The Ex

by Lutz, John

  David got to work and didn’t think any more about Lisa except to wish her luck job hunting.

  Lisa didn’t report for work that day, nor did she phone in sick.

  Her father, worried now, went back to her apartment to see if she’d returned there. He rang the doorbell, knocked, then used his key to enter.

  The apartment was still and silent. There was a faint, peculiar odor in the air. He couldn’t quite place it, but it disturbed him though he couldn’t say why. He did know that for some reason it carried him back more than thirty years to the early days of the Vietnam War, when he’d been an Army infantryman. He might have guessed it to be the coppery scent of blood, but thirty years was a long time.

  “Lisa!” he called.

  “Lisa!” More worried. Afraid. Maybe with the same premonition as Josh’s.

  Before leaving the apartment, he walked around to make sure she wasn’t there ill and unable to speak, perhaps unconscious. He looked in the kitchen, the bathroom, the bedroom.

  Everywhere but under the bed.

  Josh called Lisa’s apartment three times that weekend, then Sterling Morganson called him with bad news of a lesser nature than Josh had feared. There was a glitch in the software program that had to be dealt with before Monday, when the agency’s new system was going into effect. Everyone was instructed to come in to work Sunday afternoon to solve the problem.

  Josh wondered if “everyone” would include Lisa.

  45

  After achieving the proper mix from the faucet so the spiraling stream of water was lukewarm, Molly poured bubble bath powder directly into the tumult of swirling crosscurrents at the bathtub’s rubber drain plug.

  She sat on the curved edge of the claw-footed tub and watched the water level rise, then disappear beneath the spreading, foamy layer of bubbles. It was nine o’clock Sunday evening. David had gone into Sterling Morganson to help program the computers for the new system they were to begin using the next day. He’d phoned at five to say he’d be late. Nine o’clock was late, all right. But Molly wasn’t surprised. His behavior hadn’t adhered to any sort of schedule or structure for weeks now.

  She’d called him at work at seven to see if he’d left, and he’d answered the phone, complaining about the unreasonableness of the tyrannical Morganson in having his employees work so late on a Sunday. At least he hadn’t lied to her; he was actually at Sterling Morganson. And she knew it was true that the agency was instituting changes to make the operation more cost-effective.

  There was actually no reason for her to have thought David wasn’t really in his office. Yet she’d suspected his phone wouldn’t be picked up. In fact, she knew her phone call might have been an effort to confirm her suspicion that he’d lied to her. Dr. Mindle would no doubt have a medical term for that sort of behavior.

  The bubbles were almost at the halfway point of the tub. Molly stood up and slipped out of her jeans and panties, her T-shirt and bra. She left them in a pile on the tile floor. Catching sight of herself unexpectedly in the medicine cabinet mirror, she noticed how she’d begun to carry herself, with her shoulders slightly hunched. Was twenty-seven too early to begin worrying about developing dowager’s hump?

  Leaning over the bathtub, she twisted both large white porcelain handles to the off position. Then she submerged a hand to make sure the water temperature was right. It was a bit too warm, but it would do.

  After testing the temperature again with her big toe, she started to climb into the tub.

  She stopped when she noticed that Muffin had entered the bathroom through the half-open door and was lying curled cozily on the clothes she’d just taken off.

  No sense loading the washer with cat hair, she thought.

  She withdrew her foot from the tub, shooed the reluctant Muffin from the clothes, and put them in the wicker hamper alongside the washbasin.

  Finally she was able to settle into the old, deep bathtub. The warm water was well up on her breasts, the lush layer of bubbles almost to her chin. She began to perspire almost immediately, but she knew the water would soon cool enough to be comfortable.

  Luxuriating in the warm bath, she rested the back of her head on the gentle curve of porcelain and let herself relax. She took the brown washcloth from where it was draped over the side of the tub, submerged it, then raised it and wrung it out so trickles of warm water played over her shoulders and upper arms. Muffin had returned and was curled on the hamper lid, watching her as if mildly amused and contemptuous of such bizarre human behavior.

