by Sally Koslow
“Moosey, wanna ride today?” I’d say every summer morning.
Biking never got old, but my bikes did, and every three years, my parents bought me a shiny replacement, a tradition I kept going. My current model was a yellow hybrid worthy of Hermès, recently purchased in honor of turning thirty-five. I was eager to take it out and see if the bike lived up to the salesman’s hyperbole. Annabel was out with Delfina and Ella, and riding would give me a chance to think through the corner I’d backed myself into with Luke. I brooded best on wheels.
I switched into cotton big-girl panties, because a bike and a thong went together, as Barry liked to say, like a dyke and a schlong, and layered on a jersey and the padded pants that gave me an even bigger bustle-butt. As I found my backpack and gloves, the phone rang.
“Barry?” I said.
“Yes, your irresistible husband. Why so surprised?”
“Because I usually have to leave three messages before you call back,” I answered with immediate regret; I could hear Dr. Stafford, in her patrician tone, reminding both of us that few relationships improved with sarcasm, which she—given to food metaphors—likened to a heavy hand with cayenne pepper.
“What’s for dinner?” Barry asked.
This dear new Barry, who cares if we’ll be eating fish or chicken, home-cooked or takeout, couldn’t possibly be connected to Chanel Mommy, I told myself.
“Salmon in parchment paper, with sugar snap peas and those fake french fries I bake with kosher salt.” I’d already set the table with orange tulips and candles, and I decided that on the way back from my ride I’d swing over to the Silver Moon Bakery and pick up something decadent for dessert. Maybe I could manage Barry’s favorite, the fudge cake with a thatched roof of chocolate shavings.
“Did you get Annabel into swimming?” he asked.
He remembered that was on my day’s to-do list. The man was trying. “Yes,” I said. “Last spot.”
“Score one for supermom. And what are you up to, Molls?”
He’s awfully chatty, I noted. I loved it. “I’m going to take out my new bike.”
“Now?”
“It’s almost spring,” I said.
“It’s February,” he said with a top note of criticism. “Where are you going at this hour?”
Central Park functioned as my front yard, but if I went further west I’d be near the bakery. I decided I wanted dessert to be a sweet surprise. “I haven’t decided.”
“Be careful.”
“When am I not?” I said. “See you later.”
Did Barry actually think I’d be reckless? Me? I slipped into a windbreaker with garish reflective stripes augmented by numerous glow-in-the-dark stickers, courtesy of Annabel. In this getup, a blind person could see me.
As I walked toward the kitchen, my cell phone rang. Luke and the Saints again. I hadn’t taken him for a guy who’d work this hard for the last word.
“Yes?”
“Can you talk?” he said.
“Only for a second.”
“I really need to see you.” He sounded like a man recently arrived in triage. “Now, baby.”
Baby? Corny as that word may be, when it fell out of Luke’s mouth, I was his hostage. His voice began to seep into my skin like a rich, soothing balm. Still, I said, “When I told you before that I’d see you, I didn’t mean today.”
“But I’m nearby.”
Coincidence? I thought not.
“Name the spot,” he said. “The diner? Le Pain Q? Anywhere.”
Idiot, I thought, applying that label to myself. You need to be inoculated against Luke as if he were a deadly protozoon. The other half of my brain ragged back Except, dammit, you love that he’s interested. Admit it. You’re there.
“Molly, say something.”
“I shouldn’t, Luke,” I answered slowly. I am a degenerate alcoholic and you are a kegger. I. Will. Not. Take. A. Sip. There should be a twelve-step program for women like me, and I need to attend a daily meeting.
“I’m off for a bike ride,” I said.
“Where to?”
“Riverside, probably. What does it matter? It’s too late. But I’ll call you tomorrow. I promise. We’ll talk.”
“You’ll call me on Saturday? Really? You’ve never called me once on Saturday.”
That’s how rattled he got me. “Monday, then.”
“I cannot wait three days, Molly. We have to get this cleared up now.”
“Luke, what we have to do is stop”—stop whatever this is.
“Give me one good reason.”
