Gisèle Marie Baxter
New Introduction: This story's reappearance is pure serendipity; I came across it on an old computer disk, reread it, and found my interest renewed in a series I hadn't watched in ages. In fact, by this point, my tapes were gone and the show itself seemed to have vanished from syndication. So I turned to the internet, and found Amy Rambow's impressive tribute site, a thing of beauty, a font of information, and (most important) a living thing, constantly updated. I wrote to her about the availability of episodes, mentioned this story and my contributions to forkni-l and its offshoot fiction list in 1994-95 while I was living in Montréal, and well, here I am. I considered revising the story before giving it this incarnation, but have actually only proofread it and redesigned it as five html documents (all accessible from each part); it is what it is. I pulled it several years ago because I'd intended to rewrite it as an original story. In fact, I've scavenged parts of it for three different fiction projects I've been working on when Real Life permits. As for what I think of it now, well, if I were writing it now there'd be fewer descriptions of what people are wearing, and the whole backstory concerning Barbara Jellicoe and Dennis Matheson would be better developed. I would include at least one of Barbara's calls to Nightwatch. There was supposed to be a sequel called The House in Paris, but that now will be part of an original story (this is my one and only FK fan fiction; I've written very little fan fiction, though I have produced a couple of Gormenghast stories). I use the word "love" a lot in this, probably as lightly as people tend to use it; it strikes me now that the story is about a sort of love we often, equally lightly, dismiss as desire, and it's just as much about grief. What goes on between Natalie and LaCroix goes much further than her desperation and his malevolence: there's this profound identification and recognition. I was intrigued by the number of times I narrate a scene from one perspective but include a moment when the other perspective intrudes while they're regarding each other. I still like the immediacy of using present tense throughout: you get to experience events as they occur, and you have no way of knowing how the narrative will resolve itself. The story is not canonical; I didn't design it to fit neatly in the continuum of the series. It's simply something I had to write (I did decide to be a little more specific than the series about how vampires are made). By the way, parts 10 and 11 referred to in the original introduction are now Part Four. I think LaCroix's condominium should be featured in Canadian House and Home, or at least on the Gothic Martha Stewart site. A Disclaimer: I should confess I have never seen most of the third-season episodes so any anticipation of them is purely coincidental. Acknowledgements: I want to thank Amy for featuring this story; I also want to thank again all the people I knew while on forkni-l all those years ago, especially Lisa McDavid, who brought me across in the first place. (March 2002)
Original Introduction (Spring 1995): This LaCroix/Natalie tale was mostly written last December, including at 5 a.m. Christmas Day, when the battery in the smoke detector started its low-power beep and no one could wrench it open to replace it. I finished the main draft in early February. Consequently, it was written before I saw some significant 2nd-season episodes and has not really been revised (much) to compensate, and before I had a chance to read much list fiction. So, this is likely a version of something that's been done to death, but it's *my* version. I swear on the graves of my ancestors that Parts 10 and 11 were written before Be My Valentine aired, and other unnamed elements of the story before A More Permanent Hell (no spoilers -- you'll have to guess). And I haven't had a lot of time to work on this, so forgive typos and historical inaccuracies, though it doesn't really have a historical element. Anyway, special thanks to all my correspondents on the FK lists, especially Caile for the debates on music and decor, to Laurie for the writing pep talk, to Mad Maureen for all the jousting, and to Teleri for the house in Paris....
My radar sent me dangerEarly in September, there is a gala at the Art Gallery of Ontario, for the first major show of the works of Barbara Jellicoe. The centre court is an oasis of light, of synthesized music and sparkling drinks and elegantly eccentric attire, against the crisp golden evening, and in the exhibition hall beyond, Barbara's large canvases hang for the inspection of her admirers, sombre yet warm and provocative representations of ancient icons in urban landscapes. Barbara refuses to look at them herself; she is too busy greeting friends she hardly ever sees, and she is joyful and loud, a diminutive figure with strong striking features surrounded by masses of bright-red curls tamed by a fringed and beaded headscarf; she wears a fitted wide-lapelled velvet jacket from 1975 with a long gypsy skirt and high-heeled boots that somehow make her look shorter, and she talks incessantly while somehow also managing to hang onto a plate of artistically designed if tasteless canapes, a glass of Australian Cabernet Sauvignon, and a cigarette.
