The Ex

by John Lutz

  He took a sip of water then set the glass back down carefully in its ring of condensation, as if that were required by Miss Manners. He shrugged and smiled. “You’re right, I guess, but at least you went to see him. I can’t ask you to do more than that.”

  “And you still don’t agree that Deirdre tried to kill me.”

  “No,” he said thoughtfully, and no doubt honestly, “I can’t agree with you on that. And you said yourself you didn’t see whoever was in the basement. Whatever happened, Mol, I’m thankful you weren’t seriously hurt.”

  Molly smiled resignedly. Changing the way he thought was like trying to claw through a stone wall. “You think she was just trying to scare me?”

  “I don’t think she was there, Mol.” He reached across the table and held her hand. “Do you realize you’re accusing someone of attempted murder?”

  “I realize more than that. She did try to kill me, David. And I think she might have succeeded in killing Bernice so she could get closer to us through Michael. If she’s the woman I saw in the park, she’s in great physical shape, an athlete. She’d have the lung capacity to hold Bernice underwater until she drowned. Bernice would have been struggling, panicking, using up oxygen fast.”

  He stared at her in astonishment. “My God, Mol! That’s wild speculation. You shouldn’t be saying it.”

  “I’ve smelled my scent on Deirdre, seen her on the street in a dress that’s missing from my closet. Seen how she looks at you. She wants you again. She wants Michael. She wants my life and I’m in the way.”

  David shook his head, gazed out the window for a moment as if gathering his thoughts, then looked at her. He still had on his glasses from when he was reading the pamphlet, and he seemed to be focusing on her with an effort spurred by intense curiosity. “Do you really think she’s sneaking into our apartment and pilfering your cosmetics and clothes?”

  “Yes, I think so.” She sipped from her water tumbler, then put it down and stared into it. The water was trembling gently, its ice-cluttered surface tilting this way and that against the sides of the glass. But she could see all the way to the bottom and pick up the cream color of the table. She wished her future were as clear. “If she wants to steal my life, why wouldn’t she steal my green dress?”

  David apparently considered her question rhetorical, because he didn’t attempt an answer. “The only way she could be getting in is from the fire escape,” he said, “through the window we keep propped open for Muffin. If it will make you feel more secure, I’ll nail it so it can’t be raised any farther than six inches.”

  Molly continued staring into her glass. “David, when I came here to meet you, I was followed.”

  He sat back and said nothing. She knew what he must be thinking: Here’s something new. How would he cope with it?

  “How can you be sure?” he finally asked, his voice wary.

  He was on Central Park West, then on the subway, then behind me as I was walking here. I sneaked looks and saw him several times, saw his reflection in a shop window.”

  “Him?”

  “Yes. A man. Tall, with red hair. Sometimes he’d be behind me, sometimes on the other side of the street.”

  She could hear him breathing hard, trying to assess this latest development.

  “You joking, Mol?”

  “I wish I were,” she said to her ice water. “I know how this sounds. Don’t you think I know how this sounds? Well, I know exactly. You’d like to send me back to Dr. Mindle.”

  “Do you know who this man is?” He was clearly frightened and puzzled by her state of mind. “I mean, have you ever seen him before?”

  “No and no, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t there. Doesn’t mean he wasn’t real.” She looked up at him abruptly, which seemed to startle him. “I know what you think-that I’m going crazy.”

  He squirmed in his seat. “No, no, Mol! I think you’re a case of nerves, and I don’t blame you. Hell, everything that’s been happening lately, I’m not the calmest guy in town myself.”

  Molly had his support, she knew. He was on her side. Yet he couldn’t seem to believe any real ill of Deirdre, couldn’t believe his wife entirely. The tug of war he must be feeling, that he was helping to instill in her, was confusing. There were moments when she sometimes took his side, when she thought this whole period of discontent and fear might really be her fault. She absently inserted a finger in the cold water and trailed it in a circle, creating ripples that sometimes overran the glass’s rim.

