by Riley Sager
“Relax, babe,” she says. “I stuck to the script.”
She has the purse with her. It dangles from her forearm, giving her a disconcertingly dainty appearance. She tries to pass it to me, but I take a step back. I want nothing to do with it. Nor do I want anything to do with Sam. I keep an arm’s length between us as we walk away from the police station. Even walking is a chore. My body still longs to sprint.
“Hey,” she says, noticing the distance. “You don’t have to be so tense now. I told Detective McBitch exactly what we discussed. Girls’ night out. Drunk in the park. That dude stole the purse.”
“He has a name,” I say. “Ricardo Ruiz.”
Sam hits me with a sidelong glance. “Oh, you’re into saying names now?”
“I think I have to.”
I feel compelled to start repeating it every day, like a Hail Mary, atoning for my sins. I would do it too, if I knew it would help.
“Just so we’re clear,” Sam says, “it’s okay to say his name, but I’m not allowed to say—”
“Don’t.”
The word emerges like the crack of a whip, sharp and stinging. Sam shakes her head. “Damn. You are tense.”
I have every right to be. A man is in a coma because of me. Lisa was murdered. And Sam—Maybe? Possibly?—was there.
“Where were you before you came to New York?” I ask. “And don’t tell me ‘Here and there.’ I need someplace specific.”
Sam stays silent a moment. Just long enough for me to wonder if she’s picking through several possible lies stored in her brain, deciding on the best one to use. Finally, she says, “Maine.”
“Where in Maine?”
“Bangor. Happy now?”
I’m not. It tells me nothing.
We keep walking, heading south, deeper into the park. Red oaks line both sides of the path, their leaves barely clinging to the branches. Acorns have already started to drop, scattered in wide, unruly circles around the tree trunks. A few fall as we pass. Each one makes a tiny plunking noise when it hits the ground.
“How long were you there?” I ask Sam.
“I don’t know. Years?”
“And did you go anywhere else during that time?”
Sam lifts her arms, the purse swinging, and assumes a haughty voice. “Oh, nowhere special. You know, just the Hamptons in the summer and the Riviera in winter. Monaco is simply gorgeous this time of year.”
“I’m serious, Sam.”
“And I’m seriously getting annoyed by all these questions.”
I want to shake Sam so hard that the truth finally dislodges and plunks to the ground like the acorns dropping all around us. I want her to tell me everything. Instead, I calm the emotional storm swirling inside me long enough to say, “I’m just making sure there are no secrets between us.”
“I’ve never lied to you, Quincy. Not once.”
“But you haven’t told me your full story,” I say. “I just need to know the truth.”
“You really want the truth?”
Sam nods at the path just ahead of us. It’s only then that I realize how far we’ve walked, that Sam has used the distance I put between us to her advantage, subtly steering us to the spot we had fled last night.
The cops have gone, taking their fluttering partition of police tape with them. The only sign of their former presence is a wide swath of grass that’s been flattened against the ground. Tamped down, no doubt, by officers searching for evidence. I study the grass, looking for heel prints left by Detective Hernandez’s boots.
A cluster of candles blocks the path where Rocky Ruiz was found. They’re tall, skinny glass ones with pictures of the Virgin Mary on the sides, sold for a dollar in nearly every bodega in the city. There’s also a cheap teddy bear holding a heart, a hastily scrawled poster board sign reading JUSTICE 4 ROCKY, and a helium balloon held in place by a plastic weight tied to its string.
“Right there is the truth,” Sam says. “You did that, babe, and I’m covering for you. I could have told that detective everything, but I didn’t. That’s all the truth you need to know.”
She says nothing else. Nor does she need to. I understand loud and clear.
Sam resumes walking, still pointed south, heading God knows where. I stay where I am, guilt, fear, and exhaustion holding me in place. I can’t remember the last time I had a full night’s sleep. It was before Sam showed up, I know that much. Her arrival has whittled my rest down to nothing. I don’t see that changing anytime soon. I envision weeks of sleeplessness, my nights disrupted by dreams of Sam, of Rocky Ruiz, of Lisa being held down while her wrists are slit.
