The Stranger Behind You

by Carol Goodman

  What now? I thought. Sex addict newsman claims innocence? Sex addict newsman sues reporter? But then as I got closer the cashier lifted the paper and I saw the whole headline.

  SEX ADDICT NEWSMAN COMMITS SUICIDE IN FAMILY POOL

  The shopping basket handles slip greasily through my fingers and my toiletries slide onto the floor. “Is-is-is that . . .” I stutter. “Do they mean Caspar Osgood?”

  The cashier stares at me as if I had just crawled out from under a rock. “Yeah, the pig. If you ask me, he got off easy. Those women he molested should’ve been let to cut off his balls and stuff ’em in his mouth.”

  I flinch at the image as I kneel to collect my toiletries. But hadn’t I wanted him to suffer? When I go to pay I spill change from my pocket all over the counter. As I pick it up the cashier adds, “I feel bad for the wife though. And the kids.” She holds up a picture of Melissa Osgood, flanked by her adult son and daughter. “I hear the son’s a recovering addict. Do you think she knew?”

  For a moment I think my cover’s been blown. She knows I wrote the story that brought Caspar Osgood down and is asking my expert opinion on Melissa Osgood’s knowledge and culpability—a question I’ve often pondered these last three years.

  “If she didn’t,” I say, still trying to absorb the news Osgood has killed himself, “she was willfully blind.”

  The shadow in my peripheral flickers and I spin around, half-expecting to find Melissa Osgood stalking me through the aisles of Rite-Aid. How she must hate me! But there’s only a couple of girls my age in vintage sundresses waiting to buy coconut water. The hoodie-wearer is nowhere to be seen.

  I add the Post to my purchases and head back home, ignoring the bruised purple aurora pulsing at the edges of my vision like an impending summer storm. Caspar Osgood killed himself. It proves his guilt more than anything I wrote. An innocent man would have fought to prove his innocence. And I know he wasn’t innocent. I’ve listened to too many women recount the same strikingly similar story over and over again.

  He asked me to stay late to go over a story. He said I had Pulitzer potential. He offered to mentor me. Then he rubbed up against me. He shoved me into a supply closet. He put his fingers up my vagina. He pushed my head into his lap. He put my hand on his penis. When I complained he said he’d ruin my career. He said I’d never work as a journalist again. He fired me.

  The man was a monster.

  He had to be stopped.

  It was not my fault he killed himself.

  It’s not my fault his family’s lives are ruined.

  My hand is shaking so badly I drop the keys as I’m trying to unlock the front door of my building. As I bend for them I see a shadow stretching over and past me on the sidewalk. A raised arm poised above my head. I turn, cringing, expecting Melissa Osgood come to exact revenge for her husband’s downfall, but there’s nothing but the torn awning from the bodega next door flapping in the wind.

  I retrieve my keys and let myself in, checking that no one comes in with me, and hurry up the stairs, dodging shadows on every landing. I look over my shoulder as I unlock my apartment and quickly dash inside, engaging the dead bolt and the door chain. I sit down on the sofa and then get up to close the window, even though it turns my studio into a sweatbox. I sit back down and when I can breathe again I call Simon.

  “You heard,” he says by way of greeting.

  “I never imagined—” I begin.

  “Bullshit,” Simon cuts in. “Let’s be honest, kid. You set out to ruin that bastard for good reason. He was a monster. It’s not your fault he was too big a coward to face up to what he’d done.”

  “But what about his wife? What will happen to her?”

  “Melissa? She’ll spend a few months at their place in the Hamptons and then write a tear-jerker tell-all memoir—or her well-paid ghostwriter will—about how she was deceived and how she’s Osgood’s biggest victim. Watch, it will come out two weeks before your book, which, by the way, I hear is being shopped by Andrea Robbins at Lit. If you had asked my advice I’d have steered you to my agent at Cromwell & Fitch.”

  I detect a hint of pique in Simon’s voice. Should I have consulted with him before agreeing to let Andrea handle the book? And how did he even know that it was being repped by her?

  “I don’t even know about doing a book now,” I say, guiltily realizing that I hadn’t read the last two emails from Andrea. “It feels . . . opportunistic.”

