True Story

by Kate Reed Petty

  Quinn crosses the room in three long steps and shakes your hand. His grip is huge; it’s like shaking a clutch of bananas. “Thanks for agreeing to talk,” you say.

  “Of course,” he says. “Alice is important to me. If you’re writing about her, I want to make sure you have the truth.”

  Quinn sits down across from you. You pull out your notebook and flip to a blank page, doing the whole journalist routine. You clear your throat, look up at Quinn. Then you stop: the man has a look on his face like you’re a doctor with bad news.

  “Are you okay?” you ask.

  Quinn catches himself and laughs. “Yeah, I’m fine. I just—I can’t stand the suspense. I haven’t heard from her in years.” He stretches his arms out, flexing his fingers, then sighs and says, “So, how did you get my name again?”

  Yesterday in your basement apartment you slid open the manila envelope and spread out three pages of police records on your floor. They were photocopies, one of an Incident Report (one page) and one a Restraining Order (two pages). Both were dated 2011. Both were fairly brief and not that interesting. Like, the Incident Report didn’t seem like much of an incident:

  On DATE listed above OFFENDER-1 was observed by WITNESS-1 trespassing in a residential lobby building.

  Offender-1 was mashing the buttons on the building elevator, attempting to override the keypad system.

  Alice Lovett was OFFENDER-1, and her offense was PUBLIC INTOXICATION. The notes were brief, and there was no arrest.

  The second document was a restraining order taken out by Alice Lovett. You can barely look Quinn in the eye as you say, “It was a restraining order against you.”

  “That was retracted immediately,” Quinn says, immediately.

  “Right,” you say. You realize you’ve folded your hands together between your knees; you lean back and tuck your left hand back into your pocket (it’s just easier if people don’t see it). “I’m not here to accuse you of anything.”

  Quinn nods. You wait.

  “Go on,” he says finally.

  “I was hoping you could tell me a little bit about your time with Alice. You lived together, right?”

  “Is this about drugs?” Quinn says.

  You try not to look surprised. You remember the Incident Report. You clear your throat and nod in a noncommittal but inviting way. “What can you tell me about that?”

  Quinn sighs and leans back. “Alice has a problem,” he says. “I love her, and I tried to save her. That’s my problem, my shrink says. I always think I can save people.” He shakes his head at his own folly.

  “What kind of drugs?” you say.

  Quinn has his face in his hands. You wait for a minute. Finally he says, “Pharmaceuticals.” Then he sits back up and looks at you, sighing heavily. “This is just so painful,” he says.

  You close your notebook and wait. It’s like Quinn’s first AA meeting; he’s going limp with the relief of confession.

  “I protected her. As best I could. She got the restraining order to punish me. She was vindictive like that. Self-destructive. She was so self-destructive.” His story is long and rambling. You don’t need to take notes. It’s an old story, and the gist is familiar: Quinn would find a new way to save Alice, but it would only work for so long before she would slide back into her addiction. “To be honest, I’m waiting for the day when someone comes to tell me that she’s dead,” he says.

  You marvel at how thoroughly this man’s heart has been broken.

  “She’s still alive,” you say gently.

  He brightens. “You know where she is?”

  “I don’t.”

  “But you’re looking for her?”

  You make a noise that passes for assent. Quinn nods eagerly. “I can help.” He stands and walks over to the bookshelf, pulling down a wooden file box. “I have her medical records.”

  You say, “You have her medical records?”

  “Just copies,” Quinn says, coming back with a faux-leather folder clutched against his chest. “I thought I should save them for something like this.”

  Quinn thrusts the folder at you; the name ALICE is embossed in gold on the cover.

  He leans over your shoulder as you flip through the folder. “She was a hypochondriac. Hysterical. Drug seeking. We’d go to the doctors and they would pull me aside and warn me, say that she needed real help.”

  There are about four dozen pages, loose lines of confident doctors’ handwriting, printed on sheets of white and blue and pink paper.

