THE UP AND COMER

by Howard Roughan

  A minute later there was a knock. Thankfully, she had arrived quickly. I walked over and opened the door to greet her.

  Only it wasn't her.

  "Expecting someone else?" he said.

  In that instant, terrifying beyond measure, I knew it to be true. The jig was up.

  I was standing face-to-face with Connor.

  "Yeah, I thought so," he said, looking at my expression as he walked by me and into the room. He was wearing a full-length raincoat but had no umbrella. He was drenched.

  I closed the door and turned around. Connor had taken a seat in one of the chairs by the window. His narrow eyes were fixed right on me, brimming with a controlled anger that, for him, was far more threatening than anything uncontrolled could ever aspire to.

  "So this is where it happens, huh?" he said, looking about the room.

  I stammered. "How — did — you...."

  "We'll get to that in a moment," he said. "Now, is this, like, your regular room, or do you two like to mix it up and have a different room each time?"

  I started to say something. I can't remember what, exactly. A futile attempt to explain that it wasn't what he thought... the operative word being futile.

  Connor raised his palm at me. "You didn't give me an answer. I said, is this your regular room or is it a different one each time? You would think you could do me the courtesy of answering my question being that you are fucking my wife."

  "Connor...."

  "Answer me, goddamn it!"

  "Different room each time," I said, half swallowing my words.

  "There, that wasn't so hard, was it?" he said. "I guess it makes sense, you know, having different rooms — the two of you being big fans of variety and all."

  "How?" I repeated. How did he know?

  Connor reached into his raincoat and pulled out a folded piece of paper. "This is how," he said. "It arrived at my office yesterday morning forwarded to me by the executor of the last will and testament for one Tyler Mills. Strange to think I only met him once. I guess you could call it a letter from the grave."

  I listened in amazement. Even dead, Tyler still had it in for me.

  "Would you like to hear it?" asked Connor. "Because I'd like to read it to you."

  "I'd rather you didn't."

  "Too bad," said Connor. Then he quoted Mick Jagger, though most likely not on purpose. "You can't always get what you want."

  He unfolded the paper, cleared his throat, and read:

  Dear Connor,

  I can't tell you how disappointed I am that you're reading this letter. That's because if you are... I'm dead.

  If you don't already remember me, I met you and your wife out at Balthazar one night when you were eating with Philip and Tracy Randall. I was the one bearing champagne.

  While it may not have seemed that way at the time, my being there at the restaurant was far from happenstance. In reality, it was part of a little underlying drama that you were unwittingly a part of. I think it's time you learned what's been going on.

  Simply put, I knew something about Philip that he desperately didn't want anyone to know. You, especially. And because one of the few perks of being dead is never having to worry about being blunt, here goes…

  Philip's been screwing your wife.

  But by all means, don't take my word for it. Find out for yourself. He and your wife meet up at the Doral Court hotel in midtown two or three times during the week. You'll see that Philip usually, if not always, arrives first.

  As for why I felt the need to write this letter? I'll let Philip try to explain that one. I'm sure he'll have some good story all worked out by then. I suppose that's why lawyers are lawyers. Like I said, though, I knew something about Philip that he desperately didn't want anyone to know. And now — presto! — I'm pushing up daisies.

  Rocket science it ain't.

  Revenge is sweet,

  Tyler Mills

  P.S. When you do confront the son of a bitch — and something tells me that you will — be sure to call him Philly. He hates that.

  Connor finished reading. I watched as he slowly folded up the letter and tucked it back into his raincoat.

  "You knew the entire time last night?" I asked in complete disbelief.

  He chuckled. "Incredible, huh? But I figured, innocent until proven guilty, right? Sure enough, when I followed you yesterday, the only place you went for lunch was a deli. So I held back last night, bit my tongue — except for that little part in the limo at the end. Forgive me, I couldn't resist."

  "He was blackmailing me, Connor."

