An NYPD patrol car drove by, slow and relaxed as they do in these neighborhoods.
I waved, though my heart was banging.
It was scary and wrong and thrilling; pure adrenalin. I hadn’t felt in so long – since before…no, don’t think about it.
I see Joe’s expression, and brace myself.
“Don’t do it no more,” he says, trying to keep it light, toying with the ballpoint I’d been using.
I sit back. “Why?” I say defensively. “I don’t hurt anyone, it’s just an alternative lifestyle.” We both know that’s a Woody Allen line: someone normal accused him of doing something abnormal. In the movie it was funny.
But Joe looks uncomfortable, puts the pen back on the desk.
“Do you do sex watching?”
“Ick, no!”
“Good. So what do I call you? Nosy Rosie? Peeping Penelope? Keyhole Kate?”
I exhale, slump a little. It’s nice that he’s concerned, and I feel myself soften. “Maybe it’s just a phase,” I shrug. “Helps me deal with…everything.”
Everything: one word encompassing the horror of my sister’s death plus the pain of going through a divorce – not to mention the outraged helplessness of getting blackballed from my career thanks to the big shot who killed my sister and skated on her murder charge. It’s all a waking, ceaseless nightmare.
Joe drops his head, understanding, nodding in sympathy. A moment passes, and he looks up again.
“Just…please, Ava. Don’t get arrested.”
“Okay, boss.” I swallow hard. This is my first real conversation with him…and he’s been holding back? Fretting since he guessed about Morton Street?
I’m touched.
“Have you really left your therapist?” he asks.
“No. I just see her less often…and she understands.” I re-seize my ballpoint, fiddle with it. Joe takes an interest, so just once I’ll lay it out for him.
“She says I’m revenge-obsessed.” I feel my rage catch fire again; turn the pen faster in my hands. “Some mogul murders my sister and gets away with it? Justice thwarted needs an outlet – those are shrink terms but it’s what I feel. And hey, I’m functioning, aren’t I?”
Joe presses his lips flat and ponders. Then reluctantly, he nods again and leans back folding his arms, peering around at posters of tulips in Holland, boxwood in Provence.
“You’re too isolated,” he says, and looks back at me. “Even working late here so much isn’t healthy. Do you get out at all?”
“No.”
“You should.”
“You’re right.” I slump even lower, breathe in. “I once was gregarious, can you believe it?”
“Of course.”
My lips tighten because the truth is, I don’t even recognize myself anymore. I’ve become this angry, hurting loner whose world has shriveled.
Joe knows about the creep who caused my sister Kim’s death, and forced me out of acting. His name is Brett Moore; he’s made hundreds of millions producing his own action films, plus he invests in the projects of others. He’s a powerful money man who adored and then abused my sister; caused an accident that wasn’t an accident. Soon after his expensive lawyers got him cleared of her murder rap, I climbed to his Tribeca terrace during one of his parties and assaulted him. It was in the papers, the gossip sites.
Someone takes your life away, and you’re not allowed to fight back?
I blow out a heavy breath and pull the laptop closer; shut down Excel, go to YouTube, click, and watch.
It’s a tape from twenty months ago. A man’s voiceover reports, “Surrounded by photographers, film producer Brett Moore and his attorney left the First Precinct in lower Manhattan…”
Joe gets up, comes around and leans over me. “You can’t keep doing this, Ava. You’re obsessed.”
“Sh-h.”
“Why did you push Kimmie Beck down the stairs?” shouts a female reporter’s voice, more shrill than others demanding the same question. Moore remains stone-faced, dark and scowling as his aggressive shape bulls past a forest of cameras.
A photo of Kim appears, beautiful with long dark hair, laughing before lush vegetation on the set of her last movie, Pirate. The voiceover continues, describing “Ms. Beck’s fatal fall that happened late at night in Mr. Moore’s duplex. The couple had been living together. Actress Ava Beck disputes that her careful, athletic sister could have fallen, and friends of the pair agree, while Mr. Moore’s attorney asserts that the young woman had been drinking and tragically stumbled…”
“This just doesn’t help,” Joe groans.
