The Murderer Next Door

by Rafael Yglesias

  We met that afternoon for a drink at Bradley’s, a bar on University Place near where we both lived. I listened and dutifully admitted I had done wrong. She didn’t forgive me wholeheartedly for months: we socialized only as a foursome and in ritualized dinners, as though we were getting together out of obligation. Privately, no matter how much I disliked Ben, I swore that I would never show or express it.

  Six months after the fight she truly forgave me. She called in the middle of the day to gossip, and that weekend she and Ben dropped by without warning to suggest we go to a movie. Everything was back to normal. Only she never told me the inner world of her relationship with Ben, presumably out of pride, and I didn’t probe, out of fear.

  OBVIOUSLY I DON’T BELIEVE WHAT PEOPLE TELL ME, ESPECIALLY when it’s Stefan showing off his proudest possession: the ability to see the true motives behind the actions of others. Stefan—and Wendy for that matter—had declared that she had a desperate need to be married and have children. Sure enough, within seven months of meeting Ben, they had set a date, and within three months of their marriage, Wendy said, “Ooops,” over brunch, to announce she was accidentally pregnant and they were going to have the baby. Nevertheless, despite all the warnings and observations, I was surprised that she married Ben, and stunned that she was pregnant.

  We were in the formal dining room of our new co-op when she told us the news. I had made partner, Stefan was already successful, so we had splurged and bought a three bedroom in an elegant building on Fifth and Eleventh—far more space than we needed. There were two apartments on each floor, and by chance, the other (a two bedroom) had gone up for sale.

  “Do you think we could get the two bedroom for two twenty?” Ben asked Stefan, the words rumbling out slowly behind his thick tongue. At times, I almost liked Ben—he often told Wendy she was beautiful, bought her dresses, courted her even after marriage. He treated Stefan nicely too, his manner formal, glum, almost comically respectful. “Do you think the Iranians will release the hostages?” “Do you think Reagan has a chance?” “Do you think sixteen percent inflation is the peak?” It didn’t seem to bother Ben that Stefan had answered no, no, no to the above, nor was his track record any better in predicting the value of Knick draft picks or even recommending doctors. Ben missed the point of Stefan: his ability to empathize, to forgive, and, most of all, to be funny in even the worst extremity. During our first year of marriage, en route to a romantic inn, Stefan skidded out of control while driving on an icy Sawmill River Parkway. It’s a tight, curvy road with no margin for error. As we careened toward the divider, possibly to death, Stefan said, “This is going to put me in a bad mood for the whole weekend.” The car was totaled; we were merely scratched, saved, I’m convinced, because we were laughing on impact. Stefan was gentle, loving, kind—all heart beneath the encrusted jargon. Ben didn’t notice that; instead he paid court to Stefan’s brain, turning to him for expert opinion, in the manner of a panel moderator: “Why does that happen? What would make a man do that, Stefan?” So it was no surprise that Ben (despite his own work as a financial analyst) cast Stefan as real estate maven: “What if we made a bid for two twenty? Think they’d take it?”

  Of course, this brought out the worst solemnity in Stefan. He pulled on his earlobe and worried over the question, his dark little face thinking with exaggerated effort. “Two twenty…hmmm.”

  “Two dollars and twenty cents, that’s what Ben means,” Wendy joked. “It’s all we can afford.”

  “No I didn’t. I meant two hundred and twenty thousand. We have the money. Stop acting like we don’t.” Ben’s crankiness, his sudden rudeness to Wendy, happened often enough that she was no longer ashamed of it. There would be weeks when he was sweet to her, at least in public; and months when she couldn’t make the most innocent remark without suffering abuse. In those phases, I came home from seeing them with throbbing temples: I wanted to smack him, tell him he was lucky beyond calculation to have Wendy. “She likes to poor mouth,” Ben said to Stefan.

  “No she doesn’t,” I remonstrated in the gentle and forced politeness of womanhood.

  “What do you think, Stefan?” Ben ignored me. “With the baby we’re going to need another bedroom, another bathroom. It’s perfect. Should we offer two twenty, or is that too low?”

