by Max Barry
Clay wanted the best version of her. Of course he did. That was what she wanted, too.
“They were me,” Maddie said. “The people you killed.”
He froze. For several moments, she couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Whether he was thinking at all. His mouth closed and opened.
“It’s all right,” she said. “Clay, I understand.” She wanted to see the spotlight again, which had disappeared behind a cloud of doubt. She put both her hands on his face, feeling his rough, bloodied skin. “You love me. Not someone like me. Not me but different. Me.”
He nodded. And there it was. The truth.
“You’ll never do it again.”
He shook his head, tears spilling down his cheeks, running down her fingers. “Because I found you, Madison. I’ll be good to you always. It will be different now. It will be so different.”
She was starting to cry, too. “I believe you.”
She leaned forward. Into the spotlight. She made it slow, so that he could see what was happening, had time to anticipate it.
Their lips touched. She kissed him once, softly. He gave a small gasp for air. It was the strangest thing. She pulled away a half-inch, leaving the air between them laden with possibility. Then she sat back on her haunches. His face was incredible.
“I need to go to the bathroom,” she said. “Wait here.”
When she reached the bathroom door, she looked back. He was gazing after her with pure adulation. “I love you, Madison.”
She smiled, opened the door, and stepped inside.
As she closed the door, she was hit with a wave of revulsion. Everything she’d suppressed for the last ten minutes tried to come out of her at once. She bent over the sink. For the sound, she turned the faucet. She didn’t have long, she suspected. But she needed a moment.
In the mirror, her eyes were wide with terror. That was new, she thought; Clay hadn’t seen that. She’d kept it tucked deep down while she was playing the role of a woman in love with a murderer.
I’ll kill myself, he’d said, and that had almost broken her. Because he’d meant it, at least in the moment. But that moment would have been followed by another. And another, and another, and in one of those, he would change his mind. He would decide that he wasn’t the problem; she was. That she wasn’t even the woman he’d fallen in love with. She was someone else, someone wrong.
Her bag rested on the counter. She opened it and drew out the thing she’d taken. The thing that, in the restroom, when Clay and the large man had fought, had come spinning toward her, and which she’d picked up. She’d only meant to keep it safe. Give it to the police, when they arrived. But the words of the woman had kicked around her head: The police won’t stop him. She’d seen how angry Clay had been when the woman destroyed his stone. Which meant there was truth in her words—and Clay’s. So until she’d figured it out, Maddie had decided to do what she did best: perform.
She inspected the gun. It was heavy. She hadn’t used a firearm before. She wasn’t entirely sure how it worked. The woman had discharged it, though, which should surely mean it was ready to go.
Her eyes rose to the mirror. Her reflection was a wreck. Her reflection couldn’t kill anyone. That was the problem. She just wasn’t that kind of person. She could be facing a man who surely meant to kill her and still not act to save her own life, because she was, in her heart, kind of a coward.
In the mirror, she exhaled. The lines of strain around her eyes softened. The fear fell from her face. She found her center, and became someone else.
* * *
—
She entered the bedroom. Clay was on his feet. His face was different. He had been changing, too. In his eyes was the person she’d glimpsed earlier, the calculating one. She’d kept him at bay with sympathy and kindness, and, playing fully into his fantasy, a kiss. But she’d taken too long in the bathroom, and now he was back.
She wasn’t hiding the gun. His eyes landed on it. He yelped and scrambled backward across the bed.
She aimed and squeezed the trigger. The sound was gigantic, like a mountain breaking open. It was so startling that she temporarily forgot who she was. Clay tumbled off the bed. She couldn’t see him anymore.
“Madison,” he croaked. “Wait. Please.”
She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have any lines in this scene. It was a very mechanical part. But a part of her wondered, for a moment, if that had been what any of them said, the other women, in other places: Wait. Please.
His arm appeared. His sleeve was bloodied. She must have hit him somewhere. He rose from behind the bed with his hands out. “You have to underst—”
She squeezed the trigger again. This time he jerked back. His head hit a framed picture and dislodged it. Her next shot was wide, popping the drywall beside his shoulder. The one after that seemed to strike him in the chest. He doubled over and fell to the carpet.
She moved to the corner of the bed. She felt calm. She knew what she was doing. Clay was curled over, his fingers clenched in pain. His leg slid along the carpet, up, down. His teeth were bared. His eyes moved to her. He might have been trying to curse, or beg, or say he loved her. She couldn’t tell. All these things were possibilities. They might be happening, in other worlds. She sighted him down the barrel and squeezed the trigger again.
* * *
—
There was a banging on the door. She felt a disorienting, coming-out-of-her-head moment: the jarring instant when there was no more character, only her, unclothed and unsure.
She was in a hotel room, wearing a robe, and holding a gun.
On the carpet, Clay’s body lay still.
She moved to the door. It occurred to her to put down the gun, so she did that, on the side table. When she peered through the peephole, she saw not police or even hotel security, but the woman from the dining terrace, Felicity Staples.
