“Don’t jump!” he screamed.
“Why not? Would you prefer I wait until you climb up sixteen stories so you can push me yourself?”
“Don’t be stupid. Killing yourself isn’t the answer.”
“I’m in trouble, Pressley. You were right about everything. I’m just a stupid girl who lies, and now all the lies have caught up to me. I just wish your aim had been better on the Eiffel Tower so I would be dead already.”
“I told you already, the reason I shot you up there was to save you from my partner doing worse, not to kill you. Dang it, Margaux Grace Fix, why do you have to be so dense?”
“I guess we will see just how dense I am when I go splat down there in a second.”
“It’s not too late. I can still help you.”
“It is too late.”
“I know you’re in trouble. That’s what I came here to tell you. Operation: Boom has moved into a new territory since the last time I saw you. The United States Government has been preparing to negotiate with Motley for months.”
“I already know about that. Motley decided to cash in and screw me over. That’s why I’m on the ledge.”
“Motley has been stalling with the negotiations. The government is concerned that he is bluffing about having the disk.”
“And what do you think?”
“I think he ran into a little snag along the way.”
“You think I’m that snag. You came here because you think I have the disk and you want to take it from me so you can run back home to your bosses at the CIA and be a hero?”
I could make out the detail of his face, and that his eyes were squinting, battling through the sun’s splicing rays in order to get a good look at me. “Alice, your hair is blond again.”
My trembling hand tapped the ashes from my cigarette, dispersing them into the cyclone wind. “It’s not my real color, it’s a bottle job and the shade is called Sun-Kissed Switchblade, if you want your next girlfriend to use it after I’m dead.”
He was cupping his hand over his eyes to block out the sun mirroring off the building’s windows. “It looks just like how you used to wear it. That’s how I remember it, just like the last time I saw you back home. Your hair was all around your face that day too, whisking all around against the emerald grass, after you led me out to the lawn. You said you had something important to tell me that day. What was the big thing you had to tell me that day, Alice? I’ve wondered ever since. It’s killing me.”
I took a big gulp and looked down at my bare toes. My toenails were painted pink, and the skin around them was battered from three years of running in impractical high heels. They barely balanced on the building’s thin ledge. I made myself tilt forward a little.
Pressley screamed, “Noooo Alice! No!” A small crowd was forming on the sidewalk. They all wanted to see what the man in the black trench coat was screaming about.
“You just don’t want me to die before you figure out where the dynamite stick is, is that it?”
“That’s not true. Alice, come on, I don’t want to see you all gushed up on the sidewalk. I want to talk to you. Please don’t die without tying up the loose ends in your life.”
The words hit me like a cannon ball. Loose ends. So many tattered loose ends, writhing and grabbing like vicious octopus tentacles. “You’re right, Pressley, there is something I need to do before I fall sixteen stories, panty up, and end my life.”
Pressley made a face and threw his hands up into the air in confusion. I skittered across the ledge to the window and popped back inside before slamming the window shut with a thud. I shot to the bathroom, where I drew warm water, and sat naked in a tepid bath chain smoking cigarettes until I lost count of how many I had gone through. I was trying to summon courage for my next move.
My eyes roved panoramically around Ben’s bathroom, which was drab blue and the tile grout was moldy. I tilted my head back into the water and let it float all around my face. Just like it had that day lying in the grass with Pressley, and just like the painting of Ophelia drowning herself on Ben’s wall.
I erected from the tub, dripping soapy water as I padded over the bedroom carpet to Ben’s dresser, where I slid into one of Ben’s shirts and a pair of his boxers. I hadn’t left the apartment even once to buy myself a single stitch of clothes. I went into the closet and pulled out the high heel shoes I put in there the night I had shown up at Ben’s apartment after Rabbit got shot and Motley got run over. I fished out my confession from inside the shoe.
My loose end.