  Although Stefan claimed a certain tolerant fondness for Ben, he had discouraged socializing with them as a couple, suggesting Wendy and I have lunch instead, or spend a Saturday afternoon together. When we did meet as a foursome, I would monopolize Wendy, and poor Stefan was stuck with Ben. I knew he was bothered by the thought of Wendy and Ben moving next door. Living two blocks away in New York City can be as forbidding a barrier as the Berlin Wall—a hallway was nothing. Probably even the courtesy of telephoning first would go by the boards. Stefan broached this worry gently: “Aren’t you concerned about us living so close?”

  “No, I think that would be great,” Ben said. “Does it bother you?”

  “I think too much contact can put a lot of pressure on friendships.”

  “In other words, yes.” Ben pursed his tiny red lips together, leaned back, and folded his thick arms on top of his belly. He looked out from over the top of his glasses. “Okay, we’ll look elsewhere.”

  There was an uncomfortable pause.

  “I say that for both your and Wendy’s sake, as well for Molly and me.” Stefan used his shrink tone, liltingly reasonable, and his shrink gesture, his hand touching his own chest and then elaborately opening toward Ben, a pantomime of gentle exchange, as if Stefan wished to make a present of his heart.

  “Yeah.” Ben almost groaned the word. “Thanks a lot. You’re a real lifesaver.”

  I enjoyed Ben’s sarcasm. “Do you really have to move?” I asked, smiling at his skeptical remark.

  “Where do we put the baby?” Ben snorted this bitterly.

  “You could convert the dining room—”

  “Where do we eat?” Ben was belligerent.

  “In our kitchen,” Wendy said. “We can—”

  “No. I’m not going to live like some welfare family—all crowded in together.” He stood up and paced around our table toward the French doors leading to our small terrace. “I guess we could come here and eat in your dining room. We could sleep in your two extra bedrooms.” He opened the doors and stuck his head out, breathing deeply.

  “Can you afford a co-op?” I asked Wendy quietly.

  “I don’t think so. It’ll be too tight—”

  “Oh come on!” Amazingly, Ben had heard. He wheeled on us, pulled the door closed in the same motion, rattling the frame. Stefan cherished the small panels of lead glass on the door, had claimed its elegance was what sold him on the apartment. He jumped as it banged shut. “You have the money for the down payment,” Ben accused Wendy. “Don’t pretend you don’t. Molly’s not a fool. She knows your trust is big enough and you have control of it now.”

  Surprised, my eyes went to Wendy for confirmation.

  “Ah…” Ben smirked. “So you don’t tell each other everything. Her uncle is a first-rate money manager. She’s got enough to buy that two bedroom for cash.”

  “But then I’d have nothing left,” Wendy argued back, and I was pleased to hear the resolve in her tone.

  “So you come up with the down and we get a mortgage,” Ben persisted. “We can handle the interest—”

  “I’ve said it’s all right! Why are you bullying me? I’ve already said yes.”

  Ben continued to pace around our table, big feet treading heavily, eyes on the rug. He nodded at her concession, tiny red lips squeezed together in a sour frown, apparently disgusted by the victory. Ben finally stopped in front of Stefan and asked, in an accuser’s tone: “Did you like your real-estate broker?”

  Stefan answered at length—his opinion of the broker was complicated. I listened for a few familiar sentences and then whispered to Wendy, “What did your uncle do? Make a killing in the market with your money?”

  “You really di
dn’t know?” Once again, Ben had overheard, despite his attentive posture toward Stefan.

  “No. Wendy and I don’t discuss our finances,” I told him as haughtily as I could, which seemed to consist of my voice squeaking. “I never discuss people’s money. I think it’s rude.”

  “That’s okay, I understand that, you’re not Jewish.” Ben smiled, and narrowed his small eyes gleefully. “But Wendilah? She doesn’t tell her best friend about her money? It’s goyisha!” Ben only used Yiddish for jokes or belligerence. He leaned over and poked Wendy in the side.

  “Stop.” She pulled away.

  “She’s ticklish,” he said in a tone of weary despair. He slunk away from her, rejected.

  “You have your secrets, too,” Wendy said, an unpleasant, teasing smile on her face.

  “What!” he demanded nervously.

  “What is it?” Stefan smiled happily, his bright teeth shining out from his black beard. “I love secrets.”

