You Kill Me

by Alison Gaylin

  Nate’s voice faded away. Maybe he could tell what I was thinking: Let’s talk about ruining other people’s lives for just one minute.

  I would have said exactly that. Then I would have walked back into the restaurant, leaving him alone on Second Avenue, burning with guilt over what he’d done to Jenna, what he’d done to me, what he’d done to who knew how many other women, men and transgendered individuals during the fifteen or so years he’d been bringing new meaning to the phrase sexually active.

  But there was something about Nate’s face that stopped me. Was it the sweat? “How did you find me here?” I asked.

  “I’ve been looking for you ever since Veronica and her mother showed up at the studio with the pass I gave you. She told me your address at Stuy Town, and when you weren’t in your apartment, I started checking every bar and restaurant on the Lower East Side.”

  “But why?”

  “I needed to tell you.”

  “Nate, what do I have to do with—”

  “Because you should know how lucky you are that you don’t love me anymore.”

  Gently I removed his hands from my shoulders, then held them for a while before letting them drop. “I’ve known that for years,” I said.

  I saw a hint of the old brightness coming back into his eyes. “You have to tell the police. They can keep it confidential, but they need to know—if only to rule out any DNA of yours they might find in her apartment.”

  He winced.

  “Sorry, but it’s true.”

  “Okay. I’ll make you a deal.”

  “What…”

  “Let me tell Jenna tonight first. We were supposed to see Shakespearean Idol together, but at least I can meet her at the theater afterward, take her out for coffee or something. In twenty-four hours, I promise I’ll tell the police.”

  I looked at him.

  “Please, Samantha, just one day. For Jenna. And Ezra?”

  “Oh, okay.” I sighed.

  He took my hand and shook it.

  “Who did you buy your tickets from, anyway?”

  “That guy, En.”

  “You sleep with him too?”

  “That’s not funny.” He thought for a few moments. “Well, maybe it’s a little funny.”

  Before he started off in the direction of the Space, Nate said, “Marla was nice.”

  “She seemed like she was. I saw the articles—”

  “But she wasn’t you.” He touched the side of my face, his fingertips barely grazing the skin.

  “She wasn’t you.”

  By the time I got back to the table, Krull was sitting in front of an empty plate. “What did he want?” he asked.

  I closed my eyes. You gave him your word. Just ’til tomorrow. “He wanted an audition for Shakespearean Idol. He thought I might be able to introduce him to the director.”

  “Ah,” he said. “Couldn’t get his agent to do that, huh?”

  “I…guess not.”

  Krull put his fork down and looked at me. “Listen, I’ve got to take care of a few things back at the precinct.”

  “At nine o’clock at night?”

  “Stay as long as you want. I already paid the bill.”

  “John,” I said. “I’m sorry, I—”

  “You know what? I don’t want to know what Nate Gundersen really wanted from you. I don’t want to know how he knew enough to look for you at this restaurant, which you picked out. I don’t want to know why he was holding on to your shoulders like that. Some…pieces of information…are better off as secrets.” He stood up.

  “Wait a minute!” I said, much too loudly.

  Other customers turned to look. Ready for drama. Ready to be entertained by two people they’d never met.

  But Krull cut it all short—the public show, the comfort of this first cool September night, the rest of what I’d been planning to say. “I have evidence against you,” he said. “I didn’t believe it before, but now I do.”

  8

  ’Til Death

  After Krull left, I sat in the restaurant for quite a while, staring at his empty chair and shoving Indian food in my mouth. What evidence? I kept thinking.

  “Would you like something to read?” said the host.

  “No, thanks.”

  “I must insist,” he said. “A young woman alone at dinnertime needs a place to put her eyes.”

  “Oh, okay.”

  Carefully, he placed that copy of Soap Opera Digest in front of me. “Please be gentle with it,” he said, pointing out Nate Gundersen’s fresh signature at the bottom of a cigarette ad.

  Nate himself was on the cover of the magazine, which I imagined was a pretty common occurrence. I looked at the picture—shirtless and scowling, his chest glistening with fake sweat.

