Too Close

by Hilary Norman

  Months passed. Holly went through quiet weeks of introversion and apparently devoted study, then switched back to wild, uncontrollable periods during which she drove him almost nuts playing ‘All the Way’ over and over for nights on end. Once, Nick stormed out of his apartment wearing nothing but his shorts and pounded on her front door, threatened to break it down and smash her hi-fi system if she didn’t stop, but all that happened was that the other resident on their floor poked her grey head out through her own front door, and a man from the floor below yelled up the staircase for Nick to shut the fuck up or he’d call the cops and have him arrested.

  ‘One of these days,’ Nick told Holly the next time he saw her, ‘I’m going to call the cops, and the hell with you and your career as a lawyer.’

  ‘What makes you think they’d believe you?’ she asked him simply.

  The bitch of it was he knew she was probably right.

  She suckered him in just twice more, in the space of twenty-four hours during October ’88, not long after the start of her junior year.

  It was Saturday lunchtime, the second weekend of the month. Nick was just making himself a hero sandwich when his phone rang and a man identifying himself as Marty King, the manager of The Wheel, a pottery shop on Bleecker Street, told him that a young woman named Holly Bourne had been caught stealing a vase in his store and had begged him to contact Nick.

  ‘It’s normally our policy to prosecute,’ King told Nick in a confidential tone, ‘but it seems to me that your friend really needs some professional help, so if you can guarantee she gets that—’

  ‘What do I have to do with it?’ Nick wanted to know.

  There was a brief hesitation. ‘I understood from the lady that you are her fiancé.’

  Nick was stunned. He, too, hesitated for just a moment, and into that silence came the unmistakable sound of Holly sobbing and pleading.

  ‘Mr Miller?’ King said.

  ‘Yes,’ Nick said.

  He heard Holly again, begging now to be allowed to talk to him, and Nick could hear the manager weakening, and sure enough, an instant later, she was on the line.

  ‘Nick—’ Her voice was choked and soft. ‘Nick, please, help me out of this.’ He could barely hear her, and he could just picture her half covering her mouth and turning away from Marty King so that the poor guy wouldn’t hear what she was saying.

  ‘Nick, just get me out of this jam’ – she was barely audible now – ‘and I swear on anything you want I’ll leave you in peace for ever.’ She paused for just a fraction of a second. ‘Please, Nick, if not for my sake, then do it for my parents – this would kill my father, you know it would.’

  Nick knew, deep down, that he was crazy to even think of bailing her out. He had thought any number of times over that past year – had really believed – that what was happening right now was what he wanted, what Holly deserved, maybe even exactly what she really needed. Yet suddenly the image of Holly under arrest, perhaps in a holding cell, her legal career ended even before it had begun – and all of that mostly because he hadn’t lifted a finger to help her at this one low point – seemed too awful, too tragic, to contemplate.

  ‘He’s right, Holly. You know that, don’t you?’ he said into the phone. ‘You do need treatment.’

  ‘Yes,’ Holly said, humbly. ‘I know.’

  ‘I’m talking about a shrink, Holly.’

  ‘A psychiatrist, yes.’ Holly’s voice had grown clearer, and Nick knew it was for the manager’s benefit. ‘I’ll do anything, Nick, I swear it.’

  ‘And you’ll stay out of my life from now on?’

  ‘Yes, Nick. I swear.’

  Nick hesitated one more moment.

  ‘Let me talk to the manager again.’

  Marty King insisted Nick came to The Wheel to fetch Holly, and she was white as chalk and trembling violently when he arrived, and outside on the street he thought he’d better take her arm because she still had that sick, ghostly look about her. And then, just before they reached their building on Christopher Street, Holly stopped and looked up at Nick. She was crying again, but she was smiling, too, the most brilliant smile Nick had ever seen on her face.

  ‘You’ve proved it now,’ she said.

  ‘Proved what?’ Nick asked, though he had an ugly feeling he knew.

  ‘That whatever you say, whatever you do, deep-down you still love me.’

