by Jason Starr
Remembering how Rebecca had bitten into my face, I realized he wasn’t referring to the healing fat lip from my struggle with Ricky.
“Oh, that,” I said. “Yeah, they’re teeth marks.”
“Where did they come from?”
I shook my head, fed up, then said, “Rebecca bit me, all right? Like Carmen told you, we had an argument and it got a little out of control. Rebecca was crazy—she flipped out sometimes. I told her she had to move out and she basically attacked me. I was trying to get her off me, and she started biting me. Then I got angry and dumped some of her stuff on the street. I took a walk, and when I came back she’d locked herself in the bathroom. I saw the water coming out into the hallway, so I broke down the door and called nine-one-one.”
“The medical examiner noticed trauma to the victim’s throat. Do you know how that happened?”
“I might’ve grabbed her throat,” I said, “trying to get her off me.”
Romero had turned his head, looking back toward the kitchen counter at, I noticed, the empty bottle of whiskey.
“Were you drinking today?” he asked.
“Rebecca was,” I said. “When I came home from work she was drunk and acting crazier than usual. That’s when I told her I’d had it, and she came after me. Are you done with the questions?”
“Not yet,” Romero said. “You said you suspected an overdose. Do you know what kind of drugs she might’ve been taking?”
“Rebecca was into the club scene,” I said. “I know she took a lot of Ecstasy.”
“Anything else?”
“Pot, coke, some meth.”
“That it?”
“Far as I know.”
Romero wrote in his pad.
“Was she depressed lately?” he asked.
“No, not really,” I said.
“Did she ever try to kill herself before?”
“Not that I know of.”
Romero was about to ask another question when the buzzer rang. Figuring it was officers coming back into the apartment, I pressed the buzzer, and, about a minute later, I opened the door, surprised to see Rebecca’s friend Ray standing there. He looked like he’d been crying, and I knew the officers outside must’ve told him about Rebecca.
“Say it ain’t true,” Ray said. “Please say it ain’t true.”
Romero and I just looked at him.
“Fuck!” Ray shouted. “Why? Why’d she have to go do that shit? Why?”
Ray started crying.
“What’s your name?” Romero said to Ray.
“His name’s Ray—he was a friend of Rebecca’s,” I said.
“I’m Romero, NYPD. Did you happen to speak with Ms. Daniels recently?”
“She called me up before,” Ray said, still crying, “like at nine o’clock. She sounded whacked, know what I mean? Started talkin’ some crazy shit—said she was gonna kill herself.”
“Did she say why she wanted to end her life?” Romero asked.
“She was sayin’ all this shit,” Ray said. “Said she was a horrible person and all this shit made no sense. She was talkin’ about him a lot too.” Ray jutted his chin toward me.
“What about him?” Romero said to Ray.
“I don’t remember all of it,” Ray said. “She just said he’d been takin’a lot of shit out on her lately, and said he was bonin’ some other bitch too.”
“What?” I said.
“That’s what she said,” Ray went on. “Said it was some bitch, Angie.”
“That’s a total lie,” I said.
“I ain’t lyin’, man,” Ray said to Romero. “She was real mad about it too. I was like, ‘Take it easy, yo, chill,’ but she said she was gonna take pills and shit. I didn’t believe her, man, but I told her I’d come by later anyway, just to hang out with her.”
“Who’s Angie?” Romero asked me.
“I work with a woman named Angie, but we’re just friends,” I explained. “I have no idea why Rebecca would’ve said that.”
“Yo, you think I’m lyin’?” Ray said to me, as if challenging me to a fight.
“No,” I said, “I believe Rebecca told you that, but it’s not true.”
“Why would she lie?” Ray said.
“I don’t know,” I said. “She was always making up stories, getting paranoid. Come on, you knew Rebecca. You knew she was crazy, right?”
“Becky wasn’t crazy, yo,” Ray said. “She was a little wild, that’s all.”
