by Lisa Unger
“I thought you said I did the right thing.”
“God, stop whining for once,” said Emily.
“You did” said Linda. “You did do the right thing. But this is the right thing, too. In a different way.”
It was nothing but shades of gray, she wanted to tell him, none of it black and white. But instead she opened her free arm to him and he came and sat on her lap; he wasn’t too big for that. Emily rested her head on Linda’s shoulder and she took her brother’s hand and squeezed. They could be so mean to each other, scream and whine to beat the band, but Linda knew they shared the same ferocious love that she and Izzy did. And now, with foundations shifting, and life as they knew it crashing around them-in ways they weren’t yet aware-they’d have this. They’d always have this.
12
He felt an acute annoyance as she bled out, died slowly. Her eyelids fluttered quickly, butterfly wings of panic and resistance. There was a hopeless rattle to her breath. He looked away when he saw her hand start to twitch, her eyes go blank. His annoyance resided at first in the back of his throat, then became an ache just above his brow line.
A slow unraveling occurs when one thread separates from the fabric; it can’t help but catch on something. One tiny pull, then another, and eventually the whole garment comes apart. He’d broken the first rule he’d set for himself: Leave at the first sign of trouble; cut your losses, take what you can, and change that garment before you’re left half naked in the cold. It was attachment and arrogance that brought him to this place. Sara’s earlier admonition rang in his ears.
He moved over to the couch and sat, put his chin on one fist, watched her. There was a time when he thought he could love her. But when she’d given herself to him so easily and served her purpose, his passion for her cooled quickly.
HE’D MET MARCUS Raine at Red Gravity, where they were both programmers. Though they’d been raised in the same country, just miles apart, Marcus Raine didn’t want to be friends-not with his fellow countryman, not with anyone. Their colleagues laughed about Raine behind his back, joked that he just powered down at the end of the day, sat slumped at his desk until morning. He was there when everyone arrived, there when they left in the evenings. He seemed to have five sets of nearly identical outfits-black pants and Rockport shoes, button-down shirts in some shade of brown or gray. The receptionist took notes-brown on Monday, charcoal on Tuesday, slate on Wednesday, chocolate on Thursday, gunmetal on Friday. He didn’t often acknowledge the weather, wore the same three-quarter-length lightweight black jacket, rain or shine, summer or winter. Sometimes he wore a stocking cap when it was very, very cold. Sometimes, in the blistering heat, he didn’t wear the jacket at all.
He didn’t join in the laughter. He was only slightly more sociable than Marcus Raine. But even this was design, part of his invisibility. Friendly enough not to stand apart but never intimate, never revealing. As a result, he was fairly certain that none of his Red Gravity colleagues would even remember his name. Sometimes he forgot it, too, would go days without thinking of himself even with the name his mother had given him. Now, after so many years, the name Kristof Ragan seemed to belong to someone else, someone who’d lived a meaningless life and been forgotten.
Beneath their jokes about Marcus Raine was a current of resentment. Marcus had been hired early, before any of them. He’d been paid a very low salary and given a large number of company shares to make up for it. When the company went public, Raine became a very rich man. The company rewarded his loyalty and hard work by raising his salary on top of it. Rumor had it-and in a small company there were always rumors-he made nearly as much as the CEO. But he didn’t begrudge Marcus Raine his success; it didn’t make him angry or jealous. It made him curious. What was it like to be Marcus Raine?
Isabel got a certain look on her face when she was working-and she didn’t have to be sitting at her computer to be working. It was a faraway glaze to her eyes, a kind of thoughtful cock to her head. He could almost see synapses firing in her brain as it struggled to know. It was a place she went to imagine, to understand, to be something that she wasn’t so that she could write it. He found it fascinating but not foreign. He had the same drives, the same desires for very different reasons. He’d had them all his life.
