The Stranger Behind You

by Carol Goodman

  Chapter Eight

  Melissa

  I WOULD LIKE to go home after lunch but I have an appointment to see an apartment in Tribeca with the realtor Sylvia recommended.

  “Tribeca!” Emily had teased when I texted her earlier. “How hip of you, Mom.”

  I had thought it would make for an easy commute to Image’s Soho offices. I had thought I’d have a nice job offer in my pocket that would make a loft with a Hudson River view feasible. I’d been imagining myself starting over in a clean white space uncluttered by my past—and all those shoes older than the young women who had jobs and had slept with my husband. (I’d been exaggerating when I told Sally I’d already sold my last Prada loafers.) But walking through the army of young people thronging the sidewalks of Tribeca makes me feel old and out of place. The realtor—a bleached blonde in a skintight Chanel sheath and arms as toned as a gymnast’s—makes me feel old, and the maintenance fee for the raw, soulless loft makes me feel poor. In the taxi down here I’d calculated what I’d have in principal after making a down payment and how much income I could expect from it. With a salary it had seemed feasible; without one I won’t have enough to pay my expenses without going into the rest of the principal.

  “I’m not sure,” I tell the realtor, Marla. “It’s just so different from my Colonial in Ardsley. Maybe I’m not ready to commit to something long-term yet. Do you have anything to rent?”

  She gives me a pained look—she won’t make a commission on a lease. “That’s totally understandable, Melissa—may I call you Melissa?—but unfortunately there aren’t many leases on the market, certainly not in this neighborhood—”

  In the land of the young and gainfully employed, she might as well say. Next she’ll be suggesting assisted living for me.

  “But I do have a listing for a sale uptown that has a lot more character than this and just as nice a view. It’s quite a bit less . . .”

  She names a figure that’s still too much. “How far uptown?” I ask.

  “Near Cloister Heights.”

  “The Cloisters!” I recall a Brearley field trip there. “That’s practically in the Bronx.”

  “It’s a very up-and-coming neighborhood, actually. In fact, I just sold a unit in the same building to a well-known journalist—oh!”

  She turns bright red. Does she think the word journalist will remind me of my dead husband? But then I notice the sly smile tugging at her mouth. “What famous journalist?” I demand.

  “I really shouldn’t have . . . I mean, I can’t say . . . all client information is strictly confidential.”

  “It was Joan Lurie, wasn’t it? She bought herself a new place with the blood money she got writing lies about my husband.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Osgood, I really wasn’t thinking. Of course you wouldn’t want to live in the same building—”

  “On the contrary,” I say, picturing how uncomfortable it would make Joan Lurie, “I’d be very interested in seeing the listing. Can you show it to me today?”

  IN THE UBER going uptown I reconsider. I can’t even really afford this cheaper place that’s so far uptown I might as well just stay in Westchester. I should be conserving what little money I have in case one of Cass’s women comes after me with a lawsuit. And when we get off the Henry Hudson I immediately see that all Marla’s talk of gentrification and up-and-coming were code for ghetto. I mean, I’m not a racist. I love Marta and have several—well, two—Black friends from the boards I’m on, but that doesn’t mean I want to live in a crime-ridden neighborhood where the nearest deli is a bodega. Still, I am curious to know what Joan Lurie’s blood money had bought her and if we should happen to pass in the lobby, let her squirm. Let her worry about what a disgraced, grief-torn widow might do to avenge herself.

  As we turn off a grimy avenue onto a tree-lined street that goes steeply uphill, Marla points out the advantages of the location: the proximity to the Cloisters and the A train, the surrounding park, and the view. The view is pretty nice. It’s practically the same view as from the conservancy, and it reminds me of the night of the gala before my world caved in—the last moment I felt happy. The apartment building itself looks like the French chateau Cass and I stayed in for our twentieth wedding anniversary.

  “What was this building originally?” I ask, trying to look like I have some real interest in the place.

