The dry-cleaner knows nothing about the place with the blacked-out windows. Nor does the newsstand cashier next door to him. The psychiatrist’s office receptionist, futon salesman, and antique-furniture-and-cheese shop owner speculate that the place is a day spa, photographer’s studio, and tropical-fish store, respectively. The manager of Farber’s Hardware, across the street by the storefront church, is sure it’s a gambling den or a money-laundering operation. Why doesn’t he tell the police? I ask him. He answers, “Ain’t bothering nobody.”
Across the street, a fashionable, attractive woman is coming up the block. I dart out of the hardware store and take advantage of a hole in the traffic to cross against the light. I reach the woman as she’s about to ring the speakeasy bell. “Would you mind telling me what’s in there?”
She looks at my sweatpants and sneakers, my khaki hair tucked up under a counterfeit Yankees cap. “If you have to ask . . .” She lets the rest of the sentence dangle.
I walk home.
I’m approaching the steps of my brownstone, hat in hand, when my downstairs neighbor comes out of the building lugging a hard-sided travel case that looks constructed of quilted aluminum foil. Seeing me on the staircase, he stops and clucks his tongue.
I reach into my sweatpants pocket for my door key. Behind my neighbor, the dog lady emerges from the building, pulling a bag of bone-shaped biscuits from the front pocket of her overalls and handing out one each to the dogs whose leashes are tethered to her ample waist: two matching poodles, a big, dim-witted Lab, and Rocky the pug, who looks as if he wants to lick my ankles again. The door clicks shut behind her.
“See you soon, Simon,” the dog lady says to my neighbor.
“Lord help me, Rina, tell me I’m hallucinating. This is Iris. She lives in One-F, above me.” He eyes my hair. “Oh, dear. Dear, dear.”
“I know, I know.” Now, go away, I will him telepathically.
“It’s all wrong for her,” Simon announces to Rina, who departs with the dogs. Simon sets down his box on the stone landing and, with one hand under my chin and the other on the top of my head, tips my face backward until I’m staring straight up at him. He’s tall, at least six feet four, and my neck threatens to snap in two.
He releases me from his grasp. “Do yourself a favor, kitten. Don’t go back to whoever cut it like this.”
I clap the hat back onto my head and climb the rest of the steps, overcome with beauty shame. But hold on. I haven’t changed my style or gotten a haircut since I moved here. What’s wrong with the way I wear my hair? It’s perfectly . . . oh. Generic. “You weren’t talking about the color?”
“Color?” He squints. “Now that you mention it, it could be more flattering.” He picks up his box and continues down the stairs. I go inside and check my phone messages to see if I’ve gotten any response to my résumés. No luck.
When Vickie calls for a progress report, I trowel on the phony enthusiasm: nothing yet, but I’m going to keep trying!
“I want you to follow him tomorrow morning,” she says. “When he leaves for work, after he’s come back from jogging and dropped off the dog and taken his shower.” She instructs me to be outside her building by eight thirty sharp so I’m there when he leaves around ten minutes to nine. “And don’t be obtrusive,” she says in her bossy Vickie voice.
On Wednesday I yet again miscalculate the time it takes to get to the East Side, and arrive across the street from Vickie’s apartment house promptly at 8:38, yet again promising myself to do better next time. Still, with twelve minutes to spare I have time to buy a newspaper for disguise, and there’s a deli right behind me. I dart in for a Daily News and stake out a spot near the subway station, with the paper held up so all that’s showing is the cover—headlined “LIAR!” above the face of a man I don’t recognize—and my sunglasses and baseball cap above it. I’m dying to find out who the liar is, but train my laser vision back across the street at Vickie’s building, a nondescript, early 1960s white-brick rectangle with its name printed in white script on its awning: “Merit House.” A green and orange grocery truck pulls up and double-parks in front of the entrance, obstructing my view. I step farther down the street so I can peer around it, and watch the doorman point the deliveryman toward the building’s service door. Eight minutes until Steve comes out. I stare idly up and down Lexington, longing for a cup of—
Is that Steve? Up there on Eighty-sixth, about to board the crosstown bus?
