by Lisa Unger
Is that what I am, a vulnerable person, someone broken and attractive to predators? Now it’s my turn to be exhausted by the world. It doesn’t fit, not with the guy I know. But then I guess I don’t really know Noah Avidon. Lately, I don’t even know myself.
“So, this guy,” says Grayson. “He’s someone new in your life?”
“Yes, of course,” I answer. “I told you that.”
“Are you certain?”
He’s twisting at that indentation on his ring finger, playing with a ring that’s no longer there.
“I met him online.” Keep your voice neutral, don’t get defensive, answer simply and honestly but offer nothing more than you must. That’s the advice my mother’s lawyer gave me when I was a “person of interest.” Why do I feel like I’m back under suspicion? The angry Grayson from my dreams, that face twisted with disdain and judgment. It floats between us. “That was the first time we met.”
His cup is empty. He turns it by its rim.
“The bartender at that club? Morpheus? She said that she’d seen you before. She told you as much, right?”
“So—you are following me.”
He ignores the accusation with a dismissive frown.
“But she said when you two were talking last night, she didn’t see him.”
I’m confused. “Who?”
“The man you were with last night, Noah Avidon. She’d seen him before, too. With you.”
My throat catches with fear. I remember the intensity of his stare when I couldn’t say if I’d been there before, how the man at the door seemed to know him.
“She said she called after you when she saw him, but you didn’t hear. She tried to text, but you didn’t answer.”
It’s not true. It can’t be.
“I’ll ask you again,” he says. His voice is low and he leans in close. “Is he new in your life? Or did you know him before? Maybe even before your husband died.”
“What are you asking me?” My voice comes up an octave, is too loud. The couple in the booth next to us stops their conversation to stare.
“Just answer the question.”
“No,” I say, leaning across the table, lowering my voice. “I’ve already told you how and where I met him.”
“How do you explain what the bartender said?”
“I can’t. I don’t know. She must be mistaken.” My certainty fades, replaced by a cold dawning. “Or—”
“Or,” he says. “Or you met him during those days you don’t recall. That blank space in your memory. And he’s been watching you ever since.”
I close my eyes and press into the dream memory for the face of the man who was with me. But there’s just nothing there.
“Or you knew him before.”
“Before?”
“Before your husband was killed.”
Sarah’s words come back, that Jack thought I might be having an affair, that she’d told Detective Grayson that. That’s why we keep coming back to me, my habits, my relationships. My cheeks grow hot with shame, with anger.
“There was never anyone but Jack,” I say.
He lifts his palms. “I’m not saying an affair,” he says. “Maybe you met him, he developed an obsession with you. Maybe without your even knowing. And—”
A woman laughs too loudly, her voice a grating cackle.
“What?” My voice sizzles with fear, with anger. “And then he hired someone to kill my husband? No. No. That’s impossible. That’s crazy.”
Grayson backs away a bit—a kind of surrender. “Is it?”
“Yes.” My voice is an angry, frightened hiss.
“Well, we’re bringing him in.” Voice flat, assured. Grayson never doubts himself, does he? He never wonders if the world around him is real or a dream, if he’s right or wrong. He doesn’t care. “Just for questioning.”
What can I say? He’ll do what he wants. Part of me wants to call Noah, to warn him. But unlike the detective I’m certain of literally nothing. What if I did know him before? What if Noah is the hooded man in the periphery? Was he devious enough to then play the role of concerned friend, edging his way into my life? That bitter coffee turns to acid in my stomach, the cup has gone cold.
“On another, darker note,” he says. Great. A darker note. “The guy, the one who claimed he could identify that killer for hire?”
“Yeah?”
“He’s dead.”
The words land hard, knocking the wind out of me. “How?”
“Beaten to death,” says Grayson. He must see me wince. “Sorry.”
“What does it mean?” I ask when I catch my breath.
