Following Polly

by Karen Bergreen

  It’s still dark, and there’s someone next to me. A male someone.

  “Walter,” I whisper, hoping that Charlie will whisk me upstairs and pull me into his bed. Of course we’ll have to share a hot bath first.

  “Shhh,” he says. And it’s very sexual. With a little more edge than our brief moment last night.

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  “Shhh,” he says, even more forcefully this time. He puts his hand over my mouth. Maybe he’s afraid that if I speak, we’ll only start fighting.

  I push his hand away. Or try to anyway, but he exerts more force.

  “We both know I’m stronger than you, Alice Teakle.” A shiver goes up my spine. This is not Charlie. This is not a make-up call. I look over at his face.

  Oh my God. It’s Preston Hayes.

  I try to think quickly.

  “My friend is meeting me here,” I say, knowing that the rain will drown out my voice.

  “And which friend would that be?” Preston laughs. “Robbie the Rat? He doesn’t wake up for at least another hour.”

  Boy, is he not funny.

  “Clever,” I say. “Why are you here?”

  “I’m here about a nasty little e-mail you wrote to a certain friend of yours.”

  I decide to play dumb. After all, my name isn’t on the e-mail.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I tell him.

  Preston squeezes my arm even more tightly.

  “Would you like me to read it?” he says. “Actually, I’m an actor and a quick study. I have it memorized.”

  “I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  As Preston recites the e-mail I wrote to Jean, I realize he’s not at all in love with Jean. He and Ted Swinton were or are lovers. He was using my friend to cover up his sexuality because he didn’t want to jeopardize his burgeoning career as the next “It boy.” I had written the e-mail to Jean merely to inform her that Preston would probably not be the One, as she had hoped. Preston’s interpretation made my e-mail sound more sinister. Or more to the point, it made him seem sinister. I mean really sinister.

  It dawns on me as Preston is finishing up: I’m being hushed up by a man who will do just about anything to keep his secret.

  “You killed Polly,” I whisper to him.

  Preston doesn’t say anything.

  “You killed Mona,” I whisper even more softly.

  “You know what they say about trouble?” Preston pauses. “Trouble comes in threes.”

  Trouble comes in threes. It sounds like an Agatha Christie novel. And I smile for a second, forgetting that my life is on the line. Preston Hayes could be an Agatha Christie killer—except for the gay part. You didn’t get to be gay back then.

  “I understand,” I tell him. “I understand why you did this.”

  And part of me does understand.

  “Polly Dawson came on to you, didn’t she?”

  Preston is silently concurring, I can tell.

  “You must have turned her down. She was able to flirt shamelessly with you at Silvercup. But it didn’t amount to anything. She was relentless, and when you wouldn’t budge, she figured it out. She probably taunted you. She was probably taunting you for weeks. When I saw you two exchange glances at Silvercup, you looked worried. But you weren’t concerned that she was going to dump you or that her husband would find out. You were worried that she would expose you.”

  “She was mean enough to do it,” Preston says as if in a dream.

  “It pissed you off. And you were worried.”

  “I was this close to being an A-list star, and this slut was going to ruin it.”

  “So you started following Polly. Not like me. You weren’t trying to find purpose; you had purpose! You needed to make sure she stayed quiet.”

  “I even asked her nicely,” Preston whines.

  “You looked for secret information on Polly to keep her quiet. You tracked her every move. And then you noticed me. There was someone else following Polly. Someone who was leaving her footprints all over the place. I was blithely swiping my credit card at all of Polly’s favorite haunts.”

  “You have to admit, you made it very easy. In your next life, you should pay cash.”

  “And then she went to see you. Not at the movie set but at your home. Jean had told me that you lived two blocks from me. Polly had been carrying The Golden Pillow, Ted Swinton’s book. She must have figured out that you and Swinton were lovers, or former lovers. And you didn’t have to blackmail her. There was an easier way out. You could kill her. No one would believe that you would do it. Especially when there was a far more attractive suspect in the neighborhood.”

