Knife Music

by David Carnoy

  Kristen

  P.S. Please call me on my cell phone when you get a chance at the number below. I have something I need to tell you.

  For several hours, he’d debated whether he should return the gift or report to hospital officials that he’d received it, which was what he was supposed to do under regulations. Instead, he did what he felt was the safest thing: he called her cell phone and left a message, thanking her for her note and gently reiterating that he wasn’t supposed to interact on a personal basis with his patients and that he risked losing his job if he did. He said he hoped she understood and wished her all the best. And that was the last he’d heard from her.

  “I’m sorry,” he says now to Carrie. “But I was hoping she understood my position.”

  “She understood it. You wanted to forget that night ever happened. I totally understand. That’s fine. You made a mistake.”

  He goes to open his mouth to speak but, somewhere between brain and tongue, his words hit a fork and don’t know which way to turn. He smiles. She has him in a bind. If he answers that there’s nothing to forget—nothing had happened—it would fit her theory that he wanted to forget. If he answers, yes, he had made a mistake, he’d be admitting that something had happened, which is what she seems to want. The only answer: not to answer.

  “Is that what this is about?” he asks. “Forgetting and remembering?”

  “No.”

  He moves a few paces down the aisle, goes to one of the bargain racks with $9.95 titles, and randomly picks a movie.

  “Then what?”

  No response. She looks down again, and when she does, he thinks: We’re standing in two parallel universes, two separate truths, and instead of denying hers, I must embrace it or I’m dead.

  “That I didn’t sleep with you?” he asks in a low voice, pretending to examine the DVD’s case, which he notices is a Woody Allen film, Sweet and Lowdown.

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think so. Because if that’s what this is about, that would be pretty petty, don’t you think?”

  He moves down the rack, selects another movie, The Thomas Crown Affair, and flips it around to look at its back.

  “Can I ask you a question?” she says.

  “What?”

  “Why aren’t you married?”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve just always wondered.”

  Great, he thinks. This is her level of curiosity. A staple question.

  “I was,” he says. “For two years.”

  “And what happened?”

  “She left me for her ex-boyfriend.”

  “Why?”

  “Better offer.” His tone isn’t condescending but he speaks as if the explanation should seem obvious. “She got a nice package: big house, platinum AmEx, convertible Mercedes. Benefits included devotion, emotional support, free psychological counseling.”

  Her face takes on a slightly puzzled look. “But doctors make good money.”

  “Some do, like my plastic surgeon friend Reinhart. He makes good money. But compared to what this guy came into, I might as well have been earning minimum wage.”

  That gets a smile out of her. It’s nothing special, but he’s surprised by the charge it gives him. So much so that he has to look away. His eyes drop to the DVD case he’s holding.

  “This is the ultimate guy,” he says. “Pierce Brosnan as Crown. Ask any woman over thirty and she’ll tell you he’s it. A nurse I know watched this movie something like twenty times. The Titanic for the over-thirty female set. It should be studied.”

  She laughs, a distant look in her eyes. It’s one of those little laughs you let out when you remember something amusing from long ago, a precious moment.

  “Gwen thought you looked like George Clooney,” she says.

  “Gwen?” he says, a little startled.

  “She was there at your house that night. You remember her?”

  “Sure.”

  All too well, he thinks. He’d gotten Gwen Dayton’s phone number that night and slept with her a week later—a one-night fling, but it had certainly happened. He’d indexed her under “beautiful young women with boyfriends and interesting philosophies about cheating that you don’t question.” She’d told him that certain indiscretions were acceptable, even educationally necessary at this stage in her development, so long as they were isolated incidents. And he, an older, attractive man, a surgeon no less, with zero ties to her collegiate life, had made the approved-for-trial list.

  Although he was a little surprised she hadn’t admitted to the tryst in her deposition, she’d obviously deemed it better to lie than risk losing her boyfriend. Not that he blamed her—or was so eager for her to tell the truth and make the tale any more sordid than it already was. But he wasn’t sure it was the most prudent move given the likelihood that the information would eventually surface anyway.

  “She mentioned it that night,” Carrie goes on. “How you kind of looked like him.”

  “She probably watched a little too much ER as a kid.”

  “Probably. I never was into that show.”

  “I heard she gave Kristen some legal advice.”

  “Yeah,” she says, surprised. “How’d you know?”

  “I read her deposition.”

  “She has this friend who’s a law student, I guess.”

  “And she never expressed any doubt about what happened?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How’d she react when Kristen claimed she had sex with me?”

  Carrie shrugs.

  “I don’t know. I guess she was shocked like everybody else. Why?”

  “Nevermind. It’s not important.”

  He puts the Thomas Crown Affair DVD back into its correct slot in the rack.

  “Did you know?” she asks.

  “Did I know what?”

  “That your wife was cheating?”

  He smiles. His brother had asked the same question. Reinhart and Klein, too. He had a hunch she was, he’d told them all. But that wasn’t the complete truth. There was more. Just a bit. And Carrie, he decides, is going to hear it—and not because he expects his openness might elicit hers, but because he wants her to know what he’s capable of enduring.

  “Not for sure,” he says. “But I was hoping she was.”

