Dream Girl

by Laura Lippman

  “The Four Seasons,” the women say in unison. Kim’s tone is awed, while Leenie is clearly disgruntled. She really does hate it when he spends his money on anyone but her.

  “Yes. Would you go back downstairs and get her suitcase?”

  “Now?”

  “If you could.”

  As soon as her back is turned, he writes: Position the bed so it’s facing the stairs and when Leenie is almost to the top, push it as hard as you can toward the stairs, then get the hell out of here.

  She looks skeptical, scared, and who can blame her? Gerry scrawls: She has killed two women. She will kill you. GET OUT OF HERE.

  He adds: Hand me the walker.

  Bump, bump, bump. Leenie is dragging Kim’s suitcase up the stairs as if she wants to punish it. Perhaps she is disappointed because her orchestrated surprise did not deliver the big scene she was hoping for. Well, Gerry tried to warn her about her instincts.

  “Now.”

  She’s strong, his niece, he’ll give her that, but it’s on him to get the job done. He uses his aspirational walker like an oar, pressing hard on the floor, awkward and unwieldy as it is. He may never use his upper-body strength to transfer himself to a wheelchair, but he’s making good use of it now. He needs only two, three hard pushes to take advantage of the trajectory that Kim has started. The bed sails forward, catching Leenie at her midsection as she crests the stairs. She tries to throw the suitcase at him, but her reflexes are slow, her aim off, and it caroms to the side. The bed knocks her backward down the floating staircase exactly as Gerry planned.

  What Gerry has failed to anticipate is that the bed keeps going, accelerating, a runaway chariot straight out of Ben-Hur, rolling over Leenie’s body—oh, the terrible cracks and squishes, he has never heard noises such as these, his intention was only to knock her out, not flatten her—then hitting the wall opposite the staircase with enough force to catapult him out of the bed and—

  1999

  GERRY WALKED. He had been walking every night for hours, ever since Gretchen left. He didn’t miss her, but he was angry, offended. How dare she leave him?

  He did not have much affinity for nature, preferred New York City above all cities, but late April was the one brief season when he liked the outdoors and Baltimore. The weather still had a cool sharpness, while the air, at least here in North Baltimore, smelled of blossoms and soil. He walked through the Wyman Park dell. He walked to the sculpture garden at the BMA.

  Mostly, he walked along the path through Stony Run that led, eventually, to Cold Spring Lane and Alonso’s.

  He did not miss Gretchen. He had not loved her. She was right, he didn’t even like her. Gretchen had been a rebound. Not from Lucy, but from New York City in general, his anxiety over Luke’s diagnosis, Tara’s decampment for the suburbs. Gretchen had been a safe haven. Marriage had been designed as an institution of safety, an economic proposition. In his second marriage, Gerry had been a Jane Austen female, mating for security. He had felt he could not risk another Lucy, who had seemed so sensible and right but had always had that wildness, and it was, he realized, the wildness that drove him away. You couldn’t write the kind of poems that Lucy wrote if you weren’t a little kinky, he had decided, but it was not a lifestyle that worked for Gerry.

  And then Luke died and Tara stopped speaking to him and he was left with Gretchen. No, he didn’t miss her. But he resented the fact that she had lured him back to Baltimore, then abandoned him. That wasn’t fair play. Neither was the prenup, in which Gerry had agreed to waive any claim on the Gramercy Park apartment. Gretchen was selling it now, planning to move downtown.

  The park was full of children tonight. Gerry did not want children and, in the end, women almost always did. That had to be the reason Gretchen left. But the best way not to become one’s father is to never be a father at all. He had tried to be kind and faithful to his romantic partners and, for the most part, he felt he had been true to his own standards. He had been faithful to Gretchen, no small thing. Gretchen had started out as a most provocative bed partner; the contrast between her suited daytime self and the wanton body in bed at night had heightened his attraction to her. But she seemed less and less interested in him as her paychecks rose and his earnings stagnated. She did not respect him. By the time she left him, their sex life had long been dead.

  He suspected she had a lover, up in New York. He didn’t even care.

