by Amy Gentry
Gwen shakes her head. “No. Before that. Through the window, when I was walking up to the house, I saw Rocky standing at the balcony. Not struggling, not fighting. He looked like he was alone. Waiting for me. I even thought I saw him say my name.”
I wait for her to go on, but she doesn’t. “Well?”
“The door blocked my view for a second. And then I saw him fall.”
She says it bravely. Well, she can afford to be brave.
“I can’t imagine how awful that must have been for you.” I lace my sympathy with just a touch of pity, hinting that she can’t possibly expect herself to remember all the details.
But she continues as if she hasn’t heard me. “People don’t just go flying over balconies when they’re perfectly still. Someone was behind him. Someone pushed him. I always knew—someone pushed him.”
“Gwen, I know you loved Rocky,” I say in my most reasonable voice. “But you didn’t see how drunk he was that night.”
“Of course, I thought it was Bethany. It made sense for it to be Bethany. And with those marks on her throat—” She shudders. “I understood. I forgave. I didn’t think she deserved to go to prison for defending her life. What I couldn’t figure out was why you’d lie for her.”
“Nobody lied for anybody,” I say, more firmly this time. “Bethany asked for my help since Connor had quit. When Rocky showed up and saw Bethany, he went berserk. He was furious with her for approaching you, and they started fighting and—” I hold out my hands helplessly, as if I still can’t understand the way things went after that. “Look, it’s clear from what you’ve said tonight that you’ve held on to some romantic notions about Rocky, despite everything. Fine. I don’t begrudge you that, even though he nearly killed Bethany right in front of me. You obviously need this last noble vision of him standing on the balcony, calling your name, to ease your guilt. But don’t—”
“Guilt?” Her eyes go wide.
“In my room earlier, you said you thought it was all your fault.”
“Because I shouldn’t have gone to grad school,” she said. “Not because of that night. God, Mac.” She looks me in the eye. “You ask why I left. When those emails came out, I was a pariah. The Other Woman, the bunny boiler. Because that’s the simplest story to understand, isn’t it? A jealous wife kills her cheating husband over the mistress?”
“I never said those things.”
“No. But you were careful not to rule it out, weren’t you? What was it you said at the inquest? You were on the floor, you couldn’t see what happened. All you could verify was that Rocky was the aggressor, that he was violent. The marks on Bethany’s throat, Rocky’s history, your eyewitness testimony matching hers—it all backed you up. But it didn’t really rule out the seedier story, did it? Nothing provable, just a stink of something criminal about her. Sometimes a rumor is more powerful than the truth. I always wondered why you wanted to protect her from the law. Until tonight at the bar, when you told me what you were to each other.”
So, that’s it. The blood rushes to my face. Tiny stinging droplets of freezing rain start to fall.
“I thought your relationship with Bethany explained everything. She still had a hold over you, somehow. But since our conversation at the bar, I’ve gotten, shall we say, some conflicting information. And all night long, I’ve been trying to figure out what to believe. Who to believe.” She shakes her head. “I really wanted it to be you, Mac.”
The revelation that I told her about Bethany temporarily blurs out my ability to hear or think about the rest. The unfairness of it, that I could excise someone from my life so thoroughly, rout her so completely, win, as I did in the loft, and still be in her thrall. I know I should be focusing on what Gwen said about not believing me, but instead I hear myself making the feeblest of denials. “The thing with Bethany felt like a big deal at the time,” I say. “But I’ve moved on.”
“No, you haven’t.” She laughs incredulously. “You should see yourself, Mac. She messed with your head, and you’re out there paying it forward every chance you get. All your conquests—Harvard—‘Love’s just not in the cards for me.’ It’s sad, really.”
“Spare me your sympathy.”
“I thought you were protecting her with the story you told the police, but it’s the opposite. You’re holding something over her, but you didn’t want to use it. You wanted the power over her instead.” She shakes her head. “But when you let someone define who you are, they have the power. Always. And you let her make you a murderer.”
