After He Killed Me

by Natalie Barelli

  I smile back at the elderly woman.

  “Of course,” I say, sneaking another look at Nick making his way toward us. I make a show of opening my purse and looking for a pen. It would have been quicker to ask the woman for one; she probably has one ready, but I want to time it with the moment when Nick reaches us and I need those few more seconds.

  “If you wouldn’t mind . . .” the woman says again.

  “Yes, of course,” I repeat. “Here,” I say, finally brandishing the pen. “Do you have something I can write on?”

  “Excuse me?” she tilts her head to the side and raises her cupped hand behind her ear.

  Perfect. She’s even hard of hearing. I lean slightly closer to her and say, as loudly and as slowly as I reasonably can, “Do you have a piece of paper? For my autograph?”

  Nick must have heard me as he looks up and raises his hand in a big wave, as if I’m a long-lost friend, his face open and beaming as he walks more purposefully toward us.

  But the older woman jerks back slightly.

  “What on earth are you talking about?” she says in a high-pitched voice, stern as a schoolmistress.

  A wave of confusion descends between us. What does she want from me, then? A selfie? Really!

  Women like her want my autograph. They are—or were, anyway—probably the largest single demographic to have read, and loved, my novel, and when they see me, and recognize me, they ask for something tangible, something that they can take home to their husband and sons and daughters and say, “You’ll never guess who I saw today in Williams-Sonoma.” I even had one woman beg me to wait right there while she rushed off to the nearest bookstore to get another copy of the novel she already owned, just so I could sign the flyleaf.

  The older woman frowns, lifts a papery, trembling finger to point at something behind me, above my head.

  “Could you reach the top shelf for me, please?”

  I turn around and lift an arm, instinctively, without thinking, my hand extended to the item, and I should grab it, give it to her, let her move on and then say hello to Nick, exchange a few words, and that would be the end of it. But Lord knows why, instead, I lean forward, bending down a little, and almost hiss into the face that has well and truly lost its trusting edge and is starting to look mildly distressed. There’s background music, as there usually is in such places, but it is too loud, obtrusive.

  “Take my autograph,” I try to whisper loudly, separating every word, but it comes out wrong. Like I’m threatening her, and this time she recoils, her face registering a small degree of alarm.

  “You do know who I am, right?” I say. “You recognized me, didn’t you? I don’t mind, really I don’t. I’m used to it, I should be.” I grin widely, looking more crazy than ever, no doubt. “It happens all the time.”

  I can feel my features tighten into what I hope is a pleasant smile, but I probably look deranged, eyes wide. I extend my hand to her again. Give me something, anything, I tell her urgently with my eyes, seeing Nick almost here. Any old piece of paper will do, but don’t leave me hanging like this just as Nick the Prick joins us.

  I rifle through the contents of my own purse and pull out my wallet. My fingers tremble as I retrieve a business card of some sort, my dentist I think, and I shove it into her palm. I close her fingers around the card tightly and with one hand I hold them there, while with the other I scribble something.

  “There,” I say, loudly.

  “I’m calling the police! I don’t want your autograph. Is that what this is?” she shouts. “Why would I want your autograph, you crazy woman?”

  “Because I’m famous! Because I won the Poulton Prize!” I yell into her frightened face just as the background music stops and lets my words bounce against the tiles, and I hear Nick in my ear, with one hand on my upper arm, saying, “Are you all right, Emma?”

  I stand up straight and turn to him in time to see the amused expression on his face as the older woman says, “I don’t want your autograph, you crazy woman. I just wanted you to get the milk pitcher up there for me, on the top shelf.”

  And to complete my humiliation, Nick, the hero of old ladies everywhere, reaches up to the shelf, picks up a perfectly ordinary white milk pitcher, and hands it to her.

  “There you are.”

  The old woman takes it, shaking her head in disbelief, and moves on, muttering to herself, and turning back, looking over her shoulder to make sure I’m not going to follow her, I suspect.

  Nick repeats his question, eyes wide as he does, a picture of sincerity, eyebrows raised in concern. “Everything all right, Emma?”

  No, everything is not all right. I have been humiliated, and from the lifting corner of his mouth and the pat-pat of his hand on my upper arm, Nick knows it very well.

  My face now crimson, I leave my plastic basket right there on the floor, and without even looking at Nick, I walk out of the store with my head down, as ashamed as if I’d been caught stealing.

  23

  Strange as it may sound, I’ve only had sex with three people in my life, in total, until today. As of today, it’s four. Does four make me a serial lover?

  The first time was with a fellow student in college, whose name, coincidentally, was also Sam.

  I liked him; he was sweet. I remember we laughed a lot together. He was a year younger than me, but then I wasn’t particularly mature for my nineteen years. Most of my peers were no longer virgins, I suspect, or maybe they pretended not to be. At our age, it seemed important to exude an air of sexual experience. I’d been guilty myself of inventing a boyfriend earlier that year, after coming back from summer vacation. Max, I’d named him.

