I fight back a yawn. I was up much too late last night fixating on my hair.
Vickie admits she still has nothing concrete to back up her continuing suspicions. There’s been no smudge of lipstick, her own or anyone else’s, on Steve’s collar, no unexplained charges on his American Express. She doesn’t know about the thing she should be suspicious of, the “bombshell” episode in the copy shop. I haven’t told her. Kevin says I wasn’t on assignment for her when it happened and am under no obligation to give away information for free.
“Only someone living with infidelity would understand the pain of my existence right now,” Vickie told me yesterday. I did not try to explain how very, very much I do know about the pain. I listened when she described how Steve seemed more distant, distracted, and snappish than usual. And his morning workouts, she said, were getting longer. She was still sure this was when he was finding time to cheat. Could I follow him once more?
I agreed, vowing to myself that this was the last time, knowing I wouldn’t catch Steve doing anything but exercising. With Kevin not in town to help, I spent last night “strategizing” between hair-related panic attacks, and the Rollerblade idea came to me. I also finally realized the benefit of waiting for Steve on my side of the park, at the tennis courts, to give myself a head start. Sure enough, after about fifteen minutes of surveillance, he emerges from a trail a few feet ahead of me. Just like clockwork.
He looks the same as usual, except where’s the dog? Is the absence significant? I remind myself to mention it to Vickie, then push off and begin skating furiously to keep up with him.
This all begins on an uphill. I bought the inline skates a few years ago on a whim and haven’t used them a dozen times, and I’m in no better shape than I was last week. Within a minute I am sweating and gulping for air, cursing my unemployed state. I could be skating on the beach path in Santa Monica right now if I hadn’t put the entire country between it and me.
I lean into the hill, curling my hands into fists and clenching my jaw and stumbling over a rough place in the pavement, hanging in the balance between upright and facedown, before steadying myself and dragging myself forward. At last the hill levels out, and I turn my attention back to Steve, who’s about twenty feet ahead and doesn’t seem to be in agony of any kind. Actually, he looks good. I hadn’t noticed he’s in much better shape than Vickie and Val give him credit for. I feel like a pervert, ogling Vickie’s husband, but it’s hard not to. He’s lean and light on his feet, with just the right amount of muscle—not gym-bulky but nicely toned. Most of the other men are overdressed in shiny, expensive workout wear, with headphones and heart-rate monitors. Steve’s only gadget is a runner’s watch, and he’s in plain gray athletic shorts, a well-worn navy-blue T-shirt, and battered running shoes without socks. He doesn’t seem Vickie’s type. I’d have imagined her with someone who wore his wealth obviously.
This train of thought gets me up a second, much longer hill that starts near the bottom end of the reservoir and doesn’t crest for a good quarter mile. This time, when it switches abruptly to down, I push off as hard as I can, just to get some air on my face. Suddenly I’m rolling forward at a healthy clip, fast approaching Steve on the right edge of the road and gaining speed by the second. He may have established a nice lead early on, but he’s no match for me now that I’m moving at what feels like eighty—no, ninety; no, a hundred—miles an hour. I’m sleep deprived. My reaction time is impaired. If I fall, I’m going to die, or at least break every bone in my body.
I try not to panic; it will make everything worse. I try flexing my left foot to drag my skate brake on the pavement, but the motion throws me off balance. I move my feet apart, hoping it’ll slow me down, but all that happens is, I pick up more speed and am now doing the splits. Okay, I’m officially panicking. The wind whistles in my ears, and the road’s a flash under my feet, and I’m about to barrel into a clump of pedestrians in the crosswalk just ahead, scattering them like bowling pins.
I take the only way out I can think of: I aim for Steve’s back, extend my arms in front of me, and squeeze my eyes shut.
“Oof!” Steve grunts as I slam into him. My eyes fly open in time to see him sail over the curb—one of those slow-motion moments of clarity when you can foretell exactly what is coming next but are powerless to stop it. I’m right behind him, airborne. The two of us clatter to the ground in a bone-shattering heap. My teeth snap together as we hit.
