You Kill Me

by Alison Gaylin

  Nervous laughter from the theatergoers, studded with barely whispered comments: “Only in New York, right?”

  “…oughta think about antianxiety meds…”

  “…that time of the month.”

  I ignored all of it.

  I ran down to the sidewalk and stuck my arm out. Like something out of a dream, a cab pulled up fast, but I didn’t get in right away. I couldn’t move. The driver rolled down his window. “Don’t you want a taxi, lady?” he said. But still, I was immobile—a statue on the pavement.

  “Something wrong?” he said.

  Oh, how there was. There was something breathtakingly wrong with this cab. It was the ad on top: My mother’s face, huge and smiling. And under it, the words, DR. SYDNEY STARK-LEIFFER. SHE’S IN NEW YORK CITY, AND SHE’S READY TO LISTEN!

  “We apologize for the delay, but please stay on the line. Sydney cares about you.”

  “Bullshit,” I said to the recorded voice. Not that I was counting, but we’d had this exact exchange, that voice and I, at least ten times in the past half hour alone.

  Bullshit, Sydney cares about me.

  I’d been trying to reach my mother at WLUV (Who do you have to bribe to get call letters like that?) ever since I’d learned, from the exhausted-sounding switchboard operator, that yes, the Sydney Stark-Leiffer was counseling callers live from WLUV’s studios in Midtown Manhattan. Just like the ad on top of the cab said. And she’d been doing so for the past two weeks.

  What kind of a mother doesn’t consult with her daughter before moving cross-country to her city? What kind of mother never even tells her daughter after she gets there? What kind of mother does that two whole weeks ago?!

  “We apologize for the—”

  “Bullshit!” Jake jumped out of my lap. I threw the cordless receiver across the room, heard plastic hitting the hard floor, a small piece—probably the battery cover—skittering across the room.

  “Bullshitbullshitbullshitbullshit!” I was screaming like our neighbors did every night—so loud the walls seemed to vibrate, and I didn’t even hear the door opening.

  I doubled over, scrunching my face up to keep from crying because I would not let Sydney Stark-Leiffer make me cry on top of everything else, and that’s when I felt Krull’s arms around me. “Hey, hey, hey,” he said.

  I leaned into his chest, felt the cool cloth of his short-sleeved shirt, inhaled the clean, plain smell of the soap he used, the leather of his shoulder holster, and thought, Thank you.

  “What’s wrong, Sam?” he said again.

  And all I could say was, “My mother.”

  For a few moments, I was back in seventh grade again, in the parking lot at sunset, waiting for her. My throat clenched up, and I felt that maddening heat pressing into the backs of my eyeballs. Don’t cry.

  “She is moving here after all?” Krull said.

  “Moved. She moved. She’s here, and she never even…”

  Krull sighed, rubbing my back. “Some people don’t think,” he said. “Some people do things, and they’re so wrapped up in…doing those things that they don’t think about how those…things…might hurt other people.”

  I pulled away from him, looking into his eyes. “Stop saying things.”

  He kissed me gently. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry your mother moved to New York without telling you, and I’m sorry I was such a dickhead this afternoon. You don’t deserve either one of us.”

  “What about poor Pierce?” I said. “He got the brunt of your dickheadedness.”

  “I couldn’t get hold of him, but I left a case of beer outside his apartment. Hopefully, he’ll get home before his neighbors steal it.”

  “Or his ghost.”

  “Yeah, his ghost…I’m so sorry, Sam.”

  “It’s okay.”

  For a long while, we sat on the floor, just looking at each other. I realized we hadn’t looked at each other in a long time; not like this, anyway. When did we start making love with our eyes closed?

  “You know what?” I said. “On top of everything else, I can’t even get her on the phone. Her stupid radio station has had me on hold for the last decade.”

  Krull glanced at the crumpled receiver on the floor. “Can’t get anybody on the phone now,” he said.

  “Oh, shit, I broke the phone.”

