You Kill Me

by Alison Gaylin

  After I was done waiting in the cash register line all over again, I headed for a pay phone just outside the store, and used my memorized phone card number to call my mother’s cell. When I got her voice mail, I said, “I know this sounds weird, but are you moving to New York? Someone told me he heard—” I would have said more. At the very least, I would have finished the sentence.

  But an unmistakable feeling halted my train of thought: eyes, boring into my back. Someone was watching me.

  I’ve always hated the way some people stare at you when you’re on a public phone—as if it’s their personal property and you’re abusing a privilege. “Talk to you later, Mom,” I said. “There’s someone behind me who is obviously waiting.”

  I hung up. “It’s all yours.”

  When I turned around, though, I saw there was no one waiting behind me.

  Looking up and down the busy sidewalk, I didn’t see one person who even returned my gaze. So, while I still felt weirdly observed, I chalked it up to nerves. I hadn’t slept much the previous night, and I tended to go a little paranoid when I got less than six hours.

  As I walked to the Space, that sensation eventually dissipated, only to be replaced by one nearly as unsettling: the plastic sales tag from my new tank top, needling into my shoulder blade. In hell, everyone’s clothes probably have little, plastic tags that can’t be removed.

  I need scissors, I thought. Which made me think of paper, which made me think of the triangle-shaped note Veronica had given me. I stopped walking and took it out of my back pocket.

  I was on Sixth Avenue near Twelfth Street. To my left, I saw Ruby Redd’s Brewing Company, where Yale’s boyfriend, Peter, worked as a waiter, and I knew the Sixth Precinct was on Twelfth, just half a block away. “Our husbands’ offices are practically next door to each other,” Yale had once remarked, even though no one else would’ve called them offices. And no one else would’ve called them husbands.

  The note clung to my palm. Without thinking any more about it, I turned left on Twelfth.

  The heat was making people walk very slowly; it was like moving in a dream. I pushed myself through the thick, moist air, weaving around groups of pedestrians as if they lived in some different, less urgent dimension. When I finally reached the Sixth Precinct house, I was sweating so much I left handprints on the glass door.

  Inside, it was less busy than usual, and there was no relief from the heat; the air-conditioning seemed to be down. A group of vaguely familiar-looking cops nodded at me as they walked slowly past, sweating into their blue uniforms and saying something about Yankees tickets.

  I spotted the imposingly tall desk sergeant, Gayle Cruz, and made a beeline for her. Gayle wore her hair in long cornrows, and today she’d woven gold and silver beads into them, making her look even more coolly regal than usual. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, yet Gayle was the type of person it seemed natural to call “your honor.” She probably scared the shit out of her blind dates.

  “Think you can cheer him up?” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Never mind.” She picked up her phone, told Krull I was here to see him, and went back to the report she was filling out.

  I stared at the officer long enough to make anyone feel uncomfortable. Anyone except her.

  “He’ll be right down.”

  Cheer him up. From what? His job? Me? “Got scissors?”

  After I snipped the offending tag, I sat down in one of the plastic chairs near Gayle’s desk and stared at the note in my hand.

  Without a doubt, the best place to read a message that says, You are in danger is a police precinct, so I began to undo the guy’s meticulous folding job. Tight as origami, it took more time and effort than anticipated. And, the more seconds elapsed in its unfolding, the more nervous I became about what was written inside. I wondered if that hadn’t been the stranger’s intention all along.

  Once I got it open, I smoothed the paper out on my lap, closed my eyes, held my breath and thought, One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. The luckiest odd number there is.

  Only then did I read it.

  I was sure the phone number at the bottom of the second note was the same one as on the first. But the message was different, and though they were of the same red ink, the capital letters were larger, more uneven. Written in a hurry. Plus, he’d added five exclamation points—which troubled me more than the words themselves: DON’T SHOW THIS TO HIM!!!!!

