Out of the corner of her eye she saw Benny stare after her, but Miklos put a hand on her shoulder and held her back. Benny turned, shoulders set in angry square lines, and strode off toward the bar in the corner of the room.

  “You look hungry.”

  Abby focused in surprise on a red skewer of cheese cubes that appeared at eye level, turned slightly, and found the man who held it out. He looked like the kind of man who lived for a party, a little wild around the eyes. When she shook her head he bit off the cheddar cube on the top of the skewer and chewed enthusiastically.

  “I know you,” he mumbled. “Abby, right? We went to Cincinnati together.”

  He did look vaguely familiar, after all. She frowned, thinking about it, and said, “Piano?”

  “Violin. Larry Colchester, remember? We built a snowman outside the studios one day.”

  She did remember, oh, God. Larry, the sole wild fling of her college days. Half an hour in the snow, making obscene snow sculptures, another ten hours inside by the fireplace with peppermint schnapps. He was the first stranger she’d ever gone to bed with. Before John Lee.

  “Sure, I remember,” she said, fighting the sunburn heat of a blush. “How have you been?”

  “Ah, okay, you know. Kicked around for a while, finally got a chair in the Denver Phil, doing all right. I’m down here with my wife, Yvette—you remember t’vette, right? Clarinet, probably a year after you.”

  Yvette was a squeaky, rather bitchy blonde who’d nee tried to break Abby’s reed on the way into audition. Abby pasted a smile on and tried to look enthusiastic about the reunion as Larry looked around for his wife and waved her over.

  Yvette had put on some weight in the last few years, enough to make her low-cut dress seem desperate instead of sexy. She wore too much makeup and had already, from the way she clutched Larry’s arm for support, had too many drinks too early.

  “Abby,” she cooed, sweet as cyanide honey. “I heard you were teaching in … where was it?”

  “Midland.”

  “Oh, yes, Midland.” Yvette let the silence drag on. “Well, isn’t that nice. Larry’s with the Denver Phil.”

  “Yes, I know, he told me.” Abby cleared her throat. “How about you?”

  “Oh, this and that.” Yvette made a wide, sweeping gesture that almost clotheslined a diamond-sparkled symphony matron behind her. “You know. I’m holding out for one of the really big orchestras.”

  What she meant was that she hadn’t won an audition since she’d left Cincinnati. Abby knew it was cheap to take any satisfaction from that, but that didn’t necessarily stop her.

  And then she noticed Larry watching her. Oh no, she thought. There was that light in Larry’s eyes, just like she remembered it. He was living some little fantasy here—maybe just the tension between wife and a woman he’d slept with, maybe something more than that. Maybe he had something more exotic planned.

  She looked around, spotted Benny’s neon-green hair bow bobbing through the crowd, and quickly, “Gosh, I’m sorry, I need to find my ride. Larry, it’s been great seeing you again. Yvette best of luck.”

  As she hurried away she heard Yvette say, too loudly, “Midland. Jesus, what a loser.”

  There were too many people too many smiles, too many hands. She felt faint and sick as she pushed through the crowd, had to grab for support on the shoulder of an old gentleman with the hawk-sharp face of a conductor. He gave her a bristly stare from under caterpillar eyebrows.

  Out. Something black bubbled up from just below her stomach. Get out of here. Out!

  Her heels dragged in the thick hungry carpet and she passed the double doors, the music dying behind her, leaving only the stupid babble of a hundred different conversations. She passed the corpse-pale Renata Harhuis, who stopped her conversation to stare at her and say something cutting. Abby plunged down the stairs, ankles threatening to turn with every step, and stopped halfway down to breathe in deep, cool, unobstructed gasps.

  Behind her, a man’s voice called, “Pearl?”

  She stopped, one hand on the cool wooden, rail, I turned. Miklos stood at the top of the stairs near Renata. His face was tense and pale.

  “I’m sorry but I felt you needed help. Don’t you?” Benny made a motley shadow at his shoulder. Abby swallowed her panic and forced her back straight, her voice steady.

  “My name's not Pearl. It’s Abby. And I don’t need help, any of you. Never have.”

