Gisèle Marie Baxter
She realizes she has to dress carefully for this occasion, and she stands for a long time by the closet of the spacious bedroom in her apartment. As she hauls out dress after dress, holding each up in front of her bathrobe-clad figure, she contemplates the room, and tries to remember the last time she brought a man here. Finally she chooses a fitted black velvet dinner dress, with buttons down the front and a short hem. She wears plain stiletto-heeled shoes and diamond-patterned stockings, and spends several minutes alternately draping her hair over her shoulders and piling it up on her head. After deciding to let it hang but curling and glossing it, she applies her makeup, and manages to get the new crimson lipstick blotted perfectly.
As she rides in a taxi to the club, she feels awkward: this isn't a good idea. Nevertheless, she wants to do it.
The dress is too elegant, too formal for this place, and maybe she's a little older than much of the crowd, but she checks her coat nonchalantly and crosses the strobelit dance floor to the bar, where she is about to place her order when the bartender in response to some imperceptible signal hands her one of the club business cards, on the back of which is written a room number and a few directions. She slips this into her little evening purse, snaps it shut, and proceeds further along the floor, past the sound system, through a door, up a flight of stairs and down a corridor to a small but lush studio overlooking the club.
In this black room there is only light from an inset halogen sconce high up on the wall but her eyes adjust more quickly than she expected. He stands by the chrome bar, wearing a leather blazer and a collarless silk shirt buttoned to the neck and pleated leather trousers. She closes the door, blocking the harsh light from the hall, and accepts a proffered glass of red wine, which she touches to his glass. They drink silently for a while, standing side by side, looking out over the floor.
"What made you decide to become a coroner?" he asks finally.
She shrugs. "I thought I'd be good at it," she says, then realizes this isn't exactly the truth and adds, "and it was prestigious and paid a lot of money and allowed me to figure interesting things out." As the explanation gets longer it makes less sense, and she drinks more of the wine, which is very good, and adds, "It was there, all right? I was young, bright, ambitious, unencumbered and flexible enough to sustain the unpredictability and the weird hours. It only occurs to me now that I'm in my thirties and I work nights looking at cadavers."
He almost laughs. "But surely you don't want a life of dull suburban predictability, a husband who wants dinner on the table at six o'clock every night and a mob of children clutching at you? I can't even imagine what the suburbs look like in the daytime; at least at night the houses don't all seem to be such ghastly colours and the people in them are asleep instead of mowing their ghastly lawns, which is probably their idea of recreation. You risked something I find most intriguing."
She feels relaxed. The alcohol is warming her rather than rushing to her head, the music is just audible enough, and the situation is so odd that she simply surrenders to it. She feels elegant and sophisticated, like the beautiful dark-haired woman sitting at the bar, alone yet calm.
"I think Janette is so beautiful," she murmurs.
"She is appropriate to own a place like this," LaCroix replies.
"And you would be too."
At this he really does laugh. "What makes you say that?"
"I guess you look like someone with that sort of money." Natalie shrugs again, but with greater insouciance. "The guys I used to know in all-night radio, believe me, made next to nothing. Now granted, that was a long time ago."
He smiles, leaning against the glass to look at her. "A long time?"
She is even too relaxed to blush; draining her glass, she lets herself fall back into a deeply padded couch. "All right; I'm not that old."
"I should say you're not." He fetches the wine bottle from amongst the bottles on the bar and pours her another drink. "You are exactly the right age to accept an invitation to meet a man you scarcely know at four in the morning in a quite decadent nightclub. That is exactly why I opened a magnificent 1986 Chateau Lafite."
She extends her glass and he picks up his and they touch rims.
"And are you still so sad, Natalie?" he asks.
She is moving in slow motion, calmly swimming upwards, unafraid of losing her breath before she breaks the surface. She is perfectly still now, her eyes on his. "Yes, in my heart. But here and now, I feel -- "
He drops to a crouch so that they face each other as eye level, so quickly there seems neither hesitation nor urgency as he interjects, "Loved?"
"Yes. And not alone."
"Of course not."
