Bad Habits

by Amy Gentry

  We’re coming closer to the end of this. A bottle of wine shattering on a cold stone floor, the glitter of Gwen’s engagement ring in my pocket, the icy crust of the far-flung stars: they all merge in my peripheral vision, shrapnel from some distant explosion that happened in the past. The lights on a spinning carousel, a mirrored baton twirling in the sun.

  “What do you mean?” I say softly. “ ‘Everything I did’?”

  But Gwen is looking down at her feet. “You’ve always made me feel so guilty about what I have,” she says slowly. “I wonder, is that because it helps you justify the way you treat people? The way you use them?”

  “What people?” I take a step closer, but she doesn’t notice.

  “Connor. Me.” She looks up and lets out an ugly little laugh. “Look at us, all of us who were in the Program together. Who came out on top? That night at the farmhouse, I lost my career, my lover, and my best friend. All in one night. At the time, I couldn’t make sense of it. But after tonight, I’m finally starting to see.”

  She wraps her sweater tightly around herself and starts to walk back. “Leave the ring at the front desk. Tell them I didn’t answer the door. Tell them anything, I don’t care. I don’t ever want to see you again.”

  I can’t let her leave.

  I step in front of her, blocking her exit. “It’s not over until you tell me what you’re talking about.”

  “You know. You all but told me earlier tonight, in the bar.” Her voice sounds weary, but a thread of rage trembles beneath.

  “What? What did I say?” Panic makes me reckless.

  “You really don’t remember?”

  I shook my head.

  “You sobbed on my shoulder. Apologized, said everything was your fault. Wallowed in self-pity. Said you were scared you weren’t capable of love. And I actually felt sorry for you.” She laughed, but it was raw. “How could I be so blind, not to realize what it all meant.”

  “What?” She turns away, and I grab her shoulder. “Out with it. You’ve been hinting around at something all night. What are you accusing me of, Gwen?”

  She looks at me as if I’m beneath contempt. The way I’ve always felt, but never had to see reflected in her eyes before. She spits out a single word. “Murder.”

  15

  Well, well.” Rocky held up a vodka bottle, sloshing it a little to show that it was half-empty. “If I’d known this was a party, I’d have brought enough to share.”

  I stumbled backward onto the bed and covered myself with the rumpled sheets, eyes darting instinctively to Bethany. Her face was a rigid mask of calm, but I could see her knuckles whiten for a moment as she gripped the back of the chair behind her. Then she sat down, crossed her legs, and threw one arm over the chairback. “Hello, darling.”

  “Working late, Beth?”

  “I might ask the same of you. You’re up past your bedtime, dear.”

  They had snapped into character immediately—​her amused disdain, his buffoonery—​but there was a crackle of danger in the air.

  Rocky shrugged. “You said you were going back to the apartment. I was in the mood for privacy, so I thought I’d come out here and see what you find so appealing about this place.” He looked at me. “Now, of course, I understand quite well.”

  “Of course, darling. It’s your farmhouse too, and you can have your friends over any time you want,” Bethany purred. “Are we expecting Gwen? I’ll put on some tea.” She started to rise.

  “Sit down,” he growled.

  Bethany sank into her seat slowly, as if appeasing a snarling dog. “It is still Gwen, isn’t it? You haven’t moved on to the next one?”

  “I think I’ll ask the questions,” Rocky said, resuming his pleasant affect. “Since I’m the one wearing the clothes.”

  He took a few steps toward me, and I flinched, instinctively clutching the sheet to my chest.

  “Mac.” He nodded a greeting. “Gwen always told me what a hard worker you were, but I had no idea . . . !”

  “Is she really coming?” The thought that Gwen might walk in any minute was enough to break my silence.

  “Any minute now.”

  I started to reach for my clothes on the floor, and then snatched my hand back at his glare.

  “What’s the rush? We’re all friends here. Practically related, now that you’ve fucked my wife.” I opened my mouth, but he waved a hand to cut me off, his face losing a little of its edge. “Don’t worry about it. Trust me, I know how it is. First comes the flattery. ‘You’re a brilliant writer, Mac.’ No, no, that’s not it. Let me think.” He gave me a calculating glance. “ ‘You’re so strong.’ ”

  I flushed.

