by Lisa Unger
Last year, just months after losing him, I couldn’t even get out of bed. The holidays passed in a grief-stricken blur with the phone ringing and ringing. Layla, Mac, my mother coming by to try to coax me out of bed.
It was Mac who finally got me up, convinced me to come to join them for Christmas dinner. “We’re your family,” he said, pulling open the blinds. “You belong with us. I know it hurts but there’s no way out of this but through. Show the kids that you’re not going to let this crush you. Show them that they’re not going to lose you, too.”
Guilt. It works every time. He offered his hand, which I took and let him pull me from bed and push me toward the bathroom. As I ran the shower, I heard him call Layla, his voice heavy with relief. “I got our girl. She’s coming.”
It seems like yesterday and a hundred years ago.
“Funny you called,” says Grayson now. He’s prone to manspreading so I leave a lot of space between us.
“Oh?” I take a big messy bite of the hot dog, and try not to spill anything on my shirt. Yellow mustard and white silk are not friends. Actually, white silk is no one’s friend. Wearing it is like a dare to the universe: go ahead, bring it on—coffee, ketchup, ink—I can take you.
“I’ve got something maybe.” He does this thing, a kind of bobblehead nod. “Maybe. Might be nothing.”
There’s a file under his Pepsi can.
“They brought some punk in this weekend for armed robbery,” he says when I stay silent. I wait while he devours that dog in three big bites. It’s impressive. He wipes his mouth with gusto, maybe building suspense.
“Perp was caught in the act, more or less. A couple of uniforms brought him down as he exited the bodega in the East Village. I think he got like two hundred bucks if that. Anyway, he tells the arresting officers that he knows something about a murder in Riverside Park last year, so they call me in.”
My whole body goes stiff; my appetite withers. Putting the hot dog in its paper tub beside me, I try not to think about that dark day, not let the barrage of images come sweeping in. But it’s a flood, the uniformed officers in my lobby, the cold marble as I sank to the floor, the gray interrogation room. Weird details like a ringing phone that no one picked up, the scent of burned popcorn somewhere in the station.
“I’m sorry,” he says. He rubs at the stubble on his jaw. “I knew this was going to be hard.”
He’s watching me with a kind of curious squint. It’s warm, but it’s knowing. Dark brown eyes, soft at the edges, heavily lashed like a girl’s. He’s taking it all in, filing it away—the moments, the details, the gestures, things said and unsaid. There’s something sad in that gaze, and something steely. I wonder if I could get it. If I had a camera in my hand, could I capture everything his eyes say. Sometimes there’s not enough light; sometimes there’s too much. Some people you just can’t get. They won’t let you.
“I’m okay,” I lie (again). It’s the easiest lie to tell because it’s the one people want to hear the most. That you can take care of yourself, that they don’t have to worry. Because in a very real sense, they can’t help. Most of the time, we’re on our own.
He tosses the tub, the napkins, into the nearby trash can and lifts the file. It looks small in his thick hands. He picks at the edge with his thumbnail, opens it.
“Anyway, this mope says he knows a guy who claims to be a killer for hire. For a thousand bucks, he’ll kill anyone with his bare hands.”
The words sound so odd, so ridiculous. I nearly laugh, like people laugh at funerals, the tension too much.
“My guy, the armed robber, let’s call him Johnny for the sake of clarity, was on a bit of a bender, so his memory—it’s cloudy. Johnny says he met this killer for hire at a bar, and the guy got to bragging. I brought a healthy skepticism to the situation, naturally. But I gotta admit some of the details fit. Like, he knew Jack only had five bucks on him, that the assailant smashed Jack’s phone to a pulp. Little things that weren’t out there in the news.”
“So,” I say, feeling shaky and strange. Those few bites of hot dog are not agreeing with me. “You got a name? He’s in the system? Saw if the DNA matched?”
Detective Grayson shakes his head, leans forward.
“No name. Johnny didn’t know the guy’s name, street-smart enough not to ask. But he gave the sketch artist a description. It matches accounts of a man witnesses saw fleeing the park the morning Jack was killed.”
I appreciate how he often uses Jack’s name, doesn’t call him “your husband” or “the victim.” I feel like he knew Jack, that they might have been friends. The detective is exactly the kind of guy that Jack liked—smart, no bullshit, down-to-earth.
Grayson hands me the file and I open it. The black-and-white pencil drawing stares back at me, full of menace. Head shaved, wide deep-set eyes, thick nose, heavy brow. There’s something about it, something my brain reaches for, but then it slips away. It’s like when I try to force myself to remember those missing days. There’s truly nothing there, just a painful, sucking dark.
“Anything?”
I shake my head. “Nothing. I don’t know him.”
“Johnny says he was a big guy, maybe 6 feet, well over 200 pounds. Ripped, thick neck, big hands.”
There’s that familiar tightness in my chest, that feeling that my airways have shrunk when I think about him out there. I imagine Jack lying on the path. I see wet leaves and blood, the curl of his hand on the pavement. I’m sorry. I should have been with you.
“He’d have to be big, right?” My voice catches. “To overpower Jack.”
Detective Grayson puts a hand on my forearm, easy, stabilizing.
