only one of them occupied, by a woman who immediately rises to greet them. She’s what people call handsome, attractive in a mature and refined way: dark hair pulled back, skin polished, perfunctory smile, clothing flattering but not revealing, nails elegant and not too long. She looks like someone who has time on her hands and spends it riding horses.

  Her affluent brown eyes never really fix on Maureen; they flick away and settle on Natalie. “Is this her?” she asks curtly when Maureen says hello. Her tone suggests that she is accustomed to having her inquiries answered.

  “Yes,” Maureen answers. “Natalie Krill, this is—"

  “She’s beautiful.” the woman interrupts. “I can see why he might find her appealing. Please, take your coat off.”

  This is directed at Natalie, and not as a polite invitation. Phil’s wife is studying her—she wants to see more of the tramp her husband found so alluring.

  Natalie suddenly feels more like a piece of meat than she did when Phil was salivating over her. At least then she knew what her role was, and could distance herself from it. There is no distancing herself from how Phil’s wife stares at her as she pulls off her coat. The woman’s eyes rove over her, picking her apart, reducing her to the qualities that might appeal to her husband’s libido.

  “Nice figure,” the woman comments dryly. She gestures for Maureen and Natalie to sit and does so herself. “And young. He likes both, I’ve noticed. The nose piercing surprises me. That I would think he’d find unappealing. But he likes breasts, and yours would impress him.” She turns her attention to Maureen. ‘‘I’m guessing he took the bait?”