Freddy picked up the telephone receiver half a dozen times before she placed the call. She knew it wouldn’t be easy, but she had to make what she knew known to others. She also was aware that nobody was going to believe her, not after the past week or however long it had been since she left Max’s parents apartment. She listened to the phone ringing four hundred miles away, echoing through the receiver in her hand, pressed against her ear. Part of her wanted no one to answer; part of her hoped that Max would take the call.
After the sixth ring she hung up the phone and sat staring at it, inert and silent, on the bedside table in the tiny cabin room at the Boatel. Finally, aware that she was doing nothing again and feeling, at last, that this was against her nature, she stood up and went to the window. Pulling back the rough curtain she looked out into the sunny world beyond this dark, spare room. There were people out there. Boats and people. Men were working and somewhere there was singing, light and high but still a masculine voice. It was a song she didn’t know, in a language that sounded vaguely Spanish, slightly French. Her brain told her it was Portuguese but she didn’t accept that as truth. Not immediately.
"What do I do?" she asked herself out loud. Her voice was raspy, and her throat ached when she spoke. She found the glass again, downed some more water and tried to lightly gargle with it at the same time. It felt sweet against the strained muscles in her throat, against the too-dry membranes. She asked the question a second time and her voice sounded more natural, freer. The question, though, was still a strain all by itself.
She was still dressed in the rumpled clothes she’d had on when she followed Mikhael into the park, but she was barefoot. She looked around the room but saw no shoes. She lay down on the bed and leaned over the edge, pulling up the spread to see if they might be tucked underneath somewhere. They were. She fished them out, pulled them on her feet and stood up again. Her head was light and she felt dizzy. She needed food and she needed air and light and so many other things as well. One of them was the room key. That was easy. It was on top of the small television set. She pocketed them and headed for the door.
Outside, Freddy found herself confronted by a totally foreign world. The smell of salt-water fish was overwhelming and her stomach rumbled instantly as she inhaled the clean smell of clams and lobsters. She realized something else: she had no idea what time it was, or what day. She looked at her wrist automatically, but there was no watch there. That had been lost, or taken, somehow in all of this madness. Her eyes drifted upward to the sky and she could see the sun just descending into the western sky and she knew it was afternoon. She searched the crowd for a newspaper, hoping to see a day or date, but no one here had one. That information would have to wait.
As she walked down the waterfront road, cobblestoned and old-fashioned, past two and three story brick buildings, warehouses mostly, it occurred to her that she could be somewhere no one would ever discover her. That here there was a level of safety and anonymity that she hadn’t expected. That made her smile. Hans could never find her here. Max would never need to know what had happened to her. Mikhael’s killers might not even care to look for her here once they realized that she might know too much, have seen and heard too much. For the first time since Brianna attacked her, Freddy felt safe again, in charge again.
She stopped at a small roadside stand and ordered some fish and eggs which was served to her wrapped in newspaper. She attacked it hungrily, burying her nose in the cone as she devoured the delectable local food. When she finished it, she ordered another and went at it the same way. Then she asked for some coffee and when it was served, bitter with chicory, burning away the last angry, drug-induced phlegm in her throat she sighed with relief at the sensations of new life in her body.
The feeling was a double sense for she understood, almost immediately, that she was pregnant. The odd reality of this new knowledge was both painful and pleasurable. The thought of a child was wonderful, the understanding of its parentage was not. This would have to be Hans’ baby, the result of that awful period of humiliation. She also knew she would never have to make anyone aware of that. She could go forward, never acknowledge the paternity, keep it her dark, devilish secret, and raise the child as hers and hers alone. That was a miracle. Marvelous.
Then the thought of that dream passed into a darker reality. She would be facing this alone. The word "facing" caused her to gasp as the face of the second man, the one who had kindly put her in the cab to the bus station, the man she recognized, came jumping into focus. She remembered her goal of reaching Max, finding the police, reporting Mikhael’s death and the name of the man she recognized came back to her. She turned and headed back to the Boatel.
Back in her room, she picked up the phone again and placed the call to New York City. This time she waited a long while, hoping that Max would answer. The phone rang a dozen times but there was no response. She hung up again, slowly turned to look at her surroundings, and then she began to pack the few things that had spilled out of her knapsack. She would find a bus, Freddy thought, and she would head back home, take the risk, face the music.
The return trip was different from the journey northward. She was awake for most of it, watching the world alter as mile after mile she motored through the towns of coastal Maine, the shopping mall community in New Hampshire, the outskirts of Boston with their oil refineries and finally Boston itself, an amalgam of the old and the new brushing up against one another. Then the long haul on the highways through Rhode Island and Connecticut and finally, just at sunset, the spike spires of New York City rose into view. Knowing her goal was near she was suddenly weary and she fell asleep, not waking up until the driver announced the Port Authority Bus Terminal, the final stop in this daylong trip. Freddy gathered up her few belongings and moved into the aisle, even though the man’s voice urged her to remain seated until the bus came to a full stop at the terminal. This was a minimal risk she was willing to take, one that would prepare her for the worse moments to follow.
