The Breakup

by Debra Kent

  “I need a minute in here,” I said, panicked that he’d try to come in while I was on the toilet. “It’s that time of the month,” I lied.

  But he wasn’t giving up. “Let me in,” he whispered.

  “Please, Eddie, what’s gotten into you? I’m not feeling well. I need a little privacy here.” I hurried to finish, flushed, and washed my hands.

  That’s when I noticed it, the hamper, and the little flash of pink peeking out beneath Eddie’s dirty underwear and T-shirts. Instinctively I pulled at the fabric.

  It was a small nylon jersey.

  Frantically, with the water still running and Eddie rattling the doorknob, I dug deeper in the bin.

  “I was hoping you wouldn’t use the bathroom,” Eddie whispered through the door. “I didn’t have a chance to clean it.”

  “That’s okay, Eddie, I promise I won’t look. Just let me finish up and I’ll be right out. Why don’t you go check on the pizza?”

  “The pizza’s fine. Come out.”

  “You know how it is with women’s plumbing. Give me a second.” I reached into the hamper up to my elbow and pulled up more clothes, a couple of Eddie’s Old Navy T-shirts, jeans, more underwear.

  And a pair of black spandex shorts, women’s size small. At the very bottom of the hamper, a single crew sock. I held my breath. Could these belong to Zoe Hayes?

  I stared into the hamper and I felt the adrenaline scorch my chest. Maybe the clothes belonged to one of Eddie’s daughters, I fleetingly considered, or a girlfriend. Or maybe they were his. Each wild theory only escalated my panic. I knew this: the spandex outfit and the single Footlocker crew sock were precisely those items mentioned in every newspaper article, and in every neon green flyer posted on every window and telephone pole in town.

  I gulped back the rising knot in my throat. I could hear Eddie tinkering with the doorknob, and right then I believed in my soul that I’d never make it out of the apartment alive. They say your life passes in front of your eyes when you’re about to die, but now it wasn’t my past, but my future that appeared like a slide show in my head. I saw all the promises I had yet to fulfill, all the milestones and all the ordinary moments of a regular life. I hadn’t gone grocery shopping this week. I never organized my front hall closet—how would anyone ever find my will in that mess? Who would make Pete his Charmander chocolate chip pancakes? Who would take him to the Cub Scouts mom-n’-me camp-out? My mind raced further into a forlorn future. I imagined my son learning to drive, filling out his college applications, walking down the aisle, having his first child . . . and I wouldn’t be there for any of it. Today was the first time I didn’t tell Pete I loved him when we said goodbye. He’d been fiddling with his backpack and I was in a rush to get to Eddie’s apartment. The last thing I said when I dropped him off was, “Stop dawdling and get out of the Jeep already.” I can’t even begin to describe the remorse I felt realizing that those could be my last words to him.

  I grabbed my bag and searched for the cell phone, then realized I’d left it plugged into the cigarette lighter in the Jeep. I heard the crisp snap of the lock popping out, and watched as the doorknob twisted. I scrambled to put the clothes back in the hamper, trying to arrange everything as I’d found it. It didn’t look right. Was the pink jersey under the briefs or the T-shirts? Jesus. I couldn’t remember. The door opened a crack, and I immediately heaved it shut. I heard a wail. “Shit! Shit!” I had shut the door on Eddie’s knuckles.

  “Oh my God, I’m sorry, Eddie. I didn’t mean to . . . I just didn’t want you walking in while I was half undressed.”

  Eddie scanned the room, his eyes lingering on the hamper and then on me. “Why not? It’s not like I’ve never seen your ass before.” He nuzzled my neck.

  I forced myself to laugh. “Oh, ho! Very true, very true.” I sounded like frickin’ Angela Lansbury. My right eye started twitching.

  Eddie peered at me. “What took you so long?”

  “Excuse me?” I answered, feigning indignance. “If you must know, I’ve got my period and I have cramps. Diarrhea, actually. I’d be happy to describe it for you, if you’d like.” I paused and stared at him, clamping down on the insides of my mouth to keep my lips from trembling. “Now, then, aren’t you glad you asked?”