  ‘Holly, stop it.’ Nick shook his arm loose and stepped away from her.

  The brilliance stayed in her eyes. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she went on. ‘Whichever way you want to play it from now on, I want you to know that I’m here for you – friend, lover, sister. Whatever you want, Nick.’

  He knew then that the whole scene – maybe even getting caught stealing the vase in the first place, because Holly had never let herself get caught stealing before – had been a sham, one of Holly’s adventures, a kind of a dare with herself to see if she could hook him.

  ‘You crazy bitch,’ he said, softly, right there on the street. ‘Don’t you know yet that I don’t want any of those things, not from you, not ever again?’

  ‘I know you don’t mean that.’ Holly had lost her smile. ‘You can say it, but I know you don’t mean it.’

  ‘You’re a thief, Holly, and a manipulator, and a liar, and there’s only one thing I want from you,’ Nick told her, and his voice was very hard and clear. ‘And that is never, ever to see or hear from you again—’

  The grey-haired woman from their building passed them, and Nick saw from her shocked expression that she had heard his last few words to Holly – to that poor, sweet, hard-working, respectable law student with tears in her eyes – but Nick found that he didn’t give a damn what she or anyone else thought.

  ‘From now on,’ he went straight on, ‘you are welcome to go to jail or to stay in your apartment and play ‘All the Way’ for the rest of your fucking mad life, because it won’t make a scrap of difference to me, because I’m going to get the hell out of this place just as soon as I can and then I will never, ever, have to see you or think about you again.’

  At three o’clock next morning, he was woken by the sound of frantic pounding on his front door. Disorientated, groping for the light switch and a robe, he stumbled out into the hall.

  ‘Who is it?’

  The pounding went on and with it the sound of hysterical sobbing.

  ‘Holly, go away,’ he said.

  ‘I need help,’ she sobbed and went on pounding.

  ‘Oh, shit, Holly,’ Nick hissed through the door, ‘you’re going to wake the whole goddamn building. Just take a pill or something and go to bed like a normal person.’

  ‘Nick, please—’ It was almost a scream. ‘They’re going to kill me – you have to let me in.’

  Gritting his teeth, mindful of the neighbours, Nick opened the door. Holly, dressed in a heavy sweater and jeans, ran right past him, through into the bathroom and locked the door.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Nick called after her, confused.

  He only half registered the sound of feet running up the stairs, and by the time he turned to close the door it was too late. Two men shoved past him into the apartment, one of them slamming the door right out of his hand.

  ‘What is going on?’

  They were white and tough-looking. One of them, a guy with dyed-blond long hair and a mean mouth, held a big, ugly, serrated knife in one hand.

  ‘Where is she?’ he demanded.

  Blood rushed fast through Nick’s head. What the hell had she gotten herself into now? What the hell had she gotten him into?

  ‘Where is the fucking bitch?’ The man with the knife pushed Nick up against the wall and his head hit the corner of the Andrew Wyeth print he’d hung there the previous spring. The other man, darker, his head almost completely shaven, stalked around the hall saying nothing.

  ‘We want our money,’ the knife man said.

  ‘What money?’ Nick’s voice was thin with fear.

  ‘The m
oney she owes us for the dope, dope,’ he said, and stuck the knife blade against the side of Nick’s neck, not far from his jugular. ‘Bitch snatched it and ran, thought we’d let her get away with it.’

  Holly’s voice came loud and clear from behind the bathroom door.

  ‘I got it for him.’

  ‘Is that so?’ The shaven-headed man wheeled around and came up so close to Nick the rankness of his body odour was right in his nose.

  ‘I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,’ he said, terrified to move or even breathe with the other guy’s knife still tickling his neck.

  ‘Give them the money, Nick!’ Holly yelled from the bathroom.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Holly!’

  ‘You heard the lady,’ the blond said.

  ‘Nick, I told you it wasn’t worth trying to get away with it,’ Holly called out. ‘Just give it to them.’

