Four Thrillers by Lisa Unger

by Lisa Unger

  It was the river of ink-black curls, those dark eyes, jet in a landscape of snowy skin, the turn of her neck, the birdlike delicacy of her hands, that caused him to seek her out at one of her book signings. He knew right away that she was the one, as Americans were so fond of saying—as if their whole lives were nothing but the search to make themselves whole by finding another. He meant it in another way entirely, at first.

  It seemed like such a long time ago, that initial thrill, that rush of desire. He often wished he could go back to the night they first met, relive their years together. He’d done so many wrong things—some she knew about, some she did not, could never, know. He remembered that there was something in her gaze when she first loved him that filled an empty place inside him. Even with all the things she didn’t understand, she didn’t look at him like that anymore. Her gaze seemed to drift past him. Even when she held his eyes, he believed she was seeing someone who wasn’t there. And maybe that was his fault.

  He heard the rumble of the train approaching, and pushed himself off the wall. He’d started moving toward the edge when he felt a hand on his arm. It was a firm, hard grip and Marcus, on instinct, rolled his arm and broke the grasp, bringing his fist up fast and taking a step back.

  “Take it easy, Marcus,” the other man said with a throaty laugh. “Relax.” He lifted two beefy hands and pressed the air between them. “Why so tense?”

  “Ivan,” Marcus said coolly, though his heart was an adrenaline-fueled hammer. The moment took on an unreal cast, the tenor of a dark fantasy. Ivan was a ghost, someone so deeply buried in Marcus’s memory that he might as well have been looking at a resurrected corpse. Once a tall, wiry young man, manic and strange, Ivan had gained a lot of weight. Not fat but muscle; he looked like a bulldozer, squat and powerful, ready to break concrete and the earth itself.

  “What?” That deep laugh again, with less amusement in its tone. “No ‘How are you’? No ‘So good to see you’?”

  Marcus watched Ivan’s face. The wide smile beneath cheekbones like cliffs, the glittering dark eyes—they could all freeze like ice. Even jovial like this, there was something vacant about Ivan, something unsettling. It was so odd to see him in this context, in this life, that for a moment Marcus could almost believe that he was dreaming, that he was still in bed beside Isabel. That he’d wake from this as he had from any of the nightmares that plagued him.

  Marcus still didn’t say anything as his train came and went, leaving them alone on the platform. The woman in the fare booth read a paperback novel. Marcus could hear the rush of trains below, hear the hum and horns of the street above. Too much time passed. In the silence between them, Marcus watched Ivan’s expression cool and harden.

  Then Marcus let go of a loud laugh that echoed off the concrete and caused the clerk to look up briefly before she went back to her book.

  “Ivan!” Marcus said, forcing a smile. “Why so tense?”

  Ivan laughed uncertainly, then reached out and punched Marcus on the arm. Marcus pulled Ivan into an enthusiastic embrace and they patted each other vigorously on the back.

  “Do you have some time for me?” Ivan asked, dropping an arm over Marcus’s shoulder and moving him toward the exit. Ivan’s gigantic arm felt like a side of beef, its weight impossible to move without machinery. Marcus pretended not to hear the threat behind the question.

  “Of course, Ivan,” Marcus said. “Of course I do.”

  Marcus heard a catch in his own voice, which he tried to cover with a cough. If Ivan noticed, he didn’t let on. A current of foreboding cut a valley from his throat into his belly as they walked up the stairs, Ivan still holding on tight. He was talking, telling a joke about a hooker and a priest, but Marcus wasn’t listening. He was thinking about Isabel. He was thinking about how she looked this morning, a little sleepy, pretty in her pajamas, her hair a cloud of untamed curls, smelling like honeysuckle and sex, tasting like butter and jam.

