Fog Heart by Thomas Tessier Page A

Indian meal at the Ooti, went to see Albee’s Three Tall Women, and had some cherished evenings staying in – watching movies, playing cribbage, listening to music and making love.
    Carrie continued to have breakfast coffee and evening tea in the nook, and to use the living room as always. If she came home and found that Oliver was out, she felt no great rush of anxiety. She was home. Her home, where she belonged.
    Carrie also thought that she had learned something from the two incidents. What had frightened her most about them was the unnaturalness – they were freakish and wrong, and they didn’t belong in the order of everyday things. So when they had happened, she was shocked and deeply disturbed.
    So much so that perhaps she had been unable to take in fully what had really been happening. What had she missed? If it happened again Carrie wanted to control herself, to study it closely, as calmly as possible. She wanted to learn from it, rather than just react instinctively against it. She would have that chance.
    *   *   *
    Annemarie Clement, who was now the Contessa di Lamborghini (as they liked to joke), and who was also an old college friend, recommended Carrie to a cherubic Belgian gentleman with an empty apartment in Yorkville and heaps of money to spend fixing it up. Annemarie and Carrie still talked regularly on the phone, though they no longer moved in the same circles. Annemarie was married to some phoney Italian count, charming Euro-trash who dabbled in Formula One racing, and her picture could often be found in the social columns. Carrie was quite fond of her.
    Monsieur Chauvet had a certain dubious charm of his own. He kept apartments in Ghent and London, and now had acquired the place just off York Avenue. It was large and had potential, but it had been left in bad shape. Carrie would have to start from scratch. Which was ideal.
    She saw the place once with him, and they agreed to terms. He was in a state of exhaustion, he explained to Carrie, although he seemed to her to be as relaxed as a sandbag, and he was about to spend a month resting in Menton – poor man. He gave her the keys to the apartment. She went back to it after lunch one day to see how the rooms handled sunlight, take some measurements and photographs and sketch the existing layout.
    The doorman admitted her and checked her ID carefully, which was good to see. It was obviously an expensive and secure building. She took the elevator to the fourth floor and entered the apartment, making sure to lock the door behind her. She went through all the rooms once, a quick tour to confirm that she had the place to herself. It was empty, stripped, the air stale and sticky-warm. Carrie put her things down on the bare floorboards and went to work.
    She was there for nearly an hour and a half, clicking off photographs, jotting down numbers and scribbling several pages of notes. Good, it was all good. She had a crowd of ideas. It was a great place and it was begging to be reborn. One wall could be removed in the long corridor that ran the length of the apartment. Carrie picked up her things and glanced again down that corridor before leaving. It was dark and tunnel-like, a dreadful design job.
    She didn’t even notice him there at first, but then she did – a man standing at the far end of the corridor. A silhouette, with the late-afternoon western sun falling aslant in geometric lines through the window behind him.
    Think, don’t panic.
    It must be an intruder who had somehow got in through a window without making any noise. Carrie could try to unlock the door and get away, but she calculated that he would probably be on top of her before she managed to stick her head outside and scream for help.
    Her hand was shaking, but she reached into her bag and found the canister of pepper spray. She had never used it before but she knew that the police did – so it must work. She held it up, moving her eyes quickly