“It’s something,” he says softly. “The first something in a while.”
“A killer for hire.” The words don’t feel right in my mouth. “A thousand dollars. To kill someone.”
“The random mugging,” he says. “It never sat right.”
“But who would hire someone to kill Jack?”
He takes a swig of his Pepsi. “You tell me.”
“No one,” I say. It sticks in my throat and I cough a little. “Everyone loved Jack.”
Grayson pulls himself out of his constant slouch, twists a little like he’s trying to work out a kink. I notice he’s saved a bit of his hot dog bun, has it clutched in his hand. He tosses it, and a kit of pigeons clamor, their pink-green-gray feathers glinting in the sun.
“I’m going to go over all my files again tonight,” he says. “See if this new information sheds light on anything old. We’ll find this guy. And when we do, maybe he can answer that question.”
We’ll find this guy. “How are you going to find him?”
“I went to the place where Johnny says they met,” says Grayson. “They’ve got the sketch up behind the bar. Patrol in that area is on the lookout.”
It seems impossible that you could find someone that way, just hoping they come back to a place they’ve been. And anyway, there’s that part of me that thinks: What does it matter if we catch him? Jack is not coming back. Not even if the guy, whoever he is, gets caught and goes to the electric chair. What does it fix? Nothing changes.
I imagine a trial that drags on, a conviction, or not. Years and years of appeals, tied up in more rage, misery, grief. Jack wouldn’t like it. Let it go, he’d surely say. Everyone dies, somehow, someday. Don’t let this eat whatever’s left of your life.
“You called me, though,” says Grayson. He takes the file that sits open in my lap and closes it, tucks it under his leg. I’m glad that face is gone. “So...what’s up?”
I almost tell him about my dream, the one in the nightclub, that maybe—maybe—could be a memory. It’s why I called him, because of Layla’s suggestion that it might be a memory. But he’s so pragmatic and the images seem so strange and nonsensical now, especially in light of what he’s told me. And I don’t want to r
ecount the part where I kiss some strange man. Even in a dream, it’s shameful, sordid, isn’t it? There’s shame, too, about those missing days. I imagined myself stronger than that, not the person who shatters in the face of tragedy.
But I am that person; I did shatter.
Instead, I just tell him about the hooded man, how I think I’m being followed.
He digs his hands into the pockets of his pants, listens as I tell him about the encounter on the train.
“Big guy?” he says, looking down to open the file again. “Six feet, heavy?”
“I think so.” Bigger than Grayson, taller, broader.
“You’re sure?” He pauses and looks up at the sky, which is a bright blue through the red, gold, orange, of the leaves above, the gray of the buildings. “Of what you saw.”
He knows my history.
“Not completely,” I admit. “No.”
“You couldn’t see his face?”
“The hood.”
“Yeah,” he says, drawing out the word. He dips his head from side to side, runs a hand through his hair, considering. “But his face was completely obscured by the hood? That doesn’t seem right. You can usually see something.”
I shake my head, pushing into my memory. “No.”
Then I remember the pictures on my phone, scroll through the shots and show him the clearest one, which isn’t clear at all. He takes the device and squints at it.
“Hard to see his face, you’re right. Email it to me,” he says. “I’ll have our guys work their magic. Maybe we’ll get something.”
He hands the phone back to me. I quickly forward the image to his email address. We sit a moment, both of us lost in thought.
“So, look,” he says, dropping a hand on my arm. “The next time you see him, call me right away. Linger if you can safely. I’ll get there fast or send someone.”
“Okay,” I agree.
We talk awhile longer. He promises that he’s following up this lead with everything he has. He must have other cases, other priorities, but when I’m with him he always makes me feel like Jack is the most important thing on his mind. He’s convinced his superiors not to close the case, won’t turn it over to cold cases, even though he’s hinted that there’s pressure on him to do that. It’s been nearly a year.
“This new information,” he says. “I have a feeling about it.”
I do, too. Why does that make me feel worse instead of better?
“I’m not letting this go,” he says. “I promise you that.”
* * *
Though I’m not really dressed for it in heels and a pencil skirt, I walk up Fifth Avenue. My head is vibrating, thoughts spinning—Detective Grayson, and killers for hire, how maybe for a thousand dollars someone ended my husband’s life. A thousand dollars. And if that’s true, is the man who killed Jack the same hooded man following me? I swallow hard, there’s a bulb of fear and anger stuck in my throat.
I let the current of the city take me. Its energy pumps and moves; it doesn’t stop for any reason, ever, not even the death of the most important person in your life. It just keeps pulsing, pushing, a flow that you have no choice but to follow.
At the light, I dig into my bag and find that amber vial Layla gave me—not the sleeping pills, but the pills she said were for nerves. I dry swallow a white one. No idea what it is. I really don’t care as long as it quiets the siren of anxiety in my head.
Then I put my headphones in, and listen to my go-to, a David Bowie playlist. I keep walking, heading toward the office. I’m just getting into it, feeling lighter, less mired down, when the music stops and the phone starts ringing. Dr. Nash returning my call.
“Poppy?” she says when I answer. “Everything okay?”