“Did Rebecca tell you anything else on the phone this evening?” Romero said to Ray. “Did she say something else was bothering her?”
“Yeah,” Ray said, “she said she was afraid David was gonna dump her ass on the street.”
“Thank you,” Romero said. “Can you wait outside, please, Mr. . . .?”
“Ramirez,” Ray said. “Yeah, I’ll wait.” Then he left the apartment, pulling on the door handle to make the door slam.
“I guess I’ll get out of your way now too,” Romero said to me, “give you some time alone. But about this Angie he mentioned. What’s her last name?”
“Nothing was going on between Angie and me,” I said. “I have no idea why Rebecca told Ray that.”
“I believe you, but can I have her last name anyway?”
“What does she have to do with anything?” I said. “I mean I don’t want to drag her into—”
“Can I just have her last name please?” He sounded frustrated.
“Lerner,” I said.
“Thank you,” he said as he wrote in his pad. Then he said, “Phone number?”
“Don’t know it,” I lied. I had her home number programmed into my cell phone.
He looked at me suspiciously, then said, “How about a work number?”
I gave him the main number at Manhattan Business, figuring it would be easy for him to get it anyway, then said, “But please don’t drag her into this if you don’t really have to.”
Romero put his pad away in his jacket pocket.
“I’ll be in touch with you after the autopsy results,” he said. “You’ll be around, right?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Good.”
After the door shut I went into the foyer and listened. Sure enough, I heard the doorbell to the apartment across the hall ring, and then Romero started talking to Carmen. Their voices were so muffled that, even with my ear against the door, I couldn’t make out exactly what they were saying. Their conversation lasted only a few minutes; then the door closed and there was silence. I walked away, deciding that I should call Angie at home and warn her that Romero might call her. I reached into my pocket and took out my cell phone, then decided that I wasn’t in the mood to talk to her. But while I had my phone out I decided I might as well get it over with and call Rebecca’s mother. I went to the hallway where Rebecca’s pocketbook was hanging on the knob of the closet door. I found Rebecca’s cell phone, but her mother’s phone number wasn’t programmed in. I didn’t know why I expected the number to be there, since Rebecca had barely been in touch with her mother. I remembered Rebecca telling me her mother’s name was Edna, and that she’d never remarried after her husband took off. Rebecca had said that her mother had moved from Duncanville to another part of Texas—I couldn’t remember if it was Houston or San Antonio. After striking out in San Antonio, I tried Houston, and sure enough the operator had a listing for an Edna Daniels. I dialed the number.
“Edna Daniels?”
“Who’s this?” the woman asked with a Southern drawl. A TV was blasting in the background.
“My name’s David Miller,” I said. “I’m sorry to call so late, but are you Rebecca Daniels’s mother?”
There was a long pause, and all I heard was the TV noise; it sounded like the Home Shopping Network.
“Are you still there?” I asked.
“Yeah, I’m still here.”
“Are you Rebecca Daniels’s mother or not?”
“I used to have a daughter named Rebecca, but, far as I’m concerned, she�
��s been dead a long, long time.”
“So she is your daughter,” I said.
“Was,” she said. “What’s this all about anyway? Becky’s in some kinda trouble, I’m sure.”
“I’m afraid I have some very bad news,” I said. “Rebecca and I have been living together for about a year, and she . . . well, she committed suicide today.”
For several seconds all I heard was TV noise. Then Edna said, “That’s all you called to tell me?”
“Yes,” I said. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “Never been finer, if you wanna know the truth. Is that all you want to say?”
“Maybe you didn’t hear me,” I said. “Rebecca killed herself today.”
“I heard you.”
“I just thought you’d want to know.”
“I told you, my daughter’s dead to me before you called, so what difference does it make, you call me up and tell me she’s dead?”
“None, I guess.”
