The Big Rewind

by Libby Cudmore

  “Sorry,” George said, releasing me. “I’ll buy you another one.”

  “That was yours,” I said sourly.

  “That’s all right,” he said. “I’ve had about three cups already; I’m starting to get jittery.”

  Not what I needed to hear. “You think you can do this?” He nodded and I continued. “We’re meeting up with Philip and his NYPD contact now; he’ll wire you up and give you some tips on how to question her.”

  We made our way to the street and I flagged down a cab.

  “Is it wrong that, despite what she might have done, I’m a little excited to see Cassie?” he said as we got in. “I’m excited, nervous, angry—it was a long drive from Binghamton; I told my wife I was visiting my sister in Beacon and took the train in from there. I mean, Cassie broke my heart. I should be overjoyed that we’re getting back together, even just for lunch, even as I try to get her arrested for killing my girlfriend.” He leaned his head against the window and exhaled, drawing a squiggle in the white circle left by his breath. “Life’s so fucking complicated sometimes.”

  “You know you’ll probably have to testify, right?” I said. “Are you prepared for your wife to know about all this?”

  “I’m tired of lying,” he said. “I’ll tell her when this is all over, and if she wants to leave, well, that’s her call. But I can’t carry this any longer. I’m just . . . tired. Worn out. Too old.” He turned back to me and smiled a little. “I quit drinking,” he said. “Not doing meetings or anything, but I haven’t had a drink in almost two weeks. I was teaching drunk. Office bottle, like an old detective. But one day, I was standing up in front of my class, trying to hide it all, and I swore I smelled KitKat’s perfume—no, not her perfume, her scent. I sent my students all home early. I poured the gin and tonic I had stashed in a water bottle down the faculty bathroom sink. I want to be the man that KitKat loved—not the mess I was when she died.”

  “That’s good,” I said. “I’m happy for you.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “For all of this.”

  We met Philip outside of Pete’s Tavern, where he was standing with a man in a dark green overcoat that would not have looked out of place on Humphrey Bogart. He shook my hand and gestured to his partner. “Jett, George, this is Scott Parker, a friend of mine from the Ninetieth Precinct.”

  “Won this case in a poker game.” Scott explained the favor with a pirate kind of grin. “But between us, Jett, I never thought the boyfriend did it. Detective Henley is going to be pissed when I crack his case for him. He and that worm of a DA were already flipping a coin to see who bought celebratory drinks.” To George, he said, “You’re our CI?”

  George nodded and Scott cracked open the bag with the wire in it. “All you have to do is get her to confess,” he said. “You can’t get her drunk and you can’t threaten her, but anything else is fair game.”

  “What if she doesn’t say anything?”

  “Then we’ve wasted an afternoon and you got a free lunch,” said Scott. “C’mon, let me wire you up.”

  PHILIP, SCOTT, AND I holed up in Philip’s unremarkable black sedan half a block down, watching George pace outside the restaurant. I didn’t realize how much I was fidgeting until Scott offered me a piece from a pack of Beemans. Even the Brooklyn cops were hipsters.

  “I go through two or three packs of this stuff when I’m on stakeout,” he explained. “Smoking draws too much attention to the car.”

  “You should make a gum wrapper chain,” Philip joked, slurping his coffee.

  I crammed the gum into my mouth and pointed. “Here she comes.”

  Cassie was wearing a black dress, a too-long sweater, and her Docs when she ran up to him, embracing him like she’d never let go. When she kissed him, he didn’t pull back. My stomach made balloon animals as I watched him lace his fingers with hers, and I wondered if she was wearing the bracelet under her oversized sleeves. George was either a master at this or he was going to blow the whole thing completely to hell. I swore I heard him sniffle back a sob.

  We hunched around Philip’s laptop. They sat down at a back booth, right where Philip had set up the camera earlier. George ordered a ginger ale; Cassie got a club soda. He was holding her hands across the table, leaning in.

  “He’s good,” Scott muttered. “He’s keeping the mic close. We should hire this guy.”

