“What?”
“Nothing.” Utterly unconvincing.
“What just happened?” I looked behind me but saw nothing. No thug with a gun, no guy in a trench coat with bare feet, no spooky ghost, nothing. “Why do you look like that?”
“I don’t look like anything,” she said, still looking like she’d just been threatened with her life. The manicurist working on her nails filed down a little too close, and Crystal jumped.
“Oh, yeah, you’re fine.”
She gave me an exasperated look and stage-whispered, “I just saw a…”
“You just saw what? A what?” I realize now that this was almost me asking Why are you kicking me under the table?—the kind of ham-fisted ignorance usually reserved for the dunderheads I dated, but we were in New York, as famous for its danger as for its glamour, and I didn’t have time for her to be too polite to mention that my hair was about to catch on fire because the bright blue Macaroni and Cheese food truck outside the front window had just burst into flames.
“Rats,” she hissed.
“Rats?” This time I looked down. I did not want rats underfoot, climbing up my legs and into my underwear.
Both manicurists carried on as if they hadn’t understood a word Crystal had said, and for all I know they hadn’t.
“Three of them.” Crystal pulled her hand back. “Boom boom boom, and then they just flattened”—she smacked her palms together in a way that still gives me chills to remember—“and went through that space in the wall behind you.”
A chill ran up my spine. Or was it a rat?
“Behind me?”
She nodded frantically and pointed, and now I saw that the cheap plaster wall—like the stuff elementary school ceilings were made of—was pushed in a little bit at the seam. Right behind me.
Right behind me.
“Are they coming back?” I asked nonsensically. As if Crystal had suddenly turned into Jack Hannah, able to predict the behavior of wild, bubonic-plague-carrying animals.
“I don’t know!”
It was the least relaxing pedicure I’ve ever had, possibly even more uncomfortable for me than for Crystal because the Imagined is often so much worse than the Reality (though, for the record, I’ve had various problems with both).
Since that time, I have stepped much more gingerly through city streets in general, and been grateful for my generous suburban home in Northern Virginia, where critters don’t tend to be a problem.
So it was with a great deal of angst that I went to a big-box store and picked up every cleaning supply I could think of, as well as a rat trap I hated the idea of using but was determined to if there was evidence that I needed to.
I parked in the alleyway behind the store and used the back-door key Prinny had given me along with the apartment key. I didn’t have a store key, though I would have preferred my first few steps in—and possibly my scampering steps out—to be through the pristine, beautiful storefront, rather than the cement stairwell that loomed darkly before me. Of course, beggars can’t be choosers, and I was most definitely, at that point, a beggar.
And Prinny was a saint, because she didn’t have any reason in the world to trust me or help me, particularly given how my husband had treated her.
I turned on the flashlight app on my phone and tried to remember, with every step up into the inevitable expanse of darkness, that this was a blessing.
It was.
It reminded me of those photos that showed up all over the Internet a couple of years ago of the Parisian apartment abandoned during World War II and discovered perfectly preserved and Gigi-esque lovely under a light coat of dust, but more complete, in a very compact way, than I had expected.
There was a large room, probably above the sales floor of the store below, with an old sofa (with cushion, so I was afraid what might be in there), flanked by two side tables with marble tops. A leather wingback chair that was probably worth a pretty penny sat in the corner with a matching ottoman. There was also one of those round dish chairs that Pier One sells, but the bamboo base was visibly broken, and even if it hadn’t been, the cushion had probably been purchased by an acid fan at least two or three decades back.
That was it for furniture in that room. There was a nook of a kitchen off the back with a small built-in counter, but no stools. The two-burner electric stove would do fine if it worked; likewise the fridge, though I was sure that was going to be a big cleaning job. The bathroom, next to an unusually long, narrow closet that ran along the back wall, was just about what you would expect. Dirty linoleum floor, toilet too gross-looking even to puke into, and a shower/tub combination that I knew I’d never sit in no matter how clean I got it.
I began with the bathroom.
It wasn’t half an hour into the task—worse than anticipated because sometimes what you think is just some calcium deposit in a toilet isn’t—that I began to crave one of my newly invented energy teas, but given that it was 1:00 A.M., that was probably due to my overall exhaustion as much as to the daunting task before me, and if I had one now I wouldn’t get an ounce of sleep even when I was finished. My drive to move forward, away from Leif, was stronger than ever, and the very thought propelled me on.
Until the phone rang.
I had turned off location services on my regular phone (versus the pay-as-you-go phone I’d gotten at the grocery store on my way out of Dodge) but had somehow neglected to turn off the ringer. Or maybe it was a subconscious act so when he called I’d be reassured that he cared, although I certainly hadn’t been expecting the call, and the last thing in the world I felt was cared about.
My first reaction was to freeze in fear; my second, to flog myself for not having remembered to save myself from my first reaction by simply turning off the ringer.
My third reaction, which probably should have been my first and only, was a certain anger at the fact that it had taken him this long to notice I was gone and to have enough concern to call.
