Eve in the City

by Thomas Rayfiel

  “I’m taking you to see someone.”

  “Oh.” We drove in silence for a minute. “Who?”

  “A man I do work for.”

  “What kind of work? Police work?”

  “Like I said, the line between off-duty and on- isn’t so clear anymore. Maybe it never was, for me.”

  So we weren’t going to his house. The inside of the car got darker. He had dimmed the lights in my heart. I looked around and saw everything without the excitement I had been feeling.

  “Is that why you brought me the sweater? So I wouldn’t look like a clown for your friend?”

  “I gave it to you because you were shivering,” he repeated. “And you do not look like a clown. You look beautiful.”

  I hated the way compliments, especially compliments about my appearance, made me feel like I owed the person. Oh, thank you, I’d be happy to do whatever you want me to do, be whoever you want me to be, now that you’ve told me I look nice.

  Beautiful, a voice corrected. He said “beautiful.”

  Bite me, I shot back, and then wondered if I had said it out loud. No. Of course not. I pressed my lips together hard anyway, to make sure no other words leaked out.

  We parked on Fifth Avenue. The buildings had fancy canopies held up by brass poles. There were streaks of polish where they hadn’t been wiped completely clean. Long red carpets lay rolled out underneath, sticky frog tongues waiting to catch flies. He led me down one and motioned for the doorman to let us in. This fear began to grow in me.

  “Maybe we should do this another time.”

  His hand gave mine a little squeeze, crushing my fingers.

  We went through a gorgeous lobby with big mirrors and fresh flowers to an old-fashioned elevator run by a man sitting on a stool. We went by him, too.

  “Stand here,” he ordered.

  I looked and saw this camera bolted to the ceiling. Then another elevator, it was more like a section of the wall, opened up right next to us.

  “Listen,” I began, “I think you have the wrong idea about me. I was just going for a walk back there. And these clothes, they’re what I wear for work. You know that. The only reason I was wearing them on the street was because when I went to the bar tonight, it was closed. They shut it down. Normally, I dress very modestly.”

  He pushed me in. Gently. I was an obedient pony.

  “I’m not a whore!” I said. “I’d like to make that clear. Before we get to wherever it is we’re going.”

  I could see how, coming out of nowhere, it made me sound like a total idiot. He looked at me with his mouth open.

  “You think that’s why I brought you?”

  “Well, isn’t it?” I was already turning red. “I mean you follow me in your car, and then take me to this ‘friend’ of yours—”

  “He’s not a friend. I told you, he’s a man I do work for.”

  “Yeah, right. Work.”

  “You think I’m a pimp?” He rolled his bloodshot eyes.

  “Well, then what are we doing here?”

  “Aren’t you ever going to understand, Eve? We’re here to talk about that night. About that girl you saw. That’s what it’s always been about.”

  We were going up and up. I had that feeling of leaving my stomach behind. The elevator was slow, but there were still no buttons. None had grown since the last time I looked. We were going all the way to the top.

  “It’s like I said back in the car, you refuse to get things. The more obvious they are, the more you turn them into something else entirely.”

  I began to laugh.

  “This isn’t funny.”

  “It is. You don’t understand. I already had this happen to me, once before.”

  I explained about Viktor, driving me, to his secret hide-out, I’d thought. To safety. And then our showing up at that brownstone, his shoving me ahead of him almost exactly the same way I had been shoved into this elevator. Both times, when I got in the car, I thought I had known where we were heading, that there was this oasis of security, Viktor’s hidden room with the mysterious vibrations to it, Detective Jourdain’s house where his daughter had slept, where there was a thick woolen bedspread we would pull back, together, and underneath find . . . I was babbling, but didn’t care. As long as I kept talking, the elevator wouldn’t stop, the door wouldn’t open. I wouldn’t be forced to face what was on the other side. And instead what I’d found was fear, a paranoid fear Viktor was selling me out, taking me to someone who meant me harm, because that’s the kind of thing he would do, Viktor. Not the kind of thing you would do, I was implying, and I paused for a second, hoping he would say, Of course not, everything would be fine, don’t be scared. But he didn’t, so I went on, quickly, I went back to telling the story, trying to amuse him, telling how funny it all ended, that instead of some evil men waiting for me in a strange apartment it was just Brandy and Crystal and Nora throwing me a stupid bridal shower. Nothing sinister at all. The opposite. Like this, I was sure, even though I felt the same fear, wasn’t as terrifying as I was making it out to be. I was just being crazy. He would never let anything bad happen to me, would he? There was nothing to worry about, right?

