Someone Is Watching

by Joy Fielding

  “I’m not sure I understand,” Officer Dube says.

  “Suppose you give me that,” says Detective Castillo.

  “It’s not very sharp.” I’m giggling as I hand it over. “Smells of salmon.”

  “I see you’ve had a few,” Castillo remarks.

  “California’s finest,” I say as Claire lifts a finger to her pursed lips, warning me to keep quiet. “Would you like some?” I ask anyway, disregarding her signal. It’s not like Claire to be such a stick-in-the-mud.

  “No, thank you. We’re still on duty.”

  “Did you talk to David Trotter?” Claire asks.

  I struggle to remember who David Trotter is, why his name seems so familiar.

  “We did. It seems his mother suffered a stroke the night of the incident in the gym,” Castillo begins.

  What has any of this to do with me? What incident in what gym, and what has David Trotter’s mother got to do with anything?

  “She lives up in Palm Beach, and he took off as soon as he heard the news, didn’t get back till tonight. That’s why we’ve been unable to locate him.”

  “Did you question him about Bailey?” Claire asks.

  “We did. He claims he was attending some big dinner with at least half a dozen potential investors on the night Bailey was attacked.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  “We’ll check out his alibi. As well as the story about his mother.”

  “How is she?” I ask.

  The detective looks surprised by my question. “I believe he said she’s recovering nicely.”

  “Glad to hear it.” I feel my body begin to sway. Nice to hear that someone is recovering nicely.

  “Maybe we should sit down,” Claire says.

  “What about Narcissus?” I ask.

  “Who?” both policemen ask together.

  “The man who’s been staring at me through his binoculars,” I explain, impatiently.

  “The man we talked to is named Paul Giller,” Officer Dube says, checking his notes. “What did you just call him?”

  “Narcis …,” I begin.

  “It’s the name we gave him because he spends so much time looking in the mirror,” Claire explains.

  “You know, the old Greek myth,” I add as Officer Dube rolls his eyes and Detective Castillo shakes his head.

  “What did this Paul Giller have to say for himself?” Claire asks.

  “Well, you understand we had to be careful. You can’t just come out and tell a man you suspect him of rape without pretty substantial evidence to back you up, which we obviously don’t have. Also, if he is our man, we don’t want to go tipping our hand before we acquire that evidence.”

  “What did he say, Detective?” Claire asks again, as I lean back against the nearest wall. My head is starting to clear. A dull headache is waiting behind my eyes. “Does he have an alibi for the night my sister was attacked?”

  “We didn’t get into that.”

  “What do you mean? Wasn’t that the whole point of going over there? What exactly did you say to the man?”

  “We told him that we’d had a few complaints from neighbors who claimed to have seen him staring through binoculars.…”

  “And?”

  “He denied it. Said they must be mistaken, that he doesn’t even own a pair of binoculars.”

  “Well, of course he’d say that.”

  “He offered to let us search the apartment,” Officer Dube says, as if this ends the discussion once and for all.

  “And did you?” Claire asks.

  “No,” Castillo says. “We’d made our point.”

  “What exactly was your point, pray tell?”

  “That spying on your neighbors with binoculars could land you in court as a Peeping Tom,” he says. “A point you ladies would do well to remember.”

  “And that’s it? That’s the end of your investigation?”

  “No. We’ll run a background check on this Paul Giller, find out what he does for a living, if he has a record, that sort of thing. But other than that, there’s really not much else we can do. Unless you’re ready to make a positive identification …,” he adds, looking at me.

  I shake my head, watch the room tilt dangerously on its side.

  “You’re sure you had the right apartment?” Claire asks.

  “Suite 2706. Third floor from the top, four windows from the left,” Officer Dube says, once again referring to his notes. “That’s the information you gave us. Is it incorrect?”

  “Third floor from the top, four windows from the left. That’s right.”

  “Then I’m sorry,” Castillo says. “But unless you can come up with something more substantial, our hands are pretty much tied.”

