Deadline (3 page)

Falling and falling, showered by the debris of the broken airplanes, they rained down through the sky in a manner that was almost regimented, row after row of them, their lips shut, their hands resting on the arms of their seats, their posture suggestive of passengers preparing themselves for the in-flight movie.

I snapped out of the dream. I sat upright, pushed the bedsheet aside. Sondra was asleep. I padded out of the bedroom to the kitchen and took a bottle of mineral water from the refrigerator and guzzled it without closing the door. I liked the feel of cold air. The night was clammy.

I went into my office, pulled the tiny chain that turned on the desk lamp, and sat down. I put on my glasses. On a yellow legal pad, I outlined the dream before the details faded. I'd been exploring the syntax of dreams for years, searching the mysteries for meaning. I encouraged my patients to record their dreams.

Airplanes. They'd been awaiting clearance to land and disgorge their passengers. Arrivals. The baby, the new arrival. Clearly I still hadn't assimilated the fact of Sondra's pregnancy. It would play on my mind for a long time. I expected to have all manner of dreams in the coming months that could be traced to the unborn child.

But the collision of the two craft? The expressionless faces of the passengers falling out of the sky? What was that supposed to suggest to me? Obstacles to the healthy arrival of the child, say? The whole gamut of unspeakable worries that ran from webbed feet to cleft palate to Down's Syndrome to stillborn.

Or was it an echo of the violent encounter I'd had in the parking-lot? I rubbed the side of my neck, which ached.

I walked through the house. In the living-room I absently flicked the
On
button of the TV remote, and I thought of those dream people dropping, with no apparent fear, to their deaths. Not every dream yielded an interpretation. Some were obscure, wilfully so, the mind playing cryptic games. A joker loose in the head, a mischievous projectionist run amuck in the movie theater.

I opened a window because the room was stuffy. The hum of traffic never stopped. Brakes screeched somewhere, the next street, the next block. I saw a pale-blue WelCor car drive slowly past, wet and shining under a streetlamp like a pale shark. WelCor, a private security firm, patrolled the neighborhood every hour or so.

I sat down in front of the TV. The dream was already fading, even if the feeling of being unsettled still clung to me. I looked at CNN. A river had burst its banks in Louisiana; flooded streets, people paddling canoes through the floating debris of ruined households, sunken porches. Then the image changed and we were back in the studio, and the newscaster, a blond woman with unblinking eyes, was talking about something else: national events crammed into less than twenty-five minutes, everything was zap zap zap.
Moving right along
…

A familiar face appeared on the box. Intrigued, I leaned forward, elbows propped on my knees.

The newscaster said, ‘Rumors continue to grow in Washington that the President plans to nominate Emily Ford for the position of US Attorney-General. Ms Ford, former Los Angeles County DA, and presently Chief Consultant to the West Coast Division of the Presidential Task Force On Crime, is making no comment at this time. Stories about her possible nomination have been frequent in recent weeks. Ms Ford, who has become prominent for her hard line on crime, may not prove to be a popular choice with certain elements inside the Democratic Party.'

Now the screen was filled with recorded images. Emily Ford was pictured in bright sunshine outside a courthouse, smiling thinly and brushing aside the questions of the predators who kept shoving microphones into her face. She uttered the usual cant about how she'd make a statement at the appropriate time, and then she vanished inside a waiting car.

I heard a sound from behind, and turned to see Sondra come into the room. She was yawning, and looked tousled. ‘Storm woke me,' she said. She sat beside me on the sofa, one hand flat on her stomach. She nodded toward the TV.

‘Your old pal Emily is going places, it would seem,' she said. Her voice was icy. She'd never liked Emily Ford, whose personality and politics were the opposite of her own. ‘I'm just glad she's out of your life, that's all I can say.'

I didn't respond. I didn't want to sound as if I were rushing to the defense of Emily Ford. I didn't want to make excuses on Emily's behalf, or justify the amount of time I'd been obliged to spend with her. Almost two years had passed since Emily had last consulted me.

‘She's all raw ambition,' Sondra said.

‘She has goals,' I said quietly.

