by Adam Mitzner
“You say that like you have a suspect in mind,” Dylan says.
I begin to choke up. All I can think is that Dylan will never know Charlotte. No one I ever meet again will know Charlotte.
“It’s okay,” he says softly.
He pulls me in tighter. God, it feels so good to be held.
“There’s another guy she was seeing,” I say slowly.
With each word, I can feel my rage beginning to boil, although at whom it’s directed remains unclear. Charlotte for keeping her secret? Paul for what he did to her?
And then I know. It’s none of the above. I’m furious with myself. For not protecting my sister. For not being there when she needed me.
“It’s my former college boyfriend. How messed up is that, right? I hadn’t seen him in more than ten years, but we recently reconnected. He told me that he also knew Charlotte. And I think—more than just think, actually—I’m pretty sure that he’s the guy who killed . . . or whatever . . . Charlotte.”
A thought crams into my brain, and I want to keep it from Dylan. I don’t want him to know the kind of person I really am. But then it comes out, anyway, as if I’m incapable of keeping a secret from him.
“You know, before this, I never considered myself a vengeful person. I mean, I was a prosecutor for a lot of years, but I was never one of the ones who relished the idea that these guys—and I prosecuted mainly men who were sexual predators—would be on the other end of that equation in prison. I just considered it a tragedy all the way around. But now . . . all I want is for Paul, this guy I once thought I was in love with, to suffer for what he did to Charlotte. Not just to die, but to suffer.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Matthew is walking along the street outside the gallery by the time I exit the building. I call out his name, regretting it instantly in case someone who knows Marco overhears. At least it gets Matthew to stop in his tracks.
“Proud of yourself?” I say when I catch up with him.
His smirk tells me the answer.
“In all honesty, yes. Yes I am, actually.”
“What if I pulled a stunt like this with your wife?”
“It was harmless, Clare. In fact, I did you a favor. He’s going to be happy now. He made a sale. Am I his first one?” he says with a laugh.
“It’s not funny. Do you have any idea how often Marco’s going to talk about this with me? Are you even going to buy that piece?”
His expression turns serious. “Of course I’m going to buy it. I meant what I said. It really is transcendentally beautiful. But that’s hardly because Painter Boy is the next coming of Rembrandt. It’s because you are transcendentally beautiful.”
Maybe there are women who can still be angry after a man calls them transcendentally beautiful, but I’m not one of them. My fury dissipates and I can’t help but smile, which tells Matthew that he’s won.
While I’m writhing with Matthew on thousand-thread-count linens, Marco texts that he’s going to go out after the show with the two other student artists. I don’t see it until around midnight, when I’m already on my way home from the hotel. Since Marco didn’t text again, I assume he hasn’t given a second thought to where I’ve spent the last few hours.
Marco arrives home several hours after me. I’m awake but pretend to be asleep so I don’t have to deal with him, just in case he’s angry that I made a hasty exit from the show. Or worse, he wants to have sex, which I’m definitely not up for after Matthew.
The following morning, I wake up early and make a strong pot of coffee. I’m hoping to have some time to myself before Marco rises, and take my cup out onto the balcony. Alone, with the wind swirling around me and the beauty of the Hudson below, I reflect on what I’ve let my life become. When did it get so out of control? I’m a train wreck, no two ways about it. Living with a man I fear is becoming abusive while in love with a married man and sleeping with a student who might get me expelled.
I’m not outside long when I hear the unwelcome sound of Marco in the living room. He opens the glass door to the terrace and pokes his head out.
“Good morning,” he says. He’s wearing sweatpants, a T-shirt, and a broad grin. “I’m going to get a cup of coffee and join you, okay? Do you want a refill?”
Marco’s good spirits from last night have apparently carried over to morning. He seems so cheerful that I wonder if maybe he sold another piece last night, although I find that to be extremely unlikely.
“No, I’m good.”
He goes inside to the kitchen and returns a minute later, mug in hand.
“God, this coffee is good,” Marco says. “I had a little too much last night. I was out with Rafael in some dive bar on a Hundred and Seventh, and we ended up closing the place.”
“Rafael?”
“Yeah. One of the other two students. The one at Parsons. We started out with the chick from CUNY, but she bailed at midnight. Then Rafael and I got down to some serious drinking.”
“How’d the rest of the show go?”
“Fine. I didn’t sell anything else, but that one sale was more than the other students made. I don’t think anyone even gave their work a second thought. Rafael’s stuff is pretty—in that you could see it over a sofa in a McMansion kind of way—but there’s no power to it at all. And Mercedes—she’s the girl from CUNY—her stuff is so derivative she should be embarrassed.”
“Derivative” is the worst insult Marco can lodge at an artist. “Pretty” is a close second.
“I’m happy that you sold something and you had a nice time,” I say.
“Not just something. A ten-grand portrait of you. And I have a good feeling about that Matthew guy. Maybe he’ll become a real patron.”