At this proximity, she is briefly and vaguely aware in a professional way that she would like to see him in full daylight or at least under bright electric light, to see if he is as pale as he seems. This passes like a wave and remains only as a slight quick frown. She lets one hand drift upwards and rest lightly on one side of his face, which is cool and smooth against her palm. He watches her, half-smiling ironically, waiting, as if expecting that she will lean forward enough to kiss him on the mouth, closing her eyes to do so. Her mouth is warm and not unpleasant and there is that aura of familiarity about her: this must be rather like going to bed with a stranger yet all the while feeling it is someone you know in disguise. She sets her glass down and loosely drapes her arms around his neck and her mouth is just about to open; he carefully slides his hands up onto her arms and pressures his mouth along her jaw and down her throat and onto her neck. She has a lovely neck under all those masses of hair, very long and straight. She starts to breathe heavily, the surface is further away than she thought and at any moment she'll have to swim very hard: she has never initiated a seduction, and she realizes how conventional it was of her to think she had to do so. He is kissing her too hard on the neck and she is scared but she can't tense herself or fight. Suddenly he pulls her arms down from around his neck, clamps his hands on her wrists and shoves her back; her eyes pop open yet she can't scream, she only breathes more rapidly. But he is only watching her, eyes maybe a little more luminous, and just as suddenly he lets her go and leans back on the glass, hands in pockets. Not yet: she has a secret she doesn't know he wants to know.
"That isn't what you or I want, Natalie, is it," he says.
"No," she agrees, relaxed again and yet triumphant inside. Then she gracefully extends a hand, and he bends to kiss it so lightly she can hardly feel the warmth from her neck still on his lips.
*****
In late afternoon, on an errand to the division, Natalie sits down at an unoccupied desk. No one has to pay attention to her for the moment, so she puts her head on her cradled arms and falls promptly asleep. She is still asleep, tactfully undisturbed, when the evening shift begins to come in. Then someone is gently coughing above her.
"Let her sleep, Schanke." Nick's voice: she is drowsily aware as she wakes up that it has two levels, one a sort of casual currency, the other a deep sonority, a voice used well for a long long time, distinct yet familiar. She shakes herself into consciousness and pulls her head up, pushing back her tousled hair and rubbing smudged mascara from her eyes. She is pale and bleary-looking, and wears a bulky white turtlenecked sweater with trousers.
"Hi guys," she says. "I must be off duty by now."
"For quite a while," says Schanke. He proffers a bagel slathered in cream cheese. "Want some? This is sort of like breakfast time for us night owls, as you must remember."
It's no good; it's still repulsive. "No, thanks, Schanke."
"You all right, Nat?" Nick asks.
She looks straight up at him. He has such lovely dark eyes, eyes she could trust with her life itself. "I'm fine," she says. "I had kind of a late night and I guess I'm paying for it now. I hate falling asleep like that; I always end up throwing something out of joint." She has been absently rubbing her neck and shoulders. Nick stands behind her and starts very carefully kneading her; she smiles and lets her head drop back so she can continue looking up at him. "What are you guys working on?"
"Reports," says Schanke. "For our sins."
"You're supposed to be getting some rest, not out partying," Nick reminds her affably.
"I wasn't out partying; I had a drink with a friend after he got off work, and the curse of lives like ours is everyone we meet seems to work at night." Natalie wonders if he can see through this, or if she wants him to. His expression sobers a little and suddenly he hits an unexpectedly sore spot. She yelps and tries to laugh: "Careful, Nick, you don't know your own strength."
"I'll drive you home," he offers.
"He'll put you in a cab," says Schanke, finishing his bagel and dunking the crumpled napkin into a nearby wastebasket. "He has to help me with these reports so our captain will be impressed."
"I'll drive you home," Nick repeats.
*****
"I guess I didn't become a doctor to spend my nights deciphering corpses." Natalie relaxes in Nick's big green car.
"But your work is good," Nick points out. "You find the clues that can steer us towards a suspect, or away from someone who's innocent. You can prevent other victims from ending up in the morgue by helping us do our job faster. You may not put bandaids on kids' knees and you may not find a cure for the common cold -- "
"Or for cancer, or for you," Natalie interjects dispiritedly.
"That's not why we're friends, Natalie."
She smiles. "I know."
"And speaking of friends, Nat, who are you hiding from us?"
She looks away. "Please, Nick, don't be jealous."
"I'm not. I wish you'd meet someone terrific and kind who'd make you happy. He'd be a very lucky man. I'd rather he had a day job so he could take you, oh, I don't know, out to the Islands, maybe, or for a drive in the country to look at the leaves."
Natalie laughs, a little too harshly. "In the middle of winter?"
"Skating on the Square?"
She keeps laughing till he starts laughing too.