I stand silently. Yes. I am a murderer. Over the years I have justified it to myself as self-defense, and of course if I’d been accused that would have been my story. Rocky might even have killed me, if Gwen hadn’t come in just when she did. But perfect Gwen had come at the perfect moment to save my life, and still I had killed him. He was a reprehensible man, possibly a killer, and certainly a violent abuser, in the moment at least. Although I believed Bethany when she testified, one eye painted red with broken capillaries, bruises efflorescent on her neck, that he had never harmed her before, it didn’t exonerate him. On top of that, he used his female students abominably, including Gwen, whom he had made into an ordinary, even boring cliché. That alone could have driven me to murder.
But in the moment, if I’m being honest, I had no feelings at all. The same part of me that first took over when my mom left Lily and me to fend for ourselves took over in the loft that night. It was as if my humanity disappeared, and I became pure unadulterated self-interest, a kind of hyperrational psychosis. Probably I became a murderer long ago, even though I didn’t push Rocky until ten years later, when a cold, rational voice in my head said, This is how you get rid of them both at once. Quickly, you only have a second. I had audio of Bethany saying she wanted to kill Gwen and Rocky, Bethany advising me to “get rid of” anyone who knew too much about my past, Bethany threatening Bird. To be sure, there were things on those recordings I’d rather not make public. But I would survive them. Bethany, the voice told me, wouldn’t.
I hedged my testimony at the inquest carefully, so that if I ever wanted to change or add to it later, claiming I had been intimidated into silence by Bethany, I couldn’t be accused of having directly perjured myself. The recordings on their own would not be enough to convict her, probably, but with no other witnesses, and with a time-stamped journal I wrote alluding to how frightened I was of Bethany, they would make a difference. The beauty of not using them right away, in fact, was that it gave the rumor mill time to do its work for me, setting the stage for the later reveal, should I ever choose to push the button.
But all that has changed.
Because now I know there was another eyewitness.
Gwen has gone pale. “You did it for the Joyner, didn’t you?” Furious, she laughs and cries at the same time. “You didn’t have to kill Rocky for that. I was going to tell him I was dropping out. That was my ‘ultimatum.’ I wasn’t forcing him to choose between me and her. I was choosing him over the Program.” She makes a wild noise in her throat. “You killed him for nothing.”
“Careful, Gwen,” I say.
But she won’t be silenced now. “Imagine killing someone not because you have to—not even because you want to—but just to get power over someone else.” She curls her upper lip like she’s smelling something disgusting. “It makes sense to me now, the new name. You wouldn’t want to live with that person. Someone who did that.”
What I had to do to win was strictly my business. But it is true that it has haunted me every day since. It’s not remorse I feel, exactly. It’s disappointment. That there’s nothing on the other side of the very last door. No colors. No beauty. No transcendence. Just one generation teaching the next the brutal lessons of self-loathing until each, in their turn, becomes obsolete.
“I think I must have always known it, deep down,” she says. “That night at the police station, you looked distraught. But also something else.”
“Ruthless?” I s
ay softly.
“Triumphant. Like you’d won.” She shudders. “I wouldn’t have you at my wedding even if you really were my best friend. Not even if you were my sister. It’s true, I was in denial about Rocky—just like I’ve always been about you. But at least he was trying to be a better man.”
It infuriates me. As if anyone knows more than I do about trying.
“Virtue is a luxury good,” I snarl. “And if you can’t admit that, you’re in denial about yourself, just as much as you ever were about Rocky.” I pull the ring out of my pocket and turn it in the light. “Real diamonds. You can afford to be pure, can’t you? I went down on my back for Bethany because I couldn’t afford not to. I worked for it, just like I’ve had to work for everything. But you’re too good for sex—so you get love, the big prize. Well, I took it away once. I can take it away again.”
“We’re done here,” she snaps. “Give me my ring.”
As she reaches for the ring, her hand white against the night sky, I am reminded of the day we met in homeroom, when she stretched out her hand to grab La Règle du jeu out of my backpack. How easily she identified and claimed the very best thing that had come into my life.