“You coming?” Sam asks.
I shake my head.
“Suit yourself.”
“Where are you going?”
“Here and there,” Sam says, dripping sarcasm. “Don’t wait up.”
She heads off, glancing back at me only once. Although she hasn’t gotten very far, I can’t make out her expression. The same clouds that brought the chill have muted the afternoon sun, breaking its glow, splitting her face between light and shadow.
PINE COTTAGE
9:54 P.M.
Instead of sophisticated, as Janelle intended, the meal was muted and awkward—a pantomime of adult dining. Wine was poured. Food was passed. Everyone was too focused on not spilling something on their clothes, wishing to be free of their silly party dresses and stuffy neckties. Joe was the only one who looked remotely comfortable, snug in his worn sweater, oblivious to how much he stood out from the rest of them.
Things loosened up only after dinner, when Quincy brought out the cake, its twenty candles aflame. After blowing them out, Janelle used the same knife that had sliced her finger to cut the cake into haphazard pieces.
Then the real party began. The one they had delayed all day. Drinks were poured. Entire bottles of liquor were emptied into their dwindling supply of Solo cups. Music blasted from the iPod and portable speakers Craig brought along. Beyoncé. Rihanna. Timberlake. T.I. It was the same music they listened to in their dorm rooms, only now it was louder, wilder, finally unleashed.
They danced in the great room, Solo cups aloft, booze sloshing. Quincy didn’t have any alcohol. She had picked her poison and it was Diet Coke. Yet it didn’t inhibit her in the least. She danced right along with the others, twirling in the middle of the great room, surrounded by Craig and Betz and Rodney. Amy was beside her, bumping her hip, laughing.
Janelle joined the fray, lugging Quincy’s camera, taking her picture. Quincy smiled, struck a pose, did a little disco move that threw Janelle into a laughing fit. Quincy laughed too. As the music pulsed and she danced and the room swirled, she couldn’t recall another time when she had felt this good, this free, this happy. Here she was, dancing with her catch of a boyfriend, reaching out to her best friend, the college life she had always imagined right here in front of her.
After a few more songs, they tired. Janelle refilled their cups. Amy and Betz sprawled across the great-room floor. Rodney produced a bong and waved it over his head like a flag. When he took it onto the deck, Janelle, Craig, and Amy surrounded him, lining up for hits.
Quincy didn’t like pot. The one time she had tried it, it made her cough, laugh, then cough again. Afterward she felt wobbly and unmoored, which took away from whatever high she had experienced. While the others smoked, she stayed in the great room, sipping her Diet Coke, which she was pretty sure Janelle had splashed with rum when she wasn’t looking. Betz, the perennial lightweight, was there too, drunk on the floor after three vodka-and-cranberries.
“Quincy,” she said, cheap vodka stinging her breath, “you don’t have to do it.”
“Do what?”
“Fuck Craig.” Betz giggled, as if it were the first time she’d ever sworn.
“Maybe I want to.”
“Janelle wants you to,” Betz said.
“Mostly because she’d rather be the one doing it.”
“You’re drunk, Betz. And talking nonsense.”
Betz was insistent. “I’m right. You know I’m right.”
She let out another giggle, one that Quincy tried hard to ignore. Yet Betz’s drunken laughter stuck with her as she went to the kitchen. There was knowledge in that laugh, hinting at something everyone but Quincy seemed to comprehend.
In the kitchen, she found Joe leaning against the counter, nursing one of the awful concoctions Janelle had made for him. His presence startled Quincy. Ever since dinner, he had been so quiet that she forgot he was even there. The others seemed to have done the same thing. Even Janelle, who discarded him like a toy on Christmas afternoon.
But he was there. Watching them all through his dirt-smeared glasses, observing their drinking, their dancing. Quincy wondered what he thought of their frivolity. Had it made him happy? Jealous?
