by Sophie Jaff
I take a sip and the sip is golden and burning and lovely. It tastes of peat and wood. It tastes expensive.
“Do you like it?” He is next to me.
“David!”
He grins down at me. “You know, Katherine, you just have to stop stalking me. I mean I’m flattered, but no means no, take the hint.”
“Oh, shut up.” I punch him lightly on the arm. “What are you doing in the deepest darkest borough of Queens?”
“My friend heard about this place, heard it had a ridiculous selection of beers. We thought we’d risk it, just this once.”
“My friend,” huh? Male or female? “Yeah, this is my local.” I give a tired shrug, a little smile. I’m world-weary. I don’t care that he’s come here with some other woman who might or might not be just a “friend.”
David turns to Mike. “She’s a local?”
“Yup.” Mike moves to take another order.
“He’s crazy about me,” I tell David.
“Of course.” He is straight-faced. “Who wouldn’t be? So how have you been?”
“Can’t complain. You?”
“Good, but insane with work. Forgive me for not calling sooner.”
“No worries, my workload has been insane too.” This is a total lie. I desperately need more work. I would kill to have too much work. I’m trying to remember what David does, something to do with technology law, I think. I can never remember that kind of stuff.
“We’re actually in the middle of a big project, but we needed a break and so I dragged him here for a drink.”
The friend is a “he.” Thank God.
“Come join us?”
My heart lifts. He wants me to meet his friends already. That’s a good sign. Apparently I don’t want to drink alone after all. “Really? I don’t want to intrude on your male bonding.”
“Male bonding happens on Wednesdays.”
“Well, if you’re sure . . .”
“Come on.”
Holding my whiskey carefully, I follow David, shouldering past the growing crowd to the most desirable tables at the back.
“Hey,” he says, “move over, we’ve got company.”
A dark curly-haired man looks up from his phone.
Oh shit.
“Sael, this is Katherine. Katherine, meet Sael.”
Get up.
“Actually I think we may have met before.” His voice is expressionless, polite, but his pale eyes gleam.
“Oh really, where from?”
Stop.
Sael stares at me, pretending to think about it.
Come here.
Finally, “I think it was Jerry’s party.”
“What party?”
“It was one of those shitty ABC, no-clothes things.”
Take off your jeans.
“Hey!” David turns to me. “Is that the costume party you were telling me about on Saturday?”
Take off your clothes.
“Yes.” My voice is weak. I feel very far away, as if floating and looking down at myself from a great height.
Slowly.
David looks horrified. “Jesus, I know Katherine promised a friend she would go, but why the hell where you there?”
“Networking.” He’s still staring.
I need to say something. Anything. I need to say something. This is the moment. The moment when I say, You know, it’s the funniest thing.
I try to clear my throat. My mouth is a desert. As if sensing this, Sael partially rises.
“I don’t think we met officially,” he says, and offers me a hand.
It’s like the thirty pieces of silver. If I take his hand, then the time for telling the truth is over. If I let this moment go by, I’ll never be able to tell David.
I take his hand.
“Nice to meet you, Katherine.”
“Nice to meet you, Saul.”
“It’s pronounced Sah-El.” His tone is casual and friendly. His eyes are not.
I see David patiently standing, waiting for me to move. “Oh, sorry.” I sit down.
Then, “Shift over,” says David.
I do. “Sael, that’s an unusual name.”
Come on, Katherine, nothing like some light conversation.
“I think it might be Latin in origin. It means ‘beyond,’ according to the Native Americans.”
“Are you Native American?”
David gives a snort of laughter. “His ancestors were total imperialists, probably responsible for slaying entire tribes.”
Sael shoots him a cold look. “They were originally English. My name is probably the result of my parents’ whimsy, otherwise expressed as excessive drinking and a tragic desire to be original.”
David shakes his head. “You’re a cheerful little sunbeam, aren’t you?” He turns to me. “I’m always telling him, easy on the positive energy.”
They are supremely comfortable with each other. They are friends and they have known each other for years. Still, they are so different. David, peering through round glasses, is warm and engaged like the wisecracking friend in a romantic comedy, while Sael’s odd, almost yellow eyes remind me of a predatory cat. He sits quietly enough but I feel that at any moment he could spring. I have yet to hear him laugh, or even crack a genuine smile. After a moment of silence I try again. “So a big project, huh?”
Sael says nothing. Only looks at me while David launches into an explanation. It’s something to do with the copyright and legality of systems and apps and launching. I’m trying to listen but—
He is standing in front of me naked, aroused, his face impassive.
“Oh! That reminds me, the weirdest thing happened the other day.”
“Five,” I whisper in his ear.
“Katherine—”
I am jerked back to the present.
“—and I were at a museum and we came across your name. It was on some sort of ancient manuscript. Very pretentious, fairly nauseating.”
Sael shrugs. “De Villias is my family name. There’s little I can do about it.”
“Life is hard for the one percent,” agrees David.