  “And what’s wrong with that? This is your opportunity, kid. You’d damn well better take advantage of it. Trust me, a moment like this doesn’t come around twice. And if you want me to read a draft, I’d be happy to.”

  I thank Simon, promise I’ll do a better job keeping in touch when I “get back from upstate,” and get off the phone. Then I pee on a stick and am relieved to find out I’m not pregnant. I take two of the Tylenol PMs I bought at the Rite-Aid and climb into bed. I go to sleep imagining Melissa Osgood on a beach in the Hamptons, far, far away from my East Village studio—but when I wake up in the middle of the night it’s Caspar Osgood I see standing on my fire escape, pool water dripping from his bloated face, come back from the dead for revenge.

  I leap up, grab the can of mace my mother gave me when I moved to the city, and hold it out, braced to spray it in the eyes of my intruder, but the figure evaporates. Another concussion-induced chimera? Or my attacker back for a second round? Someone sent by Melissa Osgood to punish me for ruining her husband?

  I stay up the rest of the night asking Siri to find the most secure window gates and look up the statistics for repeat home invasions. Why haven’t I thought about it before? Had I thought he wouldn’t come back because there wasn’t anything worth stealing? But what if he hadn’t been looking for anything to steal? I’ve foolishly assumed all along that the attacker was a random criminal who seized on the opportunity of a drunk girl to follow me into my building. What if his mission was to kill me and he’s come back to finish the job? The man who attacked me knows where I live. He could come back.

  Siri interrupts my searches at nine A.M. to tell me I’ve got a call from Andrea Robbins.

  When I answer it Andrea asks me if I’m sitting down. I consider telling her the truth: that I’m crouched in a corner of my shithole apartment because it’s the only place I don’t feel like someone is sneaking up on me. Instead I say, “Still in bed. I’m getting lazy on vacation.”

  “Well, don’t get too used to it. I’ve got an offer that’s going to put you back to work. I think it’s the best offer we’re going to get; the only hitch is you have to deliver the book in six months.” Then she names a figure that is so big I can’t even imagine what I’d do with that much money—

  Until I do imagine what I will do with it.

  I tell Andrea to take the offer. I can write the book in six months (never mind that I can’t even physically write or read for more than fifteen minutes right now). She mentions a few more details but I’m not really paying attention anymore. As soon as the call’s over I tell Siri, “I need an apartment that’s safe. A refuge.”

  After a pause, she tells me about an apartment building in the upper Manhattan neighborhood of Inwood that’s actually called the Refuge.

  Yes, I think, that’s exactly what I need. Then I ask her to look up the number for a realtor whom Sylvia once said was the best in the city, one who can get me into that building the fastest.

  Chapter Four

  Melissa

  THE MORNING AFTER the fundraiser—or the Disaster, as I have come to think of it—I asked Cass to move out.

  “You have a perfect right to expect that,” he answered. We were on the deck, next to the pool. He was still in the rumpled suit pants and shirt he’d worn to the office the day before; I was in yoga pants and a silk kurta. I’d woken up still wearing the Flaming June dress, pulped to a wreck of orange chiffon, hungover, with a head full of aperol mist where my memories ought to be, but I’d taken the time to shower, moisturize, and dress. I wasn’t going i
nto a showdown with Cass looking my age. “I can imagine how upsetting this must be for you.”

  “Can you? Do you have any idea what it was like to watch all our friends get the news that you’re a sexual predator right in front of my face?”

  “That was Simon Wallace’s doing. He planned the timing of the story on the night of your fundraiser to humiliate me—and you. So whatever misplaced fondness you might still be harboring for him—”

  “This isn’t about Simon,” I began, but he cut me off.

  “That’s exactly what it’s about. You know he’s had it out for me since I got promoted over him at the Times twenty-two years ago. And this girl he sicced on me—she was fired from her internship at the Globe. Aside from the lack of ethics, it’s sloppy. I’d never assign a reporter to a story who had a motive to discredit the subject.”

  “So you deny that you had any contact with those women?” I asked.

  He had turned red; he knew I had him there. “You know that one of the women is Amanda.”