Still marching up the street, I tell her everything—the dreams, Layla’s ideas, Detective Grayson’s revelations. I always think it looks crazy, when someone has her headphones in, gesticulating, walking, talking to someone whom no one else can hear. The modern age has turned us all into ranting schizophrenics.
“That’s a lot,” Dr. Nash says when I’m done. “Why don’t you come in on Thursday? We can talk it through.”
I almost tell her. That I’ve been mucking with my dosage, taking mystery pills, drinking, that last night I took Layla’s stronger sleeping meds, two of them. That I just took something else without even knowing what it is. But what does that make me? I stay quiet.
“Okay,” I agree. “Why am I dreaming more?”
It feels disingenuous to ask this question when I know she only has part of the information she needs to answer it. Still I’m hoping for an answer that makes me feel better.
“You’re probably not dreaming more?” It sounds like a question. “Perhaps you’re just remembering more, which—could be a good thing.”
How? I wonder. How can it be a good thing to lose Jack again night after night? I know her answer about dreams being the gateway to our subconscious, how it’s a place where we work out the things our conscious mind presses away. That pain is a doorway we must pass through to get to the other side of grief and loss. She’s saying something to that effect as I flash on the filthy bathroom floor, the heat of that stranger’s kiss.
“I’d like you to stay on this lower dosage,” she says.
Here again I almost spill it, then don’t. I silently vow to give Layla back her pills, stay on the dosage Dr. Nash prescribed. I’ll tough out any hard nights ahead. Because I want to get off the pills, too. I don’t want her to know how badly I need them, how painful is the night. Daytime is easy; I can busy-addict myself into constant motion. It’s when dusk falls, and energy lags, that the demons start whispering in my ears. When the sun goes down, darkness creeps in, coloring my world gray.
“If you dream vividly again, don’t forget that journal,” Dr. Nash is saying. “Write everything down for our session. Poppy, I really do want us to think of this as good news.”
“Good news,” I repeat, not feeling it.
“If your memories of that lost time are coming back, it means that you’re stronger. And if Detective Grayson has a lead, you may be closer to closure on what happened to Jack. I know you don’t think it matters, but it could be so healing to finally understand.”
That sketched face swims before me, just a drawing of someone who may or may not be real. Was that the last face Jack saw? The thought gnaws at my stomach, cinches my shoulders tight. Why wasn’t I with him?
I want to argue with her. How would it be healing to think someone hired a man to kill Jack? Who would do that? Why? A thought, something dark, tugs at me, something from one of my dreams last night. When I chase after it, it disappears.
“Maybe,” I say instead.
“I’ll see you Thursday,” she says. “But call me if you need me. Day or night. You know that.”
Then, just as I end the call and stop to put my phone in my bag—there he is, following a half a block behind me. A hulking man in a black hoodie, head bent. He stops suddenly when I turn to him, disappears into a doorway.
I quickly dial Detective Grayson, but he doesn’t pick up. Most people would be running away. But instead, I start moving back downtown in his direction.
“He’s here,” I tell Grayson’s voice mail. “Following me up Fifth Avenue. I’m at Fifth and Eighteenth, moving south, back downtown. He ducked into a doorway and I’m following.”
Which is crazy. Maybe even—dare I say it—suicidal. But I keep walking, hugging closer to the buildings, waiting for him to pop back out of the shadows. It’s broad daylight, the avenue as ever a rush of professionals, artists, students, tourists, shoppers flitting between Sephora and Armani Exchange, H&M, Victoria’s Secret; traffic a stuttering wave of sound and motion. But it’s all distant white noise as I move toward where I’m sure I saw him disappear. I press myself against the building and then spring into the doorway that’s set bac
k from the building wall.
There’s no one there. How can that be?
I reach and pull on the handle of the large black metal double door between Aldo and Zara. But it’s locked tight. Suddenly seized by anger, I find myself pounding on it.
“I saw you,” I yell. “I know you’re following me.”
The door stays locked, and no one comes. I get a few sideways glances, but what’s one more shouting crazy person on a city street?
I pound on the door again, the metal cool, the sound reverberating.
What is it? A delivery entrance? I stand back to look at it; it’s the armored entry to a keep, a demon hiding inside. Pure rage rises, a tidal wave. I don’t even try to hold it back, let it wash over me, take me away. I get to pounding again. Not just knocking, but channeling all my anger, all my frustration into that metal, barely even noticing that I’m hurting myself, that the door doesn’t budge, that no one comes.
And that’s how Detective Grayson finds me, violently banging on the door, yelling.
“Hey, hey,” he says, coming up from behind. I feel his hands on my shoulders, turn and shake him off hard. He steps back, hands up.
“Take it easy, Poppy.”
He’s illegally parked his unmarked Dodge Charger right beside us, traffic flowing around it, honking and annoyed at yet one more pointless obstacle to traffic flow.
“He disappeared through here,” I tell him. I’m breathless, sweating from the heat, the effort, the fear. I don’t like the way he’s looking at me, brow creased with concern.
“Okay,” he says putting strong hands on my shoulders. “Take a breath.”
I do that, feel some calm returning now that he’s here.
