A Simple Favor

by Darcey Bell

  Spying on my mother, I learned: We don’t know we’re being watched. We like to imagine we’re alert. We fool ourselves into thinking we have something in common with creatures that can survive in the wild. But we’ve lost that instinct, that sixth sense. We couldn’t survive for one day in the wild—if the wild was full of predators.

  It only takes one predator. And for the moment, that’s me.

  Unless we see or hear something, the woods behind our house could be crawling with snipers. A pervert could live across the courtyard behind our apartment, binoculars smashed into his eyes, praying to the pervert god that we’ll take our clothes off.

  There was a guy like that across the alley from my first New York City apartment, around the time I started working at Dennis Nylon.

  I caught the guy. Big sloppy gut, wife-beater T-shirt. Superspy binoculars. Pants around his knees. I gave him the finger across the alley. He gave me the finger back. He put down his binoculars. His eyes never left my eyes.

  I couldn’t deal with it. I moved. I lost my security deposit.

  I got a nicer apartment.

  I asked Dennis for a raise, and I got it. He loved being so powerful that he could throw me a handful of spare change and rescue me from a pervert.

  Now I’m the neighborhood pervert. Stephanie needs to be rescued. From me.

  There’s a movie I love. Peeping Tom. It’s British. It’s about a psychopathic serial killer who films himself in the act of killing women. He has a camera attached to the end of spear on which he impales pretty girls so he can film the terror on their faces. A real artist, a real obsessive.

  It’s Dennis Nylon’s favorite film. So we had that in common.

  It was one of those movies that ruin a director’s career. Everyone finds out how sick the guy is, and no one will work with him. Especially when the film loses money. Peeping Tom was too far out for 1960. Even now, it would be. But not for me, not for Dennis.

  I was surprised that Sean hadn’t seen it, being British and for a while on the fringe of an arty crowd. Didn’t his friends watch films like that? There was no one I could ask, no one he still knew from those days. His cool university friends hadn’t gone into banking, and by the time we met, he no longer saw them. I knew I could have him, if I wanted, by making him think that he could still be the coolest kid if he was with me.

  Sean could make deals, make money, do business, but he’d never had a real love affair. I showed him what passion was. I made him think he couldn’t live without me. He was so easy to reprogram, to convince that he was in control. That was part of his appeal. It was a bonus thrown in that he was a good lover: patient, creative, and hot. That counted for more than it should have, or would have if it had been more common in the male population. So many men make love like there’s a taxi with the meter running waiting outside in the street.

  I could make Sean into whatever I wanted him to be. All I had to do was figure out what I wanted him to be.

  Sean and I met at a particularly awful charity dinner at the Museum of Natural History. I was in tears half the night because everything was going wrong, starting with an important investor falling down the stairs, moving right along to the expensive celebrity chef slicing off his fingertip. I was working my ass off so no one noticed the major screwups, which would have infuriated Dennis, and we all could have lost our jobs.

  Sean introduced himself and said he worked for the investment firm that was partnering with Dennis Nylon. I acted as if we’d already met, in case we had, but I was sure I would have remembered.

  He said, “Could we have dinner sometime?”

  Very sweet, very cool, very clear.

  Soon after that, I invited Sean to my apartment to watch Peeping Tom on DVD. It was our third date. It was a test but also a risk, inviting an attractive, rich, basically decent, basically straight-arrow guy to watch your favorite film about a psycho serial killer. If I’d pretended that my favorite film was The Sound of Music, I might as well have given up before I started. Who would want to be with a guy who wanted a woman like that?

  We watched Peeping Tom with his arm around me. We’d already had sex, good sex, maybe even great sex, so I guess he thought that it demonstrated his self-restraint and good manners to be doing anything other than having more great sex. I don’t mean to sound coldhearted or boastful when I say he thought the sex was even better than it was. I think he had limited experience, mostly lukewarm relationships with disgruntled British university students and frustrated interns at the bank.