  “It’s fixable.” He cupped my face in his hand, and I realized it had been a long time since he’d done this, too—touched my face.

  “Everything’s fixable,” Krull said. “Isn’t it?”

  He asked what I felt like for dinner, and I said, “I feel like Indian.” So we decided to have dinner at one of the Indian restaurants on Sixth and Second—the first time we’d gone out to eat in more than two months. Krull locked his gun in the safe, then changed out of his work clothes and into jeans and the vintage black Iron Maiden T-shirt I’d bought him for his last birthday. (“If you can’t beat a heavy-metal obsession,” I’d explained, “at least make it look good.” And it did. I loved that shirt on him to the point of envying it.)

  The night was cooler and clearer than it had been in weeks. You’d almost expect to see stars in the purple sky. And as we walked to Sixth Street, holding hands, I was aware that the humid air had an autumnal undercurrent—that sneaking crispness that made you know, within weeks, leaves would be dying.

  We didn’t say much on the way there, but it wasn’t an uncomfortable silence. In fact, what I noticed most of all (other than two buses with Sydney’s face on the side) was how comfortable I did feel, for a change. Like I wasn’t being watched.

  I wondered if Boyle and Patton had told Krull that someone had been examining my classroom through binoculars, or that I’d received three additional notes from a man now deemed a stalker…but not enough to bring any of it up just yet. Instead I said, “Fall’s coming. Can you smell it?”

  “You said that last year.”

  “I did?”

  “The morning of September eleventh. I was leaving for work, and that’s exactly what you said.”

  “Oh…I…I didn’t remember.”

  He gave my hand a squeeze. “Seems like a long time ago, huh?”

  When we got to the row of Indian restaurants, Krull said, “Pick one,” and I pointed at the place with the friendliest-looking host at the door.

  When we got closer, the host called us “happy newlyweds,” and instead of correcting him, we both just smiled.

  We ordered a bottle of wine and two different kinds of nan to start. When we were nearly through with both, I said in my best cheesy-TV-cop voice, “So, Five-O, I’m sure you heard about Monsieur Perp’s letter-writing campaign.”

  Krull smiled. “Who?”

  “You know…the weird little guy with the accent.”

  “The Starbucks guy?”

  “Yeah, he’s sent me three more notes since then.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “Patton and Boyle know about it. I tried to call you first, but you were—”

  “What did they say?”

  “Patton and Boyle?”

  “The notes.”

  “Oh…just…They were about some nameless person being angry. He. When I talked to him on the phone, he said—”

  “You talked to him on the phone?”

  “Yeah. He said this person, whose name he doesn’t know, is always watching me. And planning something.”

  “Jesus, Sam. I was going to run a reverse on him, but I…forgot. I’ll do it tonight, from our computer.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “He’s just a fan.”

  “A fan?”

  “That’s what Boyle and Patton think. Yale too. As soon as they determine his identity, I’ll file a restraining order. That’ll show him.”

  “I…I haven’t been there for you, have I?”

  I polished off the rest of my wine, listening to the words slur as they came out of my mouth. “Why would you shay that? Listen to me, I shound like Carol Channing.”

  �
��I’m the one who should be protecting you from him. Not those guys.”

  “You want to hear shome—something—funny?” I said.

  “Yeah?”

  “He sends me this note, right? Leaves it in my purse—I can’t believe I actually found it in there.”

  “How did he get to your purse?”

  “At the Gap, I think.”

  “Where you bought that new shirt—”

  “Anyway, all these notes are about some mysterious he or him or whatever….”

  Krull nodded.

  “Well, this one says, ‘He killed Marla S. Don’t get him angry again.’ And I’m racking my brain, ‘Who did I piss off the night Marla was killed?’ And the only person I can figure out—the only him I got angry that night—was you!”

  Krull stared at me.

  “I can’t believe I just said that.”

  “You think I—”

  “I don’t think anything, John. Obviously it’s the wine.”

