Doppelgänger Page 10

  The mantel clock had just chimed for the quarter hour when Anine, sensing a presence in the room, looked up from the card table. She saw an Abyssinian cat, its fur the color of bronze, prancing slowly toward the fireplace from the direction of the door. She was so startled to see the animal that she stood up quickly and sharply. The cat sprang, its legs splayed in a defensive crouch, and then instantly shot back behind one of the chairs. Anine saw it for a grand total of perhaps two seconds.

  “How did you get in here?” she said, walking over to the chair. Peering behind it she saw nothing. She searched the rest of the room but found no trace of the cat. It could not have left the room. The pocket doors leading to the entryway were closed. To be certain, she went to the doors, opened them and called into the gloomy entryway: “Here, kitty. Here, kitty.” Her voice echoed in the dark emptiness. She expected no answer and got none.

  She went back to the table, stacked the deck of cards neatly on it, took a book and left the Green Parlor, closing the pocket doors behind her. She decided she would not return to the room today. So there’s a cat too, she thought, holding up the hem of her skirt as she walked up the stairs, book under her arm. The spectral cat did not frighten her—not in the way seeing the woman in the red and black dress frightened her—but it was extremely unnerving. This was the first manifestation that had occurred during the daytime. She hoped that wouldn’t turn out to be an important milestone, but she had a depressing hunch that it would.

  Anine did not notice that afternoon that Shoop was also absent from the house. Overall she was relieved that Julian did in fact choose that night to dine at his club—or elsewhere, in any event—and didn’t appear for dinner, but she thought it strange that he didn’t return home at all until almost ten o’clock. He stumbled in through the doorway, obviously drunk, with Bryan Shoop following him.

  “There you go, let me get your coat,” said the valet, reaching for the sleeve of Julian’s topcoat. “Come on, hold still.” Shoop had obviously had a few drinks himself. As he led Julian up the stairs, past Anine standing by the bedroom door, she realized they’d been out drinking together. That’s rather odd for a gentleman to bring his valet with him to the saloons, she thought.

  “Oh, look, the ice princess is still awake.” Julian staggered on Shoop’s arm as they passed her. “See any ghosts today, Anine?” He laughed and turned his attention away from her.

  Shoop nodded in her direction as he passed. “I’ll take care of him, ma’am,” said the boy. “You needn’t concern yourself.” Anine said nothing. She turned and went into the bedroom, closing the door behind her.

  Predictably, Julian slept very late the next morning and did not rise at his usual time to go to the office. As Mrs. Hennessey withdrew from his bedroom, having brought him some tea and breakfast on a platter, through the ajar door Anine saw Julian naked, lying supine on the bed tangled in the covers, one arm hanging down off the bed to the floor. The half-drained crystal glass of amber liquid on the bedside table told her he’d continued drinking even after returning home. This I will not have, she resolved firmly.

  She met Shoop in the entryway at the bottom of the stairs a few minutes later. “Mr. Shoop,” she said sharply, “your conduct last night was inexcusable. My husband has never been known as a drunkard and I’m determined not to let that reputation attach to him. You are not to accompany him to saloons. If you do so again you’ll be discharged. Is that perfectly clear?”

  The boy’s mouth opened and closed as if he was searching for an answer. Finally he said, “He sent for me. He told me to meet him at his club last night—”

  “You are a valet,” she interrupted. “Your duties center around this house, not outside of it.”

  “With all due respect, ma’am, Mr. Atherton is my employer, not you.”

  She stiffened. So, that’s how it’s going to be, is it? “We’ll see about that,” she said coldly. She turned and started up the stairs.

  Shoop’s voice calling loudly from below stopped her. “He told me about you!” said the young man loudly.

  “What did he tell you?”

  “He said you were frigid.”

  At first she didn’t understand what he meant but she took his tone as hostile just the same. “That will be enough,” she said firmly. She continued upstairs.

  As Shoop turned away he murmured something else under his breath. It sounded a little like “Icy bitch,” but she couldn’t be completely sure. It was pointless to provoke further conflict with him so she let it go.