  Now he was indulging me, watching a movie I liked. I’d had enough boyfriends to know that this was the kind of thing guys do at the start of a relationship. Later, they leave the room or ask you to watch the other TV—or they just grab the remote and switch to the basketball game.

  All through the film, Sean and I didn’t speak. Afterward, he said, “Brilliant,” in that annoying three-syllable way the British pronounce it. “But I thought it was a little much. Didn’t you?”

  Failed! He thought it was a little much. Was he one of those wussy guys who want to believe that people are nice? The kind who avoid books and movies that feature any kind of pain or suffering or violence. There are guys like that out there—more than you might think.

  But not Sean. He was just pretending to be a good boy. Or maybe he was a good boy pretending to be a bad boy. It turned him on; it excited him that I liked Peeping Tom. He thought it was sexy. Scary, but scary good. It was the kind of film that that a guy might like, unlike girls, who he thought (probably because of his boring former girlfriends) just want to come home from the office and curl up with a glass of pinot grigio and the latest BBC remake of Jane Austen.

  I prefer tequila or, better yet, mezcal. But never around Sean.

  Later it turned out that he was a big fan of dark TV series: Breaking Bad, The Wire. Shows I didn’t like all that much, though all the kids at work did. I can’t keep track of the characters.

  We eloped to Las Vegas. We told no one. We got married in the Elvis Chapel and spent three days in bed in a suite at the Bellagio. It was a nice break: sex, room service, champagne, TV. Showing off for each other.

  It wasn’t the smartest thing for Sean to suggest we visit his “mum” in the north of England for our honeymoon. He kept telling me how green it was, how romantic the moors were. He knew that I loved Wuthering Heights. His town was only an hour from Haworth Parsonage, home of the Brontës.

  Two weeks of bleakness and drizzle, hideous cold, leaky rain, clouds hanging so low I couldn’t see the moors. I hate that sensation when the cold leaches through your skin to your bones. And for what? Just so Sean and I could trudge through a sad little house filled with weepy teenage girl tourists? And back to spend the night in the damp, underheated, mildew-infested row house of a sour, shrunken apple core of a woman who didn’t like her son and who liked me even less?

  In general, I try not to feel sorry for people. I don’t think it’s good for the person being pitied, or for the person doing the pitying. But when I saw that house! The cracked linoleum, the stinky gas heaters, the thick dark drapes, and the furniture reeking of every lamb stew cooked there since the reign of Henry VIII. Poor Sean!

  One day—when Sean was off doing the marketing—I offered his mother a sip from my flask. I made an introduction: Sean’s mom, meet Jose Cuervo. Jose, meet Sean’s mom. (Herradura, actually. Cheap tequila gives me a headache.) After a lifetime of sherry, it was a revelation. I told her I would kill her if she told Sean, and she laughed, a constipated heh heh heh, because she thought I was joking.

  That night she went to bed early so Sean never suspected that she was drunk. And it gave me and his mum a conspiratorial alliance that made our stay there almost entertaining. Almost.

  Oh, there was one fun thing that happened.

  I’d suffered from a sort of suffocating boredom, on and off, all my life, and I knew when an attack was coming on, the way other people can sense the approach of a migraine or a dizzy spell. I knew I had to
do something to keep myself from going under or acting out in a way I would regret. I’d had those feelings since I was a kid, and I had learned that something had to be done to make it go away. It was like an insect bite I had to scratch.

  So I stole Sean’s mother’s ring.

  It was very pretty, a sapphire surrounded by two large diamonds, set simply in gold. I complimented her on it soon after we arrived, and she blithered on about how the stones were cut and set, how her husband gave it to her before they were married, who had owned the ring before, its history all the way back to the Neanderthal era. I stopped listening. I don’t remember if I decided to steal it right then, or if the idea occurred to me on impulse when the chance arose.

  One night, I’d gotten Sean’s mom a little tipsy, as usual. I was surprised that her son didn’t notice when Mom got even more unpleasant and hypercritical than normal. I suppose he had low expectations. That night she nagged him into going into the “parlor” to watch the “telly” while “the girls” tidied up. She carefully set the ring down on the windowsill above the sink to keep it safe while she did the dishes, and she toddled off to the “loo.”