  “I understand,” I say, and I do. That’s why there are private investigators, I think, people like me, who are under no such restrictions. Except that I am no longer a person like me. “Thanks for bringing us up to date.”

  “We’ll keep you posted if there are any new developments.”

  I open the door. The men step into the corridor. Detective Castillo stops, hands me back my knife.

  “Put this away,” he says.

  I take the knife and shut the door.

  “I need a drink,” Claire says.

  —

  “Oh my God. Would you just look at this!” Claire is laughing. We’re sitting on the floor of my walk-in closet, our legs extended out in front of us, a box full of old photographs emptied around us, surrounding our bodies like an old-fashioned crinoline. “Look at my hair!”

  “I think you look sweet.”

  “You’re drunk.”

  “Yes, I am.” I grab another handful of pictures, personal items left to me and Heath after our father died, although Heath showed little interest in any of the photographs he wasn’t in. There are several old scrapbooks as well, filled with snapshots from our father’s previous two marriages, photos of Claire squeezed between her parents, her mother’s stomach swollen with baby Gene, of both children gazing adoringly at their father as their father gazes at something off in the distance.

  I open another album and see my half-brothers Thomas, Richard, and Harrison spring to life, and I follow their development from infancy through adolescence. There’s even a picture of Gene as a teenager in full football regalia. I notice the resemblance between wives number one and two, how different they were from my mother.

  “They look so sad, don’t they?” Claire states, the same sadness radiating through her own eyes.

  I want to hug her, but I don’t. Instead, I push myself to my feet and begin searching through the drawers of my built-in cabinets.

  “What are you doing?” she asks.

  I finally locate what I’m looking for in the bottom drawer: a stack of unused checkbooks. I grab one, then begin searching for a pen.

  “What are you doing?” Claire asks again.

  I find one at the back of the drawer and quickly write out a check. “For you,” I say, handing it to her as I plop back down on the floor, harder than I should, although all the alcohol in my system cushions the fall.

  “What’s this?”

  “I want you to have it.”

  “It’s ten thousand dollars! I can’t take this.” Claire tries to push the check back into my hand.

  “It’s the least I can do after all you’ve done for me.”

  “You’ve had too much to drink, Bailey,” she cautions. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

  “I know exactly what I’m doing,” I tell her. “Consider it an advance.”

  “What does that mean?”

  What does it mean? That I’m seriously considering settling my half-siblings’ lawsuit, dividing up the family fortune? Shouldn’t I be discussing this with Heath first?

  “I think you’d better talk this over with Heath,” Claire says, echoing my thoughts. She drops the check into my lap.

  “It’s not fair that you worry about money,” I protest.

  “Who s
ays I worry …? Oh. Jade’s been telling tales out of school, I gather.”

  “She just said sometimes you worry.”

  “We’re doing fine, Bailey. I have a steady job. Gene helps out whenever he can. He’s paying for that fancy private school she goes to, the one with the classmates whose parents can afford beach homes on Fisher Island.”

  “But our father made provisions for Jade’s education.…”

  “College education,” Claire reminds me. “Who knows if that’s ever going to happen.”

  “It’ll happen,” I state with absolute certainty. About the only thing I’m sure of these days is that Jade will one day make us proud. Once again, I hold out the check. “Please … take it.”

  Claire hesitates, then sighs and tucks the check into the side pocket of her pants. “But I’m not going to cash it, in case you change your mind when you sober up.”

  “I won’t change my mind.”

  Tears fill her eyes for the second time tonight. This time she makes no effort to turn away. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “You don’t have to say anything.”

  Claire reaches over and takes me in her arms, hugs me close. I feel safe, as if I’ve come home at last. Then her cell phone rings, and I jump and pull away. It’s Jade, calling to report that she’s back from Fisher Island. “I should go,” Claire says.