  "So you killed him?!"

  "I didn't kill him," I said. "I wanted to kill him, I planned on killing him, but I couldn't go through with it. Tyler actually died trying to kill me. It was an accident."

  "An accident?" said Connor. He shook his head with total incredulity.

  I started to say something else. Again, I don't remember what exactly. It probably had something to do with Tyler being a complete psycho with an overactive imagination. For sure, I was rambling.

  "Don't do that," Connor told me. "It's only going to make it worse."

  As if rock bottom had a basement....

  So there I was, the initial shock of it giving way to a kind of sustained panic that allowed me to see the situation for what it was. The sheer magnitude of it. Caught having an affair with his wife and implicated in someone else's murder to boot. He knew it and I knew it. We had the truth and it was far from irrelevant. What remained to be seen were the consequences.

  "Now what?" I asked.

  "Now we wait."

  "For what?" I said, though I understood.

  "Not for what... for whom."

  Jessica, naturally. Connor would need to see it with his own eyes. Her walking into the room to meet me. Me! Of all people. That she was having the affair he had suspected; that she was having the affair with me — the guy with whom he had shared those suspicions… who had told him not to worry, that it was just a phase — well, like I said, he would need to see it with his own eyes.

  As if on cue, the knock came.

  "Allow me," said Connor.

  He stood up from his chair and walked to the door. I took a seat on the bed. Pacing seemed to be pretty moot at that point. Oddly enough, if it hadn't been actually happening to me, the whole thing would've been pretty entertaining. But it was happening to me; and it was about to be happening to Jessica as well. I couldn't look.

  I heard Connor open the door. He didn't say anything. I figured he didn't need to — for a married couple such a crossroads seemed appropriately beyond words. As for what sound I did hear first, it could best be described as the yelp of a wounded animal. High pitched and sadlike from her. It was followed by something that I might have predicted, for the simple fact that I briefly entertained the same notion myself.

  Jessica ran.

  She didn't get very far. I could hear Connor catch up to her in the hallway. Amid her sobbing and pleas of "No!" he practically had to drag her back into the room. I never felt as helpless in my life as I did right then and there.

  We're only human in the end, and for that reason alone, I imagine there was a certain measure of satisfaction for Connor in all this. Despite the grief, despite the bitterness, he had managed to create one hell of a Waterloo for Jessica and me. This was his chance to deliver the comeuppance of all comeuppances.

  He threw Jessica next to me on the bed and sat back down in the chair by the window. Jessica remained facedown on the covers and sobbing. I had known her to be a strong-minded person — the native New Yorker, after all — capable of rolling with the punches when need be. At the same time, I had come to realize that everyone has a melting point. This was hers. She was no match for such a turn of events.

  "Okay, shall we get started?" said Connor.

  I looked at him. Started on what?

  "Do you guys talk first for a bit, or do you get right into it? I'm going to guess that you get right into it, but what do I know?" he said wi
th the kind of laugh that had nothing to do with humor. "What did I ever know?"

  "Connor, you can't be serious," I said.

  "I simply want to see what I've been missing, that's all," was his response. "Now, c'mon, you can pretend like I'm not here. That shouldn't be too difficult."

  Ridiculous, I thought. Understandable, maybe, but still ridiculous. His behavior could've been a lot of things at that point. Serious, though, was not one of them.

  Or was it?

  "You think I'm kidding, don't you," said Connor to me.

  "I don't know what to think," I told him.

  "I mean it. I want you to go ahead and fuck my wife."

  "Jesus, Connor...."

  "What, is she not good enough for you now?"

  "Connor, please—"

  "Don't please me, please her, buddy. You are my buddy, right?"

  "This is fucking crazy. You know I'm not about to do what you're asking," I said.

  Connor started to shake his head. He reached into his raincoat again. A repeat performance of Tyler's letter for Jessica's benefit was what I assumed.

  I assumed wrong.

