by Riley Sager
Also by Riley Sager
Final Girls
The Last Time I Lied
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ISBN 9781524745141 (hardcover)
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Printed in the United States of America
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Contents
ALSO BY RILEY SAGER
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT PAGE
DEDICATION
EPIGRAPH
NOW
SIX DAYS EARLIER
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
NOW
FIVE DAYS EARLIER
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
NOW
FOUR DAYS EARLIER
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
NOW
THREE DAYS EARLIER
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
NOW
TWO DAYS EARLIER
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
NOW
ONE DAY EARLIER
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
NOW
ONE DAY LATER
CHAPTER 44
TWO DAYS LATER
CHAPTER 45
THREE DAYS LATER
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
FOUR DAYS LATER
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
CHAPTER 50
CHAPTER 51
CHAPTER 52
CHAPTER 53
CHAPTER 54
CHAPTER 55
SIX MONTHS LATER
CHAPTER 56
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
To Ira Levin
Ginny gazed up at the building, her feet planted firmly on the sidewalk but her heart as wide and churning as the sea. Not even in her wildest dreams did she ever think she’d set foot inside this place. To her, it had always felt as far away as a fairy-tale castle. It even looked like one—tall and imposing, with gargoyles gracing the walls. It was the Manhattan version of a palace, inhabited by the city’s elite.
To those who lived outside its walls, it was known as the Bartholomew.
But to Ginny, it was now the place she called home.
Greta Manville,
Heart of a Dreamer
NOW
Light slices the darkness, jerking me awake.
My right eye—someone’s prying it open. Latex-gloved fingers part the lids, yanking on them like they’re stubborn window shades.
There’s more light now. Harsh. Painfully bright. A penlight, aimed at my pupil.
The same is done to my left eye. Pry. Part. Light.
The fingers release my lids, and I’m plunged back into darkness.
Someone speaks. A man with a gentle voice. “Can you hear me?”
I open my mouth, and hot pain circles my jaw. Stray bolts of it jab my neck and cheek.
“Yes.”
My voice is a rasp. My throat is parched. So are my lips, save for a single spot of wet warmth with a slick, metallic taste.
“Am I bleeding?”
“You are,” says the same voice as before. “Just a little. Could have been worse.”
“A lot worse,” another voice says.
“Where am I?”
The first voice answers. “A hospital, honey. We’re taking you for some tests. We need to see how banged up you really are.”
It dawns on me that I’m in motion. I can hear the hum of wheels on tile and feel the slight wobble of a gurney I just now realize I’m flat-backed upon. Until now, I had thought I was floating. I try to move but can’t. My arms and legs are strapped down. Something is pythoned around my neck, holding it in place.
Others are with me. Three that I know of. The two voices and someone else pushing the gurney. Warm huffs of breath brush my earlobe.
“Let’s see how much you can remember.” It’s the first voice again. The big talker of the bunch. “Think you can answer some questions for me?”
“Yes.”
“What’s your name?”
“Jules.” I stop, irritated by the warm wetness still on my lips. I try to lick it away, my tongue flopping. “Jules Larsen.”
“Hi, Jules,” the man says. “I’m Bernard.”
I want to say hello back, but my jaw still hurts.
As does my entire left side from knee to shoulder.
As does my head.
It’s a quick boil of pain, going from nonexistent to screaming in seconds. Or maybe it’s been there all along and only now is my body able to handle it.
“How old are you, Jules?” Bernard asks.
“Twenty-five.” I stop, overcome with a fresh blast of pain. “What happened to me?”
“You were hit by a car, honey,” Bernard says. “Or maybe the car was hit by you. We’re still kind of unclear on the details.”
I can’t help in that department. This is breaking news to me. I don’t recall anything.
“When?”
“Just a few minutes ago.”
“Where?”
“Right outside the Bartholomew.”
My eyes snap open, this time on their own.
I blink against the harsh fluorescents zipping by overhead as the gurney speeds along. Keeping pace is Bernard. He has dark skin, bright scrubs, brown eyes. They’re kind eyes, which is why I stare into them, pleading.
“Please,” I beg. “Please don’t send me back there.”
SIX DAYS EARLIER
1
The elevator resembles a birdcage. The tall, ornate kind—all thin bars and gilded exterior. I even think of birds as I step inside. Exotic and bright and lush.
Everything I’m not.
But the woman next to me certainly fits the bill with her blue Chanel suit, blond updo, perfectly manicured hands weighed down by several r
ings. She might be in her fifties. Maybe older. Botox has made her face tight and gleaming. Her voice is champagne bright and just as bubbly. She even has an elegant name—Leslie Evelyn.