I unfolded it and scanned the phone number of Heather Gilmore’s parent’s that was neatly inked over the page. I shoved the paper into the pocket of Ben’s shirt and grabbed the spare set of keys he had made for me. I took the maintenance exit that opened to the back of the apartment building by the dumpsters in order to avoid Pressley on the street.
* * *
When I got outside there was a dusting of snow on the sidewalk and the cold air entered into my lungs like jagged particles of glass. The streets and sidewalks were sprayed with shoppers. They all looked so happy, so peaceful, and so carefree. I felt like I was carrying a thousand-pound sack around my neck. I walked until I found a glass phone booth. I stepped inside and unfolded the paper from my pocket and dialed the number.
It rang twice on the other end and I almost hung the phone back on the receiver because my stomach was twisting over in suspense. A young woman picked up. “Hello?” Her voice sounded like someone my age, the voice was definitely too young to be Heather’s mom, and I hadn’t known about any Gilmore siblings. The voice repeated, “Hello?” I told myself that the young-sounding person who picked up was probably just a relative visiting for the holidays. Or maybe there had been siblings, after all. What did I know about Heather Gilmore or her life?
I was about to hang up the receiver when someone in the background, an older voice, someone old enough to be my mother, asked, “Heather, who is that on the phone?”
“Heather?” I mouthed the name, letting is trap silently inside the hollows of my throat. It couldn’t be, I told myself, because Heather Gilmore was dead. I held on to the sides of the phone booth so that I didn’t collapse.
Chapter Forty-two: Heather Gilmore
WHO IS THIS?” the younger voice was demanding to know. The voice of a woman who might be Heather Gilmore. I couldn’t bring myself to hang up the phone. My lips were quivering over the receiver, broadcasting dead air. “Who is this?” the voice asked again, and when I didn’t respond, she hung up. I uncurled the note in my hand and spread it out over the small ledge inside the phone booth and read the words in my head: If found dead, please contact the parents of Heather Gilmore at the following phone number and share the enclosed information.
If you are reading this letter I am dead. My name is Margaux Grace Fix and on the evening of the cyber attack against the United States, I killed a girl. That girl’s name was Heather Gilmore. I have been running ever since. Her parents deserve to know who killed their daughter. Please contact them at the phone number at the top of this letter and let them know it was me.
But Heather Gilmore was alive. I talked to her on the phone, and the dead don’t answer telephones.
My eyes were pacing the corners of the phone booth. The glass was covered in sloppy graffiti that said Never Trust Anyone Over the Age of Zero. I rubbed my fingers over the obnoxious typography. Something else caught my eye, tucked into the massing of flyers for apartment rentals and lost dogs, was one of Skip Hask’s business cards. I ripped it down and dialed the number on the card. Skip picked up on the first ring.
“It’s Skip, talk to me.”
“Skip. It’s Alice. Remember me?”
“Alice, I couldn’t forget you with a .45 to the brain if I tried.”
“Well, I hope your memory is as sharp as you claim, because I need you to remember what you saw about that girl I asked you to research for me.”
“Heather-something, right?”
“Heathe
r Gilmore. I know I told you before that you found the wrong girl, but I’m wondering if you can still remember any of the information you dug up on her.”
“Let me think,” he said. “Actually, I think I still have the printouts I collected lying around somewhere, hold on a minute.” I heard Skip put the phone down and the sound of paper shuffling. I thought I heard the honk of train in the background too, and I assumed that meant his office was situated near where the metro line veered. “Found it!”
“What other information on Heather do you have, Skip? Please tell me.”
“The only other things I dug up were as dull as the stuff I already shared. Let’s see, there’s an announcement in her hometown paper about her getting a softball scholarship her senior year of college. Wesleyan.”
“Senior year? That’s a good sign. It means she might have actually had a full senior year. What else?”
“Then we have a couple of articles here that mention a minor accident.”
“An accident? But you told me last time that you didn’t uncover any blood or intrigue.”
