by JP Delaney
INT. BASEMENT BAR—LATER
Patrick brings over two more glasses of wine.
PATRICK
Do you always pick up your professors?
ME
No. Well, one time, I guess. But that ended badly.
PATRICK
Oh?
ME
The whole relationship was pretty extreme.
PATRICK
Define extreme.
ME
You know. The usual stuff.
PATRICK
I really don’t…Tell me.
ME
The usual stuff people mean when they use the word kinky.
PATRICK
You? Kinky?
ME
Why not?
PATRICK
You don’t seem the type.
ME
Maybe I’m not a type.
PATRICK
Now I’m intrigued.
“He’ll be on the lookout for someone like you, and his eagerness may make him take risks. In fact, the risk might even be part of the thrill for him. This is something you’ll appreciate, Claire—at some level, he’s a performer. All sex killers are. That’s why they create elaborate rituals around their murders, or pose the bodies for those who’ll find them. What they really crave is an audience.”
INT. BASEMENT BAR—LATER
ME
…He didn’t really want to hurt me, I think. He just wanted to see how far I was prepared to—
PATRICK
Trust him?
ME
You keep using that word.
PATRICK
Some people think I murdered my wife, Claire. Anyone who gets close to me is going to have to live in the shadow of that. So yes, trust is very important to me.
ME
Did you murder her?
INT. NEARBY SURVEILLANCE VAN—CONTINUOUS
Frank cranes forward intently. Kathryn barely looks up—she knows it won’t be this easy.
INT. BASEMENT BAR—CONTINUOUS
PATRICK
Of course not.
ME
Did you love her?
PATRICK
Very much. But, unfortunately, not in a way she always recognized as love. And, after a time, the fact that I loved her so unconditionally became part of the problem. It can be hard to be adored.
ME
She was your Vénus Blanche.
PATRICK
I suppose she was.
For a moment I think he’s going to say more. Then:
PATRICK
We should probably call it a night.
EXT. AMSTERDAM AVE, NY—DUSK
PATRICK
Thank you. I enjoyed this evening.
ME
You sound like you didn’t expect to.
PATRICK
There are very few people whose company I expect to enjoy. And even fewer I actually do.
As he walks away I call after him.
ME
I will see you again, won’t I?
PATRICK
You’ve still got the book, haven’t you? Good night, Claire.
28
Back at the apartment, Kathryn’s jubilant.
“It’s a good start. He’s opened the door to you—only a crack, but frankly it’s more than I’d dared hope for.” She paces up and down, full of nervous energy. She must have been more tense about this evening than I’d realized.
For my part, I slump in a chair, exhausted. I was too focused to be frightened at the time, but now that the adrenaline’s wearing off I’m wrung out. I feel like I’ve just played round after round of mental tennis.
And there’s something else, too: a realization that Patrick Fogler is going to be a far more challenging proposition than any of the men I flirted with in hotel bars.
Frank comes and squats next to me, examining my hand.
“It’ll be all right tomorrow. Maybe just a mark. Jesus.” He gives my fingers a gentle squeeze as he stands up. “Well done,” he says quietly.
“If he contacts you now, don’t reply,” Kathryn’s saying. “We need to think very carefully about how we play him. We’ll probably go quiet for a while, keep him guessing—”
“Play mind games, you mean?” I say. “Is that really a good idea?”
She gives me a distracted look, as if she’s only just remembered I’m here. “It’s going well, Claire. You should be proud of yourself.”
“Proud!”
“Yes. Why not?”
I shrug. “A young professor, recently widowed, makes a halfhearted attempt to screw a student who’s made it clear she has a crush on him. If that’s a crime, I bet every man on the teaching faculty would be in jail. Really, I got nowhere.”
“Nothing he said or did tonight is incompatible with my profile of the killer,” Kathryn says sharply. “Frank, show her the AV.”
Frank clicks the remote at my TV screen, then navigates through some options. A grainy image appears. Patrick and me, sitting in the shadows of the basement bar.
“We managed to get a camera on you from the stairwell,” he says. “Nineteen oh five, you went to the bathroom. See what Fogler does next.”
I watch as, in the film, I exit the frame. Patrick waits a moment, then reaches across the table for my bag and searches it, taking out my things item by item. He scrutinizes my ID and examines the bag’s lining with his fingers. Finally, his expression unchanged, he puts everything back. As he replaces my perfume, he pauses and sniffs the nozzle.