  "I'm not asking," he said, pointing it at me.

  It was shiny. It was silver. It was a gun.

  I hadn't thought it could happen. It had. Risk Factor 10.

  The things you forget and the things you remember. Connor and me, alone at the table at the Gotham Bar and Grill. He's telling me about what he'd do to the guy having an affair with Jessica. I'll kill him. I'll get a gun and shoot the motherfucker right in the balls!

  I looked down the barrel of the gun and up at Connor. I looked back at Jessica. I was right in time to see her pick up her head and realize that there was perhaps a little bit more at stake.

  "Connor, what are you doing?" she cried out.

  "What the fuck does it look like I'm doing?" he roared back, approaching maniacal.

  Reason with him, I told myself. Deep down he was always a reasonable person.

  "Connor, listen to me," I said, as calmly as I could. "I think it's safe to say we're all having the worst damn day of our lives right now. There's one thing that can make it a hell of a lot worse, though, and that's if you pull that trigger."

  "This coming from the only person in the room who's actually killed someone," he said. "Isn't that right, Philly?" He craned his neck around me. "Oh, by the way, did you hear that, honey? I think your lover killed Tyler Mills because he knew about your affair. What a hero!"

  "I told you I didn't kill him," I said.

  I glanced back at Jessica again to see that her fear had been joined by a rush of confusion.

  Connor cocked the gun. "Now, are you going to fuck my wife, or what?"

  To hell with reasoning. The Connor I knew, or maybe thought I knew, was nowhere to be found in that room.

  From there on out, all bets were off.

  "You want me to fuck her?!" I yelled. "I'll fuck her! I'll fuck her like you've never been able to!"

  "Stop it!" cried Jessica.

  My words seemed to echo as I watched the anger in Connor's eyes overflow, his face gushing with a fiery red complexion.

  "Shut up!" screamed Connor at me. He got up from the chair. His elbow locked as he whipped his arm into a straight line, the gun swinging out and jolting into place that much closer to my body. "Shut up!" he screamed again.

  But I wouldn't.

  "Why do you think she was coming here, huh, Connor?" I said. "Because you just didn't do it for her, that's why! That's what she told me. I did it for her, though. Over and over, week in and week out. And don't you know she kept coming back for more. She couldn't get enough. FUCKING INSATIABLE, SHE WAS!"

  It was a tirade, a vicious tirade on my part. It was also something else. A ruse. A way to distract Connor… to get between him and the gun via the very dark place that was now his mind. He just needed to get a little bit closer to me.

  "SHUT UP!" screamed Connor again.

  Behind me I could hear Jessica trying to catch her breath. She wanted to yell but couldn't. It was like she was suffocating — the shouting filling up the room until there was no air left to breathe. In front of me I could see Connor rocking side to side while inching forward. The gun wobbly, his emotions crumbling. Was his face still wet from the rain? No. Those were tears coming down his cheeks. Another foot or so and I'd have my one and only chance.

  Connor lurched forward, his demons fully in charge. "I SWEAR TO GOD I'LL KILL YOU!" he yelled.

  I lunged. My hands reaching, eyes wide and focused on the shiny metal in his grip. His finger fumbled on the trigger, and I reached him before he could squeeze. A gun sandwich, we made. The two of us struggling toe to toe, moving left and right, back and forth, with the gun between us. To Jessica it must have been the scariest dance she'd ever seen.

  Later they would come to me in full. The details. Too small to register at first in the blur that was the moment. The damp smell of Connor's raincoat, soaked through around his shoulders. The way his nostrils flared and let out these quick, loud snorts. The cold feel of the gun's nozzle in my hand, smooth and substantial, as I fought to push it away from my body and by default toward Connor's.

  One of us would have to give.

  I could lay claim to a lot of things in my life up until that point. Being shot was not one of them. While the blast itself was piercing to the ears, it was the heat against my stomach that really threw me. More so than the piercing shriek that Jessica let out as Connor and I froze.

