Panic Attack

by Jason Starr

  “Come on, baby, I know you love me.” She tried to fire again but was out of bullets. It didn’t matter, though. He collapsed face-first onto the floor.

  MARISSA WAS sick of everybody telling her how lucky she was. All the doctors and nurses at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan had been going on about it for weeks, making comments like If the bullet had been just an inch to the left you would’ve been killed instantly and If you hadn’t gotten to your father’s cell phone and called for the ambulance and if the ambulance hadn’t gotten there so quickly you wouldn’t be alive right now. This made her lucky? If she was lucky, her parents never would have hired Gabriela as their maid. If she was lucky, that tropical storm wouldn’t have been approaching Florida and they wouldn’t have been in the house the night of the robbery. If she was lucky, she never would have gone with her friends to see Tone Def that night and met Xan, aka Johnny Long. Lying in the hospital bed, she ran through everything that had gone wrong in her life leading up to the nightmare in the bungalow in the Catskills, and she kept coming to the same conclusion: She’d been anything but lucky.

  Although she’d been trying to avoid reading the newspapers and watching the news on TV, she knew that the media was calling her a hero, overglorifying everything she’d done. She’d just been trying to stay alive; how did that make her a hero?

  While the media was praising her, they were blasting her father, calling him “Adam Bloom, the psycho therapist of Forest Hills.” They portrayed him as a crazed vigilante, who’d driven up to the Catskills to try to rescue his daughter, hell-bent on avenging the murder of his wife and restoring his own tarnished reputation. The media also criticized the police, particularly Detective Clements, for not pushing for a full mental evaluation of Dr. Bloom or revoking his gun license and for giving him the opportunity to go upstate on his own. Marissa enjoyed seeing Clements get attacked, and she agreed with what the media was saying about her father, too.

  One day a couple of weeks after the shootings, Grandma Ann came to the hospital to visit and said, “You can’t blame your father forever. You can’t go through life with that kind of anger.”

  Her grandmother looked worn and frail. Marissa was worried about her. “I really don’t want to talk about it anymore, Grandma.”

  Marissa had been through two surgeries to remove the bullet and repair the deep tissue damage and several broken ribs, and she was still in severe pain, despite all of the painkillers they were giving her.

  “Your father loved you,” her grandmother said almost desperately. “He just wanted to do the right thing.”

  “The right thing?” Marissa said. “He fucking shot me.” “He was trying to save your life.”

  “Yeah, and he did such a great job of it.” “You’re alive, aren’t you?”

  “No thanks to him.”

  “He was scared, he panicked. And if he didn’t go up there that Xan, I mean

  Johnny, might’ve killed you.”

  It had come out in the news that Xan had actually been a career criminal named Johnny Long. He’d grown up in the same orphanage as Carlos Sanchez, and the police believed that Johnny had been the second intruder in the robbery and that he’d killed Marissa’s mother and Gabriela. Marissa knew it was her fault for letting Xan into their lives, but everything else had been her father’s fault.

  “I know what your father did was wrong,” her grandmother said, “but imagine, just imagine, what the last seconds of his life were like, how awful that must’ve been for him. He had to die, thinking he’d killed you, thinking he’d killed his daughter. That’s the last thing he thought, the last thing he saw . . .”

  Her grandmother was sobbing. Marissa gave her a couple of minutes to get hold of herself, then said, “Look, I know it’s hard for you to accept, Grandma, but my father made a huge mistake, okay? I wish he’d been a better man, I really do. I wish I could defend him, I wish I could justify what he did, but I can’t. He was a selfish asshole who went around like he was wearing a red cape and he didn’t care about me or my mother or anybody but himself. If he’d called the police they might’ve saved me and I might not’ve gotten shot, and if he’d called the police when our house got robbed maybe my mother would still be alive and I wouldn’t’ve had sex with that son of a bitch Johnny Long. Don’t you see? My father caused it all, and I don’t care what you say, I’ll never forgive him for that, ever.”

  The day of Marissa’s discharge, Grandma Ann returned to the hospital. She looked extremely frail, like she’d lost ten, maybe fifteen pounds since Adam’s death.

