You could say I learned a lot from these people: Trust your intuition, but not too much. Don’t think you have everything figured out, because you don’t. Things are never truly as they appear. But the main thing I learned was this: I am capable of killing another human being.
Who wants to talk about that with anyone, let alone reporters? (Though, I must say, I did generate some excellent headlines. “Schoolboy Saved by the Belle!” was my favorite.)
A week after I killed Cynthia, my mother flew out to New York with Vito the hairdresser in tow, and served as my spokesperson while actually cooking me dinner several nights. Sydney and Vito were staying at the Plaza, but frequently, she’d share my pullout bed, so that when I woke up, sweating and weeping in the middle of the night, she’d be there.
Sydney referred to Krull as “that policeman” until he was released from the hospital and she met him face-to-face. Then she decided I “certainly could never do any better than that, so please, Samantha, don’t ruin this with any of your intimacy issues.”
Well, it’s six months later, and to Sydney’s shock and my own, I haven’t ruined anything. I’ve moved all my Rent 2 Own furniture into Krull’s formerly sparse apartment. I’ve met his father and brother. We’ve chipped in on a summer share on Fire Island, babysat for Patton’s son, said the L word to each other more than once. I never thought I’d believe it, but my mother was right. Love is the rudder.
Otherwise, not much has changed. I still work at the Space and Sunny Side, where I spend most of my days alternately amused and annoyed.
This afternoon, we’re going to Hermyn and Sal’s wedding. It’s at a converted mansion in Tarrytown, and we’re driving there with Yale and Peter. En and Shell—who recently outed themselves as a couple after two years of secret-but-consistent “buddy sex”—will be there too. And Argent is going to sing.
Krull will wear the hand-tailored suit his father gave him for Christmas and since I’m in the bridal party, I’ll be wearing a hideous lime-green taffeta gown chosen by Hermyn’s mother.
But now, dawn is breaking and I’m taking a walk. I’m just about there, now—the construction site on the Hudson River where this whole thing started. The place formerly known as Shank’s.
I’ve been walking here every morning at sunrise for the past week, and it’s made me feel good—the warm air, the glinting water. It makes me think, No more ghosts.
The site has been leveled. There’s nothing here now but concrete, and soon that will be gone too. The area will be planted with grass, and there will be a plaque—a tribute to Sarah, Graham, Jocelyn and all the other children taken away. I was one of the people who lobbied for it. There had been too many morbid tourists here, posing for pictures in front of the “Shank’s” sign. Too many “Ariel Raves,” with teenagers doing drugs and dancing around the trailer.
I walk down to the river, inhale the smell. It’s so warm now and the air is thick and wet, summer breathing its last gasps.
Funny how different this place is.
Somehow, with the bin and the trailer and the stacks of concrete blocks, it seemed emptier. Now that it really is empty, it feels like any other part of the city.
When I was a kid, my superstitious grandmother used to say the same few words every night before dinner, which was as close to prayer as we ever got. I’m thinking of those words now as I look out at the churning, brown-green water where Sarah’s body was dropped: That nothing bad should ever happen here.
I put my back to the river, gaze up at my crowded, messy, beautiful city. In the distance, I hear the insistent cry of a police siren. “That nothing bad should ever happen here again.”
I say it three more times, for good luck, then gaze up at the dawn sky. It’s a strange, chemical purple, pink rays seeping into it like blood from a deep wound.
Read on for an excerpt from Alison Gaylin’s next novel, the sequel to
Hide Your Eyes
coming in January 2006
“Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?” said the voice behind me. The voice was deep, with some sort of European accent—French? Belgian? Swiss? A tasteful trace of accent, like a carefully chosen accessory. Like a black leather three-button jacket, bought brand-new at Barney’s because it looked “so vintage,” but costing more than I make in a year. He was probably wearing the coat too, despite it being ninety degrees outside.
“I don’t think so,” I said without turning to look at either him or his inevitable coat.
I was sitting in a Starbucks at Tenth and Sixth at 6:30 in the morning on the first day of school, making name tags for my class, wondering how we’d all get along. I loved imagining faces to go with the names, trying to pick out the shy ones, the precocious ones, the troublemakers. After writing each name in red felt-tipped pen on a rectangle of yellow construction paper, I’d close my eyes, repeat the name in my head and make a serious attempt to visualize the student. Deep down, I suppose I enjoyed believing I was psychic. Like my superstitions, it gave me a sense of control.
Yes, I still had my superstitions. I’d had them so long they were like birthmarks and I barely noticed them anymore. But my mother did. She wanted them removed.
A year and a half earlier, I’d stabbed a serial killer to death with a butcher knife after nearly getting murdered myself. And then, just as the residual nightmares were starting to fade, September 11 happened. My mother couldn’t understand how I could go through all that and still think it made a difference whether or not I walked under a ladder. Sydney said I suffered from a disorder with a clinical term: magical thinking. But I didn’t care. My mother lived three thousand miles away and could not physically stop me from stepping over cracks in the sidewalk. And besides, magical thinking didn’t sound like a disorder. It sounded like a compliment.