“Concern” might be the wrong word, but it’s all I can come up with. Anything conjuring genuine care feels wrong, as Leif’s first seventeen layers of reaction to anything are self-protective. Any reaction to my being missing would begin with his ego. Was I with someone else? Had someone else taken what was his? If I’d left of my own accord, had I told anyone and thereby embarrassed him?
I managed not to answer, and he didn’t leave a message.
So I returned to my work and tried not to think about it.
Twenty-one minutes later, he rang again.
Again no voice mail, but this time it was followed immediately by a text.
Where the fuck are you?
Touching, isn’t it?
I had been one hundred percent loyal to this man for years, yet when he came home from God knows what unholy activity in the middle of the night and found I was not there, his first reaction was Where the fuck are you?
It’s embarrassing to admit that after the surge of anger I felt, like the sudden and brief swell of pain when you stub your toe, I fell right back into the ditch of rationalization. My old habit. My old enemy.
He’s scared, my mind tried to say. People often manifest fear as anger.
That would mean he was scared a lot, though.
I was pondering this when the phone rang again. Holding it, right there in my hand, made it harder to ignore. It took every ounce of will and determination I had, and my hand hurt from clutching the phone so hard when I set it down.
Another text: I know you’re there, answer the damn phone!
A creepy feeling of being watched came over me, even though I absolutely knew he wasn’t literally seeing me. It was an interesting reaction, though, because while I realized he was domineering at home, I hadn’t quite put together that I felt so scrutinized that the feeling could follow me even into a space as small, dark, private, and unlikely as this.
It was like being watched by a ghost.
That was the thought in my head when the phone blasted again. I can’t even
say why (Habit? The need to stop the sound?), but I answered it. Before I said a word, I thought it was a mistake.
As soon as he spoke, I knew it was.
“Where. The fuck. Are you.” A question, stated as a command, blurred slightly by Lagavulin, the sixteen-year-old single malt Scotch he drank—neat if he was in a hurry, with water if seduction of any sort was in order. He thought it was less ostentatious to go with the sixteen- rather than the twenty-year-old. In any event, tonight was a no-water night.
“I’ve left you, Leif.” The words came so simply it was as though I were saying them in a play or something. They didn’t sound true. They didn’t feel true. They sounded silly and airy. Dumb. Not strong and biting, like I would have liked to sound.
His laugh proved that he felt the same.
The humiliation of that genuine chuckle went deep in me.
“I mean it!” I insisted, sounding like a child on the playground. Yes, I did! Ask Mom!
“Get your ass back here before anyone notices you’re gone, Diana. Jesus.”
“Took you awhile to notice I was gone.”
“What?”
“It’s”—I looked at my watch—“two in the morning now. What took you so long to notice that your wife was gone?”
“I was busy.”
A million faces of busy floated through my mind. Any of the hot women who worked at his office; the woman who lived two doors down with the foreign husband I’d never seen in the three years we’d lived there; the barely legal bank teller with the red hair and green eyes who might have just stepped out of Ireland or the song “Jolene”; and, of course, there was the Plumber—and who knows how many more?
Yeah, truer words he’d never spoken.
“You are definitely busy. That’s the problem.”
“Get your ass home.” He was having no more of this. Even the small veneer of niceness was gone. The courtesy of pretending to be a faithful husband even when the truth was more undeniable than gravity.
“No.”
A pause. A menacing pause. Then a quiet voice that was more shocking than a shout could ever be. “Now.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want questions from anyone. You have a position here, and you need to fulfill it.”
“A job to do?”
“If that’s how you want to look at it.”
“Then I want a raise.”
“Diana.” I hated his voice. It was like a movie villain’s suddenly. “If you want to look at this as a job, then you probably don’t want to be fired, do you?”
My chest tightened. “Is that a threat?”
“That’s a warning.”
“A little too late.” I took a breath and worked up a little insincere bravado. “I already quit.”
“You can’t quit.”
“I did.”
“Where the fuck are you?”
“None of your fucking business.” I never spoke to him that way. Part of me cowered in anticipation of retribution.
Another pause. I couldn’t tell if it was him deciding his next move or him already knowing it.
“Diana.” A weary sigh. “I don’t have time for this. I don’t have interest in this. You need to get back here, now, and stop this bullshit, or the police are going to get involved.”
I gave a spike of laughter. “You’re going to call the police and tell them your wife ran away from you? Somehow I can’t see that. The great Leif Tiesman never admits anything is out of his control.”
“I didn’t say I was going to call the police and tell them my wife ran away,” he said evenly. “I said if you didn’t come back now, the police were going to get involved.”
“Right, so obviously—” I stopped. Yes, obviously. But not obviously he was going to call the police for help in finding his poor, lost wife and returning her safely home.
No, his implication was far more sinister. And so subtle that I might have missed it. Yet even though he’d never threatened me outright before—he’d never had to, I was such a good little wifey—I recognized it almost as soon as I heard it.