  “Ah, bull’s-eye! And then came the sex. Obviously.” He eyed me, the hardened look descending again like a veil. “Next, she showed you the cracks in her armor. She hinted at a tragic secret in her past. An abusive ex, perhaps?” Rocky smiled bitterly. “Or was it me she warned you about? Did she tell you about my temper? My fits of jealousy? This?” He held the bottle at arm’s length and sloshed it back and forth. “Perhaps she told you about the little things I did when I was a boy, for my uncle in Kiev. He was not a nice man and they were not nice things, not at all. But I assure you, I had to do them. You understand, don’t you, Mac?”

  For the first time I felt his full animal force, a coiled tension that could unleash itself in my direction at any moment. But even as he lurched toward me, looming over the bed, I sensed that it was all a performance for Bethany. He stared at me, but he was seeing her, threatening her, hating her. It made the situation feel more volatile, not less.

  “Bethany is fascinated by violence,” he went on. “The more I hated my brutish past, the more she loved it. Right, darling?”

  He smashed the vodka bottle to the floor at his feet. I screamed in terror, but he only laughed.

  “I wonder what it is that fascinates her about you, Mac?”

  With an expression of sudden boredom, Bethany stood up. Without hurrying, she pulled a paisley silk robe from a hook on the wall, threw it on, belted it, and dipped into the pocket for a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. When the lit cigarette was crackling in her hand, she leaned against the desk and gestured toward me. “Be a gentleman, darling. Mac will catch a chill.” She crossed her arms languidly in front of her chest and took a drag.

  Rocky bowed mockingly to me and turned his back.

  My hands shook as I wriggled into my clothes. When I stood up, relieved to be dressed again, the loft seemed to shrink around me. It was built for two, not three, and every nerve in my body screamed that we were too close. I had to get out of here before Gwen came. The thought of her tangled up in this sordid mess nauseated me.

  Before I could make a move, Rocky blocked the stairs. Bethany touched his arm, and he angrily threw her off.

  “Rocky, darling, be sensible. This is the first time I’ve crossed a line—​since you, of course,” she added affectionately, reaching out to caress his cheek. Rocky jerked away and she took a step back. “Besides, I’ve never given you a moment’s trouble about your little infatuations.”

  “My ‘little infatuations,’ as you call them, are what I get for being such a good boy,” Rocky said. “Always falling in line. Wasn’t that the deal?”

  “The deal is that you don’t come after my students,” she snapped. “And you certainly don’t fall in love with them.”

  “Gwen was never your student,” he said with scorn. “That makes you crazy, doesn’t it? You’re supposed to get the ones with promise, and I get the rest. You were always greedy, but losing Gwen has made you rapacious.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Go on, dear. I don’t think Mac knows yet just how much you hate powerful women.”

  “And that has made you careless,” he continued. “Or else you would never have made a mistake like that.”

  It took me a second to realize he was talking about me.

  “What do you care? Aren’t you going to ride off into the sunset with
Gwen the Good?” She bit off the words slowly. “You ingrate. I’ve done everything for you.”

  “Oh, yes. You plucked me out of the waste bin and married me so I could stay in the country and fuck you. You even built me a fabulous career, the better to reflect your glory. Only I’ve been such a dreadful disappointment, haven’t I? My god, I should have stood up to you years ago.” His face twisted with a strained conviction. “Gwen believes I can be a good man. She loves the best in me, not the worst. And she’ll succeed on her own. The Joyner belongs to her, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  I had been listening with mounting disbelief, and now the words flew out of me. “Rocky doesn’t know?”

  They both turned to me.

  “Mac!” Bethany cried sharply.

  But I couldn’t stop myself. A moment ago Rocky had jeered at me for falling for Bethany’s bullshit, but I’d only been under her spell a few months. He had known her ten years. I started laughing helplessly. “I’m sorry. I was just so sure he was in on it. But he was your first mark, wasn’t he? Not the Robert Joyner at all. The Elizabeth Armstrong.”