I say nothing. Intense, I push the red bar back and restart the video.
“Look at Moore,” I mutter. “Arrogant son of a bitch.” I glare at the brilliant monster who wined and dined my sister, and cajoled her after fights. “I keep trying to understand - how could Kim have loved such a shit? Why wouldn’t she listen to me?”
“She was young and he was all charm,” Joe says. “Charming with you too at first, right? All hearts and flowers?”
I’m silent, fighting tears.
Joe sees and reaches over my shoulder. “May I?” he says gently.
I nod.
He closes out YouTube, then shuts my laptop as if trapping an evil genie.
“Obsessing hurts you worse.” I feel his warm breath on my cheek. “Fight Moore another day. Alex is prepping the trial?”
“Yes, but it’s a civil suit. Will go over like O.J.”
“Maybe not. Stay sane for it.”
I bow my head and say nothing. Alex is my about to be ex-husband, and a lawyer. He cared about Kim, cared less about fidelity. We’ve parted with surprising amiability.
Joe finally straightens, sounding tired. “I really wish you’d give yourself a break.”
“Okay.” But I said it too fast, sounded glib.
I feel his uncertain gaze. “Promise?”
“Promise to try.”
He sighs. Peripherally, I see him check his phone for the time. “It’s nine-thirty. Late.”
I say nothing.
“Are you sleeping better?”
“Well…”
“Work on that too. Starting tonight. Go home.”
I look at him, try to smile.
He pats my shoulder encouragingly, and says goodnight.
I watch him return to the front, hear him turn on the alarm. It beeps thinly, the door pulls closed, and the thud echoes.
The front of the store goes dark.
3
I get out tissues and scrub away tears. Then I lean back, cross my arms over my chest, and gloomily survey the desk littered with invoices and Excel printouts.
For this, three years at Julliard? I still know my Chekhov and Tennessee Williams and every line in Chicago and Our Town. Kim and I were both at Julliard. We memorized entire plays together and each other’s lines; laughed a lot and supported each other.
She was the cheerier one. I still see her goofing around, hiking in Santa Monica, flinging frisbees on the beach, visiting me on the set of my TV series.
Street Beat, it was called. It was filmed here in the city; I co-starred as a young police detective. Once Kim dropped in to visit and wound up doing a small part – no contract, just for yucks - of an awkward rookie who fell over dog leashes and trash baskets. Think Lucille Ball in uniform. Her scenes were such a hit that the producer begged her to join the cast. She couldn’t; had signed for a part in a film about to start production in Montana.
But that Street Beat episode is still on YouTube.
I lean forward, open my laptop again, and watch it.
Smile.
See myself, in plainclothes holstering my gun, telling my sister in uniform to get up off the sidewalk; the others will see.
“Aw, I live for desk duty,” she groans, screwy-faced in a heap. “Why fight it?”
Seventy thousand views. Comments beneath say “Funny!” and “Comic AND gorgeous,” and “Sister of the main one – surprise.”
I push the red bar back and watch my sister say, again and again, “Why fight it? Why fight it?”
Finally I sigh, and switch off.
The room caves in, hollow and drained of life.
Tears threaten again. I think of another place drained of life.
She’s buried in the older part of the cemetery, the prettier part, really, beneath a dogwood that blooms pink in spring. Its branches shelter her, and comfort me a little, but not much. What shatters me is when those pink petals fall, and then the leaves in autumn, and the ground grows cold again….
I was there last week, kneeling at her grave, watching the first yellowed leaves flutter down. I pushed them away and left white potted chrysanthemums. There was rain two days later; that’s good, they’ll live a bit longer. Then some night soon the air will turn colder, and they’ll die too…
Tears sting so bad. I squirm in the chair and feel helpless, ready to explode.
