A Study in Sin

by August Wainwright

  Once we were inside, I was shocked at the size of the place. The room was one large space, with tall picture windows that covered the entire back wall, bathing us in afternoon light. There was a small hallway to the left of the entryway that contained a single closet and full bathroom. Further down the left wall was a door leading into the bedroom, which happened to be the only separated space in the apartment. There was a galley style kitchen to the right with a long bar top counter that divided the kitchen from the rest of the room. Other than those details, and the fact that a layer of dust lay on top of every surface, the entire place was empty. The main room had old hardwood floors and brick walls that stretched up to the celling hanging twenty feet above. Every step echoed like a gunshot. The ducting and wiring were all exposed in the ceiling area and gave the room a modern industrial feel. I found out later the bakery owner had used the room for storage after she bought the building, but eventually paid a contractor to add the bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen for her brother who needed a place to stay a few years back. He moved out after less than a year and it had been empty ever since.

  The apartment was so amazing, and the price so cheap, that we immediately told the old woman we would take it. I wasted no time, and started bringing things over from my shitty old place later that same night. Remy followed suit the next morning. For the next few days, we spread our collected belongings throughout the apartment and it quickly began to feel like a place I could call home.

  I expected an awkward conversation when it came to the lone bedroom. The single room meant limited privacy for one of us and I suspected Remy would claim it, being of the female persuasion and all. But, even after insisting multiple times, she would hear none of it.

  “I sometimes keep very odd hours, and although you don’t sleep much, I would hate to wake you by bursting out into the living area.”

  She chose the far corner of the room, farthest away from the front door, and sectioned it off using two sets of tall divider screens that were a dark hand carved wood. I thought they were quite nice, so it worked out well. She fit her bed and large chests behind the screens and had her own secluded space which she seemed very comfortable with. Who was I to argue?

  On the far wall, next to Remy’s makeshift bedroom, she installed an entire workstation, complete with three computer monitors, two laptops, and multiple other electronics.

  “Do you have your own computer, Jay?” she asked me a few days after we moved in.

  “Yea, I have a laptop I use.”

  “Good. I’m sure I can trust you, but I would just appreciate it if you didn’t make a habit of using my workstations. I keep things a very specific way.”

  “That’s no problem,” I answered. Her only response was a small smile as she went about her business.

  In no way was Remy a difficult person to live with, even with her many eccentricities. Her schedule was fairly regular; many nights she would stay out long after I went to bed and would be gone when I woke. Sometimes I would hear her come back in the middle of the night, but she was always quiet and respectful towards me. And nothing could derail her when she put her mind towards something. She would go non-stop for days on end. By the third week, I was convinced she only slept an hour or two a night. Her energy levels never ran low, that is, except for when she would enter into one of the episodes she had warned me about. When that happened, it was like living with an entirely different person. Dr. Jekyll and little Ms. Hyde. Remy would curl up into a ball on the couch in front of the wall of windows and stay there for hours, sometimes days. Her bouts would always follow the same pattern: First, she would curl up and go silent, and she looked as though she was suffering from one of the worst flu epidemics of all time. Next, she would sit up, open the window nearest to her, and stare out at the street below. It would be the first sign of life, sometimes in a day or two, and would act as a false hope for progress. Because within an hour of opening the window and letting in the fresh air, she would become irritated at the commotions, slam the window shut and curl back into the fetal position. Finally, she would go to the kitchen and brew a pot of coffee, always hazelnut, and after finishing exactly two cups, she would look around the apartment as if seeing it for the first time. A few minutes later, she would be up, bouncing around like nothing had ever happened. If I didn’t know better, and if it had been absolutely anyone else, I would have sworn it was the effects of a drug withdrawal.

  As the days and weeks went by, my fascination with Remy only intensified. Never once did we discuss what had happened the day we met; hell, we never even acknowledged it. I would find myself looking her up and down as she worked at her computer, wondering why she had kissed me and what it meant. I wondered what was wrong with her and I wondered why she smelled the way she did. Remy carried her tiny frame with a grace that I found extremely appealing. In spite of the fact that I never saw her spend more than a few seconds getting ready – she never wore makeup – somehow she always looked attractive. Not gorgeous, maybe not even beautiful, but there was something undeniably alluring about her. Saying that she was confident in herself would be the equivalent of saying a lion on the plains of the Serengeti is capable of finding its own meals. On more than one occasion, I was online submitting my resume when I looked up to find her walking naked, with only a towel wrapped around her wet hair, directly through the middle of the living room. Whether she did this on purpose, was completely oblivious to the fact I was present, or simply just didn’t care, I’ll never know. But if it wasn’t an issue for her, then there was absolutely no way I was going to voice a complaint.

  Seeing as how I was finding it difficult to locate even the slightest hint of a well-paying job, I immediately took notice of the fact that Remy never lacked for funds. Her computers and electronics had to have cost thousands and she never objected to going out for meals, many times, paying the bill behind my back when I got up to use the restroom . Yet, no matter how much I watched, or what questions I asked, she wouldn’t talk about what it was she did.