  I tried to push past Eddie, but he stood there between me and the door. Be cool, be cool, I told myself. My brain kept turning back to the jersey. But I had to behave as if the only thing I’d seen in Eddie’s bathroom was the dirty tiles, the only thing I’d touched was the toilet paper. If I bolted for the door, he would know. I had to take my time. And I had to pretend I hadn’t noticed the dark look in Eddie’s eyes. I had to get out of there. I’d run to my Jeep, and I’d dial 911 from my cell phone. I’d tell them what I’d seen in the bathroom. But first I had to get out of the apartment alive, and I had to make Eddie trust me.

  “God, I’m starving. How’s that pizza coming along?”

  “I thought you had cramps.” Eddie stared at me.

  “I feel better, thanks,” I said, disingenuously interpreting his comment as a sign of concern. “Popped some Advil.” I heard myself offer to make a salad but Eddie said he didn’t have any lettuce. At this point I pushed toward the doorway and—merciful God— Eddie yielded. “I’m absolutely famished! Let’s eat.”

  When Eddie asked if I was certain I didn’t want a beer, I knew my strategy had worked. He seemed happy now, at ease. I was struggling to maintain my equilibrium. The living room seemed smaller, warmer, darker. I had no appetite. Eddie pulled the pizza out of the oven and slapped it directly onto the small table. “You don’t have some kind of plate, a cutting board maybe?” I asked, trying to sound casual. I was horrified.

  He shrugged sheepishly. “I don’t have any of that stuff yet. Mostly I just eat out.” He pulled a sharp knife from a drawer and cut long, deep slices across the pie. I heard the blade cut into the Formica, but Eddie didn’t seem to notice, or care. Now for the hard part. I lifted the pizza to my mouth and took a bite. My rising panic was intensified by the smell of the cheese. I couldn’t eat. I wanted to vomit. Chew the damn pizza, I commanded myself. My teeth moved mechanically. I forced myself to swallow. I felt the pizza move dryly, painfully down my food pipe.

  Eddie went back to the kitchen for his third beer.

  “So . . . you needed to see me?” I began. “You had something you wanted to tell me?”

  Eddie looked at me for a long time. He scraped his fingernails across his stubble, then ran his hands rapidly through his hair as if he was shaking out bugs. He squeezed his eyes shut and dropped his head into his hands. “Things haven’t been too good with me, Val. I’m all mixed up.”

  “What do you mean, mixed up?”

  He rubbed his knuckles. “You may not believe this, but you were the best thing that ever happened to me.” I couldn’t tell where this was leading. I didn’t want to say anything that might provoke him, nor did I want to encourage him. I only wanted to escape. I said nothing.

  “Maybe I’m nuts, but when you split with Roger, I actually thought we had a chance.” He ran a hand over his face and glared at me with bloody red eyes. “Don’t you think we would have been good together?”

  I nodded slowly, carefully. “Sure, Eddie.” Actually, there was a time when I believed it, too. Eddie and I fit together in the way all misfits attract each other; we both suffered through failing marriages, both desperately needed sexual validation. For my part, though, our affair was nothing more than a diversion.

  He stared wistfully out the window. “You know, sometimes I wish I could just put you in a little box and throw away the key. I love you so damn much, Val.”

  I stopped breathing. I tried to smile.

  Eddie stood up abruptly. “I gotta pee.”

  As he sauntered toward the bathroom, I calculated that Eddie’s three beers should give me ample time to make it to the front door, and it did. I slid the chain slowly, quietly. But the deadbolt—it was the kind that locked from the inside,
with a key. I heard the toilet flush, then almost immediately felt Eddie’s warm breath on my neck. “What the hell are you doing?”

  I searched for a plausible excuse. “I was checking to make sure the door was locked. I mean, I wouldn’t want anyone interrupting us.” It was then that I devised my plan.

  Finally, Eddie smiled. “Interrupting us doing what?”

  “Whatever.” I returned the smile. Had I lost my mind? What were my options? I wanted to live. I wanted to see my son again. I didn’t want to end up like Zoe Hayes. Did I really believe I could seduce my way out of Eddie’s apartment? Actually, I did. I knew that Eddie always fell into a dead sleep after he had an orgasm, especially if he’s had a few drinks. I didn’t have to have sex, just get him to climax. If I was lucky, I could get away with just using my hand. I’d get the deadbolt key out of his pocket and run like hell.