“Seeing you is making me crazy,” I shouted. “I can’t handle the deception. It makes me despise myself. I hate women like me. I’ve always been highly judgmental about cheaters and—”
“Love trumps cheating. I’m crazy in love with you. Don’t you get that?”
My eyes landed on a framed snapshot taken at my wedding. Barry and I were having our first dance. Was that the last sane moment in my life, when the band’s sultry soloist sang “It Might Be You,” which was a good three hours before I saw Barry walk out of my parents’ powder room followed by Ms. Toffee Frost?
I could hear Luke breathing, expecting a response. I’m crazy in love with you, too, would not be inaccurate, but I only got to crazy. “Luke, I don’t know what to say.” Except that I had to get out of here.
“How about ‘I love you’? Because I think you do.”
At the front door, keys were jangling. I didn’t want Delfina and Annabel to see me unhinged, tears falling as though I’d turned on the faucet. “I promise you we’ll talk—after the weekend. Hold on. But right now, no.”
“Molly—please. See me for ten minutes. Today.”
“Luke, goodbye,” I said. I clicked off and grabbed a paper towel to mop my face, took my helmet from its hook, and slammed the back door as the front door opened. I wheeled my bike through the basement corridors and around to the front.
“You just missed Dr. Marx,” Alphonso, the doorman, said. I registered how odd it was that Barry, whom I was in no shape or mood to see, hadn’t mentioned coming home early. We’d spoken less than fifteen minutes before. I couldn’t think about that now.
I clipped my bike shoes into the pedals and took off, pushing hard.
Only when I was on the street, two blocks away, did I realize I’d left my phone on the kitchen counter.
Forty-three
PERSONS OF INTEREST
watch Hicks open his mail. Bill, bill, the Economist, postcard from the ophthalmologist (“Any way you see it, it’s time for a checkup”), Cook’s Illustrated, and an invitation to his cousin’s wedding, about which he knows to expect an earful from his mother, given that Willy is eleven years younger. But the most interesting piece of mail is a flimsy white envelope with no return address and a computer-generated label. The red stamp features a large Hershey kiss and a heart inscribed with the word love. He carefully opens the envelope. Why had someone sent him a clipping featuring a suit from Ascot Chang, an ego-tripping Shanghai custom shop he’d poked his head into once and only once? A polo shirt would set him back a hundred bucks.
“Brie, babes, I sure hope you aren’t buying me a present,” he says when she walks into the kitchen, wearing one of his Macy’s shirts and, he hopes, nothing else. That she outearns him five to one is the hot potato in their relationship. She says it doesn’t bother her, so why should it bother him? It’s a question Hicks contemplates at least twice a day.
“I thought your birthday wasn’t for four months,” she says, popping a grape into her mouth and another into his before she hugs him. “Is this a hint?”
“Is this?” Only when he waves the clipping in Brie’s face does he see its flip side. On a page titled “In This Issue” is a photograph featuring, among others, Luke Delaney and Molly Marx. With a yellow marker, the sender has circled their hands, which may or may not be touching. Hard to tell. A label has been attached to the picture, with a caption: Killer?
Person of interest L.
Delaney. He isn’t an official suspect, though he phoned Molly, Hicks has noted, numerous times on the day she died, including the last call she received. Hicks knows Luke’s hiding something. What he’s hiding is the question, for Hicks and for me.
Luke’s broken up during the interrogations, but his story’s been consistent. As recently as two weeks ago, he called to see how the case was progressing. “Nowhere” would be the appropriate answer.
“What magazine do you think this is from?” Hicks asks.
Brie looks at it closely. “Town and Country.” Actually, it’s Departures. The photo was taken on a beach in Santo Domingo, my last location trip with Luke. “But what does this picture prove? Molly and Luke Delaney worked together and possibly slept together. Occupational hazard. Happens all the time.” Brie should know, since she did the same thing with the same guy, which she’s decided she’ll never share with Hicks.
“The more important point is who sent this,” he says.
“Is that a statement or a question?”
“It’s whatever you want it to be.”