  I put the ring in my pocket. It was as simple as that. Now you see it, now you don’t. Impulse? Premeditation? I don’t know. I don’t care. I am not, by nature, a klepto. This was something special.

  She didn’t miss the ring until she’d finished the washing up. Then she went instantly crazy. Moaning like a wounded animal. Her ring! Her beautiful ring! It wasn’t there! It wasn’t anywhere! Had it fallen down the sink? Why hadn’t she been more careful? How could she live without it?

  We turned the house upside down, and poor Sean, the obedient son, had to go down to the basement and take apart the disgusting plumbing to search for it in the pipes.

  Guess what? The ring never turned up. When his mum said goodbye to us, she was still weepy—more upset about the ring than about the fact that her son and his new bride were leaving.

  I pointed this out to Sean on the plane, going home to New York. Business class.

  I said, “Your mum loved that ring more than you.”

  He said, “Don’t be hard on her, Emily.”

  That’s when I took the ring out of my purse and showed it to him. He was overjoyed.

  “You found it!” he said. “You darling angel! Mum will be so thrilled.”

  “No,” I said. “I took it. I have no intention of giving it back. She’d just take it with her into the grave. What a ridiculous waste.”

  Was this my weird American sense of humor? A practical joke? Sean smiled tentatively, as if to show me he got the joke.

  I wasn’t joking.

  “You stole it?”

  I raised my eyebrows and shrugged.

  “I wanted it,” I said. “And I took it.”

  “You have to give it back. I’ll tell Mum that it dropped into your purse when you were in the kitchen, and that you didn’t find it until now.”

  “Please keep your voice down, dear.” The flight attendants were looking at us. Were the cute newlywed lovebirds (Sean had told them we were on our honeymoon) already having an itty-bitty honeymoon spat?

  “I’m not giving it back,” I said. “What’s your mother going to do? Extradite her son’s bride and have her arrested? And if you try and tell your mother that I found it, that it wound up in my possession by accident, I’ll tell her that I stole it. That I meant to do it. And what do you think will be worse for her? Thinking she lost her ring—or knowing that her son has married a thief and a liar and a sadist who wants her and her son to suffer?”

  Which is not why I did it, actually. I didn’t want anyone to suffer. I just wanted the ring. I liked it. I didn’t understand why it wasn’t mine.

  I said, “Maybe I should tell her that you stole the ring so you could give it to me.”

  Sean stared at me. He knew I was determined. I saw that he was afraid of me—of something about me that he’d never suspected. There was a lot about me that he didn’t know, some things he never found out—and maybe never will.

  What did he think I would do? That was never clear. But why would he proceed to raise a child with someone he distrusted and feared? I suppose because he loved me. And maybe he was in love with the fear.

  “And now,” I said, after I’d ordered more champagne, “you’re going to put this ring on my finger. And you’re going to tell me you’ll love me forever. Say, ‘With this ring I pledge my troth forever.’”

  “You already have an engagement ring,” he said.

  “I like this one,” I said. “I’ve already sold the other one you gave me. Did you really not notice?” In fact I’d worn it the day before. I’d sell it when I got home.

  Sean took my hand. He slid his mother’s ring on my finger. His voice shook as he said, “With this ring I pledge my troth forever.”

  “Forever,” I said. “But for now . . . meet me in the bathroom in twenty seconds. Knock twice.”

  We had sex standing up, my ass pressed against the sink, in the cramped airplane bathroom. I had him. He was mine.

  * * *

  Until now it never occurred to me that Sean might be really stupid and weak. Stupid enough to have sex with the first woman who made it clear that he could have her if he wanted.