  He didn’t even recognize the name. Poor Rocky. “What is this about, Bethany?”

  “Mac, stop. You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Bethany looked frightened.

  Rocky’s face went a dark, ugly red. He stepped toward me again, shaking, and said quietly, “Tell me, Mac. Tell me what I don’t know.”

  “Haven’t you ever wondered how Bethany got so big, so fast? She’s blackmailing Joyner. She can give the fellowship to anyone she wants. The farmhouse, both of your jobs, and of course all her wins—​it’s graft. Don’t feel bad.” I was still hiccupping with laughter, but it was no longer a relief. I just couldn’t stop. “She learned from the best. Her ex-husband was a con man.”

  Rocky turned slowly back to Bethany.

  “She’s lying, Rocky.” She started talking quickly. “She wants to come between us. She hates you for not picking her. She’s always been jealous of Gwen.”

  Something was unraveling in Rocky, and hearing Gwen’s name snapped another thread. I couldn’t bear the tension in the tiny, airless loft and felt overcome by the urge to smash it. “I bet she wouldn’t tell you his name. He was too dangerous, right?”

  “You know nothing, Mac,” she whispered.

  “Bethany’s ex-husband was Joyner’s old business partner, Peter Armstrong.”

  Bethany looked down.

  Rocky stared at her, contempt plainly written on his face. “So you’re a fraud. And I’m just another misfit toy for your collection.”

  Bethany cast him a scathing glance. “And what do your protégés all have in common, Rocky? They always drop out before I can get a good look at them.”

  “Better they get out early, before they turn into us,” Rocky said bitterly.

  She guffawed. “I couldn’t care less whose career you ruin. I’ve never been one to interfere. But let’s not pretend you’re doing them any favors. You fuck them right out the door.” She stubbed out her cigarette on the aluminum desk.

  “At least mine tend to stay alive.”

  She flinched as if she’d been struck. When she looked back up at him, her face was blanched white with hate. “Gwen makes you feel like quite the man, doesn’t she? Not like me. And she’s clever enough to keep you feeling that way. You’ll enter your distinguished phase the way real men are supposed to: with a full head of hair and a beautiful young wife devoted to your career. Does she want babies, Rocky? The way I never did?” She nodded shrewdly at his reaction. “Yes, I thought so. And she’ll take a long leave of absence to look after them, won’t she? Perhaps never to return. And everything will be right with the world at last.”

  Rocky stepped toward Bethany, his eyes alight with a dangerous glow.

  But she kept talking, her chin jutting out defiantly. “Or maybe it won’t. You’re not strong, Rocky. You’re weak, weak, weak.” She shook her head, disgusted. I’d never seen her so angry. “When you don’t have me to blame for your failures, how long will it be before you start taking it out on the nearest woman?”

  “Gwen loves me. She doesn’t believe I’m like that.”

  “You are like that. You’re a wild dog. You should thank me for keeping you on a leash all these years.”

  He clenched his fist, and she sauntered up closer, so that he towered over her.

  “Let’s get one thing straight,” she said. “You have benefited from our relationship every day of your career, every day of your miserable existence since I first called on you in that seminar where you were, let’s face it, humiliating yourself.”

  I recognized her tone, her body language, from the job talk. She was moving in for the kill. She took a step forward so that she was looking almost straight up at him.

  “With your Levi’s and your Eastern Bloc haircut and your eagerness, and your face still frozen at the moment you became past saving.”

  “Bethany—” Now he was the one turning his face away.

  “Rocky worked for his uncle’s protection racket in post-Soviet Ukraine, Mac.” She didn’t take her eyes off him when she said my name. “He was seventeen when he saw his uncle kill someone for the first time. He never talks about why he decided to emigrate to the States—​not while he’s awake, anyway. But I have my theories.”

  “Shut up, Bethany.”

  “Gwen may think she picked you because she fell in love with you. But she picked you because you’re a coward. I think she needs someone to control as much as I do.”

