“Yes.”
“He went on and on about Carl, and the fact that he was worried…God…”
“About what?”
“That you were focused too much on Carl, imagining bad things about him. And he asked me…oh Lids, I’ve been wanting to tell you…”
“Tell me now.” Liddy’s voice shook.
“He asked if I’d report on your - fever chart, that’s what he called it...to please tell him if you were saying anything about Carl that sounded…Jesus…”
“Paranoid?” The heart, racing…
“In so many words, yes. I got mad, told him it sounded like he wanted me to spy on you. I wanted to tell you but I couldn’t, you’ve been upset enough.” A horn blared at Beth’s end; someone shouted, then her voice dropped lower. “Frankly, I think there’s something wrong with those two dudes’ relationship. It seems like Carl puts Paul up to things, dominates him…”
“No kidding.”
“…the feeling I got from that second call was Paul feeling - like, frantic, pulled into some kind of web of Carl’s - who come to think of it may have even told Paul to call me. Am I wrong? Something’s going on with them.”
“Paul’s been cleaning up Carl’s messes for years.”
“Or covering up. You don’t think-”
“I don’t know. I’m so glad you told me.”
“Of course! I hope I haven’t upset you too much. Listen sweetie, I’ll be in in in tonight. If you have even a smidgen of a bad moment, call me, okay?”
“I will. Speak soon, Beth.”
Liddy hung up.
Last night, last awful night, the thought had come to her: Even if Paul suspected Carl of something, he’d still cover up…
Now what?
It was nine minutes after seven.
For a moment in the darkened room Liddy faced the painting’s eyes, sharing their sorrow. Outside, thunder rumbled. She got up and went for her slicker, put her phone in her handbag, but not her sketchbook. No, for once that stayed. She went down the hall and through the living room, carefully setting the slide bolt and alarm system, closing the door behind her. Halfway down the stairs, she passed a delivery boy carrying up a pizza box. She hadn’t eaten; barely noticed it.
On Prince Street she got a taxi.
44
A white-coated assistant at the front counter smiled. She smiled tensely back as she walked the aisle past grad students still working at more counters until she saw a Winnie the Pooh, a big one with a big tummy under his red T-shirt, and asked the tired student about it.
“Carl gave it to me,” the student beamed with the overhead fluorescents making her glasses look like headlights, and the headlights reminded Liddy of her accident, the onrushing, frantic car blaring wildly. “Wasn’t that sweet of him?” the student beamed. “He said a little girl gave it to him.”
Liddy said yes, that was sweet, and continued to Paul and Carl’s long counter at the end.
Carl looked up from poking a white mouse. His face turned fake jovial. “Hey, surprise! Back so soon?”
“Just stopping by.” Liddy kept her voice even; pointed shakily to the mouse to duck further exchange. “Is it alive?” The little thing was on its back with its four legs stretched out in all directions. Carl’s gloved hand held a scalpel.
“Yep, just paralyzed briefly,” he said, bending back with his scalpel. “Watch, I’ll cut-”
“Don’t!” Her tension showed, but she let him think it was her usual dislike of what they did. “Is Paul around?” she asked – just as he emerged from the office behind the counter, white-coated, carrying a clipboard in one gloved hand and a small cage holding one mouse in the other.
“Lids. Hey.” He acted surprised too, and set the cage down. The mouse bore red markings on its white fur, which meant the scratching little thing wasn’t long for this world. Liddy looked at it, thinking doomed, doomed, then looked back to Paul, who watched her expectantly.
“I need to talk to you,” she said.
“Now, Lids?” He didn’t hide his impatience. “This is a big moment, big big.” He pointed to Carl’s sedated mouse. “What we just used will keep her out for five minutes, shorter and better than Propofol. Look, Carl just made a cut and she didn’t even twitch! How ‘bout that?” he grinned at Carl, who nodded jubilantly but didn’t look up from reaching for sutures to stitch Mouse’s little incision.