  Alonso’s was quiet tonight. The bar had been renovated recently, updating the dark, homely little tavern into something sleek and modern, much to Gerry’s disappointment. He preferred its original incarnation. He and Lucy had lived half a block from here. They had doted on its horrible pizza, pizza so bad that he craved it still. They had eaten the too-salty mozzarella sticks, tried to wrap their mouths around cheeseburgers almost as large as their heads. Then they would go across the street to Video Americain, take home one of the staff recommendations. Gerry still stopped into Video Americain on his walks, still heeded the staff recommendations. Last week, he had watched a film called Funny Bones, which had surprised him because he realized, in the final minutes, that he didn’t know if he was watching a comedy or a tragedy. See, art can do this, he’d said to Luke across the void. It is possible to create a story where people aren’t sure what happens next.

  He spoke a lot to Luke, in his head.

  As he sat at the bar, drinking the first of the two beers he allotted himself, he became aware of a couple sitting across from each other in a booth. The woman was twentysomething, a mix of ethnicities; he had never seen anyone like her—Asian, yet freckled, her skin a warm olive cast. Not beautiful, something better. One would never tire of looking at that animated, lively face.

  The man across from her could have been Gerry. Forty, give or take, full head of hair, Waspy. The couple’s eyes were locked on each other; no one else existed as far as they were concerned. The man would speak; she would laugh. And yet, they did not touch. They were conspicuously not touching. It was an act of propriety, an attempt to convince those who saw them that this was a friendly meal, nothing more.

  It was one of the most erotic things Gerry had ever seen. It was another one of Luke’s before moments. These people had not slept together yet. The woman was trying to decide if she would sleep with this man. It was her choice, not his. The wheel was spinning, spinning, the ball was bouncing. Where would it land? Who was this woman? She was a fantasy, an apparition. The man opposite might as well have conjured her for the express purpose of torturing him. She might sleep with him, but she would never be his, she would never belong to anyone. She was quicksilver, a treasure that would flow through a man’s fingers.

  Then, in an unguarded moment, she took a french fry from the man’s plate and ate it. Gerry realized he practically had a hard-on. There was nothing arch or sensual about the act; a french fry is technically phallic, but it is a limp phallus, especially in a place like Alonso’s, crinkle cut and undercooked. No, it was her assumption that the man’s food was hers to take. She would take what she wanted from this man, then move on. Not in a mean, avaricious way. She was not a gold digger. She wanted this man for her own pleasure, nothing more, and she would offer pleasure in return. She would be generous and wholehearted, but she could never be possessed.

  Gerry would give anything to know a woman like that.

  He paid for his first beer and left without having a second. He had to get home, he had to write. Fuck the maximalists, the Tom Wolfe imitators, the worst of whom was Tom Wolfe these days. Last fall, Alice McDermott had won the National Book Award over Wolfe and some people had tried to make it a literary scandal, claiming Wolfe was robbed because of political correctness. No, McDermott was showing the way with her human-scale stories, but she was too modest to make a case for herself. Gerry would write a piece about where fiction should go and then he would show everyone.

  He would show everyone.

  The wheel spins, the ball bounces, bounces, bounces. Where will it land? Will you get the
girl? Will your name be read from stages, the recipient of important prizes? Will your name be remembered? How will it be remembered? Will you be remembered at all?

  Everything is in the before moment. That’s where life is richest, in that moment of possibility and antici—say it, the audience screamed at the screen—pation. That’s what Luke had been trying to tell Gerry.

  And then the ball finds its slot and the story ends even as it begins.

  September 27, 2019

  “I HAVE TO ADMIT,” Thiru says, “it’s not at all what I was expecting. Talk about mixing low and high—and autofiction yet.”

  “But you like it, right? And you’ll set up an auction?”

  “Ben will be hurt that he’s not being allowed first crack, but—yes.”

  “He has no right to feel he is owed this book.”

  “Quite right. Look, I have to know—the thing about Columbus, the sex. Did that really happen?”

  “God, no. It is fiction. Almost none of this happened.”

