by Rich, A. J.
I checked my phone for texts, even though my phone hadn’t buzzed. I said I would wait for them to fill the scrip. I pictured someone with a mortar and pestle in the back. I handled the Italian soaps that you wouldn’t find at other pharmacies. I felt at peace, relatively, knowing that I was getting tranquilizers. What if I found out that Bennett had never loved me? That suggested, of course, that I still thought he had once loved me. But I had never driven past an accident on the road without looking at the injured.
I paid for the refill. Just before I got home, hackyou texted me: I’m in.
I could have taken one of the new pills, but decided instead to ride the excitement of the discovery, whatever it would bring. When I got back to the store, hackyou was with another customer, a nun. Whom was the nun hacking?
“With you in a minute,” the hacker called to me.
The nun was holding a small statue of the Virgin. The hacker told the nun to come back in a week, the repair would be completed by then. So the store wasn’t a front.
“Come around the counter,” the hacker said. “We can talk in the back.”
I followed her and sat in the folding chair she indicated.
“Unless Samantha is a pro, she didn’t send herself the e-mails.” The hacker handed me a yellow Post-it and a pen. She told me to write down the password that she dictated to me. Not wanting to leave evidence of her own hand, I guessed.
“How much do I owe you?” I had brought cash as instructed.
McKenzie was right: I paid more for three months of Internet.
The password was evenwhenusleep.
I thought of the wall. His making me sleep against the wall.
I felt as though I was about to be served a poisoned feast. I was starving, and I would be made to poison myself. Maybe if I ate something first—a piece of dry toast—it would line my stomach so that the poison would not kill me.
Nothing was remarkable about these e-mails other than that a dead man wrote them. Just the ordinary reassurances that Samantha was on his mind and he couldn’t wait to see her (though wait he would). I had expected to linger over every word and try to suss out not just the meaning but the nuance. Instead, the messages were so banal that I grew impatient. Same thing, seven times over. But in the next one, he tells Samantha that a crazy ex-girlfriend killed herself, and for some reason the police are looking at him for it. If he needed her for an alibi, he wrote, could he count on her?
Samantha would not have written to herself asking to be her own alibi.
I took off my pullover sweater. The apartment wasn’t warm, but I was sweating.
The next message from Bennett answered a panicked question from Samantha: I was home alone all day, but that won’t hold up as an alibi.
The day he claimed to be alone, he was driving to meet me in Maine.
I read a dozen more. Whoever was writing to Samantha claimed to be hiding in Canada, but I already knew that—Samantha had told me. I kept on, looking for something I did not already know. And there it was. “Bennett” had asked Samantha to meet him in Toronto, and they would go from there. And as I had just learned, she would be paying for this pleasure (Did you get to the bank?). The first e-mail mentioning the trip—or honeymoon?—appeared the day after Pat’s murder. My stomach plunged. Should I notify the police? Which police? I had illegally broken into the e-mail that contained the information. Would I tell them that a dead man was planning to meet his fiancée in Toronto after he, the dead man, killed an ex-lover?
My stomach growled, but I couldn’t eat anything. Instead, I poured a double shot of Stoli.
I typed in Susan Rorke, searching for the last e-mail Bennett had sent her, the day before her death. Now I was reading something he had actually written; I downed the rest of my drink.
Not going to be able to meet you, babe. Have meetings all weekend. Will make it up to you.
I scrolled down to see what he was replying to. Susan Rorke had invited him to Boston for the weekend.
Just because he told her he couldn’t spend the weekend didn’t mean he wasn’t there, I reasoned, the alcohol weirdly bringing out my rational side. Instead of slowing me down, the Stoli acted as a stimulant.