  And when I say “attractive,” I mean “likely to kill.” For, even as he is trying to kill me, I make note that Preston Hayes is a very handsome guy.

  “So you gathered little souvenirs when you could from places where you’d followed me and Polly. You picked up matchbooks from Lever House and the Four Seasons. You even made sure to pick up a museum pin from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. You knew that it wouldn’t matter to law enforcement that I hadn’t picked them up. You planted them at the crime scene, and my credit-card receipts corroborated my presence at these places.”

  “And as luck would have it, you put your fingerprints all over the murder weapon,” Preston whispers.

  I start to shiver, and I can feel myself crying.

  “You must have been sure that you’d gotten away with murder. You were a shoulder to cry on for Humphrey.”

  “And you brought me Jean, a delightful yet gullible patsy.”

  “But you were still obsessed with keeping your secret. Who else knew? Mona Hawkins for sure. With her ties to the gay porn industry, she would figure out the truth about you. Mona had a big mouth, plus an even bigger accordion file. You had to stuff the former and steal the latter.

  “You’d already killed once.

  “So on Valentine’s Day, you made an ‘appointment’ with her. You probably flirted and brought her snacks. Then you killed her. And you took the file! You hurried out to be with your beard, Jean. But you made a mistake. You told her about Mona’s death in the early evening before it was made public—a breaking-news halftime story during a ten o’clock episode of Law and Order. And now Jean’s friend is on to you. You’ll kill me.”

  “And I think I might have to then kill Jean,” he says without affect.

  Jean.

  Jean. How could I have considered even for a second that she was a killer?

  In a sick way, I admire him. I’ve never been ambitious enough that I would kill for something. This guy is willing to do it four times.

  “Your secret’s safe with me,” I plead. “I won’t tell anyone.”

  “No, you will, Alice. You already told Jean.”

  I panic. I told Jean right away. In fact, the second I thought of it.

  “That was before I realized how important your secret was.” I pause. “It’s just Jean. It’s not like Jean can do anything for you. She’s not a mover and a shaker like Polly Dawson or Mona Hawkins.” I can see Mona smiling as I refer to her as a mover and a shaker.

  I hope Preston will consider this for a moment. But he starts pressing on my neck.

  “That’s not a risk I am willing to take,” he says. “You’re simply not worth it.”

  Is he right? Am I not worth it? Certainly the lives of Polly and Mona were more valuable than my own. Polly was a major breadwinner and the subject of much public discussion. And Mona, while despicable, did certainly have her place in the biz. I’m unemployed, and frankly, my only claim to fame is as a murderer.

  So he does have a point.

  But what about Jean? She needs me now. Not only to warn her about Preston, but also to help pick up the pieces when she realizes that she has been dumped by another guy. There’s no reason to tell her that I considered for a moment that she could be the killer.

  What about Charlie? He hates me now. But I feel as if it’s not over
with him. We haven’t seen this entire thing through. And here is Preston trying to cut things short.

  I guess what I’m saying is that I’m not ready to die. I doubt that Mona and Polly were ready when Preston Hayes slaughtered them, but this is my story.

  Preston has experience with this. He has killed two people already. I have only gotten credit for it. How do I fight him?

  And then it flashes in my mind. Clarissa Winnick. The overly pale self-defense guru and author of Men Fight, Women Bite. I picture her pinning Rosie O’Donnell, a woman twice her size, to the ground.

  I hear her whiny voice. “Fight like a girl. Fight like a girl.” And so I do. First, I scream. The most unattractive shrill voice to hit the Upper East Side. Preston starts to grab my neck even more tightly, but I take my free hand and pull his hair. Really hard. Because it’s so thick and full, it’s easy to pull. He clamps harder on my neck, but the force on his scalp distracts him a little and I bite his hand hard. I even draw blood.

  “You bitch! You bitch! You bitch!”

  Sticks and stones…

  I kick him in the shins. I’m able to disable him for just a little bit. So then I knee him in the balls. He lets go of me, desperate for even a few seconds to tend his fresh wounds. That’s when I start to go for his eyes.