“You’re a good dancer,” he said, staring into his cup.
“Thanks?” It emerged like a question, as if Quincy didn’t quite believe him. “If you’re bored, I could take you back to your car.”
“It’s okay. It’s probably not a good idea to drive.”
“I haven’t been drinking,” Quincy said, although more and more she suspected that was a lie, thanks to Janelle. She was starting to feel the faintest trace of a buzz. “I’m sorry that Janelle roped you into staying. She can be very, um, persuasive.”
“I’m having fun,” Joe said, although he sounded like the complete opposite was true. “You’re very nice.”
Quincy thanked him again, once more adding that uncertain inflection at the end of it. An invisible question mark.
“And pretty,” Joe said, this time daring to look up from his cup. “I think you’re very pretty.”
Quincy looked at him. Really looked at him. And in doing so, she finally saw what Janelle seemed to see. He was cute, in a dorky way. Like one of those nerds in movies who blossomed once they removed their glasses. An aura of intensity swirled around his shy demeanor, making it seem like he meant every word he said.
“Thank you,” she replied, sincerely this time. Minus the question mark.
The others burst back inside just then, the pot having made them hyper and slaphappy. Rodney lifted Amy over his shoulder and carried her shrieking into the great room. Janelle and Craig leaned on each other, stoned smiles on their faces. Janelle had a thin arm wrapped around Craig’s waist, refusing to remove it even as he ambled toward Quincy. She trailed after him, arm stretching.
“Quincy!” she said. “You’re missing all the fun.”
Janelle’s face was flushed and glistening. A strand of sweat-darkened hair stuck to her temple. Her features dimmed when she noticed Joe was also in the kitchen, and she looked from him to Quincy and back again.
“There you are!” she said to Joe, greeting him like a long-lost friend. “I’ve been looking for you!”
She guided him to one of the worn easy chairs in the great room, squeezing into it with him, legs pulled up so that her knees were on his lap.
“Having a good time?” she asked him.
Quincy looked away, focusing on Craig walking toward her. He too was drunk and high. But he wasn’t a giggly drunk, like Betz, or a hyper one, like Janelle. There was a mellowness about him, an ease with his toned body that Quincy found seductive. He pressed against her, heat leaping off his skin, and whispered, “Up for a little fun tonight?”
“Sure,” Quincy whispered back.
She felt herself being whisked toward the hall, unable to ignore the judgmental way Betz stared at her as they passed. When she turned to the great room, she noticed Janelle still squeezed into the chair and stroking Joe’s hair, only pretending to pay attention to him. In reality, her eyes were locked on Quincy’s departing form, glinting darkly with either satisfaction or jealousy.
Quincy couldn’t tell.
23.
Exhaustion catches up to me as soon as I return home. I get as far as the living room before collapsing face-first onto the sofa and plummeting into sleep. I awaken hours later, with Jeff kneeling beside me, nudging my shoulder.
“Hey,” he says, concern writ large on his face. “You okay?”
I sit up, eyes bleary, squinting at the late-afternoon sun pouring through the window. “I’m fine. Just tired.”
“Where’s Sam?”
“Out,” I say.
“Out?”
“Exploring the city. I think she’s getting tired of being cooped up here.”
Jeff gives me a peck on the lips. “A sentiment I know well. Which means we should go out too.”
He tries hard to act like he came up with the idea on the spot, although I can easily detect his rehearsed eagerness. He’s been waiting for a Sam-free moment for days.
I agree, even though I don’t really want to go. Exhaustion and anxiety have caused my back, shoulders, and neck to ache. Then there’s the matter of my website, which is perilously close to careening off schedule. Responsible me would take an Advil and spend the evening doing some catch-up baking. But irresponsible me needs a diversion from the fact that I actually know nothing about Sam. Why she’s here. What she’s up to. Even who she really is.
I’ve invited a complete stranger into our home.
