The Woman in the Window(19)

And that Opteka zoom is better than binoculars.

But now shame live-wires through my body. I think of everyone and everything I’ve caught on camera: the neighbors, the strangers, the kisses, the crises, the chewed nails, the dropped change, the strides, the stumbles. The Takeda boy, his eyes closed, fingers quaking on his cello strings. The Grays, wineglasses aloft in a giddy toast. Mrs. Lord in her living room, lighting candles atop a cake. The young Motts, in the dying days of their marriage, bellowing at each other from opposite ends of their Valentine-red parlor, a vase in ruins on the floor between them.

I think of my hard drive, swollen with stolen images. I think of Jane Russell as she looked at me, unblinking, across the park. I’m not invisible. I’m not dead. I’m alive, and on display, and ashamed.

I think of Dr. Brulov in Spellbound: “My dear girl, you cannot keep bumping your head against reality and saying it is not there.”



Three minutes later, I step back into the study. The Russells’ love seat is empty. I glance at Ethan’s bedroom; he’s in there, crouched over his computer.

Carefully, I pick up the camera. It’s undamaged.

Then the doorbell rings.





18


“You must be bored as hell,” she says when I open the hall door. Then she folds me into a hug. I laugh, nervously. “Sick of all those black-and-white movies, I bet.”

She surges past me. I still haven’t said a word.

“I brought something for you.” She smiles, dipping a hand into her bag. “It’s cold, too.” A sweaty bottle of Riesling. My mouth waters. It’s been ages since I drank white.

“Oh, you shouldn’t—”

But she’s already chugging toward the kitchen.



Within ten minutes we’re glugging the wine. Jane sparks a Virginia Slim, then another, and soon the air wobbles with smoke, rolling overhead, roiling beneath the ceiling lights. My Riesling tastes of it. I find I don’t mind; reminds me of grad school, starless nights outside the taverns of New Haven, men with mouths like ash.

“You’ve got a lot of merlot over there,” she says, eyeing the kitchen counter.

“I order it in bulk,” I explain. “I like it.”

“How often do you restock?”

“Just a few times a year.” At least once a month.

She nods. “You’ve been like this—how long did you say?” she asks. “Six months?”

“Almost eleven.”

“Eleven months.” Pressing her lips into a tiny o. “I can’t whistle. But pretend I just did.” She jams her cigarette into a cereal bowl, steeples her fingers, leans forward, as though in prayer. “So what do you do all day?”

“I counsel people,” I say, nobly.

“Who?”

“People online.”

“Ah.”

“And I take French lessons online. And I play chess,” I add.

“Online?”

“Online.”

She sweeps a finger along the tide line in her wineglass. “So the Internet,” she says, “is sort of your . . . window to the world.”

“Well, so is my actual window.” I gesture to the expanse of glass behind her.

“Your spyglass,” she says, and I blush. “I’m kidding.”

“I’m so sorry about—”

She waves a hand, lights a fresh cigarette. “Oh, hush.” Smoke leaks from her mouth. “Do you have a real chessboard?”

“Do you play?”

“I used to.” She slants the cigarette against the bowl. “Show me what you got.”



We’re waist-deep in our first game when the doorbell rings. Five sharp—the pharmacy delivery. Jane does the honors. “Door-to-door drugs!” she squawks, shuttling back from the hall. “These any good?”

“They’re uppers,” I say, uncorking a second bottle. Merlot this time.

“Now it’s a party.”

As we drink, as we play, we chat. We’re both mothers of only children, as I knew; we’re both sailors, as I hadn’t known. Jane prefers solo craft, I’m more into two-handers—or I was, anyway.

I tell her about my honeymoon with Ed: how we’d chartered an Alerion, a thirty-three-footer, and cruised the Greek Isles, pinballing between Santorini and Delos, Naxos and Mykonos. “Just the two of us,” I remember, “scudding around the Aegean.”

“That’s just like Dead Calm,” Jane says.

I swallow some wine. “I think in Dead Calm they were in the Pacific.”

“Well, except for that, it’s just like Dead Calm.”

“Also, they went sailing to recover from an accident.”

“Okay, right.”

“And then they rescued a psychopath who tried to kill them.”

“Are you going to let me make my point or not?”

While she frowns at the chessboard, I rummage through the fridge for a stick of Toblerone, chop it roughly with a kitchen knife. We sit at the table, chewing. Candy for dinner. Just like Olivia.



Later:

“Do you get a lot of visitors?” She strokes her bishop, slides him across the board.

I shake my head, shake the wine down my throat. “None. You and your son.”