  My mother and I never left the city during the summer; we couldn’t afford it, and she had to work. So, during vacation, I spent most days on my own, watching TV, making sure the house was clean for her and that the laundry was done. I also made delicious meals in the evening. Nothing fancy, nothing extravagant, just taking the extra time to make something from fresh ingredients, experimenting with flavors. So I didn’t mind that we didn’t go away. I liked looking after her. I loved my mother.

  You could be a cook, Emma. A professional. You’re very good at it.

  I never corrected her, pointed out that surely she must have meant a chef, because I knew her generation had different ideas of how much women could achieve. They were intelligent women who worked hard all their lives, but there were only so many opportunities open to our gender, and it didn’t help anyone to complain about it. Something like that, anyway.

  There was a young man who worked at the butcher shop down the street, who always winked and smiled at me when I shopped there, making me blush. His name was Max, so I built a fantasy around an imaginary young man who was staying with his aunt for the summer in the same building we lived in, and we’d cross paths on the staircase. I named him Max. One day Max offered me a cigarette, and after that we’d meet downstairs and smoke, and then one day he kissed me and we’d hold hands, and I can’t quite remember how the fantasy went, but anyway, he was my imaginary boyfriend for a few weeks, who tragically had to go home after the summer. Back to his mother, away from his aunt and our building.

  But Sam, the other Sam, was real. One day he invited me to a party at his friend’s house. So I went, not really anticipating anything happening between us, but it did; on a bed covered with coats and jackets that we threw on the floor. He was so eager, and the entire exercise took maybe five minutes, and I remember thinking that if that was sex, then I must be frigid.

  We didn’t talk anymore after that; not like we used to. We were awkward. The bond had been broken, and neither of us had any desire to revisit an experience that had been embarrassing for both of us. A couple of my friends knew that we’d slept together, no doubt a couple of his friends also, but for my part I gave the excuse that Max was back, and it wasn’t appropriate for me to go with two boys. And I preferred Max. I probably did. I’d made him up, after all.

  The following year I
met Stefan, a young man also at college with me; where else would I meet anyone? Stefan’s grandmother emigrated to America during the Hungarian revolution when she was a young girl, no more than a child. Her parents bundled her onto a train, after which she traveled by boat, all the way here to join a family; part of a Hungarian community that was helping their young compatriots escape. She was, still is, the bravest person I have ever met.

  Stefan and I dated for an entire year, and when his family announced they were moving to the other side of the country, we cried and hugged, and made promises that we were too young to keep.

  And then I met Jim; the less said about that the better.

  Sam the ghostwriter has his own story too. He used to be married, but not anymore. They were childhood sweethearts. Sometimes I think Jim and I were too, all those years ago, but not really.

  As it turns out, Sam’s ex-wife left him to go traveling and decided to stay away. They never had children, so that was lucky, but he would love to, he said. He has time, of course. It’s different for men. I want children too, but Jim doesn’t really want them yet; he says he’s not ready.

  “Does Jim want children?” Sam asks.

  That jolts me back to the present.

  “I didn’t tell you. Jim and I aren’t together anymore.” Which is one way of putting it.

  “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. It’s better that way.”

  “I hope I didn’t . . . you know, with that whole business of—”

  “It’s fine.” I put my hand on his arm. “You didn’t.”

  Sam nods, and we lie in silence for a little while.

  Is there an opposite of post-coitus, I wonder? Pre-coitus? It was raining, pre-coitus. It probably still is. It feels like forever, but it was only hours ago.

  “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again, Emma Fern.”

  “I know. Neither did I.”

  I pushed past him. He was holding the door open, but not so wide as to welcome me in.

  “What do you want?”

  “What are your standard contract terms? Show me a standard contract, like the one I signed.”

  “Why? You tore it up, remember? There is no contract anymore.”

  “Show me anyway.”

  “You’re really worried about this, aren’t you?” he says. “Is that what you think of me? That I’m going to trick you? How?”

  But he gave it to me in the end; his standard contract. He actually threw it at me. He didn’t understand what I was doing, but I didn’t care.

  I sat down and I went over it again, in minute detail.

  “I’ve called you. I’ve left a few messages,” he said.

  “I didn’t feel like talking.”

  “I wanted to apologize. You were right. I should never have gone along with Jim’s idea. It was deeply unprofessional of me.”

  “That’s right.”

  “But I believed him, Emma. You have to know that. I really did think I was going to help you beat writer’s block! That’s all I wanted to do.”

  “You told me all that, Sam. I heard you the first time. Sit down,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “I want to hire you.”

  “Is this a joke?”

  “Nope. I want to finish my novel. Will you work with me?”

  He sighed. “Do you think we can work together?”

  “I can, because I know what I want. The question is, can you?”

  He stood up and went to his desk, opened a drawer, and pulled out a handful of pages. He gave them to me, silently, and when I began to read, at first I was confused. I thought that something was wrong with me, because I couldn’t make sense of the words on the page. It was as if the letters were jumbled up, or it was a foreign language, and I was about to say something when it clicked: he wrote the first paragraph backward, so that you need a mirror to read it, although once you realize that, you can figure it out pretty quickly.

