The Girl with a Clock for a Heart: A Novel Read online

  When George didn’t immediately say anything, she asked, “You still there?”

  “I am. I’m listening.”

  “Trust me when I say that I am well aware that I am the last person who should be asking you for a favor. I’m hoping that maybe you’ll hear me out.”

  “You can’t ask me now, over the phone?”

  “I’d like to ask you face-to-face. Do you have a car?”

  “I do.”

  “I would appreciate it if you drove up here and at least listened to what I have to say. You can trust me. I’m trusting you. There’s nothing stopping you from calling the police and giving them my address.”

  George breathed through his nostrils, looked at Kelly, the waitress. She glanced at his empty bottle of beer, mouthed, “Another?” George shook his head.

  “Okay. I’ll come up. Where exactly are you?”

  “Thank you, George. Do you know Beach Road? I’m staying at a friend’s house just behind St. John’s, that old stone chapel.”

  “Okay. I might know where that is.”

  “After you see the church on your right, there’s an unpaved road called Captain Sawyer Lane. It’s the house at the very end. More like a cottage. I’ll wait for you. Anytime this afternoon is fine.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”

  George handed the phone back to Kelly. “Uh-oh,” she said in her strong Boston accent. “Starting to get phone calls at your local bar. Never a good sign.”

  “Thanks, Kel. Maybe you’ll take messages for me when I’m not here.”

  “You wish.”

  George thought about ordering another beer, plus something to eat, but decided instead to go immediately to see Liana. Talking to her had tightened up his stomach, not just because she was back in his life but because she sounded genuinely scared. He left Jack Crow’s and walked the two short blocks to the garage where he kept his Saab.

  George would never have considered himself a car person, but the Saab 900 was the first and only car he’d ever fallen in love with. He’d bought one with 100,000 miles on it just after graduating from college, added another 100,000 to its odometer, and had then begun to look for a replacement. He’d been replacing his Saabs ever since. The current car was his fourth, the first with the Special Performance Group option; Saab had made only about fifteen hundred of them back in 1986, and they only came in Edwardian Gray. Garaging his Saab was a major expense, but he loved her far too much to leave her on the street.

  Liana’s location, on a traffic-free day, was about forty-five minutes north of Boston. Tucked between inlets, New Essex was an old quarry town by the sea. Half the granite in Boston originated there, and there was a massive hole in the ground to prove it, but the primary reason people went to New Essex was to eat fried clams and steamers, to gaze at the rock-strewn shore, or to visit the kitschy galleries that had replaced the old fishing shacks around the harbor.

  George made it to the center of town at a little past one thirty. He wound his battered Saab past the granite statue of a quarryman that crowned the tiny rotary at the heart of downtown and took Beach Road north. It was another muggy day. The sky was a chalky blue, and the sea, glimpsed through gaps in the evergreens, was slack and gray. George slowed the car down to look for the markers. He rounded a corner and saw, up ahead at the next bend, a stone church fronted by a bell tower. He drove past it. There was a lone man sleeping on a bench in the church’s garden. He was dressed in long pants and a long-sleeved shirt, each a navy blue; he sat rigidly straight, but his chin had drooped to his chest. George had the sudden and alarming thought that the old man had died on that bench and the world hadn’t noticed, or had decided not to wake an old man sleeping in the sun.

  After passing the church, Beach Road swung sharply inland, and the view of the sea was blocked by white pines. The green sign for Captain Sawyer Lane was bleached nearly unreadable, and the road itself was deeply rutted. George turned in and drove a few hundred yards, past a 1970s deckhouse that was camouflaged in the woods on the right. He kept going, and the road dead-ended at an old shingled summer cottage that would have looked abandoned had there not been a shiny white Dodge pulled up to its decrepit front steps. George parked behind the Dodge, killed his engine, and got out of the car. The driveway was a combination of pebbles and shells. Behind the cottage were a marshy inlet and a pier that appeared older and less reliable than the house. George climbed the steps and knocked on the unpainted door. Nothing stirred. The breeze from the sea gently rocked the surrounding pines. George knocked again; the wood felt hollow, as though it had rotted from the inside. He was about to try the door when a man came around the side of the house and said, “She’s not here.”