  Okay…

  Who did he mean by him? I imagined the man watching through Starbucks’ window as I quizzed Pierce about my mother and Krull slowly opened the first note.

  So maybe he meant Krull. Maybe he didn’t want me telling my detective boyfriend about his weird campaign to mind-fuck me into calling him. That made sense. But why such desperation? Why five exclamation points?

  Across from Gayle’s desk, the stairwell door pushed open. “Hey.”

  I studied Krull as if I were seeing him for the first time. The long, muscular legs, the broad shoulders encased in that tired old polyester suit, the loosened tie with the golf clubs on it—his father’s tie circa 1978—wide and slack against the beige shirt, collar unbuttoned to accommodate the sinewy neck.

  During Krull’s downtime, he dressed better—a little on the dull side, but always in natural fibers. His work suits, however, were bought once every couple of years from a discount outlet on Ninety-sixth Street because, as he put it, “You have to boil clothes to get death-smell out, and I’m not gonna cook a five-hundred-dollar suit.”

  Whatever he wore, though, John Krull looked best with his clothes off. I’ll show him the note, he’ll put my mind at ease and tonight we can find other ways to relieve tension.

  “I’ve got something to show you…” I said, but when I looked at his face, my breath caught in the back of my throat and the words dissolved.

  The hinge of Krull’s jaw pressed against the skin, and his lips seemed thinner, paler than usual. But what hit me hardest were his eyes. They seemed to bore through me and stare directly at the wall, as if I were nothing more than noise. As if I didn’t exist.

  I’d never seen him look at anyone like that before, and, for that moment, John Krull became a stranger—someone I didn’t want to know.

  “What do you want to show me?” he said.

  I shoved the note back into my jeans pocket. “My new shirt. You like it?”

  “It’s nice. That’s why you’re here?”

  “Well, also…ummm…guess who came to Sunny Side today?”

  “Who?”

  “Nate Gundersen.”

  His eyes went from my face to his hands and back again. But that expression never changed. “Who’s Nate Gundersen?” he said.

  I decided to take a taxi to the Space. Better to spend a few bucks on cab fare than show up twenty minutes late when we finally had a hit onstage. Roland, the ticketing manager, would have yelled at me, and getting yelled at was exactly the last thing I needed today.

  Our hit, a musical called Shakespearean Idol, had been dubbed “the most inexplicable success in theatrical history” by the New York Times and “the stink bomb that soared” by the Post. It was a modern-day version of Romeo and Juliet, in which the doomed, star-crossed lovers were finalists on a televised talent show. Yet, although the reality of this play was even worse than its description, Shakespearean Idol had been playing to packed houses since opening night.

  As far as I could see, the primary draw was the finale. After the lovers finally killed themselves, the talent show host picked one audience member at random to be the next idol of Verona. The red-faced idol was then pulled onstage and forced to sing the closing number, “’Til Death.”

  Yale said the scene turned our theater into “some kind of fascist karaoke bar,” and I had to agree. But it always earned a standing ovation, landed us on Page Six when the idol was a B-list celebrity—and, most important to Roland, sold piles and piles of tickets. For the first time since I started worki
ng at the Space, the box office staff actually had to be at work on time every day.

  Fortunately, I hailed a cab with no problem, and traffic was moving. Also, the cab was airconditioned, and the radio was set to an all-news station. Maybe my luck was turning.

  I sat back, felt the cool vinyl against my bare shoulders and started, finally, to calm down. So Krull is in a crabby mood. Big deal.

  I closed my eyes. On the radio, the traffic report ended, followed by a commercial for a prescription antidepressant, which reminded me, again, of my mother, who often suggested I take them. She’s not going to move here without telling you. You’re her only child. No one’s that self-absorbed.

  A jazzy, instrumental version of “Stormy Weather” wafted out of the speakers behind me, as a sultry female voice-over asked, “Ever feel alone in a crowd?”

  “Who the hell doesn’t?” the cabdriver muttered.