  “Wait. Take these with you.” I gather up the photo albums and stray snapshots of my half-siblings and follow her out of the closet into the bedroom. The lights are on, the blinds down. “You can divide these with Gene and the others.”

  She takes them from me. “Thank you. For everything.”

  “Thank you. For more.”

  Claire is almost at the bedroom door when she stops and turns around, her eyebrows arching playfully. “What do you say? One last peek, for old time’s sake?” I hang back as she drops the photos to the bed, then presses the button that turns off the lights, followed by the one that opens the blinds. She grabs my binoculars and approaches the window. “Doesn’t look like he’s home,” she says after a pause of several seconds. “Oh, well. It’s probably for the best.” She gathers up the photographs again and walks into the hall, hugging me when we reach the door. I melt into her arms. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  I feel words forming in my mouth, approaching the tip of my tongue. But Claire opens the door before I can give them a voice. The door closes behind her, and I watch through the peephole as she walks down the corridor. “I love you,” I whisper, my words trailing after her. She stops suddenly and turns around, as if she heard me. She gives a little wave, walks into the waiting elevator, and is gone.

  —

  The light in Paul Giller’s apartment is on when I return to my bedroom. Holding my breath, I grab my binoculars and march to the window. Through small circles of glass, I see a man and a woman moving awkwardly around the room. I glance back at the clock beside my bed, the numbers illuminated in red. Not even eleven o’clock, too early for the man I think of as Narcissus to be home. Although perhaps now that he is just ordinary Paul Giller, he’s moved everything up an hour.

  Except something else is different as well.

  It’s the woman. I adjust and then readjust my lens in an effort to bring her into sharper focus. This woman is noticeably plainer than the women I’ve seen him with all week, and her hair is both shorter and lighter. And far from hanging all over her, Paul Giller is standing on the other side of the room, fully dressed and flipping through the pages of a magazine.

  What’s going on?

  It’s then that I notice a suitcase open on the bed. Is he going somewhere? Has tonight’s visit by the police prompted him to take off for a few days, in much the same way David Trotter took off earlier in the week? I wonder if Paul Giller also has a mother who’s conveniently been rushed to the hospital.

  Paul looks up from his magazine as the woman walks to the bed and starts removing items from the suitcase: a denim jacket, then a blouse, then another blouse, followed by a pair of jeans and a peasant skirt, then a pair of flat shoes. Casual attire, for the most part. Nothing particularly exciting. No frilly nightgowns or racy underwear. I watch the woman disappear into the closet and come back with a handful of hangers. She hangs up the skirt, jeans, and jacket, then returns them to the closet. She drops the blouses into a laundry basket located on the far side of the bed. She deposits the shoes in a shoe bag that hangs on the inside of the closet door. She is obviously comfortable in this space. She belongs here.

  His wife? I zero in on her hands, trying to make out the presence of a gold band on the appropriate finger. But I’m too far away. I can’t be sure.

  Experience tells me she’s probably his wife and she’s been away all week, leaving Paul alone to morph into Narcissus and indulge his most wanton fantasies. Does she have any clue who he is when she’s not around? Would she care if she did?

  She goes into their en suite bathroom and closes the door. Paul promptly strips down to his briefs and climbs into bed. This time there is no preening in front of the mirror, no parading nude in front of the window, no spying on my apartment through binoculars. Maybe the police warning scared him. Maybe, as he told them, he doesn’t even own binoculars. Maybe I imagined the whole thing, as Detective Castillo and Officer Dube have no doubt decided.

  Paul flips lazily through the pages of his magazine as his wife, if that’s who she is, returns to the bedroom, wearing a delicate pink lace negligee. She’s brushed her hair and made an effort to look pretty. But Paul doesn’t seem to notice until she moves to turn off the light. He raises his hand to stop her, indicating with a visible degree of annoyance the magazine he is reading.