  “Lately I wonder about myself,” she said. “I can’t help it. I know that’s what she wants, but I can’t help it.”

  David stared at her in such obvious sympathy and pain that her heart ached. “Maybe you should go back to Dr. Mindle, Mol.”

  Her anger stirred. “Don’t be absurd. I don’t need an analyst.”

  “Half the people in this city are in some kind of therapy,” David said with a glance out the window.

  “The other half roam the streets talking to imaginary companions.”

  He squeezed her hand and gave her a strained smile. “I’d like for us to stay in the first half, Mol.”

  The waiter brought their burgers and beer and laid everything out on the table. There were heaped french fries, almost burying those tiny containers of slaw that looked like the miniature paper cups dentists gave you when they instructed you to rinse. The food’s pungent aroma stirred Molly’s appetite then almost simultaneously made her nauseated.

  “I love you, Mol.” David said, when the waiter was out of earshot. “I really do love you.”

  He didn’t add that he was concerned for her sanity. That was kind of him, she thought. He was a genuinely kind man and in so many ways a good husband. But something was wrong between them, something was secret and festering.

  She smiled sadly at him.

  “Possibly you do, David. Yet you ordered onions on your hamburger.”

  39

  Deirdre had told Chumley she wasn’t feeling well. As she expected, he urged her to take the afternoon off. He’d been trying to coach her to increase her skill in double-entry bookkeeping. She’d become bored within minutes.

  After buying a knish and a can of Diet Coke from a street vendor, she sat on a stone wall and ate lunch, then took a cab home. She didn’t like riding the subway. It was too crowded, not to mention the way those assholes stared at a woman. She almost wanted one of them to try something.

  Besides, it hadn’t been that long ago when one of them had set off a fire bomb in a subway car. The bomb had detonated in a station, but it might have gone off when the train was in a tunnel and caused even more death and injury. The idea of being trapped in a tunnel to die of smoke inhalation or burn to death made Deirdre shudder. There would be nothing she could do about it other than to suck in the smoke or flames and make death as quick as possible. She didn’t want that to be her final and uncontrollable destiny

  She entered her apartment and changed to jeans and a blouse, leaving her shoes off. After settling down in front of the TV to watch CNN, she became restless. Wolf Blitzer appeared on screen, talking about impending legislation that had to do with foreign aid. Maybe it was his name, but with his beard that never looked as if it had quite grown all the way out, he always seemed to Deirdre like a man in the early stages of transforming into a werewolf. Not that she believed in such things. Or needed to, like some people. There were plenty of very real threats and injustices in the world without worrying about the inventions of writers.

  Blitzer was pointing to a bar chart with a pen or pencil. She found that she couldn’t sit still; a wild animal seemed to pace inside her chest.

  When Newt Gingrich appeared on camera to be interviewed in front of a bookshelf lined with obviously phony books, she switched off the TV, stood up, and stretched to loosen stiff limbs and eager muscles. Standing tall with her head back, her arms extended straight up, she could almost feel the rough-textured ceiling with her eyes as she peered at it between the widely spread finger
s of each hand.

  She lowered her arms and her body shivered almost in the manner of a dog shaking off water. Then she went to the phone on the desk and used the blunt end of a ball-point pen to peck out Molly’s number. With the receiver pressed to her ear, she listened to the muffled ring and could imagine it much louder in the apartment two floors below. If she was home, Molly would probably be working. She would already have picked up Michael from Small Business. Maybe he’d be taking his nap. Molly would be interrupted at work, and Michael might awaken and cry and receive some of the attention he craved and was denied.

  But when the phone stopped ringing, it was Molly’s voice on the answering machine that came on the line, explaining that the caller had reached the Jones residence but no one could come to the phone right now.

  So the bitch wasn’t home.

  “…but leave a message after the tone,” Molly’s voice was saying. The voice that whispered in David’s ear, that praised and reprimanded Michael, that uttered words that passed the wrong lips.

