by Jason Starr
“I don’t know, I just noticed some tension between you two.”
While I considered Steve to be one of my good friends, he had known Maria much longer than he’d known me, and I knew his allegiance was to her, not to me. Had Maria asked him to find out what was going on with me, so he could report back to her? It was possible, but either way I definitely didn’t feel comfortable confiding in him.
“We’re okay,” I said. “Just been going through a little rough patch lately.”
“Join the club,” he said. “Kathy and I have been in counseling for six months.”
So maybe this was why he’d asked me about my marriage—to have an excuse to talk about his.
“Sorry to hear it,” I said.
“Don’t be,” he said. “Actually Kathy’s been unhappier than me lately. As you know, we moved up here because she wanted to move up here, because she’s not a city person. I mean, I would’ve been fine raising the kids in the city. But now she says she’s bored. I want her to go back to work, the kids are old enough now, but she doesn’t want to, so what am I supposed do?”
“That’s rough,” I said.
“Eh, what can you do?” Steve said. “It might work out, it might not, but at least I know we’re doing everything we can. Things were going to come to a head eventually anyway, so it feels good to deal with it.”
He hit a nice backhand shot that made me lunge. I managed to return it, but it set him up for a slam.
As I retrieved the ball, he said, “So what about you? Are you guys going to counseling?”
“Maria’s against it.”
We were volleying again.
“Yeah, that sounds like Maria,” Steve said. “She’s never been the most introspective person in the world. But what can you do? You can’t force somebody into therapy. I know a guy at my country club, dragged his wife kicking and screaming into therapy and it was a total disaster. You do what you can, and if it doesn’t work out, you get a divorce.”
“You make it sound so easy,” I said.
“I never said it was easy, but what’s the alternative? The last thing you want to do is stay in a bad marriage for the rest of your life.”
Had Maria told him our marriage was bad?
“I wouldn’t say our marriage is bad,” I said.
“Oh, I didn’t mean it like that,” he said. “I mean, difficult marriage, a marriage with issues. As our therapist told us—a good marriage needs work, but not hard work. But whatever you do, don’t start screwing around.”
I swung at an easy shot and missed.
“Want to switch paddles?” he asked.
“I don’t think it’ll help when I can’t hit the ball,” I said.
I retrieved the ball from between two boxes, then wiped off the cobwebs on my pants leg, and started playing again. I didn’t want to get paranoid, but it was hard not to. Was I that easy to read? Was I emitting a vibe, walking around with a big A—the Scarlet Letter of adultery—stamped on my forehead? Or had Steve seen the Times or another article today about this and was all of this just some kind of mind fuck?
Trying not to sound too defensive, I said, “Why do you think I’d screw around? I mean, I’m just curious.”
“I’m not saying you would,” he said. “I’m just warning you against it, that’s all.”
“Have you?” I asked, trying to shift the conversation away from me.
“No, and I never would,” he said. “But there was a couple up the road from us. The wife was cheating, having an affair with a teenage boy. Talk about bad decisions. Meanwhile, everybody thought the husband was cheating with this divorced woman who used to live next door to us. Anyway, point is, cheating is never the right decision. When your marriage is in trouble it’s always so much better off if you take the high road.”
Where was Steve last week, before I went on Discreet Hookups?
“Well, I’m not a cheater,” I said.
“That’s good to hear,” Steve said. “Maria can be stubborn and opinionated, as we both know, but she’s a great woman. I know if she was my wife, I wouldn’t let her go.”
I hit a ball off the side of my paddle at it ricocheted against the wall.
“I think that’s enough ping-pong,” Steve said. “I need another beer.”
We went upstairs. Kathy was in the kitchen, alone, preparing salad. Through a window, I saw Maria in the backyard, talking on her cell. She had a serious, businesslike expression. Was she talking to her cousin Michael, the divorce lawyer? Maybe, while I was playing ping-pong, she’d read about me online, found out I’d been involved with Sophie Ward.
“You okay, Jack?”
I turned around, startled; I hadn’t heard Steve come up behind me.
“Yeah, fine,” I said. “Just, um, enjoying the country view.”
When Maria finished her call, I went outside to intercept her before she came in.
“Hey,” she said, “how was ping-pong?”
Normal question, but she seemed distracted.
“Great,” I said. “Who were you talking to?”
“Oh, just my boss,” she said. “The system was down this morning, but it sounds like it’s up-and-running again. Let’s go eat, I’m starving.”
The rest of the afternoon, Maria seemed aloof to me, and I wasn’t myself either. I’d be okay for a few minutes, then I’d get paranoid, thinking that Steve and Maria, or even Kathy, were giving me knowing, judgmental looks, or I’d get an image in my head of the red tie wound around Sophie’s neck and her mouth sagging open and feel like I was reliving the horror.
What made things even worse was that I had no way to mourn. I couldn’t start crying or even tell anyone what I was upset about. Assuming the police made a quick arrest in the case, I’d have to go back into therapy to unburden myself, or I’d have to keep it a secret forever.