  The gun dropped to the floor as the two of us stood staring at each other's eyes. Neither one of us was blinking.

  I don't know how long it lasted, the two of us there like statues. I'm sure it wasn't as long as it felt. But when Connor's eyes did begin to flutter — when he finally blinked — I looked down. I saw blood... blood on both of us.

  More blood on Connor.

  The gunpowder igniting behind the bullet. A pulse of hot gas. That was the heat I felt on my stomach. There would be no entry wound for me to discover, though. That grim task belonged to Connor. It was his turn to look down, and inside his opened raincoat he saw the same blood that I saw. Only by then it was clear that all of it was his. It had been Connor who caught the bullet.

  His legs gave out from under him, and I caught him as he collapsed. The final dip of our hideous dance. I eased him to the floor as a line of deep red began to trickle from his mouth. He didn't look at me; he looked through me. His gaze was far off, and getting farther with each passing second.

  "I'm sorry," I told him, whispering. So very, very sorry.

  I'll never know if he heard me.

  The rain continued to beat down against the windows. Fingertips tapping at random hard against the glass. Outside, beyond the rain, I could hear the occasional blaring of a horn and the other sounds that were the city.

  Inside, Connor lay dead on the floor.

  Jessica wailed with denial, pounding her fist on the bed again and again. She had watched me feel for a pulse, and when I looked back at her with nothing more than a blank stare, she knew he was gone.

  I went to her and she pushed me away. But if I couldn't console her, I knew I still had to coach her. That's what always got me about that day. As bizarre and devastating as it was, I never for one moment stopped being a lawyer. I couldn't help it.

  "Listen to me, Jessica, because we've got maybe a minute before this room gets very crowded," I said, trusting that she could hear me. "When the cops come, the first thing they're going to do is separate us. They'll ask us both what happened and check to see that our stories match. They have to match, Jessica, do you understand? Our stories have to match."

  I knew what she might be thinking. How perverse it was that I could be so collected after what had happened. I didn't care. I literally had Connor's blood on my hands. There was a lot of explaining to do, and I could ill afford to have Jessica recollecting one thing and me another. She could ill afford it either. Though at the time it was probably the furthest thing from
her mind.

  Never for one moment stopped being a lawyer… couldn't help it.

  I laid it out for her. Points one and two: it was a jealous husband bent on revenge. He had a gun and what ensued was self-defense. As hard as it was to talk to her in those terms, the real hurdle was that little bit having to do with Tyler. Connor had more than implied that I killed him.

  "Was there anything else your husband said, Ms. Levine, anything at all?" I could hear the cops asking her.

  I reached out gently to turn Jessica's body toward me. I needed eye contact for point three. Maybe I was getting through to her or maybe it was nothing more than her being flat-out exhausted. Whichever. All I saw was that she didn't resist. She didn't push me away.

  "Jessica, there's one more thing and I know it must have confused you," I began. "Connor, I think, accused me of killing Tyler. He said something about it before you arrived, but I have no idea what he was talking about. I had nothing to do with Tyler's murder, Jessica. I don't know what would've possessed Connor to say something like that. The important thing is that we can't mention anything to the police about it, do you understand? Otherwise, it would implicate both of us."

  She was still in shock, shaking and pale as could be.

  "Do you understand?" I asked her again.

  She gave me the slightest of nods.

  All I could think was thank god Connor never read her that letter.

  The letter!

  It was bad enough there was one smoking gun in the room. I wasn't about to let there be another.

  I leaped off the bed and over to Connor. As I did I could hear footsteps running down the hallway, voices coming toward the room. Kneeling down, I dug inside his raincoat, feeling for the piece of paper. I saw him put it in there, so why couldn't I find it? Damn it, where was it?

  Frantically, I kept searching. The voices and feet were drawing closer. Not good, Philip, not good at all. Without that letter you can kiss your ass good—