Visualizing this new group of kids from the sound of their names was proving harder than usual, though. There was a Charlotte, an Ida, two Harrys, an Abraham . . . When I closed my eyes, all I could see were friends of my grandmother.
“But I’m sure I know you. Look at me, please.”
Man, this Eurotrash was persistent. Maybe it wasn’t a come-on. Truth was, I’d heard that question many times since moving to New York from men and women, gay and straight, and only a few of them had said it because they wanted a date. Though puzzled at first, I’d soon discovered that small, dark-haired, vaguely Semitic girls like me were about as common as pretzel vendors here.
Plus, I looked a lot like my famous mother and had been in the press myself after the serial killer incident. So there were quite a few people I’d never met who thought they’d seen me before.
I turned, looked at the stranger with the overpriced accent. And instantly, I felt guilty for being so rude. He was young but dressed thirty years older, in gray polyester slacks and a short-sleeved yellow Oxford with a white T-shirt underneath. His black hair was short, but not fashionably so, and he had large dark eyes and an olive complexion. Maybe he was from Puerto Rico, maybe Morocco, maybe Lebanon or Saudi Arabia. He was the type of person who got pulled aside and questioned by airport security guards, who got glared at on subways and hassled for no reason. I’m sure he’d heard the question too, but with such a different inflection, such darker intent. Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?
“I’m sorry,” I said. “You probably just have me confused with someone. It happens all the time.”
He smiled. “We will go out together. You are pretty.”
Oh, give me a fucking break. “Pretty taken.”
But the guy didn’t move, just kept staring.
“Uh . . . Bye.” I looked at the door and, as if I’d willed it, Krull walked through, along with another Sixth Precinct detective, Pierce, who’d helped out on surveillance during my serial killer case. Krull’s partners didn’t like Pierce much—Amanda Patton thought he had Short Man’s syndrome and Art Boyle was prejudiced against Scorpios. Nonetheless, Pierce and Krull had become friends, working out at a nearby gym together most mornings before wo
rk. Sometimes he ate dinner at our place, and I didn’t mind him.
The main problem with Pierce was, he overreacted to everything—even himself. He was short and small-boned, but he overreacted by working out so much that his neck swelled huge and his body became this collection of uncomfortable-looking bulges. And a few months ago, when his hair had started to thin, he’d overreacted by shaving his head until it gleamed. I’ve never seen a man more resemble a fire hydrant than Pierce, and it made me feel sorry for him. He tried so hard.
This morning, I’d told Krull that I planned to come to Starbucks before class, but still I was surprised they’d actually shown up. He remembered. A sense of relief rushed through me, and then I wondered what I was so relieved about.
From his shirt pocket, the stranger produced a piece of paper and put it in front of me. “I want you to have this,” he said.
It had been carefully folded into a tiny, tight triangle.
“It is my name and my phone number for you to make frequent use of.” This was said loud enough to embarrass me.
The two detectives moved toward my table. I wanted Krull to kiss me, deep and passionately enough to show each and every Starbucks patron just how pretty fucking taken I was, but that was not like him, not lately. I found myself envying the shoulder holster he wore under his drab, blue suit coat, just because he was comfortable to have it that close.
I wanted Krull at least to say, “This guy giving you trouble?” But he didn’t. Pierce did.
The stranger raised both hands in a corny gesture of surrender and made a fast retreat for the door. Guess he knows law enforcement when he sees it.
“Looks like a terrorist to me,” said Pierce.
Krull rolled his eyes, sat down at the table. “Only thing he was interested in terrorizing was my girlfriend.”
I smiled at him. My girlfriend.
“What’s that?” Krull pointed to the tiny paper triangle sitting next to my stack of name tags.
“His phone number.” I flicked it across the table. “Prefolded and ready for distribution. Way to make a woman feel special.”
Pierce said, “So, what do I hear about your mother moving to New York?”
It took me several seconds to digest the question. “What?!”
“I thought I heard it on the radio. I could be wrong, but I don’t think so. Dr. Sydney Stark-Leiffer, right? The Art of Caring?”
“Number one, she’s not a doctor. Two, I’m sure my mother would tell me if she were—”
“She’s not a doctor?”
“You must’ve heard wrong. You—”
“Look at that,” said Krull.
For a long moment, I stared at Pierce, amazed to absolute silence that someone I’d shared a bed with for a year and a half could hear this news—this life-altering, potentially catastrophic news involving my mother—and interrupt it with a directive as irritatingly dismissive as “Look at that.” What was he looking at anyway, a dessert? An unusual hairstyle? Pierce didn’t seem to get it, though. “What?” he said.
I turned to Krull. He had opened the paper triangle. So that’s what’s so important. Some guy’s phone number.
He handed it over.
There was indeed a phone number on the small slip of paper, but no name to go with it. Just a sentence, printed in neat, capital letters with a red, felt-tipped pen similar to my own: YOU ARE IN DANGER.
Hide Your Eyes Page 22