  Marla looks a bit uncomfortable. “Actually, it was a kind of school . . . or a home, you might say . . . for wayward girls. The nuns ran it as a laundry—”

  “You mean like those awful Magdalen laundries in Ireland?” I ask, remembering a movie I watched with Emily. “Like a prison?”

  “Well . . . not exactly . . .” she says, but that’s exactly what it looks like—behind all the French gewgaws—a prison. Which is the perfect place for Joan Lurie to have ended up.

  The doorman is young and hunky with what my mother used to call, after a few G&Ts—bedroom eyes. The apartment is on the fourth floor—not even the penthouse—and is ridiculously small. It’s advertised as two bedrooms, but the second room is barely big enough for a single bed. Where would Whit and Emily stay when they came to visit? The washing machine and dryer are stacked right on top of each other, and I’m picturing how disdainful Marta would be of it when I remember that I have to tell her that I’m letting her go. I’m the one who would be stuffing my own laundry in there like those poor girls who were imprisoned in this place.

  It’s clear from all the security features that the surrounding neighborhood is a slum. There’s camera surveillance of the hallway, lobby, and outside the front door as if it’s a prison. Which it was. At least I can leave satisfied that Joan Lurie is living in a dump—

  And then I see her. She’s on the camera, walking out the front door, wearing a floaty sundress like she’s going to a picnic. She pauses and takes a deep breath, tilting her face up to the sun, like she’s congratulating herself on what a great person she is. The valiant crusader who brought down the big, bad sex offender. She sashays off into the dappled sunshine with that same sway in her hips like on the night I followed her to her apartment. Cass’s suicide has done nothing to dim her narcissistic entitlement. It makes my blood boil. It makes me want to wipe the smug smile right off her face.

  But how?

  She’s secure up here in her protected aerie, writing her book about my husband. Spinning stories from the lies those women told—women who might be plotting to sue me for the little pittance I have left.

  Marla can probably see I’ve lost interest in the place. She shows me the bathrooms and the linen closet—which is too small to even hold the three eiderdowns I bought in Switzerland last year—in a bored monotone.

  “What’s this?” I ask, pointing to a door at the end of the hall.

  “That’s a back door,” she tells me. “It provides access for deliveries and service calls. Some of the units have covered them up, but the doorman keeps a key anyway just in case.” She finds an old-fashioned key on the chain the doorman gave her and opens the door onto a dreary stairwell. There’s a heavy iron railing that’s been painted over so many times it looks like it’s swollen with tumors. There are scratches on the walls that probably come from careless deliverymen but that give the impression of crazy people trying to claw themselves out of this place. I look up and see a door on the floor above.

  “It’s too bad you weren’t searching two months ago,” she says, staring up at the door with me. “You could have gotten the top floor.”

  So that must be Joan Lurie’s apartment. Behind that door are all her files on the women who lied about my husband and who are still lying in wait to sue me and take away what little I have left. Only one lousy door with one lousy lock that opens with a key kept by that hunky bedroom-eyes doorman—

  Marla tries to show me the claw-foot tub, but I remain standing on the landing gazing upward, more interested in this view than the one of the river.

  “How soon would it take to get board approval and move in?�
� I ask.

  “Well, that depends on your financing—”

  “Cash,” I say. “What if it’s cash?”

  “Well, generally about six weeks—”

  “How soon if I double your commission?” I hold her gaze, trying not to think about how much of my principal this will eat into.

  She doesn’t miss a beat. “Three, maybe four weeks,” she says.

  “Make it three,” I tell her. “And we’ve got a deal.”

  WHILE MARLA MAKES a call to the co-op board I sit on the window ledge and phone my broker at Merrill Lynch and ask him to wire all the money in my account into my checking so I can write a check for the apartment. It’s after seven on a summer Friday, but Gil answers. He hesitates, though, when I tell him how much I want to withdraw.

  “Don’t you think you might want to keep some back in case of lawsuits—” he begins.

  “There will be more when the houses sell,” I say, neglecting to mention that that money is slated for college tuition. “And I can’t sit around on eggshells waiting for some hysterical women to sue me.”