It was Camilla, Raine’s girlfriend, who impelled him to action. Raine, apparently, had forgotten his lunch. He brought the same lunch every day. Some type of meat on whole wheat bread and an apple. He drank water from the cooler, in a cup he kept in his desk and washed in the break-room sink when he was done. He was so precise, like an old clock, so predictable and self-contained. He never could have imagined Raine with a woman like Camilla. She breezed into the office, wearing a flouncy, printed dress, extraordinarily lean, delicately muscular, outstanding legs ending in dangerously high heels-red. She had an electrifying energy, white-blond hair, a voice that sounded like a singing bird to him.
“Can I just leave this for Marcus Raine?” she asked, holding up a brown bag.
“Oh, I’ll call him,” the receptionist said with unmasked enthusiasm. She wanted to see him interact with his girlfriend. “Can I give him your name?”
She hesitated, looked around. “Camilla,” she said finally.
The reception desk stood directly in front of the door; behind that was the field of cubicles where everyone sat. One by one, people found a reason to look over the walls, like prairie dogs popping quick, curious heads up from their holes. From where he sat, he had an unobstructed view as Marcus Raine strode up to the front and took the bag from her hand. He watched Camilla’s face brighten at the sight of him. Her smile widened-no, deepened-as Raine wound a strong arm around her waist and kissed her. He whispered something to her in Czech and she laughed, a tinkling, musical sound like ice in a glass.
Suddenly Marcus Raine didn’t seem so laughable. He watched the faces of their colleagues, mocking smiles dropping in surprise, resentment waxing like a moon, cold and hard.
HE HADN’T THOUGHT about the way he met Camilla in a long time, about the desire he’d had from the first moment he saw her. It was different from the desire he’d had for Isabel, which was cooler, more intellectual. His love for Isabel connected him to the higher parts of himself, the better man inside. His hunger for Camilla had been primal, a raptor ripping meat from a carcass on the jungle floor.
He saw her again later in the week. This time it was no accident. He worked at his station until he saw the top of Raine’s head float by his cube. He quickly gathered his things and ran down the stairs while the old elevator slowly carried Raine toward the street. He arrived on the ground floor just in time to see the other man exit through the glass doors onto Canal Street. It was summer, still light at nearly eight P.M.
The humidity in the air raised an instant sheen of sweat on his brow. From a distance, he followed Raine through the chaos of the busy street, beside the garish electronics shops, just gaping holes in buildings, loud with booming speakers, and stands loaded with knockoff bags, the air smelling of exhaust and crispy duck.
Camilla, resplendent in shades of blue, a simple blouse and flowing skirt, flippy sandals on her feet, was waiting for Raine by the subway station. She was like a breeze of clean air in the filth of the city around her. Raine kissed her quickly and together they descended below the street.
He rode between two cars and watched the couple through the thick, dirty window that separated them. They were oblivious, totally wrapped up in each other, one of Raine’s arms around her shoulder, the other holding her delicate hand. She looked up at him with that wide-open smile. Raine seemed like a different person, animated, laughing, relaxed, not like the gargoyle he usually was, staring joylessly at his screen, skulking over his sandwich in the break room, grunting his replies to questions, issuing terse one-line e-mails. To look into Camilla’s face, you’d imagine he was the most charming, charismatic bastard who ever walked the face of the earth.
When they exited uptown, he followed them again, watched as
they entered a beautiful prewar building on the Upper West Side. A doorman in a navy blue uniform pulled the door open for them, and they disappeared. Left behind on the street, a terrible current of covetousness rushed through him. It literally caused him to feel nauseous when he thought of the hovel he lived in out in Williamsburg, shared with his disgusting slob of a brother. Even earning the kind of money that would make him a king at home, he lived like a pauper in this whore of a city, where everything he’d ever wanted was right in front him but always out of reach.
He’d learned quickly that the only certain way to succeed in this country was as a thief. The wealthy Americans of everyone’s dreams hadn’t worked their way to the top, hadn’t gone from rags to riches through hard work and good morals, as they would have everyone believe. The wealthiest had either gotten lucky-like Marcus Raine-or gone crooked, stolen and cheated and killed to earn their riches. They were pirates. This didn’t make him angry. It made him hungry. It made him creative.
