by Lisa Unger
“If I may?” It’s Tom, the man in black.
“Please,” says Mac, as if it’s his permission he’s asked. Maybe it is. After all, he’s paying the bills. Layla goes back to the floor-to-ceiling window, leans against the glass and stares out. She’s always been good at looking long-suffering.
“You seem angry,” says Tom. “You know, I think I would be, too. You’ve been ambushed. Or so I’m sure it seems.”
There’s something soothing about his voice. Some of the tension in my shoulders drains as he continues.
“It really doesn’t matter where you’ve been, Poppy. You’re right. You’re a grown woman and what you do is your business. You’re safe now and I think that’s all anyone cares about.”
Both my mom and Layla watch him, nodding, as if he is casting a spell. I catch myself nodding in agreement, too, calmed by the sound of his voice. I can see him managing all sorts of crisis, handling every kind of problem.
“Layla had a call from Detective Grayson. He was looking for you. He told her that you left your conversation with him very upset and that he’d tried to reach you since.”
Was that true? Had I been very upset? There’s that feeling again, when someone tells you something about yourself that you think is inaccurate—but you’re not really sure.
“So, naturally, when she couldn’t reach you, Layla became concerned, called your mother, and Mac contacted me. Did they overreact?”
I glance over at Layla, who shrugs. Maybe.
“Given what’s happened to your husband, what’s happening to you now, and—yes, I’m sorry—your recent history, I don’t think they did. To be honest, I wish someone cared about me as much as your friends and family care about you.”
Layla doesn’t look vindicated, as I expect her to. She casts me an apologetic look, then looks down at the ground. My mother moves in, slips an arm around me, and I surprise myself by sinking into her. My mother is not much of a hugger; she’s all bones and hard angles, stiff with physical affection. But she’s soft now and so am I. I let her lead me over to the couch.
Layla comes to sit on the other side of me. She drops a hand on my thigh. I let them surround me. Mac stands by the kitchen island nodding his head, relieved. He casts a glance down the hall toward the door. Problem solved, I can see him thinking. Can I go back to work?
“Detective Grayson told you about your friend Noah, his past,” said Tom. “My team thinks he’s a suspect when it comes to who might be following you.”
In the light, I can see a scar on Tom’s face. It trails down the center of his right cheek, almost a straight line from his eye like the path of a tear. There’s a flatness to his gaze that I have seen before in soldiers, eyes that have seen things that make them want to stop seeing. A shade, a veil comes down. His trim waist, broad shoulders, the way he moves with the measured ease of someone in superior physical condition—it’s all part of him. But it’s that scar, that’s the telling detail. Pain.
“We have a team on him,” he says. He lifts his palms at something he must see on my face. “Just watching. We’re not in the business of harassing innocent people. He’ll never even know we’re there. If.”
“If?”
“If he doesn’t bother you again,” says Mac.
Bother me again. He didn’t bother me, I want to say. He was kind to me and I felt something for him. He’s my friend. More than that maybe.
I can see why Layla likes Tom, though; he’s one of those guys. The guy who handles things other people can’t handle. A fixer. I want to say that I don’t believe Noah has anything to do with this. I get it. I know what Grayson said; it just doesn’t mesh with the man I am getting to know. Was getting to know. I’m a better judge of character than that, aren’t I? If he were some stalker, if there was something that wrong with him, I’d know it. Wouldn’t I? But I just stay silent.
“Meanwhile, we have a team going over the police investigation of your husband’s murder. NYPD did a passable job—we’re not pointing fingers. Grayson seems like a good cop. But we bring a fresh perspective, as well as unlimited resources to an investigation. If this was something more than a random mugging, we’ll have a bead on that pretty quickly.”
“There’s something else,” Layla says quietly. She looks up at Tom, who begins a slow pace by the window.
“What?”
“You asked me the other night if there was anything I remembered about when I found you. Anything you said.”
“You told me no.”
She looks down at her fingernails, a gesture I recognize well, something she does when she’s nervous, uncomfortable.
“You told me that you suspected Jack was having an affair,” she says. Her words take the air from the room.
She lifts her palms. “Which you’d never said before your break. But you kept saying her name over and over.”
“What was it?”
She hesitates a moment. “Elena.”
That’s when the room seems to fade out and back in again, and she’s standing in the corner—silent, radiating rage. Elena—her eyes purple, teeth missing, a swath of blood down her shirt, watching me. I knew your husband.
Jack’s there, too, lounging on the couch.
Don’t look at her, Poppy, he says. She’s not there.
I ignore them both. Hypnagogia. Am I awake or asleep?
“You thought it had something to do with this affair, why he might have been killed,” says Mac moving closer to us.
The matchbook, that scrawled name and number. He thought I was having an affair, according to Sarah; I thought he was, according to Layla. But Jack’s not alive to say what he was thinking then. And I, shamefully, don’t know. How very far apart we were when he died. I wonder not for the first time: Would we have found our way back to each other?
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask.
Layla shakes her head, looks past me.