In the terminal, she found a pay phone and once again dialed Max’s number. This time he answered.
"Max," she said quietly, "it’s Freddy."
"My God, Freddy, where are you? We’ve been looking for you. Mikhael’s...."
"...dead, I know. I was there." Max was silent for a moment.
"The police are looking for you. They think you killed him."
"I didn’t."
"I know that."
"How? Do you think it’s impossible for me to kill that man?"
"Of course I do. Don’t be an ass." He laughed and she didn’t like the sound of it. "Where are you?"
"Port Authority."
"Come over. Now. It’s safe right now."
"You’re sure?" She wasn’t so sure.
"I am. I promise."
"Are you alone, Max?" she asked him knowing exactly how he’d answer her.
"You know it."
"Do I? Fine. See ya." She hung up the phone and headed out through the long passageway to Eighth Avenue.
When the bell rang, Max answered quickly.
"Get in here, you," he said, grabbing her arm and pulling her through the narrow slit of a doorway he had opened for her. When it was securely closed behind her, he put his arms around her and held her tight in his embrace, his fingers slowly, carefully massaging her back, his cheek pressed against her own. He was warm and he smelled good - clean and perfume-free. "God, I was so worried, Freddy."
"I’ve been. . .places."
"I want to know. . ."
"No, you don’t. Not really."
"I do."
"No, Max. Never."
He pulled her into the living room and carefully shoved her down onto the couch. Then he sat down in front of her at the midpoint in the large, overstuffed piece of furniture. He sat there staring at her, waiting for her to say something, so she did.
"You look good, Max. So good."
"I’m the same as I ever was," he replied.
"So very good."
"You know, I dreamt you, Freddy. I was in the police station and I dreamt you were there with me, telling me things."
"Bizarre, boy."
"Exactly. But it was so real. I wanted to know you were all right and so you were."
"Why were you in the police station?"
"Mikhael. They found him. They needed someone to identify him."
"How did he look?" Her curiosity scared her a bit.
"Horrible. Just horrible. But I knew it was him."
"I see." Her voice was so quiet even she couldn’t hear it, a wisp if anything.
"And now you’re back and you’re all right, Freddy. I have to let them know. The police. They’re looking for you all over the place."
"NO!" She stood up quickly. "I have to go, if you do that I have to go right away."
"Why? You didn’t kill him."
"I didn’t. But I was there. I saw it, Max. Those men know me and I know one of them and I can’t be a part of this. I have to go."
"It’ll be okay, Freddy. You tell the cops what you know and then it’s all right again."
"No. You don’t get it. This isn’t just Mikhael. Or me or you. It’s very big and I can’t be a part of it again."
"Again?"
"Yes." She nodded three times, once slowly then twice very fast. "It’s them."
"Who?"
She sat down again slowly, carefully. "I can’t tell you. I can’t tell anyone."
"Freddy, this is crazy. You have to. Otherwise they’ll arrest you."
"Maybe that’s the best thing for me, Max. They’ll protect me, won’t they?"
"I don’t know."
"What should I do, Max?" There were tears in her eyes all of a sudden. "Tell me what I should do."
"I’m calling this cop I know, Freddy. He’s been on this case since I reported you missing, long before Mikhael’s letter and then his body showed up."
"Mikhael’s letter?"
"Yeah. He wrote me. He said you were married to him and he’d get your things, but he never showed up." Max gave her a half smile. "Why did you marry him?"
"I didn’t. I swear to you I didn’t." She thought about the baby she was carrying.
"Why would he write me then?"
"I don’t know, Max. He was crazy."
"But you went to him when you left here."
"No, but I saw him. I saw him twice."
"When?"
"It’s a long story, Max and I’m exhausted. Can I just sleep please? Can I?"
Max studied her for a moment. He could see the fatigue sweeping over her, see it plainly. There was something odd about it, he thought, something different, but he had no idea what it was that had changed her so much.
"Sure. Come down to my room. Lie down and don’t worry about anything. I won’t betray you."
"Thank you, Max."
She let him help her up off the sofa and then, her hands in his, he led her down the corridor to his bedroom. Inside he made her sit on the bed. Then he knelt down and took off her shoes, swung her legs up onto the coverlet and pulled down two pillows to place them under her head. She sighed heavily, letting herself be pampered by him.
"You do that so well, Max. You could make a living helping people into bed, you know."
"Yeah," he responded, "it’s a family trait, I guess."
She giggled, but it was almost too much of an effort for she was falling asleep as she responded to him. She felt him lean over her, felt his exhalation as he kissed her on the forehead, felt his hand brushing lightly over her hair. Then she was asleep, her breathing easy and regular.
Max closed the door from outside in the hallway. Then he went swiftly into the kitchen, picked up the telephone receiver from the yellow wall phone unit and telephoned "Call me Steve."