He flung the door open after the fifth ring. He’d changed into shorts and a T-shirt. “What the hell—”
“Hi,” I said. He started closing the door but I was prepared and slipped my foot in to stop it. “I know what happened that night,” I said.
Bluffing had worked with the bartender; hopefully the shrink would fall for it, too.
“Then you don’t need to talk to me.”
“Oh, but I do. Some of the details are a bit murky. Like, was she looking at you when you pushed her off the bridge or did she have her back to you?”
“What are you talking about? That’s absurd. I was in bed, deep asleep.”
“Hm.” I cocked my head exaggeratedly. “Her Skype history shows you were very much awake.” His eyes widened. “I suspect you’d rather tell me about it inside,” I said. “You never know if one of your neighbors has his ear pressed to the door. It saved Professor Jones’s ass, I’m told, but you might not be so lucky.”
Wozniak blinked at me. His face had lost color. For a moment, I thought he would pass out but then he opened the door and, without a word, disappeared inside. I followed him. At the thud of the door shutting behind me, I had the fleeting thought that I should have told Angie what I was up to. Texted her the address at least. So that she’d know where to look for me. Should I go missing, too.
57.
KATYA
THEN
The streets were dark, empty, dead. Not even rats scurrying away from the trash at the sound of my steps. Tyler’s new place was a four-story walk-up a few blocks south of Coogan’s. I’d followed him there the other day, after Lana told me he’d moved out. The building was a far cry from his previous abode. But the neighborhood was full of Columbia students and employees thanks to the affordable rents and proximity to the university. Tyler’s apartment was on the fourth floor, his kitchen window overlooking the street. I didn’t know what I was going to say to him. Or even why I was going there. I wasn’t exactly thinking. All I knew was that the tight heavy wall I’d carefully built over the last few months to keep my demons at bay had suddenly and mercilessly collapsed on me.
I blamed Tyler for it. Because, really, who else was there? God? Myself? I’d blamed myself for everything since Alex. It was the very thing I’d been hoping to finally escape. And anyway, it was obvious—the stress of the breakup must have provoked Lana’s miscarriage. I could tell how wretched she felt knowing Tyler had met another woman. It was all his fault. He’d started this ball rolling whichever way you looked at it. He’d posted a flyer looking for an egg donor for his partner while cheating on her. Then he’d gone ahead and left her. Pregnant.
Tyler opened the door, furious. “Katya, what the hell?”
“Aren’t you going to invite me in?”
“What are you doing here?”
I hardly knew myself. For a moment, I stood there staring at him, confused. He looked like shit in his white T-shirt and gray trunks. His hair was stuck to one side. Nothing like the striking figure he cut in the lecture hall. I almost felt sorry for him.
“You’re a cheating bastard,” I said finally. His eyes grew darker, narrower. “And you’re going to pay for all the pain you’ve caused.”
“Please leave.”
I’d expected anger. Hoped that a fight would cool the burning ache inside me. But the desperation, the revulsion behind those two simple words cut like a knife.
“I went to the Ombuds office yesterday,” I said.
“What? What are you talking about?”
“I’m going to file a complaint against you.”
He didn’t blink. He didn’t say a word. He simply closed the door on me midsentence. Like I was a rat to be shooed away with a broom.
I stood there, my chest tightening again. There wasn’t enough air in the small windowless landing. The strong smell of curry. The sound of my heart beating. The walls seemed to close in on me.
The words of the guy from the club sounded in my head: You dirty little bitch. You know you deserve it.
I ran down the three flights of stairs and burst onto the street.
* * *
“For fuck’s sake, Katya! It’s five in the morning.” Josh was pissed. Boy, was he pissed. “You know the rules. You cannot be calling me in the middle of the night. You cannot be calling me period.”
So what if I’d woken him? I needed him. “I’m shaking,” I said, and leaned against a building to steady myself. I had the phone in my hand, camera on, buds in my ears. “I don’t know if I can speak.”
“Then go to bed, damn it. I’ll see you in the office—”
“Don’t hang up on me, Josh. You will regret it, I’m warning you.”
“So you can speak, apparently.” He sounded cold, angry. Like he was fed up with me.
“I got raped tonight,” I said, hoping that would get his attention.
“Of course you did. Let me guess, Tyler? Or another professor you have a grudge against?”
“Josh, this is for real.”
He skipped a beat before saying, “Go to the police then. Why are you calling me?”
“Because . . .” I couldn’t find the strength to say it out loud. “Because, it’s gone, Josh,” I finally said, my voice quivering. “My baby is gone. The miracle that was going to save me is no more.”
“Miracle? Are you crazy? Nothing can save you!”
His words landed with a thud. He’d given up on me. My legs felt weak and I slumped to the ground, my back propped against the building. I rested my head on the wall and looked up at the sky. Towering over the rooftops at the end of the street, I saw the George Washington Bridge. A glimmer of light in the night sky. Josh was saying something about me losing it but I could barely hear him.
“Josh, I’m going to jump off the bridge.”
He laughed. “Like that time you wanted me to go for a drink with you?”
