Girl Watching You

by J. A. Schneider

  Frozen, I crane over people’s shoulders.

  They aren’t even letting in the building’s tenants. An ambulance is parked near, its double doors open. On its rear platform, a distraught young woman sits hunched and weeping. An EMT tends to her while a plainclothes woman tries to talk to her.

  “Chloe…?” I bleat, thinking, Greer killed her.

  The young brunette looks back to me; edges out of the crowd gripping a moistened tissue. “You knew her?” she weeps.

  “I…” Words jam. My heart feels like an exploded skeet target.

  She mops her cheek, points. “That’s Mia in the back of the ambulance. She went to check on Chloe - it was horrible. I’d just gotten home and heard Mia screaming.”

  I back away, a whirring wail growing loud in my head as if some dreaded fear has revealed itself only to me. I could have saved her. I should have banged on the window.

  The brunette steps away with me, past police officers moving the crowd further back. She’s clutching my sleeve and weeping that she wouldn’t want to go in anyway. “Ever! No security! Her parents were worried about that building! Mine too!”

  Half strangled, I ask how the girl Mia could have seen what happened. Did she have a key?

  “Door was open. Chloe must have been drunk and forgot. We heard her fighting with her SOB boyfriend but decided, let her end it; the guy’s married and we loathed him.” The brunette pulls out another tissue, sobs, then blinks tearfully at me. “I’m Beth. Do you live in the building? I haven’t seen you.”

  “No, I-”

  “Cannot believe this. Just can’t.” Another torrent of tears.

  I manage, “Are you and Mia roommates?”

  “No, Chloe and I had studios on the same floor; Mia has a one-bedroom downstairs. Oh God, I need a drink. Please, please join me?”

  “I…can’t.”

  We’ve reached the bar next to Régine’s. Its door is open; people stand, gaping out. I’m a slack-jawed dummy staring back at the crime scene; the whirring wail is still pounding my brain. I think I hear Beth ask if I live near. I don’t answer. She pushes her card into my hand; says something high and emotional that sounds like “…in shock, too. This isn’t happening;” then she disappears through the door.

  More people crowd before Chloe’s building. I feel the first wave of nausea. Two TV vans arrive, double park near me. Reporters jump out, also crew unwinding cable from the sliding doors. A uniformed cop tells them to move; a cameraman and a woman with glued-blond hair argue with him. Cars in the street slow; heads look out.

  I turn away, walk.

  On feet that feel like cement I push through people rushing with cell phones ready. A few dart into the street; they move past slowed vehicles, start flashing their pictures. “Twitter!” someone says; and someone else yells, “It’s already up.”

  I walk, nausea worsening.

  They’re running out of Régine’s too, strangers piping to strangers. One woman’s still carrying her martini.

  My heart throbs so hard that my vision jumps. A red neon sign flashes Rick’s, and I see two neon signs - Rick’s, Rick’s - then bump into a man; say sorry before I realize it’s Joe.

  “Ava.”

  I must look wretched, because his hands go to both my arms. His face flashes red too and he frowns past me, then back; he squeezes my arms, says something urgent that I can’t make out.

  My chest heaves. “A girl’s been murdered. I could have prevented it.”

  He pulls in a breath…sad, like you’d do if a child told you he made the tornado come. Then he pivots, puts an arm around me, and tugs.

  “Tell me inside,” he says.

  “I could have prevented it,” I say higher-pitched, under his arm.

  The fingers of his free hand touch my mouth.

  “In the office,” he says. “We’re almost there.”

  8

  He settles me at his desk. I drop my face to my folded arms and close my eyes.

  “Tea?” Joe says. “Let me get you some tea.”

  “’kay.”

  He goes to his little kitchen in the rear. I hear a faucet run, cabinet doors open and close, a pot clank. Reassuring sounds. I raise my face for a second, squint around at the overhead light and lit Tensor lamp. They’re too bright. They hurt my stinging eyes and I’m too wrecked to turn them off. I drop my brow back to my arms.

  Joe is back with a steaming mug, cautioning that the tea is hot. I turn my head, squint out to him. He’s pulled his chair close and is reading his phone. Chloe’s murder must be all over the Internet.