“Fetch,” I say.
The ring seems to fly out of my hand on its own. It arcs high over Gwen’s head, and we both hear the tiny clink as it lands on the raised ledge, bounces, and rolls, coming to rest an inch away from the edge of the building.
Gwen lunges for it, and I lunge after her. Six feet from the edge, the spongy tiles give way to metal flashing, now slickened by the rain. I catch up to her and tackle, my knee slamming to the ground, ripping my leather pants. Her chin thuds on the metal. She elbows me in the stomach and scrambles to her feet, but I’m up in time to keep her hemmed close to the edge of the roof. I feint toward her, and she steps back instinctively, her ankles hitting the foot-high ridge that holds the gutter. Black buildings rear up behind her against the starry, smoggy sky.
Her voice shakes. “Are you going to push me, Mac? Like you pushed Rocky?”
Am I? It takes less than a nudge to send some people tumbling over the edge. Others, you can throw your whole weight against, and you’re the one who winds up taking the fall. Which kind of person is Gwen? There’s only one way to find out.
I take a step closer.
“Because before you do, you should know that Bethany sends her love.”
I stop in my tracks.
Gwen laughs, her eyes still wide with fright, but now slightly manic, too. “Why did you think I came to this hotel? For Bethany, of course. I went from our drink at the bar straight to her room.”
“You’re lying.” But in my mind’s eye, I see the key card lying on the floor, right in the entryway. As if someone slid it under the door.
I feel dizzy. The world spins, flecks of freezing rain swirling in the void between us and the nearest rooftop. A gust of wind hits my back like a raging current, shoving me closer to the edge, and I can feel the whole building sway under my feet.
“Believe what you want, Mac. I don’t care what you think of me anymore.”
I raise a hand, but she grabs it and shoves me easily to one side, pushing past me so that I slip on the metal and fall to my knees, ripping the other pants leg. I get a glimpse over the edge, and my stomach lurches as the possibility enters my body that gravity will simply release its hold on me, the world will turn upside down, and I will float downward like the pinpricks of rain on the wind. I throw myself back away from the ledge and hug the rooftop, shaking.
Gwen stands over me, just out of reach.
“It’s been so nice catching up,” she says, as if we’re still at the bar, air-kissing one last time before we part ways. “I’m going to my room for a long hot bath. Then I’ll go straight to my private charter jet. I’ll sleep on the plane—it’s so comfortable, you really should try it sometime. I’ll wake up in Rome, where I’ll join my rich, handsome, talented fiancé as he does a job you never had the courage or the means to try. And after that I’ll head to Tuscany for a gorgeous wedding, like something in a magazine, only better, because it’s mine. And after that—well, who knows? I have the rest of my life to learn what I want. I don’t have to explain myself—not to you, anyway. Because I’ll never see you again.” She leans down, puts her hands on her knees. “Tomorrow when you’re grubbing around with your academic pals, and then boarding a flight back to your school in the sticks, and your knees hit the back of the seat and you pay extra for your luggage and then lug it out to the taxi stand because you can’t afford a valet service—just think of the infinite beauty that infinite wealth can buy, and how easy and sweet my life will always be because of it.”
“I don’t care,” I croak.
Ignoring me, she walks over to the ledge.
“You know, diamonds aren’t really my thing.” She looks me in the eye, lifts her foot, and gives the ring a nudge. I gasp a little as eight carats drop over the edge and vanish into the night.
“Andreas won’t mind. We’ll replace it with something more to my taste.” She walks over to the propped-open door and yanks it open. “You want to be on top, Claire? Fine. Enjoy.”
I cry out as she lets the door slam shut, locking me on the roof.
* * *
I lie in a heap on the roof tiles, my cheek pressing into the pebbled wet surface. My hand rests on something I thought was gravel, but which I now realize is a pile of broken glass. I’m lying in the remnants of someone’s late-night conversation, some hotel worker or construction crew, or maybe a pair of lovers. Who knows why people go as far up as they can? My palm stings. I raise my hand and shake loose a couple of blood-grimed shards. I don’t have the energy to sit up. Instead, I roll onto my back and look at the stars.