  The clash with Shoop unnerved her more than she had anticipated. Her hands were shaking. So he’s now my enemy too, Anine thought, and for a moment regretted speaking to him; the last thing she needed was a hostile spy in her husband’s employ keeping tabs on her. But she thought better of it. She had to say something. The more quiescent and passive she was the more people would take advantage of her.

  It wasn’t until mid-day, after she retreated to her Green Parlor for the afternoon, that she finally understood what Shoop had meant by frigid. She’d assumed at first that it referred to personality, but now she realized it had sexual connotations. This meant, disturbingly, that Julian was gossiping to his valet about their bedroom relations. I want that boy out of this house, she thought bitterly, laying down a card on the table in front of her. But how to do it? Was it even fair? If Clea was Anine’s own confidante and she was cut off from her husband, why was it so terrible that Julian have one of his own?

  She suddenly realized that this was why Julian hired Shoop in the first place. The boy was too young to have any significant qualifications as a valet, and she’d noticed he seemed to be terrible at it; Julian’s clothes were frequently rumpled and his bedroom was usually cluttered. It was clear Julian expected something of him other than first-class personal service.

  I’m surrounded by enemies and spies. I have to find some way out of this situation. She despaired. Throwing down the cards, she buried her face in her arms and wept softly.

  That evening at dinner—Julian again was out, and Anine believed Bryan Shoop was absent as well—she began to feel a curious chill. She wore a new tea gown of elegant pale orange-pink silk and she first felt the chill in, of all places, her bodice. Mrs. Hennessey cleared away the dishes for the main course and was just bringing dessert. Anine placed a hand on her front and felt a strange cold dampness there which she could not explain. Recoiling at the dish of ice cream Mrs. Hennessey set in front of her she said politely, “I think I will dispense with dessert tonight. Would you bring me a cognac in the Green Parlor, please?”

  “A cognac?” Mrs. Hennessey seemed surprised. Anine had never called for spirits in the evening. But she quickly regained her composure. “Yes, ma’am.”

  A crate of Swedish-language books from Stockholm had arrived that afternoon, and she was grateful to have something to do within her velvet-walled meditation chamber other than play solitaire. She was eager to begin reading The Red Room by August Strindberg, which scandalized Stockholm society the year before she left Sweden. The strange chill in her bodice, however, made it difficult to concentrate on the book. The cognac didn’t help. It left a burning trail down the back of her throat and a pleasant warmth in her belly but her bosom was still dreadfully cold. Eventually Anine put down The Red Room and again clasped her bodice. Inexplicably it seemed to have gotten colder. Her nipples felt like nodules of granite, but it had nothing to do with arousal; it was like being outside, naked, on Lake Vänern in January.

  What is this? she thought, reaching furtively into her tea dress. Because it was a tea dress and she was at home she could wear it without a corset. Under the silk camisole her fingers encountered what felt like ice. Her breasts were numb. She did not feel the chill in any other part of her body. Indeed, everything else felt completely normal. It was bizarre and deeply alarming.

  Trying to tamp down the anxiety rising in her, Anine moved from the settee to
a wing chair, and she moved the chair very close to the fireplace. She made another attempt to delve into the Strindberg novel. Within a few minutes she was uncomfortably hot. Her hands blazed in the glow from the fire and beads of sweat covered her forehead. But again feeling her bodice, her breasts remained ice-cold.

  She gave up. She put down the book on the end table, replaced the wing chair and left the parlor, headed upstairs. She shivered. She could no longer feel any sensation in her breasts. It felt like two snowballs had been strapped to her chest. It was the eeriest feeling she’d ever experienced.

  Once in her bedroom Anine quickly pulled the bell cord. It seemed an eternity before Clea appeared. “Bring me a hot water bottle and some hot tea, please, Clea,” Anine said.

  “Are you ill, Miss Anine?”

  “I don’t know. Do as I say, please.”