  “Yeah, his Gap sweater will really help him blend in with the drug cartels,” Philip said, snapping his gum.

  “I thought I’d never see you again,” George said.

  “I’m so sorry,” Cassie said. “Losing you was all my fault. I haven’t stopped thinking about you, not in all these years. I’ve wanted to call you, I’ve looked you up before, but you were married, I didn’t want to intrude . . . and I was scared you’d hang up.”

  “Never,” he said. “But there’s nothing keeping us apart anymore. My marriage is all but over and my girlfriend, well, she’s dead.”

  She buried her face in the menu. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  The waiter appeared momentarily, blocking the shot. Scott swore under his breath and Philip held his earpiece in a little tighter. All I could hear was their order: a sandwich for him, soup for her.

  “Do you remember that movie we saw at that little art theater?” he said when the waiter slipped away. “The one that started leaking in the middle of the show?”

  “The Nelson Street Art House, yes,” she said, grinning. “I don’t even remember what movie it was—some kind of crime film, right? I think we were too busy making out.”

  He nodded. “The mistress murders her boyfriend’s wife because she’s convinced no one can love him like she does,” he said. “And in the end, she’s right. They run off together. And when I drove you home that night, when I watched you go inside, I thought, I love her like that. I loved you so deeply that watching you walk away from me felt like necrosis. Like dying. And I wanted to know somehow that you loved me with that same violent intensity. But how would I ever know? All I had were three stupid words to repeat to you over and over, but they were never enough.”

  I knew that feeling. It was the exact reason I’d never said those three words to Catch even though he said them to me. It was comforting, in a way, to know that other people could feel love to that sort of dangerous depth.

  “He’d better be talking about a real fucking movie,” muttered Scott. “I’ve only got one set of cuffs; this bastard better not have been in on it the whole time.”

  “And when you left me,” George said, continuing, “I was convinced I was dying. I would dream about finding whatever new guy you were with, because he couldn’t love you the way I loved you. I dreamed I would get him alone and . . .” He smiled. “But you really did love me like that, didn’t you? And you proved it. With KitKat.” She started to protest, but he brought her hands to his lips. “No secrets. Not now. Not if we’re going to be together.”

  She paused for a moment, glanced down at the table, then back up at him. But she didn’t speak. No one in the car dared to breathe.

  “How did you find her?” George asked.

  “I looked her up,” she said. “When you gave me her name, you mentioned that she was a party planner in Brooklyn, so it didn’t take me too long to find her. I called her up and made an appointment. But I just wanted the tape. I didn’t want her to have that song. There are millions of other songs in the world, she didn’t need the one I wrote for you. And when I got there, she invited me in for a cup of tea; she was baking pot brownies and the smell reminded me of that night at my drummer Cara’s party.”

  George actually smiled. “I got way too stoned on edibles that night,” he said, a grin cracking his face like a spring thaw. “I was convinced that all the stars were falling out of the sky and I would be sliced in half if I left Cara’s apartment.”

  “It was the first night you spent at my place,” she said. “I don’t know how I convinced you to leave in that state, but somehow, I got you back to my apartment
and I started writing ‘Secret Girlfriend’ while you slept.” She glanced down at his hands and then back up into his eyes like she’d been rehearsing this moment for the last decade. “That was the moment I knew I loved you.”

  Stars fall flash and slash my heart . . . My favorite lyric, written about a paranoid, passed-out boyfriend. I thought about Sid asleep next to me the night I’d brought him home from the hospital, his body lax with painkillers and exhaustion, how sweet and sad and perfect he’d looked in that moment.

  Cassie continued, drawing me out of my memory. “I asked KitKat about you,” she said. “And her face just lit up. She wouldn’t stop talking about how much she loved you, how much of a relief it was to finally be able to tell someone about her soul mate.” Her voice began to rise to a frustrated, panicked pitch; she pulled one hand out of his to gesture with tense, calculated moves. “And I just wanted her to shut up. I asked her about the tape, but she tried to tell me she didn’t have it, but I knew she was lying. I grabbed the rolling pin and . . . and I just lost it.”