Yet it’s not as gruesome as it could have been. Steve has managed to land on a patch of grass at the side of the road. He’s conscious, isn’t screaming, and doesn’t appear to be bleeding. Of course, he still has a 115-pound, Rollerblade-wearing human projectile on top of him.
“Oh! Oh! Oh! I am so sorry!” I struggle to disentangle myself, clipping him in the shin with my skate. I flinch when I feel myself kick him and, in flinching, whack him on the shoulder with my wrist. “Sorry! Sorry! I’m so sorry!” I’m eventually able to crawl off him, but not before knocking the front of my skull against the back of his.
My sunglasses have flown from my face and landed on top of a discarded watermelon rind. I crawl to them, put them on, and repeat, in case he hasn’t heard, how sincerely sorry I am.
Steve struggles to his feet, brushing bits of grass off his green-stained knees. I have never been so embarrassed. I have never been so petrified, either. Why did I have to crash into an Upper East Sider? I can only imagine what the next words out of his mouth will be.
“Are you all right?” He reaches to help me up. “Are you hurt?”
I stand unsteadily and inventory my body parts. No broken bones, it seems; the jury’s still out on the surface wounds. “Are you?”
He examines a raw spot on his right knee, gingerly massages his right wrist. “Not too much.”
“It’s all my fault. I feel terrible.” I do. Not so much sorry, truthfully, as furious at myself. I’ve just made the stupid mistake every driver in California knows never to make: admitting responsibility for the accident. I also feel a surge of tears rushing toward shore. Could he just publicly berate me already and get it over with? I bug my eyes out in that genius way people do to try and keep themselves from crying.
But he’s not looking at my eyes.
“My word!” he says.
In the excitement I had forgotten. I instinctively touch my hair, knowing how it must look: garish and brassy, like Val’s.
Val.
Steve’s sister-in-law.
I’m done for. He’s going to link me to Val, and then to Vickie, and have me thrown in bungling-detective jail.
“Have I seen you somewhere?”
In the time between his asking the question and my coming up with a good answer, it seems a thousand New Yorkers whiz past with bikes and skates and jogging strollers. I can’t let him think about this for too long. Otherwise he’s sure to figure out he’s seen me everywhere: in front of his building, in the park, in line at Photo/Copy Express.
I lean down and clutch my right shin, wail loudly, and crumple back onto the grass. The ploy is reasonably convincing. There’s a cut there that truly does hurt. “Owww!”
Steve sprints away.
My stomach lurches. This is not my day. I’m going to have to get up and keep following him, and also do it without his realizing it. But Steve is just hurrying to a snack cart a few yards away. He returns with two plastic bottles of Poland Spring and a wad of paper towels. He kneels down and hands me a bottle. Then he opens the other and pours water on the paper towels. “Let’s see your leg.”
I yank it away.
“Let me see,” he repeats sternly.
I extend my leg tentatively toward him. Maybe if I do what he tells me, he won’t reprimand me in the middle of Central Park.
He dabs at my wound.
“Ow! Stop it!”
He pours more water on my leg. “Hang in there.”
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“Do you want it to get infected?” More dabbi
ng.
“Owww!” It really stings.
“If I were your dad, I’d say, ‘Don’t be a baby! Pain builds character!’”
My eyes burn at Steve’s unexpected invocation of my father. I rub away the unshed tears. “Would you let me go?”
He stops his triage and sits up straight. He has a faint white scar under his chin and laugh lines at the corners of his eyes. His runner’s watch is still in stopwatch mode, the electronic numbers transforming and retransforming, unreadable. “Sorry. I know that hurt, but it had to be done. Take off your sunglasses.”
“Excuse me?”
“Glasses. Take them off. You might have a concussion. I should check your pupils.”
