The girl forced a watery smile, while Gretchen thought, if only that were my life, and smiled at her again.
“There's something I've been meaning to ask you.”
Gretchen placed her bags on the sidewalk. The girl's smile faltered, and suspicion glinted again in her eyes as she said, “It's been nice chatting,”—she looked as if it were anything but—“but I've got to get to work.”
Gretchen grabbed the front wheel of the bike.
“Don't touch!” the girl barked.
Gretchen's hand jumped from the wheel. “Do you know David Lee Roth?” she blurt out.
Of all the questions this strange neighbor could have asked her, it was probably the last thing the girl was expecting. Her prickliness dissolved into slight shock.
“Sure, I do. Of course. My mom loves him, actually. And I think I have all the songs.” Here she surprised Gretchen by blossoming into life atop the seat of the bike. She sang what little chorus there was of “Jump,” splaying her fingers in the air like a cheerleader as she sang the final “Jump!” then made to wheel her bike away from Gretchen. Gretchen grabbed her elbow. The girl started.
“I said, don't tou—”
“Please, this is important! I don't mean the Van Halen David Lee Roth. The other David Lee Roth.”
The girl was still looking down at the hand on her elbow. Her lower lip trembled. Gretchen released the elbow.
“Ah, yeah. I get it. Yes, I know him too.”
Relief swept through Gretchen.
“Oh, thank God!” The girl was staring at Gretchen as if she were a lunatic. “I hate to seem like I'm prying, but I really need to know. Did he visit you the other week? Before you went on vacation?”
The girl gawped.
“David Lee Roth was here?
She rolled her bike back a few inches from Gretchen.
“Yes. A few days before you went on vacation. He came out of the building and, er, saved me from two muggers, actually. I just need to know if it was your apartment he came out of.”
“Are you crazy? Of course he didn't! Why would David Lee Roth visit me? Are you making fun of me? Doesn't he live in LA? My mom isn't that big a fan!”
Gretchen and her bags splayed on the sidewalk were blocking the girl's escape. She looked up and down the length of the street as if in need of sudden assistance.
“But,” Gretchen wailed, “you said you knew the other David Lee Roth!”
“I thought you meant the David Lee Roth after Van Halen. He quit the band, you know. I think Sammy Hagar took over vocals and Van Halen continued, still successfully. And then David Lee Roth had a solo career, eight solo albums. So there's the Van Halen David Lee Roth and the solo David Lee Roth. But was he really here in the building? Did he really save you? I have to tell my mom!”
This wasn't what Gretchen wanted to hear.
“Was he really here?” the girl repeated, excited now. She looked around at the knob of the front door of the building as if it were now special.
“No, he wasn't.”
“But you just said—” The girl's face closed. Tears welled in her eyes. “This is mental torture. My boyfriend told me this is what people are like. I see he's right! Why are you being so mean? I'm not stupid. I'm not! Don't make me think I am!”
She and her bike raced down the street.
Gretchen was left gathering her groceries. And wondering why David had been in their building. Nobody had a reason to lie. So...back to...Roz...?
Roz wasn't home. After Gretchen put the groceries away, she sat down at her computer and thought. If a man was a murder victim in the morgue on Law and Order, SVU or not, there was probably a scene, probably the first scene, where he was alive. He would be speaking, so he would have lines. And there would be a credit. But which episode was it? She went to the Law and Order, SVU website and looked at the episode guide. It was endless. There were many, many seasons. The show had been running since 1999. She and Roz had been watching a rerun, so David's episode, if it were indeed him, could have been filmed any time over three decades. Maybe David had dabbled in acting when he was younger, while at medical school? Paid bills that way?
