Lost Boy Lost Girl Read Free Page B

she was needed, she stepped back, and the disaster happened. What else? Somewhere, I think, there’s a lot of fear, a big
old
fear. She feared the cause of her guilt: she feared what had made her needed. Some person, some man, loomed back there in Nancy’s life. He was terrifying.
    This is where we locate Nancy’s story: I can feel it stir.
    I’m reminded of what sometimes happened to me in Bangkok during the late seventies—I sensed death, actual Death, capering behind me on the crowded street, sending before him as his sign or sigil a naked Vietnamese girl running through the Patpong circus, a girl showing her bloody palms to the world.
    It’s so tempting to give Nancy a history similar to mine. A grim creature peering in from just offstage; and with her we have someone she failed to rescue from the hideous Death-figure. . . . For me, the naked Vietnamese girl represented a kind of salvation, the reawakening of my imagination; for her, it was only dread.
    I’m not sure what I think about this. It feels right, but looked at objectively it seems too much a by-product of my own story. Not to mention my imagination.
    Nancy’s story—I wonder if I’ll ever really get inside it, ever really
see
the beast that perched on her shoulder. But this is a start, maybe.
    From this window on the fourth floor of the Pforzheimer’s original building, Tim Underhill and Michael Poole once had looked down on wintry Jefferson Street as an infuriated motorist with a snowed-in car whipped his tire iron against the side of a bus moving slowly toward Cathedral Square. At the time, what they were looking at seemed like pure Millhaven.
    The sparse traffic on Jefferson Street swam through the hot, languid air. Directly below, a Pforzheimer valet in a short-sleeved brown uniform lounged against a parking meter. Across the street, a hunched old man in a seersucker suit, a bow tie, and a straw hat, the image of prosperous old-school midwestern propriety, picked his way down the red stone steps of the Millhaven Athletic Club. Some retired judge or doctor going home after a bowl of tomato soup and a turkey club. At his back, the weathered red brick facade of the athletic club was sturdy, peaceful, traditional; although less sturdy, the old man looked much the same. Tim watched him ease himself off the last step and down onto the sidewalk. He wondered where the doctor had parked his car. All the spaces in front of the club were empty.
    Working his elbows as if in a hurry, the old party in the jaunty hat and the spiffy bow tie proceeded directly across the sidewalk. He glanced quickly from side to side, then hitched up his shoulders and stepped down into Jefferson Street. To Tim, he no longer looked so peaceful. For an old guy who had just finished lunch, he was moving with an awkward, herky-jerky haste.
    Like a hideous dream-chariot, a long black car of antique design came rushing up the middle of Jefferson Street, heading straight toward the old man. Tim froze at his window; the retired doctor had more presence of mind. After a moment’s hesitation, he back-pedaled toward the curb, keeping an eye on the car racing toward him. The car corrected for his change of position. “Get out of there, old man!” Tim said aloud, still unable to believe that he was watching an attempted murder. “Go!
Move
!
”
    As the black car swung left toward the curb, the old man vaulted across three feet of roadway, came down on his toes, and started to run. The Pforzheimer’s parking valet had disappeared. The black car slithered forward and sideways with the speed of a mongoose charging a cobra, and a straw hat sailed into the air.
“No
!
”
Underhill shouted, and rapped his forehead against the cool window. A seersucker shoulder and a white-haired head slid out of sight beneath the car.
    Tim’s breath misted the window.
    Inexorably, the car ground over the roadbed. After a horrifically long second or two, it picked up speed and rolled toward Grand Avenue. The