The Key

by Jennifer Sturman

  “Rachel, I was—I am concerned. I’m only trying to help.”

  “By accusing me of being involved with other men?”

  “I wasn’t accusing you of being involved—”

  “And completely invading my privacy?”

  He took a step back. “How was I invading your privacy?”

  “Investigating my colleagues. Spying on my caller ID.”

  “Spying on your caller ID?”

  “What would you call it?”

  “First of all, I couldn’t help but see the caller ID when I went to use the phone. And second of all, it happens to be my caller ID, too.”

  “How is it your caller ID?”

  “I live here. Remember?”

  “How can I forget?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked, following me as I crossed the living room.

  “It means I gargled with your aftershave yesterday. Your stuff is everywhere.”

  “That’s because you don’t have a spare second to help me figure out where I can put everything.”

  “I’ve been working,” I said, shoving my arms into my coat sleeves.

  “It’s not just about finding a place for my stuff, Rachel, or about giving me a set of keys.”

  “Now, what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that it’s about finding a place for me.” He took a deep breath. “Do you even want me here? And I don’t just mean in this apartment or in this city.”

  “Are you saying you don’t want to be here?”

  “No—”

  “You want things to go back to the way they were?”

  “No—”

  I tore his ring off my finger and threw it down on the hall table. “Because that can be arranged, Peter.”

  “Rachel—”

  “And now I’m really behind schedule. We’ll have to talk about this later.”

  He caught my arm. “Rachel,” he said again.

  I pulled my arm away. “I don’t have time for this. We’ll talk about it later,” I repeated.

  And then I slammed the door.

  chapter twelve

  I was off autopilot and completely appalled with myself by the time I hit the street.

  My friends had been right. I was scared. The fear was so tangible I could practically taste it. And it was safer to feel angry than to feel vulnerable.

  So I’d just picked a fight—a really big, potentially irreparable, and wholly unjustified fight—with my fiancé. I’d been horrible to him, all because our relationship and everything that came with it terrified me. Something inside me seemed determined to torpedo the entire thing, to preserve my single but stable independence rather than take the risk that things with Peter might not work out.

  And unless I figured out a way to stop being scared, any attempt to patch things up with Peter would be nothing more than a temporary fix.

  But I didn’t know how to stop being scared. And I definitely didn’t have time for extended psychotherapy, however much I might need it.

  So I did what I usually did when I didn’t want to deal with uncomfortable emotions: I turned my thoughts to work and the day ahead. This would probably be hard for most people to do in a similar situation, but I’d had a lot of practice being dysfunctional.

  There was no good way to get to the office when I left this late. The subway would be a crowded nightmare, it was still too cold and slushy to go by foot, and the odds of finding a taxi in my neighborhood at this time of the morning were pretty much nil. I spent the two-block walk to the subway entrance at 77th Street and Lexington scanning the streets for an unoccupied cab. But when one didn’t appear, I descended reluctantly down to the turnstiles for the 6 train.

  I just missed a train leaving the station, which could only be expected given how my day was going so far. I joined the other commuters on the platform to wait for the next train to arrive. While people were generally relatively civilized on the subway, there seemed to be something in the air today, an unusual tension as people jockeyed for position. Rush hour always made me nervous—you had to be careful that an inadvertent shove didn’t send you flying into the path of an oncoming train. I just hoped nobody shoved me, because I didn’t trust myself not to shove back on this particular morning.

  I should have called in sick, I thought to myself. I never did, even when I actually was sick. I’d earned more than an extra hour’s sleep—I’d earned a good sick day, what with never calling in sick and working late and on weekends and then having to watch people die hideous pencil-induced deaths. I briefly fantasized about going home, changing into pajamas, and catching up on my TiVo backlog. Of course, all of this assumed that the wreckage of a relationship wouldn’t be waiting for me in the apartment. I stayed where I was.

  Ten minutes elapsed before the next train pulled in, and while it looked packed to capacity, the crowd at my back propelled me through the doors. I found myself in the middle of the car, unable to reach a pole or overhead grip, but it didn’t matter, as the people smushed up against me made it impossible to move in any direction, much less lose my balance. I shut my eyes—I didn’t want to be able to identify what might be pressing into me from every side.

  It took only five or six minutes to get to the 51st Street stop, but it took me nearly as long again to emerge from the station, which served not only the 6 train but other lines from the various New York boroughs. By the disgruntled looks on the faces I passed and the Metropolitan Transit officials hurrying about, funneling people along, I guessed that maybe one of the lines was out of service, further exacerbating the everyday gridlock of the morning commute. Up on the street, I trudged the remaining blocks to my office, skirting piles of soot-darkened snow and murky puddles as best I could and wondering again why I hadn’t called in sick.

  A half hour later, I was really wishing I had.

  The floor was strangely deserted when I arrived. I checked my watch—it was well after nine, and the place should be humming with activity. Instead it was eerily quiet.