  George turned. The speaker was a short, neat man wearing suit trousers and the type of silky expensive shirt that you don’t see too often in Massachusetts. He had a smile on his face notable for its unfriendliness. “Who’s not here?” George asked.

  The man’s smile got wider, and he took a couple of steps toward George. “Really?” he said. He had grayish-purple teeth, as though he’d drunk too much red wine for breakfast.

  “Who is it that you’re looking for?” George asked, hoping to turn the tables on him. The man was pretty small, but something about the way he carried himself made George almost physically recoil. He reminded George of a pit bull, the kind you’d normally see muzzled and straining against a leash.

  “I was looking for Jane,” Pit Bull said, as though she were a mutual friend. “She’s been staying out here. What are you doing here?”

  “I’m a salesman,” George said. He came down off the steps so that he was standing on even ground with the other man. Pit Bull was at least a full foot shorter than George, if not more.

  “What are you selling?” he asked.

  “I’m glad you asked that. I’m selling everlasting life.” George reached out his hand to shake Pit Bull’s, aware that his palms were beginning to sweat but wanting to at least keep up the pretense that he didn’t know Liana/Jane and that he wasn’t particularly scared to be alone in the dark woods with a man who looked like he could snap George in half the way he could snap a towel in a locker room.

  They shook hands. George was not surprised that the stranger’s hand was dry and cool to the touch. He went to let go, but the man held on, digging into the back of George’s hand with his thumb so that George had no choice but to straighten out his fingers. Pit Bull squeezed hard, jamming George’s knuckles together. “Jesus,” George said, trying to pull his hand away.

  “Don’t move,” Pit Bull said, his smile now more of a smirk, and George did what he said. The way he was gripping George’s hand made it pretty clear that if he squeezed just a tiny bit harder knuckles would explode like rocks in a crusher.

  “I don’t know who you think—”

  “Shhh. Don’t. I’m only going to ask you once, so I want you to give me straight answers or else I’ll crush every bone in your hand. I’ve done it before, and I really hate doing it. I’m squeamish about some things. Not about blood, of course, but the feel of turning someone’s hand into a limp glove filled with gravel makes me sick to my stomach. Even thinking about it, I don’t feel too good. So I don’t want to do it, and you really don’t want me to do it, so just tell me everything you know. Okay? When did you last see Jane?”

  George hesitated one brief fraction of a second, long enough to conclude that there was no decent reason to try to lie. “I saw her last night. In Boston.”

  “Where did you see her?”

  “A bar in Beacon Hill, called Jack Crow’s. She’s an old friend. I knew her in college, and I asked if we could get together, and she told me she was staying here and I could come see her tomorrow. That’s the whole story.”

  “Why’d you lie to me?” Up close the Pit Bull had tiny features on an acorn-shaped head and waxy skin that looked pinpricked all over with minuscule pores. His nose was flattened along the bridge like he’d los
t a couple of fights, which was hard to imagine. His hair was short and heavily gelled, and he smelled of astringent aftershave lotion, something with a lot of alcohol in it.

  “Look, I know that . . . that Jane has a history of trouble, although I honestly know nothing about what is happening right now. You looked like someone she might want to avoid.”

  The man laughed, and it was possible that he beamed a little, as though proud of George’s assessment of him. “Look, if you see her before me, then tell her that she really ought to avoid me at all fucking costs. But she knows that already. What’s your name?”

  “George Foss,” George said, willing himself not to lie. He could feel the interrogation winding to its close, and he wanted to keep the bones of his hand intact.

  “Good, George. You’ve been telling me the truth, and I like that about you. Do you want to know my name?”

  “Only if you really want to tell me.”