Ivan, unlike Marcus, had had no interest in getting an education and a job, had already aligned himself with an unsavory element. Almost as soon as they arrived, Ivan connected with two brothers who ran with the Albanian mob. Their crimes were petty-ATM heists, transporting Albanian girls who thought they were going to be models and wound up addicted to meth, wrapping their lithe bodies around poles in filthy strip bars. But Ivan was making more money-much more-even though he had a limited intelligence, wasn’t much more than a child in some ways. Ivan was always the one who treated at clubs and dinners out.
On the long ride home to Brooklyn, he’d thought about why he’d come to this country, what he’d hoped to accomplish here. He didn’t want to be a paycheck player, someone who lived by another man’s rules. He hadn’t imagined himself a slave to a company, asking permission to take time off for sickness, his only free hours squeezed in between grueling work days and the two weeks a year he was allotted for holiday. Suddenly, it seemed to him that Ivan, whom he’d always regarded as slow and essentially lazy, had been right all along.
When he got back to their apartment, Ivan was lying on the couch surrounded by a field of fast-food wrappers. He’d unapologetically unbuttoned his pants to allow his belly to expand and was staring blankly at the television set. Ivan breathed heavily, evenly, like someone sleeping though he was obviously awake. He lifted a hand in greeting.
“Ivan,” he said, closing the door loudly behind him and placing his laptop bag on the floor near his brother’s feet. The place was a hovel-a couch they’d rescued from the curb, an old table with two plastic chairs, futons for beds. Sheets acted as curtains. The place hadn’t been cleaned since the last time he’d lost his patience with the filth, about a month earlier. But he didn’t care about that at the moment. “I’ve been thinking.”
“What have you been thinking?” Ivan asked apathetically. The massive Sony television and surrounding equipment-a PlayStation, audio system and speakers, DVD player-filled the far wall. Ivan might not shower for days, but he took his audiovisual very seriously. Where all the equipment had come from a few weeks earlier, whether bought or stolen, he didn’t know and didn’t care to know.
He told his brother about Marcus Raine, about the ideas he’d had. Ivan had a good laugh. “All these years I’ve been saying that you work too hard for too little. What finally changes your mind? Just one pretty girl?”
He couldn’t say what had changed his mind. At the time, he thought it was Camilla, the force of his desire for her. But, no. It was as if he’d lost the will to keep swimming against the current of his life. He’d just stopped kicking, stopped stroking, and let the flow take him. Ivan had a good laugh, patted him on the back, and congratulated him on seeing things as they were. And then they got to work. It seemed like so long ago. It was. A lifetime. He was a different man with a different name then.
CAMILLA WAS BEAUTIFUL even in death. He stood over her still body and remembered how warm her skin had been, how wet she always was for him. He imagined that she’d sensed his evil and, instead of repelling her, it excited her. He’d been wrong about that, though. When she saw him, really understood what he was, she’d turned against him.
He crouched down and pushed back the collar of her white shirt and saw the lace of her bra over the swell of her perfect breast. French and Italian women were always lauded for their sensual beauty. But Czech women, with their fine, hard features and their slim, long bodies, went unmentioned. Maybe it was their apparent lack of warmth, the unyielding quality of their aura-like Prague itself. Compared to Prague, Paris paled. But Prague was a side trip, somewhere Americans might spend a few days on their European tour. No one dreamed of Prague the way they did Paris. Paris glittered and danced for her audience, had already lifted her skirts and offered her treasures to the world. Prague still stood in the wings, holding herself aloof, offering nothing but coy glimpses of her perfection.
“I should have killed you long ago,” he whispered.
Then the buzzer rang, the sound startling him so badly, he felt as if he’d been jolted by an electric shock. He froze in his crouch by the body, and felt every breath he took until the buzzer rang again. Then there was silence and he waited. He heard a few buzzers ringing in other apartments. Whoever was down there was hoping someone would just open the door, maybe expecting a delivery or a maid. And then he heard the sound of the door unlocking, opening quickly and then slamming, the sound carrying up the stairwell. And then it was quiet. It was quiet for so long, he started to relax.
When the knob started to turn, he remembered too late that he hadn’t locked it behind him.
