Dream Girl

by Laura Lippman

  “I would have been happy to do that with you.”

  Gerry knew this, which was why he had done it alone. He didn’t want to be anywhere private with Margot. Especially the apartment. The lack of furniture would not inhibit her.

  “Then I met with Thiru. I was supposed to go to Berlin this fall, but clearly that’s not happening.”

  She arches an eyebrow when he asks for onions on his cheeseburger, knowing that’s not usual for him. She limits herself to a cup of black coffee, from which she takes only a few sips, leaving a vivid crimson imprint, then helps herself to his french fries without asking.

  “So you’re really gone.”

  “Yes, so it would seem. Once I have the cash in hand from my sale, I need to move quickly to buy in Baltimore. I think it’s only a matter of time before my mother is in hospice, but—the doctors have been saying that for months—”

  “We never had a proper breakup,” Margot said. “We just drifted apart.”

  In Gerry’s point of view, they’d had multiple breakups; Margot simply refused to recognize them as such. She was still squatting in his apartment as recently as a month ago. His Realtor, a formidable woman, forced her out with the co-op board’s help.

  “I don’t see you in Baltimore,” Gerry said, then regretted it. He shouldn’t even raise the possibility. But he is polite, to a fault. To a fault. He moves quickly to change the subject. “You did forward all my mail, right? When you were living there? I’d hate to think any bills went missing.”

  “Of course I did. God, you were always so obsessed with your mail.”

  “Was I?” He genuinely didn’t remember it that way.

  “Your mail and your bills. Have to pay the bills on time or God knows what might happen. You’re such a good boy, Gerry.”

  She was mocking him, he can tell, but he doesn’t know why.

  “It’s a habit,” he said. “One thing I’ve done right, consistently.”

  “I’m sorry,” she says, offering him a sincere smile. “Walk me home tonight? It’s lovely out, our first real autumnal evening.”

  The word autumnal grates—so pretentious—but it was a beautiful night and what harm could there be in a walk? “Where is home these days?”

  “I’m staying at a friend’s place at 102nd and West End. We can walk through Riverside Park.”

  He did and didn’t regret what happened on the bench. Margot, with her praying mantis limbs, her voracious mouth—he counted himself lucky that he got out of this relationship without her biting his head off.

  April

  GERRY IS TRYING to wean himself from all his medication. Senses must be sharp! He cannot afford a sleep so drugged and heavy that he misses another homicide, possibly his own. Funny, it doesn’t occur to Leenie to watch him swallow his pills. Maybe she believes him to be addicted by now, or at least keen for his nightly oblivion. At any rate, he holds the nighttime pills under his tongue until she goes back downstairs, eager to be reunited with her manuscript. He then takes them out and crushes them as best he can, shutting them inside whatever hardcover book is on his nightstand, sprinkling the dust on the rug. It’s not as if Leenie even pretends to clean anymore. She leaves that to a housekeeper who comes every other week, the only outsider who still enters the apartment. Can the housekeeper save him? It seems a lot to ask, given that he doesn’t even know her name. Carolina? Carmen? Carmela? No, that was the wife on The Sopranos. Anyway, her English isn’t very good and Gerry speaks no Spanish at all.

  It strikes Gerry that he has a very bad bargain in this fake marriage, a “wife” who provides the minimal care he needs and focuses most of her energy on her writing.

  It strikes Gerry that this is who he would have been as a wife.

  Although neater. He has always been a generally tidy man, even when living alone, and his years in New York made him vigilant about food waste, which attracted cockroaches and rats. From his bed, he can see the dishes piling up in the kitchen. And there is a smell. She has thrown something in the bin and not bothered to take the trash out despite the fact that it is a short walk to the utility room with the trash chute. An old television theme song plays in his head. Moving on up, moving on up. Here he is, in his dee-luxe apartment in the sky, and he might as well be in the ghetto.

  Maybe things were better when he was taking his pills.