  “Of course not,” Gil says. “It would be useful, though, to know what that reporter has—”

  “Yes,” I say, staring up at the ceiling. I can hear footsteps moving across the floor—she’s back early. “That would be useful. But I don’t think Joan Lurie and I will be having lunch anytime soon.” This much is true. I don’t tell Gil, though, that I’ve just bought the apartment under hers.

  “No, of course not,” Gil says, clearly impatient to get off now. “I’ll have the money wired to you by Monday morning. I wish you the best of luck in this new place. You deserve some peace and quiet, Melissa. I still can’t believe—”

  “Thanks, Gil,” I cut in before he can profess his astonishment at Cass’s proclivities. “Love to Fran and the kids.” I end the call and place my phone down on the window ledge. Marla comes in to tell me that the co-op board is willing to expedite the process as long as I’m willing to sign a no-publicity waiver. “Basically it just asks that you don’t draw publicity to the building, conduct interviews—”

  “Did she have to sign one?” I ask.

  “I believe they’re standard,” Marla says, keeping her eyes on her phone and briskly moving on to dates for a closing. She’s lying, I think. The co-op board wants to make sure that the disgraced widow of the sex pervert doesn’t hurt their property values, but they probably didn’t blink an eye at letting in the slut who drew all that damning publicity to me in the first place. Who’s up there now working on a book filled with more lies—

  Marla asks if those dates are okay and I ask if they can’t be moved up a bit and she tells me three weeks is the absolute quickest she’s ever seen anyone get into a co-op. Liar. If Cass were here he’d get us in tomorrow. He was always good at getting what he wanted.

  But if Cass were here I wouldn’t be moving into this dump.

  “I suppose it will have to do,” I say, standing up. We go down in the elevator. In the lobby the hunky doorman, whose name it turns out is Enda, offers to get us a taxi.

  “I’ve already called an Uber,” Marla says. “Can I drop you, Melissa? Are you going to Grand Central?”

  “Actually,” I say, “I thought I’d explore my new neighborhood a bit.” I smile at Enda. “Can you recommend a good place for dinner?”

  Marla gives me a quizzical look and says her farewells while Enda draws me a map on the back of a take-out menu showing me how to get to an Irish pub called the Black Rose, which he says “does a brilliant shepherd’s pie.”

  Without mentioning that I have no intention of eating such slop, I lean up close to him while he draws the map. “I’m hopeless with directions. I don’t suppose you could show me the way.”

  “Wish I could, love,” he says with a slow, simmering smile, “but I’m on duty all night.”

  “Oh well, I’ll just have to manage on my own then. I suppose the neighborhood’s safe.”

  “Safe enough while everyone’s out. I wouldn’t walk back up through the park on your own after dark, though. And if you ever do—” He writes a phone number on the hand-drawn map. “You call me so I can look out for you.”

  “I’ll do that,” I say, leaning in a little closer. He doesn’t lean away. I turn and he holds the door for me and I can hear that he doesn’t close it right away. He’s watching me as I walk down the hill. It feels good to have a man’s eyes on me again. After I quit working I was in a world of women: the other mothers, teachers, women on the charity boards. At Cass’s work things I was just an appendage—the boss’s wife—invisible or, now I realize, an object of pity. The wife whose husband was sleeping with every secretary and intern within sight.

  But I’m still attractive—all that damned Pilates and expensive skin treatments Sylvia is always recommending—and still young enough. Not that I’m ready for anything romantic. I’m not heartless, and I wouldn’t get involved with the Irish doorman, of course, but there’s no harm in flirting. He might prove to be useful.

  I stop and pretend to adjust my shoe strap while glancing back and he’s still standing at the door watching me. I give him a little wave and continue down the hill, feeling happy for the first time in months, since the night of the gala.