  “You made copies of her medical records?” you say.

  “This is the most important piece, I think,” Quinn says, pulling out a pink sheet dated 2011. He holds it up for you to read. “This doctor—he’s explicitly recommending counseling. Says that there’s no physical explanation of Alice’s symptoms, suggests she has Munchausen syndrome. It’s a mental illness where people harm themselves to get attention.”

  You remember an old rumor. “Was she bipolar?” you ask.

  “She’s something,” Quinn says, shaking his head.

  You stare at the sheet. It’s hard to believe this is the girl Haley has decided to make a movie about. You’ve read about Haley’s career. You know she’s turned radical. But you can’t believe she’s this brazen.

  There’s a loud thump in the back bedroom. You jump.

  Quinn smiles at you for being startled. “It’s just Kyra,” he says. “She’s had a flu.”

  “Oh,” you say.

  “At least she’s not an addict!” Quinn says and gives a big laugh to cue you to laugh, too.

  You laugh to be agreeable. “But is she okay?”

  “I’m sure she’s fine. I’ll just go check on her . . .” Quinn stands.

  “Right.” You hold up the folder. “I can take this?”

  “On one condition,” he says. He walks you to the door with one meaty hand on your shoulder. “When you find her, you’ll tell me where she is?”

  * * *

  • • •

  IN THE POLISHED ELEVATOR you look down at the faux-leather folder, the word ALICE printed expensively across the top. You think about poor Kyra, competing with this madwoman in Quinn’s attic. You’re glad to be out of that apartment; something about it gave you the creeps.

  You walk slowly through the lobby and then outside. You want to think for a minute. You head down the hill and then along Eighth Avenue. You pass joggers, nannies and mothers pushing strollers, people sitting on their stoops talking on the phone. You pass a small, expensive-looking restaurant with its windows open, people talking over glasses of white wine, and for the first time in a long time you feel no jealousy. Relationships are wounds, and alcohol is a Band-Aid. Today you’re ready to scab.

  You get to Grand Army Plaza. You find a bench, grit your teeth. And then you call the number listed on the letterhead of Haley’s grant proposal.

  As the phone rings you look around at the arch, the fountain. There’s a woman attached by six leashes to a fan of dogs. There’s a handful of people on the other benches, each of them bowed over their phone screens like deep heroin nods.

  Your calls goes to voice mail. You’ve reached Haley Moreland, the recording says. Haley’s voice doesn’t sound familiar, but what were you expecting after fifteen years? I never check this mailbox, just text me . . . she’s saying, and then you see a man in a black baseball cap strolling slowly toward the fountain. You stand up quickly. The voice mail machine goes BEEP! and you jump two inches straight up in the air. You hang up the phone. You take two steps backward. You duck behind a bench.

  Between the slats of the bench you can see the fountain and one of the six dogs, straining to jump into the water. You take two panting breaths, and then the man strolls into your field of view. You recognize him with a firm certainty.

  It’s No Neck. He walks through the park slowly, his he
ad swiveling around on those broad shoulders. Like he’s looking for someone.

  Like he’s looking for you.

  * * *

  • • •

  YOU’RE RUSHING BETWEEN the rows of cubicles in Richard’s office, panting and panicked, when you run directly into a woman rushing in the opposite direction.

  “Sorry!” You double take on the woman’s face, rivuletted with makeup. “Are you okay?” She closes her eyes, dodges around you, and hurries down the hall. Three steps later you realize: it’s the woman from Richard’s apartment Sunday morning. “Emma?” you say, turning around, but she’s already gone.

  You feel sorry for her and whatever you assume Richard has done to break her heart, but as you walk toward Richard’s office—a glass prism in the corner, sleek and polished like a spaceship—you can’t help thinking she should have known what she was getting into.

  Richard doesn’t look at you when you open his door. He’s got his feet up on his desk and he’s looking through a binder, flicking sheets of paper like cigarettes into a gutter.