  On the street, Ivan was laughing uproariously at his own joke and Marcus found himself laughing along, though he had no idea what the punch line had been. Ivan knew a lot of jokes, one more inane than the last. He’d learned a good deal of his English this way, reading joke books and watching stand-up comedians, insisted that one could not really understand a language without understanding its humor, without knowing what native speakers considered funny. Marcus wasn’t sure this was true. But there was no arguing with Ivan. It wasn’t healthy. The smallest things caused a switch to flip in the big man. He’d be laughing one minute and then the next he’d be beating you with those fists the size of hams. This had been true since they were children together, a lifetime ago.

  Ivan approached a late-model Lincoln parked illegally on Eighty-sixth. With the remote in his hand he unlocked it, then reached to open the front passenger door. It was an expensive vehicle, one that Ivan would not have been able to afford given his circumstances of the last few years. Marcus knew what this meant, that he’d returned to the life that had gotten him into trouble in the first place.

  Marcus could see the front entrance to his building, gleaming glass and polished wood, a wide circular drive. A large holiday wreath hung on the awning, reminding him that Christmas was right around the corner.

  He watched as a young mother who lived there—was her name Janie?—left with her two small children. He found himself thinking suddenly, urgently, of the baby Isabel had wanted. He’d never wanted children, had been angry when Isabel got pregnant, even relieved when she miscarried. Somehow the sight of this woman with her little girls caused a sharp stab of regret. Marcus turned his face so that they wouldn’t see him as they passed on the other side of the street.

  “You’ve been living well,” Ivan said, his eyes, too, on the building entrance. In the bright morning light, Marcus could see the blue smudges under Ivan’s eyes, a deep scar on the side of his face that Marcus didn’t remember. Ivan’s clothes were cheap, dirty; his nails bitten to the quick. He didn’t look well, had the look of someone without the money or the inclination to take care of himself, someone who’d spent too many years indoors. Ivan still wore a smile, but all the warmth was gone. It was stone cold.

  “And you? Are you well?” Marcus asked, feeling a tightness in his chest.

  Ivan gave a slow shrug, offered his palms. “Not as well.”

  Marcus let a beat pass. “What do you want, Ivan?”

  “You didn’t think you’d see me again.”

  “It has been a long time.”

  “Yes, Marcus,” he said, leaning on the name with heavy sarcasm. “It has been.”

  Marcus felt himself moving toward the car; there was really no way around it. As he put his hand on the door, Marcus saw his wife leave the building, her hair back—the chaos of it barely tamed with a thin band—her workout clothes on, an old beat-up blue sweatshirt, well-worn sneakers. He thought of the breakfast they’d shared, how she’d worried about the calories. He ducked into the car and watched her pause, look about her. She had that steely expression on her face, the one she got when she was forcing herself to do something she didn’t want to do. He could see it, even from a distance. Then she turned, quickly, suddenly, and ran away. Everything in him wanted to race after her but Ivan climbed into the driver’s seat. The car bucked with the other man’s weight, filled with his scent—cigarettes and body odor.

  “Don’t worry,” Ivan said, issuing a throaty laugh. “I only want to talk. To come to a new arrangement.”

  “Do I look worried, Ivan?” Marcus said with a cool smile. Ivan didn’t answer.

  As they pulled into traffic, a line from the The Prophet came back to Marcus: “It is not a garment I cast off this day, but a skin that I tear with my own hands.” Marcus could feel the life he’d been living shifting, fading. With every city block they passed, he left a gauzy sliver of himself behind. The strand that connected him to Isabel, he felt it pull taut and then snap. It caused him a pointed and intense physical pain in the center of his chest. But he took comfort in
a strange thought: The man she would grieve and come to hate, the one she would not be able to forgive, had never existed in the first place.

  2

  “Rick,” I said, fifteen hours after Marcus left for the day. It was going on ten P.M. Lasagna sagged in a glass baking dish, untouched on the counter. A salad wilted in the fridge. “It’s Isabel.”

  “Hey, Iz!” he said brightly. I picked up on a strain to his voice, though, as if he was trying hard at that brightness. “What’s up?”

