by Andrea Bartz
“Ooh, what happened?” Damien said. He narrowed his eyes. “Was the sex bad?”
“I mean, yeah, but it wasn’t that. Oh, god. His name was Lloyd, of all things.” Confessing felt like a comfort, an abrupt hook from the horrifying thought of Alex hurting Edie. “I met him on a totally random night in the winter and then built him up in my mind as this Adonis for a few months. Then one night we were at the same party and ended up hooking up. Cue months of me pining over him as he didn’t return my texts, and then cue me waking up on Edie’s couch one morning and her saying, ‘Umm…you gave Lloyd a black eye.’ ” I was blushing, I could feel it, even all these years later. “Apparently I wandered into a party where Lloyd was, presumably made a fool of myself hanging all over him as he, like, casually tried to get rid of me, and then—just as Edie found me, lucky-slash-unlucky me—I guess I tried to playfully hit him with a pillow and somehow my elbow clocked him in the eye.”
A new thought, opening like an umbrella: Had it gone down that way? I’d seen his black eye later, as I refreshed his Facebook profile obsessively. He and I hadn’t spoken again, and I’d avoided the topic with Edie. Maybe she’d lied for my benefit. Maybe I’d confronted him, screamed in his face, thrown an object or an elbow or a punch.
“Serves him right,” Damien announced.
The front door jangled and Will walked in, clearly surprised to see Damien and me. He looked exhausted, and I promised, without prompting, that we’d be leaving soon.
“No, no, you’re always welcome here. I’m going straight to the gym, anyway.” He headed into the hallway.
“Lindsay, you’re welcome to stay in the guest room if you don’t feel like schlepping,” Tessa said once he’d left. “Use it now, before we turn it into a nursery.”
“I’m not invited?” Damien teased.
“Oh, please, you live five minutes away,” she replied.
I laughed. “Nah, I’ll leave you guys alone. Oh, but one other thing: I looked up Calhoun’s landlord,” I said. “Major creeper who had a weird crush on Edie.”
Damien lifted his pointer finger. “Pedophilic slumlord? I know the type.”
“Exactly. Apparently he died in a fire the winter before last.”
“Whoa. Like, arson?” Tessa asked.
“Unclear.”
Damien leaned forward. “Maybe he killed Edie and then God struck him down for it! That would explain everything.”
Tessa played along. “You’re right! Case closed. Let’s go celebrate.”
We raised our water glasses, and Damien downed his rosé.
“Oh, I almost forgot, I have something for you,” Damien said to Tessa. He rushed off to the foyer and I fought down a flicker of hurt, that Damien was already done with this topic. A moment later, he returned with a little bag from the neighborhood’s most bourgeois baby shop.
Tessa reached inside and pulled out a gray onesie with the words FUCKING ADORABLE splashed across the front.
“I love it!” She rose to kiss his cheek. “Although I’m not sure how Will is gonna feel about our kid having fucking on his or her chest.”
“Well, the store also had adorable pink and blue things, but until you do a highly Instagrammed gender reveal, I—”
“Sex!” I corrected.
Damien turned to me. “What?”
“It’s a biological sex reveal—we won’t know the gender until they’re old enough to have a gender identity.”
He lifted his palms. “Linds, you can’t be yelling ‘Sex!’ while I’m speaking and expect me to keep my train of thought. On that note, I gotta go—I have a date tonight. Lindsay, keep us posted on the murderous hottie, ’kay?”
He and Will left at the same time, an odd couple with Will’s skinny legs popping out of his gym shorts and Damien’s muscled body encased in well-tailored resort wear. Tessa set her feet on the coffee table and leaned back.
“You doing okay, Linds?”
“I don’t know. I think so. I just…that video. Christ. I’d give anything to just go back in time and be a fly on the wall, see what happened next. Fuck, I’d give anything to make the camera keep recording. Literally.”
“We’ll figure it out. It’ll be okay.”
I nodded. “I hate that she was cheating on Alex,” I blurted out.
