Beautiful Lies

by Lisa Unger

  You know that feeling you get when you step into someone’s aura and you feel as though you’ve known that person all your life, as if their energy is as familiar to you as the sound your refrigerator makes? I didn’t have that feeling with Jake. Everything about him felt new and electric. He was utterly unfamiliar, a stranger who intrigued me like a mind-bender. With Zack every new moment was like a memory of a life I’d lived already—I could predict exactly what would happen between us and most of it was pretty nice. But I didn’t want my life to be like a riddle to which I already had the answer. Some people find that kind of predictability comforting. I don’t.

  The conversation flowed easily as we chatted about my work, some about Zack, the usual getting-to-know-you stuff. You show me yours, I’ll show you mine. Now that I think back on it, it seems as if I told him a whole lot more than he told me. He kept pouring wine and I kept feeling warmer, more relaxed. We had somehow shifted closer to each other. He’d laid his arm across the back of the couch, and if he’d lowered it, it would have been resting on my shoulders. I could feel the heat of his skin, see the stubble on his jaw. Did I say sexy didn’t impress me? Well, maybe a little.

  “So you had a pretty big week last week,” he said, pouring some more wine.

  “Are we still on that first bottle?” I asked. He’d gotten up a couple times to refill my glass and I’d lost track of how much I’d had to drink.

  “No,” he said. “Not by a long shot.” I could see that his skin was flushed. And there was a looseness to him that I found appealing. It made me realize that he had been nervous as well when I first arrived. And I liked that. It made him real. It meant he wasn’t arrogant.

  “You heard about that?”

  “Who didn’t? It was all over the papers.”

  “Yeah…” I said. The mention of it brought me crashing back down to earth, remembering the picture, my parents. It must have been all over my face. I’m not so great at hiding my feelings.

  “Hey,” he said, touching my shoulder. “What did I say?”

  He leaned into me and I could see the concern on his face. I looked away from him because somehow his compassion made me want to cry.

  “Ridley, I’m sorry,” he said, putting his wineglass down. “We don’t have to talk about it.”

  But it was too late. He’d opened the floodgates and the whole story came rushing out in a tumble, everything from leaving my apartment that Monday morning to seeing my parents earlier tonight. I hadn’t told anyone except my parents about the picture. He was perfectly present, listening, making all the right affirming noises. He was totally focused on me.

  “Wow,” he said when I was done.

  “I bet you’re sorry you asked,” I answered with a little laugh.

  “No,” he said. “I’m not.”

  He touched my hair lightly, pushing it away from my eyes. It was a gentle gesture, intimate. He held my gaze.

  “So you believe your parents. You’ll just leave it at that?”

  “What’s not to believe?” I answered weakly, not really convinced myself. “The whole thing is ridiculous. I know who I am.”

  He nodded, looking at me with those eyes, seeing something in me that I was distantly aware of but neglecting.

  “Still,” he said after a moment. “You’re not even curious enough to call?”

  It’s funny when you meet someone who you think is so different from you and then they manage to connect you to a part of yourself you ignore. The curiosity was a flame inside me, one that had flickered in my parents’ assurances but which burned still. Jake breathed butane on it.

  “I don’t think so,” I said, standing up.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, rising with me. “I didn’t mean to scare you off.”

  I smiled. “I don’t scare that easily.”

  He nodded, looked uncertain. I was glad he didn’t try to convince me not to leave because it would have been so easy. Every nerve ending in my body was aching to kiss him, to feel that smooth, muscular flesh against me. I wanted to see the rest of that tattoo, the one that snaked out of his collar and curled out of his shirtsleeve. But I felt something for Jake, something too powerful to sleep with him or even kiss him that night. I wanted more. And I wanted to take my time.

  I was exhausted when I got into bed, the stress of everything, the wine, Jake. So I fell out quickly, almost as soon as my head hit the pillow. But I dreamed of Ace. I chased him in a darkened urban landscape where shadows moved quickly across my path. Doorways through which I tried to pass warped and disappeared. Then I wasn’t chasing Ace but being chased by a dark form. I came to a house that resembled my parents’ home, but once inside, I found myself in the lobby of my building. I turned to see the form rattling at the gated door, though I still couldn’t see his face. I woke, startled in the dark, my breathing heavy as I tried to get my bearings and shake the dream-terror that still lingered. I sensed a malevolent presence in the apartment and sat paralyzed for a moment, listening for the intruder who I was sure would slip from the shadows any minute. The fear faded as the images from my dream slipped away.