Shortly before half past eight, her attention is diverted from a bow-tied art critic by the arrival of a striking couple. The young woman wears her honey-coloured hair loose and curly over the shoulders of a sleeveless navy silk dress with buttons down the front, and the tall man whose arm she holds, whose hair is also blond and swept back from a noticeably pale face, wears a black linen suit with a crisp white collarless shirt.
"Natalie!" Barbara shrieks, shoving plate and glass into the hands of the startled critic, and the young woman releases her companion's arm to join the artist in a long emotional embrace. Flushed and joyous, Barbara turns to the critic, and says, "I'm sorry, this is one of my best friends on earth, Natalie Lambert; we went to school together and she put up with me as a roommate for three years. And this is?"
She looks quizzically at Natalie's companion, who smiles and extends a hand to shake hers firmly: "Nick Knight."
Barbara beams. "Nat, you always get the best looking ones."
"Nick is a detective with the metro police force."
"Ooh, to serve and protect and all that. You know anything about art, Nick?"
"One or two things," Nick admits modestly.
"Nick paints beautifully," Natalie insists, with the confident honesty of her long friendship with this woman. "His loft is full of the most amazing canvasses."
A tall thin white-shirted waiter with pale blond hair and multiply pierced ears and nostrils circulates with a tray of wine glasses. Barbara flags him down and selects a glass of white wine that she shoves at Natalie, "Here; it's a nice Gerwartztraminer -- I remember your tastes from the odd visits to real restaurants we cadged. Nick?"
"No thanks. You two get caught up. I want to have a look at your canvasses, Barbara."
At eleven, Nick and Natalie and Barbara are moving away from the Art Gallery towards Nick's car. The women walk arm-in-arm in the chilly night air, talking rapidly, intimately, in low voices. Nick unlocks the passenger door and ushers Barbara inside; Natalie climbs into the back seat. When he is behind the wheel, he enquires amiably, "All right, where to now?"
"Let's not go home yet," Barbara insists, smiling broadly with red-painted lips. Her eyes are enormous in a thin face: such a dark brown the pupils melt into the irises of glossy, wide eyes. "I don't get around much anymore, as the old song goes: let's go somewhere really wild. I'll spring for a drink and Nat and I can horrify you with all our old adventures."
Natalie meets Nick's eyes in the rearview mirror and they exchange a smile so imperceptible only they can see it. "Now, madam, I am an officer of the law," he replies lightly.
"Oh, you're not all so straightlaced. Some of my best friends are cops, Detective Knight." Barbara locates a slim black compact in her little fringed and sequined velvet evening pouch, and rubs powder over an already artificially pale face.
And Natalie cannot help rejoining, "And some of my best friends are...." but then she starts to laugh, and can barely manage to mouth "sorry" to Nick in the mirror.
"Somewhere wild," Nick echoes, musing. Then he smiles. "All right, I think I know just the place."
So they drive through the awakening streets of Toronto nightlife to the Raven. At this hour, the club is thronged and there is a lineup of mostly young exiles from the more posh suburbs downtown for the weekend, in the high style of the autumn: leather jackets and long lank centre-parted hair, shrunken t-shirts and schoolgirl skirts, baggy jeans, laceup boots, over-the-knee stockings, round woolly hats, occasionally a crushed velvet or matte satin tailcoat presaging the winter, silver rings in earlobes and nostrils and navels. They stare in pallid sullen envy at this trio as the doorman with the slightest twitch of a nod signals them inside.
"Is that the invisible influence of the badge or do you have a secret life?" Barbara shouts as the blast of dance music hits and engulfs them.
