The Bullet Page 17

  For the next hour we sat on the sofa like strangers, not snuggling, not even touching. Politely chewing and swallowing steak and salad. Every few minutes he offered a point of incomprehensible sports commentary, and I pretended to sound interested. We spoke less and less as the game ground on.

  Eventually, I’d had enough. I laid my hand on his. “You okay?”

  “Me? Yes. Bit tired. I should get going.”

  He should get going? This was not the way I had envisioned the evening unfolding.

  “Thank you for cooking.” He stood up. “Delicious marinade on the beef.”

  “Will. What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, nothing. Sorry.”

  “Then why won’t you look me in the eye?”

  He did then, miserably. “Caroline. I don’t know how to . . .”

  “Just say it.”

  “I’m an idiot. You are amazing. I just—you and me—this is a mistake. I’m your doctor. I should never—”

  Ah. So that was it. “It’s okay. I’ve been thinking about it, too. The ethics of our situation.”

  He looked stricken. “You have?”

  “I’m guessing doctor-patient sexual relationships aren’t exactly smiled on in the medical profession.”

  A pause. “No. They’re not.”

  “But we’re grown-ups, and this is consensual. The situation is what it is. I don’t want to presume anything, but . . . if this is something we both want to continue after my surgery, then I’ll just switch doctors. Et voilà, no more conflict of interest.”

  “Caroline—”

  “And I promise not to subject you to my stupid brother again until we’ve had a chance to figure out where things between us stand.”

  This drew a small smile. “I liked him, actually.”

  “He liked you, too. Now stop talking about Tony and kiss me.”

  “I would love to. But I need to go home. ” Will shook himself, a forceful, involuntary movement, the way a dog shakes dry after a swim. “I’m—I’m sorry everything’s gotten confused.”

  “What are you talking about? Everything’s gotten confused—as you put it—because you chased me down to Atlanta. Are you now professing that your interest was purely medical?”

  He bowed his head. “No.”

  I gaped at him in fury and bewilderment. “So did you come over here tonight as my doctor or my—or my—or what?” I sputtered. “Is this your thing? Are you in the habit of seducing all your female patients?”

  “Whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa. No. Jesus. This has never happened before. It won’t happen again.”

  “Shit.” I never curse. Madame Aubuchon must have been rubbing off on me. “Shit. Will, wait.”

  But he was already striding out of the house, the door slamming shut behind him.

  Twenty-eight

  * * *

  They say we are born with five basic senses.

  Remember, you learned this as a child, from picture books: What does the bunny see? What does the bunny smell? And so on. Sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing. Five. But some people have more. Some people can sense when rain is coming. Some mothers of soldiers swear they sensed a chill, an arrow of foreboding, hours before the telegram bearing the unthinkable news arrived. I believe them. There are bonds that surpass the capacity of modern science to explain.

  Then there are the curious solutions that nature devises, to counter a deficit. My great-aunt, deaf from childhood, could sense vibrations, could determine the location of a sound, through her feet. She would curl her toes, bony and freckled, onto the warped boards of her front porch, then she’d jerk upright and point, a full thirty seconds before the rest of us heard the mail truck rumbling up the drive. One sense falters; the others sharpen.

  So it is at night.

  At night it is the sense of sound that will save you.

  By which I mean, you could not see the man’s shadow outside, waiting. Could not touch it, as it slipped to the back cellar window, where the black was absolute, where the moonlight did not reach. You could not smell his fingertips as they closed around the doorknob. Could not taste his sweat beading, salty and glistening, under wool.

  No, but you could hear the glass shatter.

  You could hear the bolt scrape as it slid back. Hear the floorboard creak, protesting the weight of the foot that should not have been there.

  I was asleep when he came.

  • • •

  AT FIRST, I thought it might be Will returning. Will, having turned around, having decided he wanted to stay the night after all.