Because this is technically a job interview, I also wear a suit.
Black.
Not Chanel.
My shoes are from Payless. The brown hair brushing my shoulders is on the ragged side. Normally, I would have gone to Supercuts for a trim, but even that’s now out of my price range.
Entering the elevator, I nod with feigned interest as Leslie Evelyn says, “The elevator is original, of course. As is the main staircase. Not much in the lobby has changed since this place opened in 1919. That’s the great thing about these older buildings—they were built to last.”
And, apparently, to force people to invade each other’s personal space. Leslie and I stand shoulder to shoulder in the surprisingly small elevator car. But what it lacks in size it makes up for in style. There’s red carpet on the floor and gold leaf on the ceiling. On three sides, oak-paneled walls rise to waist height, where they’re replaced by a series of narrow windows.
The elevator car has two doors—one with wire-thin bars that closes by itself plus a crisscross grate Leslie slides into place before tapping the button for the top floor. Then we’re off, rising slowly but surely into one of Manhattan’s most storied addresses.
Had I known the apartment was in this building, I never would have responded to the ad. I would have considered it a waste of time. I’m not a Leslie Evelyn, who carries a caramel-colored attaché case and looks so at ease in a place like this. I’m Jules Larsen, the product of a Pennsylvania coal town with less than five hundred dollars in my checking account.
I do not belong here.
But the ad didn’t mention an address. It simply announced the need for an apartment sitter and provided a phone number to call if interested. I was. I did. Leslie Evelyn answered and gave me an interview time and an address. Lower seventies, Upper West Side. Yet I didn’t truly know what I was getting myself into until I stood outside the building, triple-checking the address to make sure I was in the right place.
The Bartholomew.
Right behind the Dakota and the twin-spired San Remo as one of Manhattan’s most recognizable apartment buildings. Part of that is due to its narrowness. Compared with those other legends of New York real estate, the Bartholomew is a mere wisp of a thing—a sliver of stone rising thirteen stories over Central Park West. In a neighborhood of behemoths, the Bartholomew stands out by being the opposite. It’s small, intricate, memorable.
But the main reason for the building’s fame are its gargoyles. The classic kind with bat wings and devil horns. They’re everywhere, those stone beasts, from the pair that sit over the arched front door to the ones crouched on each corner of the slanted roof. More inhabit the building’s facade, placed in short rows on every other floor. They sit on marble outcroppings, arms raised to ledges above, as if they alone are keeping the Bartholomew upright. It gives the building a Gothic, cathedral-like appearance that’s prompted a similarly religious nickname—St. Bart’s.
Over the years, the Bartholomew and its gargoyles have graced a thousand photographs. I’ve seen it on postcards, in ads, as a backdrop for fashion shoots. It’s been in the movies. And on TV. And on the cover of a best-selling novel published in the eighties called Heart of a Dreamer, which is how I first learned about it. Jane had a copy and would often read it aloud to me as I lay sprawled across her twin bed.
The book tells the fanciful tale of a twenty-year-old orphan named Ginny who, through a twist of fate and the benevolence of a grandmother she never knew, finds herself living at the Bartholomew. Ginny navigates her posh new surroundings in a series of increasingly elaborate party dresses while juggling several suitors. It’s fluff, to be sure, but the wonderful kind. The kind that makes a young girl dream of finding romance on Manhattan’s teeming streets.
As Jane would read, I’d stare at the book’s cover, which shows an across-the-street view of the Bartholomew. There were no buildings like that where we grew up. It was just row houses and storefronts with sooty windows, their glumness broken only by the occasional school or house of worship. Although we had never been there, Manhattan intrigued Jane and me. So did the idea of living in a place like the Bartholomew, which was worlds away from the tidy duplex we shared with our parents.
“Someday,” Jane often said between chapters. “Someday I’m going to live there.”
“And I’ll visit,” I’d always pipe up.
Jane would then stroke my hair. “Visit? You’ll be living there with me, Julie-girl.”
None of those childhood fantasies came true, of course. They never do. Maybe for the Leslie Evelyns of the world, perhaps. But not for Jane. And definitely not for me. This elevator ride is as close as I’m going to get.
The elevator shaft is tucked into a nook of the staircase, which winds upward through the center of the building. I can see it through the elevator windows as we rise. Between each floor is ten steps, a landing, then ten more steps.
