The Stranger Behind You

by Carol Goodman

  “It sounds like you’re carrying a grudge,” he had said.

  “Maybe,” I’d admitted, clenching my jaw to keep it from trembling. “But someone should expose him.”

  “Is that what you want to do? Expose Caspar Osgood, the darling of the conservative elite? He donates to the most powerful Republican causes and politicians and uses the Globe to crusade for reform. He’s well connected and rich enough to pay for the best lawyers. A story like that would raise a holy shitstorm. It could break your career—or make it.”

  He’d said the last three words with a little upward lilt in his voice and a tug at the corner of his mouth. It felt like a lifeline being tossed to me just when I thought I was going under. “Yes,” I’d responded, not realizing how much I wanted to expose Osgood until the word was out of my mouth. I’d spent the last three weeks weeping in my apartment, sure my career as a journalist was over before it had begun. “That’s what I want to do. I’d like to write that story. But in the meantime, I’d really like this job writing for your Style section so I can pay my rent and not have to move back in with my mother and grandmother upstate.”

  That had made him laugh. “Why not both?” he’d asked. “How about we hire you to write style stories for Sylvia, and in the meantime you see what you can dig up on Osgood? If you think you’ve got a story in six months, pitch it to me properly and if I think it’s got legs, I’ll back you up. And by the way, there’s nothing wrong with holding a grudge,” he’d added, winking. “After paying the rent, it’s the best motivator in the world.”

  Simon had been true to his word. He put me on staff, practically unheard-of at the e-zines I’d freelanced for since graduating from journalism school two years earlier. When I’d been working there for six months I went back to him with the names of two more women who said that Osgood had sexually assaulted them when they were working at the Globe.

  “There does seem to be a pattern of behavior,” he said. But he still seemed unsure and I thought I knew why. I’d learned since I began working for him that he’d gone to college with Caspar Osgood.

  “I understand if you feel that you can’t pursue the story because of your personal connection with Caspar Osgood.”

  He had bristled at that, as I had perhaps known he would, and said, “I would never compromise my journalistic objectivity. Keep working on the story but make sure you have contemporary corroborating evidence to back up every allegation.”

  We agreed that I’d stay in the Style section until the story was done, though. “It will be good cover for what you’re working on and you’ll need the distraction of shoes and gallery openings when you get deep into this.” He’d been right about that. Writing about fashion and style might have seemed superfluous at times while I was listening to stories from victims of sexual assault, but “Put lemon in your water and drink at least sixty-four ounces a day” was a nice change from “He put his fingers in my mouth and told me to suck like a baby.” Now, three years later, I was coming out with a groundbreaking exposé—a story that, as Simon had said, would either make or break my career—and my skin had never looked better.

  “AREN’T THE WOLVES already circling?” I remarked to Simon as we stood in front of the restaurant. We’d both gotten cease-and-desist letters from Osgood’s lawyers the day before. Simon had made a big production of lighting them on fire with the vintage cigar lighter some old reporter at the Times had given him when he started out.

  “Oh, they’re at the door, Joannie,” he said, grinning. “All the people who have enabled Caspar Osgood all these years and overlooked the rumors and the gossip as they lined their pockets with his money are going to say you’re an angry feminist who’s attacking Osgood for his politics and who’s bitter she’s working for a two-bit rag instead of the great Globe. In fact”—he turned to me, his grin sobering to a wistful smile that melted the icy trepidation in the pit of my stomach—“it’s not too late to back out. We posted the story to the staff’s private online site half an hour ago, but it won’t appear on the public site for”—he checked the vintage Patek Philippe watch on his wrist—“ten minutes, and the print edition won’t hit the stands until tomorrow morning. I could tell Sammy to stop the presses. You could probably still get a job at the Globe if you played your cards right.”

  I snorted—then saw he was serious. “I’d rather work at this two-bit rag,” I told him, my own voice turning hoarse.

  He held my gaze another moment, as if testing my conviction. I felt the force of that gaze like a magnetic attraction—not, as I had realized over the last three years, a romantic or sexual attraction. It was his approval I wanted, the validation of his faith in me. I felt it now as he nodded. “Good,” he said. “Let’s give ’em hell.”