  “Tragedy,” he says softly.

  “I could have prevented it,” I whisper.

  “How?”

  “Hard to talk.”

  “So don’t. Try to calm.”

  But he waits, scrolling away at his phone, shaking his head with his lips pressed flat. “Tragedy,” he says again.

  I pull in a breath, inhaling the sane, reassuring aroma of the tea. Nausea recedes a little. Feebly, I start trying to lay it out.

  He remembers Chloe - “yes, very pretty” – and her obnoxious pal Greer. Definitely noticed Greer, who once bought some fifteen dollar daisies and demanded change for a hundred dollar bill.

  “Waved his Rolex in my face.”

  “That’s him. Three girlfriends since I’ve been here, this last one with bruises.” I swallow. “She started to look…troubled. I felt sorry…” Here it comes. “So I followed them.”

  Joe blinks, leans forward.

  “Followed,” he echoes. “You don’t mean…”

  “Like Amelie.”

  “Up the fire escape?”

  His tone is too incredulous. I’d told him I’d stop…and didn’t. But I meant well! I feel defensive, angry at myself for having blurted; angry at him, too.

  “It’s too bright in here,” I complain, changing the subject.

  He gets up to turn off the room’s overhead, then reaches past me, lowers the lamp’s light.

  The room falls into shadows.

  I raise my face. Push myself up again, rub my eyes, reach for the mug of tea.

  Joe’s eyes have gone from alarmed to sympathetic. He’s processed what he’s heard, and leans closer.

  “How could you have prevented it?” he asks, again with that look of trying to comfort a child.

  I let out a huge breath. My defensiveness gives way to needing to talk, so I tell the rest…about finishing work here, going over around ten-thirty, hearing an angry shout, climbing the fire escape.

  “They were drunk, jolting from the bed and just starting to argue. I heard the girl threaten to tell his wife, his employer, and the look he gave her was murderous.” My hands squeeze the mug. “I have to go to the police.”

  Joe frowns.

  “No,” he says. “Did their argument get loud?”

  “Very.”

  I describe Beth, one of Chloe’s two friends in the building who almost intervened but didn’t, figuring it was just a breakup fight. “The second friend named Mia found the body. The door was open.”

  Joe lets out a slow, mournful whistle.

  “So there are other witnesses. It’s horrible, but this has to be open and shut. Her friends will tell the cops Greer was her date…and you’re going to say you were on the fire escape?” He raises his eyebrows to me. “With your sister’s trial approaching?”

  He leans back in his chair, folds his arms and frowns. “Climbing to Brett Moore’s terrace was bad enough. His lawyers are already trying to portray you as…”

  “Crazy,” I say. Joe just presses his lips flat.

  His mother is an attorney, a well-known prosecutor. He grew up hearing this kind of talk.

  “Defense lawyers are vicious,” he says. “You don’t want this, and the cops have what they need.”

  I sip tea, say nothing.

  His brow creases as something else seems to dawn on him He leans forward with his elbows on his knees. “So you saw…” he says feelingly. “It must have
been awful.”

  “Like seeing Kim and Moore fighting again.”

  “That explains why you’ve looked blitzed all day. How much did you sleep last night?”

  “Three hours.”

  He makes a pained sound.

  I glare miserably into the dark mug. Joe has been logical, but guilt still wracks. “I could have saved that girl,” I insist bitterly. “If I’d banged on the window like for Amelie…”

  “They would’ve called the cops on you, had their fight another time. C’mon, bed. I’ll walk you home.”

  9

  Police activity at the end of the block is brightly lit, like with kliegs for a nighttime shoot. We both stand and stare that way. With a new, awful upsurge of guilt, I realize that Joe’s logic is wrong.

  He reads it on my face. “You couldn’t have saved her,” he pleads.

  I shake my head, speak through clenched teeth. “If I’d stopped them, she would have sobered up in the morning and emailed him to get lost. This is on me.”