  Clea returned quickly. Anine was too embarrassed to mention anything of the phenomenon to her. She took the tray, bade Clea goodnight and the woman left. Anine quickly stripped off the tea dress. She lunged for the hot water bottle—a copper flask wrapped in a cloth—and clutched it to her chest. She hoped to feel the warmth radiating back into her breasts.

  She did not. Within seconds the flask grew lukewarm, then positively cold. Gasping, Anine threw it to the floor. It hit the carpet with a dull thump. The cold water inside the flask sloshed, but it also made a curious tinkling sound. Ice. Only a few seconds’ contact with her bosom had been enough not only to chill the water, but to begin to freeze it.

  Panicked, Anine stripped off the camisole and stared at her naked breasts in the mirror. They were a dull bluish-white color. Her nipples were encrusted with frost. Just touching one made her finger so cold that it ached sharply.

  “What’s happening?” she gasped, her voice becoming a frightened sob.

  Desperate now, she reached for the teapot. The liquid inside was steaming powerfully, only a few degrees below boiling. Without a second thought she tipped the pot and poured a stream of steaming tea directly on her left nipple. Where the tea made contact with her frozen skin it hissed and sizzled, giving off a puff of vapor. Then her nipple simply crumbled, falling to the floor in a shower of icy crystals.

  She screamed. Staring dumbfounded in the mirror Anine looked at the corroded chunk of white-blue ice that remained of her left breast. There was no pain, and oddly that in itself made the experience even more horrifying. Instinctively she clutched at the wound with her right hand. As she did so her right forearm brushed her right breast. Fragile from extreme cold, the nipple and a chunk of her breast three inches across popped off like the cork from a bottle. It hit the edge of the dressing-table as it fell and shattered into snowflakes.

  “No! Nooooooooooooooo!” Her arms clutched tightly across her chest, Anine fell to her knees. The terror within her seemed almost soul-shattering. She bent double, wailing, feeling at once the horror and shame of being disfigured, but none of the physical pain. Indeed her entire body was now going numb, and soon the coldness spread to the center of her brain. She gave another gasp and fainted.

  She came to in the morning. Bright sunlight streamed through the windows. She was topless, laying on the thick-pile wool carpet. The teapot she’d dropped and the hot water flask lay on the carpet next to her. With a sudden panicky jerk Anine bolted upright, drew her arms away from her chest and stared at her breasts in the mirror. They were both perfectly fine, complete and unmarred, and the eerie coldness seemed a distant memory.

  She felt her breasts. The flesh felt totally normal, her nipples soft and pliant. Relief flooded through her.

  A hallucination? There seemed no other explanation. She was completely uninjured, which meant what she’d seen last night could not be real, but it certainly seemed real enough. The cognac, maybe? She didn’t think so. She drank only a small amount, nothing that would cause visions on that graphic scale.

  But already she knew what it was. The spöke was toying with her. This was more than simple play, though—the rawness, the ugliness of the experience suggested it was more than that. It was, Anine realized, a declaration of war.

  Chapter Ten

  The Indian

  Julian Atherton did not believe in the manifestations that his wife had reported. At first he ignored them, and then he was amused by them; but quickly his amusement turned to annoyance, and then to disgust. He knew nothing of the vision of the woman or the cat or anything else and was basing his evaluation on her reports of ghostly voices and footsteps, which seemed easy enough to dismiss. Yet he was painfully aware that since moving into the house Anine had become increasingly twitchy, high-strung and disagreeable, and he credited this to her superstitious fear of nonexistent ghosts. She’ll snap out of it soon enough, he thought. When she realizes this is home and there’s no other choice, she’ll accept it. In the meantime he was annoyed that he had to correct her in her wifely duties. Forcing himself upon her sexually was regrettable but he believed it was necessary. She had to understand that he was her lord and master. She wasn’t in Sweden anymore. She was a New York wife.