  I turned to him and smiled.

  “Too gimmicky?” he asked, biting his lip.

  “No, I think I like it,” I said gently, and returned to read the rest, which was not written backward.

  I couldn’t stop reading. The words flew through the air and my heart beat faster in recognition that this was really very good. It was so compelling that I was sorry when it stopped.

  “Is there more?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I love it.” I watched a smile slowly spread across his face. It was a lovely smile: innocent, happy.

  “You wrote all this?”

  “I was inspired.”

  “Even after I told you to stop?”

  He smiled, sheepish.

  “Where’s the rest?” I asked.

  He was about to object, but I winked and he laughed.

  I read what he wrote, and he told me that he’d never had an experience like this before, of collaborating with someone like this. Normally, he said, he would go away and write the book, but with us it was a team effort. He said it was because I’m so talented. He still believed that I had writer’s block, but he said my imagination was unique, and my story was magnificent. That’s the word he used: magnificent. And that it was a privilege to work with someone like me. And it was the strangest thing because it was real this time. It really was my story and my imagination.

  “You’re just my scribe,” I told him, and he laughed. He liked that.

  Then he touched my cheek.

  But now I am lying on the couch in Sam’s office, naked next to him, intertwined in a tangle of limbs.

  I think I knew this would happen. I had an image of it once, just a flash. Maybe that’s what desire looks like.

  “I should go,” I murmur into his neck.

  “Sure.” He holds me tighter. I laugh.

  “Really, I have so much to do it’s not funny.”

  “Don’t go yet.”

  “I have to.”

  I lift myself up on my elbow, look into his handsome face. His eyes are still closed, but he’s smiling. I kiss him gently on the lips.

  I stand up from the couch, and get dressed, aware of him watching me, his arms behind his head.

  “Did you copy it on the stick for me?”

  “It’s on the desk.” He points. I spot it, pick it up, and slip it into my purse, just as my cell phone rings. I’m going to leave it, because I think it’s that blocked number again. The one that never leaves a message. They called twice this morning, and I don’t want to talk to an unknown person.

  Except it’s not.

  It’s Terry.

  Carol did as we planned and emailed Terry. She made it look like a message from Jim, to set up a meeting at the Forum and do everything in my power to make it right. That was the night before we took him out sailing.

  But Jim never showed up for the meeting. The meeting that was to take place yesterday.

  “It’s not just that he didn’t call,” Terry tells me, “which would be annoying in itself, but I can’t reach him at all. His cell phone seems to be permanently off, and he hasn’t replied to any of my emails. I haven’t heard a word since, have you?”

  “Since he left? No.”

  I watch Sam stand up and gather his clothes. He disappears into the small bathroom.

  “No phone calls? Emails?” Terry asks.

  “I’ve had no contact whatsoever.” Terry called me without prompting. I don’t need to add more layers to my story.

  “Do you know where he went?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “After he moved out.”

  “Nope, I have no idea.”

  I can hear him sigh. Terry wants something more from me, and I need to give it to him. “You sound worried.”

  I want him to be as worried as possible. Tomorrow Carol will report Jim missing to the police, and I want Terry to think that Jim may have harmed himself.

  “Don’t you think that’s strange?” he asks.

  “I don’t know. We didn’t separate on the best of terms—�
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  “I realize that.”

  “But I agree, it’s not like him to disappear completely like that. I don’t know what to say. Do you think his phone’s out of battery?”

  “Maybe. It’s just odd, that’s all.”

  “I can give you his parents’ phone number if you want.”

  “Don’t worry, I have it.”

  “You do?”

  “He listed his mother as next of kin. It’s on file.”

  And what am I, I wonder—chopped liver?

  “Okay.” I sigh. “I’ll try to call him as well. And I’ll email him.”

  “Good. He may reply to you, even if he doesn’t reply to me.”

  “Did anything else come up yet?” I ask. “From the audit.”

  I hear him snort a little. “Let’s say new information has come to light.”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s no longer about the money, Emma. As I said, some of it disappeared, but it wasn’t that much, compared to what it might have been, anyway. Jim had full access to the accounts and unlimited power when it came to disposing of it. A big mistake, certainly, and against the rules, but we fell into some bad management habits, all in the name of getting things done fast, you understand? It’s possible we’re dealing with a record-keeping issue, rather than a theft.”

  Clearly, Jim has helped himself to the till. But he’s not a thief, in the traditional sense. He would have taken what he needed to get away, and no more. Just goes to show, even crazy people have morals. In terms of planting a seed that Jim has done a disappearing act, it’s a little thin.

  “I understand. But you knew that already, right? That the amount was negligible.”

  “Just, sort of. I can raise it myself, replace it. But that’s no longer the issue anyway. I wish it was.”

  I feel a prickle in the back of my neck. We’re getting somewhere, I can taste it. I imagine Terry sitting back in his chair and running a hand over his forehead. It makes my heart ache a little. Terry never deserved this.