  Joe looks back again toward the police; frowns. “It isn’t on you at all,” he says emotionally. “What about her girlfriends - can you imagine how they feel? If only they had intervened, called the cops or just yelled at him - but they didn’t!”

  “They’re young,” I scowl. “They don’t know yet what a shit ugly world this can be.”

  He gives up. We start to walk away from the police lights, silent. I am drained; my whole body aches from tension. Then, under a streetlight approaching West Thirteenth, my mind flashes again to that scene on the fire escape.

  “There’s more,” I groan. “Greer may have seen me.”

  Joe looks surprised.

  I describe the cat jumping up to the window; Greer glaring toward me but maybe just seeing the cat. “If he did see me, he knows who I am.”

  Too fast, Joe says, “No matter and don’t worry. They’ll have him arrested by morning.” But his chin drops; shadows cross his face.

  We walk. I tell him next about Chloe’s apparent habit of leaving her window open to put out her cat, her plants.

  “In New York?”

  “She was from Minnesota. I mean Idaho. Her friend Beth said they found her door open, too. He must have stormed out; she was drunk and never locked it. That’s how a different friend – Mia – was able to enter and find her.”

  “The police have all they need.”

  “I’m just mulling. My head hurts.”

  We walk.

  My phone shows a voice mail from Alex. I can’t focus on it.

  Joe gets his phone out too; taps and scrolls. “Nothing yet on how she was murdered,” he says. “Not that it - oh, sorry!”

  I’ve raised my hand to my face. His arm goes around me, comforting, insisting again that I couldn’t possibly have made a difference. “Threatening to tell Greer’s wife and employer? That’s crazy. She would have done it again.”

  We reach my brownstone, a building of tall, surprised windows and Belle Époque architecture. Joe has been twice to my apartment, once to fix some old wiring. My bay window on the second floor is darkened. In the bay just below, there’s a dim light. A silhouette appears; a curtain moves.

  “Creepy,” he says.

  I follow his gaze. “The couple below me.”

  “Boozing worse?”

  “The husband, yes. They keep forgetting to lock the front door.”

  “Great. Did you ever replace that piece-a-junk front lock?”

  “No.” I take a shaky breath. “Just put a new chain.”

  “Let me look.”

  He comes in with me, past the vestibule and up the stairs. In the apartment, he grimaces at the chain moored in the old door jamb, then checks the windows in every room, muttering that the locks are all junk. He lives in a charmless, vertical ice cube tray where the tradeoff is safety: surveillance everywhere, cameras in the elevators.

  He scowls before the window of my small kitchen; gripes about the fire escape outside it.

  I droop behind him. “That window’s painted over so it won’t open. It’s just a fire hazard, isn’t that reassuring? But up there and there I have smoke detectors.”

  Shaking his head, Joe returns to the parlor. I follow, and watch him look around. “Still prefer here to better security?” he asks.

  “Yes, and not just for its memories.” I gesture to the fireplace in its mahogany surround, the floor-to-ceiling carved bookshelves, my father’s antique desk, the old armoire my parents found in Genoa. “My family’s things are…so right here. It’s hard to find buildings like this.”

  Joe’s lips tighten. Then he forgets himself, steps closer to my father’s desk. “This really is something,” he says, his fingers moving along its mahogany top.

  It’s an old, 1870s sea captain’s desk, with a hinged lift-top, four drawers, ball feet and legs of rope-twist columns. I cherish it; it belongs here. When my marriage failed and I came plodding back, I worried that I’d spend the rest of my days here. I had lost my sister, lost my whole family and my career. I’m well aware that in my depressed state, I’m clinging to things and not human connections. I did try climbing out of my rut, but in the screwiest way; got into trouble.

  “Scary,” Joe says, picking up from the desk what looks like a dagger. Actually it’s a Victorian silver letter opener with a floral handle. My Dad liked its feeling of “atmosphere” for a historic novel he was working on: some fine lady opening her daily correspondence or something. The room is full of such knickknacks.

  “Put it down, Joe,” I sigh, folding my arms. “You’ll hurt yourself.”