  “Stop it, stop talking.” He put his hands over his ears.

  “Even if you push her out—​and she won’t fight you—​you’ll still be you, and it’ll never be enough. She’s perfect. And you’re nothing.”

  Rocky hands went around her throat as mechanically as if he were not connected to them. He began to squeeze.

  I had been frozen in place, but now I instinctively ran and grabbed Rocky’s arm to pull him off. He didn’t even seem to notice I was there. Bethany’s face was turning red, her eyes watering. I looked around. A large piece of the broken vodka bottle lay near me on the floor. I picked it up and slashed wildly at his wrists and forearms.

  He roared and whirled. A second before I felt it, my head snapped backward and I saw the blackout lightning of a punch to the nose. Then the pain exploded everywhere. When my vision cleared, I was on the floor, my face in vodka fumes, the smell of impact in my crushed nose. Bethany was gasping and coughing at the base of the wall, one hand around her neck, the other clutching the balcony railing.

  Rocky faced me, blood dripping from his clenched fists, shoulders hunched like a boxer as he advanced, panting. His face was unlike anything I’d ever seen. Shattered into a million pieces, rearranged into an animal snarl. He looked at me like I was an object he was going to smash. I put my hands over my head. He raised his fists.

  Then a flash of light swept through the plate glass, and all three of us froze. Outside, a car door opened and shut, and the car drove off. The moment that followed felt so slow, so almost languid, that I had time to think about how much the cab must have cost.

  “Gwen?” The wild animal was gone from Rocky’s face, and he looked lost. He loosened his fists and stared down at his blood-dripping hands as if they belonged to someone else. Then he stepped toward the balcony. With a pathetically boyish gesture, he ran a hand through his hair, leaving a bloody streak. As the massive steel door beeped green, he leaned out over the railing and opened his mouth to call her name out loud and, I thought, ask for either forgiveness or help.

  I never found out which, because while Rocky stood frozen at the balcony, I rose to my feet and hurled the entire weight of my body at his back.

  He went further than I’d expected; the blow took him by surprise, and his reflexes were dulled from drinking half a bottle of vodka. The other half of the bottle was lying on the floor, and we both slipped in it at the same time, me reeling back onto the floor from the impact and him
flopping forward onto the railing. One of his feet flew up off the floor, and I quickly slid myself under his legs on my hands and knees in the puddle of vodka that, for reasons unclear to me, was starting to turn pink. Then I saw the broken glass everywhere and my hands started to sting.

  Bethany had come back to life. She screamed Rocky’s name, or tried to—​it came out a hoarse, strangled yelp—​and rushed over to throw her arms around him. When I delivered the final shove, bracing my hands against the wall and heaving his weight upward with my shoulders, I thought they might both go over the edge together, clutching and clawing at each other in midair. But Bethany, like me, was a survivor. As Rocky’s center of balance tipped out over the edge for the last time, and the railing seemed to suddenly release him, she sensed it and let go.

  The twenty-foot drop headfirst onto concrete might have killed him on its own, but as it happens, it was an antique plowshare that did the job. On the way down, grabbing for something to stop his fall, he knocked it loose from the wall, and they fell together. The rusty blade sank into his abdomen to the sound of explosively shattering glass.

  Gwen had stopped on her way to the farmhouse for a bottle of champagne.

  December 30, 2021, 3:07 a.m.

  SkyLoft Hotel, Los Angeles

  It was an accident.”

  It comes out easily enough, a sentence I’ve repeated to myself many times over the years. But adrenaline strobes through me as the word murder hangs in the air between Gwen and me.

  “That’s what the coroner’s inquest ruled. That’s what I thought at the time. Now, I’m not so sure.” Even angry, Gwen trembles a little at her own words.

  “You didn’t see the struggle.”

  “I saw something.”

  “Yes, Bethany at the railing, trying to pull him back.” I have never lied about that, never even been tempted. But that doesn’t mean I am unaware of how it looked from the doorway: Bethany leaning out over the balcony with her arms around Rocky’s waist, letting him fall to his death, while I crouched behind the pony wall, invisible.