by Mindy Klasky
Except trust a liar. A cheat. A thief.
Alicia Morton tapped a fingernail against the table, the acrylic tip making more noise than I would have thought possible. A quick glance confirmed that she would gladly have shown me the door. Made me empty out my office. Empty my office and my bank account, pay back to the Mercer what was rightfully theirs.
As if I’d ever seen a shadow of three and a half million dollars.
I swallowed the sudden acid that coated the back of my throat as I realized that my own bank account—the one I shared with Dean—might very well be as empty as the Mercer’s. “I—” I said, but I barely trusted myself to continue. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”
Hal nodded. “We will, Rebecca. We most certainly will.”
Bill Rodriguez cleared his throat and spoke before I could leave the room. “The police investigators are going to want to go through your office here, as well. I trust that you’ll help them?”
“Yes,” I said, pretty certain that I didn’t actually have a choice.
“And you’ll make yourself available to answer any questions they have as their investigation progresses?”
“Of course,” I said. I’d help the nice policemen in any way I could. That’s what good girls did, right?
And that was it. There was nothing more for me to say to the board, to their hired attorney. For them to say to me.
I could feel everyone’s eyes on me as I pushed back my chair. As I walked to the door. As I slunk out of the room where I’d learned that the past three years of my life had been a terrible, horrible lie. I barely made it to my soon-to-be-invaded office before the stinging in my eyes turned into a full flood of tears.
CHAPTER 3
TWO HOURS LATER, I WAS STILL SITTING IN MY TINY office, still staring at my computer screen, still trying to make sense out of how quickly my perfect grown-up life had come completely unraveled. It had taken almost half an hour of tears before I’d had the courage to turn to my computer. I’d offered up all sorts of prayers when I opened my Internet browser. I’d promised anyone who would listen to my silent soliloquy that I would be good, I’d work hard, I’d follow all the rules. I’d do anything, anything at all, if only…
As I pulled up the bank’s website, I interrupted myself. Surely, I was worrying for nothing. There had to be another explanation for what had happened. Dean was going to walk in any minute now. He was going to explain that there’d been a computer glitch at the bank, that the accounts had all been transferred into some high-yield something-or-other, that the Mercer was really better off for whatever it was that he’d done.
Gotta run. Don’t wait up.
The lump in my stomach got larger. And colder. And more absolutely certain.
When was the last time that Dean and I had actually had a conversation? He was always too busy, too wired from work.
Forget about conversation. When was the last time we’d even had sex?
Now, I was really going to be sick. I couldn’t remember a day, a night, not even a general sense of what had happened, when it had been. Dean was always too tired. He’d brush a kiss somewhere in the general direction of my cheek, tell me to sleep tight. Sometimes, he wouldn’t even bother getting up from his desk chair; he was too drawn to his spreadsheets, his graphics, whatever computer files he’d brought home from work, so that he could manage the Mercer’s funds late into the night.
But Dean wouldn’t do anything to hurt me. He loved me. He had pushed me to come to the Mercer. He had insisted that I move into his apartment. I had to be making mountains out of molehills. I had to be tempting myself with little lies of disaster, testing my tolerance, like a child watching a horror movie between stiff fingers covering her face.
Dean had to love me. For three and a half years, he’d always said he loved me. I would have known if he’d stopped loving me.
My fingers were shaking so badly that it took me three tries to type in my password on the bank’s website. I clicked on the cheerful green square that said Check balance.
Zero.
I must have made some mistake. My heart was pounding so hard that I could hear it in my ears. I caught my lower lip between my teeth and navigated back to the home page. My eyes blurred as I clicked on the green square again. Check balance.
Still zero.
He’d cleared me out.
Dean Marcus—the love of my life, my theatrical inspiration, my mentor, my love—Dean had taken every last cent in our joint bank account. Including the graduation gift from my grandfather. Including six months of my Mercer paychecks. Including every penny I’d ever saved.