“I told Detective Grayson at the time. But there was no evidence that either of you were having an affair, nothing in Jack’s effects that suggested it. No one in his contacts, no evidence in his phone records. You forgot about it after you came back to yourself. I thought—why cause you any more pain than you were in already? Especially if it wasn’t true.”
“A confabulation maybe,” says Tom. “Something the mind does to explain things that can’t be explained, to make things more manageable.”
My head. It’s a siren of pain; nausea twists at my insides. I’m shaking, wipe at my forehead, which is damp with sweat. I know enough to know I’m detoxing. Those pills that I’ve been taking to numb pain, to take the edge off my anxiety, the pills I flushed down the toilet. What I wouldn’t give for one of them now.
“Honey,” says my mother. She shifts forward on the couch. “Why don’t you sit down?”
I realize that I’ve risen from the couch and I’m moving toward the door. Mac seems poised to make a grab for me, edging closer.
Elena’s gone but Jack’s still there, lounging across from Layla and my mother.
Were you? Were you having an affair? Was it all too much—the miscarriages, my desire for a child, your avoidance of it, the day-to-day slog of it all? Did you meet someone beautiful and exotic, a model at a shoot maybe, another photographer? I want to ask him.
I hear that shrieking voice again, a vibration from a dream.
You’re a fucking liar.
My phone buzzes then, coming back to life. I walk over to it, feeling all their eyes on me as I do. The screen is filled with texts—from Noah, Layla, my mother, Ben. There are voice-mail messages. I ignore them all, go straight to the photos, start scrolling. The last picture on there is Noah from last night—there’s nothing from today, no pictures of Merlinda, no city scenes. Wherever I went, whatever I did, it’s gone. Confusion and fear are a roar in my head. What’s happening to me?
“P
oppy.” It’s Mac, cool, reasonable and in charge.
Almost. I could almost go to him. Our eyes lock; there’s always been a connection. A shared love of Layla, yes, but something that’s just us, too. If he and I had met first, we’d have been friends.
I move over to the tote on the chair. Inside, there’s no pink pack—just my wallet, some makeup, a brush, receipts—the usual jumbled mess. I remember holding that pack in my hand, the heft of it. I remember the scratch of the fabric, how the seam was coming unstitched.
I had it.
I know I did.
Merlinda’s apartment, snapping that image, the colors, her ringed hand, the wind chimes, the aroma of incense—I was there; I know I was. My throat is tight and dry, my heart stuttering.
“What is it?” says Layla.
The photo, the one Alvaro gave me. It’s still there in the envelope he slipped it inside. I take it out, show it to Layla.
“Who is she?” I point to the woman in the picture. There’s a flash, a quicksilver microexpression of fear, then her features fall into a practiced mask of ease and patience. Mac just stares at it, silently confused.
“Who?” she says.
“This woman,” I say, tapping my finger on the image. It’s real, as I remembered it. She’s still there. “Do you know her?”
“Where did you get this?” she asks, eyes drifting from the photo to me, then over to Tom, who leans in, as well.
“From Alvaro,” I say.
“You saw him? When?” asks Mac.
“That doesn’t matter,” I say, exasperated. “Do you know who she is?”
“When was this?”
“The wedding upstate—Claire and Bill Simpson. Remember?”
She makes a show of staring at the image, showing it to Mac and smiling a little. “I don’t know who that is, Poppy. Do you?”
Mac offers a helpless shrug.
I want to say that it’s Elena—the woman in my dream, in my conference room, the scrawled name on the back of the matchbook. But I don’t know if that’s true. And it just sounds so crazy. I’m sweating, sick to my stomach.
“Look, Poppy,” says Tom, so calm, so soothing. “If you think this is a lead, we can help you follow it. We’ll find this woman. We’ll ask the right questions. If it has something to do with Jack, we’ll figure that out.”
You can’t, I want to say. She’s dead. Just like Jack.
But I don’t know if that’s true, either, or why I even think that. I only have my disjointed hypnagogic dreams to guide me.
I can’t take this.
What I need is to get out of here. Right now. I grab the phone and the charger, shove them into my bag and shoulder it. “I have to go.”
“That’s not a good idea,” says Tom. “Poppy, let’s talk. Let us help you. But more importantly, let us keep you safe in the meantime.”
He sounds so reasonable as I move toward my front door. They all follow slowly, Mac with his hand outstretched. “Come on, kiddo, don’t do this.”
“Poppy, honey,” says my mom. “Stay with us. Everything’s okay.”
But it isn’t okay. It hasn’t been okay in so long that I don’t even remember what it feels like. They’re all standing there, all of them wanting to help me. But I can’t stay here, with them. Because that means I just crawl into bed and let them “take care of it,” let them do everything they can to “help me.”
But that’s not going to work. Because it’s time to take care of myself. It’s time to wake up and remember what happened to Jack. What happened to us.
I turn and run for the door, lock it behind me from the outside. As they struggle inside to undo the inside lock, I open the doors to the stairs and let it swing wide, then slam shut. I run around the corner and wait. Tom, Mac and Layla race out, head down the stairs through the still-open door. Their footfalls clattering on the concrete, their voices urgent.
“Poppy!” Layla calls. “Poppy, please come back.”