  He pushed open the door to the crowded restaurant, then took my hand and raised it over our heads as if I were a prizefighter who’d just gone fifteen rounds.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the press,” he boomed, “I present the reporter who’s just taken down Goliath. All hail to our own David. Hang on, kids, the ground’s gonna shake when this giant goes down.”

  The ground did shake as my colleagues and friends pounded the floor with their feet and applauded. A dark-haired server handed me a glass of fizzing Champagne and someone thumped me on the back. Marisol from accounting shouted, “Let’s take the fuckers down!” and everybody laughed and Simon gave my hand a squeeze that I felt all the way in my chest. Then he let go and I drifted untethered into the crowd.

  Everybody was pushing forward to congratulate me, but they all parted for Sylvia Crosley. In a black Chanel dress, Louboutin heels, and her signature round glasses, Sylvia looked as cool and collected as always, but my stomach clenched in trepidation as she approached me. She’d been my boss for three years—and a good one. I’d learned more about how to write from being line-edited by her sharp blue pencil than I had in journalism school. I’d also learned how to go barefoot in pumps without getting blisters (spray-on deodorant), what to order at a business lunch that won’t go to your waist or stick in your teeth (poached salmon on Bibb lettuce), and where to get this season’s couture at half price (I can’t reveal that last one; she made me sign an NDA). But I hadn’t told her about the story that I’d quietly worked on for the last three years and I was afraid she was feeling betrayed.

  I eyed the flute of Champagne balanced between her lacquered fingernails and wondered if I was about to get it in my face. Instead she lifted it to me. “You sly dog,” she said. “All this time you were filing fluff for me you were busting balls with the big boys. Brava!”

  “I learned from the best,” I said.

  She lifted her chin up and clinked her glass against mine. We each took a sip—a mere lip-wetting kiss for her and a long sizzling gulp for me. I hadn’t realized how worried I’d been about how she would take my story. Sylvia Crosley wasn’t only a style editor; she knew everybody in New York, from the wholesaler in the Flower District who could get her Casablanca lilies out of season to this season’s chair of the Met Gala. She kept a little book with the names and phone numbers of everybody from the concierge at the Carlyle to the mayor. I didn’t want her for an enemy; I was about to make enough of those.

  She sidled in closer to me and whispered in my ear. “You might have told me what you were working on. There are some sources I could have directed you to.”

  “Simon thought we should keep it as confidential as possible until we were ready to go public with the story.” What Simon really had said was Sylvia’s a doll but she trades information like currency; there’s no way she’d keep a story like this to herself. She held my gaze a moment, as if she could hear me thinking, and then gave me a tight nod. Then she smiled and touched my arm. “Truly, you did a remarkable job—tracking down all those interns, finding corroborating evidence from their friends and families—it’s all very . . . solid.”

  “Simon insisted we have contemporary corroborating evidence for everything,” I said.

  “Of cours
e he did,” she said. “Any editor worth his salt would have done the same. I was just a little surprised he’d give you the go-ahead on a story about Cass Osgood. You know they went to college together.”

  “Yes,” I said, bristling a little at the implication that I wouldn’t have known this. Simon was right: Sylvia liked to be the one who knew everything.

  Sylvia gave me a small, pained smile. “It could look as if Simon were seeking revenge. The rumor is that Cass got Simon fired from the Times back in the ’90s and then there was that thing with the club three years ago.”

  “What thing?”

  Sylvia smiled, clearly glad to be the one to enlighten me, and leaned in to whisper: “I nominated Simon for membership to the Hi-Line Club but he didn’t get in. I found out that Caspar Osgood had blackballed him.”

  “Oh,” I said, reassured. “Surely Simon wouldn’t care about something as frivolous as membership to some club.”

  “Honey,” Sylvia said, her voice dripping with condescension, “never underestimate the pettiness of men and their egos.”