  “You guys working late tonight?” I struggled to keep my voice light, my tone easy. I had the television on, the volume too low to even hear. CNN news bites flashed quick fire on the screen—there was an insurgent bombing in Iraq, a celebrity had shaved her head and checked into rehab, a police officer in Chicago was shot. I could hear the water running though the pipes in our wall; our neighbor was taking a shower.

  The hesitation on the other end caused my stomach to flip.

  “Yeah,” he said too late, drawing the word out, mock-forlorn. “You know how we do around here. No mercy.” He gave a little laugh—a fake one, uncomfortable. He’d slipped immediately into cover mode.

  “Can I talk to my husband?” I heard the edge creeping into my tone; I wondered if he did, too.

  “Sure,” he said. “Hold on a second.” A flutter of relief then, my worry dissipating. He’s working late, forgot to call. Nothing he hasn’t done before. You’re being paranoid. I waited.

  “Iz,” said Rick, back on the line. “I think he ran out to grab a bite. I’ll tell him you called?”

  “His cell is going straight to voice mail,” I said, apropos of nothing.

  “I think he said the battery was dead,” he answered softly.

  “Okay,” I said. “Thanks.” You liar.

  I hung up. He’d put me on hold and tried Marc on his cell phone, didn’t get him, came back and lied to me. It wasn’t even just a suspicion; I knew it was true. I’d seen them cover for each other like that with clients; I knew Rick, my husband’s business partner, had done it to me before for various reasons, some worse than others. I’d always found their dynamic a bit strange; they weren’t friends. In fact, I sensed an antipathy between them, even though they worked well together. And one never failed to lie or cover for the other.

  I poured myself another glass of wine, my second from the cheap bottle of Chardonnay we had in the fridge. As much as I loved my husband, nights like this reminded me about the hairline fissures in our marriage, the ones that creaked and groaned when pressure was applied, threatening to break us apart.

  BY MIDNIGHT I was mildly drunk, zoning out on the television set, barely paying attention to what was on the screen. I was listening for the elevator, for the key in the door, for the ringing of the phone. My cell phone was warm in my hand; I’d been holding it for hours, pointlessly trying his number every few minutes. He’d been late before, MIA for half a day, but never like this, never without calling. He might ring drunk from a bar after a fight we’d had, or with some vague lie about work. But this was not like him. It was too … conspicuous. I took to watching the digital clock on the cable box.

  12:22.

  12:23.

  12:24.

  Where is he?

  ONCE, NOT QUITE two years ago, Marc had been unfaithful with a woman he’d met while away on business in Philadelphia. The relationship lasted for two months, or so he told me later—long phone calls, a couple of last-minute trips out of town. Once she came here to New York while I was away at a writers’ conference—though he swore she never set foot in our apartment. Not a love affair, exactly, but not a one-night stand, either.

  I suspected something right away—on the first night he made love to me after returning home from Philadelphia after they’d met. It’s the details that give people away, the things that writers notice that other people might miss. I don’t mean the mundane things like lipstick on a collar, or the scent of sex. I’m talking about essence, the gossamer strands that connect us.

  There was something absent about him, an emptiness to his gaze, that told me his thoughts were elsewhere. Our bodies didn’t seem to fit together right. His kiss tasted different. I couldn’t climax, couldn’t cross the distance between us. This had never happened before; even our bad sex was good. We’d managed to make love well even when we were furious with each other, bone tired, or sick with the flu. We’d always been able to connect physically no matter what else was going on.

  I wasn’t as upset as one might imagine. There were no histrionics, no thrown dishes, or screaming assaults. I just waited for something tangible to prove or disprove my suspicions while the distance between us grew. I didn’t blame myself, worry about what was wrong with me, where we had failed. It wasn’t like that—I wasn’t like that. He’d met someone, they hit if off and had sex. The sex was good and he wanted more. I knew this on an instinctive level. I knew him, how he admired beauty, how powerful were his appetites. She must have been something, though, for him to stray—that was less like him. I’d met people, too, over the years. I’d been tempted. In a way, I even understood. But it wasn’t in my nature to be unfaithful or dishonest; I couldn’t even lie about how much my Manolo Blahniks had cost. But this is barely even a shoe! It’s like a tongue depressor with some dental floss tied around it. You couldn’t walk a city block in these, Isabel.