  “Yes,” I said, wincing at the name. “I’d recognize the name of the woman who nearly broke up our marriage three years ago.”

  “Nearly. I left her when you threw me out and haven’t been with another woman since you agreed to give me a second chance. That’s why she made up this story—to get back at me for leaving her. These other women . . .” He waved his hand as if the women were in attendance. I could picture them in the wavy pool light reflected on the sheers billowing out from the living room—Cass’s seraglio. “Okay, some are flirtations from before Amanda and some are women who work for me and may have been disappointed I didn’t flirt with them. I think Amanda talked to this reporter, Jane Lurie—”

  “Joan,” I corrected. “The reporter’s name is Joan Lurie.” I could also have told Cass where she lived. After we had left the Conservancy, I had asked my driver to take me down to the Manahatta offices to talk to Sylvia. I wanted to ask her to her face if she had known about the story and if she had, how could she not have told me. But when we pulled up in front of the offices I saw that girl coming out of a restaurant across the street. She was in a skimpy skirt and top, laughing, clearly drunk, and hanging on some skinny hipster with a man bun. Having the time of her life while celebrating the ruin of my life. When she got into a car, leaving Man Bun behind, I asked the driver to follow her.

  “Okay, Joan,” Cass said, his voice rising. “Amanda told Joan Lurie a made-up version of our affair to get back at me for going back to you. The Lurie woman must have thought she had a story, so she went after other women who had worked for the Globe and had been fired. Who knows how much she led them on or how much they were willing to make up to get back at the Globe. Or how much Simon egged her on to pull me down.”

  “So what are you going to do about it?” I asked.

  “I’m going to issue a statement admitting to the affair with Amanda and then explain why I ended it. And then I’ll deny the rest. Wally called and recommended a PR guy that Pat used a few years ago, Greg Firestein. He’s coming over to discuss strategy. I talked to him already this morning and he said it would really help if you made a statement of your own, saying you knew about the affair and that we had worked things out . . . maybe mentioning what happened to Whit . . . but I told him that was totally up to you. That I wouldn’t blame you if the only statement you made today was that you were leaving me.”

  “In other words, you need me. The loyal wife standing by her husband.”

  “I always need you, Mel,” he said, giving me his sad, earnest look. “But I’ll understand if you walk out now. I’ll give you everything—or at least what’s left after these women come after me. If these women sue me—well, in this climate”—he waved again in the air as if the wavering pool light and blowing sheers were symptoms of a weather system—“we may lose everything.”

  “That’s what she wants, isn’t it?” I asked, closing my eyes. It made me woozy to look at the way the curtains swayed in the breeze. It brought back images of the night before that I preferred not to think about. “To ruin us.”

  “She?” he asked.

  “That little chit of a reporter.”

  The driver had followed Joan to the East Village, where she practically fell out of her car and then weaved her way down the deserted streets as if she were untouchable. As if her life were inviolable. It had made me furious to watch her.

  “She wants to see us go up in flames. Well, I’ll be damned if I let her get away with it. Tell Greg I’ll make that statement. And you . . . you can sleep in the guest room until I decide what I want to do with you.”

  THE CHAIRMAN OF the Globe’s board called by noon that first day and suggested Cass step down from his position to “minimize damage to the Globe brand.”

  “I built that paper up from a tabloid rag,” he bellowed. “And now I’m damage to the brand?”

  Greg Firestein—the “PR guy” Wally had recommended—said it would be better to look like he was “focusing on his family” right now. He wrote a statement for Cass to release and one for me too. He also suggested that Emily and Whit go ahead with their summer plans—Whit to be an aide for Pat Shanahan’s campaign up in Albany, Emily to go out to Taos to build yurts. I hated to watch them go, but I could see Greg’s point that we should all behave as if everything were normal.

  “You and Cass shouldn’t go to any parties or seem to be celebratory but you should continue with your day to day—lunch with friends, volunteer work, recreational activities as long as they aren’t too frivolous.”

  “Too frivolous?” I’d asked.

  “Yoga, swimming, walking are all good; but no Barry’s Bootcamp or SoulCycle.”