  I started toward my office, but then I saw that all of the people who weren’t out on the floor were gathered in one of the glass-walled conference rooms. Had somebody called an impromptu staff meeting? Perhaps to discuss Gallagher’s murder? Why was it that the one day in the last year when I wasn’t the first to arrive in the office would be the one day that the partners decided it was time for an impromptu all-department chat?

  But when I got to the conference room, the first thing I noticed was that none of the partners seemed to be there—in fact, it was mostly support staff and a handful of junior bankers. Since many of the partners did the bulk of their work while golfing in Palm Beach, skiing in Aspen, or steaming at the University Club, it was not unusual for our floor to be a partner-free zone in the mornings. At least their absence assured me I hadn’t missed an important meeting.

  The second thing I noticed was that everyone’s attention was focused on the TV, which was tuned to New York 1, the local news cable channel.

  “What’s going on?” I whispered to the guy on my left, rising on tiptoe to get a better look at the screen. He shushed me. He must have been new, because I didn’t know his name, but I glared at him—I was in no mood to be shushed—and turned my attention back to the TV.

  A perky-looking reporter was holding forth, attempting gravitas. “—just a few minutes ago, at the scene of this shocking crime.”

  “What crime?” I asked the guy on the other side of me. I didn’t know his name, either, but he wore the navy polo shirt and khakis that were the standard uniform of Winslow, Brown’s mail-room clerks.

  “The dead dude’s assistant.”

  “Dahlia?”

  “Yeah. You know, the one with the—”

  The guy on my left shushed us both, which was probably a good thing, given where the guy on my right seemed to be going and my likely reaction.

  The camera switched from the perky reporter to a shot of her surroundings. “—Below Citicorp Center,” she was
saying. I realized she was standing in front of the entrance to the subway station I’d just come from.

  “Oh my God,” I said. “I was just there.” The guy on my left shushed me again, and I ignored him. “What happened?” I asked the other guy.

  “Somebody pushed her in front of a subway car. But it didn’t run her over. It stopped in time.”

  “Is she all right? And how do we know it’s her? Dahlia, I mean?”

  “They found her Winslow, Brown security pass and called. And they’re not saying if she’s all right.”

  “That’s why we’re trying to listen to the TV, here,” the guy on my left pointed out.

  “Oh.”

  The reporter was now interviewing a commuter, a witness, I guessed. Her microphone was pointed at his face, and he was speaking into it excitedly. “Like, I was waiting for the train, you know? And this one woman was talking to this other woman, and like I wasn’t paying attention, you know?”

  The reporter started to give a perky nod, but remembering that she was supposed to be serious, raised her eyebrows instead.

  “Anyhow,” the man continued,“The train was coming, and the next thing I know, it’s like everybody’s screaming, you know, and I guess the one woman fell onto the tracks, and then the other woman, she like ran past me? And somebody was yelling, ‘She pushed her, she pushed her?’”

  “Can you describe this other woman? The alleged pusher?” I could tell that the reporter liked using the word “alleged.”

  “She was pretty normal looking. Like, medium size and everything.”

  “Did she have any distinguishing characteristics?” The reporter seemed to like saying “distinguishing characteristics,” too. “Unusual features or items of clothing that you noticed?”

  “She had, like, long red hair? Sort of curly? And, like, a bright green hat and scarf?”

  A silence fell over the room.

  I turned toward the door, wondering if someone new had come in and if that was the reason for the sudden quiet.

  Then I realized everyone was looking at me.

  Or, more precisely, at my hair, which was long and red and sort of curly, and at the tail end of my scarf, which was trailing harmlessly from my shoulder bag.

  It was bright green.

  chapter thirteen

  T he silence continued, unbroken except by the perky reporter, who was summarizing what the witness had told her for the benefit of those just tuning in. But nobody seemed to be paying attention anymore.

  My face felt stiff, as if my smile muscles had been injected with Botox. “Well, I guess I’ll be getting to work now.”

  The whispering started as soon as I turned my back.

  I sat in my office with the door closed, a Diet Coke gripped tightly in one hand and my browser open to the New York 1 Web site, which offered an online audio feed of its live broadcast. The reporter didn’t have much new information, so she kept repeating what she already knew: Dahlia had been pushed onto the subway tracks and narrowly avoided being run over by an oncoming car that had screeched to a stop mere inches away, and her unidentified assailant, who was apparently a mirror image of me, had managed to escape in the ensuing chaos. Dahlia herself had been rushed to a hospital, unconscious.

  I muted the sound from my PC and started to call Peter. The shock of the news had wiped the morning’s earlier events from my mind. But then it all came flooding back.

  I definitely couldn’t call him unless I was ready to apologize, and I wouldn’t even know where to begin. No simple “I’m sorry” would suffice after everything I’d said. And I wasn’t even sure it would be fair to apologize, because it wasn’t in Peter’s best interests to forgive me. It was one thing for me to be completely screwed up inside my head, but it was inexcusable to take the screwiness out of my head and dump it on Peter. I was an emotional menace, and potentially a danger to society.

  I thought about calling one of my friends, but it would be impossible to explain everything that had happened that morning over the phone, and I wasn’t sure if I could handle the inevitable lecture that was likely to follow, even if it was justified.