  “Are you okay, Grandma? I’m really worried about you.” “I’m fine,” she said flatly. “Are you ready to go?”

  The plan was for them to ride in a Town Car to the Mansfield Hotel in midtown, where Marissa had booked a suite. Marissa intended to never set foot inside the house in Forest Hills again. It was already up for sale, and at some point she’d arrange for someone to sell off all the furniture and clothes and move everything else into long-term storage. Her parents’ life insurance policies, the proceeds from the sale of the house, and their other assets would make her a multimillionaire. She didn’t know what she was going to do with her life, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to waste it working. She was planning to move to Prague after all of the financial details were worked out. She’d live there for a while and then maybe move to Paris or Barcelona or some other city. She just wanted to get away—from New York, from America, from everybody who’d ever heard of Adam Bloom. The thought of having to live the rest of her life as Adam Bloom’s daughter disgusted her so much that she’d already started doing the paperwork to legally change her last name to Stern. It was her mother’s maiden name and she thought it would be a nice tribute.

  She got out of the bed and into a wheelchair. She could walk fine, but it was hospital policy that all patients, no matter what their condition, had to be wheeled out when they were discharged. The orderly wheeled her very slowly so Grandma Ann, next to them, could keep up.

  At the hospital doors, Marissa stood and walked next to her grandmother toward where the Town Car was waiting at the curb.

  Reporters rushed them. One of the loudest shouted, “Ms. Bloom, how does it feel to be a hero?”

  Marissa stopped for a moment, glared at the guy, who was a little older than her, and said, “I’m not a hero, and my last name isn’t Bloom, it’s Stern. I’m Marissa Stern. You got that?”

  They moved on toward the car. Now the reporters were shouting, “Ms. Stern! Ms. Stern! Ms. Stern!”

  Marissa helped her grandmother in and then got in after her. As they drove off down Fifth Avenue, she could still hear the reporters screaming.

  “I swear to God,” Marissa said, “I better not see the name Marissa Bloom in the papers tomorrow morning.”

  Her grandmother, looking away, didn’t say anything. Now the reporters were running alongside the Town Car, banging on the windows.

  “I mean, seriously,” Marissa said. “What’s wrong with people anyway?”

  Read on for an excerpt from Jason Starr’s latest masterpiece of suspense

  Available from Polis Books

  “Dreams, you know, are what you wake up from.”

  - Raymond Carver, Cathedral

  AFTER THE dinner party at the Lerners’ new 2.6 million-dollar house in Bedford Hills, Mark Berman knew that his wife, Deb, was pissed off at him about something. He had no idea what he’d done, but after twenty-two years together—seventeen married—he didn’t have to ask her if there was a problem. He just knew.

  During the car ride home to South Salem, Deb was still acting weird, but Mark knew if he said something it would lead to a whole discussion, even a fight, so why go there? Instead he went on about the Lerners’ house—“Can you believe the size of that backyard? The freakin’ Jets could play there. And the pool was sick.”—and then went over the schedule for tomorrow: Deb would take Justin to his swimming practice at nine, and he would drive Riley to her school play rehearsal at ten on hi
s way to play golf at the country club, and then she would pick up Riley at noon on her way back from swimming. As he was talking, Deb nodded, said, “Okay,” a couple times, but that was it. A few minutes later they were driving along the dark, twisty Saw Mill River Parkway, and she was staring out the window, not saying anything. Sick of the silence, Mark turned on SiriusXM to the Classic Rewind channel—the chorus of “Dream On.”

  Then, after maybe thirty seconds, Deb, still looking out the window, said, “I saw you.”

  “What?” Mark had heard her; he just wanted to hear her say it again.

  “I saw you,” she said.

  “You saw me,” he said, not as a question. “You saw me where?”

  Looking out at the window, at the darkness, or maybe at her reflection, she didn’t answer.

  “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” Actually Mark did know, but he didn’t want to say it himself. If she wanted to say it, make an issue out of it, let her.