  Wow, this Clarissa method really works. Maybe I’ll go on The View.

  And then everything goes black.

  FOUR

  MY LIFELONG DREAM

  I open my eyes. The first thing I notice is that everything around me is white. Am I dead? Is this heaven? No, I can’t be. I’m realizing this as I process my second sensation: discomfort. I turn my head. Ooh, a TV. Maybe it is heaven. But there’s no program on the screen. Instead, the screen displays only three different-colored lines and some numbers. I’m not looking at a television; I’m looking at a monitor.

  I’m in the hospital.

  The fact that this has taken seconds to digest means one of two things. One: I’m drugged. Two: I’m badly brain-damaged.

  “Help!” I try to scream but my voice sounds small and farther away from my ears than it’s supposed to be.

  The door opens. Oh my God. Blue hats. Blue attire. It’s the cops. I can’t get away physically, but I can mentally. I’ll do my best amnesiac.

  “Hello, Officers,” I say, half polite, half lady in distress.

  The officers—there are two of them—pull out their walkies and speak softly and in code.

  “Where am I?”

  “New York Presbyterian Hospital.”

  “Oh,” I say. And then I give them an exaggerated confused look.

  “Do you know your name?”

  “No,” I lie.

  The door opens.

  “Alice Teakle.” It’s Jean. Did she call the cops?

  “Huh?” I continue my charade.

  “Alice. It’s me, Jean. Jean Middleton. Your best friend.”

  Some friend. She might as well be working for the cops.

  “Jean?” I try to revive my childhood acting skills to present myself as a woman searching her memory.

  “Alice, I’m so happy you’re alive. We were so worried.”

  “Worried?” I’m really good at this.

  “You are a very lucky lady.” I know that voice; it doesn’t belong to Jean. It belongs to Kovitz.

  Jean is working with Kovitz. She turned me in because I didn’t approve of her boyfriend. And then it comes back to me. I was right not to approve of that boyfriend. He was a two-time killer and he almost murdered me as well. Boy, is Jean going to feel like a jerk when she finds out that my instincts were correct. And she is going to be feeling pretty terrible about betraying me to Kovitz.

  “You’re a very lucky lady. You came this”—and then he makes a pinching motion with his hands—“close to being rubbed out by Preston Hayes.”

  “So you figured out that he killed Polly Dawson and Mona Hawkins?” I say, shedding my amnesiac persona.

  “So you know?” Jean trills. “You know me. You know us.” She does a little dance. Okay, maybe I was wrong. Maybe she didn’t turn me in.

  “Of course I know you,” I say dismissively. But then I rethink it. I look at Kovitz and try to widen my eyes. “The name Preston Hayes made it all come back to me.”

  Jean comes over to my bed and hugs me. “Will you ever forgive me, Alice?”

  “Yes.” I turn my head in Kovitz’s general direction, hoping that he will ask me the very same question. “Don’t you have something to ask me?” I say to him with a newfound snottiness.

  “Oh. Yes, Ms. Teakle,” Kovitz says earnestly.

  This is what I’ve been waiting for. I’m going to get the apology that will have made all of the nights on the street and the running from the law worthwhile.

  “How do you suggest we dispose of these running-from-the-law charges?” he adds.

  “Detective Kovitz, I’ve watched enough legal shows on television to know that there are no ‘running-from-the-law’ charges in New York State. I wasn’t under arrest when I slipped out of your grasp.” I’m fully alert now. “I admit that what I did was slightly cheesy, but you’re not a member of the Etiquette Enforcement Agency.”

  “And if you were,” Jean puts on her lawyer voice, “you would issue Ms. Teakle an apology right away. By intimidating and harassing her, you put her in harm’s way. You’re lucky we don’t sue you.”

  “Yeah, that,” I say.