As Gretchen scrolled down the episode recaps with their list of gruesome, sexually-based crimes, pedophilia, forced prostitution, incest, criminal transmission of HIV, female genital mutilation, she was filled with a sadness. No, not for these fictional victims and the violence, usually bizarre, against them, though these of course were sad, and distressing, but for herself. Sam had been her boyfriend, and she had loved him, but Sam's love had been like the love he had for nachos or a keg of Miller Lite. Mike had been her boyfriend, she had loved him, but even when she thought he had loved her, there had always been something ironic about his love, as if he loved her with quotes around it, 'loved' her. But with David, she felt differently. His love seemed a stronger, deeper, straighter love. He loved her. She could see it, feel it, in the way his eyes lingered on her, in the gentle but firm caress of his touch, in the way he made love, and it was making love, not Sam's aiming-for-the-trophy triathlon, going for gold, or Mike’s squawking, carousel-ride merry making. So why was Gretchen sitting here before the computer trying to catch him out? Trip David up? Discover a different David Lee Roth?
What had Mike done to her? Would she always be suspicious? Never trust again?
She clicked off the computer. The graphic images disappeared. But they remained in her mind.
She would have to ask Roz what the episode was about. But did she dare? Had David been in their apartment? Her mind went back to that night again, the night before the attack, and she imagined again Roz's threesome with the alleged kitchen dumper and David Lee Roth.
SCREAMING. THAT'S HOW Gretchen woke up.
And she must have been at it for a while, because her first waking sight was the bedroom door flying open and Roz racing in, alarm and a mud pack on her face.
“The gun! The gun!” Gretchen babbled, wailed, surprised at the tears running down her face.
Smack! Smack! Roz bounded onto the bed and slapped her, then backhanded her, then slapped her, then backhanded her again. Smack! Smack! Gretchen tried to grab the flying hands, but they whizzed through her fingers, slapping her yet again.
“Stop it!” Gretchen wailed. “You're hurting me!”
She rubbed her cheeks and glared at Roz, who was sitting on her bed in the mess of sheets and pillows and stuffed animals and inspecting her with concern. “Why did you do that?” Gretchen asked. “Have you gone crazy?”
“I see people doing it all the time on TV. I wanted to know if it really works. Looks like it does.”
“You could've taken your rings off first. What the—”
“You were hysterical, Gretchen. Roaring in your sleep.”
“The gun!”
“You see? Barking mad.”
“No, the gun, Roz. Why did he take the gun?”
Roz was inching away from her across the mattress.
“I'm not crazy,” Gretchen pleaded, wiping the tears from her eyes. “I was just having a horrible nightmare, and now, now...”
Now the lucid thoughts were cascading into her brain from all corners, one question after the other, with knife-like precision. She had had dinner with David that night, and all throughout, her mind had been percolating with questions she didn't dare ask him. She had been unable to look him directly in the eye. When she thought of the date, she didn't see his face. She knew each prong of her fork, the position of the ice cubes in her lemonade. “Why are David's scrubs blue and everybody else's green? Why is his mother so old? Why is he uncut? What was he doing in our building?”
Serendipity, or...something more sinister?
“Cracker jacks!” Roz decided. “Slaps aren't helping. I'm getting professional help. I'm locking you in. It's for your own good.”
She crept across the bedroom floor as if Gretchen couldn't see her.
“No, Roz. It's David I'm talking about. Roth is a Jewish name, isn't it?”
“I don't know.”
“Well, it is. And aren't all Jewish guys cut?”
This was something up Roz's alley.
“Sure. Well, all the ones I've had were, anyway.”
“So...isn't that strange?”
“Just because someone has a Jewish last name doesn't make them Jewish.”
“But...and this, I think, was what my nightmare was about, I was being attacked again, and I realized somehow, no, I remembered that after he saved me, he reached down and picked up the gun and left with it. Why would he do that? Why?”
Roz was walking slowly back to the bed, but her arms were crossed against the hockey jersey which was the only thing she was wearing, and her mud pack was creased with confusion.
“Are you talking about your nightmare now, or about reality?”
“The attack! And there was something strange about the sound of that gun when it fell. I just can't think what it might be. A strange sound. But...but...more importantly, what was David doing in our building? Now I've spoken to all our neighbors, and he wasn't with any of them. Nobody knows him. So that only leaves you!”
Roz sputtered with shock.