The night is endless. I want to leave but there’s nowhere to go. David is sitting next to me and I’m trapped. He and Sael do most of the talking, and I take sips of scotch, hoping it will get easier if I drink enough. The crowd swells, more legs, more jostling, and the volume of the room rises around us. The music is good and cheesy. Hall and Oates warn us about a woman who will only come out at night. I see some people carrying umbrellas in. I don’t have one. Well, I’m only two streets away. I’d gladly get soaked if I could slip away now.
“I’ll get you another one,” David says.
I look down. I’m gripping an empty glass. I have no recollection of finishing it. David is standing up. “The table service is nonexistent at the moment.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Please don’t leave me.
“It will only take a second.”
“No, really,” but he’s gone.
Sael de Villias wears a gray T-shirt, a thin black sweater. Jeans. I see that he has a copy of the New Yorker with him and what I presume is his phone on top of it. Maybe with any luck he’ll ignore me and check out at least one of them. He doesn’t. Instead he stares at me.
“So,” he says.
“So,” I say.
“Shall we tell him?”
“Why not?” I’m nonchalant. I’m bluffing.
“Sure?”
I decide I mean it. “Sure.” I don’t want him holding anything over me. I’m ready to come clean.
“Hey!” David’s back with drinks. “It’s ridiculous out there—since when did they let in twelve-year-olds? Also why am I being served by sculpted male models? It’s depressing.”
No, I can’t do this. I turn to Sael. “Don’t.”
Sael narrows his yellow eyes and smiles a little.
“Don’t what?” David is carefully putting my drink down.
Sael turns to him. “Katherine didn’t
want me to tell you—”
“Wait!” Please God, stop.
“She thought you’d be pissed but—”
“Tell me what?” David scooches back in beside me, looks at his friend.
Sael pauses, looks at me deliberately. “I took care of the tab.”
“What? No!” David is incredulous. “Don’t be insane, you only had two drinks. Besides, I have one here for you.”
“You have it.” He uncoils in one easy motion.
“Leaving?” David gives him a searching look. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, I just have some things I need to take care of. Nice to meet you, Katherine. Maybe we’ll run into each other again.”
“That would be cool.” When hell freezes over.
“Night.” He turns and pushes his way into the throng.
David and I face each other.
“Charming, isn’t he?”
“Charming,” I echo, and find that I can laugh after all.
“He probably went to go meet yet another woman. He’s a total player, the worst,” but he smiles affectionately as he says this. Then he takes my hand. “Sorry if that was awkward.”
“No worries.” Holy crap.
“I know he can be a bit strange at times—”
You have no idea.
“—but we’ve been friends since college. The guy’s a genius. He’s like a dark Vulcan.”
“That’s an amazingly nerdy reference,” I say, but I feel better. A tension has been lifted. Things are easy again and natural. We talk, shouting a little to be heard over the shouts and laughter, and David tells stories and I do and we drink and a bluegrass song plays, and after a time David looks at his watch, is reluctant, but—
“Maybe we should be leaving too. After all, it is a school night.”
I see with a pang that two hours have gone by. “You’re right. I wish we didn’t have to.” It’s true, I like being with him.
“I’ll walk you home and protect you from all the bad guys.”
I don’t protest, even though it’s not far. It’s nice to be walked home on a dark and rainy night.
We leave the bar and begin to walk. It’s been raining on and off and it’s beginning again. The sidewalks are a little steamy, turning the night into a cheap film noir. David opens his umbrella. The cars slosh and shush through the wet and shining blackness. There are not many people around. We walk down the street, past squat redbrick buildings on either side, with their tiny gardens and rookeries out front. We walk in companionable silence, past the building with the strange little stone angels guarding the thin black gates, until we’re standing in front of my own squat redbrick building.
“Well, this is me.”
Still we stand, not moving yet, and the raindrops make little scuttling noises down his umbrella. A drunken couple goes by, laughing, and then they are gone. The noise of the rain increases. We look at each other.
“So, Katherine.” David is serious now, more businesslike. Surprisingly, it suits him. “What are you up to this weekend?”
“Not sure.” I sound far too easy. But it’s late and maybe I’ve had a little too much scotch.
“Well, this project is nuts so I can’t guarantee anything but I would love to see you,” he says.
Relief. “That would be great.”
We stand a moment longer. He looks down at me. I don’t know if he’s going to kiss me or not. Under the umbrella it’s airless, breathless.
He bends down so that his face is near mine; then he laughs.
“What?”
“You have raindrops in your hair.” He reaches out with one finger and ever so lightly touches a strand. “Like dewdrops on a spider’s web.” His finger finds my cheek. His touch is very gentle. I shut my eyes. I feel him draw close, the warmth of his face close to mine, his breath surprisingly sweet; my mouth opens a little and—
“Whoo! Go for it, man!”
Two frat-boy types across the street are calling out their encouragement. I open my eyes. David is looking back, wide-eyed. We laugh. The world exhales and the sound of the cars and the rain slides back.
“Well . . .”
“Yeah.”
“I better make a move—it’s really about to pour. I’ll see you soon.”
“Not if I see you first.”