  But he is grateful to have his senses when the phone rings at two A.M. His cell phone, though, not the landline. Changing up the game, are we, Leenie? He grabs it on the first ring. There is a short silence, although he can hear breathing on the other end. If ever a pause was pregnant, it’s this one. He waits, wondering what he will do if “Aubrey” speaks to him again. Then he clearly will be crazy or demented, because Victoria and then Leenie played the part of Aubrey, and Victoria is dead. Then again—he never saw Victoria’s dead body, he has only Leenie’s word for it—

  “Gerry Andersen? Is that you, Gerry Andersen?” A female voice, unfamiliar, definitely not one he has heard before. A slurred voice. Someone has drunk-dialed Gerry.

  “This is Gerry Andersen,” he says. He listens intently. Is Aileen moving downstairs? Will she try to eavesdrop? He thinks of himself as a child, stealthily picking up the heavy phone in the kitchen when his father made calls from the bedroom, the need to place one’s finger on the button, then let it slide out slowly, so there would be no telltale click.

  “Why didn’t you answer my letters? Why did you ignore me? We could have worked something out. I didn’t mean to make you angry. I only wanted what was fair—”

  “Who is this?”

  The voice continues, heedless and emotional. “I know I should have hired a lawyer, but I don’t have money to hire a lawyer. That’s the whole problem. It’s a catch-22.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He feels as if he should, though. A thought tantalizes him. Letters, letters, what letters? Everything started with a letter, but there have been no letters since, not according to Leenie. Has she been meddling with his mail?

  The woman is weeping now. “They always say not to make ultimatums unless you’re prepared to follow through. And maybe I was foolish and maybe people would think I’m the bad person in all this, but you’re the bad person, Gerry Andersen. Not because—but because—because it wasn’t what I wanted, it was disgusting and wrong, even if you didn’t realize that. I still can’t get over it and I can’t talk to anyone about it.”

  “Who is this?”

  His question prompts a wave of sobs. “Jesus, are there so many of me you can’t remember? You really are a sick fuck.”

  He tries again, his voice gentle, his ear still cocked for any sound of Leenie. “You said you sent me letters. Where did you send them?”

  “To New York, of course. Where you live.”

  “Lived. I’ve been in Baltimore since last year.”

  “Oh.” Chagrined snuffle.

  “And how did you get this number?”

  A sniffle, a few ragged breaths. She is calming down. “There are online searches. I spent thirty dollars to see what I could find out about you. Got your address, this number. I thought you would respond to the letters, I really did. Once you knew—I thought you would have to do the right thing.”

  “Knew what? Who is this?”

  But he has been too successful at calming the woman. She hangs up—clicks off, rather—and his smartphone can tell him only that he has been talking to Caller ID Blocked.

  *

  LEENIE DOES NOT bring him his breakfast until ten A.M. Toast and overscrambled eggs on a paper plate. Her eyes have a feverish glow that he recognizes. She is a writer who senses the finish line is close. Her hair is unwashed, she is wearing yesterday’s clothes. Gerry remembers the sensation, although he never forgot to take a shower no matter how well his work was going.

  “Did I hear you talking to someone last night?” she asks, her voice casual. Too casual.

  “Maybe I was talking in my sleep. I used to do that, or so I’m to
ld. In fact, I was teased for having long, mundane conversations in my sleep.”

  “I did notice that.”

  He suppresses a shudder at the reminder that she has been in bed beside him. How many times? Just the once? Every time she gave him the “calcium” pill?

  “When my book is finished,” she says, returning to the only subject that interests her, “will you show it to your agent?”

  “Of course. Although I’ve been giving this some thought.” He has not. “Thiru might not be the best agent for you. His taste is old-fashioned. I think what you’re writing is more commercial. You need one of those young agents who knows how to create a sense of excitement around a project.”

  Her face darkens. “You don’t think I’m good enough. You don’t think I belong with an agency that represents Nobel laureates and Pulitzer winners.”

  “Oh, God no, that wasn’t my intent at all. And Thiru doesn’t have a single Nobel winner in his stable.” If he did, Gerry’s not sure he could take it because then that writer would inevitably be Thiru’s favorite, or at least the one on whom he lavished the most attention. “I think this book has the potential to create a lot of excitement, maybe even go to auction.”