  That was the moment when Nick really, finally, understood exactly how dangerous Holly Bourne was, just before the two low-lives bouldered their way into the bedroom dragging him with them, found his wallet and took his earnings before rampaging through his studio, slashing four of his paintings and, as a parting gesture, beating the crap out of him.

  He must have passed out for a few moments, because next thing he remembered the thugs had gone and Holly was there beside him on her knees on the living room floor dabbing iodine on his cuts, her mascara all over her cheeks but otherwise apparently quite calm.

  ‘Are you nuts?’ Nick struggled up, dizzy and in pain, but in almost too much of a rage to care. ‘Are you completely out of your warped little mind?’

  Holly ignored him, just went on trying to fix him up.

  Nick shoved her away hard and she fell on her backside.

  ‘I’m only trying to help you.’ She looked wounded.

  A pain shot through Nick’s left arm from the effort of pushing her. He got onto one knee and managed to get to his feet. ‘Get out, Holly.’ His voice was trembling.

  ‘Please, Nick, let me take care of those—’

  ‘Get out before I lose it, Holly.’ He was shaking with anger. ‘I mean it.’

  ‘Calm down, Nick.’

  He stared at her. It was almost impossible to believe how normally she was acting, sitting there on her ass on his floor with a bottle of iodine in one hand and gauze in the other like Florence-fucking-Nightingale.

  ‘I mean it, Holly,’ he said again. He bent down, smacked the bottle out of her left hand, not caring that iodine spilled over the rug. He grasped her upper arm and dragged her up off the floor, his own muscles shrieking with pain. ‘I’m warning you. If you don’t get out of here right this minute, I won’t answer for what I may do to you.’

  ‘I wouldn’t do anything if I were you,’ Holly said, quietly.

  Nick became aware then of the sounds outside in the hall. Voices calling to each other. Neighbours.

  ‘Oh, great,’he said. ‘Just great.’

  He got to the front door and ripped it open. Three men stood in the hall, two young, one old. The old one, the man from the floor below, was carrying a baseball bat. They all jumped back at the sight of Nick.

  ‘It’s okay,’ he said, still breathing hard. ‘There was some trouble here, but it’s over.’

  Wielding his bat, the old guy peered around Nick, trying to see inside. ‘Miss?’ he shouted. ‘You okay in there? We called 911 – the cops are on their way.’

  ‘She’s fine,’ Nick said, wanting to scream. His face felt like it might have been pulped. He was suddenly afraid to look in the mirror. On the other hand, he figured, no one here was exactly offering to get him to the hospital.

  Holly came out from behind him. ‘I’m okay.’

  One of the younger men, a guy Nick had never seen before, winced as he saw Holly. ‘Jesus Christ, the bastard hit her.’

  Nick turned around. Holly, whose face had been mascara-smudged but otherwise unblemished, now sported a nasty scratch on her right cheek.

  ‘You bitch,’ he said, softly. ‘You lousy bitch.’

  And then he heard sirens.

  It was one hell of a night. Nick told the cops exactly what had gone down, but with Holly contributing her own version of the story, and with traces still clinging to the sides of the lavatory bowl in Nick’s bathroom testifying to the fact that someone had tried to flush marijuana down into the New York sewer system, no one was listening to him.

  ‘He’s probably going to be charged with possession, ma’am,’ one of the cops said to Holly before they took Nick to the station. ‘Do you want to add assault?’

  ‘No, thank you, sir,’ Holly said, fingering her scratch.

  ‘Look at her nails,’ Nick said. ‘Check her nails.’

  The cop threw him a sour look. ‘Why would we want to do that, sir?’

  ‘Because she gave herself that scratch, so you’ll probably find her own skin and blood under them.’

  ‘This isn’t homicide, sir.’ The cop smiled a don’t-be-such-a-jerk kind of a smile and shook his head.

  ‘Do you have to charge him with possession, officer?’ Holly asked. ‘I mean, there isn’t really much evidence, is there? And it’s not as if he was planning to sell it. Couldn’t you just forget it?’