  My next thought was to call Jake, but as soon as I started to dial, I could hear the hurt in Peter’s voice as he suggested I had feelings for him, and that my feelings were getting in the way of my judgment.

  I put the phone down before I could finish dialing. I still hadn’t untangled the knot of emotions that had caused me to flip out at Peter, but it seemed like now would be a good time to figure out what, precisely, I felt for Jake before I tangled the knot further.

  I couldn’t deny the flash of jealousy yesterday. Or the warmth in my cheeks at lunch on Monday.

  But there’d also been Jake’s welcome support in a work environment that had been more than a little stressful of late. He’d helped me deal with Gallagher’s pass and all of the hostility that came after it, not to mention his ugly death. And he’d done it all with understanding and discretion. I’d trusted him with a lot, and he hadn’t disappointed that trust.

  Maybe I did have a small crush—but it was harmless, the sort of thing that was bound to happen when you worked closely with someone who was interesting and attractive. It didn’t mean anything, really, and it didn’t change the fact that Jake had been nothing but kind from the moment we met. He was my friend, and I hoped he considered me his friend, too. He must, I thought, remembering his self-deprecating comments about his failed marriage—that wasn’t the sort of thing you shared with just anybody.

  And just because I’d gone looking for trouble in my relationship with Peter didn’t mean I should go looking for trouble in every other relationship I had.

  I picked up the phone again and dialed his extension but his assistant answered. “He’s on the other line,” she told me. “I’ll have him get back to you.” I probably was being paranoid, but I thought I could detect an iciness in her tone that had never been there before.

  Frustrated, I tried to come up with someone else to call, but I was fresh out of names. Desperate for distraction, I began scrolling through my e-mails and even flipped through the new analyses Mark Anders had dropped off for the Thunderbolt deal, but I couldn’t absorb a single word or number.

  Ten minutes later, Jake hadn’t returned my call and New York 1 had moved on to other topics. Meanwhile, my office walls felt as if they were closing in on me, and while the members of the department hadn’t yet grouped outside my door with pitchforks and torches, I suspected that plans to do so were afoot somewhere on the floor.

  I could use some fresh air, I decided. I pulled my hat and scarf out of my bag and shoved them under the desk. “I’ll be back in a bit,” I told Jessica.

  For a variety of reasons that seemed, in retrospect, not terribly well-reasoned, I had determined by my senior year of college that I wanted to pursue a career in investment banking. Most of the major investment banks recruited on campus, and I submitted my résumé to them all. Probably nobody was more surprised than I when several of them extended job offers.

  My decision came down to Winslow, Brown and two other firms. All three were considered top-tier Wall Street institutions, but the other two took the entire “Wall Street” thing a bit too seriously. Their offices were actually located downtown, in Manhattan’s financial district. Winslow, Brown’s midtown headquarters, on the other hand, were around the corner from Saks Fifth Avenue and only minutes from the time-honored trifecta of Bendel’s, Bergdorf’s, and Barney’s.

  The decision was an easy one, and the choice I’d made to return to Winslow, Brown after business school had been based on similar criteria.

  I was back to operating on autopilot as I left the office, my thoughts consumed with questions about who my unknown twin was, why she would want Dahlia dead, and what the connection could be, if any, with Gallagher’s murder. My feet, either out of habit or because they had a better understanding of what was happening than my brain did, delivered me to the side entrance of Saks on East 50th Street.

>   I didn’t actually try anything on, but browsing through the designer collections occupied the better part of an hour, and the contemporary collections on the fifth floor took up the remaining part. My thoughts still weren’t very clear when I rode the escalators down to the ground floor and the accessories counters, but on some level I was already aware that it wouldn’t do to use a credit card and leave a digital trail of my whereabouts and purchases. Fortunately, I’d gone to the ATM a few days before and my wallet was stuffed with bills. I parted with some of them to pay for a pair of oversize black sunglasses, and I parted with some more to buy a black wool hat with a big, floppy brim.

  I took the escalators back up a few flights and went into the ladies’ room. It was empty—Wednesday mornings in March tend not to be prime shopping time for most Manhattan retailers, and tourists were more likely to hit Bloomingdale’s or Macy’s than Saks. There was an elastic band in my handbag, which I used to anchor my long, curly red hair in a makeshift chignon. I liberated my new hat from its tissue wrappings and removed the store tags before placing it on my head. Then I slipped my new sunglasses over my face.

  The reflection in the mirror was practically unrecognizable. But if I’d been thirty pounds lighter, several inches shorter, and clutching a Starbucks cup, I might be in danger of being mistaken for an Olsen twin.

  The sun was shining brightly when I emerged from the store, so I didn’t even need to feel self-conscious about my wraparound shades, and it was fun to be able to stare at everyone around me without them even knowing I was staring. My office and the assorted responsibilities waiting for me there were beginning to exert their usual gravitational pull, but I wasn’t ready to go back to work, much less deal with the unresolved mess I’d made of my personal life. I crossed Fifth Avenue, thinking I’d do a bit more window-shopping.