I stuff the newspaper under my arm, run for the corner, and look helplessly across the street. It is Steve. How did he get to the bus stop without my seeing him? Can I make it across Eighty-sixth, against the light, before the bus pulls away? I step off the curb—and into the path of an oncoming car. I can see the whites of the driver’s eyes. I jump back on the curb in time to see the bus pull away. I run after it on my side of the street, pacing it for a long block until it roars out of sight. I call Vickie when I return home to tell her, with slightly less cheeriness than yesterday, that it seems I’ve struck out yet again. She does not sound pleased.
But two hours later she calls back. Steve has told her offhandedly that he’s leaving the office tomorrow at twelve thirty to show some retail space. “That means,” she says, “you can wait for him in front of the Empire Property Management offices, and then, when you see him come out, follow him.”
“I can try.”
“Good, because if you don’t get something soon, I’m firing you.”
No one calls about my résumé.
By noon Thursday I’m seated on the granite rim of an enormous water sculpture in front of a forty-story office building at Fifty-fifth and Sixth, watching for Steve to emerge. Vickie didn’t mention that the building would be half a block long, with two entrances separated by a good dozen car lengths, one on the building’s east corner and one on its west corner. Each of those entrances has three sets of revolving doors. And it’s lunchtime; each door is in constant rotation. Trying to simultaneously monitor every human being whirling out feels like watching a six-way tennis match in hyperspeed. To make matters worse, though I remembered my baseball hat, in my rush to get down here on time I forgot my sunglasses. For almost two hours I wait and watch anyway, until my neck aches from swiveling, my head aches from squinting, and the rest of me aches from sitting. No doubt Steve slipped out of one entrance while I was keeping an eye on the other. I haul myself to my feet and walk home. My answering machine light remains stubbornly off.
“It wasn’t the brightest idea.” Vickie makes it sound as if it were mine. “His schedule changes constantly. By nine most mornings, he’s already reshuffled half a dozen appointments. The only constant thing about him is this jogging. You’re absolutely sure he’s just jogging, Iris?”
At bedtime Thursday I resolve to take Friday off. I’ll use the day to follow up with marketing firms right after I sleep in and watch Guiding Light. Naturally, my little voice has to put in its two cents, keeping me from falling asleep with its whispery scolding. At one thirty I sit up in bed and call Kevin. “Where are you?”
“In the Denver airport, waiting to board. Where are you?”
“In bed.”
“What are you wearing?”
“Some other time. Kevin, can you remind me again what Steve did when you followed him?”
“Sure. He started out on the trail below the reservoir. Ran past the tennis courts. Cut over to the park road. Went around the park back to the reservoir, stretched at the stretching area, then back to his building. I think he was working on his sprints.”
“What stretching area? You never said anything about a stretching area.”
“I did,” Kevin says.
“Kevin!” I wail. “The stretching area could be the key to the whole mystery, and you didn’t even mention it!”
“Mystery? There’s no mystery. There’s no data lost here. He went running and afterward spent thirty seconds stretching his hamstrings.”
I groan, dive backward onto my pillow, and stare up
at the ceiling. It’s a dramatic twelve feet high, the only thing about my apartment you could legitimately call spacious. “Where did he do this purported stretching?”
“At the south end of the reservoir, those benches by the stone boathouse, where everybody stretches after they run. You’re not still following him, are you?”
Early Friday morning I dress quickly in my sweatpants and sneakers and pull my beige hair into a ponytail through the back of my cap.
Bang! Bang! Bang! The sound of Simon’s banging vibrates up through my feet.
I jump up on my hardwood floor, thudding down on flat feet. For good measure I do it eleven more times. Take that!
There’s a knock on my door.
I freeze in the preparing-to-jump position.
“I know you’re in there!”
I slide on the chain and slowly open the door. Simon is there with his metal box. I touch the cap to be sure it’s still securely on my head. Simon raises an eyebrow but says nothing. It’s a small blessing.
“Woowoowoowoowoo!” The sound is coming from somewhere near our ankles. I look down to find a black pug.