“I’m calling Detective Grayson,” my mother says, the door closing.
When the hallway is empty again, I press the call button for the elevator.
“Poppy.”
“Mac,” I breathe, startled. “I have to go.”
“You don’t,” he says. He has both his palms up in a gesture of surrender. “Look—you’re sweating. You’re pale and shaking. You’re not going to help yourself, or find out what happened to Jack—not like this. But Tom can help us. He has the resources.”
I back away from him, though he makes good sense. Any reasonable person would listen. But I can’t. I can’t. I can’t go back to sleep. And something else—my heart is racing. I am afraid. I don’t know of what, of whom.
I hear the ding of the elevator arriving and Mac takes a step closer.
“What are you going to do? Physically restrain me?”
Something strange crosses his face—sadness, something else.
“Come on,” he says. A final plea.
“Let me go, Mac.”
He lets his arms drop to his sides, shakes his head.
“Don’t do this to her,” he says. “She can’t lose you again. You’re the only family she has.”
Guilt, it’s a stab in the gut. But when the elevator door opens, I step inside and watch Mac, sad and defeated, disappear. I go all the way to the basement and exit through the service door in the back of the building.
On the street, I hail a taxi, climb quickly inside.
“Where to?”
“Uptown,” I say. “Just drive.”
And then we’re racing up Broadway, the city a blur of light and color. I scroll through my texts, looking for anything to orient me.
Noah: I can explain things. It’s not what it looks like. Please give me a chance to tell my side of this.
Ben: Hey that guy, Rick? Rick in finance. He’s persistent. Wants to keep the date, says he’ll hang there for a while in case you change your mind. It’s just a drink, he says.
“Where to?” says the driver.
Where to?
“Hey, lady,” he says, impatient, dark eyes staring in the rearview mirror. “Where do you want to go?”
I wish I knew that answer to that. Do I want to go back? Do I want to go forward? I give him an address and he keeps driving. I lean my head back, fighting sleep.
* * *
Jack is breathing in that deep and even rhythm that I know means he’ll be difficult to rouse. I can slip away before he even knows I’m gone. He is always most soundly asleep in the hours between three and five.
I lie there for a moment, feeling the distance between us. We are inches apart, but a gulf, a deep divide separates us. When did it start? After the last miscarriage? No, before that. When I confided in him how desperately I wanted a baby, how the desire came on me powerfully and would not be denied. It wasn’t an intellectual decision. Do we have the time? The money? What about the business? What about the work? None of those questions or their answers were a part of this. It was something that welled from inside me. He didn’t understand, though he pretended to. He complied because that’s who he is; he wants me to have the things I want.
Maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s causing him to drift away, the fact that I want something he doesn’t want as much. It casts into stark relief our differences. When we met, he said, you told me children weren’t a priority. That you hadn’t ruled it out, but that it wasn’t a driver for you, not something in the plan.
That was true then. Something changed. People change.
I slip from the covers, that unrelenting cold still with me, clogging my sinuses and making my head heavy. My throat is raw from coughing. But I need to get out there, into that hour before dawn, and run. I need to think about all of this—our fight, my miscarriages, that desire, how I feel now. About a baby. About Jack. Things were easier when I was alone.
Lonelier. But easier.
His breathing goes deeper, and I reset the alarm. Then I quickly dress in the living room, pulling on the clothes I left out there, my sneakers, my down vest. I take Jack’s wool cap and even a scarf. I’ll have to strip them off as I heat up, stick them in my pockets. But the wind whips up our street, a frigid corridor.
Outside, the air is even colder than I anticipated. I start moving right away, a light jog past the row of awnings, doorways golden with the light inside, doormen cozy and warm at their desks. I wait at the light, then enter the park. My heart rate is up, and I’m already getting warmer, the wool at my throat growing scratchy.
I stay on the main path, which is already populated with other runners, many of whom I recognize from keeping this routine for so long. You run into the same people morning after morning, maybe you wave, notice when a few days go by without seeing the guy who runs in the same red shirt and shorts every day, even in winter. Or the woman who sprints then jogs, sprints then jogs. The lean, muscular girl who walks, arms pumping, and is faster than a lot of the joggers out there, her face a mask of dogged determination.
Then, I don’t know why, but I veer off onto the path that takes me deeper into the park, into the dark, away from the other runners. The city looms tall and glittering around me as I take the incline, pass under the first bridge. I am not afraid. I know this city. And more than that, I am fast. I pick up speed, feeling my temperature rise, my heart working. It all drops away, my fight with Jack, the pain I’ve been carrying around, even the heaviness of my head cold. My sinuses clear, and the endorphins start to pump. I pick up my pace.
The sky turns the milky blue-white of dawn. By the time I return to the apartment, it will be light. As tension, anger and sadness leave me, pushed aside by the brain chemicals of exertion, I realize that Jack’s right. I’ve let my desire for a baby, and my sadness over my miscarriages drain some of the love and passion from my marriage. I’ve turned sex into something scheduled, something burdened with expectation. Maybe I need to recast my thinking. Maybe we are enough, I realize. Even if there’s no one and nothing else, we’re enough.