Stalker Girl

by Rosemary Graham

  It was time to go.

  The walk downtown and that little bit of harmless people-watching had calmed her down enough that she felt she could go back to Nick’s and participate in the movie night Jess and Nick had planned without sulking. Sleeping in Jess’s room wouldn’t be so bad. Yes, it was pretty awful to see what had once been her space invaded by Chantal, but that room wouldn’t have been hers forever. She’d have other rooms of her own. A dorm, next year, to start. And others after that.

  That’s how close Carly came to saving herself from all the trouble contained in that file folder.

  She glanced across the street for one last look just as the front door of the main residence, one floor above the gallery, opened and Taylor walked out. She was with two friends. All three seemed to be talking at once as they traipsed down the stairs, linked arms, and headed up West Fourth Street.

  Carly watched for a while, and she’d be lying if she said she didn’t consider following Taylor again. She knew Brian was on the road. Probably up in Canada by now, according to the tour itinerary they’d posted. What would a girl like Taylor do on a Friday night when her boyfriend was out of town?

  Carly was proud of herself when she decided against it.

  And then the next thing she knew, she found herself walking across the street and pulling open the heavy glass door of the Monroe Gallery.

  Found herself?

  Yes. Found herself. As much as she had tried, in the days that had elapsed since, to locate the point in time where she made the fateful decision to enter the gallery, she couldn’t. She knew full well that she had made a choice to do what she did, to go where she’d gone. She had only herself to blame. But she could not recall making the decision. One minute she was averting catastrophe, heading back to her life—such as it was. And the next she was creating catastrophe.

  She felt a jolt of alarm when she saw the uniformed guard standing next to the reception desk. But he smiled and nodded at her, like she was just one of the crowd. And so Carly walked on, trying to look like she belonged there as much as anyone did.

  A waitress in a white shirt and black bow tie offered cheese-stuffed mushrooms. Carly was too nervous to eat, but when a waiter came by seconds later with a tray of plastic champagne flutes, she took one and downed it. The bubbles tickled her nose, and as she swallowed, she felt the warmth travel down her throat, across her chest, and right up to her head.

  She made her way to the back of the room, where a huge painting illuminated from above and below had the whole wall to itself. On her way, she met the champagne-carrying waiter again and exchanged her empty plastic flute for a full one.

  The painting was called Lucinda. At first she wondered about the name, since all she could see was an old house with cracked windows and peeling paint surrounded by trees. But then her eye landed on the upstairs window, where a shadowy figure peered out into the trees. Carly stepped closer and saw that the figure was a woman and she was naked—or at least the part you could see was naked. Whoever said “haunting and disturbing” on the artdealers.org Web site was right. Lucinda exuded sadness. There was a car in the driveway below, but the woman seemed very much alone, cut off from the rest of the world. But maybe she wasn’t alone, Carly thought. Maybe there was a husband or a boyfriend lying asleep on a bed behind her. Maybe there was a baby dreaming in the room behind the next window.

  According to the tiny card on the wall, Lucinda cost $50,000.

  “I can’t believe this. Her work is so facile. So derivative. Hello? Anyone ever hear of Edward Hopper?”

  The source of this pronouncement was a skinny blue-haired woman in a black sack of a dress. She was standing a few feet away from Carly, arms crossed tightly, scowling at the painting. At first Carly thought the woman was talking to her, but then someone else said, “I know. Ever since MoMA put her in that nineties retrospective . . .”

  The source of that comment was an even skinnier pasty-faced guy wearing a faded Mr. Bubble T-shirt. He said it loud enough for anyone in his immediate vicinity to hear.

  They moved on to trash the next painting. Carly had no idea if the work was derivative or the artist was overrated. She liked Lucinda. She didn’t think she’d want to look at it all day every day. It was too sad. But if she had that kind of money, she figured, she’d probably have a big house, and she could keep Lucinda in her own quiet corner, a place reserved for sadness.