  This was as secure and sane as Molly had felt in days. For the moment, anyway, her life seemed under control. She knew where her husband was, and Michael had just gone to sleep in his bedroom.

  In a way she was glad David was working so late. The strain of recent events was creating a barrier between them; at times they were uncomfortable in each other’s presence. Silences had begun to weigh.

  She raised the washcloth again, let water trickle over her, then closed her eyes and spread the wet cloth over her face, breathing through its soapy warmth.

  A shrill clanging sound, like a school bell, shattered her peace and relaxation.

  Muffin looked startled and leaped down from the hamper and fled.

  Molly wadded the washcloth and hurled it into the layer of bubbles, then slapped the edge of the tub.

  Damn! Another fire alarm!

  “There is no fucking fire!” she told herself softly. “No smoke, no smell—only the alarm.”

  But she couldn’t be sure. And she wasn’t the only one in the apartment.

  Sighing, she dutifully climbed out of the tub and dried off with a thick towel. Then she opened the hamper and dug out the clothes she’d just thrown into it.

  By the time she was dressed, she could hear Michael crying beneath the din of the clanging alarm bell.

  He became quiet immediately when she picked him up. He rested his head on her shoulder, maybe going back to sleep despite the clamor. This wasn’t his first fire alarm; he’d attained a veteran’s nonchalance.

  Michael was getting heavy fast, but she decided against the stroller. If he became too burdensome, she could always put him down and he could walk.

  In the corridor she saw a knot of neighbors waiting by the elevator. Elderly Mrs. Grace from down the hall. A middle-aged married couple, Irv and Rachel Teller, who lived in 2G. The young blond man Molly thought was an actor grinned at them as he walked past still buttoning his shirt. He swung open the door to the landing and Molly heard his rapid footfalls on the stairs.

  Molly sniffed the air and glanced toward the ceiling. Still no scent or sight of smoke. It would have surprised her if there had been. These repeated false alarms were becoming wearisome. She remembered David speculating that the faulty wiring causing the alarms could itself start a fire. He’d been joking, perhaps, but maybe it was possible. She decided to write a letter to the management company and add her voice to the tenants’ numerous complaints about the malfunctioning alarm system.

  “Take the stairs,” a thirtyish, heavyset woman, whose name Molly had never learned, said to her roommate, a tiny, thin blond woman about forty. “You know we’re supposed to take the stairs and not the elevator in case of fire.”

  “There is no fire,” Irv Teller told them in disgust. “It’s the faulty wiring again. They keep promising to fix it but they don’t. It’s the second false alarm this month.”

  Both women stared at him as if he hadn’t spoken, then followed the young actor down the stairs.

  “So where’s your husband, Molly?” Rachel Teller asked.

  Molly shifted Michael’s weight against her. “Working late tonight.”

  “Uh-hum,” Rachel said.

  “Too bad,” Irv said sarcastically. “He’ll miss all the excitement.”

  A few more tenants arrived simultaneous with the opening of the elevator doors. Obviously they wouldn’t all fit in the elevator, so several of them made for the stairs. Molly, the Tellers, and three men and a woma
n Molly knew only to say hello to, rode the elevator down to the lobby.

  When they went outside, Molly saw many of the other tenants standing in three or four tight groups across the street, staring glumly at the building. No one seemed to be seriously considering the possibility of a real fire.

  Molly crossed the street and joined them, glad to put Michael down. Still sleepy, he stood leaning with his head pressed to her thigh.

  The tenants were talking casually among themselves, about the weather, baseball, the sad quality of summer movie releases, about everything but the notion that the apartment building might be on fire. The night was warm, and Molly hadn’t taken time to towel completely dry from her bath. Her clothes were sticking to her uncomfortably, and residue soap from the bubbles was starting to make her itch.