  College was out of the question. Although Remy spent hours reading science journals and skimming through books that induced yawning just by reading the title, she never stayed on any one subject for long, quickly moving on to something completely unrelated. At one point, I was certain she was a freelance programmer because she stayed on her computer for days, going through screens of code line by line. So I asked her if she was a programmer. She looked at me for a moment, or better yet, she looked through me, and then turned back to her screen. I took it as a no. The idea struck me that whatever she was doing, it might not be what one would define as legal. Whatever her reasons, I knew that nobody would put in the effort Remy did if there wasn’t an end goal in mind.

  She was educating herself but didn’t go to college. She spent hours behind her computer, but it wasn’t her job. She had “appointments” that kept her out at all hours, but no friends to speak of. She had money but didn’t answer to an employer. I was beginning to question my certainty that drugs weren’t involved when things suddenly changed.

  With no explanation as to why, people started showing up at the apartment. Morning, noon, and night, people of all ages and from every bracket of society would come and go. Some I would hear Remy talking with early in the morning, before I was even out of bed. Others would come late at night, talk for a few minutes, and then go. Rarely would I hear what the conversations were about, but when I did, they seemed overly vague and secretive. Occasionally, Remy would introduce me to some of the visitors.

  There was Mrs. Mueller, the wife of a watch repairman, who was at least eighty years old, smelled like cabbage, and started to sob as soon as I left the room. Then came Jerome Tinsley, a giant of a man who had muscles on his muscles; very soft spoken though. I heard him tell Remy about a guy named Jack, who was somehow mixed up in Jerome’s gym, and was causing serious problems. They talked for a few minutes and then he took off. I never saw him again.

  On one single day, there were four separate people t
hat came by. A young women who was unbelievably gorgeous and wore a light yellow summer dress, an old bald man with a long white beard, an overweight woman who coughed the entire time, and a guy who wore mirrored sunglasses and that I was pretty sure was a cop.

  Never once was Remy rude about her guests. Sometimes she would introduce me and then stare with a smile, a sign I should be happy with being included and go on my way. Other times, she would ask me outright, always politely, if I wouldn’t mind going into my bedroom for a few minutes. And throughout all of this, I never put my foot down and demanded an explanation of what was going on or who these people were. So she never told me.

  As Remy and I got to know each other better, and I learned more about her peculiarities, I realized that for every subject she could genuinely be called an expert, there was another she knew absolutely nothing about. I mean completely and utterly devoid of knowledge. Her grasp of computers and their systems was limitless. She knew more about crime, the theory of law, crime scene investigation, and police procedures than anyone I’d ever seen. I had seen her reading books in both Spanish and German and even heard her fluently speak Korean on the phone once. But her lack of information on other subjects was baffling. She knew nothing about pop culture, couldn’t tell the difference between a cucumber and a zucchini, and she didn’t even have a driver’s license.

  Then there was the Pluto incident.

  Early one Monday morning, Remy had run out and returned with coffee and bagels from a place around the corner. We sat in silence as I clicked through websites on my phone and she read a copy of The Post. For all of her understanding of technology, she still chose to consume most of her information in print form. I looked up from my phone and took a sip of the scorching hot coffee, noticing an article on the back page of the paper. It was the science section and the article was an opinion piece railing against the physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson for his role in the demotion of Pluto as a planet.

  “That still doesn’t seem right,” I said.

  “What doesn’t seem right?” Remy asked from behind the paper.

  “That article,” I answered, pointing. “It doesn’t seem right that Pluto isn’t really a planet. Don’t you remember My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas? Just not the same without the pizzas.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The saying? It’s just a way to remember the order and names of all the planets.”

  “No, what’s Pluto?”

  I was blown away. I didn’t know what to say. It was like being asked a question by a child that has no real answer, like being asked to describe the color yellow.

  “Pluto. It’s the ninth planet in the solar system. Or at least it was.”

  “Oh.” The way she responded baffled me. It wasn’t the fact she didn’t know Pluto was the ninth planet that bothered me, it was that she didn’t care that she didn’t know. How could someone that read constantly and consumed information like a sponge be so oblivious to something that’s taught in a third grade science class.

  “What’s the big deal? Who cares if Pluto is a planet or not? I have absolutely no use for that,” she said.

  “How can you not have use for the basic facts of the universe? Do you even know what gravity is?”

  “I know what gravity is, but even if I didn’t, why would it matter?”

  “You’re kidding right?”

  “No. What changes if I know everything there is to know about gravity? Or Pluto? How does either help me? You say there’s eight planets now, well there used to be nine. Ten years from now there will be six. Or ten. But nothing actually changed. So why take up space with something that doesn’t matter?”

  “But it’s basic freaking knowledge Remy!”

