Waterhouse And Zailer: The Carrier Part 38

I cant stand this. What if I wait for him to decide to come in and he never does? "The walls arent even plain white," I shout back. Theyre wallpapered: a pattern of pastel-colored squares against a cream background. "Tim, I promise you, you wont be scared of this room the second you set foot inside it. Its not the room from your nightmare. Its enormous, for one thing."

Hes moving. I feel the vibration in the floor. When he comes in, I expect him to stop in the doorway, but he strides over so that hes standing right next to me, our arms touching. He looks around. I listen to his jagged breathing.

"Are you . . . ?" He stops to clear his throat. "Youre sure this is where me and Francine stayed? The right room?"

"You told me your room was called Marjolaine. This is Marjolaine." In case he needs any more grounding, I say, "You recognized it just now when you saw the name on the door."

"Yes. Sorry." He wipes his forehead with the back of his hand. "Youre right. Its not . . . This isnt the room in my dream."

"No. Its not. Nor is any other room."

"What?"

"The room in your dream isnt a room, Tim."

"What do you mean?"

"Follow me." I pick up the key and move to leave.

He pulls me back. "Wait."

"No. Ive waited. Im sick of waiting."

His eyes fill with tears. "Gaby, I understand that, but I need to stay here for a few seconds. Not much longer than that, not even five minutes, just . . . I need to stand here and know that its not this room Im scared of. It never was."

"Right. It never was."

"But . . . now you want to take me somewhere else," Tim says, his voice full of shadows: the shadow of a handbag against a white wall. Except it wasnt a wall. "You want to take me to the place I should have been scared of all this time, the place I thought was this room. I dont know if I can do it, Gaby."

"What place, Tim? Where is it? What is it?" No point asking; I can see from his face that he has no idea.

"Its here, in Leukerbad. It must be if youre about to show it to me, but . . ." He shakes his head. "There isnt anywhere else. We didnt go anywhere else that wasnt a public place. She wouldnt have tried to kill me in a public place."

"She didnt try to kill you," I tell him. "That never happened."

"Then why do I dream that she did?"

I take a deep breath. I dont know if its going to be worse or better for him when he has the answer. "Youre taking the dream too literally," I say. "Come. Let me prove it to you."

This time he doesnt protest.

We walk along the corridor in silence. Into the lift, down to the ground floor, outside and down the red-carpeted stairs. We turn left, Tim following me as if he doesnt know where Im going. Can he really not know? Where else might I be going?

I wish the walk were shorter. I could end this now and just tell him, but I want to give him every chance to get there on his own. As we walk up the hill, past shops, restaurants and wooden chalets, I say, "In the dream, does the size of the handbags shadow change? Does it get bigger or smaller?" The weathers bright and sunny where we are, but theres snow on the mountains above us. I take care not to look at them.

Tim stops for a second beside a fountain thats spilling warm water. Leukerbad is famous for its hot springs and likes to show them off, I discovered last time I came here.

I carry on walking.

"No. The handbag stays the same size," Tim says, picking up his pace to catch me up.

"You said Francines walking toward you in the dream, diagonally across the room, getting closer and closer."

"Right." The wounded expression on his face as I force him to think about his nightmare is too much; I cant look at him.

"So the handbags shadow ought to grow or shrink, depending on the source of light," I say. "It ought to get smaller, or bigger and more blurred as she gets nearer." I find this immovable law of nature comforting. I doubt Tim does. "If shes walking diagonally across the room toward you, the bags either going to be getting farther from the wall or closer to it."

"Its a dream, Gaby," Tim says. "Not a scientific trial."

Hes almost right: theres nothing scientific about a symbolic representation of danger in a dream, which is why Im determined to cling to the one scientific detail: the shadow of an object traveling across a white surface will only stay the same size if the distance between it and the surface doesnt change as it moves.

We turn another corner and I freeze. Here we are, sooner than I expected. I throw out an arm to stop Tim going any farther. "What?" he says. "What, Gaby?"

"Look. Have you been here before? Did you come here with Francine?" The answer has to be yes. Ahead of us are tall snow-covered mountains. A cable runs from the peak of one of them down to a small wooden building at the bottom. Theres a square car sliding down the wire, a slow diagonal through the air.

Tims breathing as if it hurts him.

"Theres your small room," I say.

"The cable car. But . . . I dont understand. Yes, Francine and I went up in it, but we werent alone. There were other people there, a family of four, a Russian family. She wouldnt have . . ." His words run out. Hes staring. Trying to piece it together.

"Wouldnt have tried to kill you in front of them? No, she wouldnt. I told you: she didnt try to kill you at all, in front of anyone or no one. Not in the way you mean. What happened in that cable car, Tim? Did you and Francine talk? Did anything important happen?"

"She proposed to me. I told you." Hes distracted. Cant keep his eyes still.

"You told me she proposed, but not where."

"She asked me at the top, when the car set off. She said . . ." He shakes his head.

"What? What, Tim?"

"I didnt answer straightaway."

"What did you want to say?"

"I didnt want her to have asked." I force myself not to turn away from the pain in his eyes. "She said I had until we got to the bottom to give her an answer."

A proposal immediately followed by an ultimatum. Nice.

"I said yes."

"When? On the way down?"

"When we got to the bottom. Id run out of time. She was my girlfriend, Gaby. What was I doing with her if she wasnt the right person? I didnt know there was a right person."

"All the way down the mountain in the cable car, you were getting closer-not to a handbag containing something that was going to kill you, but to the moment when you handed over the rest of your life to a woman you knew would crush all the joy and hope out of it. Thats what was going to kill you."