Rocky. I should have recognized that bark when I knocked on Simon’s door last week. It figures Rocky would belong to my downstairs neighbor. An obnoxious dog for an obnoxious human.
Simon reaches his right hand through the space between the door and the doorjamb. There’s a leash looped around his wrist. “Sweetie, I need a favor. I’ve got to go to work, and Rina is out sick today. Could you find it in your heart to walk him, just this once?” He pauses. “Where are you off to?”
“The park.” I’m planning to wait for Steve at the stretching area and make sure there’s nothing else Kevin didn’t tell me.
“Perfect! Rocky here loves a good walk in the park.” He slips his hand out of the red leather leash and holds it out to me.
I study Simon’s dog. Bulgy eyes, smooshed nose, barrel body, folds of skin in odd places, pig tail, toothpick legs, claw feet like the ones on my great-aunt Zinnia’s dining room chairs. He jingles his engraved, heart-shaped silver name tag against the buckle of his red leather collar. I would help out, I tell Simon, except that I have some business to do in the park.
“Perfect! Rocky has to do some business of his own.”
I hate to admit it, but having Rocky with me might help me blend in better. Everybody walks dogs in Central Park. I would certainly be less conspicuous by the reservoir if I had one, too. Besides, I can’t waste any more time arguing with Simon. I tell him, just this once.
“Hooray! Kitten, you’re a lifesaver.” Simon slips me a set of spare keys. “So you can let Rocky back inside.” He hands me a wad of plastic bags. (What are those for—oh.)
Fifteen minutes and one revolting baggie break later, Simon’s pug and I approach the stone staircase below the boathouse, at the south end of the reservoir, watching die-hard runners climb the stairs to the stretching area. Die-hard because it’s dark and warm, and the threat of rain is heavy in the air. If Steve has checked the weather, he may well stay home. My stomach ties itself up into a bow. Will Vickie pay me if Steve never shows up anywhere? Why did Michelle Heeley have to lay me off? Why hasn’t anyone responded to my résumé?
My thoughts are interrupted by an explosion of barking and a sharp yank at the leash in my hand. For a creature the size of my microwave oven, Rocky is surprisingly powerful. I return to reality in time to keep the pug from taking a flying leap at a woman strolling by.
“Bad dog!” I reel him back toward me. He sprawls on the staircase landing and grimaces. The woman looks ready to shoot me. No wonder Rocky is agitated: She’s walking, at the end of a green rhinestone leash, an enormous, fluffy gray cat.
I apologize and start to hustle Rocky up the stairs. We’ve got to get to the stretching area!
But Rocky, the little beast, leaps back up and makes another lunge for the cat. This time the cat gives it right back. It is exactly like in cartoons when two fighting characters become a whirling cyclone with exclamation points and little puffs of dust. Worse, this cat is as brash as a street-corner thug and is as big as Rocky. The cat’s owner helps out by contributing a series of colorful expletives. Meanwhile I am helpless with fright: Simon’s dog is about to be eaten!
This is exactly the point at which Steve arrives. As a detective, it’s not my shining moment. As Rocky’s temporary guardian, I don’t care. When he looks toward the commotion, I catch his eye.
He does a double take.
“Help!”
He sprints up the steps to meet me on the landing and takes Rocky’s leash from me. “Here, boy,” he calls sternly.
The woman continues to curse, and the cartoon cat-on-dog whirlwind roils, but somehow, Steve manages to haul Rocky out of the fray. Rocky barks a few more times but trots back to us and once again slumps onto the landing. I’d swear the cat is smirking.
“No dogs at the reservoir!” the woman screams at me before stomping off.
Guess what? She’s right. there at the top of the stairs a green-and-white Parks Department sign, one I haven’t noticed during my past two outings, quite clearly prohibits dogs (and strollers, skates, skateboards, tricycles, and bicycles) on the reservoir track. It reminds me that again Steve doesn’t have his dog with him.
Steve hands me Rocky’s leash. “What do you do, wait in the park for me to rescue you?”
“Right. I’m following you around.” I hope I’ve infused that with a credible amount of irony. “All joking aside, thank you.”
