But Roy didn't feel that way. Roy wanted a stubby assistant securities analyst instead of her and that was that.
Another gagging flood of hot slimy water shot up her nose.
Air, air, air. . . . Give me air!
Now Cheryl Marston saw her father and mother at Christmas, decades ago, coyly wheeling out the bicycle Santa had brought her from the North Pole. Look, honey, Santa even has a pink helmet for you to protect your pretty little noggin. . . .
"Ahhhhhh . . ."
Coughing and choking, gripped by constricting chains, Cheryl was hauled out of the opaque water of the greasy pond, upside down, spinning lazily, held by a rope looped over a metal crane jutting over the water.
Her skull throbbed as the blood settled in her head. "Stop, stop, stop!" she screamed silently. What was going on? She remembered Donny Boy rearing, somebody calming him, a nice man, coffee in a Greek restaurant, conversation, something about boats, then the world uncoiling in dizziness, silly laughter.
Then chains. The terrible water.
And now this man studying her with pleasant curiosity on his face as she died.
Who is he? Why is he doing this? Why?
Inertia spun her slowly in a circle and he could no longer see her pleading eyes, as the inverted, hazy line of New Jersey miles away across the Hudson came into view.
She revolved slowly back until she was looking at the brambles and lilacs. And him.
He in turn looked down at her, nodded, then played out the rope, lowering her into the disgusting pond again.
Cheryl bent hard at the waist, trying desperately to keep away from the surface of the water, as if it were scalding hot. But her own weight, the weight of the chains pulled her down below the surface. Holding her breath, she shivered fiercely and shook her head, struggling vainly to pull free from the unbreakable metal.
Then Cheryl's husband was here again, in front of her, explaining, explaining, explaining why the divorce was the best thing that could've happened to her. Roy looked up, wiped away crocodile tears and said it was for the best. She'd be happier this way. Look, here was something for her. Roy opened a door and there was a shiny new Schwinn bike. Streamers on the handle grips, training wheels in the back and a helmet--a pink one--to protect her noggin.
Cheryl gave up. You win, you win. Take the goddamn boat, take your goddamn girlfriend. Just let me go, let me go in peace. She inhaled through her nose to let comforting death into her lungs.
*
"There!" Amelia Sachs cried.
She and Bell ran forward over the pedestrian walkway toward the thick cluster of bushes and trees on the edge of the Hudson River. A man stood on a rotting pier, which had apparently been a dock years ago before access to the river had been filled in. This area was overgrown, filled with trash and stank of stagnant water.
A man in chinos and a white shirt was holding a rope that arced over a small rusting crane. The other end disappeared below the surface.
"Hey," Bell called, "you!"
He had brown hair, yes, but the outfit was different. No beard, either. And his eyebrows didn't seem that thick. Sachs couldn't see if the fingers of his left hand were fused together.
Still, what did that mean?
The Conjurer could be a man, could be a woman.
The Conjurer could be invisible.
As they jogged closer he looked up in apparent relief. "Here!" he cried. "Help me! Over here! There's a woman in the water!"
Bell and Sachs left Kara beside the overpass and sprinted through the brush surrounding the brackish pond. "Don't trust him," she called breathlessly to Bell as they ran.
"I'm with you there, Amelia."
The man pulled harder and feet and then legs in tan slacks emerged, followed by a woman's body. She was wrappe
d in chains. Oh, the poor thing! Sachs thought. Please let her be alive.