He stopped a few feet in front of me. “You keep acting like you’re too busy to get together.” His expression was sad, hungry for affection, a puppy wanting a ball toss and an ear rub. Those large brown eyes didn’t help.
I put one hand on each of his shoulders. “Jared. Pay attention. I don’t want a relationship. I told you that. Several times.”
“Are you breaking up with me?”
“There’s nothing to break up.”
“We had mystical sex.”
“Yes, we did. That’s all.”
“There’s so much chemistry between us.”
I nodded.
“So what’s the problem? Are you really that scared of Noreen?”
I shook my head.
“I can see why you would be. That thing with the mirror was a little freaky.”
“What thing with the mirror?”
“Scratching it up like that.” He shuddered.
“She said you did it.”
He put his hand over his brow and squinted, but the sun was no longer hitting his face. It was a squint of confusion. “Why?”
“She said you couldn’t look in mirrors. Some Buddhist, excess vanity thing.”
“There’s no Buddhist thing about mirrors.”
“She said you were concerned about your temptation to vanity.”
He laughed. “I guess she thought we wouldn’t talk to each other,” he said.
Of course she thought that. She’d threatened me with eviction if I even glanced at him. It never crossed her delusional brain that I might ignore her instructions. Why on earth would she destroy her own mirror? I tried to remember what she’d said about it. The story about Jared’s Buddhist beliefs slipped off her tongue with a tasty blend of pity and reverence. Maybe she was just messing with my head, trying to make Jared out to be leaning toward the freaky side, so I’d have extra incentive to stay away from him, or maybe she thought she’d keep me out of the bathroom as much as possible, confined to my room so there was less chance of Jared and I speaking to each other at all.
I grabbed his arm and dragged him around the side of the building into a small garden. It’s not the nicest garden, since cars are parked six feet away, but there are a few benches and a short gravel path lined with agapanthus. I sat down. He sat beside me. I glanced at my phone. Seven-forty-five. I had plenty of time, although I wasn’t excited about a co-worker observing me having a personal conversation at work.
“Did you ask her what happened to it?” I said.
“No.”
“Why not?”
He put his hand on my leg. It felt nice, but I shoved it off.
“Hey.”
“I’m at work.”
“Not yet,” he said.
“It’s a proprietary move.”
“It didn’t mean anything.”
It meant everything. It meant he thought we were a team and should tackle the Noreen problem together. It meant he felt he could touch me whenever he pleased. It meant he didn’t care that I was at work, that I already looked vulnerable, exposing a piece, no matter how small, of my personal life to my co-workers. It meant he didn’t care at all about my career and what kind of reputation I’d built up with my colleagues. It meant he wasn’t afraid of me. Touching me like that meant he thought my body belonged to him. A proprietary touch suggests a man knows what you’re thinking, that you’re in the mood for physical contact, that you need comfort, and a man should never assume he knows what a woman is thinking. Especially me. “You saw a trashed mirror and didn’t think to ask her about it?”
“I try to avoid getting into conversations with her. And to be honest, it scared me a little. There was something angry about it.”
“You should ask her. Now that you know. Just to see what she says, if she puts it on me.”
“I’m not interested in having a conversation with her.” He moved closer. “Why are you pushing me away? It doesn’t matter why she does anything.”
I stood up. I adjusted my skirt so the seams were more perfectly aligned with the sides of my hips. I told him I was late for work. When I reminded him again that I wasn’t interested in a relationship, he called out the sad, puppy eyes and asked if there was some other guy in my life. I said no and I wanted to keep it that way. He stroked my lower arm, squeezing it gently. He informed me that everyone needs a mate, it’s how the human psyche is structured. I stared and wondered why he thought he knew anything about my psyche, as if we all have the same wires running through our brains. He whimpered that I’d slipped inside of him and taken over his heart, changed its rhythm. I suggested it sounded like an addiction and he should meditate his way out of it.
After a long silence, during which I checked the time again — seven-fifty-five — he nodded and agreed that meditation was always a good suggestion. He moved closer. I smelled his shampoo and saw the hairs of his beard sprouting on his jaw and cheeks, tiny dark needles, threatening to puncture the palm of my hand if I touched them. A piece of crust left over from sleep clung to one of the bottom lashes on his right eye. I wanted to pluck it away, but it would be interpreted as an intimate gesture. He needed to leave. I needed to get to work, not stand in the parking lot with an increasing flow of people, turning their heads as they tried not to look at us. A few slowed their pace in an effort to catch a few words so they could have insight into the drama, a little sip of blood, drawn from someone’s heartache to make them feel better as they started the day.
“I guess I can’t make you like me,” he said.
“I like you.”
He glowed, like the dog who’s delivered the ball back to his master and received a rub on the head, slobbering with joy that he’s been able to please.
“Even more, I like doing what I want when I want. I like not having attachments.”
“That’s very unusual,” he said.
“It is.” It looked as if he wasn’t going to leave without a virtual shove. “It’s time for me to get to work.” I grabbed my purse off the bench and walked to the door. I held my pass card in front of the reader. The light turned green and the door clanked as it unlocked. Those doors sound like they’re opening an airlock into a vault. The sound is designed to make it clear to the badge-less — they aren’t one of the elect.