  I lay suspended, halfway between dreaming and awake. My pillow was warm. I would make him apologize. He would have to grovel. Then I would scoot over, let him slip naked between the sheets, let him curl against me. I made a purring sound, turned beneath the blankets. Hurry up, silly boy. What was taking him so long? Why had he made such a clatter letting himself in? Why was he not padding up the stairs? And something else was nagging, some detail not right, swooping and buzzing at my sleepy brain like an insistent insect.

  At last I caught it: Will did not have a key. Will could not be in my kitchen. I sat up.

  Listened.

  I had imagined this moment. Every woman who lives alone must harbor her own private night terrors. In my nightmares these confrontations always unfold in black and white. Grainy, like a Hitchcock movie. Me, willowy and bearing a distinct resemblance to Ingrid Bergman, my floor-length white satin dressing gown cinched in a bow around my waist. Something—not a specific noise so much as a nameless but urgent sense of menace—routs me from bed. I slide on fur-trimmed, kitten-­heeled mules and light a cigarette (still channeling Ingrid here). Inhale for courage. Then Ingrid/I crack my bedroom door, flick on the hall light, tiptoe to the landing, and call down in a throaty, trembling voice—the trembling voice is key—Is anyone there? Around this point in the dream I usually snap awake. I never see the intruder’s face.

  The reality, when it came, was less elegant. My hair in tangles, my breath sour from last night’s wine. In reality there was no time to tiptoe. Certainly no time to light up a smoke. And no power on this earth that would tempt me from the safety of my bedroom, toward the yawning, dark mouth of the stairs.

  From below, a thump. Someone unfamiliar with my house, bumping softly against a table or chair. Someone moving in the living room. Out of my bed cross the room slam the door turn the lock. But the lock on my bedroom door was useless. Flimsy, the keyless kind that spins inside the door handle. A determined child with a paper clip could pick it in ten seconds flat. Something to brace the door, then. Against one wall leaned an antique, mahogany chest of drawers stuffed with jeans and sweaters. My house was built a century before people decided they needed closets. I leaned in and shoved. Slipped. No traction on the waxy floor. Under the bed were a grotty pair of UGGs, suede ankle boots, the ones I wore to bring in the newspaper and roll out my trash bin. Yank them on, hurry up, push, the chest gouging tracks into the floor.

  There. The chest was square against the door. I pricked my ears.

  All was still.

  Nothing but the wind rustling leaves outside my window. My heart slamming in my chest. Whoever was downstairs did not want to be heard. Adrenaline shook my hands as I cast about for my cell phone. Please, God, please, God, let me have carried it upstairs last night. Not on my desk. Not on the nightstand. I found it in the pocket of my jeans, slung over the back of a chair. My fingers would not cooperate, kept mashing wrong buttons, backing up, fumbling. Finally, ringing. A second went by. Two. Enough time to curse the burglar-alarm panel, winking green on the wall. Mocking me. I had been so upset after the fight with Will that I’d stormed off to bed without remembering to turn it on.

  The 911 operator was calm, told me to slow down and repeat my address. I tried. Croaked out my cross street, spelled my name: C-A-S-H-I . . .


  I was spelling when the stairs creaked. Specifically, the second stair. Then the fourth. I know every loose board. Whoever was climbing was taking the stairs two at a time, and stepping smack in the center, not sticking to the quieter, more stable edges. Whoever was climbing no longer cared if he was heard.

  “He’s upstairs,” I whimpered into the phone. “Please hurry. How long—”

  “Ma’am, an officer will be right with—”

  “No, now! You need to get here now!”

  I threw the phone down. Trained my eyes on the crack at the bottom of my bedroom door. The intruder did not turn on a light. On the top step he seemed to hesitate, then he began moving toward my closed door. He was panting. Winded from the stairs. No more than a dozen feet from me. Only the door and that chest of drawers separating us. I could whisper and he would hear every word.

  My doorknob rattled. He was testing it. He would give up, turn around now, surely. He would not break the lock. This was not personal. A dozen burglaries occur every night of the week in the District of Columbia. He would grab whatever burglars come to grab—a camera, my laptop, an expensive and never-used tennis racket?—and then he would go back to wherever he had come from.