  “Well, a hospital bed did roll right over that nurse, killing her. And Margot Chasseur remains missing, as does the assistant. They found her car at the airport, right?”

  “That part I can’t speak to. I just hope the ending works, given the circumstances. That it matches up with everything that came before it.”

  “Oh, yes. I mean, the voice is different, but that’s the point, right? Gerry Andersen writing in the voice of his insane nurse, pretending to be her, then editing her. I love how lurid it all is. Anyway, I’ll submit to five editors in the first round. I think women will vibe more to the material.”

  “How quickly do you think this will go?”

  “Oh, I’ll sell this in less than a week. It’s Gerry Andersen’s last book, written in collaboration with his niece. I mean—I know you wrote only the last bit, but there’s no harm in pumping up your contributions. And including an author photo of you—that won’t hurt. No, that won’t hurt at all.”

  Kim smiles, lowers her eyes with pretend shyness. Is Thiru flirting with her? How unprofessional. Can these old tigers ever change their stripes?

  “Thank you, Thiru. I know I’m in good hands here.”

  “I’d like to push for a two-book contract. Do you think you have another book in you?”

  “Maybe. Let’s see what they offer for just the one, then talk.”

  Kim leaves Thiru’s office. It’s a splendid September day, the platonic ideal of fall, perfect for walking. Good thing, because she is staying with a friend near Fort Tryon Park and she can’t afford a cab. But she will be able to take cabs, and soon. For now, she will walk until she tires, then hop on the subway to complete the trip.

  The day that Gerry died—her first and only instinct was to get out of there, away from those crazy people. She had grabbed her suitcase, made sure the door locked behind her, and left the building through the parking garage, which was how Leenie had brought her in, come to think of it. Had Leenie really intended to harm her? Why had she invited Kim to Baltimore, hiding her identity—and true intentions—behind Gerry’s email address? Where were the letters that Kim had written to Gerry last year? Kim sat in a small park near the apartment for almost an hour, trying to figure out what she should do.

  Finally, she returned to the building and presented herself to the front desk, announcing she was Gerry Andersen’s niece from Ohio and he was expecting her. After all, he had bought her the ticket, had he not? When no one answered the front desk ’s call, she insisted that someone go upstairs and let her in. He was expecting her, he was confined to bed because of an injury, maybe something had happened. The put-upon woman at the front desk finally agreed to send a custodian up with Kim.

  She let the poor man discover the bodies at the bottom of the steps, quickly pocketing the Moleskine notebook that Gerry had thrown to the floor. She had tried, as unobtrusively as possible, to snoop for her letters, but she didn’t find them, not that day. Later, when she was allowed back into the apartment, she unearthed what must have been Aileen’s hiding place, a duffel bag deep in the master bedroom’s walk-in closet, overlooked by the blessedly lazy detectives. The duffel was full of objects; Leenie was quite the magpie, stockpiling shiny things and rare first editions. Here was the Birkin, the phone case, and, yes, Kim’s letters. She understood why Leenie had kept Margot’s things, which were beautiful and exquisite, but Kim had no problem tossing them in a dumpster outside a nearby construction site. As for her letters, she shredded them.

  There also was a manuscript, but Kim had read that already, having discovered a copy on Gerry’s computer. It surprised her that the computer was of no interest to the homicide detectives who had investigated Gerry’s death, how uninterested they were in motive or reason. But that was to her benefit, too, as it never occurred to them to request the elevator tapes that would have shown her arriving with Leenie earlier. For them, the scene was all physics and sequence, trajectories and blood splatter. Aileen was clearly killed first, her larynx crushed by the bed. Gerry had suffered a fatal head injury when he was thrown from the bed to the floor. Scuff marks on the upper floor, the walker lying on its side—that indicated how he had managed to move the heavy bed.