  “Fucking legal,” he says, baring his teeth.

  “Someone’s following me,” you say.

  Richard slams the binder closed and throws it onto his desk. “Fucking legal department is always up my ass.” For the first time he looks at you. He immediately points at the leather folder under your arm. “What’s that?”

  “Listen: A guy is following me. I’ve seen him three times now. The same man. Wherever I go, he’s waiting for me.”

  “Why would someone be following you?”

  “I have no idea. It’s freaking me out. Does someone else know about the job I’m doing?”

  Richard nods, slowly, and takes his feet off his desk. “Okay,” he says.

  “I don’t know who would know, nobody else knows, right?”

  “Sit down,” Richard says, leaning forward, his hands folded like he’s praying.

  You sit in the black leather chair facing his desk, at the edge of your seat. “I can’t imagine what anyone would want from me, unless it’s about this—”

  Richard interrupts. “You know you’ve done this before.”

  “No.” You stand up and start pacing. “I’m sober now.”

  “I’m not saying you’re hallucinating . . . again . . .” He lets the last word hang.

  You realize you’re pacing and make yourself stop. You roll out your neck, sit back down. Your entire body has been tense for the past forty-five minutes—sprinting out of the plaza, spending your last subway fare getting here, looking over your shoulder the whole way. You know you look crazy. But the urgency you feel in your body is so thick right now you want to punch something. You clench your teeth and say, “It’s never been like this before.”

  Richard walks over to a bookshelf on the far wall. All of his books are fake; he pulls a panel of red leather classics forward and down and track lighting clicks on automatically. It’s a minifridge filled with clear and brown liquids. He cracks open two slim cans of seltzer and hands one to you. “I believe you, Nick,” he says, sitting on the front of his desk like a sympathetic middle school teacher. “But it’s gotta be just a weird coincidence.”

  “This guy following me is super sketchy,” you say.

  “This is New York!” Richard says.

  You inhale and exhale. You chug some of the seltzer, then burp.

  “Give it another day.” Richard is shrugging. “If you see this guy again, call the cops.”

  “They won’t believe me.” You suppress a second burp.

  “Then call me, and I’ll hire you a bodyguard.”

  You look at Richard. He smiles and spreads his hands wide, backlit heroically by a view of lower Manhattan. Here in his glass office and his easy confidence, burping like an idiot, you can see your panic from a little distance. “Okay,” you say. “Okay.”

  Richard claps you on the shoulder and walks back around behind his desk. He puts his feet back up and his hands behind his head and says, “Now tell me about that other thing.”

  You give him the high level. The police records, the medical file. How Haley has gone too far; how she’s exploiting a drug addict. How you believe she’s just gotten carried away, that she’ll be embarrassed, that she’ll correct course as soon as a rational observer explains it to her.

  As you talk, Richard starts vibrating in a carefully controlled way, like a panther. “Now I just need to get in touch with Haley,” you finish.

  Richard points at the leather folder. “So that’s it?”

  You nod.

  His eyes widen in excitement. Then he throws his head back and howls, kicking his heels on his desk like a happy baby. “Fuck, you got her medical file! You animal! You did it, Nick!”

  “Don’t look so gleeful,” you say. “This whole thing is icky.”

  “I know. It’s very icky.” Richard grins. “Can I see the file?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  Richard begs, but you’re not budging. You remind him that he’s paying you to take care of everything. “I’ll let you know when Haley agrees to cease and desist.”

  But Richard is shaking his head. “You cannot show that to her.”

  “How else do I blackmail her?”

  “If she sees that file, she’ll figure out a way to kill it. No, Nick, you have to take it to Willem right away. Get him to run a killer story on her. Make sure no one ever believes her work again.”

  “No. That’s not what we agreed. I won’t do that to Haley.”

  “You’re being sentimental.”

  “I’m handling this. Didn’t you want to stay out of the details?”