“Anytime.” He crouches down and pats Rocky’s softball-size head. Rocky sticks out his tongue to sample Steve’s left running shoe. “Nice pug.”
“He’s my neighbor’s.” For some reason Steve needs to know I would never own a gargoyle with a heart-shaped ID tag.
Steve gives Rocky a slow-motion fake punch to the jaw, the way one might a favorite nephew, and straightens back up. He lifts a dry corner of his shirt to mop his face. I try not to notice the sliver of skin his gesture exposes, and instead glance down at Rocky, whom I find gnawing noisily on one of his dining-room-chair paws. Fighting a fit of giggles, I look back up.
Steve catches my eye, looking close to laughter himself. “Next time I’d put my money on the cat,” he says.
“Who walks a cat on a leash?”
“One time I saw a rabbit on a leash. Another time on the subway, a lady had a ferret in her purse. She was feeding it an everything bagel.”
Before I can stop myself, I laugh.
Steve looks me over for, as seems to be his habit, several moments too long.
I pull the cap lower on my forehead.
Steve says, “I told you this last time, but I’m positive we’ve met before.”
I’m desperate to change the subject. I’ll even point out my hideousness, if that’s what it takes. “I’m surprised you recognize me at all with the different hair,” I mutter.
“Well, you’re hard not to notice. Which is why I feel sure I know you from somewhere.”
I think: Upper reservoir track, two weeks ago, perhaps? Photo/Copy Express? Lexington Avenue, across from your building?
“I doubt it. I just moved here.”
“You did? From where?”
“Studio City, California.”
“Hmm. I don’t know anyone from there.”
If only he would stop looking at me. I steal a peek at my filthy sneakers, then at my grubby sweatpants, and then, because if I consider my appearance any longer I may die from the humiliation, turn my attention back to Rocky, who’s now chomping on a stick. Are there pesticides on that thing? Can dogs die of splinter ingestion? I reach down to take the stick away. Rocky growls ferociously.
Steve continues, “Perhaps I’ve met you through my line of work.”
Not unless you’re really a claims processor at the Department of Labor, I think, and then say, “I’m kind of between jobs.”
He nods. “I’ve had to cut back myself.”
“You’re not working?�
��
“Working, but shorter hours.” He tilts his head to the left, pauses, then gingerly braces his right hand against his right cheek and pushes. “I needed time to”—the vertebrae in his neck make faint popping sounds—“get my affairs in order.” He repeats the spinal adjustment on the left side.
Get his affairs in order—did he phrase it that way on purpose? It comes to me, watching his hands, that he’s not wearing a wedding ring. Is that important? Or is he one of those married men who don’t wear the ring? I’ll have to remember to ask Vickie. And where is the dog? It’s missing yet again.
Steve smiles down at me.
And zap!
It’s the sensation from last time, only stronger—a current of raw energy hitting me with a shock like my apartment buzzer going off unexpectedly.
“Your friend’s dog looks thirsty,” he says. “Come with me. I’ll buy him some water. It’s part of our tradition.”
Another zap. BZZZZT! There’s someone at the door!
Iris, you idiot. This is Vickie’s husband. He is either an innocent man who loves his wife, or a sociopath who’s betraying his wife. That zap you felt? Pure physical revulsion.
“I think I’ll go home and get Rocky some water there.” I tug on Rocky’s leash and say formally, “Thank you again, Steve.”
Steve stares at me.
And it’s clear I’ve made a catastrophic mistake.
TEN
I take in Steve’s body language: arms crossed, back rigid. Even Rocky seems to sense that something momentous is happening, because he stops what he was doing—rooting in the dirt with his nose—and fixes us with his rheumy eyes.
“If I don’t know your name,” Steve says slowly, “how is it you know mine?”
I may faint.
“Sit down.” Steve points to a stair. “Now.”
I obey. So does Rocky.
Steve remains standing. “I want to know what is going on. Do not even think about lying. Who are you, and why are you stalking me?”
My brain gropes frantically for an idea, any idea, even a stupid, nonsensical idea. I play with the string of my sweatpants. “You told me your name was Steve. Just the other day.”
It's About Your Husband Page 10