  He gets the reaction he wants. She blinks, taken aback. “Why?”

  “Because I felt like a victim. Only I needed something to prove I was one. Something nice and concrete.”

  “Kristen felt just the opposite,” she says, unimpressed. “She didn’t feel like a victim. Not at all. But everybody wanted to make her one.”

  “Her father?”

  “Well, it started with her father. But her mother fed off of him. You know, she was definitely influenced by him. I sometimes think her mom did it on purpose.”

  “Did what on purpose?”

  “She was always creating little crises for Mr. Kroiter to deal with. You know, to get his attention. That’s what Kristen said. Mrs. Kroiter knew Mr. Kroiter would flip when he saw what Kristen had written in her diary.”

  “So her mother should have gone to her first.”

  “Totally. That’s what ticked Kristen off. Her mom could have totally kept her dad out of it.”

  “And what would she have told her mother?”

  “The same thing she ended up telling her father. You know, that it was some stupid writing exercise she was doing.”

  “But her father didn’t believe her?”

  “He jumped all over her. Asked her what class she did it for. What teacher. What the exact assignment was. I mean, he’s an investigator himself. Insurance stuff. He was hard to fool. He always knew when she was lying.”

  Now there’s an ironic statement if there ever was one, Cogan thinks.

  “He was like, ‘OK, so you say it was for Miss Bracken,’” she goes on. “‘Well we’re going to have a little meeting with Miss Bracken and see what she says.’”

  The more he listen
s, the more depressed he becomes. He can’t hold on to his indignation; it keeps slipping away. And for a brief second, in a strange out-of-body moment, he finds himself angry with the doctor for sleeping with the girl. The thought flusters him, and suddenly, without warning, his tone turns hostile.

  “Well, she should have stuck to her story. She should have told him she made the whole thing up, that it was a writing exercise. Because that’s what it was, wasn’t it?”

  “She defended you. She told him she wasn’t raped. She told him she wanted to do it.”

  “By denying something, she was really admitting to something.”

  “She was defending you,” Carrie repeats.

  “She wasn’t defending me. She was defending herself. And you, how can you say you saw us? Do you hate me that much?”

  “I don’t hate you. I wouldn’t be talking to you if I hated you.”

  “Well, go ahead and fuck me. Fuck me right out of my career.”

  That does it. Finally, he’s upset her. She looks at him a little helplessly, a pang of guilt in her eyes.

  “It’s not my fault,” she says.

  “Too easy,” he shoots back. “Try again.”

  But before she can, one of their phones rings. He pulls his out to turn it off, but it’s hers. She looks at the phone, checking the caller ID, and clicks the talk button on. “Hey, I’ll call you right back,” she says. “I’m picking up an application.” After she hangs up, she turns to him and says, “I’ve gotta go. I was supposed to meet my mother ten minutes ago.”

  She puts the phone back in her bag and heads past him, toward the front of the store.

  “Carrie, wait.”

  But she doesn’t turn.

  “Carrie, hold on.”

  He goes after her and takes her by the arm, not hard but hard enough to get her to turn around and face him. He’s greeted by a defiant scowl.

  “You won’t tell anybody I talked to you, will you?”

  “I talked to you first,” she says, almost smirking.

  “I take that as a ‘no,’ then.”

  “Take it for whatever you like. Can I go?”

  He starts to loosen his grip on her arm, but at the last moment a thought from his subconscious makes him reverse course.

  “When Kristen left that note for me, you mentioned she had something to tell me. What was it?”

  “It doesn’t matter now. I didn’t even remember until you reminded me.”

  “Yes, it does.”

  She looks at him, seeming to weigh what she owes him, if anything.

  “What was it?” he urges more gently, suddenly determined to get it out of her, if only to wring some semblance of victory from what he’s certain is a serious setback.

  “She was going to tell you that you should go see a doctor.”

  He’s stunned. “Excuse me?”

  “I don’t know exactly what for. She wouldn’t tell me. I’m sure you know, though.”

  Whether she realizes the incapacitating effect of the remark or not, she takes it as her opportunity to make her break. She easily slips from his grasp and makes for the door.

  “Carrie, wait.”

  “Sir, can I help you?”

  He whirls around. J. D., the salesperson, is standing behind him, his welcoming smile replaced by the edgy, alarmed look of a security guard who hasn’t seen action in a while and isn’t supposed to.

  “No. No, thanks. I’m fine.”

  “You’re that guy, aren’t you?”

  “Which guy?” he replies, knowing full well whom he means.

  “That guy in the papers.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “The guy who slept with the girl who killed herself.”

  “I didn’t sleep with any girl who killed herself.”

  “Well, you sure look like him.”

  “Well, I’m not him. I am fine, though,” he repeats. “And you’ve been quite helpful. Really. Thanks.”

  He bolts for the door. But the delay costs him. By the time he gets outside, it’s too late. Carrie’s gone, disappeared around one corner or the other.

  28/ DELETED SCENES

  May 5, 2007—4:55 p.m.

  “SHE WAS GOING TO TELL YOU TO GO SEE A DOCTOR.”