  “Not to me it’s not, so I don’t care to remember it. Think about it like an iceberg. Everybody’s brain is a single iceberg floating in the Arctic. Most people spend their entire lives letting every random penguin jump on and take up space. But over time, things become too crowded. Have you heard the saying that humans only use ten percent of their brains? Well that’s ridiculous. Every human uses the full capacity of their own brain. What people fail to realize is that there comes a point where, for every new piece of information you obtain, another goes flying off the iceberg. Your memory becomes crowded and the edges of one fact can’t be discerned from that of another. And just when you need it the most, your brain will fail you. So you keep gravity and Pluto, I’ll keep what matters.”

  It was the perfect opportunity to pull at her secrets.

  “So what matters to you?” I asked.

  “What matters to me is what allows me to do my work.”

  “And what work would that be?”

  Remy hesitated and I thought she would ignore the question. But instead, she straightened up in her armchair and folded the paper, placing it neatly on the table beside her.

  “I help people who can’t help themselves. I’m a researcher; a consulting researcher. People come to me with unsolvable problems and I solve them. Some pay me a small fee, others I charge a small fortune. They all pay because they all have nowhere else to turn.”

  “That’s who the people are who come to see you.”

  “My clients, yes. Most are sent by referral from other people I’ve helped. They come to me, tell me their stories, I give them advice, and they pay my fee. It’s their choice whether or not they listen to what I say.”

  “How can you be certain that your advice is correct, when most of the people who show up here never come by more than once? Do you solve their problems from the comfort of my leather chair?”

  “Sometimes. Other cases are more involved and require that I get my hands dirty. Those are the times when I stay away from the apartment for hours on end. Every piece of information that I keep is invaluable to me and helps to solve the unsolvable. Every penguin has a place on the iceberg.”

  “So why don’t these people just go to the police?”

  Remy’s conceded grin turned to full on laughter.

  “The police; that’s good, Jay. Who do you think some of the people that come here are?”

  “The police come to you to solve crimes they can’t?”

  “Of course. They would never admit to it, but I promise you’ve read about things in the news, about some successful police effort, that should have been attributed to me.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Remy looked across at me.

  “You’ve seen me with a detective from DC Metro,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “The one you watched me with.”

  I was about to respond when I registered what she was referring to. I stared, speechless, back at her.

  It was the middle of the night a few weeks back and I was having trouble sleeping. My arm was killing me and I couldn’t calm my nerves. I got up to make a cup of tea, thinking it might help. Remy had come home after I went to bed, so I quietly made my way to the kitchen, assuming she was asleep. As I looked through the cupboard for our box of teas, I heard a deep sigh from the corner of the room. When I turned, I noticed a gap where Remy’s screens usually were. It was an area large enough to see into her bed. And large enough to see her naked and grinding at the man lying beneath her. Once I saw her, I couldn’t look away. I slumped down behind the kitchen island and watched as she moved her body and moaned in pleasure, her skin shining as the light from the street posts spilled through the windows. Part of me was exhilarated at the chance to be a voyeur in my own apartment, but mostly, I was pained at the sight of Remy with another man. My feelings fluctuated between that nervous pleasure and biting pain as I listened to the soft sounds she sent forth with every movement. Eventually, it became too much for me. I snuck back into my room, leaving the cupboard open and my tea cup on the counter.

  “Remy, I didn’t –”

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said, smiling. It wasn’t the reaction I was expecting. I didn’t know what to say.

  I finally managed to pull together
a response, “Are the two of you together then?”

  “Lambert and I. No, don’t be ridiculous.”

  “So, then he and you just –”

  “Yes. We have sex. Although, not very often. Lambert is adequate enough, and he seems to think that us having sex will lead to something more, no matter how much I insist it’s not a possibility. I’ve ceased trying to convince him, since he’s been allowing me access to more and more crime scenes lately. I let him think whatever he wants. And the sex clears my mind.”

  Remy’s views on sex seemed to match her views on every other social aspect of life. She did exactly what suited her needs at any given moment and cared very little of the opinions and feelings of others.

  “Well, I crossed the line and I apologize for that,” I said.

  “I don’t understand your need to feel sorry, Jay. You enjoyed watching and I enjoyed having your eyes on me.”

  “Um, what?”

  “You’re an attractive man,” she said, looking blankly back at me. “I really don’t see why that surprises you. I’ve seen you talking with women down at the bar and you’re quite gifted. You have a very confident manner about you. I have to admit, I admire your abilities in social environments.”

  “It’s not something I even think about.”

  “I imagine you don’t. Everyone has a unique talent, Jay. Maybe that’s yours. You really should learn to harness it.”

  Remy stood up and started to walk away, but after a few steps, she turned to face me.

  “It’s a very powerful man that can sway the minds of the opposite sex. You should remember that.”

  Chapter 3

  A Capital Offense

  Remy hovered over her order of chicken and waffles as the two of us sat at the Silver Diner in Clarendon.

  “Watts,” she said between bites, “What do you think about our waitress? Social standards would say you two are a likely match.”