  “We got it,” said Philip. “We can go in.”

  “Wait,” I pleaded, holding up my hand. “I want to hear the rest of what she has to say.”

  “This isn’t a bedtime story,” Scott said. “Let me spoil the ending—fifteen to twenty-five on murder two, up for parole after seventeen.”

  “I just want to hear if she gives up any more.”

  “She’s right,” Philip said. “‘Lost it’ isn’t exactly a detailed confession.”

  We turned back to the feed. “She wasn’t lying,” George said. “The tape went to the wrong mailbox. Her neighbor got it instead.”

  Cassie’s eyes went wide and she sank back against the leather bench. “She never heard my song?” she said. “But this girl at my show, she requested it, where else would she have gotten it . . . ?”

  “Go now!” Philip cried. “She’s putting it all together; get her before she makes a run for it!”

  It was almost too late—Cassie sprang up from the booth and made a dash for the door. Scott kicked open the passenger-side door and met her under the awning with Philip flanking her on the other side. George followed her out of the restaurant. She looked to her right, to her left, and then back at George with eyes like a cornered dog. She took two quick strides back toward George and pulled his face to hers, kissing him hard.

  He didn’t resist.

  “I love you,” she murmured, holding him tight. “I’ve always loved you.”

  Scott pulled her away, twisting her arms behind her back with his handcuffs ready. George just stood there dumbly, her lipstick still dark on his mouth. She struggled in Scott’s hold.

  “George, please,” she said. “Please don’t let them do this. I love you. I love you!”

  Scott pushed up her sleeves to get the cuffs on, revealing KitKat’s bracelet. “Bag it,” said Philip. To George, he added, “This look familiar?”

  George swallowed so hard his eyes bugged out. “Yes,” he muttered, staring at the scuffs on his shoes. “It’s the one I bought KitKat—Katie. For her birthday last January.”

  Scott pulled out a plastic evidence bag and dropped it in.

  Cassie looked at me, standing next to the car where I’d frozen in place, watching this all go down. She smiled sadly. “I thought you, of all people, would understand,” she said.

  “You killed someone over a song,” I replied, my throat dry.

  “I killed someone for love,” she said as Scott ducked her head into the backseat of his unmarked car. “Isn’t that how all great stories go?”

  For a moment, it made sense. For a moment, she was beautiful, a tragic lover, a wronged woman. If this was a movie, she would still be the heroine even as they led her to the hangman. But this wasn’t a movie, and when that moment was up, she was just a bat-shit lunatic who’d beaten my friend to death over a song she’d never gotten to hear.

  I thought about the music I had hoarded, my fear that if I heard the songs in the wrong place and time it might mean they no longer belonged to the moments I clung to. If Catch had grown up to mirror George’s suburban malady, was I then fated to follow Cassie’s, grow bitter and mean because I could not let go of all my junkyard yesterdays?

  No, I decided. It had to end. Now Jeremy and I could have something new. Gabe and I could have happy memories. But William and Catch had to stay firmly in my past. Because I was not like Cassie. Not anymore.

  George stood in the doorway with that same empty gaze he’d had when I’d told him that KitKat was dead. We watched the car pull away. Cassie never once looked back, never made one last plea, seemed to simply accept the fate she must have always known was coming. And then it was just George and I, standing on the sidewalk, watching her go. He was as blank as a Munny figure. I couldn’t stand the silence.

  “What now?”

  “I’m going to go home,” he said. “And tell my wife everything.”

  “Probably a good idea,” I said. “You want me to go back to Grand Central with you?”

  He shook his head. “No offense, but I’d rather be alone.”

  “Then take this,” I said, reaching into my coat pocket and pulling out the tape. “It’s your secret. KitKat died believing you still loved her.”

  Tears filled his eyes. “I really did love her,” he said, turning his face from me and staring into the wide window of the restaurant. The gawkers had already grown tired of the scene playing out before them and had gone back to their lunches. “Both of them. I meant every goddamn word I said to Cassie in there.”