She opened the door. Felicity came inside in a rush, shouldering Maddie aside. Her head whipped from side to side. “Where is he?”
“Behind the bed.”
Felicity pressed Maddie to the wall, stepping in front of her. Then she spied the gun on the side table, snatched it up, and ran in quick, balanced steps, the gun in two hands, pointing down, like a professional. She reached the end of the bed and looked at what was behind it.
“I shot him,” Maddie said into the silence. The words were shocking. Now that there was no part to play, she felt dismayed. What had she done? She was in a hotel room with a dead man. “He didn’t have a weapon. I just shot him. I murdered him.” She covered her mouth.
“Thank God.” Felicity crossed to the kitchenette and began pulling drawers open. “The twenty-second one, that can be yours.” She raised a knife, inspected it under the lights, then, satisfied, returned to the bed and knelt beside Clay. “He came here to see you?” She glanced back.
Maddie nodded.
“All right. Then you got into an argument. He threatened to kill you. You had to shoot him to defend yourself. I was here. I saw the whole thing. That’s what we tell the police.”
Maddie nodded without understanding. All she could think about was what she’d done.
Felicity seized her by the arms. “Look at me. It’s going to be okay now. It’s going to be okay for you everywhere. You’re going to live because of what you did. You did exactly what you had to.”
There was determination on Felicity’s face, but something else, too: relief on a scale that Maddie couldn’t quite fathom. Felicity had seen it before, she realized. She had seen what happened when Clay was not stopped.
“Thank you,” she said.
Felicity pulled her in for a hug, fierce and tight, like she might never let Maddie go. “Thank you,” she said.
18
She had expected to slink away without fanfare. But at four-thirty, Brandon Aberman called everyone into the Daily News�
��s meeting room, where there was a cake, plastic cups, and an oversized card that said congratulations. “Felicity Staples came to work for this paper seven years ago as a bright young cadet with a promising future,” Brandon declared, once the small audience had settled. “And I can say today that we didn’t entirely beat it out of her.”
There were cheers.
“Not for lack of trying,” Levi added, twisting the cap of a wine bottle.
“We got a few good years out of her as a political reporter,” Brandon said, “before Levi dragged her into crime reporting and ruined her.” Levi protested that he’d had nothing to do with it. Brandon raised a finger. “I say ‘ruined’ in the sense that we are ruined without her, as she’s leaving us for a far better newspaper.”
People laughed. Todd, who had been an intern but was now taking over her job, applauded enthusiastically.
“Nevertheless,” said Brandon, “despite my sadness, I’m buoyed by the thought that some small part of her future success will be because of what she did here. And because it is so nice to be able to do one of these where the person isn’t quitting the entire fucking industry.” More cheers. “To Felicity!” Brandon called, and they echoed her name, raising their plastic cups, which Levi had been filling. “To the future of journalism!” he added, to mixed feedback.
She drank. She ate three slices of cake. By five-fifteen, most people had excused themselves, but she was hanging around, reluctant to leave. The newsroom clock was thwack-thwacking its way through the hour, and she was even going to miss that.
“Mmf,” said Levi, approaching with a drink in one hand and a slice of cake in the other. “It won’t be the same without you, Felicity.”
“You’re not getting rid of me that easily,” she said. “I’m going to call you all the time, because I need your contacts.”
“Yes,” he said, pointing at her. “Do that. Great point.”
“You are drunk.”
“Actually, I’m grieving. A colleague just told me some terrible news.” He leaned toward her conspiratorially. “Annalise from Ad Sales. Her marriage is over.”
“Oh,” Felicity said. “Wow.”
“She finally walked out on her no-good husband.” He made little walking motions with his fingers. “Poor girl. Woman. Poor woman. I’ve been through a divorce. I know what it’s like.”
She nudged him with her hip. “I’m happy for you.”
“Are you implying that . . . Annalise and I . . .”
She nodded. “I am implying that, yes.”
He snickered. “This is the problem with working around a bunch of reporters.”
“The problem is you’re not very subtle.”
“Well,” he said, topping up his cup from the wine bottle, “that may be true. You might have me there.”
“I should go,” she said. “It’s getting harder the longer I stay here, and I don’t want to carry a cardboard box on the subway in rush hour.”
He nodded. “I’m glad we got to work together. Even though you never told me the truth about what got you started.”
She blinked. “What do you mean?”
He waved her away. “Forget it. Me and my big mouth. Go be happy.”
“Tell me.”
He glanced around. The room was empty. “Hugo Garrelly breaks out of prison, flies across the country, and shoots up an L.A. mall with a Walther M2. The same night, an obsessive fan breaks into the hotel room of an up-and-coming actress, and she shoots him dead.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Lot of bad mojo in one night, in two places only a few blocks apart.”
“It’s the economy,” she said.