  Oh, they had spoken to Kim at length, and it had been hard not to demand a lawyer, but she assumed insisting on one—lawyering up, as they said on TV—would be suspicious. Luckily, the truth was more or less on her side. She had arrived that afternoon from Columbus, on a ticket paid for by her uncle, who had only recently come into her life. Email supported that. He wanted to discuss her grandfather’s inheritance with her. Why had it taken her so long to arrive at the apartment from the airport, which was only a twenty-minute drive? She said she had tried to use public transportation and screwed up horribly, ended up walking a good portion of the way. She was proud of that invention—if police really did check her cell phone’s GPS and determined she was in the neighborhood, it would be consistent. She knew all about cell towers from one of her favorite true-crime podcasts.

  Ultimately, the police ruled it a homicide “abated by death” and a state’s attorney closed the case: a man had killed a woman, accidentally killing himself in the process. “Weirder things have happened,” one of the detectives told Kim when she followed up. “You should see this Wikipedia page on bizarre deaths.” No one could figure out why he had killed her, or if it had anything to do with his missing girlfriend and assistant. Again, the why of it was of no interest to the detectives. It was speculated that Gerry had been paranoid and possibly delusional after his fall in January—consulting a private detective, then a neurologist. It appeared that he had been taking some medications that were not prescribed, possibly in dangerous combinations, although tox screens showed nothing and an autopsy found that the only damage to Gerry’s brain was from the injury that killed him. If Gerry had lived to see how his death was treated by some Internet outlets, he would have killed himself.

  Kim felt she was doing Gerry a favor of sorts when she finished the manuscript she found in his computer. Giving him the last word, rescuing him from being a morbid punch line, another bizarre death logged on the Wikipedia page of bizarre deaths, a terrible thing Kim wishes she could unsee. She is especially haunted by the little boy whose head got stuck in the floor of a rotating restaurant. Why had the detective told her about that list? God, men can be awful.

  She wrote far more of the book than she let on to Thiru. The memory of Columbus, the night in Gerry’s hotel room—that wasn’t in the original, an omission she found hurtful. How could the worst thing that ever happened to her not be one of his pivotal memories? She added other scenes as well, invented memories that she felt softened him. When she was finished, she realized she finally had some empathy for Gerry Andersen. She had expended so much energy, for so long, on hating him, but he might have saved her life and sacrificed his own in doing so. Not intentionally, perhaps, but he had believed himself brave, he had seen himself as a hero, and that had to count for something.

  A two
-book deal. It’s not enough. It’s too much. Kim doesn’t lack confidence. She can write another novel. She wrote one in her MFA program. She wrote and revised much of The Floating Staircase, a title about which Thiru is dubious, but Kim has been gently insistent that the book be submitted with that name, claiming it was Gerry’s choice. She simply doesn’t know what she wants. She remembers Gerry’s image of a wallet on a sidewalk, tied to a string, assuming that was Gerry’s image and not Aileen’s. She is not quite thirty. She doesn’t want to spend her life chasing wallets on strings. During the weeks she lived in Gerry’s apartment, readying it for sale, she found that the shelves full of his titles in various editions and languages exerted less power and charm with each passing day. It was, she supposed, like living near a beautiful vista, a mountain range, or an ocean. At some point, you stop noticing.

  She has reached the northern edge of Central Park and the sun has disappeared, the wind is kicking up. The sky to the west looks dark, as if a storm might be coming in. She descends into the subway, a tune bouncing in her head: You must take the A train. That doesn’t sound like something she would be thinking, she’s not even sure how she knows that song, although she thinks she has heard Lin-Manuel Miranda sing it, but why would Hamilton mention the A train? Maybe it’s Gerry’s voice she’s hearing. Maybe Gerry will be with her forever, whispering in her ear, filling her mind with his old-man concerns and crotchets.

  Good lord, how does she even know the word crotchet, so weird and old-fashioned, not something a thirty-year-old would say? Has she become Gerry Andersen by writing about him? She certainly didn’t bargain for that.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  And now perhaps we begin to see?

  This is the way I always remember the last line of Portnoy’s Complaint. I always get it wrong. The psychiatrist asks Portnoy, clearly rhetorically, if he is ready to begin, not see. At any rate, Gerry Andersen is beyond therapy at this point.