Three and a half million dollars stolen from the theater, and he’d still felt the need to ruin me, as well.
I folded my arms around my belly, rocking back and forth as if the motion could somehow comfort me. My chair squeaked in rhythm with my movement, but I didn’t care. I didn’t think anyone could hear through my closed office door. And if they did? If they were annoyed? Well, they could just get over it.
It wasn’t like anyone was going to seek me out, not until the police moved in, to complete their investigation. I knew the way that gossip spread around the Mercer. Within seconds of the board meeting’s end, someone would have started to whisper in the halls. That always happened—no matter how often people were sworn to secrecy, no matter how dire the threats to keep matters confidential. By now, the rumors had probably spawned on ShowTalk, in some discussion group newly created, just for this scandal.
I knew the score. After all, I was part of the theater community. I fed on drama, just like the rest of them, just like all of my peers.
I thought about who I could call. There were at least three dozen Yale alums within a three-mile radius. But a lot of them knew Dean. A lot of them had known Dean and me, as a couple. Truth be told, a lot of them had hinted that we might not be a match made in heaven. I could remember a lot of those conversations—every time, I had responded with a smile, a laugh. I had explained that Dean’s passion for perfection, his calm, logical, orderly approach to the chaotic world of theater, his ability to be a rock as I tossed around in the often crazy ocean of a professional artist, all of that kept me sane. He was two years older than I was. Older and wiser. Opposites attract.
Well, he’d pretty much proven himself to be an asshole. So what did that make me now? A saint? Somehow, I didn’t think my Yale classmates would see things that way.
My college roommate, Linda, was halfway across the country, in Chicago. I’d been ignoring her, though—not on purpose, just by accident. There were too many nights when I came home from rehearsal, from grabbing a couple of drinks with the cast, from long, invigorating conversations with Hal, with Jenn, with all the Mercer folks. (All of them but Dean. Damn. That was another warning sign—we hadn’t hung out together with the theater crowd in…months.)
I was pretty sure that Linda had been the one to e-mail first the past dozen times we’d corresponded. Her last message had arrived nearly three weeks ago, and it was still sitting in my inbox. I could hardly break my silence now, just to tell her that my life was collapsing all around me. “Hey, Li—haven’t bothered to get in touch for ages because I thought I was too cool, but now that I need you, here I am.” Uh-huh. Great way to be a friend.
My parents were in San Diego, three thousand miles away. Even if they’d been an easy five-minute walk, though, I still wouldn’t have called them. We’d fought too many times over the past five years—first, about my being an undergraduate English major, then about my going to Yale Drama. They had hit the roof when I’d chosen the obscure discipline of dramaturgy. Note to self: Insert long, boring story about how I’d tried to bury the hatchet two years before, traveling all the way across country for the extravagant sixtieth birthday party that my mother threw for my father. Insert longer, more boring story about how Dean had been an ass for the entire week we’d visited, repeatedly offending my effusive mother with his standoffishness. Yeah. I wasn’t going to reach out
to Mom and Dad, to confirm their worst suspicions about Dean.
That left my grandfather, Pop-pop. Pop-pop who had always had faith in me. Pop-pop who had always placed my happiness above more common definitions of success. Pop-pop who had given me my graduation money—money that I’d lost because I’d been stupid and naive and trusting.
“Hi, Pop-pop,” I would say. “Becca here. I’m just calling to tell you that Dean is a lying, cheating bastard who has probably been plotting how to bankrupt me and the theater for the entire time I’ve been shacking up with him.”
Yeah, not so much. I wasn’t going to tell my grandfather what had happened. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
At least I had three hundred dollars in my wallet—thank God I’d stopped at an ATM on Sunday morning. Money Miser Dean had always advised me to take out the most I could at any one time; we could save on service fees that way. Knowing that my grandfather’s gift would easily cover my immediate need for cash, I’d taken my stack of twenties with confidence. Such a luxury, that security. I hadn’t even bothered to count the bills.