"We all have secret lives," Nick shouts back melodramatically, and leads them expertly through the throbbing mass of dancers in the blindingly strobelit terrain, past a curtain of chains, to a little oasis of tables where people drink and speak in confidential tones, heads almost touching, or watch the room. They sit down, and Barbara and Natalie order Coronas with lime, and Nick gives the waitress a tiny shake of his head, and aloud orders nothing, since he's going on duty soon. Natalie playfully taps his knee under the table, and in reply he presses it against hers.
"Look who's here," Natalie announces: Janette is approaching from the bar, glass in hand. Her hair is piled up loosely, held in place by jewelled pins, and she wears a short-sleeved clingy silk jersey dress with a short flared skirt, in iridescent black and green, and long black velvet gloves.
"Nicholas! You should have told me there would be a party." She extends one hand gracefully for him to kiss.
"We were in the neighbourhood, and thought we'd drop in," Natalie explains; she is bubbling with good humour, brash and relieved at this rare release from professional constraint.
"We were looking for somewhere wild," Nick adds, then indicates Barbara. "This is Barbara Jellicoe; an exhibition of her paintings has just opened at the AGO. She was Natalie's roommate when they were both at U of T."
As usual, Janette makes only a brief gesture of acknowledgement in Natalie's direction, but smiles with the keen bright curiosity that sometimes passes for warmth in Barbara's direction. She sits down and leans forward on the table, hands cradling her glass, and says very earnestly to the artist, "I have seen your paintings. The one of the children building a temple in the rubbish dump -- I liked that very much. It was disturbing. Also the woman on the crowded subway wearing an ankh pendant."
"This would be an interesting place to paint," Barbara replies, indirectly accepting the compliment. "These kids -- they make symbols of themselves, and they don't even know what symbols are."
"Janette owns this place," Natalie explains.
"What a wonderful way to live," Barbara muses. "And what do you think of the paintings, Detective Knight?"
"I think I would like to own one. The one of the old factory building, with the man painting an enormous eye on one side."
"With the sky all sunset colours," Barbara muses, then she smiles with an illuminating abruptness: "Okay. Now do you want to dance?"
In reply, Nick rises and gallantly extends a hand, which Barbara takes, and he leads her out on the dance floor. Nick moves lightly, with a loose informality that makes no attempt to copy the styles of the regular crowd, while Barbara, despite the beat, stays rooted in one place and moves with a slow sensuality, making of herself an undertone of the rhythm, and her dark eyes seem fixed on a point light-years away. Natalie watches them, her face suddenly sombre, her Corona forgotten, her chin propped on folded hands.
"Does she know, Natalie?" Janette asks pointedly, following her line of vision.
Natalie looks around sharply, alarmed, and says, "No, of course not; she just wanted to see a fairly exotic club...."
Janette shakes her head, almost smiles, and places a hand on the other's arm and replies firmly, "No, I did not mean that. Does she know that she is dying?"
For a moment, Natalie can say nothing, then she returns her attention to a couple of attractive and smiling, well-dressed people making entrancing movements amid the energetic obsessiveness on the dance floor, and she whispers bitterly, "Yes."
*****
In the middle of January, in the true bleak midwinter, Barbara Jellicoe dies of cancer in a Toronto hospital. Her parents and her two sisters are with her. Various friends and other relatives, including her ex-husband, her most recent lover, Dennis Matheson, her two children, and Natalie Lambert can now end their long occupation of a waiting room. Natalie, when told, is on a vinyl couch with her arms around the children; when they go to their father, she sets her unopened two-months-old Macleans down on a table and gradually leaves, exchanging weary murmured condolences with these people on her way to the elevator.