After lunch, we all hung out together, making small talk about the kids mostly. No one was talking much, though, and it was hard to keep the conversation going. I asked Steve if he could drop us off at the train station in time to make the 4:31 back to Manhattan. We’d originally planned to leave a couple of hours later, but things were so awkward that neither he nor Kathy seemed particularly upset to see us leave earlier.
“Okay,” Steve said, going right to the closet to get his coat, “but we better hustle if we want to make the train.”
During the train ride back, Maria still seemed cold and distant. Jonah was absorbed, reading Pokémon manga, so I said to Maria in a hushed tone, “Are you angry at me about something?”
“No, what makes you think I’m angry?”
“Well, you’ve been acting weird all day so I’m just wondering if you’re actually angry or if I’ve just been misreading you.”
She held my gaze for a few seconds, then said, “It’s always about you, isn’t it?” and looked away.
She’d made cryptic, melodramatic comments like this to me before when we were arguing. But this time I didn’t even know what we were arguing about.
“Did I say something I wasn’t supposed to?” I said. “Did I insult you somehow? If I did, it would help if you let me know so I can apologize.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“If we don’t talk about it, how am I supposed to know what’s wrong?”
She was looking away again and with Jonah right there I didn’t want to push it any further.
The rest of the trip we barely spoke. Jonah was getting cranky and acting out, so Maria and I were focused on him most of the time.
At 125th Street we took a cab downtown. Maria still seemed upset, avoiding eye contact. She’d acted almost exactly this way once before, I recalled. It was when my drinking was at its worst and she confronted me and told me that if I didn’t get help she was going to leave me and make sure I never saw Jonah again. Terrified, it had forced me to get my ass into A.A. I was afraid that when we got home she was going to hit me with a similar ultimatum—sit me down and accuse me of having an affair and threate
n to leave me and take Jonah. If she did confront me in any way, I planned to deny everything. Although I was sick of the deception and wanted to be honest from now on, I couldn’t risk that she’d blow up and start with the divorce threats again.
Entering our building, I should have known something was wrong when Robert, our doorman, looked right at me when I said hi, but he didn’t say hi back the way he normally did.
Then, in the mirrored wall adjacent to the elevator, I saw why.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“MISS ME?” DETECTIVE Barasco asked, smiling.
Terrified, I didn’t answer and I could barely think. My only clear thought was, This is it—the end of my marriage.
“Aren’t you going to introduce me to the family?” he asked, oozing cockiness. “Eh, I’ll do it myself.” He extended his hand toward Maria and said, “Nick Barasco, NYPD.”
I swear, he was looking in her eyes like he was trying to pick her up.
As he shook her hand, he was smiling at Jonah, saying, “Hey, and it’s nice to meet you, too. What’s your name?”
Jonah, hiding shyly behind Maria, didn’t answer.
“Yeah, I know, I’m having that kinda day, too,” Barasco said. Then he said to me, “Got a few minutes to chat?”
I needed to give Maria some explanation for why an NYPD detective wanted to talk to me, but I was too flustered to think of one.
While I was hesitating, Maria asked, “What’s this all about?”
Barasco started to speak and I interrupted quickly, “There was an incident involving a potential client.”
Under pressure, it was the best lie I could come up with.
“Really?” Maria asked. “What kind of incident?”
“It’s sort of complicated,” I said. “Why don’t you and Jonah just go and wait upstairs?”
I could tell Barasco, the sadistic son of a bitch, was amused by my desperate attempts to save my marriage. For him this was entertainment.
“You didn’t tell me anything about this,” Maria said.
“I forgot,” I said. “Jonah is tired, just go up.”
“You’re gonna have to tell her the truth eventually, Mr. Harper.”
“The truth about what?” Maria asked.
“It’s nothing,” I said.
“There was a homicide last night,” Barasco said.
“A homicide?” Maria sounded shocked.
“What’s a homicide?” Jonah asked.
“I think it would be better if we had this conversation upstairs,” Barasco said. “Besides, I need to use your john.”
In the elevator, Barasco didn’t speak. I was aware of Maria staring at me, but I focused my attention on Jonah, saying, “When we get home, I want you to go right into your room and do your homework.”
“But I’m hungry,” he said.
“You’ll have dinner later. First, I want you to do your homework.”
On our floor, Maria and Jonah got out first and then Barasco held out his hand in the “after you” gesture, and I left the elevator ahead of him. God, I hated this guy. He was like the old-school cop from hell—the kind of cop who decides who’s guilty and then starts building a case, instead of the other way around. Meanwhile, I was still trying to figure what I was going to say to Maria, how I could possibly explain this all away.
As we were entering the apartment, I glanced at her and I could tell she was already fuming. Her eyes were narrowed to slits, her nostrils flared.
“Why can’t I have dinner now?” Jonah asked.
“Because you can’t, that’s why,” Maria said, and she took Jonah into his room as he continued to protest.
“May I?” Barasco asked, glancing toward the bathroom.
“Go right ahead,” I said.
While he was gone, I paced, desperately tried to get my thoughts together, to come up with some kind of plan.
After about ten minutes, Barasco exited the bathroom. I caught a whiff of the putrid odor wafting out.
“Sorry, had Indian for lunch,” he said.