  I read the block letters that ran across the leg of his tight black jeans: L&LL: LUCAS IS ALIVE—AND HE WANTS REVENGE! The print was red—like a Valentine, like wet blood. In his left hand, Nate clasped a large hunting knife that glinted under the studio lights, and didn’t look like a prop at all.

  I got the host’s attention and gave him back the magazine. “Thank you,” I said. “But I don’t feel like putting my eyes here tonight.”

  I looked at my watch. Nine thirty. If I took a cab, I could make it in time for the end of Shakespearean Idol and get Nate to call Krull personally. Jenna too. She owed me one for showing up at Sunny Side so late and bitchy. And he owed me three years and three thousand miles.

  I hurried out the door and grabbed a taxi.

  I squeezed into the back of the theater just as Corky and Juliana were singing their climactic final number, “’Til Death.” Since the audience was in complete darkness, I couldn’t discern faces. So I was forced to stand there, behind all the cheering fans, watching the star-crossed duo sing their long and brassy duet, before finally falling on top of each other’s sword-shaped microphones.

  Okay, stop clapping so we can get to that damn finale.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” announced the actor portraying the sexy/sinister emcee. “As you can see, our two finalists are…disqualified. Everybody say, ‘Boo-hoo!’”

  “Boo-hoo!”

  “But listen up, people! This dark and tragic cloud has a solid-gold lining! One of you, yes, you, will be chosen as the next…idol of Verona! Houselights!”

  As usual, the audience went wild. It was a tough task—scanning this collection of screaming faces and waving arms for two slender soap stars. Maybe he’ll choose Nate or Jenna as the idol. He loves to pick celebrities.

  Suddenly, the emcee straightened his dancer’s body, made his mouth into a tight O.

  The crowd completely lost it; they knew what was coming next. Most of them began stomping their feet or clapping in unison.

  You’d think that outfit of Nate’s would reflect the light.

  “The judges have made their selection. All the Capulets, all the Montagues have cast their votes. And the waiting is over. The next idol of Verona is”—he paused for a packed moment—“someone who’s already a star!”

  Thank you.

  “The most fabulous fan we know, profiled in this week’s New Yorker…Tabitha Meeks! Come on up, Tabs!”

  Oh, great.

  As Tabitha approached the stage, I looked for Nate’s face in the crowd, running my gaze across every row, until finally I picked out Jenna’s gold chignon. She was sitting at the center of row three, next to an empty seat. He never showed. He lied to me.

  “I’ve never been chosen before,” Tabitha said. “This is the best night of my life.” As I started to leave the theater, she started singing “’Til Death” in a voice so bell-like, so strong, that even from the beginning I knew it would be her version—not Corky’s or Juliana’s—that this audience would remember for the rest of their lives. A star is born.

  I couldn’t help it, I felt a little jealous. Not of Tabitha’s startling voice or how she glowed under the kliegs, not of the way the entire audience jumped to their feet and cheered before she’d
even finished the song—but because tonight really was the best night of her life. And for me, it was turning out to be the worst.

  I was on the sidewalk trying to hail another cab when I heard a female voice behind me. “You’ve got some nerve, bitch.”

  I spun around. Under a streetlight stood Jenna, her skin smooth and beige as a mannequin’s, her eyes bright with anger. This is all I need.

  “Excuse me?” I said.

  “I said, ‘You’ve got some—’”

  “By ‘excuse me,’” I said between my teeth, “I didn’t mean, ‘What?’ I meant, ‘Why?’—a.k.a. ‘Why are you assaulting me?’ a.k.a., ‘Why don’t you go away?’”

  “You’re having an affair with him, and don’t try to deny it,” she said. “And in case you even care, he’s being treated for chronic sex addiction. So you’re not only a slut; you’re an enabler.”

  I had a near-desperate urge to punch her in the face, but I managed to refrain. “Jenna,” I said, as quietly as I could, “I am not sleeping with Nate. I have a boyfriend. And even if I didn’t have a boyfriend and Nate didn’t have a girlfriend, I still wouldn’t sleep with Nate.”