Despite being bleary-eyed from long sleeplessness, despite the softly matted unbrushed hair, and the eyesockets darkened by smudged mascara, the skin pale from too much exposure to fluorescent light, the rumpled clothes, she hauls on her long winter coat and gloves against the brutal dry windchill and drives herself first to the Coroner's Building, where her shift is technically starting, and then (avoiding Grace, avoiding everyone) to the 96th Division to drop off some evidence reports she has collected there. She walks quickly, head bent, peripherally taking in Captain Cohen haranguing someone on the phone, then Schanke tapping away at his computer keyboard. Not quickly enough: he spots her and stands up just in time to get in her way, and he steadies her with his hands on her arms. She looks up at him and feels no urge to cry, only to keep going.
"Half past seven this evening," she says evenly.
"I'm so sorry, Nat." Schanke makes a move to embrace her but this is hard to do with her armful of reports.
She shifts her shoulders, maybe a shrug. "We've all been expecting it and somehow we never expected it. Does that make sense?"
"Yeah. Listen, sit down and I'll get you a coffee."
"No." Startled at her own abruptness, she widens her eyes and tries to smile apologetically, but can only add rapidly, "I have to get this stuff delivered."
Schanke nods.
Between her departure to deliver the reports and her attempted escape back through the squad room, Nick arrives from an errand; while he is tugging off his overcoat and scarf at his desk, Schanke tells him quietly, "Barbara Jellicoe died this evening." So that when Natalie reappears, Nick approaches her to embrace her, and again she startles herself, this time by freezing, clenching her arms against his touch. Appalled, she embraces him quickly, accepts his murmured realizations of how much Barbara meant to her, even believes them, but declines the offer to talk, the offer of a drive home, and again her arms tense against him, and he draws back carefully, watching her as she swallows, then looks up with eyes he has never seen before, regarding him as if she has never seen him before.
"I am sorry, Nat; you have to believe that," he says.
"Nick." Again, she makes her attempt at a smile. "No, really, Nick, I just can't cope with it right now."
And he knows she means more than Barbara's death.
*****
Natalie makes the first call three days after Barbara's funeral. The sleeplessness has stopped troubling her; with resignation she turns off the bedside lamp and lies down, fully dressed, on the new raspberry polished-cotton duvet cover, amidst the many and various pillows. Her cat wanders in after a while, explores the room silently, then jumps up onto a painted wicker chair with an old velveteen cushion on it. Staring at the ceiling till her eyes adjust to the strange indoor brightness of a snow-covered winter night, she lets her mind wander into the unfocussed state where it feels most at home now, and is intermittently conscious of the music but always of the amazing voice: despite an occasional currency of expression, it is cultured and ancient, so long in use it would seem no more than a rasping whisper, except for the beauty of the inflection, somewhere between French and English, yet also neither. The voice does not calm or soothe her so much as it anaesthetizes her, and permits her to feel no pain, only sadness. And tonight it invites her. Collecting her bedside telephone during one of the musical interludes, she punches out the intermittently repeated call-in number, then rolls onto her back again, switching the radio volume down.
At CERK, LaCroix hits the answer button on the speaker phone, meanwhile carefully folding and sharply creasing a memo entitled How to Incorporate the Station Name as Often as Possible in Your Program, with a first subsection of Answering the Telephone. He says gently, "Talk to me.'
"Hello," Natalie murmurs, and her mouth goes dry; she can barely manage to add, "I wonder if you could.... I mean...." and then her voice fails her. She closes her eyes.
After what seems an eternity of dead air time, LaCroix asks calmly, "What is it that you want me to do for you?" By this time, he has the memo folded into an elongated triangle with a perfect point at the end, and this he aims at the engineer; it sails crisply across the studio and strikes the glass just where the back of her neck is visible.
Something in the simplicity of the question makes Natalie want to cry and cry and she squeezes her eyelids tightly and clenches her teeth to quell the urge and suddenly she finds herself free with words in a relaxed version of her normal voice: "Actually I have no idea why I'm doing this; I never call radio programs and I've hardly even heard this one before. That's not a content judgement personally, but I work night shifts normally and it might not make me too popular with the other people in the Coroner's Building. Anyway, this was the absolutely favourite program of an old friend of mine, a woman I went to college with; we used to hang out with a group of people who'd sometimes sit in on an all-night show a couple of the guys did at U of T. Her name was Barbara Jellicoe. A few days ago she died of cancer. She was thirty-four years old, and had two children in a joint custody arrangement after her divorce."