“He probably wanted to be sure I wasn’t a reporter,” I say. “He told me he had quite a few approaching him, trying to get stories, after Stella died.”
“Possibly,” Kathryn says. “Either way, it’s good we went to the lengths we did.” My student ID is watermarked with Columbia’s crown logo and a real card number.
“Right now, he’s like a predator circling a lone antelope before deciding whether or not it’s worth the chase,” she adds. “Don’t let your guard down, Claire. Not even for a second.”
29
And then…nothing.
For two weeks we wait. And for two weeks, Patrick Fogler doesn’t get in touch.
“He figured out it’s a trap,” Frank worries.
“He didn’t figure it out,” I say. “I’d have known.”
“So why haven’t we heard from him?”
“Maybe he had second thoughts. Or maybe he just wasn’t that into me.”
Frank looks at Kathryn. “Should we change the plan? Have Claire approach him again?”
She shakes her head. “We wait. Let’s see what happens.”
“It can’t hurt for me to go back to his class, though,” I argue. “After all, I’m fascinated by Baudelaire.”
“Absolutely not. You’re playing hard to get, remember? Stick to what we agreed.”
* * *
—
She does let me continue with my acting classes. It’ll keep me occupied, she concedes.
At the next session, Paul introduces us to mask work. The masks are Japanese, their painted features saved from caricature by a hint of cruelty. I get the Waif: an innocent, a lost child with a smile that, though it never changes, seems somehow both eager and coquettish in turn.
Paul talks about them as if the masks, not us actors, are the real people. When one of the students, having put on the mask of an old man, comes up behind another student and pokes her with a stick, Paul says: “He’s always doing that, the old rogue.”
Rather than act a scene together—there are no eyeholes, and we’d have been bumping into one another—he has us stand in a line, facing him. The story is about a landlord
who comes to the rice fields and rapes a woman whose family can’t pay the rent. The Rich Man knocks at an imaginary door: Farther down the line, the Waif opens it. When the Rich Man attacks me, he has to mime his aggression, and me the Waif’s fear, six feet apart, without either of us being able to see what the other’s doing.
Suddenly I realize that, underneath the mask, I’m crying. I don’t know why—it’s as quick and inexplicable as a nosebleed. For me, used to being able to turn my tears on and off at will, the lack of control is as unsettling as the crying itself.
When the scene’s over I sit down and pull the mask off, gasping. Paul comes over, squatting so his eyes are at my level. “You okay, Claire?”
I nod, not trusting myself to speak.
“It’s like that sometimes,” he says quietly. “Sometimes, when you wear a mask too long, you find it sticks to the skin.”
He says it so seriously that I just nod again, unable to tell him that the real mask, the real stage, is somewhere a long way from this room.
* * *
—
By Thursday, I can’t stand the waiting any longer.
I take the subway uptown, to the 116th Street station. I love this part of New York—a world away from the hustle and razzmatazz of Times Square. The green spaces and classical buildings remind me of England. Not to mention a dozen great movies, from Ghostbusters to Still Alice.
I walk with the other students up the steps of the Low Library, then veer right to Buell Hall. Once inside, I scan the noticeboard. Professor Patrick J. Fogler: The Aesthetics of Decadence from De Sade to Baudelaire is on the schedule for noon. Next to it is a handwritten note. Today this class will be taught by Dr. Anne Ramane.
“Excuse me,” I ask a woman who looks like she works here. “Do you know why Professor Fogler isn’t teaching today?”
“Sure. He’s attending a conference in Europe,” the woman says.
“Oh. Thanks.”
So Patrick’s away. No big deal.
But how come, I think, Detective Durban and Dr. Latham didn’t know that?
* * *
—
“An oversight,” Kathryn says dismissively. “We’d have tracked him down soon enough. The bigger question, Claire, is why you went against my explicit instructions not to attend the lecture.”
“It’s a good thing someone’s being proactive around here,” I point out.
“We have to be able to trust you—”
“Strange how right now you sound exactly like him,” I interrupt. “Like your sociopath. And trust has to work both ways. I have to know I can rely on you not to screw up.”
Kathryn frowns at my tone.
“Claire does have a point,” Frank says. “After all, we’re asking her to use her initiative in her interactions with Patrick.”
“Someone has to be in charge here,” Kathryn says coldly. “And it certainly can’t be Claire. She seems to have forgotten how dangerous this is.”