  I hate yoga. And where would I walk without reporters following me? As for lunches, my so-called friends all canceled our lunch dates. Some of them made excuses—suddenly many of my friends had emergency root canals and jury duty—and some spewed out sanctimonious hypocrisies about needing to “distance” themselves from that kind of behavior. And as for volunteer work, the chair of the Cancer Foundation called to say that perhaps it would be better if Cass and I didn’t come to the gala this year—too much negative publicity.

  “It’s this #MeToo movement,” Cass would rant, pacing up and down the patio after his morning swim. Whatever happened to due process? Whatever happened to innocent before proven guilty?”

  After a few days I was sorry I hadn’t gone to Taos to build yurts with Emily. With reporters camped at the end of the driveway we were practically prisoners in our own house. Greg arranged for food brought in from FreshDirect and GrubHub. I worked out on the elliptical in our exercise room and swam laps in the pool until I saw a picture of myself on the Internet looking emaciated in my bathing suit. Cass started swimming at night after that, but I stayed inside, eyeing the sky for drones and silently eating meals out of boxes.

  After that first day we didn’t talk about the women. If I was going to credit the stories I’d have left on the first day; since I hadn’t left I’d lost my chance to question him. If I questioned him I’d be admitting doubt—and if I had any doubts, what was I doing here?

  The women were always with us, though, in the rippled light that came off the pool and in the billowing sheer drapes in the open doorways. Those drapes continued to make me sick when I looked at them. They reminded me of something that had happened when I followed Joan Lurie home. I’d only wanted to talk to her, to tell her what I thought of her planning her little debut on the night of my suicide awareness fundraiser. Did she know how hard I’d worked to build Whit back up these last three years—the expensive therapy, begging Wally to get him the job on Pat’s campaign to give him a sense of purpose, the work I did for SAD? Did she know what it was like to see your son in a hospital bed because he had decided he didn’t want to live? Or how long it took before I didn’t wake up every night at three A.M. in a panic wanting to call Whit to make sure he was okay? But when I got out of the car I found myself following her, mesmerized by the sway of her
skirt, unable to say a word. She was striding down an empty street as if nothing bad could happen to her. Because nothing bad had ever happened to her. It had made me so angry. It had made me want to make something bad happen to her. I pictured grabbing her by the hair and swinging her around. I pictured driving my fist into her round, gaping mouth and pushing her down onto the filthy sidewalk . . .

  But then I was on the sidewalk and the driver was helping me back into the car. I must have slipped. I wasn’t sure what had happened. But whenever I looked at the drapes billowing, I’d be reminded of Joan’s swishing skirt and I’d feel sick. So I stopped looking at them.

  Our only outside visitors (unless you counted faithful Marta, who braved the reporters twice a week to come clean and take away our take-away boxes) were Greg Firestein and Wally Shanahan. They always arrived in Greg’s anonymous-looking black SUV with tinted windows and pulled directly into our garage so the reporters wouldn’t see Wally getting out. No doubt so Pat Shanahan wouldn’t be connected to Cass more than he already was, since officially Pat had issued a statement “distancing” himself from Cass. Greg and Cass always sequestered themselves in Cass’s study. Wally brought bottles of Veuve Clicquot and treats—French pâté and Russian caviar and Swiss chocolates, things I wouldn’t want anyone seeing on our FreshDirect account because they might look too frivolous. She also brought Ambien and Xanax from a pharmacist who wouldn’t talk to reporters. And she brought news.

  “A lot of people think this whole #MeToo movement has gone too far. Did you read the letter those French women wrote last year? The French are always so sensible about these things. Maybe you and Cass should think about living in Paris for a while.”

  “And let Joan Lurie think she ran us out of town?”

  “Sylvia Crosley told me she hasn’t been in the office since the night the story was released. She’s clearly ashamed of herself.”

  I knew Wally and Sylvia were friends—Sylvia knew everybody—but I was still a little piqued that Sylvia had told Wally this and not me. Sylvia had called exactly once since the Disaster, and then only to assure me she hadn’t known what Joan was working on or she would have warned me. She hadn’t called since.