‘Goals? Hey, goals are what ice-hockey players and kickers score. Goals are what salesmen have. Emily has this great big agenda that seems to involve the incarceration of half the population –'

‘Come on, you know that's total exaggeration,' I said.

‘I read about her, Jerry. And I don't like what I read.'

I wanted to drop the subject. I made a small gesture with my hand, acquiescence,
pax.
I gazed at the TV. The newscaster was going for some kind of late-night, in-depth profiling.

‘During her time with the Presidential Task Force, Ms Ford has alienated certain influential Democratic congressmen, and she's also been in conflict with prominent members of her own legal profession, most notably Dennis Nardini' – here the screen was filled with footage of Nardini stepping out of a limousine. I knew the face. It appeared, albeit rarely, in social columns, always in connection with something tasteful or charitable – the opening of an art exhibit, a fund-raiser for the education of inner-city kids.

Good-looking in a dark-eyed Latino way, it was the kind of face that suggested culture, sophistication. Nardini was said to be an intensely private man, but I knew some of his background – I'd read about it somewhere. His grandfather had stepped off a steamship at Ellis Island on the first day of the twentieth century; perhaps it was this timing that had impressed the story on my mind: a new immigrant arriving on Day One of a new century, and turning himself into an American Success. He'd made a fortune importing spices. His son (Arturo? Antonio? I couldn't remember) had expanded the business – cheeses and wines – but grandson Dennis, equipped with an Anglo-Saxon first name, broke from family tradition; he'd gone to Harvard Law School, trading parmesan for the kind of prosperity a hot-shot LA lawyer could expect.

He was a man of some influence in the city, and his law firm represented an assortment of highflying showbiz demi-gods and goddesses, as well as mega-rich clients whose occupations were less well-defined and whose public profiles somewhat murky. I recalled that Emily had subpoenaed one of Nardini's clients in a criminal case the Task Force was trying to build, but the precise details eluded me: something to do with an oil-lease scam. I remembered the term ‘witch-hunt' had been bruited about in newspapers by associates of Nardini, although Nardini himself remained aloof from anything as undignified as name-calling.

Sondra was watching the screen with a look of concentration.

I said, ‘I hear Nardini has some dubious connections.'

‘Really? I never knew you paid attention to gossip.' She reached for my hand but she kept her eyes on the screen, where Nardini, in some library footage, was entering the offices of his law firm.

‘It's just stuff you hear around,' I said vaguely. ‘True, false, who knows?' What did Nardini's connections matter to me, anyway? I didn't want to talk about him; I just wanted to steer the conversation away from Emily Ford.

‘He doesn't look like a bad guy to me,' she said.

‘I never said he was a
bad
guy, Sondra.'

‘Guilt by innuendo,' she said, and smiled.

Now commercials bounced and exploded across the screen. I picked up the remote and killed the picture. Sondra rose, walked towards the bedroom. I told her I'd be a minute; I went inside the kitchen and drank a pint of ice water. I stood for a time at the sink, thinking about the possibility of Emily Ford going to Washington. Why not? She was qualified, experienced; her bad times were behind her – correct?

I entered the bedroom. Sondra lay turned away from me, already asleep. I got into bed beside her and lowered a hand against her hip, putting my palm around the pleasing curvature of bone. I looked at the red digital numbers on the bedside clock: 3.00 a.m.

She moved very slightly, turning an inch or so on the pillow, opening her mouth with a small plosive sound, a tiny pocket of air expelled.

She mumbled, ‘My love …' in the flat inexpressive voice of a sleeper, a monotone I associated with messages uttered by mediums during trances.

I had never heard her speak in that lifeless way before, and it startled me a little; it was so unlike her own voice it might have emerged from a total stranger.

I wondered what she was dreaming about.

7.55 a.m.

Our working days were long, so we usually tried to spend as much time together as we could over breakfast. We drank coffee in the kitchen and ate sliced oranges and wholewheat toast spread with Dundee marmalade from a small specialty store in Santa Monica. I liked this routine, this little clearing of peace at the start of the day. I'd almost forgotten my skewed dream.

‘You were talking in your sleep,' I said.

‘Bull. I never talk in my sleep,' Sondra said.

‘Last night you did.'

‘OK. What did I say?'