Tessa raised her eyebrows, waiting.
“I mean, I guess it makes me mad. That she was doing that. And then I’m mad at myself for judging her because, c’mon, she’s dead.” Something that’s always bothered me about cheating: It seems so greedy. I would gladly take just one partner. You need two?
Tessa nodded. “I mean, cheating sucks, but it happens. Either way, you’re not wrong for feeling your feelings.”
“Have you ever been cheated on?” I asked.
She kind of laugh-sighed. “Okay, I’m going to tell you something,” she said. “Years ago, I became totally convinced that Will was cheating on me. We had kind of a rough first year of being married, and then he was traveling all the time for work and coming home late, and I just thought, ‘Dammit, I’m one of those women. I’m the idiot wife.’ ”
I could barely hide my shock. Sweet, boring, definitely-not-as-hot-as-her Will? “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t tell anyone.”
“So what’d you do?”
“Oh god, this is embarrassing. I installed a keystroke logger on his computer.”
“A what?”
“A keystroke logger. You can get it at, like, Office Depot. It records everything someone types so you can see it remotely.”
I frowned. “Why not just hack into his computer? Or, like, look at it when he wasn’t around?”
She shook her head. “You can clear your search history. You can delete emails and texts. This shows you everything they’ve ever typed.” She bowed her head. “I can’t even look at you. I know, it’s so bad.”
“No, I get it. You just wanted to know. So what’d you find?”
“That he’d been seeing a therapist. Because he loved me and was afraid he was gonna fuck things up. I felt like such a crazy person.”
“Oh my god. Well, I’m relieved about that ending. And you’re not a crazy person. Love makes people crazy.”
“Fear makes people crazy,” she added, or maybe countered.
I nodded slowly, unsure of what else to say. I’d always thought their relationship was close to perfect, the Platonic ideal. Knowing about this rocky patch, even all those years ago, made me feel sad for Tessa, but also…what was that soft fizz? Relief?
“Sorry, I’m not helping,” she burst in. “I’m just saying shit. But listen, it’s gonna be okay.”
I thought for a moment. “Can you do me a favor and look into the landlord for me?” I asked. “Anthony Stiles. I did a cursory search and found the fire, but maybe—”
“I’m on it.” She nodded emphatically, then finished a scribble in her notepad with a dramatic dot. Stiles, cross the t, dot the i. Stick a needle in my eye.
“But, Tessa, I know you’ve got a lot going on with the baby and work and everything else. So please don’t feel like you need to—”
“You’d do the same for me,” she interrupted.
“Can I at least take you out to dinner this weekend to say thank you?” I pressed my palms together. “Or we can order in some Thai and watch movies that’ll make you really excited about motherhood. Like Rosemary’s Baby!”
She giggled. “I wish, but Will and I are going up to the house on Friday. The city smells are getting to me.”
“Rain check, then,” I told her, careful not to let my face fall. The house in Saugerties. Coincidentally, they’d closed on it the same weekend when, a few years back, a pipe had burst under my kitchen sink. For weeks, I had to sleep in hotels as contractors ripped at the cabinets and floor. Tessa had called to check in from their new pinewood
cabin, and the heavy envy I’d felt had been almost too much to bear: Here I was stuck with no partner, no dream job, and no apartment, and Tessa was rounding the bases with home number two. I’d cried often that month, ugly sobs that took me by surprise as I blow-dried my hair or got ready for bed.
* * *
In the morning, I rode the subway clutching a greasy pole and thinking about Alex. A suspect so obvious, it was laughable: the cuckolded ex-boyfriend, spurned and right there that evening. I was standing in the break room, making a cup of coffee, when a circuit connected—a cuckolded ex-boyfriend, recently spurned: We had another one of those in the cast. Why didn’t anyone suspect him?
I’d found Greg’s architecture firm back when I’d first broke into my old email—no contact info, just a physical location and a generic info@ email address. The address was in DUMBO, a cobblestoned neighborhood in Brooklyn, just one subway stop from my office. I blocked out a fake lunch on my work calendar. Greg, I’m coming for you.