  The tangible proof turned out to be a text message on his cellular phone. He was in the shower; it was next to me on the bedside table. It was unusual for him to leave the phone out. Usually it was on his person, or tucked in his laptop case. I heard the buzz indicating that a message had been received. I couldn’t stop myself from picking up the phone and opening the message.

  A note from someone identified only as “S” read, I can’t stop thinking about you. I can still feel you inside me.

  Marcus emerged from the bathroom, a plume of steam following him into the bedroom carrying the scent of a sage-mint body wash we’d been using. I turned to face him. He saw the phone in my hand and, I suppose, the look on my face. We both froze, locked eyes. He seemed strange and unfamiliar to me, as though I was seeing him for the first time emerging half naked from our bathroom. There was an odd tightness from my throat into the muscles of my chest. The air around us was electric with tension.

  “Are you in love with her?” I asked finally. I was surprised by the flat, unemotional quality to my tone. I suppose it was the last safe question, its answer determining everything else that followed.

  “No,” he said with a quick dismissive shake of his head. “Of course not.”

  “Then end it.”

  A pressing forward of the shoulders; a slight nod as if he was agreeing to meet me at a café somewhere. “Okay,” he said easily.

  “And go sleep somewhere else tonight. I don’t want to be near you right now.”

  “Isabel,” he said.

  “I mean it,” I said. “Go.”

  I was injured—my pride bruised, my heart cracked, if not broken. But mainly I was just disappointed. It was not that I had any illusions about him, about our marriage—hell, about marriage in general. I just thought he had more self-control; I thought he was a stronger man. To think of him lying, sneaking out of town, sleeping with a woman in a hotel somewhere—it cheapened him somehow, made him seem less to me.

  We spent a few days apart, had some long phone conversations during which we agreed that there were problems in our marriage that needed to be addressed. There were tears, apologies made and accepted on both sides. He came home. We moved on. I don’t know that I got over it, exactly. But the incident was slowly stitched into the fabric of our relationship; from that point on everything was a slightly different color, a different texture. Not necessarily bad, but not the same. We didn’t seek therapy or hash over details or talk late into the night about why or when or could it happen again.

  Those problems that we agreed existed—his workaholic nature, and mine, for that matter, his unavailability, my various neuroses an
d insecurities—were never actually addressed. I didn’t struggle with newfound trust issues. I saw the incident as an aberration. And neither one of us ever brought any of it up again. At the time, I just thought we were being so intellectual, so sophisticated about it. But was it just denial? I never told anyone about it, not Linda, not Jack. I don’t know. Maybe it was more like fear-induced laziness. You notice the lump under your arm but you can’t bring yourself to have it examined, feel unable to face the diagnosis. You don’t want anyone else to know; their concern would just make it real.

  BY THREE A.M. I was thinking of his affair, wondering about her, about all the things I hadn’t wanted to know at the time—her name, what she looked like, her dress size, what she did for a living. Redhead, brunette, blonde? Stylish? Smart? I was wondering: Is he with her now? Or someone else? Has he left me?

  Funny that I never imagined he’d been in an accident—pushed onto the subway tracks by a deranged homeless person, hit by a city bus, suffered a head injury from the crumbling facade of a postwar building, all those New York City–type accidents you hear about now and then. It just didn’t seem possible that something like that could befall him. He was too, I don’t know, on his game. He was a man in control of his world. He didn’t believe in accidents.

  By five A.M. I had run the gauntlet of emotions—starting with mild worry, moving through cold panic to rage. There was a brief period of nonchalance, then a return to fear, then on to hatred, through despondency ending with desperation. I was about to call my sister when the cell phone, still clutched in my hand, started to ring. The screen blinked blue: Marc calling.