“Are you saying that I—”
“Yes. It was the night that that guy took the dump in the kitchen. You must remember every detail of that night, no matter how drunk you were. Tell me, were you with one guy? Or two? Were you with David too?”
Roz was crestfallen. She sat back down on the bed again. Her hands reached out, and Gretchen shirked, ready for more slaps. But Roz took her hands in her own and massaged them gently.
“Oh, baby,” she said softly. “There are many people out there against you, against me, but I'm not one of the ones against you. I hope you would know that. I'm sad you think I might have done something like that to you. And kept it quiet.”
Gretchen didn't quite know where to look. Sins absolved or not, she was feeling guilty again about what she had done in the kitchen. But she had to keep it quiet. She'd never tell Roz. Tears rolled anew, and Gretchen sobbed miserably between Roz's ample breasts. Roz cooed and patted her red curls.
“What's this all about?”
“David. I don't think he's who he says he is. We had dinner this evening, and I could barely look at him. I said I had a headache and left early. Why am I thinking like this? Why can't I believe people are who they say they are?”
“It's that damn fool Mike. He's making you think like this, making you paranoid. There, there. Calm down. There's some of that tequila still left in my room. I'm going to force you to drink it. It'll make you feel better. I'll drink some too. We'll put on some music, get plastered, and you'll forget all about it. Okay? I've got limes as well. How about some Adele? No, maybe too depressing. Katy Perry? Too poppy. Some 80s soul. Teddy Pendergrass?”
Gretchen dried her eyes and eyed Roz gratefully.
“Anything but Van Halen.”
A FEW WEEKS LATER
Darko called early and said he had an important emergency business meeting that might take all day. He'd take her out to lunch tomorrow again to make up for it. Roz was at work in her jewelry store. That left Gretchen with nothing to do except deliver the two packages her boss had given her the day before. Luckily, one drop-off was in the neighborhood, though fifteen blocks down. If it were a nice day, she'd just walk. But a glance out her bedroom window, and a crane of the head up, way up—as the bricks of the next building were her wondrous New York view—told her dark clouds were pressing down. They looked like they might erupt with rain any moment.
As she scrabbled in the closet for a functional umbrella, Gretchen wondered if she should drop by the hospital for lunch with David. Though the operations he was scheduled for changed daily, he usually seemed to have a break for lunch at 1:00. That was when he always called her, anyway, to chat about whatever and tell her that he loved her. Yes, they had moved on to that stage, which made her feel even worse about doubting who he was. But Roz had helped her that night, talking it through with her as Teddy Pendergrass had crooned to 'Close The Door.' Did it really matter why David was in the building? Gretchen should just ask him, instead of driving herself crazy. He had introduced her to his mother, for God's sake! So the guy really must have fallen for her!
“I've never met the parents of any guy I've slept with,” Roz had said. “None. You should be thankful, not fearful.”
Wise Roz.
And now Gretchen had met Mrs. Roth twice. Apparently, David had explained, when the invalid was having an attack, which, thankfully, wasn't often, she had a little buzzer thing she pressed, and David had an app on his phone which altered him. Just the other day, they had been eating ice cream cones in Washington Square Park, and Gretchen had been avoiding looking at the troupe of mimes performing before them, when the alarm had gone off. Strange, from the sound of it, it seemed just like a regular text, but David had jumped up, startled.
“My mother!” he said. “She needs me!”
“Let's go!”
“Are you sure you want to come? I can deal with it myself. These attacks are harmless, but they scare her. I just need to calm her down.”
The maternal instinct in Gretchen, though backwards, she supposed, was awoken. She had enjoyed giving the poor old woman some comfort on the first visit. And it would get her away from the mimes.
“No, I'll go with you.”