  Pit Bull tilted his head back and barked with laughter again. His chin and neck were incredibly smooth, as though he’d had a professional shave that very morning. George felt a slight loosening of the grip on his hand and almost considered trying to pull away and make a run for it.

  “George, I like you, and I am going to tell you my name so that we’re on a first-name basis. It’s Donnie Jenks, and I hail from the state of Georgia, and I can always tell when someone is lying to me, and you haven’t been lying to me, at least not since that bullshit session with which we started our friendship. So if you see Jane, you can tell her that Donnie Jenks is in town. Will you do that?”

  “I don’t plan on seeing her, but yes, I will if I do. I promise.”

  “So before I go I want to leave you with something, just so you know that I’m serious.”

  Donnie Jenks pulled George forward with his right hand so that George’s hips spun, then turned his own hips and punched George in the kidney with his left fist. George felt the pain in an instant, a small detonation unleashing its ruin in his lower back. He dropped to the ground, a wave of blackness passing over him as though he were about to pass out.

  “Donnie Jenks. J-E-N-K-S,” the short man said. “Tell Jane she has one goddamned life left, and it’s a short one. You try and help her in any way and I’ll shorten your life as well. You remember all that?”

  George managed to nod, and the man turned and walked away, loafers crunching on the driveway.

  Spit flowed into George’s mouth, and he turned his head and vomited violently, continuing to spasm even after his stomach had emptied itself of a distant breakfast and the beer he’d had for lunch. He heard the Dodge start up and drive away. He had enough strength to push himself a few feet over, turn onto the side where he hadn’t been punched, and put his head down. He stayed like that for over ten minutes, staring at his own stomach contents on the crushed-shell driveway.

  Chapter 4

  George got back to Boston a little before three. He considered stopping at a hospital on the way back but kept driving. The need to be home in his own neighborhood seemed greater than his need to deal with a potentially ruptured kidney. The nausea and dizziness had passed, but every time he turned the steering wheel to the left it felt as though a small rip in his side was getting larger. He instinctively touched his side to make sure his insides weren’t spilling out into the car.

  He parked in his garage, tried to smile at Mauricio, the garage attendant, as he took the keys and asked how the Saab was running, then walked the long half block up the steeply inclined street to his building. His place was the minuscule converted attic of a luxurious town house, accessible by a stairwell, built onto the back of the brick building, at the end of a cobblestoned pedestrian walkway that was charming for three seasons of the year but smelled of urine and garbage for most of the summer.

  Sitting on the bottom step of the back stairs, exactly where George had been sitting the previous night, was Liana. She looked pale and nervous, her knees clamped together, an elbow on each knee, her chin on a hand. Next to her was a small black purse, a perfect square of well-worn leather.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” George asked.

  “Look, I’m sorry, I—”

  “Fuck off, please. Go away,” George said and maneuvered around her.

  “Look. I can explain. I tried to call you, but you’d left the bar. My friend came back with my car.”

  “Why didn’t you stay there and wait for me? You knew I was coming to you.” George kept walking up the stairs gingerly, trying not to pass out.

  “That’s what I need to talk with you about. There’s someone who’s after me, and I think he might have found out where I was.”

  “His name’s not Donnie Jenks, is it?”

  Liana took a large intake of breath. “Jesus. Was he there? Are you okay?”

  “I’m okay. I just . . .” He stopped and turned. Liana was looking back down the alleyway.

  “Did he follow you here?” she asked.

  It was a possibility that hadn’t crossed his mind. “I don’t know. Maybe. He left before me, but I guess that doesn’t mean anything. For all I know, he’s on his way here right now. You should probably leave.” He looked down at Liana, who seemed small and frail, her shoulders impossibly narrow.

  “Did he hurt you? You’re hurt. I can tell.” She took two steps up toward George and put a hand on his arm. “What can I do?”