“This is different.”
“Katya, enough! I’m going back to sleep.”
“I’m telling you, Josh, I’m going to jump off the George Washington Bridge.”
“Go ahead,” he said. “Jump!” And hung up. The fucking bastard hung up on me. He didn’t think I would do it. Or maybe he just didn’t give a damn.
I’d show him.
* * *
The barrier barely came to my chest. But I knew that already. I’d come up here a couple of times on my runs along the river. Still, I was shocked how low and easy the railing was to scale. I rested my hands on the bar and stared into the darkness below. Cars zoomed behind me. I wasn’t worried drivers would see me. I’d picked a dark spot where the walkway wrapped around the stanchion, creating two little nooks at the corners away from the road. I’d seen night photos of the bridge with the towers glowing white, illuminating the intricate lace of steel. But both of the towers were dark today except for the blinking red lights at the top. Maybe they only lit the rest for special occasions.
There was a tall fence around the stanchion—maybe ten, twelve feet high—with outward spikes at the top to prevent you from climbing it. But to discourage you from jumping off the bridge over the breast-high railing, the authorities had chosen suicide prevention signs. You’re not alone, read a sign next to me. Seriously? And how the hell did they know? They didn’t even know I was here. The only camera I could see was pointing up at the tower. Suicide is never the answer, another sign read. I hated platitudes in my best of moods, swiping through Instagram photos or Facebook posts. But seeing them here made me want to jump for real.
I looked down. From the little balcony that jutted out along the tower, I could see the cars on the lower level. I gripped the railing harder and gazed into the void below. The cool air felt good on my skin. The wind blew my hair.
It was time to Skype Josh again.
58.
LANA
NOW
The
first thing I noticed was the road bike propped against the wall. The black helmet hanging off it had two gray stripes on the sides, just like the one on the CCTV photo. My legs felt weak. I paused to examine it, not really looking for anything but more so to calm my breathing. There must be many helmets like this one, I told myself. For all I knew, the one in the black-and-white photo had white or yellow stripes. The rest of the room was nearly empty but for an open futon with the sheets bunched up in a ball, a dresser, a couple of chairs, clothes draped over both of them, and a fruit crate that doubled as a coffee table, judging by the mug on top of an old issue of Men’s Health. The place would have been lighter if it weren’t for the trees in front of the two windows and the fire escape cutting diagonally across one of them. There was a tiny kitchen off to the side.
Wozniak emptied a chair for me and sat on the bed. He was older than I’d thought, furrow lines already creasing his forehead.
“So why don’t you tell me how it all happened?” I said, breaking the silence. I’d long ago learned to take charge as a way to mask my fear.
He stared into space, seemingly unaware of my presence. The hum of the refrigerator coming from the kitchen filled the room.
“I should have known better,” Wozniak said finally. He was looking somewhere to the right of me as if at my reflection in an invisible mirror. “She was a master manipulator and went to great lengths to punish those who had hurt her.” He paused and I thought of how astounded she’d been that I wasn’t planning on making Tyler pay for leaving me. “She made elaborate plans,” Wozniak continued. “She stalked you and then tricked you into meeting her.”
I nodded. It still hurt to think that her excitement about meeting me had been fake.
“She’d been manipulating me for months,” Wozniak said. “I had to stop going to my local bar because she showed up there one night last semester, not long after she’d first hit on me. I thought it was a coincidence. After all, Coogan’s is around the corner from the Columbia medical school. I thought she’d come with some of the med students. Only later, when she started stalking you and Tyler, did it hit me that she’d planned it.” He looked up to the ceiling, shook his head. “I should have deleted her from my Skype contacts. But I was scared of upsetting her. She was unraveling as it was and I knew she was capable of anything. She’d reported Tyler to the Ombuds office, for fuck’s sake. And he hadn’t even slept with her. I was terrified I’d lose my job—”
“Wait, are you saying that she and Tyler weren’t involved?” My stomach swooped at the thought.
Wozniak snorted. “No way. She put him on a pedestal. She was able to restrict her feelings and stay away from him because, in her mind, he wasn’t capable of doing anything wrong. Then she saw him kissing another woman and went nuts. It was a double offense for her. First, he’d disillusioned her, proving he was just another mortal capable of cheating, and second, he’d fallen from grace with a woman who wasn’t her.”
So Tyler was telling the truth? I filled my lungs with air, exhaled slowly.
“Katya was desperate that night,” Wozniak went on. “She even claimed she’d been raped. I knew better than to fall for it, of course. After all the lies about Tyler and her threats to me . . .”
Jacuzzi Guy. The thought, cold and poisonous, coiled at the bottom of my belly. The bastard had raped her. Even Katya wouldn’t lie about something like that. I made a mental note to make sure he wouldn’t get away with it.