I’d actually been proud about how well I was managing my life.
That was before I was broke. And homeless. And totally, completely alone.
The bastard. I turned toward my bulletin board, ready to rip down everything that reminded me of Dean—every note he’d ever left me, every card he’d ever given me for my birthday or just because, every menu from every meal we’d shared since I’d started at the Mercer.
Well. That was easy. There wasn’t anything there. There wasn’t any record of good times together, of shared casual fun. The chaos on my bulletin board was from me, from my life, from my friends and coworkers. But not from the man I’d thought I’d loved.
Huh. What exactly had been going on for the past six months? What lies had I been telling myself, to make our happy, happy home life seem real? Just how much of an idiot was I?
I didn’t have time for self-pity, though, or self-examination, either. I had to make a plan. The police were going to finish their investigation of the apartment soon enough—a week or two, the precise date didn’t really matter. Even when I was allowed back into my home, I knew I couldn’t afford to live there on my own. It had been a stretch for the two of us, with Dean’s salary, which was half again as much as mine. Unless he’d lied about that. Maybe he’d been earning even more, salting away the difference in some hidden bank account.
Jackass.
It didn’t matter. Not now. Not ever again.
The lease required us to give sixty days’ notice, and I might as well start the clock now. At least we had put down first and last month when we moved in; Dean couldn’t take that security blanket away from me. I only needed to cobble together one month of the completely impossible, utterly exorbitant rent, on a place I couldn’t access, with funds I didn’t have.
Simple.
I dug around in my purse for my wallet, tugged out a dog-eared business card that our landlord had given me the day that we moved in. Mechanically, I got an outside line, punched in the numbers, got an answering machine.
I pasted a smile on my face so that my voice would seem bright, professional. I said that Dean and I needed to move out immediately, that I’d like to discuss the possibility of paying only one month, if I found someone to move in right away, to take my, er, our place. In any case, I was giving notice. I hung up the phone with a decisive sigh.
If Dean reappeared and had a different plan? That wasn’t my problem. Nothing about Dean Marcus was my problem anymore. It was a good thing for him that the police had the place cordoned off. Given half a chance, I’d set every last one of his possessions on the curb, with a giant sign saying Free to a Good Home.
Like he’d really care, multimillionaire that he’d become overnight.
I gritted my teeth and focused on my next problem: a place to live. As if I could afford rent in New York City. I couldn’t turn to my friends, to all those people who had questioned my commitment to Dean over the last three and a half years. I was too embarrassed. Too ashamed. And frankly, most theater people in New York were already crammed in small apartments with no extra space.
At least I had a temporary refuge—the Mercer had a large prop room, complete with a half-dozen couches, held in storage until they were next needed onstage. Sure, they ranged in style from unsleepable Empire to overstuffed-and-perfectly-comfortable 1970s rec room. I could turn one into a bed. I could probably even scrounge up blankets, somewhere in the storage bins. The theater had dressing rooms, too, complete with showers.
I didn’t think Hal would throw me out, if he caught me living backstage.
Despite my determined problem-solving, my brain kept flashing on memories—Dean waiting for me outside a classroom, up in New Haven. Dean getting me drunk on Manhattans, having his entertainingly wicked way with a very willing me, the first time I visited him here in the city. Dean encouraging me through my most difficult classes, my most challenging exams, telling me that I could do it, that I had what it took to be a great dramaturg. Dean waiting for me at Penn Station, each and every time I took a train down to visit him.
It hadn’t always been bad. He hadn’t always been the rotten guy he’d apparently turned out to be.
No. Not “apparently.” The temptation of millions of dollars had unveiled a side of Dean that I’d never imagined existed. Somewhere along the way, he’d changed. I didn’t know the man anymore. The sooner I accepted that, the better.