  The Black Rose is full of girls in droopy dresses and boys in beards and those horrible man buns. No one would imagine me living here in a million years. Wally Shanahan will be shocked, I think gleefully, sitting down at the bar and ordering a gin and tonic. And Sylvia . . . I remember that Sylvia set me up for that disastrous interview with Sally Jessell. I’ll give her a call next week and thank her for the referral but make clear that I wasn’t going to do any interviews right now because I was thinking of writing my own book. Best not to make an enemy of Sylvia; I had enough of those with the women lining up to sue me and Joan Lurie planning to write more lies about me and Cass in her book.

  I drink two G&Ts and nibble on a kale salad while paging through a local paper, since I didn’t bring my phone. I chat with the bartender, who’s a font of information on the neighborhood. When I tell him I’m moving into the Refuge, he launches into a long monologue on the history of the place, including riots, daring escapes, and tragic suicidal leaps from the high windows. The bar itself was named for a girl who was an inmate there, some ’40s mobster’s moll who killed herself jumping out a window at the Refuge.

  “My husband killed himself,” I tell him while biting on a swizzle stick. “Only, we lived in a two-story so he had to drown himself in the swimming pool.”

  He stares at me as if he’s not sure if I’m joking or not—finally, a cure for mansplaining!—and then leaves me alone. My last drink is on the house.

  At 11:45 I leave and start walking up the hill. Enda was probably right about it not being safe. There’s no one but a few dog walkers and a bum asleep on a bench. If I had my phone I’d take Enda up on his offer, but it’s safely tucked away in the apartment that’ll soon be mine. Besides, even if I could call Enda he wouldn’t be able to see me from the front door.

  A fog has crept over the park, hiding the apartment building from sight. It smells like the ocean—and something else—bleach and laundry soap. Probably coming from a factory along the river. That’s a little detail that Marla left out. I walk faster and am glad to hear voices ahead of me—women’s voices, one urging the other on—“We just have to walk up the hill. . . .” A couple of girls coming home late and drunk. I hurry to catch up with them, passing through a colder patch of fog. Suddenly I feel like I’m in the river. I can’t breathe. I’m choking on ice-cold water, my throat and nostrils burning with the sting of soap and bleach—

  Which must have been the last thing Cass ever smelled: the chlorine from our pool. I picture him floating in the water, his limp arms spread out. My heart squeezes at the thought of his last moments. No matter what he did to me he didn’t deserve to die like that—

  Something brushes up against my face. Something cold and wet, like the dead hand of a
drowned man. I scream and jerk away, running blindly in the fog, which spits me out onto the doorstep of the Refuge. Enda is there, staring into space. His eyebrows shoot up at the sight of me.

  “Mrs. Osgood? Are you all right? Did something happen?” He’s looking behind me into the fog. The two girls have vanished.

  “Someone grabbed me . . .” I gasp. “Back there.” I point into the fog—only the fog has vanished now. The sidewalk is empty.

  “He must have run into the park,” I say.

  “I said to call if you were coming up the hill alone,” he says, helping me into the lobby.

  “I don’t have my phone,” I say. “I realized I didn’t have it when I went to call an Uber. I must have left it in the apartment.”

  “Are you sure? Could you have left it down at the bar? I could call them—”

  “No,” I say sharply. Then, letting the tears fall, “I’m sure I left it in the apartment. Please, let me go up to look for it?”

  “Technically,” Enda’s saying, “the place isn’t yours yet and I’m not supposed to let anyone in.”

  “What if one of my children is trying to reach me? This has been such an awful time for them. For all of us.” The tears are flowing now and I’m not faking it. The smell of chlorine still burns in my nose and the touch of death crawls on my skin. “You have a key, don’t you?”

  He gives me a suspicious look. I shouldn’t have said that about the key. It makes it look like I’ve planned this, which, of course, I have. “I’m supposed to leave the lobby . . .” he begins, and then his shoulders slump as I sob. “We’ll have to be quick about it then. Come on, we have to go up the service stairs, though, because I only have the key to the back door. Are you up to it in those shoes?”

  “Of course I’m up to it,” I snap.

  “Come on, then.”

  He shows me through a door to the left of the elevators into a dimly lit stairwell. I recognize the same overpainted iron banister as before.