  “You know what I’m talking about,” Deb said, turning toward him.

  Though he was looking at the road, not at her, he knew exactly what expression she had—that one where she squinted and her nostrils flared and she looked like she wanted to rip his head off. Yeah, he’d seen that look a few hundred thousand times.

  “No, I don’t,” Mark said. “I have no idea, okay?”

  She turned away again.

  Steven Tyler was screeching the chorus. Mark lowered the music, and said, “I don’t get this, you know? Everything’s cool, we have a good night together, out with friends, and then out of nowhere you have to launch into me.”

  “How’m I launching into you?”

  He didn’t like the way she’d said that, like she was mocking him. “It’s weird, okay?” He squinted because the guy driving toward him had his fucking brights on. “I mean this whole attitude of yours is weird. It’s like you’re looking for drama, like you want drama.”

  “I want drama?”

  “Like right now,” he said. “Like the way you’re repeating everything I say. You know it annoys the hell out of me, but you keep doing it anyway. It’s like you get off on it or some shit.”

  “I think you’re the one causing drama in this marriage.”

  “What?”

  “I saw you, okay? I saw you.”

  “Saw me?” He pretended to think about it. “Saw me where?”

  “Outside… in the backyard.”

  There was no use denying it anymore. “Oh, come on. Is that what this is all about?”

  “I’m so angry at you right now,” Deb said.

  “Nothing happened with Karen, okay?” Mark said. “I can’t believe you’re actually accusing me of something. It’s so ridiculous.”

  Karen was a neighbor, a friend, who’d also been at the Lerners’ dinner party.

  “You were holding her hand,” Deb said.

  “I was not holding her hand,” Mark said.

  “You were holding her hand,” Deb said.

  Mark let out an annoyed breath, shaking his head. “I was not holding her hand, okay? Maybe we held hands for like a second, but—”

  “It was longer than a second.”

  “A few seconds, whatever, but it was totally innocent, okay? We were talking, just talking, and she was upset, you know, she’s been having some financial trouble, that investment advisor fucked her over, and I was gonna put her in touch with my guy, our guy, Dave Anderson. That was who were talking about—Dave, Dave Anderson. Anyway, she was upset, and I was talking to her about it, giving her some advice, that’s it, okay? And, yeah, maybe at one point I may have held her hand, just in a like friendly supportive way, but—”

  “In a friendly supportive way,” Deb said.

  “There an echo in here?” Mark asked.

  “Look, I know what I saw, okay, so stop denying it. You were having a moment.”

  “What?”

  “It was what it was.”

  “It was a conversation about mutual funds.” Mark made a sharp turn, too fast, around a bend. He had to be careful, there was a deer crossing around here, wasn’t there? Then he slowed a little, and said, “I can’t believe I’m even talking about this right now. Karen’s a friend, that’s it.”

  “Friends don’t flirt the way you two always flirt.”

  “What?”

  “Can you watch the road?”

  “I can’t bel… I was helping her with a situation, okay, I wasn’t flirting with her. You want to talk flirting, how about you and Tom?”

  That was the way—put it on her.

  “What about me and—”

  “You flirt with him all the time.”

  “When do I ever—”

  “I even saw you hugging him tonight.”

  After a pause, Deb said, “You mean when I was saying goodnight?”

  “You were hugging tightly,” Mark said, glad they weren’t talking about him and Karen.

  “Oh come on, that’s—”

  “Yeah, ridiculous, I know. But what if I tried to make a big production out of it? What if I was like, ‘How could you flirt with Tom? You were having a moment? How could you do that’?”

  “Don’t try to deny what you did,” Deb said.

  “I’m not—”

  Raising her voice to smother his, Deb said, “I didn’t go off with him to a corner of the backyard, okay? If I did, what would you think? Would you think that was normal? Would you think, ‘Oh, Tom and Deb are just good friends, that’s why they slipped away together to be alone’?”

  “Are you drunk?” Mark asked.

  “What?” Deb sounded shocked, but maybe she was just pretending. “No, I am not drunk.”

  “You sure? ’Cause you’re acting drunk right now.”