I smile at Marco, but inwardly I’m rolling my eyes. This is exactly what I feared would result from Matthew’s purchase. Marco sees Matthew as the Medici to his Michelangelo.
I’m saved from having to hear more by my ringtone. I should let it go to voice mail, as I usually do when Jason calls and I’m with Marco, but I’m so desperate to stop Marco from talking about Matthew that I say, “It’s Tobias. I need to take it.”
Marco scowls. I wonder if that’s because he suspects that it’s not my director who’s calling, or he simply doesn’t want to be interrupted.
“Hi,” I say, just as I’m getting off the terrace.
“I need to see you,” Jason says. “Right now.”
“I’m sorry, I’m in the middle of something now.”
“Are you with him?”
Damn. He knows about Marco.
“Who?”
“I’m not doing this over the phone. And I’m not asking, Clare. You better come here right now, or my next call’s going to blow up your world.”
This doesn’t sound like Jason. Not the Jason I know, at least. Still, I’m in no position to call him on the threat in case he’s not bluffing.
“You win. Give me twenty minutes.”
“Not a minute more,” he replies. Then he hangs up.
DAY ONE
TUESDAY
Christopher Tyler
25.
In my wildest dreams, I never thought I’d be staring at the corpse of a woman I just fucked. But there you have it. A lifetime of being a nonmurderer, gone in a flash. Never to return.
I will say this in my own defense: there was no premeditation. It just happened. One thing led to another.
That’s where the choice point actually occurred. I could have called the police and turned myself in. Or I could have run. Or I could have begun the cover-up.
You know which one I chose by now.
Moralize all you want about how something like this could never happen to you, and if by some crazy confluence of events it did that you would do the right thing. That’s just talk. Hell, I might have said the same thing. But when you do something without thinking—no matter how horrible—you can’t really say that you could never do something like that, because, by definition, you didn’t intend to do it in the first p
lace. And once it’s done, the calculus shifts dramatically. Nothing I did was going to bring Charlotte back. Which meant that the only question was the degree to which I should be punished for my momentary lapse. A little? Sure, that seems fair. But to have my life destroyed? No, that’s too great a punishment for any person to self-impose. I know society is all gung ho about justice, but I don’t think too many people in my position feel the same way.
I met Charlotte six months earlier. She was sitting in Starbucks having a fight with some black guy, who I assumed was her boyfriend. Women don’t fight in public with a man they’re not sleeping with. He stormed out of the place, leaving her in tears. I figured that made her easy pickings.
Up close, Charlotte was even more beautiful than from a distance. Although her eyes were tear-filled, they reminded me of a flickering flame—all blues and oranges—and her bee-stung lips were nothing short of perfection.
“It can’t be that bad,” was my opening line.
She rubbed her eyes with the tips of her fingers. “What?”
“I’m sorry for intruding. I’ve got a bit of a white-knight thing. And you’re nothing if not a damsel in distress, milady.”
She smiled at me and then wiped her eyes again. “I’m so embarrassed,” she said.
“Don’t be. I’ve been married for six years, which means that I’ve had more than my fair share of Starbucks fights, believe me. My name is Christopher Tyler.”
I made the call on the fly that I’d improve my odds if I told her I was married. People in relationships like that because they think it means you have something to lose as well. It seemed to work, because I got another smile.
“Nice to meet you, Christopher Tyler.” The repetition of my name was another good sign. She didn’t want to forget it. “I’m Charlotte. Charlotte Broden.”
“Nice to meet you too, Charlotte. Can I get you another coffee, or was your fight the kind that requires alcohol?”
I knew this was a ballsy play, but it’s my experience that you need to move fast in these situations or else the woman starts to think twice about where it’s heading.
“I could go for a drink,” she said.
There was a very nice hotel bar just around the corner. I’m partial to hotel bars, even though they charge at least a 30 percent premium, because they’re almost never crowded. I’m more than willing to pay eighteen bucks for a drink if I can carry on a conversation without either of us needing to shout to be heard.
She ordered a gin and tonic without specifying the brand, which I liked. I said, “Make it two,” to start laying the groundwork that we had much in common.
Our banter was easy. We flirted a bit about how I was too old for her, and I complained about my imaginary wife to keep up with her bad-mouthing of her boyfriend. When she asked what I did for a living, I told her the truth—that I’m an investment banker—because women, no matter how independent, don’t mind hearing that I’ve got money. She said she was studying to be a writer.
“I didn’t know people study to be writers,” I said. “I thought they, you know, just wrote.”
“You can learn to do anything better. All it takes is someone sharing their expertise and lots of practice.”
By the lasciviousness of her smile, I knew she wasn’t talking only about writing.
A second round of drinks followed and then a third. When she downed this last G&T like she was a gunslinger in an old Western saloon, I suggested that we see if the hotel had any availability. She didn’t even blink at the overture. Instead, she grabbed her purse and said, “Let’s go.”