  ‘There isn’t much evidence,’ Nick exploded, ‘because she flushed it down the goddamned john herself.’

  The policeman grinned at Holly sympathetically.

  ‘You got yourself a real white knight here, ma’am.’

  Nick made his call from the police station that night to his friend Jake Kolinsky, and it was Jake who got a lawyer to him two hours later.

  Liza Montgomery was a short, skinny African-American aged around thirty-five, with tired but sharp eyes and a matter-of-fact attitude. In a cold, miserable room at the station, Nick told her everything he could think of about himself and Holly and their history, and the crazy way she’d been acting during the last few months. In particular, he told her about Marty King, the pottery store manager, who, Nick suggested, could be called to testify that Holly was a thief and, therefore, not to be believed. Liza Montgomery pointed out that, at the end of the day, Holly having allegedly stolen a vase the previous lunchtime was not relevant to Nick’s present situation, and did not, alas, manifestly alter the fact that traces of marijuana had been found in his john, in his bathroom, in his apartment.

  ‘It’s going to be her word against yours, Mr Miller.’

  ‘But she’s a liar,’ Nick said. ‘And a thief.’

  ‘Maybe so,’ Montgomery said.

  ‘All I did was open the door when she was banging on it and yelling for help. The neighbours must have heard her.’ He knew he was clutching at straws. ‘You could get them to testify to that. I only opened the door to help her.’

  ‘According to the police report, it was one of your neighbours who called 911 and reported that you were disturbing the peace, Mr Miller,’ the lawyer said, ‘not Ms Bourne.’

  ‘Jesus.’ Nick shook his head in anger and despair. ‘This is all so nuts – I mean this is really nuts. Holly buys marijuana off these two low-lives but doesn’t bother to pay them so they’ll chase her right into my apartment, and then she tells them the stuff is for me – and I don’t use dope, Ms Montgomery, I don’t even smoke tobacco, for Christ’s sake—’

  ‘Take it easy, Mr Miller—’

  ‘And then these guys beat me senseless, and when I wake up Holly’s all over me like the measles, and when I tell her to get lost she puts a big scratch on her own cheek – her own face—’

  ‘Which she claims you put there.’

  ‘I told them to check her fingernails, for fuck’s sake – I should have told them to check mine.’

  ‘And I told you to take it easy,’ Montgomery said again. ‘At least she’s not bringing assault charges against you – unless she has a change of heart.’

  ‘Great,’ Nick said. ‘Just peachy. How am I supposed to take it easy when that bitch is one step away from putting me in jail?’
/>
  ‘No one’s going to jail right now, Mr Miller.’ Liza Montgomery reached over and patted his left hand. ‘Let me go do some talking,’ she said, ‘see if I can make this thing go away.’

  ‘What do you mean “go away”?’ Nick was half-choked with outrage and disgust. ‘I don’t want it to go away. I want Holly to get what’s coming to her. All I did was try to help her, and this is what she does to me. I mean, I told you she’s a law student – is she the kind of lawyer you want in your profession?’

  Montgomery made no comment. She was up on her feet, putting forms and papers back into her briefcase. ‘I wouldn’t hold your breath about what’s going to happen to Ms Bourne, Mr Miller. I’d say the best you should be hoping for is that the DA’s office agrees to drop the charges against you.’

  ‘And what about Holly?’

  The lawyer was already at the door. ‘If I were you,’ she said, ‘and if we do manage to get you out of this mess, that is one young woman I’d get myself as far away from as possible.’

  ‘We live next door to each other,’ Nick pointed out.

  ‘You said you were thinking of moving out. So move.’

  ‘We’re still both going to be at NYU.’

  ‘NYU’s got to be one of the most spread-out campuses in the country,’ Liza Montgomery said. ‘Try losing yourself in it.’

  Montgomery achieved exactly what she had said she might. The DA’s office had agreed to decline prosecution, but she wanted to make Nick understand that he was on a kind of unofficial probation: that his arrest was on record, and that if he got into trouble again any time in the next few years, he’d be unlikely to get lucky a second time.