On one of the landings, an elderly man wheezes his way down the stairs with the help of an exhausted-looking woman in purple scrubs. She waits patiently, gripping the man’s arm as he pauses to catch his breath. Although they pretend not to be paying attention as the elevator passes, I catch them taking a quick look just before the next floor blocks them from view.
“Residential units are located on eleven floors, starting with the second,” Leslie says. “The ground floor contains staff offices and employee-only areas, plus our maintenance department. Storage facilities are in the basement. There are four units on each floor. Two in the front. Two in the back.”
We pass another floor, the elevator slow but steady. On this level, a woman about Leslie’s age waits for the return trip. Dressed in leggings, UGGs, and a bulky white sweater, she walks an impossibly tiny dog on a studded leash. She gives Leslie a polite wave while staring at me from behind oversize sunglasses. In that brief moment when we’re face-to-face, I recognize the woman. She’s an actress. At least, she used to be. It’s been ten years since I last saw her on that soap opera I watched with my mother during summer break.
“Is that—”
Leslie stops me with a raised hand. “We never discuss residents. It’s one of the unspoken rules here. The Bartholomew prides itself on discretion. The people who live here want to feel comfortable within its walls.”
“But celebrities do live here?”
“Not really,” Leslie says. “Which is fine by us. The last thing we want are paparazzi waiting outside. Or, God forbid, something as awful as what happened at the Dakota. Our residents tend to be quietly wealthy. They like their privacy. A good many of them use dummy corporations to buy their apartments so their purchase doesn’t become public record.”
The elevator comes to a rattling stop at the top of the stairs, and Leslie says, “Here we are. Twelfth floor.”
She yanks open the grate and steps out, her heels clicking on the floor’s black-and-white subway tile.
The hallway walls are burgundy, with sconces placed at regular intervals. We pass two unmarked doors before the hall dead-ends at a wide wall that contains two more doors. Unlike the others, these are marked.
12A and 12B.
“I thought there were four units on each floor,” I say.
“There are,” Leslie says. “Except this one. The twelfth floor is special.”
I glance back at the unmarked doors behind us. “Then what are those?”
“Storage areas. Access to the roof. Nothing exciting.” She reaches into her attaché to retrieve a set of keys, which she uses to unlock 12A. “Here’s where the real excitement is.”
The door swings open, and Leslie steps aside, revealing a tiny and tasteful foyer. There’s a coat rack, a gilded mirror, and a table containing a lamp, a vase, a small bowl to hold keys. My gaze moves past the foyer, into the apartment proper, and to a window spaced directly opposite
the door. Outside is one of the most stunning views I’ve ever seen.
Central Park.
Late fall.
Amber sun slanting across orange-gold leaves.
All of it from a bird’s-eye view of one hundred fifty feet.
The window providing the view stretches from floor to ceiling in a formal sitting room on the other side of a hallway. I cross the hall on legs made wobbly by vertigo and head to the window, stopping when my nose is an inch from the glass. Straight ahead is Central Park Lake and the graceful span of Bow Bridge. Beyond them, in the distance, are snippets of Bethesda Terrace and the Loeb Boathouse. To the right is the Sheep Meadow, its expanse of green speckled with the forms of people basking in the autumn sun. Belvedere Castle sits to the left, backdropped by the stately gray stone of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
I take in the view, slightly breathless.
I’ve seen it before in my mind’s eye as I read Heart of a Dreamer. This is the exact view Ginny had from her apartment in the book. Meadow to the south. Castle to the north. Bow Bridge dead center—a bull’s-eye for all her wildest dreams.
For a brief moment, it’s my reality. In spite of all the shit I’ve gone through. Maybe even because of it. Being here has the feel of fate somehow intervening, even as I’m again struck by that all-consuming thought—I do not belong here.
“I’m sorry,” I say as I pry myself away from the window. “I think there’s been a huge misunderstanding.”
There are many ways Leslie Evelyn and I could have gotten our wires crossed. The ad on Craigslist could have contained the wrong number. Or I might have made a mistake in dialing. When Leslie answered, the call was so brief that confusion was inevitable. I thought she was looking for an apartment sitter. She thought I was looking for an apartment. Now here we are, Leslie tilting her head to give me a confused look and me in awe of a view that, let’s face it, was never intended to be seen by someone like me.
“You don’t like the apartment?” Leslie says.
“I love it.” I indulge in another quick peek out the window. I can’t help myself. “But I’m not looking for an apartment. I mean, I am, but I could save every penny until I’m a hundred and I still wouldn’t be able to afford this place.”