He didn’t sound sorry; he sounded proud.
In a hushed tone, I said to him, “Why do we have to do this here with family home? Why can’t we go back to the precinct?”
“Look,” he said, “I know you’re worried about your wife finding out you were fucking around—”
“I wasn’t fucking around.”
“Sorry, but when you pick up women online and arrange booty calls, that’s fucking around.”
“What’s going on?” Maria had just returned to the room.
“Nothing,” I said.
“What do you mean, nothing?” Maria turned to Barasco. “Why do you want to talk to my husband about a homicide?”
“A woman was murdered last night,” Barasco said. “Sophie War—”
“Look, I can explain, okay?” I said. “It’s going to sound bad, but it’s not as bad as it sounds because nothing happened.”
“What’s going on?” Maria glared at me.
“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing at all.”
“You knew this woman who was killed? Stacie—”
“Sophie,” Barasco said.
“It was just a friendship,” I said.
“A friendship?” Maria sounded angry and confused.
“Look, I know you two are going to have a lot to discuss when I leave,” Barasco said, “but right now I’m afraid I don’t have time to watch the fucking Young and the Restless.” He smirked at his dumb joke, then he looked at Maria who was still looking at me. “If you want to leave, maybe take your son somewhere, then come back and discuss this later, that might be a good idea.”
“What kind of friend was she?” Maria asked me. “How do you know her?”
Caught off-guard, I hesitated, then said stupidly, “What?”
“Who’s Sophie?” she asked.
I couldn’t lie, not with Barasco there.
“I met her online,” I said.
“Online?” she said. “You mean Facebook?”
“No, um … uh … a different website.”
“What website?”
When drinking was at its worst, I did a lot of things I’ll never stop regretting. I insulted employers, got into bar fights, and was pretty much a total asshole on a daily basis. But I’d never felt more pathetic and ashamed than I did when I said, “Discreet Hookups.”
“Discreet Hookups?” She sounded shocked, humiliated, and enraged.
“If the name isn’t self-explanatory, it’s a site for cheaters,” Barasco said.
“I’ve never cheated on you,” I said to Maria.
“I can’t …” She had to get a hold of herself. “I can’t fucking believe this.”
“You’re really going to have to have this conversation later on,” Barasco said, smirking. “Right now I have to—”
“I want to know the truth,” Maria said to me. “Were you cheating on me or not?”
“No,” I said, looking right at her eyes, trying not to blink. “I swear to God, I never even spoke to her. It was just a flirtation, that’s it, that’s all it was.”
Maria continued to glare at me, not blinking.
“I need to ask you some questions now, Mr. Harper,” Barasco said.
“What kind of questions?” Maria asked.
“He discovered her body,” Barasco said. “He was …” He looked at me, then continued, “Let’s just say, involved with her in the days prior to her death.”
“I wasn’t involved.”
Ignoring me, he said to Maria, “At the very least, he’s an important witness in this case, maybe the most important witness.”
“Very least?” I said. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means whatever you want it to mean.”
“I told you everything I know yesterday so talking to me again’s a total waste of time. Besides, I saw in the news you brought her husband in, so you got your guy.”
“We released Lawrence Ward earlier today.”
“What?�
� I couldn’t believe this. “Why?”
“Because we had nothing to hold him on.”
“Nothing to hold him on? He killed his wife.”
“He has an alibi—he was at a work meeting in Stamford at the time his wife was murdered.”
“How do you know that?”
“We have witnesses who vouched for it.”
“The witnesses are lying,” I said. “She was terrified of her husband. He killed her. It was him.”
“Look, Mr. Harper, I suggest you—”
“You have to talk to him again,” I said. “Fuck his alibi.”
“Mommy, I’m hungry.”
Jonah had just come out of his room.
“Maybe you should take him out to eat,” I said to Maria. “Let me take care of this alone.”
Maria gave me a loaded hateful look, as if warning me that she wasn’t through with me yet, and then said to Jonah, “Put your jacket on, we’re going out to dinner.”
“Why?” Jonah asked.
“Just put your fucking jacket on,” Maria said.
“Hey, don’t curse at him,” I said.
“Don’t tell me what the fuck to do,” she raged at me. “You fucking cheater!”
With my eyes closed, I asked myself, How did this happen? How did we get here?
When they were gone, I launched into Barasco, saying, “This is ridiculous, barging into my apartment on a Saturday, trying to cause trouble for me, traumatizing my son, for absolutely no reason. I did the right thing. I discovered the body, I called the police. What exactly did I do wrong?”
He waited a couple of beats, then leaned in and said, “You fuck me, I’m gonna fuck you back—harder.”
“Huh?”
He took out a small pad and a pen.
“Where were you all day today?”
“Westchester.”
“I told you not to leave the city, then you take off?”
“I didn’t take off. I went to a barbecue at a friend’s house.”
“I told you not to leave town.”
“Westchester’s New York; New York is town. Besides, I thought the case was solved anyway. You had her husband, I read about it in the news.”
“New York City is town, Manhattan is town. When I tell you not to leave town and you leave town, that’s taking off. You know I can have you arrested for this.”