  “I had a couple of drinks.”

  “You had more than a couple.”

  “Look, I told you how I feel about you, you and that woman, but you don’t seem to care. You just rub it in my face.”

  “Karen is our friend. Since when is she that woman?”

  “Since she started trying to steal my husband.”

  “Oh, for god’s sake, Deb, will you stop it? It was just holding hands—”

  “So you admit it.”

  “For a couple of seconds, for a couple of seconds, for god’s sake.”

  “It was more than the hand holding, okay? It’s everything between you two. It’s the way you look at each other, at dinner it was so obvious. And when you were telling that joke and Karen got up to go to the kitchen you waited, you waited till she came back to finish it.”

  “It’s called being polite,” Mark said.

  “You wouldn’t’ve waited if I left the table, or if anybody else left it. It was because of her. You waited because of her.”

  “No, I waited because she hadn’t heard the joke yet, you had, and she was interested, so I… Listen to you, just listen to you. Attacking me, launching into me ’cause I was polite when I was telling a joke, like I committed some kind of crime or something.”

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about, okay?” Deb said. “You won’t stop, you just keep doing it, because you want to do it, because you... I don’t know, you want to get a reaction from me or something, and you make it so obvious. I don’t think you get how embarrassing this is to me.”

  “What do you mean?” Mark looked away from the road, at Deb, for a second. “Somebody said something?”

  “No, nobody said anything, nobody had to say anything,” Deb said. “But everybody saw it, everybody knows, and I’m sure they suspect something.”

  “Suspect what?” Mark raised his voice. “This is fucking ridiculous. Nothing is going on with me and Karen. Nothing at all!”

  “I want you to stay away from her,” Deb said, “or I’m going to say something to her.”

  “What?” Mark’s hands squeezed the steering wheel as if he were trying to strangle it. “Can you just cool it, okay? This is getting out of control.”

  “Why do you car
e?” Deb said. “I mean, if nothing’s going on, if it’s all my imagination, what difference does it make to you?”

  “Because she’s a friend, she’s our neighbor,” Mark said. “Our kids are friends with her kids and… and you better not say anything, please don’t do that. It’ll just create drama. You don’t want drama, do you?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

  “Don’t say anything to her, Deb. Please.”

  “I said I’m done,” Deb said.

  She said it in a loaded way, as if maybe she wasn’t just done with the conversation, she was done with the whole marriage. Mark knew it was just an empty threat, of course. She was always getting melodramatic in arguments, then forgetting about it the next day. This would blow over too—well, it had better blow over. If she said something to Karen, confronted her in some way, Karen would freak, feel uncomfortable, and maybe would want to cut him off. Mark couldn’t let that happen. Karen was one of his closest friends, probably his best friend; he didn’t know what he’d do without her.

  Rush was into “Tom Sawyer” but Mark, not in the mood for music anymore, shut off the radio. Ah, finally, it was silent in the car. A few minutes later, they veered onto Savage Lane, a narrow road with seven houses along it including the one at the cul-de-sac where Mark, Deb, and their kids lived. Karen and her kids lived in the second house on the left and as Mark drove by he noticed—without actually turning his head to look—that the light on the second floor in Karen’s bedroom was on. Karen had left the party about ten minutes before Mark and Deb, so it figured she was home already. Mark wondered what she was doing in her bedroom, if she was getting undressed, watching TV, or if she was on the phone, talking to that new guy she’d been dating. What was his name? Steven? Yeah, Steven. Mark hated the name Steven; it reminded him of Steven Litsky, a cocky kid in his sixth grade class in Dix Hills on Long Island, who had bullied him, making his life hell. Thinking about Karen and Steven, this Steven, talking on the phone, Mark felt a pang of nausea, jealous nausea, which was ridiculous, because what did he have to be jealous about? Mark was married—maybe not completely happily married but, yeah, solidly married—and it was true that he and Karen were nothing more than friends. They had a connection, a special connection, but it wasn’t anything more than that. Still, when he thought about her with Steven, or any other guy, he always felt that pang.