  “Do you find you can’t speak to anyone, even loved ones? Are you awkward in social gatherings? Have your moods affected your work? Your sex life?”

  That wasn’t a crabby mood. It was something else.

  “If so, you may suffer from social anxiety disorder.”

  At the precinct, I’d asked Krull out to lunch—not because I wanted to. I wasn’t even hungry, and it would have made me late for work. “Want to have lunch with me?” I’d said, to plug up the silence.

  “No, thanks. Already ate.”

  “John, what’s wr—”

  “I’m actually kind of busy right now. Sorry.”

  His mouth smiled, but not his eyes.

  “John, wait.”

  “Yeah?”

  I shot a quick look at Gayle, then moved closer.

  “Last night…what I said…about us living together…I didn’t mean that.”

  “We all do things we don’t mean to do.” His eyes were dry, black stones.

  “Rest assured, there is hope for sufferers of even the most severe symptoms.”

  “Things we don’t mean to do.” What was that supposed to mean?

  “This little pill could change your life,” the voice-over said, “It changed mine.”

  Does he want to change his life? Has he changed it already?

  The last notes of “Stormy Weather” played out alone, and I thought, Where does a man go for four hours in the middle of the night in the pouring rain?

  I wished I had enough money to quit my job at the Space and stay in this cab forever. Or at least, rent it to sleep in for a few hours.

  “Recapping today’s top stories, a woman’s stabbed, mutilated body was found early this morning in Washington Square Park….”

  I opened my eyes.

  “Jesus,” said the cabdriver.

  “She has been identified as Marla Soble, age twenty-nine, an accountant described by her neighbors at 122 West Twenty-sixth Street as kind, generous and fun-loving. She was also known for her volunteer work at the city’s animal shelters….”

  “That’s it!” I said.

  The driver glanced at me, but turned quickly back around without saying a word. Who could blame him? Who knew what my face looked like with that chill running through me—that strange mix of shock and sudden fear and the misplaced satisfaction of having figured out something awful? My eyes probably looked exactly like Krull’s. Of course he needed cheering up. He’d known about this murder. He’d probably caught this case.

  One twenty-two West Twenty-sixth Street. My old address.

  But still, why hadn’t he told me?

  Yale and I were stationed at the ticket window, and since the line of Shakespearean Idol fans stretched past the end of the block, it was a slow process telling him everything that had happened today.

  “Oh, my God, another note?” Yale said. Then, in a completely different voice, “You don’t really want me to tell you whether Corky and Juliana kill themselves, do you? That would spoil the surprise ending!”

  I found the conversation irritating and kind of pointless, like pouring out your soul to someone with split-personality disorder. But it was the way Yale and I talked when we were working the window these days.

  “You two look like you could use a homemade protein bar,” said Shell Clarion’s voice behind us.

  “No, thank you,” we both said in unison.

  “Oh, come on, you assholes. They’re gluten-free.”

  I turned around. Shell was holding a plastic baking tray lined with bars the color of cigarette ash.

  “Did she mention my nuts are the main ingredient?” shouted En from the other room.

  “He’s just pissed off because I’ve been withholding sex for three weeks.”

  I said, “Okay, now we’ve officially been given too much information.”

  “No ring, no schwing, En! Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?”

  “Would you deny me food as well?” En yelled. “Would you deny me water and air?!”

  “I bet you’d get that ring if you denied him protein bars,” said Yale.

  Shell said, “Very funny. Ha, ha, ha. I’m laughing so hard I can hardly breathe.”

  Riiiing.

  “Shell Clarion!” shouted Roland, the ticketing manager. “If you don’t get your baked goods back in the subscription room and answer that phone, you are fired, effective immediately!”

  “May I have two tickets for December eighteenth?” a man at my window was saying. “They don’t need to be together.”

  I picked up the heavy binder that Roland kept next to the window, and began paging through December seating charts.

  “So, did you show the note to John?” Yale asked.