"Oh, Nick, it's nothing like that. It's not even a mad fling," she says, suddenly and soberly. "It's just someone. I'll tell you all about it soon."
*****
Towards the end of his shift, Nick drives over to the Raven. Janette is doing something frustrating with a calculator and the place is closed when he comes in.
"Nicholas! You're here to help me figure out the take." She is wearing a long-sleeved gown in blue crushed velvet and it makes her hair look even blacker, her skin milklike.
"Do you make money on this?"
"I have no idea. I wish you were an accountant."
"Well, very few accountants work at night."
"That's what you think." She arches her eyebrows, tosses the calculator onto the bar, and crosses the dance floor to finish locking up. "Why are you here? Do you want a drink?"
"It's about Natalie Lambert, actually," Nick admits.
Normally the eyebrows would arch even further and an ironic comment would follow, but Janette's eyes move too quickly around the room before she says, "What about her? She told you she was here last night? And you object?"
"She was here?"
Janette nods. She returns to the bar and pours herself a drink. "She came in about four, beautifully dressed if not quite like the other patrons, but anyway, I knew she wasn't here on business so I didn't let her see me; I wanted to see what she would do. She sat at the bar and ordered a drink, then she went upstairs; she was gone for maybe an hour, then she left immediately."
"Upstairs? Where the private rooms are?"
"Oui. Nicholas, is there a point to this?" Janette is losing patience with this. Collecting her glass and the bottle she trails away, through the screen and into her office, where she sets these items down on a low polished table, and starts removing her jewelry and unpinning her hair. Nick follows her. The answering machine light is blinking several times and the radio is playing softly. She turns it off, and hits the button on the machine: the messages are days old, mostly, and all business-related. There are fresh red roses in a tall glass vase, and one of LaCroix's many coats is hanging over the back of a chair. Janette turns on the television and sits on the chesterfield facing it, aiming the remote control and aimlessly scanning. Nick watches her shut him out, then impatiently paces the room a couple of times, then impulsively yanks the coat from the chair and goes to fling it in the closet. Janette turns off the television.
"All right," he says slowly, "I know she called him at the station during one of his broadcasts. But why this?"
"I don't know," Janette replies honestly. "All I know is she was here, and so was he, and one of my better bottles in reserve was expended on her."
"To get at me?"
Janette shrugs. "It would be unwise. The community cannot help but know that Natalie knows. Our knowledge is strong; it's best to keep hers limited. Has she ever expressed genuine curiosity about us, about where we come from, what our lives have been?"
"Not much. I think she also knows the risks."
Janette ponders this as she finishes her drink, then says very seriously, "Perhaps, Nicholas, the knowledge was too much to give her. Has she undergone any sort of personal crisis recently?"
Nick nods. "A friend she'd known since university died of cancer a few days ago. You met her briefly here: Barbara Jellicoe."
"Yes. I realized then she was dying. As you must have."
"And so did Natalie. She's been through so much personal loss for someone whose work is death. Barbara was divorced, two kids in a joint custody arrangement. I think Natalie's been questioning the whole state of her life and the arbitrariness of death and illness. She's switched to a day shift but it hasn't helped."
"In love with a man she cannot have."
At this reminder, Nick winces slightly. "She told me after Barbara's funeral that soon she'd look older than I do."
"And she's so pretty," Janette says, almost absently. "And courting despair; LaCroix adores that in people. The question is, who found whom? As for what we do, we do nothing for now. Any interference would be regarded as a challenge. Perhaps even by her."
"I won't let her be brought across."
"Even if she wants it?"
"No. That would betray our trust."
*****
Early into the next evening shift, Schanke calls Nick at home. Nick is sorting some clothes he wants to drop off at the drycleaners on the way to work, so he only takes the call after the answering machine has kicked in. He props the receiver on his shoulders as he drapes trousers and shirts and jackets over the back of his chesterfield.
"Hi, Schanke, what's up?" he says on the way to the refrigerator. Six bottles, five still unopened, remain inside, plus a third of a plastic bottle of diet soda abandoned by Natalie, and a sack of nacho chips he could always offer Schanke if his partner ever comes over.
"Remember Nat's suspicion about Barbara Jellicoe's toxicology report? We may have something like a break," Schanke announces. "Well, okay, something more like a tiny crack, but apparently someone called an all-night radio show the night before the evening Barbara died, and kept pleading with her to forgive him and come back to him."