"I knew Barbara a little; she'd phone in every month or so," LaCroix offers patiently at this break.
"She preferred to listen. That's when she did her painting."
"But that's not why you're calling."
The truth of this startles Natalie, but virtually without hesitation, she replies, "No. No, it isn't."
"Then tell me why."
It is like a litany of anguish, all the more painful for being spoken in such a toneless voice: "I can't sleep, I can't eat, I can't work, I can't grieve. I might have cried at her funeral but not since then although I want to, God help me, I want to; I feel I'm betraying her or being disloyal to her but I think sometimes all the pain and sadness that I feel is more for myself than her."
"Why for you?" LaCroix enquires.
"Because I'm thirty-three, I'm not married, I don't have children, and I've never done any of the really wild and crazy things Barbara and I and our gang would promise to do, between reading aloud the collected works of Edgar Allan Poe and playing ‘Anarchy in the UK’ ten times in a row," Natalie says promptly. "Because I live alone and I spend my nights dissecting cadavers."
The engineer makes a slashing gesture across her throat and says cut her off, but LaCroix shakes his head briefly and asks, "What's your name?"
With deep resignation, she says quietly. "It's Natalie." Then she sighs and adds, "Natalie Lambert: you know me, or know of me."
LaCroix smiles. "I knew there had to be a payoff."
"That's not why I called."
"I wouldn't for a moment think that."
Suddenly, Natalie feels drowsy; she wants to roll over onto one side and she wishes the cat would more over and curl up against her stomach. "Then what would you think," she murmurs.
"I know what I think but you must find out for yourself," LaCroix replies cryptically. "And now," he continues practically, "it's four in the morning and if you work day shifts now, you ought to sleep. But I want you to call me again; will you promise me that?"
"Yes," says Natalie, breathing sleepily into the receiver as her eyelids grow heavy.
"Then good night, Natalie." He gives her name the slightly French inflection Janette gives it when she bothers to use her name. Natalie just manages good night and slides the receiver back into its cradle and turns up the radio volume a little before the two hours of sleep she can allow herself begin. LaCroix switches off the telephone speaker and resumes his conversation with Toronto: "And so, gentle listeners, why has the beautiful Natalie so favoured us when she has so far remained strong and immune past my imaginings? Yes, I know she is beautiful; you see, we have a mutual friend. Yet perhaps she would have come to me nevertheless; after all, no matter how long you may dwell confidently in the light of day, there will come the night when you cannot sleep, and you realize that you need me, that we all, sooner or later, need the Nightcrawler."
*****
Nick arrives at the Coroner's Building as soon as he can safely do so and is just capable of containing himself enough not to run to the lab where the information desk says she is. Schanke has promised to meet him here but there is something he has to do before Schanke arrives, and he calls out her name with a brusque attempt to mask an emotion he's not certain he can name. She is sitting at her desk, with a toxicology report before her, also a stack of postcards and letters. She has her hair untidily piled up on top of her head and is shaking slightly from the ingestion of several cups of coffee as strong and black as the one before her, and there are dark circles under her eyes. She looks up at Nick with vague curiosity and some surprise at his tone of voice.
"Nat," he repeats, in a calmer, more recognizable voice. "What exactly did you think you were doing?"
She frowns and almost laughs. "Is this some new way of saying hello?"
"You know what I mean." He stands just inside the doorway, hands in the pockets of his overcoat.
"Sorry, my telepathic powers never responded to the jump start today."
"Natalie, please," Nick says gently.
"Don't talk in circles, Nick." She returns to her work.
"All right. Maybe you don't remember." It occurs to him, rather unpleasantly, that she might not. "Around four o'clock this morning I'm driving downtown to check out something, radio on as usual, Nightwatch on because Schanke isn't there to turn it off, and someone calls in. And immediately I realize it's you: Nat, I nearly drove off the street."