Brie sits on the aluminum bar stool next to the granite counter that separates Hicks’ compact, immaculate kitchen from his small living room with its black leather love seats and circular steel dining table. He won a real estate lottery to buy this condo, which is less than a mile and yet a giant step away from his ma. Could I live with this man? Brie is starting to ask herself. If the only thing that matters is how deeply she cares for him and how anal-retentive they both are, the answer is a re-sounding yes.
“Who sent it?” she says. “My money’s on Barry, good old guilty Barry.”
“Guilty of what?”
“Of something, I’m sure.”
“That’ll get you far in a court of law,” he laughs. “You don’t suppose it’s from big bad Lucy?”
“Lucy wouldn’t play games. She’d call and say, ‘My moron sister was having an affair and the guy whacked her. Nail him.’” Brie’s Lucy impersonation used to make both of us convulse with laughter.
“What about Kitty, trying to point the finger away from the good son?” Hicks asks.
“Or herself,” Brie said, although in her heart, Brie doesn’t see Kitty as a killer. Brie can’t read Hicks’ look. “You know I’m kidding, right?” she says.
“How about this?” Hicks says as he draws Brie to him and pulls her hair out of its clip so that it hangs loosely down her back. “Molly’s in love with Delaney, but Delaney loves someone else. But Molly won’t leave him alone. She goes all Fatal Attraction, acting like a bitter, vengeful she-devil. So he suggests they take a bike ride together. At a scenic spot they stop and she thinks he’s going to kiss her, but instead he pushes her off her bike into the water and leaves her to drown.”
“Never,” Brie says. “But what about this? Barry and Molly go for a ride together and get in a fight. He pushes Molly—accidentally or on purpose is the piece I haven’t worked out yet—and she falls in the river. He panics, pulls her out, and gives her artificial respiration like the good doctor he is. When he realizes she’s massively injured and will most likely die, and he’s absolutely 200 percent positive no one’s seen what happened, he leaves the scene of the crime.”
“What’s his motive?”
“She knew he was cheating for the nth time, and she was going to sue for divorce and take him for everything.”
“Very interesting, Detective Lawson,” Hicks says. “Or maybe they fought and then the putz rode off and never looked back, so he never knew Molly lost control of her bike. Reckless endangerment.”
“Oh, so you like Barry. Well, maybe Luke really was at the movie he said he went to but left early and caught up with Molly in time to get rid of her because he’s a textbook psycho and if she wouldn’t leave her husband for him, then he didn’t want Barry to have her. Or—”
“No, I’ve got it,” Hicks says. “What about this?” He slips his hands under the shirt Brie’s wearing, quickly establishes what’s underneath—nothing—and ends the discussion. Only after Brie leaves, two hours later, does he look again at the clipping.
Hicks makes four phone calls, to Luke, Barry, Kitty, and Stephanie, and tells them to expect a visit from him tomorrow.
Forty-four
KILLJOY
rode north on Central Park West, slowing or stopping at almost every corner, turned left on Eighty-sixth Street, and passed the apartment building where Marion Davies was kept by William Randolph Hearst. Hats off to Marion. There’s a woman who knew how to handle a lover.
Turning right, I ducked into Riverside Park, where an American flag snapped in the breeze. Damn, it was windier than I’d thought. I continued on past the Hippo Playground. If the fair weather held, I’d surprise Annabel with a visit there tomorrow. I traveled for only a bit on the promenade before I rode through the dank fieldstone tunnel that ran under the parkway and took me to the Hudson.
GO SLOWLY, a sign commanded. RESPECT OTHERS. Exactly. Luke, don’t tempt me. Enough. Respect that I’m trying to turn the page.
I dismounted to take in the view. To the south, the Hudson widened. I could pick out Jersey City, a place I knew only from weather reports. In the northern distance the George Washington Bridge half hid under the mesh of fine gray mist. Even at this time of year, when dusk came before dinner, it was too early in the afternoon for its lights to cast their glow. Closer by, high on a hill, Riverside Church lorded over the tomb of Ulysses S. Grant.