"Who gave the tip?" Nick wonders, pouring out a tall juice glass, kicking the refrigerator door shut and leaning on the stove to drink and talk.
Schanke has at his desk a young man with lank centre-parted long hair and a minuscule van dyke beard; he wears a Nirvana t-shirt and wraparound shades. He smokes a cigarette languidly.
"A guy named Seth Potter. He's working his way through art school driving a cab at nights." Schanke glances at his aloof guest. "You should meet him; you guys might have a lot in common."
"Briefly. We have to find out if there's any record of the call. The time of death was about half past eight."
"The station says we can't come over without a warrant and they also say they've talked to the program host and he doesn't remember the call and refuses to talk to us."
Nick frowns. "It's not the Nightcrawler, is it?"
"How did you guess," Schanke counters drily.
"It's the best program in the universe," Seth Potter offers tonelessly. "It's genius and excellent."
Nick finishes his drink and rinses the glass out in the sink. "Here's what we do," he decides. "I'll talk to the Nightcrawler; we go back a while."
"All my old friends went into the army or became dentists," Schanke complains. "So, is this a break or a crack?"
Nick hardly dares to speculate. "It could be a very nasty coincidence."
*****
Later, Nick sits at his desk in the division squad room, filling in reports, half watching Schanke devour a box of donuts he has brought in as a peace offering. He has the radio on his desk on low volume, tuned to the Nightcrawler, and keeps thinking damn you, even when the music comes on and he absently taps a pencil against his computer keyboard, and remembers a bemusing rainy night recently spent in Janette's office, listening to CD's and picking out music to play in her club. When he starts to hum he realizes Schanke is watching him.
"I thought you liked long-hair stuff."
"I have eclectic tastes."
"Don't tell me you're listening to the Larry King of the cemetery set again." Schanke laughs. "That show's right up there with those infomercials about increasing your brain power through hypnosis, or that one about people who've been abducted and forced to have sex with aliens."
"Why don't you phone in a request? 'Heartbreak Hotel’ or something," Nick suggests, nabbing one of Schanke's donuts and setting it where it won't look too repulsive till a chance to pretend to eat it arises.
"Yeah right. Or shut up and get a life." Schanke frowns into the box, tosses it and resumes his report. "What kind of drugs give you a voice like that?"
"Hallucinogens," Nick offers charitably.
"I wonder what it would be like to have sex with aliens," Schanke muses.
*****
Outside it's five a.m. and icily damp. For the first time Nick realizes there is something almost peaceful or at least serene about the dark sterility of the broadcast booth. And for a moment he doesn't want to see it violated by a troop of cops with warrants, any more than he would his house. As a created reality, it has as much validity, if fewer risks, and how could he really judge the risks? At any rate, LaCroix regards him from across the room, arms folded, smile slight yet sardonic, face pale after the long night but relaxed.
"So tell me again that you want my help, Nicholas," LaCroix says softly.
Nick smiles back tightly. "Let's be specific, LaCroix. I personally want nothing from you. Metro Homicide wants information to see if a murder investigation should be opened, and I thought this might work better if I came here. The alternative involves a warrant and your going downtown, where the questioning might wrap up later this morning than you might prefer."
"That's very kind of you," LaCroix returns drily.
"Survival instinct -- I never do overtime," Nick counters. "All right, this is it: several days ago, a woman named Barbara Jellicoe died in a Toronto hospital. She had terminal cancer, but the cause of death was actually an overdose of a painkiller she had been given intravenously. Last night we got a tip from a cab driver that he'd heard someone pleading with Barbara for forgiveness in a call to your program the night before she died."
"A rather delayed reaction on his part," LaCroix comments.
"Whatever. Is his memory all right?"
LaCroix considers this. "Yes. There was a very brief call around half past two on that night, from someone who simply asked Barbara to come back to him and forgive him. Four or five times, with roughly equal vehemence and unintelligibility."
"How do you know when Barbara died," Nick wonders smoothly.
LaCroix's smile turns mirthlessly cold. "There's a lovely confluence at work here, Nicholas. Five nights ago, at around four a.m., I got a call from a young woman, not a regular listener, but someone who knew and loved Barbara. I know more about Barbara than Barbara knew about herself and as she's dead, she's of no interest to me. Her friend, on the other hand, I have come to admire as I have few mortals. So you and I have that, at least, in common." He slowly unfolds his arms and rounds the console to collect a tape, which he hands to Nick. "This is the call your cab driver heard. The station keeps recorded logs, but no, you can't have the Natalie tapes; I erased them."