  “Well, yes and no…It looks like we’re sold out that night.”

  “What do you mean, yes and no?” said Yale.

  “What do you mean you’re sold out?” said my customer. “That’s four months in advance.”

  “It’s a popular show at a small theater, sir.” I looked at Yale. “I mean, I was going to…but I changed my mind.”

  “Give me standing room.”

  “Excuse me,” said a teenage girl at Yale’s window. “Do you know if that guy who plays Corky has a girlfriend?”

  “How long did you wait in line to ask me that, you poor creature?”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” I told my customer. “Fire laws forbid standing room at our theater.”

  “Um…like, two hours?” the teenage girl told Yale.

  “We can sit in the damn lighting booth, and I’ll pay five hundred dollars a ticket.”

  “Hey, buddy, there’s people behind you!”

  And so it went, for two hours at least, until Roland mercifully put the CLOSED FOR A MOMENT sign in the window and gave us all a forty-fiveminute lunch break. God, how I hated Shakespearean Idol.

  By the time that break finally took place, I’d lost all interest in telling Yale about my day and was dead set on somehow making sense of it.

  “Can I borrow your cell phone?” I said to him.

  “I’m getting you your own for Christmas,” Yale said, like he always did.

  I took his phone and walked out of the theater as the rest of my coworkers stepped into the small courtyard to smoke cigarettes and eat and Roland—ever spry and springy for seventy-five—ran upstairs to report the day’s initial take to the artistic director.

  Giving us all a break at the same time instead of staggering us was a holdover from The Space’s days of having no customers whatsoever. It might not have been terribly efficient, but Roland thought it was good for morale—the “forty-five minute vacation” he called it—and astonishingly, the fans in line never complained. They just sat on the sidewalk and picnicked ’til we returned. As if we were Shakespeare in the Park.

  “I’ve got an idea,” En told Shell. “You can eat one end of a protein bar, and I’ll eat the other, and we’ll meet in the middle…. You know what I’m saying?”

  Yale said, “That’s an exit cue if I ever heard one,” and headed for the theater, where he now spent most of his downt
ime rehearsing for an upcoming audition at the Brooklyn Academy of Music to understudy KoKo in The Mikado.

  It was his dream role—the Lord High Executioner, who couldn’t bear the thought of killing another person. Knowing this, Roland had talked the artistic director into letting Yale use the stage whenever it was empty. Sometimes, he would show up as early as dawn to stand on that Idol set, with its balcony made out of gold records and microphones, and rehearse KoKo’s big number—the one about laying your head on a block and waiting for the “short, sharp chop” of death.

  A stabbed and mutilated woman. My age, my old apartment building. Why couldn’t he have just told me?

  “Sam!” Yale said, just before he entered the theater. “You’re going to tell John about the new note, right?”

  “Actually, there’s something more important than that.”

  When I reached the end of the block, I flipped Yale’s phone open and tapped in Krull’s cell number.

  “John Krull,” he said, just like always.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I hadn’t meant for the words to come out like that, so hard and accusatory.

  No reply—just seconds of silence, with my question sitting there like a pile of broken glass. “I mean—”

  “Tell you what?”

  “Jesus, John.”

  “What is this, some kind of guessing game?”

  Now it’s his turn to accuse. When did we start having conversations like this? I took a deep breath. “Marla Soble. I heard it on the news.”

  More silence. Then, “Oh.”

  I closed my eyes. “That’s why, right? You’re upset because she lived in my old building? I need you to tell me these things. I need you to explain why—”

  “Apartment.”

  “What?”

  “She lived in your old apartment. She was killed in your apartment.”

  “She was—”

  “You asked, so I’m telling you. I didn’t tell you previously because I didn’t think you wanted to know that someone went into your old apartment and lost control and stabbed a woman to death and, even though her dog howled all night, no one called the cops. I thought telling you that…explaining that to you…might hurt you more than my being a little uncommunicative, but—”