  The answering machine tone screamed then was silent.

  Deirdre knew what she wanted to do. She couldn’t hang up. She smiled.

  “Fuck you, Molly!” she said. Was the bitch screening her calls? Sitting by the machine listening? Deirdre doubted it, yet maybe it was so.

  She ran her tongue over her lips as if tasting them. Sometimes you had to take a chance, leave things up to destiny. Sometimes it was fun to take a chance.

  “This is Deirdre, Molly. The woman who fucks your husband!” She tried to say more, but laughter almost strangled her and she had to hang up the phone.

  Her blood was roaring in her ears like wild music, singing to her that now she had to do what she’d been considering. Otherwise, how could her message be erased before Molly returned home?

  She started to slip her feet into her shoes, then stopped. Maybe what she planned would be better barefoot. More contact with the flesh and more intimate. Definitely it would be quieter. That might be important if Molly happened to be home and not answering her phone.

  Deirdre padded barefoot to a small vase shaped like a star that she’d bought at the flea market at Sixth and Twenty-sixth. She turned the vase upside down and the key she’d had made for Molly’s apartment fell out into her waiting palm. She squeezed it hard until it was as warm as her own body.

  She went to the door and opened it, peeked out to make sure the hall was empty, then crept to the stairs.

  It took her only a few minutes to descend the stairs and let herself quietly into the Jones apartment.

  She stood inside the door and knew immediately that no one was home. She could always tell about that when entering a house or apartment; she had a sense about such things.

  But just to confirm what she already knew, she walked about the apartment, glancing into the bedrooms and bathroom.

  Then she went to Molly’s desk and saw by the digital counter on the answering machine that there were three messages. She sat down in Molly’s desk chair and pressed Play, then got a pencil out of the mug on the desk and sat bouncing its point on the flat wood surface while she listened.

  Beep.

  “David, Mol. Just wanted to remind you of lunch, but I guess you’ve already left. Hope so, anyway.”

  Beep.

  “Traci here, Molly. The architectural manuscript is fine. Reads beautifully. Even the author is orgasmic over it, and he’s an architect who hasn’t been responsible for an erection in years. Got another assignment for you if you’re interested. A mystery. Not like the wife-in-the-trash-compactor book, but almost as juicy. Was that a joke? Call you later. Bye.”

  Beep.

  “Fuck you, Molly! This is-”

  Deirdre pressed Fast Forward, then Erase.

  So they were at lunch, together, and Michael was probably being watched by Julia after hours at Small Business.

  When the machine was silent, Deirdre put down the pencil and walked into Molly and David’s bedroom. She went to the closet and opened the door, then stood looking at the now familiar array of clothes. Molly should certainly dress better for David. More the way Deirdre dressed. She smiled. Didn’t Molly know clothes could make the man?

  She shut the closet door and walked to the dresser. In the mirror she saw Molly’s SLEEP OR SEX T-shirt lying on the bed. She went to the bed and picked up the T-shirt, then noticed the toes of a pair of women’s terrycloth house slippers protruding from beneath the spread where it draped to the floor. So this was Molly’s side of the bed.

  Deirdre walked over and stood in front of the dresser mirror. She was visible from mid-thigh to the top of her head.

  Staring at her reflection, she slowly and sensuously undressed, doing a striptease for the woman watching in the mirror, dropping her clothes on the floor.

  Naked, she flipped her hair back from her pale shoulders then struck some poses in the mirror, some attitudes. The woman she was observing still had a superb body and no doubt about it. Breasts with gravity-taunting lift and lush, erect nipples. Her hips were still trim and there weren’t any stretch marks-none that she could see from where she stood, anyway. Her stomach was smooth and flat, her thighs muscular but not too thick.

  Moving closer to the dresser, she selected one of Molly’s perfumes, unscrewed the cap, and cautiously sniffed as she waved the neck of the bottle beneath her nose.