  I was wide awake. I got up from bed and rummaged through my pants pockets and found the photograph and the note. I crumpled both in my hand and put them in the garbage. I pulled on a pair of sweatpants and sneakers and left the apartment with the garbage bag. It was after three and the building was asleep, except for the faintest sound of a television I heard somewhere in the distance. I crept down the stairs and through the hallway to the back of the building. I pushed open the dead bolt on the heavy metal door and flipped on the light. Rats skittered away from the sound and the stench of refuse rose up to greet me as I tossed my garbage bag in the nearest can.

  I knew that Zelda would come before the sun rose and roll the cans out to the sidewalk, that the garbage would be picked up early in the morning even before I got out of bed, and the note and the photograph would be gone as if they’d never existed. What about this flame of curiosity I was talking about? It wasn’t out. It was just that I could not imagine the consequences of knowing the answers. I’ll admit it wasn’t exactly a noble decision but I chose ignorance.

  I headed back up the stairs feeling lighter with relief. I was halfway up when I saw a shadow on the landing above me, the figure just out of the line of my vision. I stopped in my tracks and my heart started to race.

  “Is someone there?” I said. I knew everyone in my building and had never once had a moment of feeling unsafe there. Any one of my neighbors with a genuine purpose for being on the stairs would have answered me. I heard a shuffling, someone moving against the wall. I looked behind me and the light on the landing below had started to flicker, then went dark. The sound of my own breathing was loud in my ears, adrenaline started to pump through my veins, and every nerve ending in my body throbbed with fear. I didn’t know whether to go forward or backward.

  “Who is it?” I said, louder.

  I looked around for something to defend myself with but there was nothing. Then I heard footsteps hard and heavy in a run. I pushed myself against the wall, as if I could disappear by making myself very flat. I was about to scream when I realized the footsteps were moving away from me. I crouched down and looked up through the space between the staircases and saw the figure of a man. He had a large build and I saw his gloved hand on the banister. He ran up the last flight and exited the door that led to the roof. I braced myself for the sound of the fire-door alarm but it didn’t go off.

  I sat weak with relief on the staircase and wondered how he would get off the roof. Then I heard the groaning of the fire escape ladder out front. I wondered if anyone else had heard it, too. But after a minute, the building was silent again, as if none of it had ever happened. I walked cautiously back to my apartment and closed the door. A second later I heard another door close and lock. I couldn’t be sure whose door it was, whether it was above or below me.

  seven

  Obviously, I didn’t sleep much the rest of the night. I che
cked the gates on my windows and double-locked my front door and basically sat in my bed wide-eyed, startling at every little sound until the black sky lightened from charcoal to gray. Another night I might have called Zack or even my father, but since everyone seemed convinced that I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, I didn’t want to give them an incident that might prove them right. After a little while I began to doze until my alarm went off an hour or so later.

  I got up and made a pot of coffee. As I listened to the machine’s familiar hiss and gurgle and smelled the aromas from Veniero’s, I started to feel normal again. Everything about the night before began to seem surreal, as though I might have been dreaming from the moment I got on the train to go to New Jersey. I’d thrown out the photo and made a decision to consider the whole thing a hoax. In my sunny kitchen, I could halfway believe that I had imagined the whole encounter on the stairs. You know, because the stress was causing me to hallucinate. Anyway, it was over. It was just me, Ridley, on a normal Thursday morning. Denial…it ain’t just a river in Egypt. Seriously, I think it’s something your mind does when it has too much to handle. It takes a little vacation.

  I went into my office—really, it’s just a little space I have sectioned off with an Oriental screen where I keep my files and laptop. I rummaged through some papers on my desk and found the business card Uma Thurman’s publicist had given me. We’d met at a yoga class and wound up going to Starbucks afterward for some chai. Her name was Tama Puma. She was crunchy, smelled of patchouli. Tall with broad shoulders, had that gray complexion and limp hair that people who eat a macrobiotic diet always seem to. She was impossibly thin and spoke softly but with a lofty self-importance. We’d chatted briefly about the article I wanted to write and I had told her I’d call if the features editor at Vanity Fair accepted my pitch. I left a message for Tama and felt glad to be getting back to work, moving forward from a neatly diverted disaster.