It’s a funny thing about stars, how they seem to run away from you. There’s always a thicker, brighter cluster in the far corner of the sky, but when you look directly, the stars there dwindle to insubstantial pinpricks.
Bethany sends her love.
I pull out the hotel room key and read the green Sharpie on the sleeve again:
PH-12.
The penthouse.
16
The scandal at Dwight Handler University was delightfully sordid stuff, fodder for moralizing op-eds and impolite jokes at dinner parties. Rocky’s predatory philandering and Bethany’s willingness to trade academic favors offended everyone and shocked no one. Everybody knew of similar rumors in their own departments. It was the indignity, more than the tragedy, that was unforgivable.
Gwen, being Gwen, told the police everything at once. After turning over her email account for evidence, she immediately disappeared to Cape Cod or St. Moritz or wherever people like her go to lick their wounds. That was just as well, because soon afterward the emails were leaked to a reporter, and for a time she was painted in a rather unflattering light by the press. Then Soo-jeong came forward, followed by three more former DHU students who had dropped out after a sexual relationship with Rocky, and the conversation changed. Rocky’s family connection to a Ukrainian mob boss was mentioned in the stories, but only sparingly, to spice the lede. I suppose they couldn’t find anything definitive. I myself occasionally wondered if he’d embellished his dark past to get women in the sack. But then I remembered the way his soul seemed to leave his body when his hands went around Bethany’s neck.
Reporters quickly dug up Bethany’s past marriage to Peter as well, but since she had cooperated with prosecutors, all that came of it was a general air of unsavoriness. More damaging were the whispers that she had killed Rocky over Gwen, which, despite my protestations, I confess I did not do much to dispel. Bethany had made a lot of enemies, not just in the Program but all over academia, and there were plenty of people ready to proclaim, after a few too many glasses of shiraz at dinner, that they “wouldn’t put it past her.” However, the official reason the university gave for terminating her contract was the quid pro quo she had offered Gwen. That sort of thing is taken very seriously
in the academic world.
The IRS also took it seriously. Bethany’s promise to Gwen and the provenance of her farmhouse triggered a self-dealing investigation into the Joyner Foundation, but thanks to Joyner’s legion of lawyers, the foundation dealings were all found to be aboveboard, and Bethany’s claims of influence looked like empty talk. Nevertheless, the committee announced with deep regret that, due to the distressing allegations of misconduct at DHU, including the resignations in disgrace of Margaret Moss-Jones and Dean Cadwallader, the fellowship would be discontinued after this year.
Tess settled her discrimination suit against DHU out of court, for an undisclosed sum that I hope and pray was astronomical. Grady Herschel took over as chair, to the tune of a great deal of closed-door murmurings about what a relief it was to have a man running the department again.
Not that there was much to run, anymore. In the wake of the accident, the department hemorrhaged students. Gwen, Connor, Letty, Arjun, and Morgan all left. Tess and Soo-jeong were already gone. Three more left within a year. After that, Aggressively Bland Matt and I were the only ones left from our original cohort. The Program was a ghost town.
The very last Joyner Fellowship went to me on the strength of my Viridiana project. Thanks to Lorraine, Margaret’s recommendation letter had already been drafted, signed, and sent; Grady, with his typical keen sense for the way the wind was blowing, wrote the second. Given the sudden demise of one of my professors and firing of the other, the committee waived the third recommendation requirement.
I did not list, under “additional materials,” stolen faxes implicating the head of the foundation in a decades-old conspiracy to defraud investors. Nevertheless, I assume they helped in some way. Not that I made contact with Joyner personally—I never did meet him, and in fact he died a few years later—but anyone who knew about the papers could take an educated guess as to where they were now. Bethany clearly didn’t have them, Gwen would have turned them over to the police, and Rocky was dead. I was the only other person in the loft that night.