  She turned away from the hurt on Benny’s face and ran down the stairs in the foyer, dress swirling around her thighs. Outside, the dark pressed against the windows like one big mouth, waiting to eat. She gulped down panic and found a thick padded bench to sit down on, one hand over her mouth to cover the moans.

  “He’s not right,” she whispered to herself, and balled her fist to pound it hard on her leg. “He’s … not … right.”

  Then who am I? that part of her whispered.

  Pearl. John Lee’s mother’s name is Pearl.

  “No. No.” Abby took a deep breath and put her hands down flat on her thighs, smoothed the black fabric of her dress. “I’m all right. I’m fine.”

  “Sure you are,” said a voice from behind her. She twisted around to look behind her and found an older woman standing shadowed by the stairs, a thin cigarette held in her equally elegant fingers. She tapped ashes into a potted plant with bored abandon. “I always talk to myself when I’m doing just fine. Forgive me, I’m rude. Mrs. Georgette Caulfield.”

  “Abby Rhodes,” she mumbled automatically—she didn’t want to talk, but she couldn’t seem to stop, either.

  Mrs. Caulfield raised a plucked eyebrow. “My. You children of the sixties really didn’t fare well, did you? I suppose you’re one of those tiresome music people. They’re all so dreadfully self-centered. Would you like a cigarette, dear?”

  She held out a gold foil package. The cigarettes all looked thin and elegant, nicotine on a diet. Abby shook her head.

  “God, not another health nut. This town is rotten with them. I suppose you eat tofu as well, whatever that is. Tell me, dear, what is it that you’re assuring yourself isn’t right?” Mrs. Caulfield took a drag and exhaled a gray stream into the air. “About a man, is it?”

  “Not—not exactly. Yes, I’m a musician. What do you do, Mrs. Caulfield?”

  “I spend money, dear. I have made a thriving career of contributing to causes I care absolutely nothing about. Oh, do tell me your problems. It’ll liven up an otherwise dreary week. Or need I buy you a drink first? You don’t look like a drunk, but then most of my friends don’t.”

  “I don’t think you’d understand my problems.” Abby shoved her hairspray-stiff hair back from her face. “There’s some people upstairs I don’t want to talk to.”

  “Life is too short to talk to anyone you don’t want to, dear. Rudeness is an important social skill. Do you want to leave?”

  “I was going to catch a cab but …” Abby looked out at the dark pressing on the windows.

  “Cabs.” Mrs. Caulfield tapped ashes over a philodendron. “My God, child, not public transportation, surely things aren’t as bad as all that.”

  “I think …” Something moved out in the dark—someone walking past, or a car cruising by without lights. “I think I may have information about a murder.”

  Mrs. Caulfield sat down on the bench beside her, facing the opposite direction. Her perfume settled like a fine mist of White Shoulders. Up close, the dove-gray silk dress looked hand-tailored, the beads individually sewn. Her earrings were rich clusters of diamonds and pearls. She very deliberately did not look at Abby.

  “How very interesting. I’ve never met anyone involved with a murder.” Mrs. Caulfield thought it over, tilting her perfectly groomed head to one side. “No, that’s not quite true, there was that dreadful Parkinson boy, but that wasn’t really a murder, that was quite sordid. I think all the best murders are intriguing, don’t you? None of those messy crimes of passion. Yours wasn’t a crime of passion, was it?”

  “I don’t know.” Abby rubbed her hands together, remembered the numbing, tingling pain of snakebite. “I don’t even know if it really happened.”

  “I’m hardly an expert, of course, but you really ought to be sure about these things before you start talking about them. Otherwise people will simply think you are insane.”

  “I’d like to be sure.” Tears stung Abby’s eyes, and she blinked them back out of terror for her mascara. “I don’t know what to do about it.”

  “Start with a practical solution,” Mrs. Caulfield said. “Go to a psychiatrist.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve never met a problem that couldn’t be solved by someone paid two hundred dollars an hour.” She seemed perfectly serious. “Oh, I do understand, not everyone can afford the best. I suppose a hundred- and-fifty-dollar rate would do. The point is to feel the money flowing out of your pocket. It has such a healthy effect.”

  “I’m a musician, Mrs. Caulfield,” Abby pointed out. “I don’t think I’ll be able to afford that kind of solution.”