  “So you’re going through with it?” he asked. “You’re going to marry that guy?”

  “I guess.” It seemed totally irrelevant. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t sleep with your friend, too. I mean, if it’ll stop him from asking questions about what I saw that night. I mean, in a way you are a pimp, aren’t you?”

  He slapped me.

  I had never been hit. It stunned me into complete silence. Which I guess was what he wanted. I was “hysterical.” Meaning I had been telling the truth. I put my hand to my cheek. It was burning. The blood was rushing back to the surface. There were tears in my eyes but they weren’t falling, just clearing my vision, helping me see better. So this is what he did. This is why they left, his wife and daughter.

  The elevator stopped.

  “Mr. Van Arsdale is a very important man,” he explained. “I can’t have you going in there all out of control. He won’t appreciate the kind of games you play. Just tell him what he wants to know and you’ll be fine. I promise.”

  The door opened. He moved to leave. I stopped him. I reached out and held him back, just to see, really, if I could. What he would do. He waited. He was the one who seemed uncomfortable. Not me. My fear had passed into him. All I felt was cold, not the temperature, but this calm.

  “You never told me your name.” I looked at him. “Your real name. Even your card just says Detective A. Jourdain.”

  He cleared his throat.

  “Arthur?” a voice called. “Don’t just stand there. Show the young lady in.”

  The elevator led right to the apartment. There were no doors. We were in a little room with a scuffed pink marble floor, a ratty old chair, and a half-open closet for coats. It was empty, with two or three hangers and an umbrella. Then we walked down a short hall and everything changed. My feet sank. It was an enormous space done all in red, with thick red carpet and red walls. The walls weren’t paper or paint, though, they were padded fabric, with what looked like water stains running down. The stains repeated. They were a pattern, an effect, one I’d never seen before. There were windows everywhere, big ones that started at the floor, and little islands of elegant furniture, low armchairs, a mahogany table, a bar, a desk, all these separate areas. I looked up and saw there was no ceiling. Instead, there was colored cloth, stitched loosely so it billowed around chandeliers that lit folds and cast shadows, making private clouds and sky. I didn’t notice the man at first, even though he was standing right in the middle of it all. I was too knocked out by the room. He was old, holding himself very straight, with white hair that stuck up in tufts at each eyebrow. His eyes were blue. His skin had that papery, talcum powder look to it. He wore a blazer with some kind of patch over the breast pocket, and instead of a tie this piece of polka-dotted silk bunched in his open collar.

  “Carl Van Arsdale,” he i
ntroduced himself, holding out a hand.

  Excuse me, but is that an ascot? I managed not to ask, although what did come out of my mouth was almost as bad.

  “This is the coolest place!” I squealed. “You live here?”

  “Not normally, no.” He smiled. “I come here at night. When I can’t sleep. Or when I have someone to meet.”

  “Wow.”

  “This is Eve,” Detective Jourdain sighed.

  “Eve ...?”

  “Just Eve.”

  The bar wasn’t like the one at work. It was small, for two, and topped with a thin sheet of metal.

  “You like it here, Eve?”

  “I love it! What floor are we on?”

  “There is no floor. This is the penthouse. There’s a bedroom upstairs.”

  The penthouse. So we had escaped numbers entirely.