  Then something occurs to you.

  Richard says, “You’re enjoying fucking with me like this, aren’t you.”

  You say, “How did you know his name is Willem?”

  Richard freezes for just a hair of a second. “What?”

  “The journalist. You said, ‘Take it to Willem.’ But I never told you his name.”

  “Did I say Willem?”

  “You said you wanted to stay out of this.”

  Richard grins slowly. “You got me.” He spreads his hands wide, like he’s showing all his cards. “I asked Ed Brand. I had to know. I’ve been dying of anxiety over here.”

  You look at him steadily. He looks back at you with the same steadiness, still smiling. He folds his hands in prayer. “Please, Nick, just give me that file. I’ll give it to Ed to give to Willem. You can be done here, take the rest of your fee and go home.”

  “I’m doing this my way.” You stand up.

  Richard stands up, too. “No,” he says.

  You pause, frowning. “You really are freaked out, aren’t you.”

  “You have to let me take that folder.”

  You walk over and put your hand on the doorknob. “Don’t worry,” you say. “Just give me one more day.”

  You look at each other. Richard looks like he’s thinking hard. You figure he’s just worried. “You can trust me,” you say.

  Richard nods, frowning. “Okay,” he says. “Fine.” He turns away and picks up the phone. Already on to the next piece of business.

  “I promise it’ll be done tonight,” you say.

  “I know,” Richard says, just before you close the door.

  * * *

  • • •

  IN THE BUILDING LOBBY you run up against a tide of young professionals, all sweeping back to their offices with cell phones and cups of coffee. You grapevine four steps to the left, getting out of the way, then lean against the wall and pull out your phone. No new messages.

  You write a text to Lindsey: Notice anything special in your bank account? You think about it for a second, then delete it. It’s better if Lindsey finds it on her own. And anyway, you’re just stalling.

  You call Haley, and
get her voice mail again. “Hi, Haley,” you say. “This is Nick Brothers. From high school? Out of the blue, I know. I know you said you don’t check these messages but it’s worth a shot. I’m in New York, and I just had the weirdest coincidence—anyway, I need to talk to you. Call me back.”

  You hang up the phone. She’s not going to call you back. You’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way.

  You check your watch—it’s a little after four, so you’ll have to walk fast. You’re going to go to her building, the address on her film company’s letterhead, and catch her when she leaves for the day.

  You pass through the revolving door and head west, imagining what it will be like to see her again. Will she still be angry at you after all these years? She’s mad at Richard, but maybe she’s forgiven you; maybe she’ll feel nostalgic for old times. You think about asking if she remembers smoking a joint with you in the backyard of somebody’s house. You imagine her laughing. We were just kids! You look up and realize you’re approaching Broadway; you went the wrong way. You stop abruptly and turn around—and there on the sidewalk behind you is No Neck.

  You make eye contact. His eyes widen in surprise; clearly, he wasn’t expecting you to turn around. He blinks and turns quickly away, cutting right. He strides through a sliding glass door and disappears into a Duane Reade.

  You turn and run.

  You pass the Brooklyn-bound subway entrance and cross the street, heading for the northbound side. You dodge a group of teenagers giddy with shopping bags and swing around a row of periodical boxes. You tap dance down the steps of the subway station, swipe your card, and slam into the turnstile.

  “Insufficient fare,” says an old man behind you.

  You look both ways and then swing yourself over the turnstile. The old man hollers righteously, but you ignore him and keep moving, toward the sound of an approaching train. You jog downstairs and across to the opposite platform, Brooklyn-bound. You make it just in time, barely clearing the closing doors.

  The train is mostly empty. There’s a young couple in matching sweatshirts holding hands. Three men in MTA uniforms. A woman reading a book. An advertisement for a personal-injury lawyer. If you see something, say something, says a recorded voice. You take a seat. You’re okay for now. You decide to go back to your apartment; you can go see Haley tomorrow; right now you need to think.