  “No?” The older woman unsnapped her beaded purse and pulled out a handful of business cards. “Where do you live, dear?”

  “Midland.”

  “Well, well. You know, I have a cottage there in Midland. My late husband built it during the oil boom. I go there when I’m feeling sentimental.” The cream-colored card she handed over said RICHARD D. URDIALES.

  “You have a psychiatrist in Midland?”

  “Midland, Dallas, Houston, New Orleans, Los Angeles, New York. And one out in Saint Thomas, if I’m feeling very low.” Mrs. Caulfield stood up and crushed out her cigarette against the brass planter. “You’re an interesting child, Abby. Thank you for an entertaining few minutes. God knows they are few and far between in this life. I’ll call Richard and tell him to expect your call.”

  “But I can’t—”

  “I’ll tell him to put it on my account.” Mrs. Caulfield offered her a handshake in farewell. “Believe me, child, it certainly won’t matter to me.”

  She strolled off, in no particular hurry, and gave orders to a uniformed chauffeur who stood near the entrance. He touched his cap and disappeared out into the dark. Mrs. Caulfield turned and proceeded up the stairs, her dress sweeping in an elegant beaded fan behind her.

  Near the middle of the ascent, she turned and leaned slightly over the rail.

  “Now, you will call him, won’t you?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Abby had no intention of doing it, but it seemed to be the only polite response. “Thank you.”

  Mrs. Caulfield had already dismissed her. Abby watched her until she disappeared into the crowd at the top of the stairs.

  “Ma’am?” She turned to find the chauffeur standing behind her. He touched his cap and smiled. “I have the limousine outside. I’m to take you anywhere you want to go.”

  “The limousine?” Abby watched him for any sign that it might be a joke. “But—”

  “Mrs. Caulfield’s orders, ma’am.” He gestured toward the doors. “It would be my pleasure.”

  If he was lying, he was a damn good liar. Abby cleared her throat and smoothed her dress down over her thighs.

  “Sure,” she said, and smiled. “I’ve never been in a limousine before.”

  He gave her a wide smile as he opened the door for her.

  “Oh, I think you’ll like it just fine, ma’am.”

  In the morning, Abby caught a cab to the airport—quite a come-down from the opulent purring luxury of Mrs. Caulfield’s limousine, which had been the experience of a lifetime. She lounged in the boarding area, half asleep, and jerked back awake as the intercom blared out a message that ended in “… Gate Twenty-seven.” She looked around and saw the other passengers standing up, gathering baggage, shuffling into a rough semicircle around the closed boarding doors. Obviously they had better hearing than she did. She grabbed her bag and shuffled into line, too, clutching her blue plastic boarding pass. It looked like a wolfhound had chewed on it, but she thought it said 17 on the top.

  “Hey! Hey, wait!” Somebody in lime-green stretch pants leaned over the railing and waved. “Damn, Abby, wait! Please!”

  Benny. She’d called the hotel, of course, but Abby hadn’t answered and had thrown away the phone messages. Too late to duck out now. Abby sighed and stepped out of place; somebody surged in to claim it. She approached the rail where Benny waited.

  “Hi,” Benny said. She looked bruised around the eyes. Her smile looked weak and bruised, too. “You okay?”

  “Yeah.” Abby looked at a point over Benny’s shoulder, a safe middle distance. “I’m fine. How was the party?”

  “Bummer. A total waste. Five more minutes and you could have had a ride. Did you take a cab?”

  “A limousine.” Abby risked a look at her friend’s face. “You and Miklos looked cozy. I didn’t think you’d miss me.”

  “Of course we—” Benny stopped and blew her cheeks out. “No offense, Abby, but you’re acting like a total shit. I actually got out of bed before ten to see you. You could at least give me a shot here.”

  Behind her, the boarding doors banged open and a flight attendant called for passes one through thirty. Abby held up her blue pass. Benny squinted.

  “Hundred seventeen.”

  “Seventeen,” Abby corrected. “See you.”

  She hesitated, though, drawn by that wounded look on Benny’s face. After a second or two, she reached over the rail. Benny met her halfway, and for a few heartbeats the warmth and Benny’s cinnamon perfume held her safe from the memories.