  He suddenly realizes that this book, with certain revisions, could be his alibi and his SOS. If Aileen keeps going down this autofiction path, maybe he can steer her toward making a full confession. Of course, there will be the unfortunate truth that he believed himself to be Margot’s killer and allowed Leenie to cover up for him, but—he was at her mercy, drugged and addled. If Thiru were to read such a book—

  “You know what? Thiru should be our first choice. But we’ll have to prod him to have more commercial instincts, to see the book ’s potential. Toward that end, I do have one suggestion. I think we need more of Gerry’s inner life, but it should be dreamlike, almost off-kilter. I could even give you some prompts about his past.”

  She nods judiciously. “That could work.”

  As she heads downstairs to write—goodness, she has lost weight, she must not be eating at all—he calls after her, his voice casual. “Leenie, when you went through Margot’s purse, were there letters for me?”

  She stops at the top of the stairs. How he wishes he could push her. That would solve all his problems. Give the staircase another human sacrifice and maybe he’ll be allowed to go free.

  “Letters? No. Why do you ask?”

  Not: No, there were no letters. But an echo, a denial, and then: Why do you ask?

  “I still think about her claim that she had something on me. I thought maybe she wrote me, then decided to visit instead. It’s such a mystery, what she thinks I might have done. Because I’ve been lying here, reviewing my life, and, until Margot died, I can’t imagine anything I’ve done that would rise to the level of being a credible threat against me.”

  Leenie smiles. “I hope I can say the same when I’m your age.”

  It doesn’t seem to occur to her that she can’t say the same now. She has murdered two women, one of them her friend for almost a decade. Yet she’s the one who sleeps soundly, depleted by her work, while Gerry crushes his pills and stares at the ceiling, trying to figure out how this all ends.

  1970

  GERRY WAITED for his mother in the kitchen. I am the man of the family, he said to himself. He knew it was an odd thing for a twelve-year-old to think, but it was true as of today. I am the man of the family.

  His mother arrived with the groceries. She looked so pretty and happy. He didn’t want to upset her, but she had to know.

  “Where’s your father?” she asked.

  “Gone.”

  “Gone? He wasn’t supposed to leave again until Tuesday.”

  “Gone forever, Mom. I sent him away.”

  “You—What—Gerry, please make sense.” She turned her back to him and began unpacking the groceries, but her hands were shaking and she put the milk in the pantry, on the shelf with the canned soups.

  “He has another family, Mom. An entire family—a wife, two daughters. I heard him talking to them on the phone.”

  “He called during the day? With the rates at their highest? That doesn’t sound like your father.”

  “She called. Person-to-person, collect. There was some sort of emergency. I think one of the”—he needed a moment not to find the right word, but to find the courage to say it—“daughters broke her arm? I didn’t hear all of the conversation, but I heard a lot. I heard enough.”

  “You were eavesdropping, Gerry? I’ve told you time and again not to do that.”

  “Mom, he has another family.”

  “I’m sure you misunderstood. Your father has always been a magnet for women who need someone strong to lean on. Are you sure he’s not just out, wiring her money or …” Here, his mother’s imagination faltered. She had finally run out of excuses for her husband.

  “He’s gone, Mom. He packed all his clothes and put them in the trunk of his car, then left. He’s going to wherever they are.”

  “No,” his mother said. “He’ll come back. He always comes back.”

  “I told him we don’t want him to come back. I told him he had to choose. He chose them.”

  He did not tell his mother how triumphant he had felt when he laid down the law to his father. And that he was not altogether disappointed when his father elected to leave, if only because it confirmed what he knew.

  “Oh, Gerry, what have you done?” His mother walked slowly out of the kitchen, then broke into a run. Her bedroom was over the kitchen and he could hear her sobbing.