"She made herself more miserable than anyone else, always," Tim murmurs. Hes angry with me.

"Francines crooked arm in the dream-thats the cable," I tell him, needing to have it out in the open. "Crooked because the cars hanging from it and making a dent in its straight line, dragging it down as it moves along. The white wall isnt a wall, its the mountain, covered in snow. The car was at the same distance from the mountain all the way down, and you were watching its shadow moving along the white mountain-thats why the shadow of what you thought was a handbag stayed the same size. But it wasnt a handbag, it was a cable car, the one you and Francine were in, Tim."

"I cant stay here." Tim starts to march back in the direction of the hotel. I run after him, into the oncoming wind. It stings my face. "All this time, thinking she tried to kill me," he says. "I really believed it."

"I know."

"It was so vivid."

I grab his arm, pull him round to face me. "It wasnt too late," I say. "You could have left her. You did leave her, but you didnt come and find me. You never came looking for me!"

"You had Sean."

"Yes, I did, didnt I? How did you feel about that?"

Tim stops walking. "I thought he was wrong for you. Part of me was glad you had someone, even so. Id have felt guiltier about not being able to leave Francine if you were completely on your own-"

"Stop!" I cant stand to listen.

"What do you want me to say, Gaby? That I was jealous of Sean because he had you and I didnt? Of course I was."

"But you didnt say that, Tim. You said something different. Shall I tell you how I felt about Francine? I hated her. Not for being a b.i.t.c.h and putting you through h.e.l.l every day. For being your wife. She could have been the kindest, loveliest woman on the face of the earth and Id have loathed her every bit as much. I used to wish shed drop dead. I Googled her five times a day, looked at the photo of her on her firms website, stared into her stony eyes. Id imagine you in bed with her, watching TV with her, clearing away the supper things together, and Id wish her dead. Next to you, Francines the person whos inspired my most pa.s.sionate feelings. There-how do you feel about me now?"

How would you feel if I told you I love Lauren for killing her, and always will, however wrong it is?

"Wow," Tim says.

"You didnt feel that way about Sean, did you?"

"No, I didnt. But that doesnt mean what youve decided it means."

"You can live without me, Tim." I cant forgive that. "All those years of no contact-"

"Gaby, you lived without me perfectly well!"

"Its not the same. I thought I had no choice. Youd made it clear you didnt want me anywhere near you."

"You could have thought, f.u.c.k that, and hunted me down," Tim says. "You could have turned up on the doorstep and told Francine the truth, provoked a crisis. Cant you see how unreasonable youre being? I could live without you, yes, but I dont want to. I choose not to-ever." He laughs. "What about you? You can live without me, and youre about to prove it. Youre leaving me, arent you?"

I say nothing.

Tim grabs my hands. It hurts. "Tell me what I can do to change your mind," he says. "Ill do anything."

"No. You tell me what you can do. Or, better than that, dont tell me-just do it. Change my mind."

"I will."

"Good-bye, Tim."

I walk away, down the hill, without looking back. I dont have to hurry; he wont follow me. Though I cant see him, I know hes still where I left him, deciding were doomed, that its too late-there is nothing he could possibly do that would be big enough. Run after me, refuse to let me go. Turn back the clock, do everything differently.

Theres a taxi stand outside a pizzeria at the bottom of the hill path. I get into the first cab in the line, tell the driver to take me to Geneva Airport. "Which airline are you flying with, miss?" he asks me in English.

Good question. I think back to Dsseldorf Airport, Sean asking me, "Whos the carrier?"

I dont know who Im flying with. Im booked onto the same return flight as Tim, but thats impossible now. "I dont know," I say. "Take me to any departure gate."

"You are going to book a flight when you arrive?" The drivers not giving up easily. "There are different gates for different destinations. What is your destination?"

"I dont know. Sorry. Ill decide when I get there."

If I get there. Maybe Tim will stop me; maybe well decide to stay in Switzerland for the rest of our lives. A new start. Not three hundred and sixty-five minus ninety midnights, but as many as weve got left. If Im lucky-and I have been in my life so far, mostly-Ill never have to make the decision of where to fly to, never have to face the realization that theres nowhere I want to go without Tim.

Thats what Im going to keep thinking all the way to Geneva Airport. Ive got about two hours, a bit longer if Im lucky. Two hours is a long time.

28.

6/4/2011.

"Stop where you are! Permission to approach denied."

"Im . . . here, sir." Sam was standing directly in front of Prousts desk. Any closer and hed have been touching it. He stared at the inspectors upside-down signature on the bottom of a form. The ink was still wet. s.h.i.+ny.

"I meant metaphorically stop where you are. I dont want it."

How could he know? There was no way. "I think were at cross purposes," Sam said, trying to work out what Proust thought he was about to give him.

"You mean youre making me cross on purpose?" the Snowman snapped, removing the signed form from the top of the pile in front of him and signing the one beneath it without looking at it. "I dont want your letter of resignation, Sergeant."

"My-"

"The one you were about to produce from your jackets inside pocket and put on my desk."

Give it to him. You dont need permission. Its not up to him.

With an unsteady hand, Sam extracted the letter from his jacket and held it out for Proust to take.

"Put it through the shredder," the Snowman barked. "Im not interested."

"You want me to stay?" Sam asked.

Proust smiled in the way that an adult might smile at a childs sweet but nave suggestion. "Neither of us wants you to stay-not you and not me-but well both have to put up with you being here. Im not one for lavish compliments, Sergeant, but youre the only member of my team whos halfway normal. Reliably unremarkable."