“When I refused to play her game,” Wozniak was saying when I turned my attention back to him, “she snapped. And I fell right into her trap.” He wiped away the sweat from his forehead. His voice was strained, his breathing fast as he continued. “It wasn’t the first time she was calling me in the middle of the night. It wasn’t the first time she’d threatened to kill herself. So when she said she was going to jump off the bridge, I told her, ‘Go ahead, jump!’ I fucking said that, then hung up. I turned Skype off and pulled the blanket over my head. But I couldn’t go back to sleep. The bitch was messing with my head. I took my phone and turned Skype back on. Sure enough, thirty minutes after the first call, she rang me again. It was dark and I could barely make out her face but I could see the red blinking light on top of the bridge tower above her. She was on the goddamn bridge. I sat up in bed like I’d smelled fire.”
His voice cracked and he bit his lower lip before continuing. “I told her to stay where she was. That I was getting on my bike and would be there in five minutes. She said it had been fun knowing me, blew me a kiss, and hung up. She actually blew me a kiss.”
Josh shook his head, looked at his feet. Outside, a car drove by with the music blasting. A Latin tune that lingered long after the car had passed.
“I rode there like mad,” he continued after a while. His voice was now steady, like he was narrating a movie playing in his head. “My building is only six blocks away but it seemed to take an eternity. My fear had turned into rage by the time I got to the bike ramp. She couldn’t just go and jump. She had to drag me into it. Finally, I approached the tower. Katya must have been standing somewhere in front of it when she called me because I could see the light above her, but she wasn’t there now. So I pedaled even faster. I was terrified that she could have jumped ten times by then.” He paused. “I wish she had,” he said, and took his head in his hands.
I stared at him, cold sweat running down my back. Something told me I didn’t want to hear what he was going to say next.
59.
KATYA
THEN
A sense of victory washed over me as I saw him coming. Dawn was starting to break over the rooftops behind him. I lifted my leg and straddled the railing. There were barely any cars on the bridge at five a.m. on a Sunday but just in case, I’d picked a dark spot shielded from the road by the enormous cable.
“Katya!” he yelled, and screeched to a stop a couple of feet from me.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I was barely able to keep the triumph out of my voice.
“Get the fuck down from there,” he said, and dropped the bike.
I started laughing. Poor old Josh was truly scared, but he put on such a show of being angry. I wanted to hug him. “You didn’t think I’d do it, did you?”
“Why don’t you come here and we’ll talk?” he said, and inched a step forward.
It felt good to see his concern, a small chip at the ice in my chest. But I wasn’t ready to let him off the hook yet. “I’m thrilled you’ll be here to see me go,” I said, and holding on to the railing, I swung my other leg over and planted my feet on the concrete edge on the outside. It didn’t even occur to me to be scared. I was high on adrenaline.
“Fucking hell, Katya!” he cried, his eyes twice as big.
“It’s the perfect way for me to go, if you think about it. To drown, like Alex. There is a certain symmetry to it. A closure.”
“Katya, please! Don’t be stupid. You can still turn things around if you want to. Please.”
I locked him in my stare. Had I misjudged him? What if he truly cared? “And how would I do that?” I asked.
He took another step forward.
“You’re a proven donor now. You’ll be in high demand. You can choose the couple yourself next time. Make sure they are right. You told me this yourself.”
“What do you care?” I asked and held my breath. Just say it once, Josh, I thought, desperation taking over me. Just this time and I’ll stop the game.
I peered into his eyes with anticipation, but instead of love all I saw was terror, and before he’d even spoken, my pathetic stupid hope had turned to stone.
“Of course, I care,” he said. “I’m your therapist.” The blow of his words shook me so hard, I instinctively gripped the railing. Josh wasn’t here because he cared for me. He was here because it was his job. I would never be anything more than a patient to him. A patient he could fuck, but that was it. Ang
er constricted my throat. He’d fooled me there for a moment, the bastard. And he would pay for it.
He was still talking, saying something in his deceptive therapist voice, but I was no longer listening.
“My hands!” I screamed. “They’re slipping.” He lunged forward and grabbed me by the shoulders, clutching me so hard I nearly cried out in pain. His face was inches from mine, sweat dripping at his temples. I couldn’t hold it any longer and began laughing. “I got you!”
He stared at me. His hands relaxed their grip on my shoulders as it slowly dawned on him that I was fucking with him. His face went from white to red in a flash. His eyes glowed like a wild animal’s. There was something primal, intoxicating in his anger, and I inhaled its scent greedily.
The momentary surprise when I felt his hands strike my chest gave way to an immense relief. This was what I’d wanted all along, I realized as the railing slipped from my hands and I fell backward. Ever since Alex’s death, I’d been inching toward this moment, hoping someone would free me from myself.
My lips parted to say Thank you but it was too late.
60.
LANA
NOW
I stared at the man slumped on the futon in front of me, merely a silhouette in the dim light of the streetlamp streaming through the windows behind him. It had been nearly two hours since I rang his doorbell and dusk had settled over the city. Josh Wozniak seemed to have forgotten me and was talking as if to himself. “I was starting to calm down, you know, thinking that I had her attention. That she would climb back onto the bike path and everything would be fine. Then suddenly she cried that her hands were slipping. I threw myself at her and grabbed her by the shoulders. My heart was racing. Sweat was running down my forehead as I held her.”
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