  While Carly stood there, imagining a house with a room for her every mood, someone else came up beside her and said, “This is my favorite.” She’d already turned her head toward the familiar voice before remembering she wasn’t supposed to know or be known by anyone in that room. It was Judith Deen, Taylor’s mother. And she was smiling at Carly. “It says so much about loneliness and longing, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “It does.” Was that a trap, a trick question? She scanned the room for the nearest exit.

  “I’m tempted to buy it myself.”

  “Too late!” The little blonde receptionist seemed to come out of nowhere. She reached out and placed a sticker, a tiny red dot, on the price tag. She turned to Judith with a big smile.

  “Who?” Judith asked.

  “Jack Chiara,” said the receptionist.

  “Good for Jack,” said Judith, looking around the gallery, which was quite crowded by now. “Where is he?” The two of them walked off in search of the $50,000 man.

  Carly was safe. Judith had no idea who she was.

  She continued down the hallway at the back of the gallery, which led to a glass door with JUDITH MONROE DEEN painted in long, gold letters. Carly glanced into the darkened room before turning around. A single red light—a phone, a computer, maybe an alarm—blinked on and off. She headed back up the hall, passing pairs and groups of people talking in low whispers.

  At the end of the hall was another door made of dark solid wood. At its center was a gold plate engraved with the word PRIVATE.

  As Carly passed, the door opened. A waiter carrying a tray of grilled shrimp on skewers came out.

  He paused and held the tray out for her. “Shrimp?”

  “No, thanks,” she said.

  He nodded and disappeared down the hall without bothering to close the door behind him.

  Carly took a few steps back and peered into the stairway behind the door. Two more waiters were on their way down with trays.

  “He claims they’re not,” said the first to come through the door. His tray held tiny crackers dotted with tiny blobs of some pinkish-orange thing. When he saw Carly, he held it out to her. “Salmon mousse?”

  She shook her head and he moved on as the other came out saying, “But you know they are.” He stopped in front of Carly and lowered his tray, “Champagne?”

  Carly reached for her third small plastic fluteful of champagne, courtesy of the Monroe Gallery, est. 1963.

  “Thanks.”

  He left the door ajar. Carly waited a moment in case there were more waiters. When none came, she pushed the door open and peered in on a narrow stairway leading into the family home.

  The wall along the narrow stairway was covered with framed photographs. She glanced up and down the hallway. Seeing no one, stepped over the threshold. Her predictable heart started its predictable pounding. She tried to calm it by telling herself she hadn’t done anything that bad. If anyone asked, all she had to do was say she was looking for the bathroom.

  She drank the champagne in one long gulp and took three deep, calming breaths as she stepped toward the pictures. This wasn’t Monroe Gallery art; it was Monroe family history. From the bottom to the top, the wall was covered in snapshots of Taylor’s grandparents and their famous artist friends, Judith as a baby, a young girl, and a bride. Big next to small. Old next to new. Black-and-white next to vivid and faded color. One double frame held two pictures, mirror images of mothers and baby daughters under the same striped umbrellas on a white-sand beach. The “rustic island getaway” in Jamaica. The first, Sadie and Judith; the s
econd, Judith and Taylor.

  As she climbed those stairs leading from the open-to-the-public Monroe Gallery to the clearly demarcated private living space of the Deen family, Carly wasn’t thinking about how the criminal code of the State of New York would view her actions. All she wanted was a glimpse into the perfect life of the perfect girl who had taken her place. Which isn’t to say she didn’t know what she was doing. Or had somehow lost the capacity to judge right from wrong. No. She knew what she was doing. She knew it was wrong. But once she had started up those stairs, she could not stop. Maybe if the State of New York criminal code had sent a messenger, a spokesperson in the form say, of Susan G. Whitman, Esq., to intervene, to read her the part about how what she was doing could cost her a $500 fine, three months in jail, and/or a year’s probation, well maybe then she would have stopped.