  “I never doubted that,” I said. “I don’t think they did either.”

  I had a momentary instinct to get us a cab back to Grand Central for a proper good-bye, follow him on Twitter, friend him on Facebook, to make sure we stayed in touch. But with all we had in common, I realized it was probably best if we parted ways now.

  “Guess I’ll see you at the trial,” I said.

  “Guess so,” he replied.

  And then we didn’t have anything else to talk about.

  Chapter 53

  THROWING IT ALL AWAY

  The L train was filled with people chattering about Cassie’s arrest, and I thought of how fucking nice it must have been to live in an era where the newspaper only arrived once a month, maybe, if the postmaster’s horse didn’t die. By the time I reached my stop, I’d heard so many armchair lawyers spout their TV court cases that part of me hoped Cassie was acquitted, just to prove them all wrong.

  At home, I tore the Boyfriend Box out of the closet. Fuck nostalgia. Fuck all of it. Cassie murdered KitKat because she couldn’t let go of the past. I pulled out love letters, mix tapes, and burned CDs with decoupaged liner notes, stuffed animals, college T-shirts, broken necklaces, guitar picks, the black bowling shirt Catch used to let me fall asleep in . . .

  Into the bathtub it went. Everything but the stuffed animals; Gabe’s bear and the rest of them went into a Trader Joe’s bag destined for the Salvation Army. I lit a match and tossed it onto the pile in the bathtub. A stack of bad poetry went up first. Then William’s Sailor Moon stationery, the last love letter he’d sent me before getting engaged. All the track lists, the notes passed in math class, postcards from halfway around the goddamn world. And when the smoke detector began shrieking, I smashed it open with a broom and ripped out the battery. Baldrick dove under the bed.

  I sat on the toilet and cracked open the cassettes. I gripped handfuls of tape, pulling it out like it was a cheap weave in a reality-TV catfight. I tore up Rent, the Smiths, Devin Townsend, the Shins. I smashed CDs into shivs on the edge of the bathtub. Hardcore Pining, The Portable Saturday Night, The Wind. It wasn’t until I tasted the acrid black smoke in my lungs that I even noticed I was sobbing.

  But there was one piece I hadn’t torched, one item left dangling off the edge of the sink. Sid’s blue toothbrush, the bristles worn and almost dry from when he’d brushed his teeth before leaving for work. I threw that in too. Everything must go.
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  Then finally, I cranked on the shower and extinguished the blaze. I gathered everything up into a garbage bag and dumped it in the basement of the building. I scrubbed the black out of the bathtub. I washed the tears off my face. And when I went to the drugstore, I left the windows open to air out the place and release all the memories lingering in the smoke above my head.

  SID DIDN’T ASK about the remaining burned smell. He didn’t ask about the busted smoke detector. He didn’t ask why Baldrick wouldn’t come out from under the bed.

  “Where’s my toothbrush?” he asked, emerging from the bathroom with the toothpaste in one hand.

  I got up and rummaged through my purse to retrieve the new one.

  “What, did you clean the toilet with mine?” he joked, cracking open the package.

  “Just thought you should have a new one,” I said, trying to sound nonchalant, as though hours before, I hadn’t almost burned my apartment to ashes, his toothbrush included. “New apartment, new girlfriend, new life, new toothbrush. Leave what’s past in the past.”

  “New girlfriend, huh?” he asked, his mouth full of toothpaste. “Who might that be?”

  I swatted him on the arm. He ducked back into the bathroom to rinse and spit and wash his face. “This is real, right?” he asked after, holding my face with two long, delicate fingers. “Us?”

  “It’s as real as you want it to be,” I said. “You and I are both coming off a lot of weirdness and if you want to take things slow, I get it.”

  “Why, Miss Bennett, are you trying to appeal to my chivalrous cowboy nature?” he teased.

  “Perhaps I am, Mr. McNeill,” I replied in a honeysuckle drawl.