It was great. The kind of sex you can only have with a stranger. I think the age difference also helps. You know that thing about how wives should be half their husband’s age plus seven? Having never been married, I can’t vouch for whether that formula predicts a lifetime of wedded bliss, but I am a big believer that an age gap leads to pretty explosive sex. I know what I’m doing in the sack, and Charlotte seemed like she’d had a lifetime of dating guys who didn’t.
After, we got to the inevitable discussion about whether we were ever going to see each other again. I would have been okay either way, but Charlotte said that she’d feel less slutty if I called her. To keep in character, I went through this whole thing about my wife being super suspicious, so I’d buy a prepaid cell phone and we’d need to meet in hotels. She said she was fine with that.
And that’s the way it went for six months. Charlotte and I would meet once a week or so, have mind-blowing sex, and then say our good-byes until the next time.
That is, until tonight. When I killed her.
The evening began like all the others. She texted my burner saying that her boyfriend—as a way of heaping further disdain on him, I never called him by his name, but just referred to him as Mr. McDouche or McDouche, for short—had left unexpectedly for a few hours, and she was hoping I could get away too.
We met in the bar of the W Hotel in Union Square, where we quickly did a couple of rounds of shots followed by two real drinks. Then we adjourned upstairs. It turned out that neither of us had eaten much that day, so we were both drunker than usual. That led to the sex being particularly good, but rougher too. She was totally into it, though, screaming at the top of her lungs. Real porn-star shit.
Then she called me by another man’s name. Not her McDouche of a boyfriend’s name either. A third name. There was another guy, apparently.
I stopped cold. Still inside her, I said, “What did you call me?”
She turned around. Up until that moment, her head had been buried in the sheets facing the opposite direction from me.
“Don’t stop,” she said breathlessly. “I’m so close.”
She pushed back against me, trying to start me going again. As she gyrated, I grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked on it, hard. This only excited her more; her pace quickened and her moans grew louder.
She called me by the right name. Over and over again, in fact. But I knew what I’d heard a moment before, and the fact that she was now screaming my name in the throes of passion wasn’t going to make that go away.
When her orgasm finally subsided, I stopped too. She must have thought I had finished, because she rolled over with a satisfied smile on her face.
“I swear, I’ve never been fucked so good in my life,” she said.
“Not even by him?” I asked.
“By whom?”
For a woman who had barely uttered a word that could be said on network television for the past hour, she had the most innocent look in her eyes. I wasn’t buying it. Not for a minute.
“You know who,” I said.
“I really don’t,” she said.
I said the name. Her face told me everything I needed to know.
For a moment, I felt as if I’d left my body and I was watching the scene play out. I knew how it was going to end. Badly. Very badly. And yet I didn’t see any way to avoid that result.
I never hit her. Ironically, I wish I had. That might have spent my rage and maybe she’d still be alive. Instead, when the impulse to violence overwhelmed me, I grabbed her by the throat. It was a position we’d assumed before, but always during sex, when the danger excited her. This time her eyes bulged out. She knew this was not about anyone deriving pleasure.
Once, when I was a boy, I touched a lever on some kind of electrical box that was live, and my hand became paralyzed. I knew I had to let go, and if I didn’t I’d die, but I still couldn’t relax my grip. The circuit finally broke when I yanked my entire body back from the box and fell to the floor.
It felt exactly like that. But I didn’t release quickly enough.
26.
I move Charlotte’s lifeless body from the bed to under it, just in case housekeeping comes in. Then I put the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the doorknob and leave my dead lover inside.
There’s no place open in Union Square at close to midnight that would sell a receptacle large enough to hide a fully grown woman’s body. Although it is t
he last thing I want to do, I have no choice but to go home and bring back something of my own.
I walk a few blocks away from the hotel, where I grab a taxi back to my place. I pay the driver in cash. I go up to my apartment, retrieve the largest suitcase I own—which I’m hoping will be big enough for Charlotte to fit inside—and head back to the hotel. Before leaving, I scrub the valise down with a damp cloth and empty every pocket. The last thing I want is something linking it back to me.
I arrive back in the room less than an hour after I left. When I reach under the bed, I don’t feel Charlotte. For a moment I think that maybe she’s still alive. That she somehow got up and went home. But then I feel her hair. I slide my hand down until I grasp her shoulder. Her skin is room temperature, maybe a little cooler. Like a steak that’s been left out overnight. She still feels fleshy too; I’ve been wondering how long it would be before rigor mortis sets in. More than the time I’ve been gone, I suppose.
I drag her body out. She looks like she’s sleeping, although her lips are bluer than before. I give fleeting thought to dressing her, but that seems like too much work. So I collect her clothing and stuff it into the suitcase.
It’s more difficult wedging Charlotte inside than I had initially thought. Her legs fit, but her head sticks out. She looks a bit like a magician’s assistant right before he’s about to saw her in half. I push down on her head, first with my arms, but when that doesn’t yield results, I put my knees on her shoulder to leverage my body weight. That does the trick, although I hear a definite crack as I fold her in.