I didn’t look back. Rather than letting the door close on its own, I pulled it into place behind me. It’s not that I thought he was inching toward stalker territory, that he’d try to slip in while the compressor was easing the thick, dual pane glass and aluminum back into place, but maybe my animal instinct thought differently. I ached to turn around and check whether he was headed toward his car, but if he was still there, he’d believe I cared about what he was doing. I did not.
Good sex doesn’t mean two people should join their lives at every point — eating together, spending weekends watching movies or going to clubs or hanging out, skin grafting together until it’s not clear where one person ends and the other person starts. A shivery orgasm or two doesn’t mean you should start sharing your families and secrets and money and the history of your lives. After a while, you can’t breathe, as if someone is swallowing you and you no longer know which thoughts are your own and which belong to another.
Even though I left him standing in that sad little garden at the edge of the parking lot, he’d managed to attach himself to my thoughts. All I could see when I looked at my computer screen was the scratched bathroom mirror. Thinking about Noreen’s ridiculous Buddhist vanity story, I couldn’t understand why I’d fallen for it. If you don’t want to look in a mirror, don’t look. Why had I believed that a guy who was relatively calm and sure of himself, would make a violent assault on someone else’s property?
I stood up and went to the window. Half the parking lot was visible from my office. Beyond that was a building leased by another company, and a tiny sliver of the Santa Cruz mountains. Jared’s white BMW wasn’t immediately obvious, and there was no sign of him anywhere in the lot. It was possible he’d already left wh
ile I was walking down the hall and up the stairs to the third floor. Maybe he hadn’t lingered at all, accepting the finality of the secured door. But for some reason, I had the feeling he was still out there.
Usually when a woman feels stalked, the guy is a creep, someone who gives off the vibe of terrible self esteem buried below a garbage heap of rage. But that wasn’t the case with Jared. He was good looking — I guess that’s been mentioned. More than once. He had money, and he wasn’t needy or clinging in a pathetic way, the kind of neediness that makes you feel ashamed for the other person. He seemed to be genuinely infatuated with me. It was the sex, of course. There’s no greater aphrodisiac for a man than a woman who wants sex as badly as he does, and doesn’t surround it with all kinds of romantic requirements, relationship rules, and ultimatums that we need to talk.
It wasn’t a new problem.
But now he knew where I worked. He was out there, possibly saying inappropriate things to my co-workers. Worse, he might be asking to be let into the building, creating a story with those creamy brown eyes that would make most women and a number of men cave to his sweetness.
The company can post signs on all the walls and doors, send weekly emails, and require employees to take online security training, but human beings want to trust each other. They don’t want to think someone is manipulating them. No one wants to think a young, gorgeous guy is out to steal their laptop or cell phone, or worse, cut their throat. If I closed my eyes, I could see Jared’s smile with his perfectly aligned teeth. I could see the sparkle that swims to the surface of those dark brown pools, and the almost imperceptible tilt of his head giving an impression of boyish innocence. Half the women in the building would gladly hold the door open and invite him inside.
There was still no sign of him crossing the parking lot.
I felt something behind me and whirled around. My office was empty, the door half open as it had been when I’d entered. There was no one in the hallway. I walked around the desk and closed the door. There was no lock.
I sat down and spun my chair to face the window, taunting the unlocked door and the sensation that someone was watching me. It was a sunny day. The building was filling with people. Even if Jared was inside, so what? And it wasn’t as if he wanted to hurt me. He just wanted me seated across from him at the dinner table every damn day of the week.
22
Mountain View
A week or so after I hung out by the pool with Charlie Denton, he took me out for a juicy, bloody steak dinner that left me with a dopamine high. The next day we hung out by the pool again, and then went back to his condo where he mixed two martinis. After downing the martinis, we had sex. Not great sex, but nice. Diversionary. Lying in bed after, he wanted me to quiz him to help with his bar exam prep, but I declined. His personality was like sex — diversionary.
We met at the pool again on the Fourth of July. The pool was mobbed. Charlie brought a six pack of beer, which wasn’t allowed in the pool area, but was acceptable in the grassy picnic spot adjacent to the pool where there were a few tables and several large magnolia trees providing thick shade. I brought a bag of tortilla chips and homemade salsa from the Mexican place two blocks away. We spread our towels on low lawn chairs. I was wearing a pink bathing suit that looked really good next to my nicely developing tan. We sat and watched all the craziness in the water. We didn’t talk much, just munched chips and drank the icy beer, which was quite pleasant.
After his third beer, Charlie stood up and pulled his phone out of his pocket. He tapped it and turned it sideways, pointing it at me.
“Don’t take my picture,” I said.
He laughed.
I sat forward. “I mean it. Don’t.”
“You’re gorgeous. You should be photographed on a daily basis.”
“I don’t want my picture taken. Put it away. Now.”
“Don’t be so shy. You look hot. There’s no reason to feel insecure.” He tapped the screen twice.
I stood up. “I’m not insecure. I don’t want my picture taken.” I took off my glasses so he could see the hardness in my eyes.