“Funny,” he deadpans. “You’re a funny lady.” He winks.
I climb the steps and draw my keys out and open the first of the two doors into a little space too small to be a foyer, more stairs, and then the second door. I don’t turn around. Up the four flights of stairs, past the stained-glass window on the second floor that has some Scotch tape in the corner. I think a tenant broke it trying to move a sofa and the landlady never fixed it. The lighting here is old and yellow. Someone was cooking steak tonight. I can smell the onions. Counting the stairs, twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven—I don’t love walking up alone at night. But now I think about how we stood outside in the rain. No, don’t think about it. Think too much and it will lose its magic. I think about it. I’m here, apartment 4 “G as in Girl,” unlock the door, and go in quietly. Andrea and Lucas are long since asleep, of course. It’s a school night, a pre-K night at least. Lucas is only four.
Once in my room I turn on the light. I throw my stuff on a chair and examine my face, my raindrop-coated hair, in the mirror.
Maybe there was something in my teeth? I bare them fearfully. Nothing, thank God. My makeup is a little smudged under my eyes but otherwise I look decent. As I open my drawer to take out a large shirt to sleep in, I knock over the lipstick on my dresser. It falls with a little thunk and rolls off and across the warped wooden floor into the corner. These floors are the worst. I have to put my scale on the flat tiles of the kitchen; otherwise it tells me I’m two pounds heavier. The boards creak, you can hear them even through closed doors, and I don’t want to wake up Lucas or Andrea, so I move quietly, adjusting the weight on my soles, then getting down on all fours, reaching into the corner for the lipstick. That’s when I first see them, unobtrusive in the shadows, patiently waiting to be found: four pennies pushed up against the wall.
Lucas must have gotten in here. We’ve only once had a talk, but normally he’s so good. It’s really not like him to do this. I give my room a sweeping gaze. It’s lucky I don’t leave medicine out, or my one pair of sexy panties. I look back at the four pennies. I move to pick them up and then stop. They’re all heads up.
Find a penny, pick it up, and all day long you’ll have good luck.
It would be better to leave them here and bring Lucas tomorrow and show him, remind him about the “always knock” rule. I’ll tell Andrea if necessary, but I don’t think it will come to that. He’s not doing any harm, they’re probably a gift or a surprise, but he needs to learn that he can’t come in here without asking. Still, it’s a sweet gesture. I smile, thinking about sweet gestures as I put my lipstick back on my dresser and wander to the window to look out at the rainy night.
There, at the far corner of the street, in front of the darkened windows of the Colombian coffee shop, a woman stands looking back at me.
She is naked. Her shoulder-length hair looks red, though it’s hard to tell in the rainy night. She stands still, staring up at my window. Her face is expressionless. Her eyes are blank. There are strange lines curving down her neck to just above her breasts. More marks down her left side, concentric circles crossed with jagged lines. They aren’t tattoos; the lines run red in the rain.
There’s a naked, bleeding woman standing in the rain.
Fuck. What do I do? Oh fuck. Should I leave my apartment and go to her? What do I do? What if she’s crazy? What if she has a knife? Is it a joke? Or is it a massive stunt to get me outside in the rain? There’s a television show called What Would You Do? The show puts actors in all sorts of situations, pretending to faint or pretending to mug someone or drug someone’s drink, and there are hidden cameras around to film people’s reactions.
I have to do something. Jesu
s. There is no one around. Like when that woman in the 1960s was attacked and although she screamed and screamed no one did anything about it. I could wake Andrea. Andrea is more capable. Andrea is fierce and a single mother and tough. She would know what to do. But of course even I know what to do. I must phone the police.
I can’t find it. Where is it, where the hell is my phone?
The woman hasn’t moved. Hasn’t moved a muscle. Where is everyone?
Catatonic. That’s it. That’s what the word is, “catatonic.” She must have just been attacked. I’ll call the police and then I’ll go out and help her. I have to do something. I have to.
The woman stares right at me. Her eyes are dead.
I dial. I think I’m going to throw up. The phone rings and then a voice, neutral, bland, competent, asks, “Hello, what is your emergency?”
I try to speak but nothing comes out.
“Hello, what is your emergency?”
My chest forces up something cracked and whispery, a single breath. “Hello?”
“Hello, what is your—”
“There’s a woman outside my building.” My words come out in an exhaled rush.
“Ma’am, slow down, please.”
“She’s naked and I think she’s bleeding and she’s just—” My words pour out in a torrent. There’s a ringing in my ears.
“Slow down, ma’am, you say there’s a woman outside your building?”
“Yes.”
The voice sharpens. “Hello, ma’am? Is she breathing?”
I look outside.
“Hello, ma’am, can you describe the woman?”
There’s no one there.
“Ma’am? Hello?”
No one is there. I speak through numb lips. “I’m sorry, I must have made a mistake.”
“Ma’am? Hel—”
I hang up.
There is nothing there but the rain and the darkness.
My legs are shaky. I collapse down onto the bed.
I must have imagined it.