  Kovitz holds up his arms in the universal “halt” position. “Look, nobody is suing anybody here.” I admit Kovitz’s take-charge manner is preferable to what was becoming a high school feud. “Ms. Teakle.” Kovitz looks at me. “What you did was very brave. True, it was incredibly stupid, but you got guts. The city owes you a great deal of thanks for assisting in the capture of a very dangerous man.”

  So there it is. My apology. My cheeks flush. Kovitz is human. Suddenly, I realize I don’t know what happened.

  How did I end up in the hospital, and where is Preston Hayes?

  “Hayes is in custody,” Kovitz says. He can read my mind now that we’re best friends.

  “Last I recall, Preston Hayes and I were wrestling, he was winning, and he won—or so I thought.”

  “Hayes knocked you out. Lucky for you, a Good Samaritan happened to be passing by. He slugged Hayes, just hard enough to knock him out, and then he called us. Another five minutes out there, young lady, and you would have been having cocktails in heaven with Polly Dawson and Mona Hawkins.”

  I doubt very much that Mona Hawkins is anywhere near heaven right now. The food is probably better in hell. I’m not so sure that Polly Dawson made it up there, either. Also, cocktails?

  “Wow, I still can’t believe it was Preston Hayes.”

  “Alice, I’m so sorry that I doubted you. I guess I got carried away because he seemed so great. I really believed that I liked us together. If only he had been straight and had lacked homicidal tendencies…”

  “I know what you mean.”

  I’m not lying to her. I took all these risks these last few weeks because I was so focused on Charlie. It never occurred to me that someone would try to murder me. I was too busy planning our meals and our children.

  Speaking of which, I wonder if Charlie knows that I’m in the hospital. I can’t call him and tell him the latest development. He thinks I’m a weed.

  “He can’t possibly be angry still,” Jean says.

  She’s brought a huge box of newspaper and magazine clippings with her. It seems that William has become quite the hero. A few days after I landed in the hospital, Kovitz, despite Charlie’s instructions to the contrary, leaked the truth about William Redwin to the press. He became an overnight phenomenon. Readers, exhausted from a consistent barrage of human weakness, were drawn universally to this story about a man’s quiet goodness. Women saw his actions as romantic and wrote him love letters and delivered casseroles; men saw him as rehabilitating the tarnished image that their gender had suffered over the last few d
ecades. One of Tuesday’s New York Times op-ed columnists said he brought honor back to the name Bill. People magazine did a photo retrospective of William and Emily’s marriage.

  “I don’t understand the fuss,” William told The National Observer. “My wife worked with these women for years. Where are her front-page stories?” And of course that comment spurred on a whole new heap of praise, calling William the new face of feminism.

  I wonder how Charlie is taking his father’s celebrity. Most of the articles make a passing reference to Charlie and his non-wavering faith in his father’s innocence. Others simply mention a son. I wonder if Charlie still has all of his files on the girls. Has he cleaned his apartment yet?

  I wonder if Felisha’s riding boots are there. I picture him throwing all of my stuff, including the wig, the dress, and the gloves, into a plastic bag and giving it to the real Salvation Army. The TV is most likely back in its former, useless location.

  I’m certain he’ll keep the coffeemaker.

  Jean’s telling me that Mother has come by several times.

  Sans Barnes. Hard to believe that Barnes would allow Mother to enter my little drama without him. Maybe he’s making her wear a wire.

  “I’ll call her later,” I tell Jean.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” Spoken in a distinctly unfamiliar Jamaican accent. I look behind me. It’s a nurse. She’s holding a clipboard and taking notes on all of the information on the computer monitor.

  “Huh?” Is she about to tell me that I’m going to die after all and that I should make peace with Mother?

  “I don’t mean to be enterin’ your business, you know, but your mother—she’s very worked up ’bout all of this.” The nurse has come over to the side of the bed. She’s beautiful; a little older perhaps. But she has beautiful skin and perfectly molded features. Come to think of it, she looks like a black version of Mother. “She wants to know you’re all right.”

  “Why don’t you tell her then?”

  “I think she means all right in the head.” The nurse taps her own head on the off chance that I didn’t understand the meaning of the word “head.”