A trickle of sweat runs down my neck. “I do not have a concussion.”
“But I might, and if I do it’s your fault. So take off your sunglasses, please, and look at my pupils.”
What if he does have a concussion? Could he die in his sleep from it? Forget that I’d be responsible for taking another person’s life; Vickie would never let me hear the end of it.
I clench the sunglasses in one sweaty palm, lean forward, and look intently into Steve’s pupils.
They don’t seem to be dilated, but I’m no doctor.
He gazes back into mine. “Do you feel faint or shaky?”
The thing is, I do feel that way.
Steve’s eyes are liquid brown with flecks of green and gold and something else, too.
There’s a spark. A flare of the combustible element men give off when they’re attracted to someone. To my horror, I feel my body sending the same spark toward him. It crackles in the space between us, uncontrollable. Dangerous.
He moves his face in closer.
I can’t think. I can’t move. I can barely so much as breathe, waiting for what I know will come next. He’s going to kiss me, I think wildly, with equal parts dread and excitement. He’s really going to kiss me.
It’s that magically charged first-kiss moment, when you’re longing with every last nerve, Please, let this happen, and it happens, his lips brushing yours softly, that tentative dance of desire and hesitation, until you give in, melt into him, and he folds you into his arms. . . .
No, no, no. God, no.
Steve doesn’t kiss me. What I meant was, it’s like that other kind of moment where the man is about to kiss you but then realizes that if he tries anything, you’re going to punch him in the stomach and call the cops.
He pulls back. “Nothing there.”
It takes me a moment to understand that he’s talking about my pupils.
Just for a flash, I’m disappointed. Right away the disappointment gives way to disgust, then outrage. Steve isn’t some stranger I happened to crash into! He’s Vickie’s husband! How dare he!
I stand, pull the bottom of my sweatpants back down over my aching leg, and test my center of gravity on the Rollerblades. I’m pretty sure I can make it home without passing out. I pull a few dollars from my pocket and hold the money out to him. “For the water.”
“Keep it.” His tone is as frosty as mine.
I should insist more vehemently, force the money on him, but instead return it to my pocket. Hey, I’m unemployed. Every little bit helps.
“Maybe I’ll see you around,” he says.
I may not be a professional private eye. I may not be a good amateur private eye. I suspect, though, that the first rule in the handbook has got to be, don’t let your client’s husband try to seduce you.
“I don’t think so,” I say as I find an unsteady balance and skate painfully away.
SEVEN
Hi, Vickie? You won’t believe this, but I bumped into Steve today. Literally. During the stakeout. Yes, crashed right into him. On Rollerblades. He may need his head examined. No, I mean that literally, too. Cheating? Still couldn’t say, although talking to him I got the strangest feeling he was trying to . . .”
Vickie needs to know what happened this morning. She needs to know right away, but I can’t face her, not in person and not over the phone.
I open my laptop and bring up a blank e-mail.
TO: Vickie Benjamin Sokolov
FROM: Iris Hedge
SUBJ: Steve
The screen watches, blank and impatient, as I fidget in my seat, stretch my arms, try to work a kink out of my neck, and succeed only in reminding myself of the extent of my Rollerblade injuries: skinned knee, sore back, and bruises in places I didn’t know could bruise. I drop the stretching and survey my apartment. Spotless. That pillow could use plumping, though, the one on the side of the bed that used to be Teddy’s. Should I do something with myself? I’ve got Linda’s assignment tonight. Should I tweeze my eyebrows? Give myself a clay masque? Take off the faded nail polish I’ve been wearing since before I got laid off? Stare at my hair and cry? No—mail my résumés. I stuff and seal the two dozen envelopes, slip on my sandals, and limp off to the Columbus Avenue post office. Forty minutes later I return to the computer.
