Black Market

He then considered what he felt to be a somewhat lesser possibility: that he might somehow hurt her. She'd already told him things about her two previous love affairs. One guy had been a highly successful New York investment lawyer, who was so busy making his second or third million, he hadn't bothered to notice that Caitlin wasn't just an extraordinarily pretty face, an asset in certain demanding social situations… Her second lover had been a professional te

Jesus, he was so incredibly wired. So uptight tonight.

Finally he did it, though. The absolute worst thing he could have done under the particular set of circumstances.

On the a

Nora's death three years before.

December 14.

First, he gathered up a handful of old photographs. He found most of the photos on a cluttered bottom shelf inside a glass-enclosed book cabinet. Next, he pulled a tattered wicker chair up close to one of the tall windows facing the lights of Riverside Drive and the river.

Carroll stared down at the West Side Highway, the peacefully quiet boat basin. He was letting the present go all fuzzy and blurred.

Then he stood up again.

He took three particular record albums off the uneven stacks on the stereo. One album was 52nd Street, Billy Joel self-consciously holding a trumpet on the cover. The second album was mainstream country and western, I Believe in You by somebody called Don Williams. The third was Barbra Streisand and Barry Gibb Guilty.

Carroll switched on the stereo, and the big floor speakers immediately hummed. He felt the power surge through the soles of his bare feet. He turned the volume way down.

He'd never been a big Streisand fan, but there were two particular songs he wanted to hear on this album: “Woman in Love” and “Promises.” Out in the world, a moving van rumbled along Riverside Drive.

He still kept an old framed picture of Nora, hidden away facedown in the bottom of the bookcase. He slid it out now and carefully propped it on the arm of the couch.

For a long, pensive moment, he stared at Nora in her hospital-issue wheelchair. A

In the photo, Nora was wearing a simple yellow-flowered sundress, a knitted blue cardigan sweater. She had on a pair of crazy high-topped sneakers that became her trademark as an invalid.

She was smiling radiantly in the picture. Not once to his knowledge had she completely broken down during the illness; not once had she felt sorry for herself. She'd been thirty-one years old when they'd found the tumor. She'd had to watch her blond hair fall out from the chemotherapy treatments. Then she'd had to adapt to life in the inflexible iron clutches of her wheelchair. Nora had somehow accepted that she wasn't going to see her children grow up or anything else the two of them had laughed and dreamed about and always taken for granted.

Why couldn't he finally accept her death?

Why couldn't he ever accept the way life was apparently supposed to be?

Arch Carroll stopped and listened more closely to Barbra Streisand singing.

The song “Promises” made him remember the stretch when he'd visited Nora every night, night after night, at New York Hospital. After the hospital visits, he would eat at Galahanty's Bar up the hill on First Avenue. A very tired burger, soggy home fries, draft beer that tasted the way swamp grass smelled. Probably the begi

The two Streisand songs had been local favorites on Galahanty's jukebox. They always made him think of Nora-all alone back at that scary, skyscraper hospital.

Sitting in the bar, he'd always wanted to go back-at ten, eleven o'clock-to talk with her just a little bit more; to sleep with her; to hold her tight against the gathering night inside her hospital room. To squeeze every possible goddamn moment out of the time they had left together…

The worst, the very truest line for him in “Promises” finally came…

Tears rolled slowly down his cheeks. The pain inside was like a rock-solid column that extended from the center of his chest all the way up to his forehead. The sadness and inconsolable grief were for Nora, though, not for himself-the unfairness of what had happened to her.

He began to hold himself fiercely tight, squeezing hard with both arms. He was remembering more than he wanted to about the time around Nora's death. He was going to blow apart one of these times. Real tough cop, right?

When would this cold, hollow feeling please stop? The past three years had been unbearable. When would it please fucking stop?

He always had this same insane urge-to break glass.

Just to punch glass.

Blindly, irrationally punch glass.

Caitlin, meanwhile, stood immobile, perfectly silent, in the darkened hallway. She couldn't catch her breath, couldn't even swallow right then. She had wandered back from the bedroom when she'd heard noises. Faint strains of music…

So sad to watch Carroll like this, with the old photographs.

Finally she walked back to the bedroom and huddled deep down into the body-warm covers and sheets.

Lying there alone, she bit down hard on her lip. She understood and felt so much more about Carroll now. Maybe she understood more than she wanted to.

She stared at shadows walking the bedroom ceiling; she thought about her own life since she'd come to New York. Somehow she'd known she would never completely fit in Lima, Ohio. There were so many other experiences she needed to try. There was her long-standing need to involve herself in the financial arena. Maybe to vindicate her father, maybe just to make him proud again. She'd become a success; everybody acknowledged that.

Only recently, for the first time in many years, she wasn't sure if success was what she wanted now, if she'd even done the right thing leaving the Midwest. Right at the moment, she was not completely sure about anything.

Except maybe one thing: she was in love with Carroll. She was falling deeply in love.

She wanted to hold him right now, only she was afraid. Caitlin closed her eyes and felt a great sense of solitude assail her. Would she always be a trespasser in Carroll's life?

She didn't know exactly how long she'd been alone. The bed felt so empty without Carroll.

The telephone on the nightstand began to ring.

It was three-thirty in the morning.

Carroll didn't pick up in the living room. Where was he?

She waited, four, five rings, and he still didn't pick up. Finally she grabbed the receiver.

A high-pitched and very excited voice was on the line. A man was talking before she had a chance to say a word.

“Arch, sorry to wake you. This is Walter Trentkamp. I'm down at number Thirteen right now. The stock exchange in Sydney just opened. There's a massive panic! You'd better come now. It's all going to crash!”