“Three minutes ten seconds so far,” Carl said, checking his watch. “In less than two more minutes this critter’s going to be back to crawling around, hurting and really pissed at me. Hey, she gets to live another day!”
“Congrats,” Liddy said dryly, seeing that Paul’s eyes were now fixed on her: What gives? You hate to come here.
Her answer was to turn and step into their office: twin desks facing each other in a room filled with computers, papers, monitor screens showing mouse brain cross-sections, and a few empty cages. A closed door with a red EXIT sign led out to a hall.
Liddy leaned on Paul’s desk to face him.
“I have a question,” she said, inhaling hard, folding her arms tight.
“Shoot.” He sensed this was going someplace unpleasant, because his face tightened and he half-closed the door.
Quietly, she asked, “Would you be able to work separately? Minus him?” She cocked her head toward the door.
Paul blinked and frowned. “What?”
“You’re just as brilliant as he is. That latest drug composition is yours, isn’t it? Your formula?”
“Well yeah – after a thousand other tries working together. What gives?”
She turned away from him, still with her arms folded. “Your work is done. You’ve got your formula or whatever you call it, the grant people will be thrilled and” – she turned, pointed to the door - “he’ll be rich in prison.”
“Liddy…”
“You have to save yourself,” she whispered desperately. “Cut ties professionally. Are you not aware of his tightening connection to Sasha Perry?”
Paul hesitated, then held up both palms. “Yes. We’ve talked more about it and it’s bullshit.”
“You’ve-”
“After Righetti’s. He says there’s nothing there. Please, Liddy-”
“He had a fling with her. Something connecting those two is what’s been making me crazy. Please, you have to get away for my sake-”
“Oh Lids, what’s happening again?” He tried to reach for her; she cringed away. “I really, really fear for your mind-”
“Now who’s talking bullshit?” Liddy cried. “She’s dead, Paul. Sasha Perry is dead, the cops are closing in on Carl, you’d cover for him even if you suspected - and you don’t care about me.” Tears literally burst from her eyes and she turned for the exit. “Okay, I tried. I’m outta here.”
Paul grabbed her wrist and held tight. “Control yourself,” he growled.
She whirled on him. “Why? Because you tell me to? You who don’t care what’s in front of you and don’t give a damn about-”
The door opened. Carl came in, his lips pressed tight; saw Paul holding on to Liddy with her trying to break his grip.
“Knock it off,” he said.
Paul looked at him; let go just like that. Liddy saw the two of them trade glances. Something was happening here; something strange as Carl’s expression turned regretful; looked at Liddy.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “Something – nobody knows what - seems to have happened to that girl.” Then he held up his thumb and index finger, a half inch apart. “But we’re this close to the least dangerous surgical anesthetic ever developed-”
“Great.” Liddy backed away. “You’ll get the Nobel and the chair-”
“-and this girl…Sasha…was troubled. Again, nobody knows what happened to her, so I beg you, don’t let progress like we’re making-”
“You know what happened to her!” Liddy shot back, weeping. “You hide behind your white coat and think you’re immune, but you’re not – and Paul’s done cove
ring for you!”
Carl blinked; looked at her for a long moment. Then raised his hands in surrender, his eyes sorry as he looked back to Paul.
“I tried,” he said. “We’ve both tried, and I’m tired. Isn’t it time to tell your wife that this is your mess? I really don’t want the cops back again questioning me.”
He shook his head and left, closing the door behind him.
Liddy stood motionless, paralyzed.
“Your mess?” she breathed.
“Lids…”
Like an explosion, the memory flashed back.
“I know,” she whimpered. “I was there, before the accident. She was there, in our old apartment… Sasha… You tried to lie, say you were just helping her cope after Carl dropped her – and she looked at you so hurt, started crying, ‘But you said you love me.’”
“Liddy.” He reached and she yanked away, backed around the desk.
“I came home,” she wept. “You’d both been…what? Skinny dipping? Her hair was wet.”