‘My love.'

‘“My love?” That was all?'

I nodded. ‘You remember what you were dreaming?'

‘I never remember dreams.' She sipped coffee and looked at me over the rim of her cup. She smiled.

I said, ‘You sounded very far away. Detached. Out of reach.'

‘People are always out of reach when they're asleep and dreaming. They're always strangers in strange places.' She put her cup down and picked up a slice of orange and held it to her lips. ‘I bet I was dreaming something nice about you. We were probably having a picnic by a river on a warm summer's day,' and she tossed the crescent of orange into her mouth and walked around my side of the table. She ruffled my hair. ‘You look good this morning. Sort of fatherly. Proud. Pleased with yourself.'

I said, ‘Life's wonderful.'

‘I agree.' She took my hand, guided it to her stomach. The way she did this touched me unexpectedly. I felt an upsurge of emotion, a warmth fuse through my blood. The idea of wife and child, of family.
I'll be good to them
, I thought.
I'll be fiercely protective. I'll keep the bad things of the world away from them. We'll leave the scum of this decaying city and head for some quiet place when that time comes.

I was surprised by the force of my feelings. It was as if the news of the baby had overjoyed me, and left me raw and vulnerable at the same time. I was already in love with this unborn, beautifully shapeless being Sondra carried. Like some ancient cave-dweller, I was already prepared to club to death anything that threatened this child's existence. Deep fatherly feelings were rising to the surface: I was nervously patrolling the front-line of impending fatherhood like countless generations of men before me. I'd get used to it as the months passed, I was sure, and my tensions would recede, but for the moment I was undergoing sensations unfamiliar to me.

‘I just thought about something,' I said. ‘Shouldn't I talk with Marv Sweetzer about the baby? I need to discuss my role in all this. I want to be present, you know. I wouldn't miss it for the world.'

‘I already asked him about seeing you. He said to call him in a week and set up an appointment.' She carried her cup to the sink. ‘What have you got on today?'

‘I have a lunch date with Harry Pushkas.' Pushkas, a sixty-five-year-old wild-haired Hungarian immigrant too fond of aged brandy and infantile practical jokes, had been my mentor and advisor at UCLA. It was Harry who'd steered me towards psychiatry at a time when I was an intern unsure of my future specialty. I'd thought of general practice, but Harry had scoffed at the notion.
Don't be a mender of broken bones, my boy. Mend broken spirits.
I was fond of Harry.

‘Give him my best,' Sondra said.

‘I will.'

‘He's an old lech.'

‘But sweet,' I said.

‘Which is what saves him from total depravity. You can keep his warped sense of humor, thank you.'

I watched her stand with her back to the sink. She had side-parted her hair sharply to the left, and wore small hooped earrings of plain silver. Her makeup was scant, a touch of mauve eye-shadow and pale lipstick. She wore an expensive gray-blue linen jacket, a short dark blue skirt of the same material, and a white blouse with a tiny heart-shaped brooch pinned to it. I'd given her that inexpensive piece of jewelry in the third year of our marriage, on Valentine's Day, and she still wore it now and then.

‘I'll probably be home before you,' she said. ‘Gerson's at some conference today, so the office is quiet.'

‘When Gerson's away the mice will play,' I said. Leo Gerson was the autocratic boss of LaBrea, a strutting little man who smoked fat cigars and moved everywhere in a flurry and expected his people to work impossible hours.

‘The mice rest, Jerry. They're way too tired to play.'

I got up and walked to her and placed my hands against her hips, drawing her towards me. Eyes shut, I held her in silence for a time. I was aware of her heartbeat, the scent of her skin, the rich wholeness of her against me.

She said, ‘Maybe I'll cook something terrific tonight.'

‘Or maybe we'll eat out,' I suggested.

‘We'll see. Meantime, back off or I'll be late,' and she disentangled herself from me with a couple of mock karate blows, swishing the air with small chopping motions. I heard her go out of the kitchen, walk to the bathroom, close the door. I poured a second cup of coffee and wandered into my study. I usually left the house about fifteen minutes after Sondra. I looked at the yellow legal pad on the desk; then my eye was drawn to the answering-machine, which was flashing the number 1.