I forced my thoughts away from more fond memories, only to find that my imagination was more than willing to race forward, hurtling toward other disasters. The Mercer wasn’t standing still while my personal life crumbled around me. Crystal Dreams auditions were supposed to take place in ten days. Auditions that weren’t going to happen, for a play that we weren’t going to stage.
I stared at my desk, at the towering stack of hopeless over-the-transom scripts. I’d tossed Ryan Thompson’s on top. At least it was neat, orderly, with its perfectly pasted address label.
Maybe I should read it. Right now. See if it could be the play to save us. Sure, Ryan had seemed like a totally awkward geek. He’d barely been able to string two words together. He seemed uncomfortable in his own skin, uncertain about the most basic social interaction. But Jenn had read something online that had made her put the guy on the stalking list. Maybe he could write, put things on the printed page that he couldn’t say in person.
And maybe I’d discover a brown paper bag on the street, filled with three and a half million dollars.
Forget it. The Mercer had to pick up something easy to replace Crystal Dreams. Something simple to stage on such short notice. Something in the public domain, so that no copyright lawyers ever darkened my e-mail inbox ever again. Ancient Greek drama, stripped down to a skeleton cast. Shakespeare, performed in modern dress on an empty stage. Not some untried author with an unknown script requiring untold resources.
I lifted my chin and squared my shoulders. Okay. I could figure out a play later, maybe stop by the public library to review some possibilities. I forbade myself to even think about the shelves and shelves of plays in my inaccessible apartment.
Next up on the disaster hit parade, then. Clothes. My closet and my dresser were as out-of-bounds as my bookshelves. I took a brief survey of my office, inordinately grateful for my packrat tendencies. Two different gym bags were tossed on the floor. My workout clothes were back in the apartment somewhere, strewn at the bottom of my closet, if I had to make a highly educated guess. The police investigators would have a field day with them.
I regularly changed into my running clothes here at work, getting exercise on the way home, leaving behind what passed for my professional wardrobe. That meant that I had the clothes on my back and two other outfits to wear.
I grimaced as I remembered that one of those outfits consisted of a paint-streaked sweatshirt and torn, holey jeans, remnants from a day when I’d come to work ready to pitch in painting a set. So, I had one other outf
it—if I had to appear anyplace dressed as a grown-up. Like the police station. Or a court of law.
Great. No end to the fun. I should throw a party, I was having such a good time.
Whoops, that reminded me. One more disaster—food.
At least my starving student days had given me ample practice at stretching a dollar till it tore. First step: taking stock of what I had in storage. I tugged open my desk drawers. Two packets of neon-orange cheese crackers with peanut butter. Half a bag of Hershey’s kisses, wrapped in red, pink, and silver. Happy Valentine’s Day all over again, on sale. A pack of gum that was so old it might crack my teeth if I tried to mangle a piece. I dumped that in the trash. I couldn’t afford to pay a dentist anytime soon.
So, I wasn’t looking at the breakfast of champions. Or lunch or dinner, either. The precious bills in my wallet were going to transform into a frightening amount of ramen noodles. My stomach growled in rebellion, but it still ached too much for me to actually think about eating.
I glanced at my calendar. We got paid on the fifteenth and the last day of every month. Direct deposit. And it was just my luck that today was the second. Dean had made off with an entire paycheck, and I had almost two full weeks before I’d see another dime of salary. That reminded me—I needed to cancel my direct deposit. I wasn’t about to let the bastard get another penny that belonged to me. I dug out a pay stub, placed another phone call, arranged to receive a live check at the end of the month. While I was at it, I had the bank put a hold on my debit card, issuing me a new one, which Dean would never be able to access.
And then I was through with errands. There wasn’t anything else I could do. Nothing that could make things better. Nothing that could change what had happened. Nothing that could keep me busy. Nothing.
Which meant that I had to think about Dean.
Why hadn’t I seen what he was doing? Why hadn’t I recognized his lying? How desperate had I been to have him, to keep him, to say I had A Boyfriend? How had I never realized just how wrong Dean was for me?