Natalie sighs; she hasn't really thought about it all day except for a vague uneasiness about seeing Nick that would strike her occasionally. Now she abandons the report and swivels her chair around to face him, and she says quietly, "It was Barbara's favourite program. I'd never give it much thought if not for you. I can't imagine listening to it here. I guess from what you've told me of LaCroix this must be a sort of comedown; maybe he'd rather be the CEO of a multinational corporation but that's neither here nor there. When I went on day shift, I developed insomnia; my body clock didn't respond to the switch. So I started listening, trying to imagine Barbara painting and trying to imagine why she was so loyal and all of a sudden I found myself calling in. I can't remember that he said much. He knows who I am, but I suppose that's inevitable. Does he know about my trying to bully you back over to mortality through fresh air and healthy eating?"
At this unselfconscious relapse into her habitual style, Nick has to smile, and he impulsively crosses the room and bends to kiss her lightly on the mouth. "Most probably," he replies. "But he wouldn't give you the same credit I do, so I don't think it's an issue just yet." He leans against her desk and indicates the papers. "So what are you thinking about with all of this?"
Natalie shrugs and takes another gulp of coffee. "Something very strange. I've been going through my correspondence with Barbara over the past while just to see if there was any pattern I should have picked up on; as you probably noticed, Barbara had a kind of idiosyncratic way of putting things. As for why I'm doing this, well, I got a copy of the toxicology report that accompanied her autopsy. This stuff was all procedural; I guess I've been at this so long it's part of my perception of people. And I found this: a massive concentration of a morphine-derived painkiller she was being given towards the end." Natalie looks up very seriously at Nick. "Given its length of time in her bloodstream," she says, "I think that even though Barbara was dying of cancer, she died of an overdose administered earlier that evening."
"Do you think it was deliberate?" Nick asks carefully, masking reaction: there is not enough to know yet.
"I don't know it but I feel it," Natalie whispers.
*****
What do you do when the unimaginable happens? Natalie asks herself as she lies awake on this latest consecutive night, the room dark and the radio on. And tonight when she has almost reached the point of picking up the telephone, instead she pushes herself up off the bed and goes to change her clothes, dressing simply in a black pullover and tights, casual low-heeled boots, her long winter coat. She ties her hair back with a black velvet bow she has never used, grabs her keys and her wallet and leaves quickly, before she has time to change her mind. The unreality of the situation propels her fearlessly through the parking garage and into her car. As the motor warms up, she switches on the radio and glances through a city map-and-guide she keeps in the glove compartment. Then she drives straight to her destination.
The radio station is in a nondescript downtown building, its illuminated logo set above the door. The night watchman buzzes her in but makes her stop at his desk and asks her name; apparently you can't get beyond this floor if your name isn't on a list. She is about to ask to use the telephone when he simply says, "All right, Natalie Lambert; go on up." She manages not to look surprised and actually isn't; she even smiles to herself slightly in the elevator. And soon she finds herself in the studio, mostly dark now. The first thing she notices is the on-air light, so she stands looking through the glass into the broadcast booth.
LaCroix is apparently absorbed in what he is saying, but when he switches off the microphone he immediately looks up at her. He wears a beautifully tailored, high-collared black suit that makes him look somewhat like a futuristic priest; she is struck by the contrast with his pale hair and skin and especially eyes. He smiles with recognition and beckons her inside; she hesitates, then enters, gazing around with fascination.
"When I used to sit in on all-nighters it was nothing like this," she says. "The shows were pretty bad and the equipment was pretty archaic. We still had vinyl records and turntables, and egg-carton soundproofing." She absently runs a forefinger along the console, then quickly draws it back. "I probably shouldn't touch anything. By the way, you seem to have been expecting me, or how did security get my name?" He is standing by now, taller than she is, and regarding her delightedly from across the booth but so far disinclined to say anything. She tries to smile.
"Sit down," he invites her; "I want to show you something."