  “My apartment’s on top, too,” I said. “Only it’s not as big.”

  I went over to the windows. They made me dizzy, the way they started at the floor.

  “My family has always had an interest in New York real estate,” his voice came from behind. “These towers were built by my grandfather.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  It wasn’t what I expected, being this high and looking down. I thought it would be like getting above the stars, being able to read the constellations. The way people said, “That’s Orion’s Belt,” and I would nod, pretending to see what they were pointing at, but really couldn’t. I thought if I got up high enough, I could see it all the way it was meant to be seen, that everything would match up with its name. The city most of all. Chinatown, for example, would look like, I don’t know, a place, separate and distinct, instead of when I was down in it, trying to find it, and noticed just as I was leaving that all the signs were in Chinese. I was always realizing things when I was past them, when it was too late. I had this dream of seeing the city whole, seeing things as they really were, and then making a plan for conquering it. But it wasn’t like that, the view. I couldn’t even tell which way I was looking. There were a million lights and they weren’t fixed, they were all quivering, this pulse was running through them. At first I thought it was just me, that I wasn’t used to taking in so much, from such a height, all at once. But then I realized it was actually moving. Instead of being a map of itself, Manhattan was this living breathing creature.

  One of them coughed, waiting for me.

  “Mr. Van Arsdale wants you to do him a favor,” Detective Jourdain said.

  I turned.

  “What kind of favor?”

  “He wants you to provide an accurate description of the woman you saw that night.”

  “She is a friend of mine,” he began carefully. “Someone I care for, deeply. Unfortunately, she is also a very troubled girl.”

  “Wait, you mean you already know who it is? Then why do you need me to say what she looks like?”

  “I’m trying to protect her.”

  “Protect her from what?”

  “From me,” Detective Jourdain said.

  “From herself,” he corrected. “She has gotten herself in a great deal of trouble. As you witnessed.”

  “Well, like I said before, I don’t know what I saw.”

  “Of course you do, Eve.”

  The way he pronounced my name, the way he stared, was hypnotic, this gold watch swinging before my eyes. We both waited.

  “She stabbed a man.” Detective Jourdain took out his pad. “Almost killed him.”

  My knees were weak. I wanted to sit, but it was the usual problem. They would be taller than I was. Even taller than they were now.

  “I got his name here. He’s nobody you know. A stockbroker. Well, portfolio manager, whatever that means. Married. Father of three. Met her at a bar, he claims. Then they went out and partied some more. A little before dawn, they were engaged in consensual relations, on the street, when, for no reason at all, she produced a knife and attacked him.”

  “So you knew I was telling the truth the whole time? That I really did see something?”

  “Of course I knew. Hell, I’m the one who cleaned up the mess. Which, believe me, was no picnic.”

  “But he’s going to be all right?”

  “He’s going to be fine,” Mr. Van Arsdale said. “He has no interest in pursuing the matter. He has been more than handsomely compensated.”

  Jourdain shot this annoyed look. I remembered his saying he wasn’t proud of the things he’d done, but he was proud of where he’d gotten to. And this must be how he had gotten there, by doing favors for this big shot, by protecting—the rest of it finally came to me—this rich man’s girlfriend.

  “Unfortunately, having the victim withdraw his complaint isn’t enough for Arthur, here.”

  “She could do it again,” he said bluntly.

  “My friend is an adult, legally. I can’t force her to accept the kind of treatment she needs.”

  “Treatment?”

  “Medication. Therapy. A controlled environment. Round-the-clock care.” He looked at me. “You’ve seen what she’s capable of.”

  “You mean keep her locked up someplace?”

  “She’s a danger to herself and to others.”

  “You want to make her a prisoner.”

  “She would already be a prisoner,” Detective Jourdain said, “if she was anyone else. If I was allowed to do my job. But because Mr. V. here is a friend of the department, I’m trying to let him handle this problem in his own way.”