  The alarm suddenly cut off, leaving the night in silence except for the usual neighborhood noises of traffic and occasional voices and laughter.

  But nothing else changed. A police car cruised past, and one of the uniformed cops glanced with disinterest at the tenants, but the car didn’t stop. The alarm wasn’t the sort that summoned the fire department automatically, and apparently no one had phoned. Even people in the surrounding buildings knew by now that most likely there wasn’t a fire.

  The tenants’ attitude became one of irritation tempered by resignation. They were New Yorkers and conditioned to standing and waiting.

  After a few minutes, one of the downstairs tenants who hadn’t left the building appeared at the front door and yelled across the street to them that it was another false alarm and they could return to their apartments.

  Several people groaned, as if disappointed that their homes and possessions weren’t actually threatened by flames. They’d been fooled again. Slowly they crossed the street and began reentering the building.

  Molly lifted Michael and joined them.

  Michael went back to bed without an argument, and almost immediately he was on his way to falling asleep. Something was going right this evening.

  Molly returned to the bathroom and lowered a hand into the bathtub to test the temperature of the water beneath the bubbles. It was still warm, and there were plenty of bubbles left.

  She worked her damp body out of her clothes, dropped them back into the hamper, and lowered herself again into the tub. Trying to recapture her previous level of relaxation, she sank deeper and rested the back of her head against the cool porcelain. Enough bubbles had disappeared so that she could see patches of water now, but no washcloth. She fished around for it but didn’t feel it.

  Then she noticed its dark form floating just beneath the surface near her right thigh.

  She reached for it, lifted it dripping from the water, and stared in horror.

  It wasn’t the washcloth.

  It was the limp, dead body of Muffin.

  Molly recovered from her shock enough to drop the dead cat and scramble screeching out of the tub. It was all one frantic motion and she felt the cat’s claws scrape her stomach. She splashed water everywhere. Her bare feet slipped on the wet tile and she fell to the floor, bumping her knee on the toilet bowl.

  Her leg throbbing with pain, she staggered from the bathroom, not looking back, her feet sliding and her toes curled to find traction by digging into the grouted spaces between the floor tiles. Bubbles had splashed up in her face and soap stung her right eye and blurred her vision.

  By the time she’d reached the phone in the living room, she’d stopped screaming but her breath was rasping and her entire body was broken out in goose bumps and trembling. She’d never felt so horror-stricken and so vulnerable.

  So naked.

  Curled on the floor with the phone, it took her three fumbling tries before she punched out the number of the direct line to David’s office.

  46

  They stood in the lobby of the Wharman Hotel near Columbus Circle. It was a small, mostly residential hotel, with wood paneling, a modest registration desk, and a single elevator with an old-fashioned brass arrow-and-numeral floor indicator above its door. Rates were reasonable because the Wharman hadn’t the amenities of the larger hotels, no restaurants, bars, shops, or ballrooms.

  The desk clerk was in his early twenties and sharply dressed in a blue suit, white shirt with red tie. He had neatly trimmed dark hair and a smooth complexion and looked more like a leader in the Young Republicans than a hotel employee. If there was a bellman, he was nowhere in sight.

  Clutching Michael’s hand, Molly stood off to the side near a chair and table and watched David check them in. At her feet on the waxed parquet floor were Michael’s folded stroller, a suitcase, and a large dufffle bag.

  She found herself studying David’s face. He was obviously under more strain than he usually allowed her to see. Like her, he was trying hard to hold everything together and keep his world from disintegrating.

  The young desk clerk turned away from him to swipe his Visa card, and David quickly wiped a hand over his face, massaging his Adam’s apple between thumb and forefinger as if his throat was constricted. His expression became placid and he glanced toward her and smiled to let her know he was thinking of her; he was hiding behind his facade again.

  When he’d gotten the room key, he came over to her and lifted the duffle bag and suitcase. Without a word, she picked up the stroller and they went with Michael to the elevator.