  “No kidding,” I said.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ben said in an officious tone. “But violating my privacy—”

  “That’s what you did!” Wendy was thrilled by her logic. “That’s exactly—”

  “No.” Ben bowed forward, shaking his great bald head vigorously, “I didn’t—’

  “That’s exactly what you did!” Wendy gripped my chair in her excitement. “Just like I’m going to—did you know Ben was married before?”

  Ben was stilled, nervous legs quiescent, head down; his bald skull reflected our overhead light, his delicate fingers curved down over his knees.

  “I only found out last week by accident—”

  “Because you were spying.” Ben spoke in a mumble.

  “I was looking in the drawer for our insurance forms, to pay—”

  “You were spying!” Ben was on his feet, wide and thick and ugly. His sallow skin, instead of turning red with fury, bled two small pink blotches on each cheek. His glasses slid down almost to the end of his nose, his chin was scrunched up, and his tiny lips made a tiny circle. Though big and loud, he didn’t scare me. I almost wanted to laugh. I felt pity for him, that he cared so much about trivialities, that he wanted to live near us, when neither Stefan nor I was really his friend. “Admit it! You were looking—”

  “What?” Wendy appealed to me. She faced him. “What was I looking for, Ben?”

  “Fuck you!” That hurt. He shot it out violently and watched her, obviously wanting it to be painful.

  “Ben,” she complained.

  “Go fuck yourself! You can live alone in that shithole with your baby!” Ben marched past her and out into the hall.

  “Ben!” Wendy pleaded.

  “Ben,” Stefan said softly, slowly rising from the chair.

  The front door squealed open and slammed hard. It seemed to take all noise along with it.

  We sat in its vacuum until Stefan, rather stupidly, said, “Ben?” and then went into the hall. “He’s gone,” he reported a moment later.

  Wendy leaned forward, put her face in her lap, covering up, and cried silently. I put my hand on her trembling back. “I’m okay,” she said, as if the touch were a question. “Hormones,” she mumbled. She was quiet then. Stefan, of course, brought tissues. She sat up, wiped her eyes, and loudly blew her nose.

  I waited for her to volunteer, wishing I didn’t care, wanting to be concerned only about her feelings, but when she didn’t say anything, I couldn’t leash my curiosity. “What’s the secret?”

  Her eyes were clouded with pain when she answered. I felt stupid and mean. “Oh.” Her voice droned, played at too slow a speed. “Ben was married once before.”

  “When he was young?” Stefan asked.

  “In his twenties. Right after college.”

  “That’s all?” I said. “That’s the secret?”

  “She left him for his best friend.” Wendy lifted each word out with effort, her sadness settling in. “I guess that’s what bothers him about my talking…” She couldn’t lift anymore.

  She loves him, I thought to myself. She’s carrying his child, she’s bound to him for life: in her eyes, I fancied I saw this tragic knowledge that it was too late, that she had picked wrong and yet had to stick with the selection. I too was committed—because of my love for her—to her choice.

  I swore there and then I would be nicer to Ben for Wendy’s sake: she was about to become a mother and needed my help.

  YOU MAY HAVE GATHERED THAT STEFAN ISN’T EASILY ruffled. Ben managed it, spectacularly, a few weeks later.

  “I’m furious,” Stefan announced. He stood at the door to the room we had converted into a miniature gym—my arms were pinned to my chest by a Nautilus machine. Stefan’s dark skin seemed to be tanned by his anger. He spoke in an even tone, yet his body was strung tight, feet together, stomach in, chest out—on military alert. “I’m in a rage,” he said. “I feel totally manipulated.”

  I pushed my way out of the press. I had overworked the lats earlier—they stabbed with pain. I knew his upset had nothing to do with me—he never hated me. I waited for his explanation.

  “Ben has made an offer on ten B.” That was the two bedroom across the hall. “It’s been accepted and he and Wendy are supposed to go before the board in two weeks. He’s told them we’re friends and—I ran into Margaret Hibbing in the elevator”—our co-op president—“and she assumed I’d be delighted—assumed I knew! Assumes we’ll recommend—”

  He was sputtering. I handled him the way I’ve seen good cross-examiners manage a hysterical witness, fixing his eyes with mine and asking sharply: “What did you tell her?”