  Another creak. Retreating footsteps. He had turned around, was tracking back down the hall, away from me. I slumped. Air slammed into my chest, sweet air, as though I were surfacing after a long time ­underwater; I had not realized I’d been holding my breath.

  Then the crash. The deafening, savage, booming crash of a man running at the door, lowering his shoulder, trying to break it in. Oh, sweet Jesus.

  There was only one other way out. My bedroom window looks onto the street. The drop is maybe ten feet, maybe more, onto scrubby azalea bushes and brick sidewalk. I undid the latch, pushed up the window, leaned out, and howled, Help! Help me! No one below, the street deserted.

  Behind me the sound of wood splintering.

  One leg over the sill, then the other, trying to lower myself, but I had no upper-body strength. I’d never done a pull-up in my life. My nightgown snagged. I ripped it free and crashed to the ground. Sting of cold on my skin, scrape of knees against brick, pain beyond words in my neck. I scrambled upright. Swayed. Stumbled. My right arm—the bad one—instinctively mashing down my breasts, stopping them from swinging unsupported under my gown.

  Running. Really running, lungs burning, legs churning. Too frightened to stop and look back.

  It turned out I have been running my whole life. I just never knew it.

  Twenty-nine

  * * *

  THURSDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2013

  They fingerprinted the entire house before they let me back inside. A frizzy-haired, wide-assed woman around my age arrived with a forensics kit and set to work on the front door. I watched her from the backseat of a squad car, a bulky Georgetown University Police Department jacket draped around my shoulders, another one covering my legs. Blue lights mounted on the car roof flashed on-off in jerky rhythm.

  I had run straight for the front gates of the university. At the corner of Thirty-Seventh and O Streets, there’s always a police car parked, standing by for emergencies and also as a visible reminder of the security presence on campus. I caught the startled look of the officer in the driver’s seat as I hurtled in his direction. University cops must see some weird stuff, but hysterical women in UGG boots and torn nightgowns, blood streaming from both knees, probably didn’t come along every night. I flew into his arms while he was still disentangling himself from the car, one boot planted on the asphalt, the other midair. Both a gun and a truncheon dangled from his belt. I’d never been so happy to see weapons.

  The cop half-walked, half-dragged me into the guard station attached to the gates, a stone hut I’d marched past a thousand times and never given a second glance. He sat me down. Offered a tissue and ­motioned for me to wipe the snot and tears off my face. It was still dark outside. I had no idea what time it might be.

  “You okay, ma’am? You hurt?”

  “There was a man,” I gasped.

  “Okay. You’re okay now. Deep breaths.”

  “In my—in my house.”

  “And where’s that?”

  “Q Street.”

  “Q Street? All right. Take it easy, there you go.” My teeth were chattering so violently it must have been audible. He snatched a navy police jacket off a hook and wrapped it awkwardly around me. “So, this guy. In your house. You know him?”

  Did I know him? But it was a logical question. Women who turn up bloody and weeping in the wee hours must often turn out to be domestic-violence victims, their wounds inflicted by their husbands or boyfriends.

  “No.” I shook my head for emphasis, and the simple gesture scorched such pain through me that my vision went white. Pinpricks of light danced behind my eyelids. When I forced them open, the cop had folded his arms over his gut and was regarding me with an expression somewhere between pity and wariness. I must have looked frightful. Like a madwoman off her meds. Snarled hair, skinned knees, mangy boots, the hem of my nightgown ripped and dirty. Embarrassment spurred me to pull rank.

  “My name is Caroline Cashion. Professor Cashion. I’m faculty.”

  “Really.”

  “French Department. Faculty of Languages and Linguistics.”

  His eyebrows bounced up. Then, recovering, “Professor, okay, I didn’t . . . hang on.” He reached behind him, felt around on the counter for a spiral-bound notebook. “Let me take down your address, call this in.”