I hate how my voice shakes, how afraid I sound. I used to be stronger than this. It’s as if Jack’s death was a blow that broke every bone in my body. Now I’m just a rattling mess, waiting to fall apart.
“Not sure,” he says. He flips his notebook shut. “But it does lend a certain credibility to his story.”
I’ve seen this before in Detective Grayson, the practicality that borders on apathy. He’s not wearing a suit today, instead a John Jay College sweatshirt and jeans, a worn denim jacket. A black cap and gloves rest beside him on the table.
“But you haven’t found the man, the one in the sketch.”
Grayson shakes his head, presses his mouth into a frustrated line.
“Is it another dead end?”
The detective looks down at his hands. His knuckles are swollen and red; he trains at a boxing gym on the Lower East Side, he has for years. He shared this once. He works out all his stress there, which must be considerable.
“Maybe,” he admits with a dip of his head. “I’m sorry. But I haven’t given up.”
The room is spinning—Merlinda, Noah, the unopened backpack. My dreams, the hooded man. My life is a Tilt-A-Whirl.
“You okay?” he says. “You look pale.”
“I have to go,” I tell him.
“Poppy,” he says, face grim. “Be easy for me to find.”
There’s the look I remember, a deep, probing stare, cold and searching.
Who are you? it asks. What have you done?
I feel it on my back as I slide away from him and walk quickly through the loud, crowded space.
Outside, the cold air hits me like a wave. A light drizzle falls; cabs speed past me as if I’m invisible. I walk past my office, my phone buzzing in my pocket. I should go in, go to work, call Layla, let her bring in her team of investigators and bodyguards. I should call my mother’s lawyer, tell him about my conversation with Grayson, bring the pack and whatever is inside to him. I could retreat behind the curtain of powerful people in my life. And there, I’d be safe—from whatever is happening in my mind, from what happened to my husband, from the man in the shadows.
But I’ve been sleeping for a year. I broke apart when Jack died, and I’ve been hiding beneath a blanket of grief and pills, numbing my pain, pushing away the truth, pretending it doesn’t matter. It does matter. Who we were, what happened to him, what’s happening now. No one can fix this but me.
I pull out my phone to see a text from Noah: Can we talk? The police came to see me. I know what they’re going to say to you. There’s more to me than that.
My screen is filled with texts and phone calls from Layla and my mother, too. I see the text from the bartender. She’s sent me another picture, one of Noah as he stood at the bar waiting for me. He’s staring at his drink, his face contemplative. It’s him, her text reads. The guy you were with tonight is the same man from last year. Did you already know that?
I stare at him. There’s nothing on his face that gives him away as a liar, as a stalker, as a man who rages at women. All I see there is wisdom, kindness. I remember how his lips feel, his touch. But hey, I’m crazy, remember? Completely losing my grip. So what the hell do I know?
Layla: Wh
ere are you?
Mac: Hey, Poppy. Layla’s driving me crazy. Can you please just go back to our place before she blows a gasket?
Mom: Call me.
Noah: I just want a chance to make you understand.
Layla: Poppy, please, just come home.
21
The space is spare, white walls, high ceilings, innards exposed—the venting, wires, an artful tangle above my head. It’s constructed like a maze, each surface showcasing a large format image—a bear covered in snow, a congregation of monkeys high in the trees, the soulful face of a gray wolf, eyes a sad, searing yellow. Some of Jack’s images hang here, too—a lone man atop a boat, pushing himself with a pole down the muddy waters of the Amazon River, a little girl with startling blue eyes kneeling in a field, hands and face marred with dirt but her gap-toothed smile wide and pure.
Soft flute music plays as I wind through the images. I have the sense of traveling to exotic, distant places, though Alvaro’s East Village gallery space can’t be more than seven hundred square feet. He has a small darkroom in back, also a room where he lives when he’s in the city—a bed, a desk, his computer and a wall of equipment. I’ve been here a few times—for Jack’s shows, for Alvaro’s.