  He rescued the milk from the pantry, found the Sealtest ice cream—his favorite, chocolate chip—still in the grocery sack and stowed it in the freezer. He put everything away, rinsed out his glass and put it in the dishwasher.

  We’ll be better off without him, Gerry told himself. She’ll see.

  April

  GERRY IS LOOKING at his checking account online. There is more money than he expects—not just the electronic royalties deposited by Thiru’s agency (why did he resist this for so long?) but also an electronic deposit of $215,000. Foreign payments? Foreign money is forever dribbling in. Sometimes gushing in. The Germans love his work.

  Wait—a payment for $9,500 went out the next day, via something called a Zelle P2P payment. It takes him a while, but he finds the site within the site where he can view his Zelle activity. There is only the one transaction.

  The recipient was one Aileen Rachel Bryant.

  “Leenie,” he brays. Then, in the tone of a parent who wants his child to know how much trouble she is in: “AILEEN RACHEL BRYANT.” He’s not even sure how he knows her middle name. Oh, wait—IT’S THERE ON THE ZELLE PAYMENT SHE MADE TO HERSELF.

  She takes her time and is all sweet innocence when she arrives at his bedside.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “How did nine thousand, five hundred dollars of my money go from my bank account to yours?”

  “Oh, I used Zelle. It’s like Venmo or PayPal but—”

  “I’m not asking how”—okay, he did, in fact, ask how—“I am trying to understand who moved that money and why.”

  “I moved it. On your computer, the one I’ve been using—you saved all your passwords, so I can access lots of things.”

  Lots. Of. Things.

  “Why did you feel”—he decides to choose his words carefully—“you should transfer this money?”

  “I’ve been working so hard on the book and, even if it does sell, it will be a while before I see any payment.”

  “But—you have your nursing salary. Not to mention free room and board here.”

  “Not forever. You made that clear. We won’t be together forever.”

  “It’s safer that way, don’t you think? Leenie—we have to go our separate ways. We’re not Doc and Carol.”

  “We could be.”

  He thinks of Thompson’s Carol, he imagines the cinematic Carol. Two very different creatures, but both alluring. What does one say to an unb
eautiful woman? He has no idea. Unbeautiful women have never interested him much. There is no democracy in sexual attraction and there is not, in his estimation, a lid for every pot. There are many, many lidless pots in the world, although most of them, Gerry would wager, are men. Aileen can find a man, if all she wants is a man. But she cannot have him. Even her burgeoning talent has not made her attractive to him, and that is the ultimate unfairness. Gerry, at sixty-one, is desirable because of what he’s accomplished. Aileen, at twenty-nine, now showing glimmers of ability, will never write her way into a man’s heart. Gerry didn’t make the rules. The rules made him.

  “I’m sorry, but that’s not an ending I can envision.”

  “Okay, then,” Leenie says. She walks over to the bed, picks up his cell phone, disconnects the landline, grabs his laptop. Luddite Gerry, antisocial Gerry, anti–social media Gerry cannot believe how hard his heart is beating at the loss of these things. They are his only connection to the outside world, after all.

  Leenie says: “Once my book is finished and under contract, we’ll say goodbye.”

  Gerry knows how Leenie says goodbye.

  April

  ONLY A NAÏF would try to buy time by switching up and giving Leenie a harsher critique. Gerry is not Penelope, he’s not going to tear up the weaving every night. He goes the other way, praises things that could be improved, swallows his revulsion for cheap plot devices, Leenie’s Achilles heel. It’s all good. It’s all fine. The sooner he can get this book to Thiru, the sooner he will have a chance to be free. In his editing sessions, he makes tiny suggestions that would seem to be inconsequential, but Thiru will know, Thiru will see through it, as he once joked. Thiru knows Gerry doesn’t care what the Oxford English Dictionary says, he’s sticking by the old meanings of literally and hopefully. Thiru knows all Gerry’s bugaboos, to use that peculiar word that Lucy loved. Gerry has been fighting New York copyeditors for almost forty years over the word rowhouse. What Baltimoreans have joined together, he would retort in the margins, let no copyeditor tear asunder.