  We were interrupted then by Sam, one of the interns who had worked with me on the story. I looked apologetically toward Sylvia, but she shooed me away with a wave of her Champagne flute and a benign smile. I tumbled into the crowd of young reporters and interns—all bubbling with my success, genuinely glad for me because I’d gone out of my way to be kind to them and at twenty-eight I wasn’t that much older, so if it could happen to me, it could happen to them. Their happiness added to the glow from Sylvia’s seal of approval.

  “Look.” Sam showed me her phone. “The article is live! There are already pictures on Twitter of Melissa Osgood receiving the news at that fundraiser of hers.”

  “What?” I ask, the warm glow fading. “Do you mean her fundraiser for suicide awareness?”

  “Yeah. Didn’t you cover it last year?”

  “Y-Yes, but . . .” I remembered spending the whole night of the fundraiser trying to avoid Melissa Osgood. A better reporter might have tried to get her on record saying something about her husband’s reputation with women, but I’d been afraid of compromising the story. Or maybe I’d just been too mortified to shake the hand of the woman whose husband I was working to destroy. I should have remembered the date of the fundraiser, though—the summer solstice because it was her son’s favorite day—

  “Oh no,” I said, remembering the history of the foundation. “I feel awful. The fundraiser is for suicide awareness because their son tried to kill himself. If we’d known—”

  “Oh, Simon knew,” Khaddija, Simon’s assistant said, looking around to make sure her boss wasn’t within earshot. “He always had me keep tabs on the Osgoods. You know he used to be friends with them.”

  “Wow, some friends,” Atticus, one of the graphic designers said. “I’ve heard there’s always been a rivalry between him and Caspar.”

  “Oooh,” said Lauren, a style reporter, “I heard a rumor that Simon was in love with Melissa but she married Cass because he had the money. . . .”

  The chatter around me became a cacophonous blur of he-saids and she-saids, exactly the kind of rumor-mongering I’d tried to avoid in my story. Why hadn’t I remembered Melissa Osgood’s fundraiser? Why hadn’t Simon said anything about it?

  The same server as before handed me another flute of Champagne and I drank it down too quickly. She seemed to be on my heels, as if someone had paid her to keep my drinks flowing. Looking around the room, I spotted Simon out on the restaurant’s patio talking to Sylvia. He didn’t look happy; neither did Sylvia. I imagined she was taking him to task for not telling her about the story beforehand. I couldn’t blame her. I remembered suddenly that Sylvia had been at Melissa’s fundraiser last year. They were friends too—

  Which of course was why Simon hadn’t told her.

  Something didn’t seem right. Was it true, I wondered, taking yet another flute of Champagne from the dark-haired server’s tray, that he had a thing for Melissa Osgood? Was that why he had agreed so easily to me doing the story—because he wanted to hurt his rival? Surely it couldn’t have been something so trivial as resentment at not getting into a club, but then there was the thing he’d said about a grudge being the best motivator in the world.

  But what did that matter? I knew that Caspar Osgood was a sexual predator—I’d heard story after story and corroborated each of them with evidence from colleagues and friends whom the victim had told of the assault around the time it happened. As I’d said to Sylvia, I hadn’t used anything I couldn’t back up. I wanted to ask Simon if he’d known about the fundraiser. I wouldn’t ask about the club thing; that was too ridiculous. He was still on the patio but now, instead of arguing with Sylvia, he was on the phone. As I was wondering if I should go out and talk to him, a petite brunette in a Theory suit approached me and announced. “You’re part of the new vanguard. Have you thought of writing a book?”

  Glad for the distraction, I laughed and asked, “What self-respecting journalist hasn’t?”

  “Do you have additional material that didn’t make it into the story?” she asked.

  I snorted. “Are you kidding? After three years of research? I’ve got enough on the cutting-room floor for two books,” I bragged, realizing I was pretty drunk by then.

  “Really?” Theory asked, lifting one heavy eyebrow (I could recommend an eyebrow threader on the Upper West Side for her). “More of the same? Or anything more . . . combustible?”

  Even through my Champagne high I knew this was a loaded question, but Sylvia’s story about the Hi-Line Club had sparked a memory and I found myself telling the brunette that there’d been one line of inquiry that Simon had pulled me back from because I couldn’t find corroboration.