What am I doing here? It’s like a safari into my past—Sarah, Merlinda, now Alvaro. I’m tracking the big game of my memory, my life with Jack. But the truth, now that I’m really looking, seems elusive, always slipping into the shadows, just ahead or just behind.
As I near the back, Alvaro emerges from a door built into the drywall, one that when closed disappeared almost completely. A chime announced my entrance, and there are cameras in two of the four corners of the room, red eyes blinking. He must have been watching me make my way through the gallery space.
“Poppy,” he says, shutting the door behind him.
We stand a moment, regarding each other. He has his black hair pulled back, his dark eyes trained on me. His face is all hard angles, his mouth a thin line. I should feel closer to him, I think. He should connect me to Jack, shouldn’t he? But there’s that familiar distance between us.
He tries to bridge it, moves closer, and takes me into an awkward embrace. His body is hard, stiff, as if he’s pushing me away even as he’s pulling me in.
“How are you?” he asks, releasing me. “It’s—good to see you.”
He looks older, fuller in the face. There’s something changed about him, maybe something softer, sadder through the eyes. Grief, I suppose. It ages us, introduces us to new ways of looking at the world. Alvaro, however I feel about him, lost his best friend.
“It’s good to see you, too.” I say it just because it seems rude not to.
And maybe it is good to see him in a way. I never felt quite relaxed around him, sensed that he was silently judging me and finding me not good enough for Jack. He’s just like that, Jack used to defend. He’s a watcher. But today what he thinks of me—or what he thought once—doesn’t matter much. He’s another person with a piece of Jack that I need to collect.
“Ben said you stopped by, that you needed to talk?” I say.
Alvaro and Jack share the same fashion sense, faded jeans and threadbare T-shirts, hoodies, boots. The I’m-too-cool-to-care look. His faded, ripped T-shirt reads Art should hurt.
“I just wanted to see how you were doing,” he says with a shrug. “I’ve been thinking about you, about Jack. A lot lately. How are you, Poppy? Really.”
I almost tell my favorite lie: I’m okay. Everything’s fine. Don’t worry about me. But I don’t bother.
“Can you stay a bit?” he asks when I don’t say anything.
I nod, not trusting my voice.
He walks over to the street door and locks it, and I follow him into the back.
The space is nicer than it used to be. He’s created a cozy sitting area; there’s a large screen television on the wall. The galley kitchen still only consists of an espresso machine and a microwave, a small sink. He motions for me to sit on the couch and he brews us some coffee, walks over with two tiny cups, handing me one. He sits across from me, and for a while we don’t say anything.
There’s a mirror on a stand in the corner and in it I see a wreck of a girl, my gray sweater washing me out, my jeans too big, my hair tied back messily. I try to smooth my hair out, but what’s the point?
“You went to see Sarah,” I say after an awkward moment of silence.
He nods. “A while back, before I left for the Congo.”
That was the kind of assignment Jack would have loved, travel to somewhere exotic, weeks in nature, searching for something elusive like newly released okapi, beauty leaping out at him everywhere—an adventure.
“Jack—he’s on my mind a lot,” says Alvaro. “Out there I was thinking—man, he would have loved this one.”
Is there going to be some jab about how Jack gave up the work he loved to settle down with me? How even if he’d been alive, he’d have turned down that job. But no. He’s watching me with that new stare; but it’s not judgment I see. It’s sadness.
Honestly, maybe the distance between us wasn’t just about thinking he didn’t like me. Maybe it was more that I never liked him. Alvaro was bad for Jack, luring him into behaviors that he wanted to leave behind—drinking too much, smoking, staying out too late, being wrecked for work and cranky at home the next day. He was that friend, the guy who doesn’t grow up, who connects your husband to the single, wild man he used to be. Maybe that’s why we could never be friends. I wanted Jack in one world; Alvaro wanted him in another, places utterly incompatible with each other.
“Jack would have wanted me to be there for you,” he says when I stay silent. “I haven’t been.”