  “Why don’t we relax on the couch?” I asked, gesturing toward the leather sofa.

  “I’ve got a better idea.” He grinned. “Let’s go into the bedroom.”

  My heart stopped. “The bedroom?”

  “Why not?”

  Because you’ve got a dead girl in there, you goddamn lunatic, I wanted to say, but instead heard myself say, “No reason. Bedroom’s fine.” I watched him pull a plastic drink stirrer out of his back pocket and slip it through the hole in the doorknob. He was sweating now, and breathing heavily. “You’ll have to excuse the mess,” he said as he opened the door. “I’m working on a project.”

  “What kind of project?”

  Eddie flicked on the light. That’s when I saw a sheet draped over what looked to be a big box. Or a cage.

  Kate Trager, one of my colleagues at the Center, lived in New York during the “summer of Sam,” the summer when David Berkowitz, aka Son of Sam, left his bloody mark on the city. Since the cops had more questions than answers about the elusive killer, every guy on the street seemed like a suspect, especially if you were neurotic, which Kate was. She called the cops a half dozen times with tips on various men—a guy on the subway with an odd-shaped package that might have concealed a gun, a man in a car that lingered a little too long outside the bowling alley. But Kate wasn’t alone in her paranoia. Lots of people called in with tips that summer. Everyone was hysterical, desperate. All that summer Kate tucked her long brown hair under her sweatshirt hood no matter how hot the weather, and when she drove in cars, she always crouched under the dashboard, “out of the crosshairs,” as she put it.

  One afternoon, as Kate was sitting with her mother at the Tip Top diner in Queens, she looked through the window and noticed a man standing by his car in the parking lot. His back was turned, but in that weird telepathic way that exists between strangers, he intuitively knew someone was watching him and slowly swiveled his head around, making direct eye contact with Kate. He smiled and his eyes rolled back in his head. His expression made Kate’s skin prickle. She grabbed a pen and jotted down his license number before he drove away. Kate began moving toward the pay phone but her mother dissuaded her. “Enough with this nonsense, already. This is getting ridiculous. Sit down and finish your tuna melt.” Kate never did call the cops about the man in the parking lot. But after Son of Sam was captured, and his picture appeared in the Daily News, Kate saw that the man in the photograph was the man she had seen that day outside the Tip Top diner.

  At the time, his look gave her the creeps, but her real horror came only in retrospect, as she realized how close she had come to making contact with a killer. The stare was an intimacy she never meant to share with him. In all likelihood, Kate was never a target—she was too young, she was in a public place with her mother, it was the middle of the day, and besides, she was wearing her hood. But Kate came away from the experience traumatized, as if she were, in fact, caught in Son of Sam’s crosshairs, spared only by some accident of luck.

  I got the chills when I first heard that story. But Kate had only brushed shoulders with true evil. I was about to give it a hand job!

  Even with the stained sheet draped over the thing in Eddie’s bedroom, I saw enough—the hard squared edges—to know I was looking at some kind of cage, and a big one, too, large enough to confine a St. Bernard or bullmastiff, or, perhaps, a grown woman. My uncle Dennis had used a cage this size for unruly Great Pyrenees while he was at work. The cage was eerily silent and impossible to ignore.

  “What’s that?” I tried to sound only mildly interested, though I was consumed by the worst imaginings. Is that where he kept her before he killed her? I made myself breathe.

  Eddie locked the door behind us. “I told you. A project. Forget about it.”

  “What kind of project?”

  He chuckled softly. “A really fun project.” Eddie’s face seemed to darken. “Forget about it, okay?” He turned me away from the crate, then gave me a little shove toward the bed. “Take your clothes off.”

  Call me crazy, but I was determined to get through this ordeal fully dressed. “Mmmmm . . . not so fast, you naughty boy. You first.” I ran a finger lightly across his zipper and licked my lips as seductively as I could manage.

  Eddie pulled his black T-shirt over his head, exposing his hard belly and hairy chest. “You do the rest,” he said, flopping back on the bed, folding his arms behind his head. “Go ahead. Knock yourself out.”

