Last Snow - Eric van Lustbader [105]
His cell buzzed. He was plunged so deep in thought he almost didn’t answer it.
A local number not recognized by caller ID. “Hello?”
“Mr. Paull?”
“Yes?”
“This is Nancy Lettiere, we’ve met several times. I run the Alzheimer’s wing at Petworth Manor. I’m sorry to report that Mrs. Paull expired at three eleven this morning.”
For a long time after that Paull sat very still. His eyes still ran over the lines of information on his laptop just as they had during the long hours before the call, but now nothing registered in his brain, which was suddenly filled with a dreadful little refrain repeated over and over—“You weren’t there, you weren’t there, you weren’t there when she died”—as if it were a ridiculous children’s song coming out of a ghostly radio in her room. All at once he was suffocating in the sickly-sweet odor of her, of . . . good God, he couldn’t even say her name, she’d been a vegetable for so long. And yet now he was choking on what was left of her, of Louise, as if he’d inhaled the ashes of her funeral pyre.
He pushed back his chair, rose, and left the room without retrieving his coat. The fire stairs echoed harshly with his hurried footfalls. Outside, he lit a cigarette, but almost immediately the night manager appeared behind the glass door, pointed to the cigarette, and shook his head vigorously. Paull took a deep drag and blew the smoke against the glass.
The night manager frowned, slid his key card into the slot, and opened the door. “I’m sorry, sir, but federal regulations prohibit any smoking within twenty feet of the building.”
Paull said nothing, stood looking at him while he continued to smoke.
“Sir, did you not hear me? If you persist I’m going to have to call the authorities—”
He gave a startled yelp as Paull grabbed him by the lapels and slammed him up against the wall, then struck the man in the stomach. As he doubled over, Paull hit him in the side of the head, then flush on his nose, which immediately gushed blood.
For a moment Paull drew smoke into his lungs and let it out in a luxurious plume. He was dizzy with the onrush of adrenaline. At length, he knelt down and showed the night manager his credentials.
“I am the fucking authority, buddy.” He hauled the man to his feet and pushed him roughly through the door. “So fuck off before I turn you in as a suspected terrorist.”
Alone again, Paull stamped out his ruined cigarette and lit another. He stepped out onto the asphalt lot. Shouldn’t it be raining, he thought, gloomy weather to match his mood? Instead, a brilliant butter-colored moon rode in the sky, and all at once he was thrust back twenty-eight years, when he used to read Claire Goodnight Moon. He read it so often that she had soon memorized it and then she recited it aloud with him as he read.
He took another long drag and let the smoke drift out on its own. Seven years ago Claire had visited for a long weekend with her then boyfriend, one of those young men full of entitlement based on an inflated assessment of their own self-worth. She was nothing but smiles and laughs, even when they had gone together to visit Louise, who, at that time, might on occasion still recognize her daughter.
Following dinner on Saturday night, in an awkward attempt at male bonding, the boyfriend had invited Paull out onto the back porch. Producing a pair of cigars, he boasted that they were Cubans. Not a good way to get into Paull’s good graces. Nevertheless they smoked together companionably for a time while the boyfriend spoke about