  I watch Paul’s wife pull back the covers and crawl into bed beside him. She leans back against the headboard, glancing anxiously toward her husband, as if willing him to stop what he is doing and take her in his arms. After several minutes, she decides to take the initiative, her hand moving tentatively to stroke his thigh. He lowers his magazine and shakes his head. “It’s late, I’m tired,” I can almost hear him say. She nods and removes her hand, sitting in silence for several minutes before scooting down in the bed and pulling the blanket up over her head to block out the light. Or maybe to hide her tears. Even through the covers, her shame is palpable.

  Less than five minutes later, Paul, alias Narcissus, tosses his magazine to the floor and stretches to turn off the light. I am left in the dark, nursing the image of Paul’s wife with the blanket covering her head. I feel a pillowcase being dragged over my face, my own shame spreading throughout my bloodstream and racing toward my heart.

  — SIXTEEN —

  The phone rings at just before seven o’clock the next morning.

  The sound jolts me awake, although I can’t even remember climbing into bed last night, let alone falling asleep. Obviously I did both at some point. I have vague memories of sharks swimming menacingly beneath my feet, of faceless men extending gloved hands toward me, of passive women watching me from distant balconies. My head is pounding and the leftover taste of wine lies flat across my tongue, an unpleasant reminder of all the alcohol I consumed last night. “Hello?” I whisper, pressing the phone to my ear, and then again, despite the busy signal that greets me: “Hello?” I say it a third time. “Is somebody there?”

  I drop the phone and flop back onto my pillow, dozing off again for approximately another hour until a shrill ring once again shakes me into consciousness, like a hand on my shoulder. This time I think to check the caller ID. Unknown caller. “Heath?” I say, instead of hello, the dull throb of my hangover pushing against the insides of my eyes. “Heath, is that you?” There is no answer, and I’m about to disconnect, to dismiss this latest call the way I did the first, as nothing more than an early morning extension of my nightmares, when I hear the sound of breathing.

  The voice, when it comes, is low and filled with dust, like tires on a gravel-filled road. “Tell me you love me,” it growls in my ear.

  I
scream and drop the phone, watching as it bounces across the floor toward the bathroom, coming to a stop on the marble tile of the bathroom floor. “No,” I cry, falling to my knees beside my bed. “No, no, no, no.”

  The phone rings again almost immediately. Once … twice … three times … four, each ring a dagger thrusting into my chest. If the phone doesn’t stop ringing, I will die.

  It stops, and only then am I able to breathe, although just barely. Hands shaking, I crawl to where the phone is lying on its back on the bathroom floor, like an upturned insect. I glance at the caller ID, expecting to see the familiar words: Unknown caller. Instead I see Carlito’s on Third, followed by a number. Who or what is “Carlito”? What does this mean? I quickly press in the number for Carlito’s on Third. It’s picked up immediately. “Hello,” I say before anyone can speak.

  Tell me you love me, a gravelly voice whispers lewdly.

  “No!” Immediately I drop the phone and burst into tears.

  Seconds later, the phone rings again. Carlito’s on Third, caller ID boldly proclaims, and again I don’t answer, listening as it rings four times before being transferred to voice mail. “You have two new messages,” voice mail informs me seconds later. “To listen to your messages, press 1.” I do as instructed. “First new message.”

  “Hi. This is Johnny K. from Carlito’s Auto Repair,” a voice informs me. “I’m just calling to tell you that the work has been completed on your Porsche, and you can come by to pick it up any time.” He leaves a number where he can be reached.

  “Oh, God.” I’m overwhelmed by a fresh onslaught of tears. What does this mean?

  Tell me you love me.

  “Second new message,” voice mail continues as I try to separate fantasy from reality.

  “Hi. This is Jasmine from Carlito’s Auto Repair,” a woman is saying. “Did you just call here? I think we got cut off.” She leaves the same contact number.

  I call back. Again, the line is picked up before the first ring is complete. This time I give the person on the other end time to speak. “Carlito’s on Third. Jasmine speaking. How can I direct your call?”

  “Can I speak to Johnny?” I ask.