So they had. There were no seats on the subway. On the way up to 103rd Street, David told Gretchen all the wonderful things his mother had done for him when he was growing up in California, the trips to Disneyland, to ghost towns in Death Valley, to the Badlands in South Dakota, to Mount Rushmore. He was an only child, and his mother had doted on him. She had sacrificed her career as an architect, dropping out of college, to raise him, and, when his father divorced her, she had taken full custody. (His father had moved to Thailand to start some sort of company.) Mrs. Roth had gotten a job as a sales person at Mark Cross, working on commission. She had flirted and smarmed across the counter for years to afford to put him through college.
“My parents—” Gretchen began, then bit her tongue. What a fool! She had been about to tell him her parents had won the lottery and put her through college! She should never mention that. Sure, she trusted David, and he was an anesthesiologist, so obviously he wouldn't want her money, but after Mike, she didn't want anyone knowing about any extra money. And anyway, her parents had run out of money before Gretchen's graduation. And she would wait until they were engaged before revealing Ursula and Jed were responsible for SlimJed Jerky. “My parents paid for my first two years,” she said. “F-from money they had saved and saved since I was born. They, uh, had a special account they put the money into. And then I had to work to pay for the second two. I'm still paying back the student loans. Well, I was until recently. You see, I won big on a scratch card the other month. $50,000.”
“Wow!”
At that moment, the train gave a sudden lurch and David flew into her arms. So it was difficult for Gretchen to single out what caused tiny red flags to wave before her eyes. Not tiny red curls, this time, but flags. David had said “Wow!” as if he were surprised, but something had been a bit off. Gretchen couldn't put her finger on what. The way his eyes had flown to the upper left of their sockets? The way a tic now seemed to be playing at the right side of his mouth? But as she was wondering this, and it only took a second or two, a passing woman's backpack smacked Gretchen in the face, and they were in a different place.
“Hey!” David said. “Watch where you're going!”
The woman's ears were stuffed with earphones blaring the Chainsmokers, and she continued down the length of the train, blissfully ignorant of all the distress her backpack was causing each standing passenger.
“Don't get so excited,” Gretchen told the now-normal David. “It was only $30,000 after taxes. And I just paid off all my old student loans with it.”
David stared, and, again, Gretchen couldn't understand what was going on in his brain. Then she won
dered if she were being paranoid. But, no. It looked like shock, relief, alarm, disappointment, happiness, irritation and relief were all vying for control of his facial features. How could that be possible? So many emotions at once?
“Really?” was what he finally said. “That's, er, a strange thing to do with a lottery win. I would've thought...I don't know, an around the world trip, a Ferrari, I don't know what. Something huge. Not paying off student loans.”
“It was a scratch card. And, er, I saw the world when I was a child. And I've seen enough of the US when I was with Nickel and Dime. And I never got around to getting a driver's license, so...”
David now had retreated into himself again, as Gretchen had seen so often. But why would he suddenly start thinking about medical procedures there and then? It seemed unlikely. Had she been wrong about these deep silences all along? Why did he always seem so lost in thought, troubled thoughts, when he was with her? Was he really thinking of...oh, she didn't know exactly...thinking of...his wife and children? His secret gay lover? His instructions as an undercover agent? What part of David Lee Roth was Gretchen missing?
He leaned towards her, something strange in his eyes, and his lips parted. He was on the verge of telling her something. But then he just smiled, though it was a tight smile, and he wrapped his arm around her waist and held her tightly there around the pole. He kissed her tenderly on the neck.
“Like I said the last time we were on the way to meet my mom,” he whispered into her ear, “I really do love you, Gretchen.”
They had reached their stop. Although a warm feeling was spreading through her, Gretchen was confused. David was suddenly all business as the passengers streamed out the door and they joined them. It seemed as if he were quoting from a script.
“Now, Gretchen,” David warned as they walked out the sliding doors and he slipped his hand in hers, “when you see my mother, please try to keep your distance. It was nice of you, kind of you, to take her hand the other week. And that kiss on her forehead also. But we were lucky she took it so well. We never know how she's going to react to the touch of a stranger. And, as you know, sometimes she thinks even I am a stranger. She's gone ballistic sometimes. Just from a touch.”
Emergency Exit (The Irish Lottery Series Book 6) Page 24