  David set down the suitcase and pressed the button with the Up arrow. After a pause, the brass arrow on the floor indicator trembled as if stuck on 12, then began moving spasmodically toward lower numbers.

  “Did we remember to pack my electric razor?” David asked.

  She knew he was trying to restore normalcy, to get her mind off what had happened to Muffin. The horror in the bathtub. Who had done it and why.

  “I’m not sure,” Molly said, not looking at him.

  The arrow stopped at 4, then within a few seconds began lurching downward again.

  “No matter. It isn’t far. I can go back and get it, along with anything else we forgot.”

  “No!” she said vehemently. “You will not go back inside that apartment tonight. None of us will!”

  The elevator arrived and they waited for a man cradling a bouquet of roses to make his exit, then they stepped in and David set the luggage at his feet and pressed the button for the fifth floor.

  “Okay, Mol,” he said reassuringly when the elevator door had closed. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll go into work late again tomorrow. We can go to the apartment together in the morning after dropping Michael off at Small Business.”

  “Julia,” Michael said, at the mention of Small Business.

  “All right,” Molly said. “We’ll do what has to be done there, then we’ll get out. We don’t live there anymore.”

  He leaned close and kissed her cheek. “Another thing we can do tomorrow is sign the lease for the new apartment.”

  The elevator door slid open, David stooped and picked up the suitcase and duffle bag, and they walked down a wide, gray-carpeted hall illuminated by indirect lighting set in carved wooden sconces on the pale green walls.

  They stopped before the door to room 512.

  David unlocked then swung the door open. He reached inside and flicked a wall switch.

  After standing aside to let Molly and Michael enter, he followed with the luggage.

  The room was small but high-ceilinged, well appointed with a dresser, desk, and a TV with a VCR on it on a wooden stand near the foot of the bed. Molly noticed right away there was no scent of tobacco smoke; David must have anticipated her wishes and asked for a nonsmokers’ room. There was a large closet with sliding doors, one of which was a full-length mirror. What she could see of the bathroom was all gray tile and modern, with gleaming chromed plumbing and frosted-glass shower doors. Nothing like the apartment’s old bathroom where Muffin—

  She veered her mind away from vivid and disturbing images, concentrating instead on the room. It was cool and quiet, with light beige walls
that were almost white. Here and there hung restful framed prints. Two of the prints were very stylized fox-hunting scenes, erect, red-coated riders on horses leaping over hedges to race over a green expanse of field bordered by trees. It was a bright, sunny day in the prints and everyone other than the fox was having a fine time. The room’s carpeting was a dark green that matched the green in the fox-hunting scenes as well as the long green drapes and green, padded headboard. There was a small roll-away bed in a corner for Michael. The wall switch had turned on a tall brass floor lamp with a cream-colored shade that cast a soft light over everything.

  “Just another hotel room,” David said, hoisting the suitcase onto the bed to unpack, “but it looks comfortable.”

  To Molly it looked like much more than that.

  It looked like sanctuary.

  47

  Molly knew Deirdre had probably left for work, but she still felt a sense of foreboding, a tingle of fear, as she crossed West Eighty-fifth Street with David to enter their apartment.

  They’d overslept that morning. David had left the Wharman while Molly was getting herself and Michael dressed, and returned with some orange juice and a cinnamon roll from a nearby bakery for Michael’s breakfast. After delivering Michael to Small Business in a cab, Molly and David had a leisurely breakfast on Amsterdam. The truth was, after what had happened to Muffin, and all that had gone on before, neither of them was anxious to return to the apartment.

  But here they were, Molly nervously glancing up at their windows as they crossed the street, David staring straight ahead and setting a slow pace.

  The building seemed to engulf her as they entered the foyer, but she said nothing as they walked to the elevator.

  In the second-floor corridor, her heart was racing as David fit his key in the door to their apartment. Even the harsh grating of the key in the lock was now an unfamiliar sound. Full of their possessions though it might be, this place was no longer home.