At noon, I emerged at High Street and wandered the wrong way for a while, confused by the area’s angled streets and sudden dead ends from the two bridges plunked there. Eventually I found Greg’s building, a block-long behemoth with bookstores on both ends. No doorman, so I rode the elevator to the fourth floor. No receptionist there, either, so I wandered the hallways, watching the numbers until I came upon suite 418.
It was one of those open offices, sunlit and dissected by four absurdly long tables, hip men clacking away at computers along them. Many were standing and the rest were rolling around on Aeron chairs. Ringing the whole space were beds of snake plants and zanzibars, thick and green and leaning gently toward the windows.
“Can I help you?”
The only person free from the long tables was a tall guy at a standing desk near the door. I realized with a little jolt that he was almost intimidatingly hot: thick black hair, big brown eyes, a sharp suit in contrast to everyone else’s hoodies. I smiled and clacked over. “You look like you run the place.”
He grinned. “I’m just an assistant,” he said.
“So not yet. Got it.” I leaned on the desk. Thank god I’d thought to apply lipstick on the subway. “And yet you’re the only one with your own desk. Seems like there’s nowhere to go but down.”
He shrugged, looking pleased. “No one cares what I think about open offices. But yeah, I don’t mind being on my own over here.”
I giggled like he’d said something wickedly clever. “So I’m looking for someone I think works here,” I said. “Greg Bentley?”
“He does!” he said. “But he’s not in right now.”
I felt the same complicated release I get whenever someone doesn’t pick up the phone: relief and annoyance. “Oh, is he traveling?”
“He’s on paternity leave. Another…four or five weeks at least.”
“Well, that’s exciting! Boy or girl?”
“A boy.” Lucky kid. Life like a game set to one level easier.
“That’s great. Wow.”
“He’s picking up his messages once a week,” he said, doing something on his computer. “I can pass something along?”
“Oh, that’s okay.” There was a sudden joyous shout from a corner. I turned and saw that one of the frosted glass doors along the back wall was marked PLAY.
“Game room,” the man explained. “They’re probably playing cornhole.”
I nodded. “Anyway, thanks for your help. I was just in the neighborhood and thought I’d stop by and say hi.”
“Old friend?”
I smiled mysteriously. “Sort of.”
“Ex-girlfriend?”
“Interesting guess!” I laughed. “But wrong again. He used to date my best friend.”
“Oh. That had to be a while ago; he and his wife have been together for…I don’t know, this is their fourth kid.”
“It was a long time ago. Anyway, thanks for your help.”
“Do you have kids?” He leaned to his side. The ease of an attractive white man who, obviously, gets to decide when the conversation’s over.
“I don’t. Do you?”
He chuckled. “Nope, no kids. Are you married?”
“You’re sure full of questions.”
He laughed, gave that winning smile. “I’m trying to figure out if I can ask you out.”
My cheeks burned. “Oh, I thought you—oh. Well, sure. Let me give you my number.” I looked around for a pen, then realized his fingers were aloft over his keyboard because he was not, like me, old and analog. I recited it, then added, “…and I’m Lindsay.”
“Josh,” he replied, reaching out to shake my hand.
A classic Hot Man Born in the Nineties name. I forced myself to maintain eye contact. “Well, I better get back to work,” I said finally. “And no need to mention me to Greg, I’ll catch him some other time when he’s…back in action.” Then I spit out a goodbye and shot back into the building’s labyrinthine hallways.
* * *
No one at work had noticed my absence, of course. I returned to the architecture firm’s website, telling myself it was to learn more about Greg but knowing it was to research Josh. The babe wasn’t anywhere on the site, so I forced myself to at least reread Greg’s bio. He was an accomplished man, one who’d worked on several impressive-sounding buildings around Manhattan before cofounding this technology-driven firm, one of the first to employ 3-D printing.