As the only chair available is the one he broadcasts from, she sits down there. He stands behind her and places the headphones over her ears, gently guiding back a few stray strands of hair. His fingertips are cold, though she finds the studio as airless as most modern offices. He adjusts a volume lever and she is aware of the music being played, Depeche Mode's "Blasphemous Rumour," and almost midway through.
"When the song ends," LaCroix explains, "you lower this volume lever, and switch on the microphone here."
"Aren't you supposed to do that?" she asks pointedly.
"Not this time. You do it." He rests his hands on the back of the chair.
"I can't do this," she protests. "I'll either say 'Am I on the air?' or the other classic, 'Hello Toronto.' And you'll be fired."
"I can almost assure you no one in management has ever listened to this program," he says soothingly. "Think of the power, Natalie: all over Toronto, millions of people will be turning over in their nightmares to the sound of your voice. Be brilliant: don't disappoint me."
She clears her throat and leans towards the microphone, adjusting it to her height, then says brightly (since the unreality is now beginning to make her giddy), "Hi Mom! Hi Nick. Hi Schanke. Hi Grace." She laughs and tilts her head back, but LaCroix gently shakes his head at her and his eyes seem luminous. He eases her back towards the microphone and taking her wrists so lightly she feels no pressure through her sleeves, guides her hands onto the controls. The song is ending, so she lowers the volume and takes a deep breath and switches on the microphone.
She closes her eyes.
"When you confront a fear, and let it into your life, and let it consume you, and sleep with you, and make love to you, you become fearless, and when you're fearless you can without compunction crawl into the nightlives of people, whisper goodnights full of suggestion to a stranger you left in a bar, wake up your friends while wearing a mask and trade your worst secrets, fly out over the city with no regard for gravity."
"Tell me why you're here," he says softly.
"Because the only true life is at night," she replies, eyes still closed. "To fear no more the heat of the sun is to give in to the lie of civilization."
"But if the others argue the night is neither warmth nor light," he pursues. "What does it have?"
"It has love," she says promptly. "And the trust that counts."
LaCroix brings up the volume on Shriekback's "This Big Hush," then turns off her microphone and removes the headphones from her ears. She opens her eyes slowly, as if reluctantly waking up, and she looks around at him over her shoulder.
At the end of his shift, he switches the system over to the prerecorded music that will take the station to the sunrise show, which is called this even in the winter when it starts at least an hour before sunrise. Then he signs the playlist on his log sheet. Natalie watches from where she has been standing; she continues to watch as he collects a long leather overcoat and a fringed silk scarf. For a moment she wonders if he has forgotten she's here, then he stops and with exquisite lightness touches the fingertips of one hand to her face.
They emerge from the building in the last predawn hours. It is snowing lightly and Natalie smiles.
"Look, it's snowing," she says. "I love snow."
"I'm afraid I prefer being indoors," he confesses; the cold is acute.
"Thanks for letting me sit in," she continues, looking up at him seriously, while the snowflakes cling to her long hair. "I hope no one I know heard me when I was on the air."
"I hope everyone you know did," LaCroix counters. "You were splendid."
She is pleased in spite of herself. "Tell me something. Was I on the air when I phoned you?"
"Of course."
"You make me feel as if I'm part of a conspiracy." Despite her love of the snow, she is starting to shiver, but she cannot feel anger or betrayal; this is, after all, the trust that counts.
"Perhaps you are, but I won't do it again without your permission."
He takes her hand in his cold grasp and raises it briefly to his lips. Again, in spite of herself, she melts, and has some trouble finding her voice to say, "My car's just across the street; can I drive you anywhere?"
"No, that's not necessary," he says decisively. "I shall call you tomorrow; stay awake and wait for me, Natalie."
Again the French inflection. She melts still further.
|Part 1|Part 2|Part 3|Part 4|Part 5| Table of Contents
Copyright 1995-2004 by Gisèle Baxter; all rights to original narrative, characters and characterizations reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Last updated 2 August 2003 by G.M. Baxter.