“Wet? What are you talking about? That’s not what happened!”
Liddy backed toward the exit. “Sasha looked at me, I remember now. Her blue shirt was wet – that’s how I remember a blue shirt…and she looked sorry.”
She flung open the door and was out, careening into grad students who turned in the hall as Paul caught up to her, seized her wrist again but she ripped free.
“Please, I tried to stop you.”
“I ran into the street, saw the headlights, kept running-”
“Forgive, I’d been trying to break it off,” he begged as she burst through the heavy front door, started down the cement steps with him at her heels. “She fell too hard for me, threatened to go to the dean, wreck everything we’d worked for, threaten us. She was unstable, hooked on uppers Carl gave her-”
Liddy spun on him. “Uppers Carl-?” She almost laughed. “You took Carl’s castoff, then bitched she fell too hard for you? What are women to you creeps? Just toys to play with and lie to?”
She signaled a cab that pulled over. Paul was desperate, pleading. “I was a fool, out of my mind. I made a mistake.”
“Go to hell. You never said a word to help me understand the accident.”
“So you’d run into the traffic again? Jesus, forgive, I didn’t know what to do!”
His words were lost as the cab door slammed, and she was gone.
45
thrub a-dub hissss
higher hiss, soft…like a far radio frequency…
Low steady ring ring ring…
These sounds in the ears: better with the eyes closed.
Sometimes the sounds faded, and then there was only pain, the heart pulverized yet still somehow able to be astonished, just amazed at its own stupidity. Angry, too. Oh yes, very angry at the good old stupidity. How much easier it is to live in the soft, blurry warmth of one’s own ignorance…
She opened her eyes and asked that question – silently – of the Striped One. What was it called? Wait, the mind wasn’t working yet, was refusing to work…oh yes, it’s called angelfish, see it drift languidly through the water, its fins barely moving, without stress, so without stress, its snout down, pecking delicately through wafting grasses at flakes specially formulated…but here comes another angel, and a third one and look, they’re getting aggressive with each other. C’mon, guys, this tank isn’t big enough for you? Beth said they get more territorial as they get older; they fight, even these slow beauties now still young enough to glide away from each other, wander elsewhere in this carefully tended, soft-bubbling world.
“You calming?”
Beth’s voice came from somewhere. Into her limp hands something warm was placed, and she felt Beth’s hands wrap her fingers around it. Liddy looked down at the mug of hot cocoa. She squeezed it.
“Mm-m. Thanks.”
“Can’t beat the two of them, hot cocoa and especially the aquarium.” Beth plunked onto the couch behind Liddy; let out a pained breath. “I swear by aquariums to relieve stress, they’re mesmerizing, right up there with staring into a fire in the fireplace with glowing embers beneath the logs. Only who in Manhattan has working fireplaces with glowing embers – who even has logs? Except for decoration…you burn your expensive-in-the-city logs and then they’re gone, no woodshed. So for here aquariums win.”
“The bubbling sound alone...”
“Yeah, nice. Almost beats Valium.” Liddy could hear Beth plumping throw pillows, muttering that they’d been losing their feathers. Then Beth said, “Take deep, slow breaths, hear nothing but the bubbling. Emotional closeout! Everything must go! No pain or static allowed.”
“I’m going to start calling you Yoda.”
“Ha.”
Beth’s apartment was open, with few walls and the long, turquoise-hued aquarium acting like a room divider. Very Feng Shui, really nice. Liddy had seen party guests gravitate to the aquarium, oohing and pointing and forgetting themselves. It was hard to wrench herself away but she did; finally left the chair she’d pulled up to the fish and returned with her cocoa to the couch. Beth was now fiddling with an old-fashioned afghan.
“Crocheting helps too,” she murmured, fingering soft wool strands of orange and peach. “I made this during the split from Rob. It saved me from killing myself.”
“You told me.” Liddy put her mug next to where she’d left her phone on the coffee table. “Gotta buy me some yarn.”