TO: Vickie Benjamin Sokolov
FROM: Iris Hedge
SUBJ: Steve
But it’s pointless to go further until I remove that nail polish. Regrettably, I appear to be out of cotton balls, which necessitates another side trip, this time to Duane Reade. It does not escape me that in my former life I knowingly fed the marketing machine that lays all this pressure on women.
My face is plastered with clay, and I’m in the middle of obliterating the offending polish, when the phone rings.
“Well?”
I should have written that memo.
“Well?”
“Vickie,” I say carefully, through the drying masque that has left me barely able to move my lips, “have you spoken to Steve today?”
“To his secretary. He was on his way into a meeting. You sound funny. Are you lisping?” In the background on Vickie’s end of the line, a teakettle shrills.
“Did his secretary mention how he was feeling?”
“No, why?”
“She didn’t say he seemed hurt, or anything?”
“No! Iris, what happened?”
“Nothing. I thought I saw him limping a little when he was running, but I guess not. Anyway, not to worry. He’s fine.”
The whistling grows deafening; Vickie must be walking toward the stove. “Okay,” she says as the noise cuts off abruptly. “You’re telling me yet again that he just went running.”
“That’s it.” I prepare myself. Vickie’s going to fire me, the way I imagine she must dismiss anyone who doesn’t deliver exactly what she wants: the cleaning lady whose hospital corners aren’t up to par, the facialist whose hot towel isn’t quite hot enough. She wants me to catch Steve cheating, and I am simply unable to do so.
It will be a relief. There’s something cheap and sordid about this spying business, and I’m not just talking about what Vickie pays me. After this assignment for Linda is over I’m going to hang up the chicken cutlets, retire the Rollerblades, and concentrate on getting my dignity back. “Vickie.” My face is a lakebed of cracked mud. “Have you considered couples counseling?”
“I would never trust my marriage to a total stranger.”
I go to the bathroom, dampen one of my wedding washcloths, and scrape some of the masque away from my mouth. “Even so, it’s probably time you and I parted ways. I’m sure you can find far better uses for your money.” The pittance you tossed my way, that is.
“I guess you’re right,” she admits in a small voice. “Let me know what I owe you.”
And just like that, my time in Vickie’s employ comes to a merciful end.
Val says the bar Linda has chosen for the Sexy Lexy-Icarus rendezvous, at the Hotel Royal on Forty-fifth Street, is years past its peak, but it’s still plenty intimidating to me. Nearly every wall is mirrored, lending the place the disorienting ambience of a carnival fun house, and its clientele is made up of the kind of people who spent junior high school tormenting the smart kids. It’s as if someone had tossed me into the chic-hole to tea
ch me to swim. “Sorry!” I squeak after planting the wrongly shaped heel of my slingback onto the instep of an actual woman—not the reflection I’d assumed her to be—while groping my way into the long, narrow room. The woman confides something mean-seeming to her equally flawless friend. I blush and continue on my path toward the bar, nearly colliding with the trashy, half-naked redhead with the skinned knee, who’s marching straight toward me. Good Lord! That is me, stuffed and trussed into the black “slip” Val sent over. It took a careful search of Val’s garment bag before I realized that this, the lone article of clothing within, was the dress: A cross between a corset and a slip girdle, on top it’s little more than a glorified bra, out of which, I fear, a cutlet may fly at any moment.
The bar is three deep with exquisite creatures ordering neon-colored cocktails that look to have been synthesized in a lab. I want to order a beer but don’t want to be laughed out onto the street.
“Pandora’s Box, please,” I tell the bartender, remembering the name of the drink Val ordered at Grand Central.
“You don’t want that. The Pandora’s Box is so last month. For you, a Wallflower: Stoli, Galliano, extract of Jamaican ortanique, which is a cross between a tangerine and an orange, garnished with a dandelion blossom not yet gone to seed.” I walk away with a fifteen-dollar cocktail the color of a highway safety cone. It doesn’t taste half bad, though the dandelion sprig keeps tickling my ear.
It's About Your Husband Page 7