  “I didn’t know what she was talking about! I covered. Pretended to be ignorant only of the fact that their offer was accepted. I’m tempted to blackball them. I really am.”

  “Wendy never said anything,” I told him.

  “Of course not. She probably doesn’t know!”

  I thought it rather funny, although I put on a stern face. Stefan was accustomed to getting his way with his civilized method—remember his reasonable shrink tone and shrink gestures? Ben had foiled him. Either Stefan could tell Margaret Hibbing that he wouldn’t recommend them (which Ben would deduce), or Stefan would have to give in. Ben had forced the issue: Are you friend or foe? Of course Ben wasn’t playing fairly. We were Wendy’s friends and couldn’t answer him directly. He was a coward.

  “I don’t want to give in to this,” Stefan said after a pause, his tone considered. “It may be childish rage, but I don’t want him to get away with this. He asked me—”

  “All right, I’ll talk to Ben,” I interrupted. Stefan made a feeble attempt to offer to go with me, but I insisted, got out of my exercise clothes, showered, and then called.

  Ben answered. Very cheerfully. “Molly! How are you?” He was ebullient, sounded almost drunk.

  “I’m fine. I’d like to come over and talk about the apartment.”

  “The apartment?” He was quizzical.

  “Your offer on ten B.”

  “Uh-huh.” Now he was glum. “Wendy doesn’t know. I wanted it to be a surprise. She’ll be so grateful to be near you, it’ll mean so much to her—”

  “I doubt that’s why you haven’t told her.” Silence. “I’m coming over now.”

  He insisted we meet outside their apartment to give him a chance to explain privately, in case Wendy came home from the clinic while we were still talking. I agreed to go to a coffee shop a block from both of our places. I got there first. The windows were steamed up from the contrast of the baked heat inside against the outer cold. Although it was mid-April and the weather had been mild, that day felt like winter again, reminding me of Maine and its long freeze and dark afternoons. I felt sad.

  Ben took over a half hour to arrive: he appeared to have just showered and shaved. “Sorry,” he mumbled, calling out to a sullen waiter that he wanted coffee. He wore a black turtleneck and thus his thick-skinned face seemed whiter than usual—glowing in sickly fas
hion, as big and dully luminous as an old-fashioned school globe. Indeed, he looked a little bit like my former elementary school principal, I realized. Nothing about this seemed amusing anymore.

  “Stefan is furious,” I said.

  “He is?” Ben hunched down, a fearful soldier ducking a shell.

  “What did you expect?”

  “I…uh…I know he said he was concerned that it might put pressure on the friendship, but I didn’t think that…uh—”

  “Come on. He was being polite.”

  At this, Ben was no longer meek. He puffed up. His long legs shuffled under the table. His right knee whacked against my leg. “If he meant he didn’t want us to move next to you under any circumstances, he should have said so. You don’t leave things like that to people’s imagination. I don’t have much of an imagination,” he sneered. “Never have. Can’t be subtle with me.”

  I thought him disgusting. Ugly, self-conscious, mean, insecure. I experienced his unpleasantness in a concentrated way, watching it beam out from his pugnacious, rhinoceros-hide face, soaking it up, a massive dose of miserable Ben Fliess.

  Getting no verbal response from me, Ben waved his hand. “Anyway, if he’s angry why doesn’t he confront me?”

  “I wouldn’t let him because Wendy is my friend and this concerns her too. She would be humiliated to know what you’ve done.”

  “No.” He shook his head from side to side. “I know you think that. But it’s not true. She was crushed that Stefan didn’t want us to bid on the apartment.”

  I smiled. He really wasn’t a clever man. “So you admit you understood that Stefan didn’t want—”

  “Listen to what I’m saying!” he shouted, shoving his thick chest over the Formica tabletop. I leaned back involuntarily. Imagine having him on top, I thought, heaving up and down, with his massive size, rough skin, and thick speech—I couldn’t understand Wendy loving him. Ben saw that I was repulsed. He glanced self-consciously at the other patrons, leaned back (he was so strong the entire booth shifted with him), and tightened his small mouth. “Wendy would never admit this to you, but she’s scared—”