The worst of all possible threats.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” I said, my voice like a flat basketball, thudding on the court.
“Try me.”
Man, that answer came so easily to him. After all our time together, after all the love I thought I’d built for (and from) him, all the bricks we’d set and mortared to build the foundations of a marriage, it was that easy for him to eliminate me if I became inconvenient for him.
Or at least to contemplate it.
I knew the difference between something he was saying for effect and something he was saying because he meant it deeply.
He meant this, deeply and easily.
He was a monster.
For so long, he had been the Leif I could make explanations for, and now it was so obvious that he was the horrible man I thought he was. I wasn’t wrong. I wasn’t imaginative. I had lied to myself and turned him into a reasonable person, not the other way around.
“Why not just let me go, then?” I asked, doing my damndest to keep my voice steady and strong. “Why the threats, Leif? Why go so low-rent? That’s not like you.”
“This isn’t like you,” he countered. “And, more to the point, it’s not like me to have a live wire out there, about to throw sparks in any direction at any time with little or no provocation.”
“Little or no provocation?” That was the wrong thing to say. Don’t incite him. “I don’t have any interest in tangling with you at all,” I covered quickly. “I want to move on, get out of your realm. Will you give me a reasonable divorce?”
“No one divorces me.”
I hesitated. Not because I was thinking about obeying him or going back, despite his incredibly romantic pleas. No, I was scared. Straight up scared. “Well, then, what on earth do you want me to do?” I asked, now allowing all the fear and hopelessness into my voice.
It was real, even though I wished it weren’t, but it was also going to serve me a whole lot better than pissing him off with bravado.
“I will say this one more time.” He expelled a long breath, and I could imagine him pinching the bridge of his nose. “You come back, you stay in, you shut up, you speak when instructed and at no other time.”
I backed up to the dusty sofa and reached blindly behind me for it, then sat, dropping my forehead into my free hand. “What happened to us? When did you become my keeper?”
“The moment you became an escaped prisoner.”
“And before that?” I couldn’t help the tears that came. And, worse, the sadness that sank my heart. “Before I escaped, was I your prisoner then, too?”
“Was it so bad?” I could see him shrug. Meh.
Like it meant so incredibly little to him that my whole life with him had been a lie.
And that, goddammit, I cared enough, even now, to feel huge grief at its loss.
“No,” I lied, and stood up, my legs moving like mechanical limbs or something driven by remote. “No,” I repeated, going to the door and opening it quietly, thinking to throw the deadbolt on my way out, so it wouldn’t lock behind me. “Obviously it hasn’t been that bad. I love you, Leif.” The words tasted like poison on my tongue now. In my whole mouth. Like when you spray disinfectant in the air and accidentally inhale it.
“And?” He wasn’t sure about my sudden turnaround. He wasn’t that stupid, and he wasn’t that easy.
But when it came to his ego, he wasn’t that smart or complicated, either.
“I need to know that you will never, ever cheat on me again,” I said, because that was the first—and very least—demand he would have expected of me.
“Who said I ever did?”
This was chess, I reminded myself. I was playing chess. He didn’t have that much faith in me, though; he thought I was a blind idiot, so he was still playing checkers. If I went too soft, he’d figure me out. I’d already gone off on him about cheating; there was no putting the
smoke back in the chimney. So no, I had to go hard, but not too hard.
“You know you did,” I said. “You know it, I know it, she knows it. In fact, a whole bunch of shes know it.” I sounded more like myself now, even though I didn’t feel like myself at all, going down the dingy, dark cement steps of my new digs and walking out onto the eerie quiet of wee-hours M Street. “I don’t even want to talk about them anymore. I don’t want to think about them. But there cannot be any more.” I turned right at the corner and headed south two blocks.
“If you don’t go fishing,” he said, oozing confidence, “you won’t find yourself with a bunch of fish.”
“Likewise.” I could have puked.
“So you’re coming back,” he asked, and it wasn’t even a question. I could tell from his tone that he was sure he’d won, sure my tail was firmly between my legs and I was returning to the “safety” of his rule.
I sighed.
He chuckled. I gagged. “That’s a yes, then.” Not a question, a statement. Naturally.
“I suppose.” I wished I could lie as easily as he could. “But I drove for hours and just got here when you called.” I prayed my casualness was convincing. “So I’m just going to sleep first. I already paid for the night, after all. Or you did.” Was I laying it on too thick?
“There’s nothing on the credit card statement,” he said. Because of course he’d checked.
“Cash, Leif. You think I wanted you to know I came down here?”
“Down—wait, you went all the way to Hilton Head?”
Hilton Head was one of my favorite vacation destinations. For a brief time I’d owned a condo there and had a lot of fun fixing it up and renting it out, in addition to going down whenever I could for my own time off. When I’d said “down here” to him, I only wanted to indicate I hadn’t gone north, but he’d taken it and run with it, and I was going to let him.
One Less Problem Without You Page 14