  Lately, however, Julian had noticed that he barely even desired Anine anymore. This disturbed and worried him more than a little, but of course he couldn’t show any outward sign of it. She was beautiful—there was no question about that—but her coldness and her emotional distance had withered her allure almost down to nothing. He was deeply alarmed that it seemed he would have to resort to whores only five months into his marriage. He’d never been a particular fan of whores, although he had some experience with them, especially on his trip across the West four years ago. He didn’t even know where to begin in New York. While trying to decide, he adopted masturbation as a morning ritual. He guessed it was healthier than philandering with the disease-ridden crones who prowled the Bowery and the Five Points after dark, and it was certainly cheaper.

  The night he and Bryan Shoop went out drinking immediately followed Julian’s decision that he would have to seek female companionship somewhere. He was sitting in his office that afternoon, pawing through papers from some endless property case, thinking about what to do. I shouldn’t have to go to the Five Points or the Bowery. Surely there are more respectable places in the city where gentlemen of means can be serviced. He was certain some of his law partners and colleagues at the gentlemen’s club knew such places, but he hesitated to ask them. Julian was quite aware of the low esteem in which his colleagues—except Roman Chenowerth—held him. He had no idea why, but he was reluctant to give them any more ammunition against him. One of Anine’s great disappointments was her apparent inability to persuade New York society to swallow whatever contempt it had for him and treat him as an equal. He wasn’t sure how to get out of this box.

  In the afternoon he sent a messenger back home bearing a card for Bryan Shoop: Join me at my club. 5:30 o’clock. Say nothing. Leave the house unobserved. Julian of course couldn’t invite his manservant into the gentleman’s club so he met him outside. “I fancy a drink,” he said as Shoop walked up. “There’s a charming little tavern over on 29th Street. Would you care to join me?”

  The tavern, called the Brass Arms, was solidly middle-class. It served roast beef and chops and tall frosty steins of beer, but it was at least the sort of place where one might envision a well-dressed gentleman ducking in from time to time on a lark. As they drank beer and Shoop cracked peanuts, flinging the shells onto the floor, Julian confessed his problem. “My wife is frigid. I know she’s beautiful—she was one of the most beautiful young ladies in Stockholm society when I met her—but she’s frigid. There it is. I’ve said it.”

  “What does ‘frigid’ mean?” Shoop asked.

  “It means she’s cold. In bed. It’s like fornicating with a wet rag.”

  Shoop gave a boyish giggle. “I wouldn’t have imagined it.”

  “Neither did I, when I married her. That’s my problem.”

  “So what do you want me to do
about it?”

  Julian lowered his voice. Hoping he didn’t sound desperate he asked, “Do you know of any…places where a gentleman might find reasonable companionship? I’m not talking about brothels in back alleys. But I’m sure there are some more respectable places.”

  Shoop disappointed him. “If there were,” he said, “what makes you think I would know about them?”

  Julian recoiled. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you.” He reached for his beer mug.

  “I’m not insulted. I just don’t know.”

  “Do you think you could find out for me?”

  Shoop blushed. “Mr. Atherton, I’m not sure that’s what I should really be doing.”

  “Call me Julian. Why not? You’re a manservant. Your job is to tend to the needs of gentlemen. This is a need, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose so.” Shoop seemed eager to change the subject. “Hey, if you like taverns, I know a couple of those around here. That I can help you with.”

  Julian smiled. “All right.”

  So they made the rounds, hopping through a succession of drink-sodden grottoes nestled in the back streets of Manhattan; Julian was surprised at how many watering holes lurked in the shadows of New York’s fashionable avenues and at how many of them Bryan Shoop seemed to be known. They spoke no more of whores or brothels. Julian got drunker and Shoop goaded him to tell some of his stories of his trip across the West, which he enjoyed mightily. At nine-forty-five, his head spinning, Julian finally decided that they should probably go home. Shoop stepped out and found a carriage, and guided him deftly back home.

  Julian’s head was buzzing so fiercely by the time they reached the house that he was barely aware of Anine’s presence in the hallway. “Oh, look, the ice princess is still awake,” he laughed, staggering on Shoop’s arm as they passed her. “See any ghosts today, Anine?” He was still thinking of her mysterious creakings and gigglings, nothing of which he’d told Shoop. But he was too drunk to notice his lapse.