  “I already called it in,” I snapped. “I called 911 from my house. But the guy, the guy who I don’t know, the burglar, he was inside. He came upstairs. I had to run.”

  The cop was nodding, scribbling, a new urgency to his movements, when the hut door slammed open. I jumped, ready to flee. But it was only another uniformed police officer. Flabby, older than the first.

  “Evening, Al. Goddamn freezing out—” He spotted me, checked himself. “Evening . . . miss.” He looked me up and down, then turned to my cop. “Whaddawe got here?”

  “This is, um, Mrs. . . . Professor . . . Cashion. I was just . . .” The one apparently named Al had slid out a keyboard from an underdesk tray and was pecking at the keys. I knew what he was searching. I doubted that at that moment I remotely resembled the smiling, poised ID photo that he would pull up in the university database. But the age, race, and gender would match. The photo must have passed muster because the two cops exchanged nervous glances and began barking at each other.

  “Why haven’t you cleaned her up? Where’s the first-aid kit?” The older one.

  Al swatted him away. “I’m calling over to Idaho Avenue, see what they know.” Idaho Avenue is the closest DC metropolitan police station. Second district, the one responsible for Georgetown.

  “Here we go. Just a little sting.” The older officer again, leaning over my knees, swiping at them with an antiseptic wipe that stung like hell. He lowered his voice. “Do you need a rape kit?”

  No, thank God.

  “You said you called 911? Were they sending somebody over to take a look?” asked Al, one hand cocked on his hip and the other squeezing the phone to his ear. Before I could answer he held up a finger and mouthed, Wait. Then, to the phone: “Georgetown DPS here. Main campus. I got a lady here . . .”

  Half an hour later I was back on Q Street. Back in front of my house, climbing out of Al’s GUPD vehicle, being handed off to a DC police detective. The big boys would take it from here. The sky was beginning to streak gray. My father was on his way. The fingerprint lady had finished out front and moved inside. Al squeezed my shoulder, told me not to worry about the jackets, I could return them anytime.

  Then he was gone and a new detective stood before me. The new guy was wiry with beady eyes and a thin, rodenty nose that started too high on his forehead. He addressed me with what sounded like a stock speech: I must be exh
austed, but anything I could tell them was helpful and it was important to do it now, while the details were fresh.

  My front hall looked just as it always had. Every lamp blazing. A shadow moved at the top of the stairs, causing me to shrink back against the front door. But it was only the fingerprint lady, wrapping up, calling down to us, “All set.”

  “Ready?” The detective turned to me. “Ready to show me exactly what happened?”

  • • •

  I TOLD MY story.

  The detective listened, jotted it down in careful block letters. Ballpoint pen scratching across a carbon-copy form, filling in boxes in smeary pink-and-yellow triplicate. Hadn’t these guys ever heard of iPads?

  But I sensed he wasn’t quite buying it.

  He kept pressing me on what I had actually seen (nothing, I’d ­actually seen nothing, I was behind a locked door the entire time) and what exact noise had awakened me (maybe glass breaking? Or a creaky floorboard?) And what exact time I had heard this alleged noise (um, 3:00 a.m.? 4:00? 5:00?) And, if I never saw him, why was I so sure the intruder was a man? (Because. Because, jackass, what woman goes around breaking into houses, charging at doors trying to bust them open with brute strength? For fuck’s sake. I never swear, but come on.)

  At some point during this inquisition my father arrived, followed in short order by Martin and then Tony. We Cashions believe in traveling in packs. Martin and Dad wore jeans; Tony was incongruous in a pin-striped, dark suit and tie. I gathered this was so he could head straight to his office afterward, but the effect was imposing, as though he were ready to indict the prowler on multiple charges right then and there.

  “So let’s walk through this one more time.” The detective was tapping his notes with the tip of his ballpoint. “You were asleep. Your burglar alarm never sounded because you had it switched off. . . .”

  “Sis. For Christ’s sake,” muttered Tony, shooting me a how-dumb-can-you-get look.