Or perhaps I’m just less obsessive than you are, I think. Less of a control freak.
Because I’m already starting to wonder: If Kathryn could make a mistake about something as simple as Patrick Fogler’s schedule, what else might she be wrong about?
30
Patrick’s absence is actually an opportunity, Kathryn decides.
“While he’s at a distance from you, he might be induced to reveal what he fantasizes about.”
“Why would he do that?”
“First, because if he is our killer, fantasies will be extremely important to him—they’re all he has to sustain him between killings. Second, because he’ll enjoy the process of sounding you out—playing games with you, teasing you, choosing what he reveals and when. As you gradually become more intimate, the detail of his fantasies will—if I’m right—increasingly come to resemble the actual details of the murders. Which is to say, the imagery of Baudelaire’s poems. We’ll drop him an email. Or rather, you will. Nothing too eager, mind.”
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Our meeting
Hey Patrick,
Just to say, I missed you in class yesterday. Dr. Ramane was great but no substitute…Plus she didn’t take me out for drinks afterward.
Sorry if I overshared that evening. I think it was just the adrenaline high from your trust game. So look, it was nice to meet you, and maybe our paths will cross again one day.
Best wishes,
Claire
“He won’t reply,” Frank predicts.
“He will if he’s the killer,” Kathryn says calmly. “If he’s the killer, he’ll be drawn to her vulnerability the way a shark’s drawn to the scent of blood.”
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Re: Our meeting
Claire,
Nice to hear from you. Perhaps we can meet up again sometime, when I’m back.
Patrick Fogler
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Re: Our meeting
Really?
To be honest I got the impression you weren’t that into me.
Claire x
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Re: Our meeting
I don’t know what gave you that idea. I’d have been in touch sooner, but there didn’t seem much point with me being away.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Re: Our meeting
That’s very conventional of you…How would Baudelaire have played it?
I love to imagine myself as his Venus, receiving all those extraordinary poems. I wonder whether he knew she’d be turned on by the things he’d dared to conjure up.
I say imagine…but in fact I was once in a similar position myself, and I know what it’s like, being allowed inside someone’s mind. An amazing feeling.
I guess some people would call what that man wrote for me pornography. But to me they were as beautiful, and as honest, as any poems.
x
A long wait, three days passing with no reply. Until, without warning:
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Re: Our meeting
In that case, perhaps the enclosed will keep you amused in my absence.
<
31
“It’s all there.” Excitement flickers on Frank’s normally impassive face as he re-reads Fogler’s fantasy for the third time. “Sweet Jesus, it’s all there.”
Dr. Latham doesn’t answer. The only sound is her pen, tapping against her lips.
“It’s just as you expected, isn’t it,” I say to her. “Everything you said he’d write about. Violence, pain, control…”
Frank reads aloud: “The musky smell of your arousal fills the room like the sickly perfume of a rare flower, an orchid that releases its heavenly odors only as it starts to wither and decay…This is some weird shit, Kathryn.”
The tapping stops.
“He could have gone down to the bookstore and copied that out from any one of a dozen books in the adult fiction section,” Kathryn says reluctantly. “It’s mildly deviant, certainly. But I couldn’t put my hand on my heart and say only a killer could have written it.”
“He hasn’t eliminated himself, though.”
She shakes her head. “No.”
“So what do we do now?”
Dr. Latham turns to me. “He’s holding back. You need to show him you’re more into this than he thinks. Write back. Give him something in the same vein, but stronger.”
“You want me to write it? Couldn’t you—?”
“Why
do you think I got you to spend time on those websites? This needs to be in your voice.”
* * *
—
Sitting at my laptop, I have to remind myself that I’ve done harder things than this, that I once went out into the New York streets and sold sweaters made of giraffe wool to commuters.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Re: Our meeting
Dear Patrick,
Thank you for the fantasy—I enjoyed it. But believe me, the things you describe are fairly tame for me. The things I like, sometimes I scare myself with how extreme they are—God, why am I telling a total stranger this? Sometimes I look at the things that turn me on—things that make me feel powerless and vulnerable and afraid—and wonder if there must be something wrong with me.
I’m telling you this because I think you might actually understand…but now I’m almost nervous of you writing anything else in case you get it wrong. Perhaps it would be better to say goodbye now, before this takes us any further.
I wrote something myself. Tell me if you like it.
Claire xx
<
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Re: Our meeting
What a remarkable person you are turning out to be, Claire.