  “Oh?” she asked.

  “Yeah, something that happened in a private club with an underage girl . . .” I waved my empty flute and nearly collided with Sylvia, who had her head down looking at her phone. She looked up briefly, glanced at the woman I was speaking to, curled her lip at the Theory suit (Sylvia thought the brand was unimaginative), and hurried toward the front door with her phone pressed to her ear.

  “At a private club?” the woman repeated.

  “Um . . . I can’t really talk about that,” I said, watching Sylvia leave the restaurant. What had she and Simon been arguing about?

  “Well,” Theory said, retrieving a card from her jacket pocket, “if you’re interested in doing a book let me know. I’m a literary agent. I think I could get you a seven-figure advance.”

  And then she was gone and I wasn’t sure if I’d heard her right. Seven figures? That was, like, a million dollars. That was . . . I could pay off my student loans, live in a building where the stairwell didn’t smell, afford the kind of clothes that wouldn’t curl Sylvia’s lip . . . and then I was talking to someone’s wife who said she’d been groped by her uncle when she was five and the dark-haired waitress was saying she had a story for me and she was writing her name on a napkin and stuffing it in my pocket and I saw Simon standing on the other side of the room looking at me, and I started walking toward him, but somehow I ended up tilting toward a banquette, and Atticus grabbed my arm saying, “Whoa, Nellie! We’d better get you an Uber.” And then I was in a car, only whoever had called the Uber had gotten my address wrong and the car dropped me off at the corner of East Tenth and Avenue D, two blocks from my apartment.

  Thank God for gentrification, I thought, stumbling down streets that only a few decades ago would have been littered with hypodermic needles but now were completely changed as evidenced by the Lexus cruising the street, probably club kids looking for some chic after-hours spot. My mother had turned green when I told her where I was living. But she was remembering the neighborhood from her own brief residency in the city in the gritty ’80s, before she scurried back home to the safety of upstate New York. Now there were artisanal coffee bars that offered six-dollar cold brews and boutiques that sold hand-sewn felt serapes that looked like something I’d worn in m
y kindergarten pageant and cost more than I made in a week. So what if my vestibule smelled like urine and the lightbulbs on floors three through five were burned out? I was living the dream! Small-town girl comes to the big city after J school, lives in a dive on ramen noodles and dreams for five years, and finally makes it big.

  I was opening my apartment door when my phone rang. Maybe it’s Simon, I thought, with more news about the story. I pulled my phone out of my purse, dropping my keys. As I bent over to pick them up I was shoved onto the floor. I tried to scream but a large hand covered my mouth pressing a damp cloth over my nose and mouth. A sickeningly sweet smell flooded my brain.

  Chloroform.

  My brain immediately went to a story Ariel had done a few years ago on a serial rapist who chloroformed his victims. She had researched its effects and learned it took five minutes to knock someone out, and too much could kill the victim.

  I bit down hard on the hand and when it pulled away I tried to twist around to see my attacker—but he pulled something down over my head—a knitted cap that covered my eyes and nose and mouth. I couldn’t breathe. The smell was overwhelming. I was getting dizzy. I heard metal jangling and then I was being pushed through my own door, into my own apartment, where this invisible attacker would do whatever he wanted.

  I just want you to be safe, I could hear my mother pleading as I hit the floor.

  Here it was, my mother’s worst fear, the thing she lay awake nights worrying about. If I died it would break her heart.

  No! I thought, pushing myself off the floor to fight, I can’t die like this.

  I must have taken my attacker by surprise. I got all the way to my knees and managed to grab a handful of his coat, but the fabric was slippery, like a raincoat, I thought, picturing my attacker dressed head to toe in blood-resistant nylon the better to bludgeon me in. What to wear when attempting a murder, I blearily imagined proposing as a story as the slick fabric slid through my fingers. Then I was tackled so hard that my head slammed against the floor. I had just time enough to think that my mother had been right—the world really was a dangerous place—and then I wasn’t thinking anything at all.