  “I want you to leave here, that’s what you can do. I’ve been beat up three times in my life, and each time it was by someone you knew. Please just leave.” He continued up the stairs, and she followed him. George felt her presence behind him, and it made him want to lash out backward with a fist. The encounter with Donnie had shaken whatever courage George felt he had. He was suddenly grimly aware of his own cowardice and felt that after the shock wore off he was probably going to have a good long cry. He didn’t feel good about it, but he also felt lucky to be alive and longed to be back in his apartment alone.

  His hand trembled as he put the key into the lock. Liana was right behind him now, her voice pleading. “George, I need a favor. I’m really sorry that I’m asking you, but you are the only one I can ask.”

  He knew instinctively that turning around was the worst thing to do, but he turned anyway, looking in the general direction of her face, avoiding her eyes that shone wetly under the high sun. Her eyebrows were raised a fraction, her mouth set in a worried half frown. “It’s one favor, and it’s going to get rid of Donnie Jenks for good, and I promise that it won’t be dangerous for you.”

  He looked at her hairline and felt the muscles in his face contract.

  “Please,” she said, and the sound of her voice in the echo chamber of his stairwell reminded him so much of the girl she had been, eighteen and unsophisticated, when they had first met.

  “If I let you in, and if I think for one moment that one of your friends is going to show up here, I’m calling the police.”

  “That’s fine. They won’t come here.”

  He went through the door and left it open behind him.

  She followed, and George heard the oily click of the door latching shut. They both stepped into the apartment, George’s home for over ten years. It had slanted ceilings with heavy beams, and the architect who had converted the space had put in large skylights and a modern kitchen. It was hot in the summer and cold in the winter, but George loved it regardless. He’d lined the largest walls with bookcases and bought a few good pieces of midcentury furniture, all of which had been shredded and scratched by Nora, his fifteen-year-old Maine coon cat.

  “You always liked books,” Liana said, casting her eyes across the apartment.

  George scratched Nora’s chin, then went into the bathroom, where he took four ibuprofens and swallowed them down with water directly from the tap. He exited the bathroom to find Liana standing in the middle of his living room, almost dreamily gazing up at the skylights. Liana Decter is in my apartment, he thought to himself. She’s real again. She’s in my life.

/>   “Can I get you something?”

  “A glass of water. And, George, thank you for letting me in. I know that wasn’t easy for you.”

  George got two waters, then sat in an upholstered chair while Liana perched on the edge of the low couch, her back rigid, her glass of water on the tile-topped coffee table. “I never would have let you go to that place if I’d thought that Donnie might find it. I hope you know that.”

  “I don’t know anything.” George took a long sip of his water and wished he’d gotten himself a beer instead. He positioned his body in such a way that he felt the least pain.

  “I owe you an explanation. I know that. I’ll tell you everything, but I want you to believe me when I tell you that I never intended for you to get hurt. Tell me about Donnie.”

  George told her about the encounter, all the details, including how scared he had been and the information he had offered up.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Now you can tell me why he’s after you. You owe me that.”

  She drank the remainder of her water, and George watched her pale throat move. In the clear light of George’s apartment, she looked more beautiful than she had the night before. She wore a navy blue pencil skirt with a wide leather belt; her tucked-in blouse had small black polka dots. Her legs, unlike her face, were tanned to a honey brown color. Her hair was pulled back by a clip, and her face looked freshly scrubbed and clean of makeup. The only sign of stress was a dark smudge under each eye. “Can I have more water?” she asked.

  George rose. “Do you want a beer instead? I’m going to have one.”

  “Sure,” she said, and George remembered that that was how they’d met. Over a beer. He almost said something, but stopped himself. If anyone was going to get sentimental first, it wasn’t going to be him.

  He pulled two bottles of Newcastle from the fridge, popped their caps, and returned to the living room. He gave Liana her beer and sat back down. Nora scratched at the leg of his chair, then leapt up and into his lap, purring. She settled in and eyed the guest. She was a cat that had always been skeptical about other females.