“You know how much humiliation that girl caused me? You know how much pain she caused? Good, I’m glad she’s dead. She’s better off dead. Now when I tell people she’s dead it’ll be the truth. Can I hang up now?”
“Sure,” I said, and the call clicked off.
I held the phone up to my ear for several seconds before shutting it off. Although Rebecca had never given me many details, she’d always made out as if her mother was extremely overbearing and controlling, and I knew they’d had serious problems when Rebecca was a teenager. Still, I couldn’t imagine what had happened between them that had made her mother become so cold and heartless that she didn’t care that her own daughter had died.
I hadn’t peed since I’d come home from the bar, and I had to go badly. About to enter the bathroom, I hesitated, then went in, trying to avoid looking toward the bathtub. I had to stand over the bowl for a long time, feeling like an old man, waiting for my urine to start coming out. Finally it started to dribble out, but it took a few minutes for my bladder to drain completely. After I flushed I accidentally glanced toward the bathtub, which looked perfectly normal, as if nothing had happened. Then my legs started buckling and I had to rush out of the bathroom and catch my breath.
In the hallway I started breathing semi-normally, but then the tears started coming and then the momentum-crying kicked in. Finally I pulled myself together, reminding myself how crazy Rebecca was, and how she’d attacked me earlier and could’ve seriously hurt me.
I went into the kitchen and poured myself a glass of water from the Brita pitcher. I drank it quickly and poured another and drank that too. I felt better for a while, and then I remembered the sight of Rebecca’s naked body bobbing in the bathtub—how white she’d looked—and I decided that spending the night someplace else could be a good idea. I thought about where to go, and the first idea that came to me was Barbara’s; then I had to actually remind myself that she was dead. I laughed, shaking my head, then considered taking a train out to the Island and spending the night at Aunt Helen’s. She’d definitely let me stay for as long as I liked, but did I really want to deal with her nagging? When she found out about Rebecca, she’d start hounding me to see her friend Alice’s son, the grief counselor, and that was the last thing I needed.
Maybe I could stay at a friend’s. Keith lived right across town, on Seventy-fifth and Second, but since the failed intervention over Rebecca I’d fallen out of touch with him and the rest of my friends. A few months ago he’d called me at work and asked if I wanted to meet up for lunch sometime. I was on another line and told him I’d call him right back, but I never did. It would have been awkward to call him now and say, “Sorry I’ve been such a dick lately, man, but my girlfriend’s dead, so could I crash at your place for a couple of nights?”
Without realizing it, I’d picked up the phone and started dialing.
“Angie?”
“Yeah.” She sounded half-asleep.
“David. Sorry to call so late.”
There was a pause, and then she said, “It’s okay, I wasn’t asleep yet. What’s up?”
“Nothing much,” I said, wondering why I’d called.
“Oh,” she said.
“It sounds like I woke you,” I said.
“You didn’t.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“No, it’s okay.”
“It’s no big deal,” I said. “Get some rest.”
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
“No, of course not,” I said. “Good night.”
“Good night,” she said, sounding confused.
I had to do something to keep my mind occupied, so I started playing stock-car racing on my PlayStation. Barbara had bought me the console and a few games for my thirtieth birthday. Whenever she came over we’d play, getting loud and competitive, like kids.
“I’m gonna lap you,” I said.
“No, you’re not,” she said, hitting the brakes, causing me to rear-end her, lose control, and crash into a brick wall.
“Cheater,” I said, steering my car back on the road. “I’m gonna get you.” I accelerated at top speed, getting back into the race. “Okay, here we go, baby.”
“So you want to go on a date Friday night?” she asked.
Making a hairpin turn at top speed, I said, “With you?”
“With my friend Stacy at work.”
“Not interested.”
“She’s really cute.”
“Okay, ready? Watch this.”
“Don’t you want to meet somebody?”
“There you are . . .”
“I think you’ll really like Stacy.”
“. . . and here I come.”
“Won’t you just call her?”
“Ha! Lapped you!”