He laughed, moved in close, and tapped the phone several times, taking a series of close-ups before I lunged at him and tried to grab the phone. He held it above his head.
“You’re not gonna get my phone.”
I moved away. I sat down, picked up my beer, and took a long, slow swallow. I would absolutely get that phone, but I wasn’t going to make a game out of it.
He smiled and dropped the phone in his pocket. He sat beside me, leaned over, and bit my earlobe. He put his lips close to my ear. “I won.”
I smiled and took another sip of beer. I always win, but he didn’t need to know that. He wouldn’t believe it anyway.
For the rest of the summer, we mostly hung out by the pool, went out to dinner, and had lots of sex that didn’t improve much. I was stuck with him until I could find an opportunity to get that phone. I looked for an opening, but he kept it in his pocket except when we were in bed, and he never fell asleep while I was there. It wasn’t urgent, but eventually I had to have it. When you’re mostly living under the radar, it’s not a good idea if photographs are floating all over the internet, living on smart phones, taking on lives of their own in the cloud. It was bad enough I had to have a photograph taken for my key card at work, and the driver’s license I only used in bars.
It might seem contradictory to wear showy swimsuits and give a lot of attention to keeping my body strong and sleek, to pay high-end salon prices for my hair and nails, then get angry when a man tries to take a photograph. But the photograph wasn’t the only irritation, or even the most critical problem. The unforgivable aspect of his impromptu photography session was his utter disregard for my wishes. I’d clearly said, don’t take my picture, and he took my picture. He didn’t even hear me. Rather, he heard me and decided what I wanted was unimportant. Would he do the same if I said I didn’t want sex? And then he went further, inventing his own explanation for my desires. Insecure my ass. I haven’t had an insecure moment in my life. It’s a colossal waste of time. What is there to be insecure about? Insecurity means doubting your place in the world, it means measuring yourself against others and coming up lacking. It means believing someone else is somehow better or more important than your own self. Why on earth would anyone think that way? You are what you are.
There was no way he was keeping those photographs of me. Nothing would stop me from getting his phone. If I couldn’t guess his password — he seemed a likely candidate for 1234 — the phone would have to be destroyed. He had no right to possess anything of me that I didn’t expressly give him.
As the summer wore on, I learned Charlie didn’t have a lot of variety in his conversational topics — the bar exam and complaining about Sylvia were his primary interests. Splashing around in the pool with him was fun, but I was getting tired of hearing about minutiae in California law, and even more tired of his view of Sylvia’s supposed illegal behavior.
As I was leaving his condo early on a Sunday evening in August, he said, “I’m reporting her to the homeowner’s association. She and her crowd of kids will be evicted.”
“You can’t evict someone from their own home.”
“She doesn’t own it. She’s renting.”
I shivered. What kind of man picks on a woman over a bit of excess noise that could be easily blotted out by headphones? And Fall was coming, they wouldn’t have the sliding glass door open all the time. Her kids would be in school.
“Don’t be a bully.”
“I’m not.”
“Her husband left her with two kids. She gets up before dawn five days a week and feeds and dresses her kids and herself. She commutes forty minutes and busts her ass all day. So what if she has someone there to help her so she doesn’t have to drive the kids to daycare, or rush away from work and jeopardize her job if they get sick? It’s hard raising kids, a heroic effort doing it all by yourself. She’s mom and dad, she cooks, cleans,
does the laundry, pays the bills…”
He shrugged. “Not my problem.”
I thought about her brownies and her cute kids. If they could tolerate five people and an infant in a one-bedroom apartment, they deserved respect for making it all work. “You can’t report her. She’ll have nowhere to go.”
“Next meeting. In September.”
“You’re a jerk,” I said.
He laughed. “That’s what everyone says about attorneys.”
“You’re not an attorney.”
“Soon.”
I said good-bye and went back to my place. I made a martini and lit a cigarette. I sat on the balcony and watched the sun fade across the brown foothills. The sounds of kids shrieking and splashing in the pool filled the air. They sounded like wild animals. I wouldn’t let Charlie report Sylvia to the homeowners association. He wanted to send two women into what would likely be transient housing, dismantling six lives because he was too self-righteous to put on a pair of headphones.
23
Aptos
Jared wasn’t home, Noreen had been in her room all evening, and the hall light shone dully on the scratched surface of the bathroom mirror, driving me mad with curiosity every time I glanced at it.
I mixed two martinis and placed them on the coffee table. I lit two of Noreen’s noxious candles, plugged in my phone, and brought up a new age playlist. I went down the hall and knocked on her door.
“Jared?” Her voice was soft and hopeful.
I clenched my fists and took a deep breath. “It’s Alexandra.”
“What do you want?”
“I made martinis.”
There was silence on the other side of the door. A moment later she opened it. I was hit in the face by the thick, pungent odor of nail polish. “Martinis? That’s a nice surprise.” She held her hands stretched out, shaking them gently to dry the pale pink polish.
The Woman In the Mirror: (A Psychological Suspense Novel) (Alexandra Mallory Book 1) Page 12