  “But you said—”

  “The point I was trying to make…before my tongue got tied in knots…was that this guy’s full of shit. He wants me to get all scared and paranoid of every other ‘he’ I know, so I go running to him for help. It could have been Yale or Roland or your father or Jake I pissed off that night—wouldn’t make any difference to him because he has no idea.”

  His eyes cut into mine. “Oh.”

  “So there’s no point in running a reverse.” I cleared my throat.

  Krull called the waiter over, ordered lamb saag, chicken vindaloo and a pitcher of water. And as he scanned the menu for more ideas, I flashed, for a moment, on Ezra, gazing so seriously at The Runaway Bunny and his loving, shape-shifting mother. “There’s this boy in my class who breaks my heart a little.”

  “Let me guess,” he said. “His dad’s not around, and his mom is a huge piece of work.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Because there’s always a kid like that in your class, and that kid always breaks your heart.”

  I stared into his eyes, feeling my own eyes starting to water. “Why do the dads always leave? Make their kids wish they’d never been born? Is selfishness hardwired into male DNA? Is…total disloyalty and…and weakness?”

  Krull said nothing; he just watched me.

  “Yikes,” I said. “Don’t know where that came from.”

  “I do.”

  “I didn’t mean to be such a downer, John. Can we please start over?”

  “Tell me about the rest of your day,” he said. And for a while, it was as if we actually had started over. Our conversation jumped easily from one topic to the next: Yale’s upcoming Mikado audition, Tabitha’s newfound celebrity, the chalk city I drew in class, Shell’s purple chicken, my decision never to speak to my mother again.

  Until finally I said what I’d wanted to say all night. “Where were you today, John? Why couldn’t I get hold of you?”

  He swallowed the rest of his last glass of wine before speaking again.

  Krull had never been that much of a drinker, so, big as he was, alcohol tended to show early on him. “It’s…I had…responsibilities….”

  “Oh.” I reached out and took his hand. “What do you say we talk about it later? Maybe tomorrow, after we get through with our hangovers.”

  He gazed at my hand, clasping his. And when he looked up again…maybe it was the dim lighting in the restaurant, or perhaps the dependable melodrama of my imagination, but what I saw in his eyes was a sorrow so deep, it stopped my breathing for a few seconds. “Sam,” he said. “What would you do if you found out something about me? Something that…isn’t good?”

  Oh, please let it be the cigarettes. Please let him say, “I must confess: I’m a closet smoker.” And I’ll act surprised and think, “There goes my secret litmus test, but oh, well. At least it’s only cigarettes.”

  I said, “Is it the cigarettes?”

  “No, Sam. It’s not.”

  I opened my mouth. But before I could make any more words come out, I felt a hand on my shoulder, heard a voice say, “Am I glad to see you!”

  I looked up and there—in the world’s worst answer to my prayers—stood Nate Gundersen, staring down at me as if I were his favorite toy from childhood.

  He was wearing a plain white T-shirt, pale khaki pants, white sneakers—all of it so light and clean against his tanned skin and shining blond hair that he seemed to glow.

  I wondered if this look of Nate’s wasn’t an attempt to advertise his newfound purity. He’s faithful now. He’s getting help. Was step eight at Whores Anonymous a shopping spree at Banana Republic?

  For lack of anything better to say, I introduced him to the man sitting across from me—dark eyed and brooding, a screaming corpse on the front of his black Iron Maiden T-shirt.

  “I know who you are,” said Krull.

  “Really?” I said. “I thought you said you didn’t.”

  “I know. Who he is.”

  “John Krull. That sounds familiar,” Nate said. “You don’t act, do you?”

  “I don’t act.” For the first time, I truly understood the expression If looks could kill.

  “John’s a detective,” I said.

  “Oh, right,” Nate said. “You were in all the newspapers two years ago. You’re the one from the…with Samantha…”

  “Bingo.”

  “We have a lot in common.”

  “Meaning?”

  “The character I play just became a police commissioner.” Nate had crouched down next to my chair, his arm resting on the back. Considering how perilously close he was to having the shit kicked out of him, the self-confidence of this gesture was staggering.