I climbed back onto my bike and picked up speed. A few yards to my right, separated only by a fence better suited to a prison, cars hurried by in the opposite direction, the drivers’ eyes straight ahead, on their mission. Go, go, go. Beat the other guy. Man, it was loud. The din of traffic never failed to amaze me, but I could tune it out. I always had. Suburban Illinois might have been my birthplace, but I was a New Yorker and I could activate my inner iPod. I sang out off-key, doing my throatiest Janis Joplin. “‘You know, feeling good was good enough for me, good enough for me and my Bobby McGee.”
I sped past a small stand of scrubby pines guarding the empty tennis courts, winding left to Cherry Walk, a scraggly string of bike path bordered on the left by low stone embankments. The rocks sloped straight down to the lapping edge of the gloomy river barely a foot or two below.
In lyrics, life is always distilled to quaint, deceptive clarity. But women I knew wouldn’t drown their woes in Southern Comfort, nor were they willing to trade all their tomorrows for a single yesterday. Before bed, they did fifty sit-ups, popped a Lexapro, contemplated having a baby or a consultation with a top divorce lawyer, and counted the months until their vacation, when they could liquefy into a beach under a broad-brimmed hat and a creamy slather of SPF 45. Until then, they soldiered on and kept their shoes and optimism shined, responsible, cut, and colored, inside and out.
I was determined to do better than that. I couldn’t lead a halfway life in a halfway home.
The intermittent sun had called it a day and rain was starting to fall again. It felt refreshing, washing away the old Molly, cleansing my attitude. I planned to cycle all the way to the bridge, make sure that the little red lighthouse Annabel and I loved had withstood the winter, then turn back and zip over to the bakery. If the sprinkle got worse, I’d shift to plan B and exit by Fairway, where I could buy Barry one of those tiny cherry pies he polished off in two servings—a peace offering, even if he thought it was just dessert.
As adrenaline kicked in, my brain began to drain—comfortably, pleasantly, and reliably. That was as much the point of cycling as any benefit to my hip measurement or cardiovascular system. I took scant note of the skate park, the basketball courts, or even the path’s painted dividing line, blue and steady as a vein, separating north-traveling bikers like me from those heading south. With each revolution, I could feel my tension release, my resolve grow.
On Monday I would call Luke. To avoid him was cruel; the sweetness of our history deserved more than jagged conversations. In plain, sans serif la
nguage I’d tell him this would be our last conversation. It would be over.
Except—I squinted—there he was, Bobby McGee Delaney himself, a tall streak in a navy windbreaker and jeans, standing by the side of the road. “Stop so we can talk,” he shouted.
I was touched that Luke had gone to this length to find me, but I wasn’t prepared, and I felt trapped. “Oh, Luke, not now,” I shouted back. “It’s too late.” I meant that in every way, but I tried to keep it kind and casual. “I don’t have the time.”
“Molly, I’m here and we need to speak,” he yelled.
I begged to differ; my face said as much.
“You don’t get how much I love you.”
Perhaps, but I didn’t want to listen. I wanted to keep it clean and manageable.
“I love you, Molly. I do.”
Maybe he did. Maybe I owed him. Maybe this was my Casablanca. A whole lot of maybe.
“Okay,” I said. “Grant’s Tomb is up the road. Walk there and wait for me. I’ll see you inside.”
He shot me a skeptical look. Did he honestly think I’d ditch him?
“I will,” I said. “In ten minutes, fifteen at the most.”
“Grant’s Tomb,” he said. “I’ll be there.” And he was off.
I’d ride to the bridge as I’d planned, check out the lighthouse, circle back, meet Luke, and we’d talk now instead of Monday. I didn’t want to pose, to pretend. I wanted to make right in my life what wasn’t. I wanted to change. I would change, starting that very day. Even if the wrong man loved me, I told myself, I refused to be one more woman who smiled meekly and tried to make the best of her 5-on-a-scale-of-10 life.
I wouldn’t get out my knife sharpener. I’d break things off gently but irrevocably, like snapping a brittle twig, and Luke and I would go our separate ways. I’d face my husband with the first layer of guilt scrubbed away. I knew I was doing the right thing, which gave me a blast of speed.