I continued playing the game for a while longer, but I was too distracted to focus on it, and I kept crashing into things, exploding.
At one point I thought about Charlotte and Kenny. It was strange, but with everything that had happened this evening I’d almost forgotten that I was being blackmailed. As I drove my car off a bridge in a fiery crash, I decided that they had given up. They must’ve realized I was broke and couldn’t give them any money, or one of them would’ve contacted me by now.
When I glanced at the time on the cable box I was surprised to see that it was one-fifteen, meaning I’d been playing the video game for almost an hour. I decided that a good night’s sleep would do me a lot of good, so I shut off the lights in the living room, foyer, and kitchen, and went down the hallway into the bedroom. I stripped to my underwear and realized I had to pee again. I dreaded having to return to the bathroom, but unless I wanted to pee in the kitchen sink or into a milk carton, I didn’t have a choice. Finally I decided to just grow some balls and go in there.
As I urinated, I made a point of looking at the bathtub, and the strategy worked. I wasn’t sad or horrified anymore—I was just angry. Rebecca was crazy—there was no doubt about that—but why’d she have to kill herself?
I got into bed and tried to fall asleep. After about an hour of stirring, I returned to the living room and resumed playing the stock-car racing game, getting into a four-car pileup on the first bend.
11
SATURDAY MORNING, I decided I needed to get the hell out of my apartment. Without shaving or showering, I put on my Rollerblades and glided along Eighty-first Street. I hadn’t bladed in a long time; I felt awkward for a block or so, stumbling a few times, and then I got back into the groove. At a deli on Broadway, I bought a chocolate-chip muffin and a cup of coffee, and then I bladed into Riverside Park.
It was a perfect day—the sun blazing, the sky deep blue and cloudless, and it felt like it would definitely hit eighty later on. I headed downtown along the promenade adjacent to the Hudson, going at a pretty good clip by the time I reached the West Fifties. I’d been planning to blade all the way to Battery Park, but I tired out near the Chelsea Piers and had to sit on a bench to rest.
A young woman with
long, dark hair in a ponytail was sitting at the other end of the bench. She was wearing black yoga pants and a black sports bra and looked like she’d just finished a run.
I stared at her until she noticed me, and then I said, “Great day, huh?”
“Yeah,” she said. She smiled politely and looked away again. She had a plain-looking face, but she was still very good-looking.
“So do you run here often?” I asked.
She turned back toward me suddenly, as if my lame pickup line had jolted her.
“Once in a while,” she said.
“Me too.” I squinted. “Have we met somewhere before?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You really look familiar. Have you been on TV?”
“No.”
“Radio?”
“You recognize me from radio?”
I laughed, then said, “I know I’ve seen you somewhere. Do you live uptown?”
“No.”
“Oh well. We must’ve crossed paths somewhere. By the way, I’m David.”
“Ellen,” she said.
I held out my hand and we shook. I hadn’t done anything to hide the fact that I was blatantly hitting on her, but she seemed amused anyway. She acted like she wasn’t used to guys trying to pick her up.
“So what do you do?” I asked. “Maybe that’s how we know each other.”
“I’m a speech therapist,” she said.
“Really?” I said, trying to sound truly interested. “Where do you work?”
“St. Vincent’s Hospital.”
“Cool. I mean that’s a great hospital.”
“What do you do?” she asked.
“I’m the associate editor of Manhattan Business magazine.” It was strange, saying my new title aloud for the first time.
“I subscribe to Manhattan Business,” she said, her voice brightening.
“Really?” I said. “I don’t think I’ve ever met an actual subscriber. Or at least not a subscriber who’s a speech therapist.”
She laughed at my attempt at a joke. We started talking about the magazine for a while, and then I asked her a few questions about her job. We were making a lot of eye contact and she seemed to have warmed up to me.
“Do you want to get something to eat?” I asked.
She hesitated, caught off guard.