I scrolled down farther. I began reading the responses of “Bennett” with an eye toward the linguistics, the syntax. I tend to go cold and analytical when I feel most vulnerable. I noticed two hallmarks of the sociopath in written communication: he repeatedly used the words so and because, indicating his view of the causes and effects of his actions. And he frequently adverted to money, to financial concerns. Though wasn’t everyone concerned with money? So maybe scratch that last. Still, it was hard to ignore a line like Needed you to pay deposit for wedding caterer so I could afford to get the tuxedo you liked. And this one: Because you didn’t give them the right credit card number, we just lost the honeymoon suite. I saw that he gave her a chance to make it right by giving the correct credit card number to a more expensive hotel for their honeymoon suite.
He had offered to let me pay for the wedding cake while he ostensibly bought a tuxedo.
He continued to write to Susan Rorke for two days after her death. Not hearing back from her, he changed his tone, was solicitous, asking where she was, asking her to write him. Then his tone changed again. The last message he sent to Susan Rorke was short and to the point, but not original. He fell back on the words of countless angry, rejected lovers: Are you happy now?
As sick as all of this made me feel, I was also relieved to know that I had not almost married a murderer. I served myself seconds of the poisoned feast. I looked for clusters of e-mails sent to addresses I did not recognize. Looking for still more women. Still more rendezvous.
On the plus side, I had not been in love with a murderer. However, I had been taken in by a womanizing sociopath who had lumped me in with the rest of his harem.
Libertine635 came up, and came up, and kept coming up. The word would not have had the effect on me that it did had I not just read of the libertines Valmont and the Marquise. I supposed that I would now see the word everywhere. The number 635 told me how many other libertines were out there online.
I checked the date of Libertine’s last message to Bennett; it was the day of his death. I scrolled back to the beginning of their correspondence. I scrolled back years, back to the night they met in the casino.
• • •
Libertine wrote first, establishing a pattern of dominance. She challenged him to shed his secrets; she had no interest in conventional courtship and shot down his early efforts in that direction. She eschewed dailiness—there would be no meeting for lunch, or dinner and a movie; she did not want to hear about his day; she wanted the heightened experience, the mysterious, the transcendent. She wanted to be entertained. For his part, he got a quality of attention he had not previously known, and from a beautiful woman who constantly surprised him. He got a willing and able sexual partner who surprised him in bed as well.
She was insistent on loyalty, though of a form foreign to Bennett at the time. Maybe most pointedly, she convinced him that his first allegiance must be to her. This became relevant when, six months in, she encouraged him to sleep with other women to show him that far from being jealous, she could use these occasions to further the intimacy they shared. He interpreted her encouragement as trust, which allowed her to escalate her manipulation.
She applauded him when he seduced the earnest, the altruistic, the virtuous. She laughed at the women’s tentative declarations of love as he re-created them for her. She urged him not to hold back—and he didn’t.
One year in, they had their first fight. She wanted him to drop Samantha Couper; she found the man Bennett became with her boring. When Bennett let slip that he admired Samantha’s work on the suicide hotline, Libertine wrote, She should tell those losers to buck up. After four weeks of silence, Bennett invited Libertine to see a movie with him—and Samantha. He proposed that Libertine sit behind them. When the film ended, and he asked Samantha what she th
ought of it, her vapid answer was his gift to Libertine.
Two years in, he brought her Susan Rorke. Their second fight. He found her work laudable, too—not only at the precinct, but the counseling she volunteered at the homeless shelter. The deal he brokered toward a rapprochement delighted Libertine. He arranged for the three of them to meet at a gun range where Susan would teach Libertine—introduced by Bennett as a family friend—how to protect herself with a handgun. I read Libertine’s praise for Bennett after the lesson; the feel of Susan Rorke’s hands guiding hers on the gun had been a bonus.
The closer I came to the time I met Bennett, the more apprehensive I became.
New and interesting, or just new? Libertine wrote. And a few hours later: Well?
Bennett replied to this second one. You’re more excited about her than I am.
They were talking about me. Astonishing how much pain a dead man could inflict.
He made fun of my research.