  I know he thinks I’m dead—even though I specifically told him not to believe reports of my demise. Couldn’t he follow instructions? Did I have to tell him not to believe the autopsy report? Did I have to say that even if he got back my ring—his mother’s ring—it wouldn’t mean that I was dead? Though to be fair to Sean, even I hadn’t expected that the ring would get back to him. That was a bonus, an accident. Once more Sean’s mother’s ring was working its magic.

  Sean’s an honest guy. Too honest. Too trusting, as it turns out. And altogether too simple.

  I told him: I will not be dead. No matter what you hear. I will not be dead. It was like a warning in a fairy tale. Don’t turn around and look back at me on our way out of hell. And once again, the hero blew it.

  Even if Sean believed that I’d taken a drunken, pill-addled fatal swim in the freezing lake, shouldn’t there have been a decent mourning period? Time for him to grieve and begin to forget about me and recover? To resolve to “move on,” to quote Stephanie again. Maybe after a suitable lapse Sean would find a woman whom he would never love or desire as much as me—but who would cook and clean for him and take care of Nicky.

  But my “best friend” Stephanie? It’s embarrassing! Insulting that he could look at her after he’d seen me! She’s a wounded mess consumed by guilt and determined to repent for her sins by being the best mom in history. She’s like a fuzzy bath mat pretending to be a person.

  Sean’s being with her is maddening. How could I have married a guy who hits on Stephanie the minute he thinks I’m dead?

  Maybe revenge is in order.

  Sean’s stupidity is what I’m looking at as I stand behind a tree at the edge of the yard and watch Stephanie flap from window to window like a bird trapped in a house. Trying to see me, to see where I am. Holding up two fingers, then seven. Staring into the woods.

  Thinking, Help me! Help!

  I let Stephanie run around my house, skittering from window to window. She’s afraid to go outside. I watch her for a while more, then leave. My car is parked just beyond the driveway.

  I drive back to my room at the Danbury Hospitality Suites, where I am registered with a phony credit card and under an assumed name. I’m driving my mother’s car, which I took from the lake house after I ditched the rental in the woods.

  I’m betting that Stephanie won’t tell Sean I called, or that I’m spying on them. She used to ramble on about being afraid that people might think she was paranoid and crazy. She’d say (I’m hearing her voice now), “Isn’t it awful how people are always trying to convince moms”—(how I hated the way she said that word moms)—“that they’re insane.” That was what I had to listen to on those dreadful Friday afternoons as I tried to figure ou
t how I was going to go to work on Monday and deal with Dennis’s latest meltdown.

  If Stephanie suggested that a dead woman is not only alive but also a Peeping Tom—well, that might make her seem cuckoo indeed. It would prove that she is crazy. I never worry that anyone will think that I—the flawlessly dressed and made-up public face of Dennis Nylon, the cool, competent mother and wife—am crazy. Though if anyone knew the truth, they might conclude that I am way loonier than Stephanie, who is just silly and not too bright and terribly insecure.

  If Sean admits to anything, he will have to admit to everything: we had a plan to defraud his firm’s insurance carrier of a (relatively) small fortune. Sean has learned from his work in finance not to show his hand. Poker players and bankers know. And thrill seekers, like yours truly.

  * * *

  Our plan began with a little game I’m sure lots of couples play. What would we do if millions of dollars fell into our lap? We’d quit our jobs. We’d take Nicky to some beautiful place and live till the money ran out. That was the fantasy.

  Sean was doing well at work. I had a good job. We had a nice house, a great kid.

  You might think that we would have liked our lives. But we didn’t. Maybe discontent isn’t the greatest thing to share. Maybe restlessness isn’t the strongest foundation for a marriage. But it’s probably better if both people in the couple are restless and discontent, rather than just one. Sean despised the crooks he worked for. He resented the time and energy his company sucked out of him, which made it easier for me to persuade him that what I was planning was some righteous Robin Hood sort of thing. Bonnie and Clyde, that was us. Outlaw heroes.

  Meanwhile I’d had it up to here with the fashion business, with everyone acting like the world was coming to an end if a runway model stubbed her toe. The models were temperamental. They lived on water and cigarettes.