13
As soon as I exited my sister’s apartment, I saw her. She sat in an unmarked Caprice across the street, trying to hide behind a newspaper. But I recognized Jesamyn Breslow by the blond crown of her head, saw a flash of her face as she flipped the page of the newspaper. That’s why it had been so easy for me to get away. They wanted me to, thinking I might lead them to my husband.
I wanted to walk over and pound on her window, rage at her for following me when they should be doing some police work of their own. Tell her that I didn’t know any more than they did and was following the pathetic leads they unwittingly gave me. But instead I headed to the N/R station on Prince Street. I heard the car door slam and knew she had gotten out and was following me on foot. I walked fast, eventually ducking into the station.
A quick glance showed that she was still behind me. She was trying to hang back, still hiding behind that newspaper. I managed to lose her by squeezing onto a crowded uptown train. I took it one stop to Astor Place and then took the next train back downtown. I walked to Camilla Novak’s building on West Broadway and Broome Street. I’d always loved SoHo, something so grand and yet terminally hip about it, somehow swank and grunge at the same time-the galleries and upscale shops with huge picture windows representing outrageous rents, narrow residential buildings, tony cafés, only the very coolest bars and restaurants. Once known as the Cast Iron District, SoHo boasted huge historic buildings with gigantic windows and upper floors that were wide-open loft spaces, appealing to artists because of the square footage, natural light, and cheap rents. They moved into the spaces illegally in the 1970s, ignoring the city zoning at the time, but the depressed city was too embroiled in its other messes-rampant crime, a shattered economy-to care.
Most people didn’t realize that more than 250 buildings were made with cast iron. Architects found cast iron to be cheap, could be fashioned into the most intricate design patterns, and was easily repaired. It was also the strength and pliability of this metal that allowed for the carving of magnificent frames and the tall windows so beloved by artists. Unfortunately, when exposed to heat, cast iron buckled. Steel brought a rapid end to the use of cast iron. I know all of this because of Jack, the original New York City geek.
When I came to the address I’d written down, I rang the buzzer hard, a few times. Novak, 4A was scrawled on her mailbox; otherwise, I wouldn’t have known wh
at buzzer to push. I realized that this was the reason they (the ubiquitous they with all their cautionary tales) told you not to put your last name beside the buzzer at the street door.
But there wasn’t any answer. I didn’t have any reason to believe that she’d been here when I talked to her; I might have reached her on her cell phone. And if she had been here, maybe she’d left afraid that I’d do exactly what I’d done, look her up on the Web and show up at her door. She’d wanted to talk to me once. Why had she changed her mind?
I rang the buzzer again. When there was still no answer, I started ringing other buzzers in the building, hoping someone would just let me in. I had no clear idea what I would do if I had gained admittance. I was just operating on a kind of autopilot, moving forward on instinct with little planning and no visibility beyond the present tense.
I was about to give up when a voice carried over the intercom.
“Who is it?”
“It’s Camilla,” I lied. “I forgot my keys.”
“Again?” crackled an elderly voice. “I’m not letting you in next time.”
I heard the door unlock and I pushed my way into the foyer. Black and white tile beneath my feet, cool concrete walls, milky light washing in from a window on the first landing. Now what, genius? I thought, pushing through the second door.
I peered up the staircase. I could hear the sound of a cat mewing, the frenzy of a game show on someone’s television. Somewhere in the building a baby was crying. As I started up the stairs, I patted my bag for my cell phone, on reflex wanting to call my sister. But it was gone, I remembered. I’d left it behind. I felt suddenly as if I was alone in the dark without a flashlight. In the woods, feeling my way.
On the fourth floor, I paused, then walked slowly in the grainy light filtering in from a frosted, double-paned window at the end of the hallway. 4A was the first door on the right. I looked at it; someone had painted it recently, a glossy black compared to the dull gray of the others on the floor. What would I do? Knock? Listen at the door? I almost turned around and left, almost took Erik’s advice and headed uptown to the lawyer’s office. Instead I put my hand on the knob and, against all better judgment, turned it and found the door unlocked. This, I knew, was not a good thing.
