Rachel Alexander 04 - Lady Vanishes

right now. But something’s wrong. I just feel it, and I’m scared.”
    “Of what?” I asked, thinking I should have said, Of whom? But it wouldn’t have made any difference. She wasn’t going to answer me either way. I could see it in her eyes. The conversation was over.
    “I have to get back now,” she said. “I’m already late. Come later this afternoon, two-thirty, can you do that? I go to the gym every day after work, Serge’s on Bank and West, just a couple of blocks from Harbor View. I’ll arrange a pass for you. It’s a good place for us to talk. We can meet there every day and fill each other in. Five-thirty. On the treadmills.”
    “Then there’s more you want to tell me?”
    “Lots more,” she said. “But it’ll have to wait. I’m never late, and I don’t want to draw attention to myself right now.”
    “Venus, if I’m looking for a bicycle messenger or a delivery man, then why—”
    “I don’t know what you’re looking for,” she whispered. “But whatever it is, we only have until Friday for you to find it.”
    “Why?” I asked. “What happens on Friday?”
    “I’m late,” she said, turning to leave, but not before I saw the fear creep into her dark eyes.
    Then she was gone, and I was standing there alone, holding the price list, wondering what was going to happen on Friday. Would her coach turn back into a pumpkin, her fine white horses into mice?

CHAPTER 3
    Some People Have All the Nerve

    As I approached Harbor View, I was assaulted by the deafening sound of jackhammers. They had already come so close to the building line, chopping away half the sidewalk out in front, the institution looked as if it might fall over forward onto the half-constructed roadway.
    Harbor View was neither grand in scale like some of the commercial buildings facing the river at the northwestern edge of the Village, meatpacking plants that had been converted into high-priced housing, nor small and funky like the bar that had been its neighbor to the south, a squat little hovel painted aqua so that on the occasion when it wasn’t your first stop, you still couldn’t miss it, not even if you’d been drinking for a million years.
    In its previous life, Harbor View had been a hotel for seamen, a place where they could keep a watchful eye on the river while waiting to sail again. I didn’t need the AIA Guide to New York City or Greenwich Village, How It Got That Way to tell me that. It was written in stone, right over the front door. Harbor View, it said. And under that, Seaman’s Rest. Harry hadn’t changed the name.
    It was a neat little building, four stories, about fifty or sixty feet wide, red brick with that stone trim over the door and the windows. There was a narrow alley on either side, leading, I supposed, to a rear yard. Half the rooms would face the back, a quiet oasis in a noisy city. The others looked out over the river, the very view that made the price of housing along West Street so high.
    I stopped in front to let Dashiell drink from the squirt bottle I carried for both of us. There was a young man standing in the skinny window to the right of the doorway, a sidelight with a rectangle of stained glass at the top, blue for the sea, yellow for the sun. He seemed to be looking at us, but I doubted he was. More than likely his view was inward, to some dark place only he was privy to.
    I rang the bell. A moment later, Venus opened the door.
    “Ready to begin?” she asked.
    I nodded, too hot to speak, glancing at the man in the window, my eyes drawn to his hands because of the bandages, his fingers sticking out beyond the waterproof tape tap-tap-tapping against each other as if they were piano keys. Venus touched him lightly on his shoulder, then headed for her office, to the right of the front door. Dashiell and I followed behind her.
    “You’re going to have to work one-on-one to begin with. We don’t know exactly how the kids will react to Dashiell. Some of them won’t see him. Maybe not for the first few visits. Charlotte, when she gets overstimulated, scared, whatever, she acts out, beats herself on the chest, moans, rocks. Just let her be. She’ll stop on her own.
    “If it goes on for more than a few minutes, you can take her to the squeeze machine. It’s on the second floor. You can’t miss it, the door is always open. Are you familiar with them?”
    “Is it something like the thing they use on farm animals, to keep them calm during veterinary