Not much you can do with these feelings.
Go home? Curl back into a ball?
No. This outlet I’ve discovered…
Peering into people’s lives is exerting a greater pull, like an addiction. Odd, how that night saving Amelie opened a whole new thing for me: my antidote for feeling bad.
I check the time on my phone. Ten-twenty, no messages.
Such emptiness!
When Alex and I were happy, we’d text ten times a day…and even after marriage we’d text and text before things plunged; before he broke my heart with his infidelities. “It’s nothing!” he’d protest. “Guys do that!”
Kim and I used to text a lot, too, when she was in L.A. or on location or back here living with Moore. Restless, I scroll through some of her pictures on my phone, listen to her voicemail: “Safe trip! Text me when you get home!”
She would have been twenty-seven, three years younger. When we were young, I promised our Dad I’d take care of her…
Great job.
Does heartbreak ever ease?
Dimly, I hear traffic outside. West Eleventh is a quiet street, but behind those lit windows, square blue televisions are going, and Netflix, and couples cuddling on couches or cooking or arguing.
My addiction pulls. Also a more serious sense of caring, like what I felt going night after night to stand under Amelie’s window.
Minnesota was more than tense with her womanizer. Her eyes looked frightened - and those bruises….
Wish I could bang on her window.
Back in the laptop I find the White Pages site, and do a reverse address search.
It’s frightening, how easy it is to find out anything about anyone. White Pages is the old phone book standby now on the Web. You type in any address, and the site comes back with the resident’s name, age, phone number, and a map of their neighborhood.
I type in what little I have, and watch the screen.
The info fills in.
Minnesota’s name is Chloe Weld. She’s twenty-three and from…Sand Point, Idaho.
Close enough.
Are they arguing? Is he cajoling or…?
Finding her Facebook page is easy: nice friends, a church cookout, relatives who wouldn’t be thrilled seeing her prey to someone like Peter Greer.
His Facebook page shows him being the perfect, phony Dad to the kids he sees maybe two weekends a month. One photo shows them with him in front of their Fifth Avenue building, which I recognize. I’ve been in it.
So I know where his depressed wife lives.
I scribble a few notes about Chloe Weld, gather my things, switch off the lamp, and leave through the darkened front of the store.
4
Outside, under the awning reading Cooper’s Flowers, I glimpse myself in the store window, eyes large, dark and somber like a ghost hovering over the lit bouquets. I pull my hair into its long ponytail, better for stealth, and I’m wearing the same black tracksuit and Nikes I wore on Morton Street. I have two other tracksuits in dark blue and navy. They’ve been practically my uniforms lately.
I head east past an Italian restaurant, a small bar, a trendy clothing boutique and then good ol’ Régine’s, popular for upscale booty calls. The door is propped open on this balmy, mid-September night, and I glance in. The crowd has thinned; a few bored souls still sit dead-eyed at the bar, not interested in each other or the overhead TVs.
They’d love the adrenalin I’m feeling.
At the end of the block, Chloe Weld’s brownstone is ivy-clad and four stories, with most of the front windows still lit. The time is ten-forty.
I stop in front, and look around on the sidewalk as if waiting for someone. A cool guy in a worn-backward cap passes, fixed on his phone’s loud recap of the Yankees game. Next a woman in thigh boots passes, arguing stridently into her phone. “Wrong color – no, I said dark beige!” Burglars should thank cell phones for nobody noticing anything.
I switch mine off, and head into the narrow service alley with its leaning sapling and a line of green-painted Dumpsters.
My heart thuds.
The harvest moon has grown bigger, sending pale light across the small garden in the rear. There are two big trees, tired-looking flower beds, and what looks like a tool shed next to the fire escape. The feeling is hushed; just the sound of the first dried leaves underfoot, and a muted TV from one of the dimmed windows.