“I didn’t uncover blood or intrigue. This accident thing was minor, like I said. It barely seemed worth mentioning.”
“Tell me everything the article says about the accident.”
“Like I said, really minor. According to a blip from the Middletown police archives, it looks like a few years ago she got into a minor bang up when a car struck her on her college campus at the start of her senior year. Wesleyan, again. It never even made it past the college newspaper.”
“The incident was labeled a minor bang up?”
“Yeah, it looks like she walked away with a bruise or two, like I said, nothing major, oh and it looks like they never caught the guy who did it.”
“Does it go on to say anything about an investigation?”
“Hold on.” I could hear his breaths beating as his tongue skimmed the information in front of him. “Ah, it looks like the police ruled it a hit-and-run, but Heather couldn’t recall any description of the car and there were no witnesses, so the police never brought in any suspects.”
“Oh my gosh,” I gasped into the phone. “I can’t believe I was so stupid.”
“Stupid? What’s this all about, anyways? Was she one of your sorority sisters or something? You just wanted to divert my attention away from the dynamite stick for the afternoon?”
“She is a girl I thought I killed.”
“Killed? Even when you pointed a gun at me inside the club bathroom, I didn’t see a murderer in your eyes.”
“I didn’t do it on purpose. Kill Heather, I mean. I was driving across campus back to my dorm, it was late.” My eyes lifted to the roof of the phone booth as the imagery from that night surged through me. “I was driving my big, ugly red Buick. It was foggy as heck that night, that real thick, smudgy fog that makes everything surreal like a charcoal painting. You know those kinds of nights?”
“Yeah, I’ve driven through some myself,” Skip replied.
“Well, my mind was distracted by the November Hit happening that morning, plus I was stressing about test grades being posted like any normal college kid, and my mind wandered off - and then THUNK, Heather Gilmore bounced off the hood of my car and flew into the bushes. She had crossed in front of the library when I hit her, the books she had been carrying were scattered all over the street. I ran away the next morning and that’s when I met my boss, Motley, at the train station.”
“Alice, that’s horrible!”
“I’ve heard that screech in my dreams for three years.”
“So, that’s why you had me look up information on Heather? To learn the details of her death, and to see if anyone back home was looking for you as a suspect? But what made you think she was dead? Based on the newspaper clippings in front of me, it sounds like she barely had a scratch on her.”
“I never got out to check if she was alive or not. I mean I stopped the car, but it was so dark and all I could see in the bushes was her blond hair and the checkered sweater she had on. She wasn’t moving. I recognized her because she always sat at the senior table in the dorm cafeteria. I thought for sure she was dead. The way she was so very still. She didn’t even utter a sound. I tried to listen for the sounds of her breaths against the bristles of the bushes she was jammed in. But there was no sound. I didn’t think a person could ever be that still and that quiet without being dead. I couldn’t think. I sped away and went back to my dorm.” My eyes clenched in desperation as I went back to envisioning that night. “I heard sirens streaking across campus a few minutes later. I was afraid a witness might have seen my car, might have seen me speed away. I didn’t sleep at all that night. All I saw when I closed my eyes, all I ever saw, was Heather lying dead in the bushes.”
“Didn’t it occur to you to just turn yourself in, explain to the police that you panicked?”
“It did occur to me. I thought all about it all night. I was certain that there had to be witnesses, so I knew it was only a matter of time before the police came knocking at my door. My car was this old red Buick, everybody knew I drove it. It would be easy to identify me. The next morning, I called my boyfriend Pressley to meet me on the lawn on campus so I could tell him what happened and he could take me to the campus police to turn myself in. But then once I saw him, saw the way he looked at me with such love and innocence, I chickened out. I ran away instead.”
“Damn, Alice.”
I collapsed into sobs. “You have no idea how much carrying this secret around has been killing me.”
“Why are you telling me all this, Alice? You barely know me.”
“I needed to tell someone. You have no idea what it’s like to walk around with a secret like this.”