What song made her cry but she was ashamed to admit it. Ha! Libertine wrote.
I was ready to put in an emergency call to Cilla.
Libertine: Did you get anything off her?
Bennett: What are you, a ten-year-old boy?
I left the computer and looked out the living-room window. A light snow was falling, but not yet sticking to the sidewalk. I was not faint, nor was I sick to my stomach. I was not enraged, not throwing a glass to break against the wall. I felt something quieter, but no less consuming. Shame. Humiliation is what you feel in front of others; shame is what you feel alone. Shame is harder to shake.
A snowflake landed on my window in its pristine geometry, and when the heat from the room met the glass, I watched geometry melt. It took less than a second. What could happen in a second?
I was glad I had refilled my prescription; I took a whole Xanax. I knew I wouldn’t wait for it to kick in before taking another. I could not read any more, so I changed into a larger pair of sweatpants and continued reading more.
I was looking for clues as to who Libertine was. She never sent Bennett a photo of herself. But I found photos of myself that Bennett had sent to this person. Nothing compromising—just invasive: me making him an omelet, me with a towel wrapped around just-washed hair, even a photo of me feeding Cloud and George and Chester. She knew where to find me; I could not say the same for her. I went into the bedroom and locked the fire-escape gate, a feeble gesture in light of the violation. I could not face more of their banter.
I’d felt this kind of annihilation once before, as an intimate couple took me apart with their trivialized torture. Her taking my $300 to pay for their beer, her not untying me when she had the chance. Candice. Doug. I read these e-mails as both of these women—myself now, myself then. It was like watching a horror movie with the sound on and closed captioning—the horror coming at me twice. He could not have hurt me more if I read that he told her I was bad in bed.
Libertine: Is she still pursuing her research—the victim studying victimology?
Bennett: I’ll give her one thing—she’s avid. She’s a learner.
Libertine: Stop sounding so smug. Does she play the victim in bed?
Bennett: A gentleman never tells.
As fucking if, I thought. I tried to take a deep breath and feared I might hyperventilate. I put my head down between my knees, closed my eyes, and tried to breathe normally. I jumped when I felt Olive’s cold nose on my forehead. She had come to comfort me. She whined once, and I lifted her onto my lap. Stroking her brought my pulse under control, and I could breathe again. “Paging Dr. Olive,” I said to the little white dog. She would not stop licking my hands, to the point that the drama of my emotions turned to melodrama in the face of her fervid attempts to soothe me, to bring me back from where I had gone.
• • •
I climbed into bed too drained to read or watch TV. I tried to reenact the meditation practice I had done in the bath not long before, relaxing one body part at a time. My knees were locked. I tried to relax first one, then the other. I would come back to them. Arms: not a problem. Shoulders and trapezius muscles fine. I came back to the knees for a second try. There was no yielding. I remembered that the Greeks believed that life resided in the knees, which was why we fell to our knees to beg for our lives. Should I be on my knees begging for my life?
I thought of all the people who had had worse things happen to them. People endured unspeakable cruelty. What they did was bear it. Some of them even found grace. In themselves. I suspected I could bear this, too. But that didn’t make the pain any less in the moment.
I rolled onto my side and surprised myself. Where was the bitterness? By all rights I should have been swearing off men, love, romance. But I found myself wanting these things again, and soon, and soon enough that what I had read earlier in the evening would not preclude this possibility.
For a moment, I mistook a streetlight for the moon.
What consumed me in the morning was the thought that Bennett might have invited Libertine to observe me, as he had done with Susan and Samantha. Had Libertine been sitting behind us in the theater when we saw Grizzly Man? Had she been another guest at one of the B&Bs in Maine? Had she borrowed my notes from a lecture at school? Had I met her? I tried not to cross the line between rational query and paranoia, but the fallout from reading the poisonous e-mails the night before made me think of those people who contract the flesh-eating virus. Did I still have arms? Did I still have legs? How was it I was able to stand up at the stove and wait for a kettle of water to whistle?