This surprises me; that sadness I see has etched itself into the lines around his eyes, aged him. There’s a hard stab of guilt at my selfishness. Grief can be so myopic. You forget about what other people have lost.
“When things get rough, I tend to disappear,” he continues. “Jack knew that. You probably know that, too.”
This admission softens me.
“I disappeared, too,” I offer. “I fell down a rabbit hole.”
He watches me, as if he’s looking through all my layers.
“Your breakdown?”
Yes, my breakdown. Fragile Poppy couldn’t hold on to reality after she lost her husband. I search for the usual judgment on his face but it’s not there now.
“Tell me what happened? I heard some from Ben, from Maura, just the company line.”
I recount how two days after the funeral I disappeared, turned up in Layla’s lobby, spent a few days in a private hospital, and returned to reality with no memory of those lost days, and spotty recall of the days immediately preceding Jack’s murder. It sounds exactly as crazy as it is.
“And those memories—they won’t come back?”
“Actually, they might be coming back,” I say. “I guess that’s why I’m here.”
I tell him what’s been happening to me, the hooded man, my dreams that might be memories, the new leads Grayson is following up.
I could tell him the details about my visits to Sarah and Merlinda. But I don’t. I’m still not ready to look into that bag, and I don’t want him to know that Jack suspected I was unfaithful. I guess I just want the sliver of Jack that he had. In the same way that Layla knows a version of me that no one else does, maybe that’s true for Alvaro, too. Maybe if I can collect enough of those fragments, the picture of our life together—and his death—will be clearer.
“Was he happy?” That’s not the question I meant to ask. But maybe it’s what I really want to know. “With his choices? With our life?”
Alvaro blinks. “Don’t you know?”
“Was he hiding anything from me?”
Alvaro leans back in his seat, keeping his eyes on me.
“He loved you,” he says. “I
have to admit, I didn’t get it. I thought he was giving things up—for the agency, for you. It seemed to me like he was settling down, when there was still—I don’t know—so much out there.”
He lifts his shoulders, looks at some point past me.
“I didn’t understand. A wife. Trying for a baby. All the responsibility of an agency, a business. The Jack I knew—he was a wild man, an adventure junkie. It all seemed like an anchor to me. Maybe what you wanted, but not him.”
There’s a squeeze on my heart, a kind of tremble inside. “Is that how he felt—ultimately?”
“No,” said Alvaro. “He never felt that way. He loved you—more than anything. He was happy. Truly happy.”
We sit in silence a moment. It’s a different picture than the one Sarah painted, one where Jack was worried about me, our marriage, whether I was faithful or not. But maybe both these versions are equally true. Different moments in the same life.
“I understand now,” he says finally.
This new softness—it suits him. Maybe he’s in love, I think. Nothing else changes people as much, as quickly.
“He knew that—there’s nothing out there.” He points toward the front of the gallery. “The more you chase, and roam, sleep around, wake up hungover and empty, the further it gets—whatever it is.”
I watch him. I always thought he was just another jerk, another blowhard, a threat in some ways to my happiness with Jack, a lure back to the life of the roaming photographer. Maybe beneath the dark exterior, there’s more to him.
“It—whatever it is—it’s in here.” He taps at his chest.
I remember Maura talking about him in the conference room, my suspicions that she had feelings for him. Ben mentioned that Alvaro came by to pick her up from the office. I put the pieces together.
“Maura, right?” I say. “You’ve been seeing her?”
He smiles. “Yes,” he says. “And the big news is that she’s pregnant.”
There’s a hard and sharp twinge in my heart. I think about what Noah said, about how when you lose someone you don’t just lose that person, you lose the hope of everything you thought you’d be together. I thought we’d be parents, Jack pushing our baby in a stroller. I saw the birthday parties, the graduations, one day maybe taking her to college. Maybe we’d be travel photographers again, maybe. Retirees, eventually. One day, grandparents. All of those versions of us died with him.