They fell silent for a long moment. Liddy just stared at her mug. Beth patted the afghan, then took another deep, consoling breath. “But really, I gotta be fair,” she said slowly, catching Liddy’s look and raising her hands. “No, it has to be said - the split from Rob only came after more of his screwing around. In retrospect, I would have been happy with that once.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“Okay, maybe not when it happened and I was so girly hurt, betrayed, crying and throwing things, but later I realized…that first time had too much to do with my pride, and we healed after that – remember him bringing flowers, going all rose-nutty, filling every room and the bathroom with flowers?”
“Guilt. Overdoing it.”
“True. I knew it but like your standard chump it placated me – and made him feel off the hook and then he went back to his tricks, and I just got sick of him – frankly stopped giving a damn, stopped trying to love him. That’s what did it, the accumulation of…” Her voice trailed.
“Lies,” Liddy finished for her.
“Right, but multiple lies, deceptions, squirming like a spineless worm. Something else? Despite all the damn flowers and the gold bracelet Rob never said Sorry – not once, apology wasn’t in him. Whereas this…” Beth shook her head, peered across to the fish for help. “I can’t even believe it. Paul has always seemed crazy about you. At the hospital he was in such bad shape, terrified of losing you.”
Liddy looked to the fish too; frowned. “Why do men cheat?”
A who-the-hell-knows gesture. “Because they’re wired that way? Or, they like to be bad? In Paul’s case, ‘cause Carl had his fun in the toy store and Paul wanted some too? He may have figured, no harm if no one knows, this little girl gets around anyway.”
Liddy’s cell phone buzzed. She just stared at it on the coffee table. Beth reached for it and checked the readout.
“Paul again. This makes his fourth call.”
“Ignore.”
“He doesn’t even know where you are.”
Liddy shook her head, back and forth. “Lying by omission…big omission…is also lying.” Her voice was bitter. “He let me go through months of nightmares, lost sleep…never once tried to explain the accident.”
Beth inhaled, solemn. “He was afraid you’d ‘run back into the traffic?’ That’s what he said?”
Nod.
“He may have meant it literally. Either way he was terrified of your reaction.” Beth touched Liddy’s arm. “Hey,” she said. “He’s frantic. You two had a bad fight, he doesn’t know where you ar
e, and last time you got really upset you wound up spending four days in intensive care. Let me call him back at least, tell him you’re okay. Sleep here tonight. Sleep on the whole thing…tomorrow you may feel different.” Beth tried to smile. “That sound okay? A chance for you both to simmer down?”
For long moments Liddy glared at her phone.
“Okay,” she finally said.
46
The Skype connection was bad. Twice it dropped, and when it came back the sound and image were distorted and the screen was red.
“Crappy connection, huh?” said the man in the screen.
“Yes, sorry,” Kerri Blasco said. “Now I hear you but you sound like Darth Vader.”
“You look yellow at my end.”
“Wait a sec? Our brilliant technician here is fixing cables. Old cables. Your taxpayer dollars at work.”
“Tell me about it.”
Jerry the tech guy made his adjustments, and the thirtyish, sweet-faced man in his camouflage Air National Guard uniform came into focus.
“Ah, better.”
“You look better, too. You’re pretty.”
“You must be sleepy. I really appreciate this, the hour’s ungodly where you are.”
He smiled and shrugged. “Four-thirty in Kabul. We get up at five anyway. How can I help?”
Peter Dunn, his name was. He was a New York City EMT and a sergeant volunteering his second tour of duty in Afghanistan. He’d been on some assignment and was finally, after nine days, reachable for Kerri. She’d already emailed him her question: Did he by any chance remember the hit-and-run accident on last June third, at three in the morning in front of 410 West 83rd?
He did. Emailed back that, in fact, the accident still bothered him, still seemed weird, he’d never gotten it out of his mind. “Busy night, but some things you just remember,” he wrote. They’d made an appointment to Skype – by five local he’d have to roll – and now here they were.
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