  And then she had to pull away, and the cold settled in again. She turned away from the darkness in Benny’s eyes and hurried to wave her boarding pass at the harassed flight attendant. Just before she entered the shadows of the carpeted tunnel she looked back, but the rail was empty.

  She wasn’t actually sure that Benny had even been there, except for the fading scent of cinnamon clinging to her jacket.

  The flight seemed slow and bumpy, full of crying babies and grumbling businessmen. Abby sat at a window and stared out at pale gray mist while the gray-suited woman next to her cursed under he breath and punched keys on a laptop as if they personally offended her. She tried to think about John Lee but her memory shifted and turned sepia, as unreal—or as real—as Pearl Jordan and the pain of the snakebite. Reality ended now at her skin. May she hadn’t woken up at all; maybe she was still lying in a rented hotel room, dreaming Abby’s life.

  Her eyelids slipped shut, sealing out the plane, the clouds, the dream life. Against the curtain of darkness she saw the house again, sepia in sunset. She walked up the cracked concrete steps and swung the screen door open with a sharp squeal of metal. All the lights blazed in the living room, a feathery glow over thin carpet and threadbare chairs. The glass-fronted bookcase was shadowed with dust, the few books toppled sideways …

  … as they had been since they came and took Pearl’s mother away. Daddy had taken most of the books out and burned them in the backyard the day after Mother left; she remembered watching from her bedroom window while the fire spun higher and higher into the hot noon sky, blowing charred words up to the sun. He’d stayed, out there in the heat until the fire was ashes whipped by the wind. Later, in the night, he’d turned on the lights.

  All the lights. And he’d never turned them out again. Every week he’d gone to town and bought five brand-new light bulbs, stacking them in yellow cardboard piles in the hall closet. She remembered waking in the middle of the night weeks later, hearing him screaming. She’d had to go open one of the boxes and take the cool smooth light bulb into the darkness, unscrew the one that had burned out even though it was hot enough to scorch her fingers, and screw in the new one until the light flooded out over her staring eyes and open mouth. In a few seconds, he’d stopped screaming and it was like it had never happened at all, except for her blistered fingers and the broken light bulb on the floor, as well as the blood where her bare feet had stepped on the sharp pieces of glass.

  She never cried. Neither of them had ever cried, ever. They’d just gone on changing the light bulbs. She’d been real careful to do it before the old ones burned out after that.

  She never asked him what Mother had done, because she knew he'd never tell her. But the other children told her, mean biting whispers in the schoolyard, taunting yells as she ran for the safety of home and the bright lights.

  Killed

  Killed her own

  Killed her own baby drowned it in the bath killed it killed it

  Mother staring blankly at the wall as she sat on the old couch, sweaty hair curling damp on her forehead. Go to bed, Pearl. Go to bed. There’d been something so cold in her eyes that Pearl had run down the hall and jumped in her narrow, hard bed, pulled the faded quilts over her head, and waited, waited. It seemed like hours until the screen door screamed and she heard Daddy say, What in the world’s got into you, Anna, you look like you seen a ghost, and then nothing, nothing at all until his heavy footsteps went down the hall and the bathroom door creaked open and he’d made this sound, this quiet sound.

  Next day they came to take Mother away and they’d burned Baby Timothy at the Eternal Grace Cemetary in Midland, all the way to Midland with that small white casket, the smell of dying liles and Daddy quietly sitting there staring out into the gray afternoon.

  Two nights later, he’d woken up screaming about the dark. He’d told her all about the worms and the beetles and the skin slipping off little Timothy’s bones, then he’d turned all the lights on.

  On the day he’d died, she’d gone around and turned them off, every single one, and sat on the couch in the shadows while the beetles whispered and the worms crawled and the dark ate. They’d made her go out to the funeral at Eternal Grace, where Daddy was buried next to Timmy and a grave with her mother’s name on it. When she’d come back she’d broken every light bulb in the house and when people came calling she didn’t let anybody in at all. After a while they stopped coming, except for the boy who delivered the groceries and the preacher who kept knocking on the screen door every Saturday, asking her if she had accepted Jesus as her personal savior.