Of course: you own the place. Regulations here only exist for you to bend. "You know the community's position on Natalie," Nick reminds LaCroix aloud. "And you can imagine mine."
"Don't moralize with me, Nicholas," LaCroix returns brusquely, turning away to collect his coat and scarf.
"I'm not," Nick counters. "Natalie's a free agent. Under other circumstances, she'd regard you no differently than she does me or Janette: with a healthy mixture of curiosity and scepticism. But she felt Barbara's death very deeply; she's known too much pain too recently. She won't talk to any of us; I have no idea why she's decided to trust you."
LaCroix says simply, "Why shouldn't she trust me?"
Nick cannot bother to reply to this, so he changes the subject slightly. "Well, do you have any idea why you seem to be the focal point for all these people?"
LaCroix shrugs. "In a way, I was Barbara's intermediary," he says cryptically. Then he hesitates, deliberately stretching Nick's patience still more, and adds, "Anything Natalie has said to me I regard as having the secrecy of the confessional, or the privacy of the psychiatrist's couch. Anyway, I don't think it matters much who called or why, or whether a medical error or a deliberate overdose killed Barbara. She's dead, and she was going to die regardless. Natalie's reaction is rather more important, don't you agree? Oh well, of course, you're a detective; it's professional for you as much as it is personal." Under the harsh electric light, LaCroix suddenly looks even paler than he had, and there is a weariness behind his smile. He turns up his coat collar. "I thought I'd have a drink with Janette before sleeping; care to join us?"
"Another time," Nick says absently, then adds, "but thank you."
*****
Early in the evening, Natalie leaves the Coroner's Building to find Nick standing in the wet slush leaning on his car, a large takeout cappuccino in one hand. She smiles warmly.
"Hey, what's this for?" she wonders.
"I thought we'd go for a drive before I check in," he explains, as he hands her the paper cup and opens the passenger door for her.
She pries at the lid on the cup, finally getting open enough of a gap to sip at the creamy froth without spilling it. "Okay," she says, "so you and Schanke got a tip."
"Maybe more of a coincidence," Nick replies; he pulls a cassette from the dashboard and pops it into his deck, hitting the play button. The tape has been cued up to the beginning of the call; a lugubriously desperate male voice emerges: "Hello....Barbara, are you listening; can I reach you this way.... Barbara, please come back to me, please forgive me, come back into my life long enough to let me explain what I did, oh my dearest, dearest Barbara, oh my love, I love you, forgive me, you have to come back and forgive me, this is not what I wanted." And so it goes. Natalie is visibly horrified. She turns to Nick, who is concentrating on his driving but paying careful attention to her nonetheless.
"That's Dennis Matheson; I'm sure of it," she says earnestly.
"Who's Dennis Matheson?"
"He was part of our group in university; we were seven or eight of us at any given time, all living around the same place. Dennis and this other guy, Nathan, did an eccentric all-nighter for the college radio station, and sometimes we'd all sit in, read creaky old poetry, play weird music, and generally do all the stuff we couldn't when the station manager was around in the daytime. Dennis and Barbara kept in touch after we all moved on; who's to know what there was to it? What is this, anyway?"
Nick pops the tape out of the deck and hands it to her. "I got it from a friend of yours, actually. Matheson, if that's who this voice belongs to, called in the night before Barbara died."
Natalie turns the tape over and over in her hands. "He never told me about this." She swallows and tries to be casual. "But I guess he told you about me."
"Nothing personal." Nick steers the car towards the harbourfront; it is snowing heavily enough to make him switch on the windshield wipers. "And I didn't ask; he volunteered that you'd met a couple of times. Oh, and no tapes of you on the air exist."
"That's a relief," Natalie says absently. She stares out the window at the harbour lights through the veil of snow, drifting away with it. She drinks her cappuccino mechanically, shivers and feels suddenly a sort of crushing loneliness that must be palpable; she has to keep talking, it seems, to dispel it as much as possible, so she continues, "How long has LaCroix been a vampire?"
"A long time. Probably two thousand years."
This compels her to glance at Nick, who is apparently still concentrating on his driving. "And he's not tired of it?"
"LaCroix can't contemplate mortality," Nick says. "He's forgotten how."
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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.