  “I need to talk to you,” Nate said to me. “Alone.”

  I widened my eyes, thinking, The balls on you. But that was always what had gotten Nate Gundersen everything he wanted—not his looks or his charm or his Phi Beta Kappa key. Not even his parents, who adored their youngest son so much they’d flown in from Minnesota every time he was in a play at Stanford, staying throughout its entire run, even if he was only in one scene.

  It was the balls on him.

  “I’m…I think I’m kind of busy right now, Nate?” My voice came out about an octave higher than usual. What is wrong with me?

  “Please, just for one minute.” He looked at Krull. “I promise I’ll bring her back in one piece.”

  “Knock yourself out,” said my boyfriend.

  I looked at him. “Don’t I get a say in this?”

  “You’ve had your say,” Krull said quietly. “I heard you, loud and clear.”

  Once we were outside the restaurant door, and once he had finished autographing a copy of Soap Opera Digest that the host had just today purchased from the deli across the street (“What a happy coincidence! Please make it out to ‘My number one fan!’”), Nate shot a quick look through the window at the back of Krull’s head and said, “Sorry I interrupted you like that.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “He was just about to tell me he has three hours to live.”

  Nate put both hands on my shoulders. I had the sensation of being watched again, and instinctively turned my head up to the apartments over the Indian restaurants, thinking, Binoculars? But then I noticed Krull’s face, snapping back to profile. I didn’t blame him. I’d have been watching, too.

  “Samantha,” Nate said. “There was a woman killed, and she lived in your old apartment.”

  “I know that.”

  He didn’t let go. I could feel his grip tightening on my shoulders, and when I looked up at his face I noticed a sheen to it, a wetness that seeped into the collar of his T-shirt. I tried to remember the last time I’d seen Nate sweat when it had nothing to do with treadmills or stage lights…and drew a blank. What is going on with you? Why are you sweating at nine p.m. on the first cool night in weeks? Why are you in the East Village? Why are you touching me?

  I glared into his eyes. And, at that moment, I saw all that confidence—the b
alls on him—dissolve into fear. He didn’t even look like Nate Gundersen anymore. He looked like someone wearing a pretty mask that was on too tight.

  “What’s wrong?” I said.

  “I knew her.”

  “Marla Soble?”

  “Yes.”

  I swallowed hard. “What a happy coincidence.”

  “I met her a week ago. When I went to her apartment. I was looking for you.”

  “Why?”

  “I wanted to apologize. You know…step seven.”

  “How did you get the address?”

  “I Googled you. I guess I got an old listing or something, but…I went there. And…she answered the door. She knew who I was. She’d seen me on TV, and…her dog liked me.”

  “Okay…”

  “She made me a cup of coffee and we talked about Lucas. How it makes sense that he forgives Blythe for trying to murder him because he knows she’s only trying to get back at their withholding father—the father’s the real enemy. I compared Blythe to Medea—loving but vengeful. And then Marla…And then we…”

  “Oh, God, you didn’t.”

  “I went off the wagon.”

  “You were the one she cheated with?!”

  “Not the only one, I’m sure.”

  “You have to tell the police. You can tell John right now.”

  “I can’t tell the police, Samantha. You don’t understand. It will get in the papers. The fans would freak out—I could lose my job. And…Jenna. Jenna would fucking kill me.”

  I stared at him. “But you could help them find the murderer.”

  “How could I possibly—”

  “You can give them information. Like…was Marla afraid?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Not of you, for God’s sake. Did she tell you anything—maybe her fiancé was mad at her? Or she owed somebody money or—”

  “All we talked about was Live and Let Live, Samantha. She was a fan. I didn’t even know her last name until I saw it in the paper.”

  “Unbelievable. What am I talking about? Of course it’s believable.”

  “I lost control….” He glanced over at Krull, who was now talking to our waiter. “Don’t tell him, please,” he said. “It’s my life, Samantha. My whole fucking life will be ruined….”