  He puts it back. “Guess I’ll have to behave myself,” he smirks, peeking back at me, then returns his gaze to photos hung over the desk: one of Kim and me small with our parents; another of my Dad grinning, working at his old desk on his Mac and thinking that was the most uproarious anachronism. There are also a few pictures of me with cast and crew friends on the movie sets of Cape Castle and Jaffa Road – those were small roles – and television’s Street Beat.

  “Still getting this gig’s residuals?” Joe taps the glass over Street Beat.

  I tell him yes and silently, we both acknowledge the irony: TV is scorned by actor snobs, but it’s the cop series now in reruns that sends me monthly checks. Film roles? Forget it. They’re over fast and you’re forgotten if they weren’t huge hits.

  “So you’re in clover financially.” Joe glances back to me. “Seriously,” he says again, “why stay here? It’s not safe.”

  I say nothing, wishing he’d leave.

  He crosses the room, resumes scowling at the front door’s chain and the molding around it. “Besides being soft,” he points unhappily, “the jamb’s wood is splintered. I could practically yank the chain out with my hand.” He frowns back to me as if re-thinking something. “You think Greer may have seen you?”

  “Yes, can’t be sure.”

  I sink to the window seat by the door; describe in more detail Greer glaring wildly up as the cat leaped to the window. “He seemed to be looking straight at me, but he was drunk and I was crouched down.”

  “He would have recognized you from the flowers.”

  “Yep.” My mouth purses.

  Joe leaves the door and paces, rubbing his stubbly cheek as if not believing what my craziness has gotten me into.

  “Well, he’s going to be arrested,” he says, as if reassuring himself.

  My face works. “It hurts. I still think…”

  “Hey.” Joe turns back and bends to me. “Torturing yourself can’t help anyone.” His hand cups my cheek. “And you have to rest, as in, sleep.”

  His eyes ask for more. I drop my gaze; he hesitates, then drops his head, not surprised.

  Weeks before, in the hall outside his kitchen, we found ourselves standing close, talking. Like me, Joe’s had love disappointment, and we got onto the subject of loneliness. He touched my arm and then my neck and said, “You’re too pretty to sleep alone.” I pulled away, practically apologizing that my
life was still too much of a wreck for getting close to anyone. My sister, the divorce… He understood; we were okay after that.

  He straightens, glances at the door, makes another try. “My place is safer,” he says hopefully. “You could sleep on the couch.”

  “Greer’s going to be arrested, remember?” I say drily.

  He raises his palms, and gives up. “Right…so I’ll…go. Just re-check this first.” He pulls the door open, fiddles with the bolt.

  “You’re upset. Make sure it snaps nice and loud when I pull it closed,” he says, stepping out to the hall with his hand on the knob. “Then…”

  I stand, duck my head in concession. “The chain, the worthless chain.”

  He almost smiles.

  “Thanks,” I tell him, leaning closer. “For being there.”

  “Of course. Always. I’ll call in the morning.”

  The door closes, the bolt snaps. I put the chain in place, and press my brow to the door.

  Joe is a good man. He’s a very good man, also attractive. I’ve seen other women flirt with him, so it’s a sign of how empty I’ve become that I’ve kept him at a distance. He knows I like him a lot, but it stops there. I’m dead inside.

  Except for the anger. Since we left the store, I’ve felt a terrible fury build higher inside me. This young woman I didn’t even know… I could have saved her, like I should have saved Kim.

  I wander through the short hall to the kitchen, where I grab a bottle of Dewar’s and a plastic glass. This morning’s resolution about booze falls away. I really do need, desperately, to sleep. If I can’t drop off, I’ll use the whiskey to clobber myself.

  I carry the bottle and glass to the bedroom, pull my clothes off, and burrow into my pillow.

  Cry and toss until two. Then reach for the bottle.

  10

  Mnmn, arghh, nooooo.

  Sunlight. Pain. Crawl under pillow.

  Forgot to close the drapes last night. Sun slices through the blinds, chases my throbbing head.

  I pull the pillow tighter, remembering the night. Too wired to sleep, I toughed it out as long as I could, then gave in to the bottle. Slept hard for three hours, then was awake and thrashing again; more Dewar’s around five-thirty…then what?