Next I combed through my old emails, looking for signs of Greg. I found remarkably little, although I did figure out how they’d met: a motherfucking missed connection on Craigslist, which, Jesus Christ. It was the kind of ridiculous thing that would happen only to Edie, whose life played out like a single-shot mumblecore: hip parties. Fashion school. New boyfriend, probably dovetailing with the ones before and after, obtained in a cool, unique way that also underscored how desirable she was. Then I felt a rush of nausea, aware that I was once again envying a dead girl.
Why had we called each other best friends? We were young, after the period when you could declare someone your bestie but still young enough to crave it, the way a twelve-year-old lusts after a place at the lunch table. She was my girl crush, and my adoration fed her.
But that’s not it. She could be such a good friend, when she wasn’t obsessed with her own problems or mad at you about something. I thought back to my twenty-third birthday, when we’d gone to see an Australian band at Glasslands, a wood-paneled venue with terrible bathrooms and reliably cute bartenders. I’d deemed the keyboardist hot, and as soon as the show ended, Edie had dragged me to the lip of the stage and introduced me as the birthday girl as he helped break down gear. He’d invited us into the greenroom and we’d spent the evening drinking with the Aussies; twice, she’d pulled me into the bathroom to make sure I liked this guy, that I was still having a good time.
I’d missed her so badly in the weeks and months after her death, even though I’d been planning to split from her anyway, even though the departure was almost mine. Over and over, I’d think of something funny or ridiculous or sarcastic to share with Edie, and sometimes I’d have my phone out by the time I realized I couldn’t text her. Nor could I contact any of the other Calhounies, off grieving in their building’s rambling halls. Instead I’d worked hard to find new friends, ones to whom Edie meant nothing, and I’d watched with slight surprise as time rolled past.
* * *
That night I dreamed I was in Calhoun again, stumbling through the halls with something behind me, my legs clumsy and useless, bruises blooming on my shins and knees. The apartment numbers on the doors that lined the corridor kept changing, so that no matter which way I went, SAKE slipped farther and farther away, 3G, 4H, wrong wrong wrong. I turned around and suddenly knew, with certainty, it was Alex behind me, Alex coming for me. I started awake gasping for air, terrified, like I’d been a hairsbreadth away from dying.
I stared at the ceiling for a while, picking back through my phone call with Alex two nights earlier. Why hadn’t Edie moved into her parents’ apartment after the breakup, if only for a week or two? She had her own room there, and things with Alex must not have ended well if, two months later, he was standing on a rooftop, screaming “I want to slit her throat!” into the night.
Edie and I had bonded a bit by complaining about our insufferable parents, but I’d never met Mrs. Iredale. Everyone else had, which made me feel a little excluded; she’d helped Edie move in and the other roommates complained about her occasionally showing up at Calhoun, smelling of whiskey and banging on the door of 4G. She was like the kooky old woman in the crumbling house that the neighborhood kids call a witch, one-upping one another with mad tales. Who was this woman?
On the subway ride to work, I hatched a plan, a madcap scheme that shoved Alex further, further, further out of the frame. I’d talk to Edie’s mother—figure out if she had any suspicions or details she’d kept hidden. From my desk, I used an app to hide my number and called her landline, a rare 212 area code on an island of untethered communications. She picked up and I asked if José was home (Why José? I thought, even as I said it), then apologized, hung up, and began gathering my things. I wasn’t sure what I’d tell her at her front door, but I had a twenty-five-minute bus ride to figure it out.
As I rode north toward Morningside Heights—an odd neighborhood near Manhattan’s knobby tip, one where old row houses unfold down both sides of the street—my brain kept sifting; mentally I stepped over the people I’d talked to like bodies scattered across the ground: Sarah, Tessa, Kevin, Damien, Alex. I peered out the window, where rain coated the street, and my mind wandered over to last year’s horrific accident in the Bronx, the one where a bus collided with a big rig, veered into a pole, and had its top sliced off by a sign. Fourteen people dead after rolling around like popcorn inside. I imagined it for a moment, this bus suddenly airborne, screaming and limbs and the stiff punches of seats, windows, other bodies.