When the phone rang, I jumped.
“I’ve got good news,” Billie said. “But I feel like a ghoul, saying so. I just found out that the sick dog at For Pitties’ Sake has a day at the most to live.”
“How come they called you?”
“I’m here with Alfredo, dropping off the patty-cakes. We were able to transport four. Alfredo just got them settled in their comfy, new quarters. We already have homes for three of them.”
My admiration for Billie in that moment was genuine. But I still had to rally to acknowledge the good work she had done.
I thought, if I can’t protect myself, I can still protect my dog.
• • •
I snapped on Olive’s leash and took her out for a walk. Soon, Cloud would be able to go outdoors, too. We headed toward Petopia. Olive picked up her pace as she recognized the route to her toy store. By the time we turned the final corner, Olive was flying along. Inside the store, I saw a medium-size beagle-mix, unaccompanied, walk up to a dog-height barrel of rawhide treats, nose around, and select one, then trot out the door with it. I laughed and asked the clerk if he had seen that. “Rudy runs a tab,” he said. Rudy worked in the travel bureau next door. We left the store with a tub of freeze-dried liver bits for Cloud.
The simple joy of pleasing a dog strengthened me enough to return to the job ahead. Back at the computer, something was obscene about having to slog through Bennett and Libertine’s flippant sniping for a chance to find out who she was.
Libertine: Are you in her will?
Whose will?
Bennett: The apartment is rented, and she doesn’t have a car. She didn’t come from money, and she gives away most of what she makes.
My donations to animal-welfare agencies?
Libertine: Nothing like keeping busy without making money!
Bennett: Isn’t that what you do?
Libertine: I can afford to, as you well know.
Bennett: I keep thinking of that documentary we liked, Grizzly Man, the way Timothy Treadwell’s passion for grizzly bears led to his ironic death. I mean, a homeless man? In the shelter where she worked to help them?
The relief that I felt was twofold: relief that it wasn’t me they were talking about, and more powerfully, relief that Bennett was dead. I thought I knew what a sociopath was; I could profile one for you. But not until that moment did I understand viscerally what one did.
He had talked this way about a woman he had planned
to marry, a woman who had been killed in compassionate service to others. I even had the time-worn thought Is nothing sacred? And what of Grizzly Man? They both liked the documentary, according to the e-mail exchange, but I had seen it, too, and remembered that Treadwell’s girlfriend accompanied him and she was also killed by the grizzly that mauled him.
I read to the point where the homeless man under suspicion for the murder of Susan Rorke had been cleared and released. After that, the tone of Bennett’s e-mails changed. He became concerned that the police might look at him. Rather than offering reassurance, Libertine failed to take his concerns seriously. She even changed the subject, moving on to thoughts of where they might go next on vacation. But Bennett brought her back to the subject at hand. I read on, seeing the ways in which his expression of fear affected her. At one point she wrote, Who are you! And then I landed on a sentence I reread over and again, looking for a trace of sarcasm, not finding it. It was Bennett defending me to her: Morgan is deeply kind. She would never treat me the way you do.
I was disappointed in myself for feeling flattered.
Libertine didn’t take the bait. Or maybe she did. She issued a challenge to Bennett: I want you to fuck me in her bed. Tomorrow morning. Bennett wrote back, She’ll be gone by 9.
There were no more messages from Libertine. That last one had been sent the night before Bennett’s death.
• • •
I needed to be in motion. I could not bear another moment in the apartment. Grabbed a coat and scarf, hat and gloves, and left to walk—anywhere. I needed to pass people whose mistakes I knew nothing about. I felt safer out among others. I passed the Metropolitan pool, a rack of Citi Bikes, the Colombian food truck, and a juice bar. Who doesn’t need juice? I stopped in and got a small carrot juice, a nod to nutrition.