  It was easy to sit in the conference room of Babcock & Whitman, Attorneys-at-Law, and ask, as her mother was now, what the hell she thought she was doing going into those people’s home. The best response Carly could think of was that she wasn’t really thinking at all as she stepped farther and farther down the road that led to that order of protection and the possibility of criminal charges they were gathered around the table to discuss.

  “Curious” doesn’t quite capture the feeling that kept her moving up those stairs past the original of that picture the Times Home section had carried of the pregnant Judith and her husband resting their hands on her swollen belly.

  She was almost to the top of the stairs when she heard someone behind her say, “Excuse me.” She whipped her head around, ready to make excuses about looking for bathrooms, opening wrong doors. But it was just another waiter, this one with an empty tray, wanting to get by. He didn’t give her a second look when she backed up against the banister to let him by. And when he took a left at the top of the stairs, toward the sound of clanging pans and the smells of elegant finger food, she turned right and found herself in a softly lit, painting-lined hallway that opened into a big, dark room. There was enough light coming in through the windows for her to see a big couch and some chairs next to a huge fireplace and to see that there was a man sitting in one of the chairs.

  “Taylor?” His voice was deep. A bit ragged.

  “No. Sorry. I must have taken a wrong turn. I was looking for the kitchen.”

  The bathroom excuse wasn’t going to work up here. And so on the spur of the moment she made herself into a clueless member of the catering staff. It was lame. From the top of the stairs there was no question which direction the kitchen was. And the staff was obviously very professional. Not to mention that her cargo pants and T-shirt looked nothing like the black dress pants, white shirts, and black bow ties they wore.

  But the man in the chair wasn’t asking questions. He had needs of his own.

  “Wait. Young lady?” She heard the clicking of a lamp.

  She turned around to find a red-faced R. Conrad “Duffy” Deen III sitting in a blue blazer and a crumpled, open-collared, violet shirt. He was holding an empty wine bottle out to her. “Would you get me another bottle of this fine vintage?”

  It was clear from the way he spoke—too slow, too loud—that R. Conrad “Duffy” Deen III had consumed that entire bottle on his own.

  “I—uh—”

  “I’d get it myself, but I’m supposed to stay out of the way.” He looked around the room like he didn’t quite know how he got there.

  “Um, sure. Let me just—” She walked toward him, took the bottle out of his hand, and pretended to inspect the label. “I’ll just—um—”

  “Thank you, thank you very much,” he said with a sigh as he reached for the lamp switch.

  Carly followed the little bit of light down the hallway to the bustling kitchen. A chef in checked pants and white linen jacket was arranging trays of hors d’oeuvres for waiting waiters.

  “Um, excuse me,” she said to the waiter closest to the door. She held the bottle out. “Could someone—Um, Mr. Deen asked for another bottle of wine? He’s in the living room?” She tilted her head behind her.

  The waiter laughed, took the empty bottle, and tossed it into a bin on the floor, the clank barely audible over the bustle of the kitchen.

  “Duffy wants more,” he yelled to a woman slicing lemons at the back of the room.

  “Don’t give it to him!”

  The waiter turned back to Carly and shrugged. “Don’t worry. He’ll pass out and forget. He always does.”

  Whether Duffy was passed out or just resting, he didn’t stop Carly when she tiptoed past the room down the hall where she thought the bedrooms should be. There was no question of stopping now. She’d made it all the way up the stairs. People had seen her and hadn’t flipped out. No one had asked her who she was, what she was doing upstairs. She’d seen Taylor leave the building. It looked like she and her friends were on their way out for the night. That was less than an hour ago.

  Now it was just a matter of figuring out which of the four doors led to Taylor’s room.

  It was the second door Carly tried. The room was huge, as Carly had expected. But messy, as she hadn’t. She stepped inside and quietly shut the door behind her. It was only in size that Taylor Deen’s inner sanctum met any of Carly’s expectations. Whenever she’d imagined Taylor’s room, she’d seen a magazine spread with designer furniture, luxury bedding, and expensive rugs. Never any clutter or dirty clothes. And certainly no plates with food scraps like the one piled with shrimp tails on the desk. In Carly’s imagination, Taylor’s bed was always made, the clothes were always put away.