“Ha,” he said. “Except you’re in both places. The restroom where Garrelly gets cornered. And the hotel room where Maddie May is attacked.”
She tilted her head. “What are you trying to say, Levi?”
He shook his head. “Nothing. It’s just the kind of thing that sticks out to someone like me. You know how it is. A piece doesn’t fit right, so you keep tugging on it until something falls out.”
“Maddie didn’t want to be alone. We met before Garrelly started shooting, and afterward, we decided to hang out. Neither of us knew anyone else in the city.” This was what she’d told the police.
“Yes,” Levi said. “I’m sure that’s it.” He eyeballed her, then laughed. “Forget about me. I’m genetically incapable of minding my manners. You’re going to make a great crime reporter, Felicity. You have a knack for it.”
He extended his arms. She stepped into them and they hugged.
“Sing Sing will allow visitors eventually,” Levi said into her hair.
She stepped back. “Pardon me?”
“They’ve had him locked down for six months, but that can’t last. Sooner or later, people will be let in to visit. To ask questions.”
She eyed him, unsure what this was: A piece of harmless gossip? A warning? “I don’t have anything to hide, Levi. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Of course you were.” Then, like he couldn’t help it: “Twice.”
“I have to go,” she said. “Thanks, Levi. I learned a lot from you.”
“I wish I could say the same,” he said.
* * *
—
Four days later, there was a thick yellow envelope in her mailbox marked new york department of corrections. She stared at it for so long that a man who owned a dog that had once peed in the elevator said, “Excuse me,” and she had to move to let him by. She carried the envelope to her apartment and sat on the sofa beside Percival.
Inside was a smaller envelope, white, stapled to a form letter that informed her that she was receiving a missive from a convicted felon. The communication was subject to monitoring, and if she had any questions or complaints about that, there was a number she could call. On the form were two dates, one for original application and one for approval granted, and they were three months apart.
Joey leaped onto the sofa. She gave him a scratch, to reward his bravery. Then she tore open the envelope. Inside was a single page, handwritten:
Dear Felicity,
I’ve been allowed to write this letter, but I don’t know if it will get to you. If it does, I hope you’ll visit. I know we had our differences and I don’t blame you if you don’t want to see me, but I hope the fact that I came back means something.
My people moved without me.
It’s hard to get news here, but a CO told me Madison May is in a big movie. I’m glad to hear that.
If you visit, I would like to ask a favor. I know this might make you stay away, but this might be my only chance, so I have to ask.
Before we last met, I put something in a pool outside a bank. By now it might be gone, but if you can find it and return it to me, I would be forever grateful.
Yours sincerely,
Sing Sing Correctional Facility
Hugo Garrelly, #411002
* * *
—
She flew out to Los Angeles the next day. It was the first time she’d returned to California, and during the flight, she debated whether to message Maddie. On the one hand, Maddie had impressed upon Felicity that she should let her know if she was ever in town. On the other, Maddie was in the process of becoming a major star, and Felicity didn’t want to turn up like some unwanted relic from the past. In the end, she sent: In L.A. for the day, hope you’re well F xxx, and put away her phone.
She parked beneath the Century City mall, one level down from the last time. Riding the escalator upward, she felt like she might be able to glance around and see the ghosts of six months prior: Maddie and Clay, Hugo, maybe even herself, clutching a bag. At the top, she turned right, away from the stores, and departed the mall for bright sunshine. She’d studied a bunch of online maps and come to the conclusion tha
t the “pool” Hugo had described in his letter must be a rectangle of aging concrete on Avenue of the Stars, which did indeed front Wells Fargo, and was close enough to the mall that she could imagine Hugo selecting it as a temporary hiding place.
It was smaller, smellier, and dirtier than she’d imagined. She walked a circuit, noting the gardens on each side that were filled with gray rocks, all of which looked quite a lot like what she was hunting for. Hugo had said he’d put it in the pool, but this was less disgusting, so she began to sift through the rocks on her hands and knees.
Forty-five minutes later, she’d collected nothing but dirty looks from a security guard in a gray uniform, who occasionally came out of the Wells Fargo and put his hands on his hips and went back inside. She straightened, studying the pool. The water was too murky to make out the bottom, but it was not deep, presumably. She sighed.
She kicked off her shoes and set them with her keys and phone. Then she climbed over the short railing and slid in.
Water closed around her up to her waist. Her feet touched slime. “Gahh,” she said, because why did an ornamental pool need to be that deep? It was ridiculous. She waded a short distance, but she wasn’t going to find anything with her toes, so she put her face beneath the surface.
When she forced open her eyes, there was a whole underwater world in front of her, with shafts of light and floating detritus. She searched for a few minutes, coming up every so often for air, and then the security guard was running toward her and hollering. “I dropped something,” she said. “I’ll just be a minute.” She ducked back under.
“Get out of my pond,” said the security guard, when she surfaced.
“One minute.”
“No, not one minute. Get your ass out of there now.”
“I’m not hurting anyone.”