  The line, Carrie’s line, is still reverberating through Cogan’s head as he edges forward in traffic. He made the mistake of following the route he’d normally take home, taking University to Palm Drive, then turning right onto Arboretum and left onto Sand Hill Road next to Stanford Shopping Center. Like on most Saturday afternoons, Sand Hill, which became famous for its high commercial real-estate prices during the tech boom of the 1990s and runs for three-and-a-half miles from the shopping center to the 280 freeway, is fully backed up. The traffic is actually worse than it was coming out toward the mall, yet it barely raises his ire. He might as well be doing eighty-five in the fast lane on the freeway. His mind is racing, his fatalistic anxiety of the last several days replaced by nervous energy, a giddiness he hasn’t felt in weeks.

  What had she meant exactly? Carrie had intended to deliver the message to him weeks ago. Yet there he’d been fifteen minutes ago, standing before her in a store at the mall, physically, if not quite mentally, fit. The last time he’d been treated by a doctor was well over a year ago—for a foot injury sustained during a beach volley-ball game.

  She was going to tell you to go see a doctor.

  He keeps thinking that the only reason she could say such a thing was that something had been wrong with her. Something very wrong indeed. And wrong is good—of that he is certain.

  He has a sudden desire to talk to someone. Carolyn? Maybe not, for despite his haste he’s aware that whatever he reveals to her she’ll have to pass on to the DA’s office, and he needs time to consider the implications of such a move. But Klein—yes, Klein, the spineless wonder—will do.

  “Hey, buddy,” Klein answers his cell phone, recognizing the number on his caller ID.

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m over at the club. Why, what’s up?”

  Good. The club. It was closer than Klein’s home. Once he got through the four-way intersection, it would be clear sailing, an eight-minute ride.

  “Need to talk.”

  Klein sighs, sounding more rueful than irritated.

  “Give me half an hour. I’m with Trish and the kid. We’re eating. Why don’t you meet me and Reinhart over at Blue Chalk in a little bit.”

  “Now, Kleiny. It’s important. I saw her.”

  “Saw who?”

  “The girl. Carrie.”

  “Ted, wait—”

  But it’s too late. He’s already hung up.

  Pulling into the club’s parking lot, he’s surprised by how distant the place feels, though it hasn’t been that long since he’s been there. He had a similar sensation rolling into a high school reunion years ago; the environs seem instantly familiar yet remote. And like that day, he’s hit with a pang of nostalgia. Being relieved of his job had been hard, but sometimes he wonders whether he mourns the peripheral losses more—the simple pleasures of bantering with Reinhart and Kim during matches or sitting around the pool, kibitzing and assessing the “talent.” It’s as if his DNA has been stripped of one of its strands.

  Usually, when he arrives at the club, the girl behind the front desk doesn’t even ask for his membership card. She just smiles and says, “Hi, Doctor, go ahead, I got you.” But when he walks in today, this same girl, this little blonde Miss Congeniality, looks startled to see him.

  “Hey, Sandra,” he says, handing her his membership card. “How are you?”

  “OK,” she says, and takes the card but seems unsure what to do with it.

  Though he senses something’s wrong, he thinks she’s only acting strangely because she’d heard he’d been arrested. He asks her whether she’s going to run it or should he just go through?

  She looks at the card, then at him, then down at the card reader on the desk in front
of her. It doesn’t hit him immediately what she’s afraid of, but when she finally goes ahead and runs the card, he knows from the look on her face what the problem is.

  “I’m sorry,” she says, “it says your membership is frozen.” Then, after a beat: “Didn’t they tell you?”

  “Frozen? What’s that mean exactly?”

  “It’s on hold.”

  “I didn’t freeze it.”

  “No, I know. They did. Wait a sec. I better get Bill.”

  Bill, the manager, is a nice enough guy. Or at least he used to be. Middle-aged but very fit-looking, he turns up a couple of minutes later wearing his usual white polo shirt that shows off his physique. He’s one of those guys who would have looked older had he worked in an office. But working—and working out—at the club five days a week has enabled him to retain a tenuously youthful luster, enhanced by a hair-care product that leaves his uniformly dark, slicked-back coif looking a shade unnatural.

  “Hey, Ted. How are you?”

  “I’m doing OK, Bill. I’m just having a little trouble getting past your crack security guard here.”

  He smiles at the girl, who smiles back, seeming to relax now that her manager is on hand to buffer the tension.

  “I’m sorry, but your membership has been temporarily frozen,” Bill says, adopting an official, impassive tone that he normally reserves for members who fail to pay their bar tabs.

  “You froze it?”

  “I didn’t. The directors did. It’s club policy.”

  “I didn’t read that clause. Could you refresh me?”

  “The club has the right to refuse anybody membership. In your case, they haven’t terminated it, they’ve simply put it on hold until . . . until, well, your situation has been resolved.”

  “Why wasn’t I informed?”

  “You were. We sent a letter.”

  It was possible. After his arrest, he’d only been opening his mail sporadically and was quick to toss anything that looked irrelevant. He could have easily mistaken the envelope for one that contained the club’s monthly newsletter.

  “Aren’t you on the board, Bill?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you voted with them. You didn’t try to stop them.”