  Taylor’s big bed did have an expensive-looking duvet and sheets, but they were all twisted into a huge clump in the center, and the bed itself was covered with clothes, books, and magazines.

  The only place Carly could sit down was in the big, overstuffed easy chair in an alcove with double dormer windows. She made her way over to it and put her feet up on the ottoman. She sat with her hands over the worn patches on the arms. The fabric was velvety and soft. But old. Threadbare at the arms. She wondered who else had rested their arms here. Brian? Bob Dylan when he was allegedly “romantically linked” with Taylor’s grandmother? Out the window she could see the arch of Washington Square Park and wondered what it would have been like growing up with that view. Not bad, she thought. There would be lots of great people-watching from that spot. All those windows, lit up against the New York night. If she lived here, she’d spend hours in that chair, imagining the lives behind those windows.

  Across from the chair was a desk with two huge, flat-screen monitors and a fancy, ergonomically correct chair on wheels. Hanging from the back of the chair was Taylor’s deep-red sweater, the one she wore the day Carly followed her. Carly left the easy chair for the Aeron, placing a hand on the sweater as she did so. It was even softer than it looked. Carly picked it up and turned it inside out, searching for the label, which verified that it was indeed one hundred percent cashmere. She held it to her cheek and breathed in Taylor’s orange-mixed-with-cinnamon scent. With the sweater in her lap, she touched the mouse, and the screen came to life, bathing the room in purple-blue light.

  Taylor’s desktop was a collage of her photographs. Some were familiar to Carly, like the black-and-white “Gig” series where she’d seen her breakup with Brian caught for posterity. Others were new to her—scenes of destroyed houses in New Orleans, one of Taylor’s mother standing on her head in yoga class, one of her father looking much better rested, less crumpled, and less drunk than he did out in the living room.

  And then up in the corner, a weird sort of portrait of Brian inside a hand-drawn frame. It was a terrible picture. It was badly lit. His hair looked like it hadn’t been combed or brushed. Carly wondered why, when she had so many great pictures of Brian, Taylor would want to look at this one every time she turned on her computer. It looked almost like a mug shot the way he was staring dully into the camera.

  And then he moved.

  At first Carly thought she’d imag
ined it.

  Then he moved again. He scratched his cheek and rubbed his nose, and she thought Taylor had put a couple pictures on a loop to create the illusion of movement.

  But then he spoke. “Hey. You there? I thought you were going to that party.” He wasn’t looking into the camera but right below it. He was looking at a monitor. It wasn’t a picture. It was a live video stream.

  His face came even closer to the monitor. “Taylor?” Until then, Carly had been so focused on the screen that she hadn’t noticed the glowing green light at the top of Taylor’s monitor. That meant—

  “God, this is really weird. . . .” Brian squinted. “You look like—”

  Carly lowered her head and let her hair hang in front of her face. Her big curly red hair that Brian loved so much.

  “Carly? What the—?”

  Carly pulled the sweater from her lap and threw it over her head.

  “Carly, what are you doing there?”

  With the sweater covering her face, she slipped out of the chair, got on her hands and knees, and crawled across the room toward the door to the sound of Brian yelling “Taylor? Carly? Taylor? Carly?” with increasing panic. She stopped once to look back at the monitor and she saw a freaked-out Brian on his phone, and Avery and Liam taking turns peering into the monitor.

  She almost made it out. If she hadn’t collided with the waiter and tray full of hot-from-the-oven cheese puffs, she probably would have been able to get down the stairs, through the crowd, and out the door. Of course they would have caught up with her eventually. If not that night, then the next day, or the day after that. Brian would have told them who she was and where to find her. It wouldn’t have changed the trouble she was in, but it would have been less humiliating.