  “She was being raped!”

  That didn’t seem to impress either one of them. The old man ran a hand through his white hair.

  “She’s headstrong. She gets angry. As if she resented the very attention she had done her best to bring on.”

  “You mean she gets mad when some guy pushes her up against a wall.”

  “I’m saying there’s a history. One that could be exploited at trial.”

  “Oh, so now you’re saying she was asking for it? That is so typical.”

  “She needs to be taken care of, Eve. She needs to be watched.”

  “I don’t understand. You both act like you want me to help her, by getting her into even more trouble.”

  “Are you sure Arthur can’t bring you something? A soda, maybe?”

  I didn’t even have to answer. We watched Detective Jourdain trudge off to the bar. His heavy shoes and dark suit didn’t go with the decorating scheme.

  “She came back here,” he whispered, in a different tone, urgent, like I was the only person in the world who could help him. “Right after. She told me what she’d done! How she’d led him to this very spot! I don’t know why, to shame me, I suppose. Or because she knew I’d protect her. She told me everything. And then she left again. Left all this in my lap. Forcing me to get involved.”

  “What do you mean, ‘came back’?”

  “Don’t you see what I’m afraid of? That I won’t be able to save her. She could spend the rest of her life in an institution!”

  “You mean this is where she was to begin with?”

  “This is where she should always be. This is where I want to keep her. This is my private place. It’s safe here.”

  I looked at the windows again. We had come in on Fifth Avenue, but it was the penthouse, it went all the way back to the next block. The city, wheeling like the night sky, locked into place now. There was Madison, behind me. Madison and Seventy-third Street. Yes, this was where it happened. This is where her footsteps had disappeared into. This soft carpet.

  “The reason I finally had Arthur bring you here was because you’ve been so unwilling to give us what we need. I thought if I appealed to you personally, explained how important it is that you help me—”

  “Help you how? By betraying her?”

  “By saving her life.”

  He was desperate. It was awful to see the pain of rejected love on the face of someone who must have been at least seventy. It didn’t go with his features, with his skin. I hadn’t thought old people fe
lt that way. But I didn’t doubt him for a second. He was sincere. I was even embarrassed, that he felt the need to confess this passion of his to me, of all people, as if I could understand, as if I could sympathize.

  “Diet Coke?”

  “Oh, you didn’t have to put it in a glass.”

  He went back to talking the same way as before, formal and polite.

  “There was another reason I wanted to meet you. Arthur tells me you may need funds.”

  “Mr. Van Arsdale is prepared to offer a reward for your cooperation. Ten thousand dollars.”

  The ice rattled like a lie detector. Even the slightest shiver made a noise. I put it to my lips and drank. Then, buying time, I crunched down on a piece while they watched, the two men. I made my throat numb, so when the words finally came out, they didn’t have any emotion to them. I refused to admit my fear. And if you refuse to admit it, I reasoned, then maybe you aren’t really afraid. Even if you should be.

  “So you want me to say it was her. Officially. And then you can blackmail her into coming back.”

  “Blackmail isn’t the right term.”

  “Because otherwise she would go to jail, right?”

  “I think of it more as leverage, so we can convince her to do what’s best.”

  “You might have to pick her out of a lineup,” Detective Jourdain warned.

  “No.” He shook his head. “It would never come to that. She’s a very sensible girl, really. Except in certain areas.”

  “Yeah, certain areas like between a guy’s legs.” I giggled. “Oh come on. I was just kidding. And you’re willing to give me ten thousand dollars for helping you put her away? That is so sick.”

  Van Arsdale held up his hand. He was married, I noticed. Or at least he wore a wedding ring. Big surprise.

  “I’d be willing to go as high as twenty.”

  I wanted to put my glass down. Zinc. Was that a zinc bar over there? I’d read about zinc bars. It’s funny what I knew. What stuck. The metal had a yellowish-green gleam.