  I took a deep breath as I unzipped Eddie’s jeans. He wasn’t wearing underwear and he was fully aroused. “This is like a dream come true,” I heard him mutter. “Honest to God, Val.” He lay passively while I struggled to pull his pants off. He grinned happily at me. “Easy, baby, easy. What’s the hurry?” I glanced at my wristwatch. 2:19. Pete’s school was over in forty minutes. I had to work quickly, efficiently. I tried not to think about the cage. I peeled his pants over his big feet and dropped them on the floor.

  “Aren’t you going to take your clothes off?”

  “No, lover, this is all about you,” I forced myself to say. “I want to give you a gift. Just lay back and relax.”

  “Oh, come on. At least take off your shirt. Give me something to look at.”

  I undid the top buttons of my blouse, hoping to placate him, but it wasn’t enough. He reached over and I held my breath as he unbuttoned the rest and yanked my bra up around my collarbone. “That’s better.” He fell back on the pillow. “I like a good view.” He slogged down another beer, his fourth. Good: The more he drank, the more deeply he would sleep. I also knew that Eddie could be ugly when he was drunk, less rational, more explosive. I had to move quickly.

  “Slow down,” he muttered. “And use your mouth.”

  I kept him in my hand; with enough spit and just the right pressure, he didn’t seem to notice the difference. His eyes were rolled back in his head, his hands were clenched, his breathing quickened. Soon. Soon. He was almost there. I went faster, harder. All the while, I mentally reorganized my linen closet, sorting towels by color and size, separating the flat sheets from the fitted . . .

  “Keep going,” he whispered. “Just like that. Keep . . . it . . . going.” With tears in my eyes, I continued working on Eddie until I felt his body stiffen. “There,” he whispered. “There. Yes. There. That’s it.” I wiped my hand along the edge of the mattress. “You’re amazing,” he muttered, already bleary eyed. “I swear I’ll return the favor.”

  I covered Eddie with the blanket and lay beside him, my head on his chest. “This is the way it should be, the way it was meant to be,” he whispered. He absently circled my arm with a fingertip. “We make a helluva team.”

  I responded with a low “Mmm-hmmm,” fearful that anything more articulate might stimulate him to wakefulness. I listened for his breathing to slow and deepen until I was sure he was asleep. He threw a heavy arm across my body, pinning me to the mattress.

  I watched Eddie’s chest rise and fall. His hands and feet twitched, like a dreaming dog. I could hear the ticking of my wristwatch.

  I had to get out of there. I had no idea what was under that sheet, but I knew wi
th complete certainty that I wanted to pick my son up from school and remain in his life until I died, preferably in my sleep of natural causes at 102 years old. Not now, not here, not by the hand of my former lover.

  I snapped my bra back into place and decided to worry about the blouse buttons later. With my heart rioting against my ribs, I slipped my hand into Eddie’s jeans, first in the front pockets, then the back. Nothing but a wallet, couple of coins, and the plastic drink stirrer. Jesus. I checked the tiny fifth pocket, but it, too, was empty. Where the hell was that key? I was choking back tears as I scrambled under the bed and searched fruitlessly. I suddenly remembered that Roger used to keep a spare house key in his wallet, as did my father. Maybe it was a guy thing. Still crouched on the floor, I pulled Eddie’s worn leather wallet from the back pocket, flipped it open, and wildly stuck my finger in all the compartments. I found a gold Schlage key behind his driver’s license.

  I glanced at Eddie. He didn’t seem to be sleeping as deeply now. After all the beer, I knew it would be only a moment or two before he would wake to pee. I had to get out. But I also had to know if Zoe Hayes was inside that cage. I started to pull away the sheet.

  “Hey!” Eddie murmured. “What are you doing?” He propped himself up on his elbows. My heart stopped.

  “All right, Little Miss Nosey. Go ahead. Have a look,” he said.

  I had nothing to lose. I shut my eyes and slowly drew the sheet away.

  “Isn’t she a beauty?”

  I slowly opened my eyes.

  It was a go-cart.

  “Took me three weeks to put that baby together,” Eddie said, beaming. “Full suspension. Three-point-five-horsepower engine.” He rolled off the bed and ran his hands over the go-cart’s metal frame. “I made it for Tracey, my brother’s kid. She wants to be a race car driver when she grows up. And an FBI agent. And a ballet dancer. Last time she was here she changed her getup three times.” Eddie stood up. “That reminds me. I gotta do a wash. She left some of her stuff here and I told my brother I’d throw it in the wash.”