  “You might have everybody else fooled with the heroic-schoolteacher act, but not me. You’re nothing more than a sympathy vulture!”

  “I swear to God, if you weren’t Ezra’s mom I’d do you such physical damage right now—”

  “Listen, sweetheart. I know how to run a recent search history on a computer.”

  I stared at her. “So?”

  “I know he Googled you. And I know he went to see you because I found dark brown hairs on his shirt. And he called me Sam during sex. He didn’t think I heard him, but I did.”

  “First of all, those weren’t my hairs.”

  “Well, whose were—”

  “You have to ask him.”

  “You expect me to believe—”

  “Second, he did come and see me, at Sunny Side for his idiotic twelve-step thing. To ask for my forgiveness so he could move on. That’s all. If you don’t believe me, you can talk to Terry. Or the other teacher, Veronica.”

  “But—”

  “Third, do you have any idea how many Sams—male and female—Nate could have been referring to?! I mean, Christ, he doesn’t even call me Sam! He calls me Samantha!”

  Jenna visibly cringed. “Shit. He does, doesn’t he?”

  “Fourth, I am having a really terrible night right now, mainly because my boyfriend also seems to think I’m sleeping with Nate, so I just don’t need any more—”

  “Oh, God. I…”

  “What?”

  “I think I might have jumped to conclusions.”

  “You think?”

  “I…I…don’t know what’s wrong with me. It’s probably the soap. All that insanity and drama every day. I’m too much in character as Blythe. Too deeply in the moment…”

  I sighed. “Nate has a way of making real life into a soap opera, doesn’t he?”

  She nodded.

  “Sorry he stood you up tonight. But I’ll tell you what—he really, really doesn’t want to lose you.”

  “Hey,” Jenna said. “Can we just…like…take two? Pretend I never acted like a horrible bitch to you and talk about—I don’t know—Ezra?”

  “Sure.” A cab turned onto our street. “You want that?” I asked her.

  “You take it. My limo’s picking me up.”

  As the cab edged closer and pulled to a stop, I saw the ad with Sydney’s face. I wished I could “take two” on today, at least.

  Krull had to be home by now. Maybe he’d be sitting in front of the TV, watching replays of some Yankees game, unable to go to bed for worry, with Jake sleeping in his lap. I would walk in and turn off the TV. “Talk about not giving me a chance to explain,” I would say. And I’d tell him everything Nate had said to me outside the restaurant.

  Then Krull would understand why I’d lied to him—after all, my ex’s “whole fucking life” was on the line—so he’d promise to be discreet when he called Nate in for questioning. And we could go back to that distant, soft-focus past of five hours ago.

  Maybe he’d let me know what he’d been trying to tell me over dinner, maybe not. It didn’t matter. All I wanted to do was glue the two of us back together.

  On the ride back, the cab driver said, “Anybody ever tell you you look like Sydney Stark-Leiffer?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Hey, it’s a compliment. She’s hot.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “I’d put her show on, but my radio’s fucked up.”

  “She’s a terrible mother.” I hadn’t even been thinking that—not in those words, at least.

  “Really? Man, you’d never know it. She’s always talking about her daughter, how close they are.”

  “Bullshit!”

  “Jeez. Mellow out.”

  We didn’t say anything for the rest of the ride. I even paid in silence, let him keep the change. Serves me right for taking another cab. I can’t afford to take cabs all the time. Who do I think I am, anyway? Sydney Stark-take-cabs-everywhere-stay-at-the-fucking-Plaza-get-three-face-lifts-a-year-and-love-your-hairdresser-more-than-your-daughter-Leiffer?

  But she wasn’t worth thinking about.

  I’ll go into that apartment and say, “First of all, I’m sorry for not telling you the truth in the first place….”

  By the time the elevator doors opened on our floor, I’d rehearsed everything I was going to say to Krull, from start to finish.