  Rose-scented, she thought. She liked it. She applied some of the perfume to the insides of her wrists, then dabbed some in the cleavage between her breasts, so much larger and riper and more appealing than Molly’s breasts. Finally she used her fingers to work perfume into the dark mass of her pubic hair.

  She returned the bottle to where she’d found it, then went to David’s dresser. Familiar with the contents of the drawers, she slid open the top one. There in the left front corner were the ribbed condoms and the tube of K-Y lubricant.

  She took the K-Y tube to the bed, slipped into Molly’s SLEEP OR SEX T-shirt, then threw back the spread and top sheet. Wearing only the T-shirt, she lay down on her back on Molly’s side of the bed. She worked the back of her head powerfully into Molly’s pillow, leaving a deep impression, letting her long red hair fan out on the white linen. More lustrous, more beautiful than Molly’s hair. She uncapped the K-Y tube and squeezed a bead of the slick substance onto the middle finger of her right hand.

  Closing her eyes, letting her mind soar where it might, she lowered her hand and touched her finger to the precise spot she sought and began to masturbate.

  When she was finished, she replaced the K-Y tube, then wiped her hands on the T-shirt, and laid it on top of the sheet.

  Standing at the foot of the bed, dressed in her own clothes again, she drew a deep, triumphant breath, taking in the rose perfume mingled with the scent of her sex still on her hand. Surely destiny was her ally. Any threat or obstacle would be destroyed. Nothing could stop her from claiming what was hers, from being who she was.

  Nothing.

  No one.

  Silently, she padded barefoot from the quiet apartment and locked the door behind her.

  She did not make the bed.

  40

  David had a difficult time concentrating on work after his lunch with Molly. He left Sterling Morganson at four forty-five, missing most of the evening subway rush, and was home before five-thirty.

  As he closed the apartment door and hung up his suit coat, he saw that Molly was seated at her desk working at her notebook computer.

  “Another job for Link?” he asked.

  “No,” she said without looking around at him, “it’s the article for Author.”

  She was trying to sell an article on editing from the editor’s point of view to Author magazine. It would be her second article for the publication whose readership was largely amateur writers. David was glad to see her working instead of worrying.

  He kissed the back of her neck as he walked past her-without response-then went into the bedroom to put on jeans and a casual shirt.
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br />   Inside the bedroom door he paused.

  The bed was unmade, the sheet rumpled. Molly always made the bed, even on the mornings when she was rushed. And there was the T-shirt she slept in, wadded up instead of folded as usual, lying on the bed.

  As he moved closer, David saw the depression in Molly’s pillow, as if she’d been resting and had just gotten up. But he doubted that she’d taken a nap in the middle of the afternoon. In fact, he doubted that she’d returned directly home after having lunch with him.

  Yet there was her bizarre story about having been followed. How might that have affected her behavior this afternoon.

  He bent to straighten the T-shirt and saw that it had been smeared with something clear and oily, as if the substance had been deliberately wiped there.

  Then he saw the single, long red hair on the pillow.

  His grip tightened on the T-shirt as he figured out what must have happened. Deirdre had been here. Apparently Molly had set to work whenever she arrived home after meeting him, and hadn’t yet gone into the bedroom. Hadn’t yet seen this.

  Deirdre again!

  “Bitch!” David whispered.

  Quickly he used a tissue to rub most of the slick substance from the T-shirt, then folded the shirt as Molly usually did and set it aside. He made the bed, straightening the wrinkled sheet and plumping the pillow. Then he laid the T-shirt on the bed where Molly kept it when it wasn’t in the wash, making sure the faint stains were facing down.

  After changing into jeans and a faded Lands’ End shirt, he took a last look around the bedroom, then returned to the living room.

  Molly was still working at her desk. She didn’t seem to have moved.

  “I’m going out to get a Post,” he said. “Want anything?”

  “Supper,” she said, without turning around.

  “I’ll bring something back. Chinese? Pizza?”

  “Anything,” she told him, working her fingers over the small, silent keyboard delicately, as if she were weaving.