“A secret can change a person,” Skip said, with his voice trailing to a deep world populated with his own heavy regrets.
“You think if only you can get far away enough from it, that you can leave the secret behind, that it won’t have any power over you. But it seems like the further away you run, the more corners the secret seems to creep up in.”
“And what about now, Alice? Now that your secret wasn’t as scary as you thought?”
My eyes caught my reflection, casting in the glass of the phone booth; my blond hair was set around my face like twisted roots, and my cheeks were slim beneath a pair of sad, yet bright, eyes. “Now I have to live with the way I’ve acted. Heather may not be dead, but I’m still guilty. They aren’t kidding when they say Never Trust Anyone Over the Age of Zero. I can’t even trust myself.”
“That’s just a stupid saying. Don’t be too hard on yourself. I mean, who can blame any of us for being wily deceivers when we live in the Generation of Liars.”
I wiped the tears from my eyes and cracked open the door to the phone booth so that the cold air knocked onto my skin. “Thanks for digging this stuff up for me. Next time I see you, I hope it isn’t in some filthy bar bathroom again. I hope we are toasting to your Pulitzer or something.”
“Here’s to Heather Gilmore being alive, and to the immortality of the Generation of Liars. See you around.”
I crumpled up the confession note and shoved it back into my shoe. Once I climbed out of the phone booth, I took the first real cleansing breath of air I had taken in three years. That’s when I saw a set of eyes focused on me from behind a bus huddle across the street. The eyes were dark, and even concealed beneath a dark hat, I recognized them, and I recognized the betrayals of brown tendrils peeking out from beneath the hat’s brim.
“Ben?” I called out. He rounded the corner, as though trying to get away without me seeing him. I jogged to catch up with him and called out his name. “Ben, what the hell are you doing?”
Chapter Forty-three: Followed
I JOGGED UNTIL I got close enough to tap him on the shoulder. When he turned around his face was strange and the smile curled on his lips was forced. “Alice, what a surprise.”
“Did you follow me here? Were you spying on me just now?”<
br />
“Alice, no, I didn’t follow you.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“Lie to you, Alice?” He was indignant. The expression on his face had suddenly turned hostile, as though a switch had been flicked. “Lie to you? It is quite interesting for you of all people to accuse someone of lying.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Oh please, Alice, like we both don’t know that you haven’t been honest with me.”
“Ben, don’t you dare turn this back on me. You’re the one who just got caught spying on me when you said you would be at work.”
“Isn’t it sad that I have to spy on you just to figure out what you’re up to?” He coughed out a petty laugh. “Having to spy on my own girlfriend, how tragic.”
“So, then, you admit you were spying?”
“I admit it. I followed you. Can you blame me? I was worried and I wanted to make sure you were safe.”
“I can take care of myself, you don’t have to worry.”
“I know you lied about being a flight attendant.”
A shiver licked upwards the length of my spine. “You do?”
“I know why you lied, and I understand. But that doesn’t mean I won’t still worry about your safety.”
“You mean you’ve known this whole time?”
“I’ve known ever since the night you showed up at the hospital. The first time I laid eyes on you, just by the way you were dressed in those flashy stockings, and how you wouldn’t say who hurt you. Trust me, I’ve treated more than one of the dancer’s from Pigalle before, coming in with black eyes and broken bones. I know how it is.”
“Dancers? Pigalle? Ben, I wasn’t dancing in Pigalle for a job.”
“And no offense, but it’s pretty darn obvious that a flight attendant’s salary couldn’t cover the rent on that fancy apartment you were living in. Heck, I’m a doctor and I can barely even afford the neighborhood. No, you would have to be doing something far more lucrative than being a flight attendant.”
“But, Ben, I wasn’t dancing.”
“It’s okay, Alice, I don’t judge you for it. I mean, I asked you to be my girlfriend knowing that’s what you did for a living, didn’t I?”
Generation of Liars Page 31