Three nights ago, I was here and almost got caught. (Chloe had only seemed troubled then; no bruises.) I’d pulled down the fire escape extension and was up behind that second floor window in seconds, stepping over the yellow chrysanthemums I’d wrapped for them hours before. I peered in, caught just a glimpse of bed near the window, a breakfast counter beyond it, and Greer and Minnesota-now-Chloe getting glasses down from a cabinet…
And someone came.
Some big-shouldered silhouette entered below, footsteps soft-swishing dried leaves.
My breath stopped.
Definitely a man.
Did he live in the building? Garden in those beds and maybe forgot his shovel or something?
Frozen, I watched his dark shape approach the fire escape - or the tool shed, I couldn’t know which - and I bolted. Scrambled down and brushed past him, grazing his arm.
“Hey!”
His voice was low, gravelly. His shadowed face whipped to me but I was tearing for the service alley and out to the street, where my feet kept pounding for blocks.
It was my first frightening encounter. My pulse took hours to slow. And coming back tonight would have been out of the question, except for Chloe’s bruises.
This time I’m more careful. I turn and crane back toward the alley, listen, and double check that no one’s coming.
Coast is clear.
A muted, sudden shout catches my attention, and I look up. It’s coming from Chloe’s window.
Breathing faster, I pull down the fire escape extension, climb up and over her yellow chrysanthemums, and crouch in darkness below her window.
Then I stop; frown at shadowed ivy below her sill.
Do you do sex watching? I hear Joe ask, and hear myself say, Ick, no!
I feel gross and hesitate, slide the potted mums across the metal platform to make more room…
…and hear a woman’s cry.
I raise up and look in.
They’re in bed near the window, under the blanket. A lamp turned low illuminates Greer’s form over Chloe’s. She’s tearful; he’s up on his elbows talking, low and urging. She whimpers, pulls away from him but he pulls her back; kisses her, steps up his blarney.
So they’re done with sex. Or between rounds.
Cue the misgivings.
“…tell yo
ur wife,” she cries. “Or I will!”
Nooo don’t, I wince, seeing an empty wine bottle next to the lamp. Another empty lies on its side. Chloe makes a sudden gesture trying to rise, knocking down the empty.
Greer’s voice gets louder. “I do care about you. Just give me time.”
Is she so new to this that she doesn’t know the rules? I gape through the window’s bottom left corner, crouched so tightly that my knees start to cramp. Chloe sobs and pleads. I want to tell her This is dumb! You’re dating him for a month and already making demands?
Something thuds behind me.
I spin, gasping.
A tabby cat has appeared from nowhere, must have jumped from one of the higher steps. Its bright eyes go from me to the lit window, and it mews complainingly. It’s Chloe’s; they’ve put him out.
I am ridiculously glad to see it, and scoop it up. “Hey, Fluffy,” I whisper, patting. “Thanks for the company, I feel less freakish.”
He purrs. We’re instant friends. I realize how hard I’ve been holding my breath.
At sudden tumult, I peer back inside.
Chloe is on her feet, blanket around her, pointing to the door. “Then get out!” she weeps and stumbles. “You are an SOB! I was stupid, wouldn’t listen!”
Fluffy jumps away and drops to his haunches, tensely watching the window. His tail flicks.
Greer is in his pants, angrily pulling on his shirt and muttering that she needs to calm down.
Her shoulders heave. She sobs again that he’s “just another bastard” and “I’m going to tell your fancy hedge fund! Email every partner!”
Oh, that gets him.
I’m slack-jawed, heart banging.
“Bitch,” he sneers drunkenly, his face contorted as he raises his hand to shove her. She ducks, falls back onto the bed and he pivots, swearing, grabbing his blazer.
Just as Fluffy leaps, thuds the glass, and presses tight to the sill.
Greer’s glare darts toward me.
He starts for the window. I want to rise up and bang on it, scream at him to stop! like I did for Amelie – but I freeze. He looks violent and knows who I am. He’s seen me at Cooper’s.
Girl Watching You Page 2