In the process, I’ve become a stranger myself. One who can beat someone to a pulp in Central Park and then lie to the police about it. One who used to be so content with Jeff but now itches to be alone.
Outside, the setting sun is at our backs. My shadow stretches before me on the sidewalk, slender and dark. It occurs to me that I have more in common with that shadow than the woman creating it. I feel just as insubstantial. As if, once darkness arrives, I’ll dissolve until I vanish completely.
We end up walking a few blocks to a French bistro we claim to love but seldom patronize. And even though it’s chilly, we huddle at an outside table, Jeff in a secondhand Members Only jacket he bought during a brief ’80s phase and me wrapped in a shawl-collared cardigan.
We refuse to talk about Sam. We refuse to talk about his case. That leaves little else to discuss as we pick at our ratatouille and cassoulet. I have no appetite to speak of. What little I eat has to be forced down. Each minuscule bite seems to lodge in my throat until I wash it down with wine. My glass is emptied at record speed.
When I reach for the carafe of house red, Jeff finally notices my hand.
“Whoa,” he says. “What happened there?”
Now would be the perfect time to tell Jeff everything. How I almost killed a man. How scared I am of getting caught. How I’m even more afraid of having another memory of Pine Cottage. How I know Sam was in Indiana around the time of Lisa’s death.
Instead, I plaster a smile on my face and do my best imitation of my mother. Nothing is wrong. I’m completely normal. If I believe it enough, it’ll come true.
“Oh, it’s just a silly burn,” I say, giving the words an airy spin. “I was so stupid this morning and accidentally touched a baking sheet that was still hot.”
I try to jerk my hand away but Jeff catches it, studying the topography of the scabs across my knuckles.
“That looks pretty bad, Quinn. Does it hurt?”
“Not really. It’s just ugly.”
I again try to pull away, but Jeff keeps my hand trapped in his. “Your hand is shaking.”
“Is it?”
I look to the street, pretending to be absorbed by the passing of a silver Cadillac Escalade. There’s no way I can look Jeff in the eyes. Not when he’s being so sweetly concerned about me.
“Promise me you’ll see a doctor if it gets any worse.”
“I will,” I say brightly. “I promise.”
I drink more wine after that, emptying the carafe and ordering another before Jeff can protest. Frankly, wine is exactly what
I need. The alcohol combined with the Xanax I took as soon as I got home from the park makes me feel deliciously relaxed. Gone is the pain in my back and shoulders. I barely even think about Sam or Lisa or Rocky Ruiz. When I do, I simply reach for more wine until the thought passes.
On the way back from the bistro, Jeff holds my good hand. He leans down to kiss me when we stop at a crosswalk, slipping his tongue into my mouth just enough to send a heady shiver of desire running through me. Once home, we make out in the elevator, not caring about the camera installed in the corner or the sweaty, potbellied security guard probably watching us on a monitor in the basement.
Inside the apartment, we get as far as the foyer before I’m on my knees, taking Jeff into my mouth, liking the way he moans so loud I’m sure the neighbors can hear through the walls. When one of his hands holds my head in place, I reach back and curl his fingers around a length of hair, hoping he’ll tug on it.
I need it to hurt. Just a little.
I deserve the pain.
Later, in bed, Jeff lets me pick the movie. I choose Vertigo. When the opening credits start to swirl across the screen in all their trippy, Technicolor glory, I lie down tight against Jeff and spread my arm across his chest. We watch the movie in silence, Jeff dozing off and on through most of it. But he’s awake during the climax, when Jimmy Stewart drags poor Kim Novak up those bell-tower steps, begging for the truth.
“I don’t have to go,” he says once the movie’s over. “To Chicago. I can stay here if you want.”
“It’s important that you go. Plus, you won’t be gone long, right?”
“Three days.”
“They’ll fly by.”
“You can come with me,” Jeff says. “I mean, if you want.”
“Won’t you be busy?”
“Swamped, actually. But that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy yourself. You love Chicago. Think of it—a nice hotel, deep-dish pizza, some museums.”