  I sprinted down the hall, practically throwing my key into the lock. But when I opened the door to our apartment, I saw nothing but darkness inside, heard no baseball play-offs, no TV at all—just the thud of Jake’s paws on the floor and a hoarse, hungry “Meh.”

  I turned on the lights, then poured Jake a bowl of dry food and some water. “Hello?”

  No answer, and even before I did a quick walkthrough of the small apartment on the chance Krull might have passed out in some remote corner of it, I knew I was alone.

  He would’ve fed Jake, for one thing.

  I saw the three Sterling roses he’d given me. I’d placed them in a vase on the kitchen counter. One for “I,” one for “love,” one for “you.”

  The cordless receiver was still lying on the floor, its tiny battery pack hanging out, attached to wires thin as nerves.

  I walked over—just stared at it for a few minutes, the same way you’d stare at a dying animal on your lawn. Should I try to save it, or just clean it up?

  I restored the batteries to their proper position, then found the plastic cover and snapped it back on. Nothing else was missing, so I brought it back to the base and recharged for a lot longer than usual.

  And, sure enough, when I put the receiver to my ear, I heard the dial tone.

  “Fixable,” I said to no one.

  Back in January, Yale and Peter had given me a bottle of twelve-year-old, single-malt Scotch for my twenty-ninth birthday. Knowing how much I appreciated the really good stuff, they’d practically gone into debt to buy it, saving up Peter’s tips and cooking their own meals for well over two months.

  When I’d opened the package, I’d gone speechless for a good minute and vowed not to break the gold seal until I honestly had something to celebrate.

  But at eleven p.m., with no one in this apartment to keep me company but Jake and the couple next door (who, I swear, had been fighting for the past half hour about a grocery bill), that seal was looking very breakable.

  “I didn’t ask for turnips! Why did you buy turnips?”

  “You said turnips!”

  “I said parsley!”

  “Well, fuck you, you got turnips now!”

  At least they have each other. The fact that I’d actually had this thought was enough to make me crack the seal and pour myself a huge glass, straight up, without feeling a shred of guilt over it.

  I took a long swallow. It was smooth and warm going down—and with a slight thrill to it—nothing like any Sc
otch I’d ever had—even Black Label. It made me mad I’d consumed so much cheap wine at the Indian place, because that had surely numbed my palate before this singular experience, and God, I was so lonely it hurt. Where was Krull?

  “What the hell is this?”

  “Marshmallow fluff.”

  “What?”

  “Marshmallow fluff, motherfucker!”

  Before I could fully comprehend what I was doing—which, for the record, was getting shit-faced alone in my apartment—I’d drained the entire glass and was pouring myself another.

  “I’m taking your churchin’ credit card!”

  “You take my credit card, I take your fuckin’ balls!”

  “You took those long ago, honey!” I couldn’t believe I had just said that—actually, shrieked was more accurate. Drinking and screaming alone in my apartment. Joining in on other people’s domestic disturbances. “And what the hell is churching?” I continued. “Speak English, asshole!”

  I clamped my hand over my mouth. Jake had come out of the kitchen, and seemed to be staring at me as if I’d gone insane.

  “Cut it out. At least I fed you.”

  I noticed a sudden quiet all around me, and wondered if my neighbors weren’t calling the cops, whispering into their phone about the crazy, screaming bitch next door. Wouldn’t that be ironic?

  I walked back into the bedroom and put an ear up to the wall, but still I heard nothing. No phone calls. Maybe I’d actually embarrassed them into shutting up.

  Jake jumped up on Krull’s empty side of the bed. I sat down next to him, petting him until he purred, loud as a little outboard motor. “At least you still like me.”

  The cordless receiver was on the bed, next to Jake; I’d been carrying it around like a security blanket. And without another thought, I picked it up, hit redial, and was immediately connected with my mother’s producer. “Dr. Sydney’s ‘Art of Caring’ on WLUV,” said the polished, professional voice. “Please tell me your name, and what you’d like to talk to Dr. Stark-Leiffer about.”

  “She’s not a doctor.”

  “Pardon?”