  When I opened my door, I saw it there on the ground. The sight of it felt like a blow to the solar plexus. Another envelope with my name scratched across in black marker in the same harsh, scrawling hand. I picked it up and went back into my apartment. The whole world seemed to spin around me as I ripped the envelope open. There was a clipping from an October 27, 1972, newspaper. The headline read YOUNG MOTHER FOUND SLAIN; TODDLER MISSING. The rest of the article had been clipped away, but there was a headshot of the young woman from the first picture and another photo of the little girl. Looking at the woman’s face again, even in the grainy newsprint, I could have been looking in the mirror. And looking at the child, I noticed something on her face that I hadn’t seen in the first picture. She had a small brown birthmark under her left eye, identical to one I had on my own face. There was a note as well.

  It said simply, They lied.

  I was out of my apartment and down the stairs in a shot, racing for the garbage cans. I ran into my landlady, Zelda, in the hallway. “Did the garbage pick up?” I said, running to the front door.

  “Ah,” she said in disgust, lifting her hands. “Sanitation strike. Lazy sons of bitches, like they don’t get enough money. It’s still in the back. Goddamn unions.”

  The garbage bag was on top of the can and the picture and number easy to find. I unwrinkled the photograph and the note and went back upstairs. I stopped at my apartment and picked up the clipping. Then I took everything upstairs to Jake. Why would I do this? I barely knew him. But I think it was precisely because he was a stranger, utterly unconnected to the other people in my life, that I thought he might be the only one with any perspective.

  “I’m sorry,” I said when he opened the door. “I need some help.”

  I handed everything to him and pushed past him without being invited in. He looked at me, then down at the papers in his hand.

  “This is what you were telling me about last night?”

  “Yes. And something I found at my door this morning.”

  He nodded, his face still and solemn. He never asked why I’d brought this to him, what I wanted him to do. He sat at the table, started flipping through the items, and I saw lines crease his brow as he frowned down at the papers in his hand.

  “This woman could be you,” he said after a minute. “She looks just like you.”

  “I know,” I answered.

  “Could be someone fucking with you.”

  “Why? What would anyone have to gain?”

  “Some people just like to play with lives. Some psycho sees your picture in the paper, you remind him of someone he used to know, someone who died. You become his target.”

  “Okay. Explain this,” I said, pointing to the tiny mole just below the corner of my left eye. He looked at the photograph and saw an identical mark on the face of the child as I sat across from him.

  He nodded slowly and looked over at me. “I’ll admit it’s weird.”

  There were things about him that I hadn’t noticed the night before. There was something sad around his eyes, lines there that seemed to mark the vision of tragedy. I could see through his white T-shirt that the tattoo, which peeked out of his short shirtsleeve, also worked its way along his chest and over his collarbone. I saw a scar on his neck; it was an inch long, thick and raised as though there were something beneath the skin.

  “But what do you want me to do?” he asked gently, coming to sit beside me.

  I looked at his hands; they were thick and square, the knuckles calloused, blue veins roping beneath the skin. Something about them simultaneously turned me on and sent a shock of fear through me. In the daylight, he looked harder, tougher, bigger than I remembered him looking last night.

  “You know what?” I said, getting up. “Forget it. You’re right. I don’t even know you. I’m sorry.”

  He didn’t say anything. What an idiot I was. I gathered up the papers. I wished the floor would fall out beneath me.

  “I’m overreacting. And it has nothing to do with you,” I said. He stood and blocked my exit.

  “I don’t think you’re overreacting,” he said. I let him take the papers from my hand. He put them down out of my reach, then put his hand in mine.

  “It’s okay, Ridley. I’m not sure how, but I’ll help you figure this out if you want me to.”

  And we stood like that. The joining of hands is highly underrated in the acts of intimacy. You kiss acquaintances or colleagues, casually to say hello or good-bye. You might even kiss a close friend chastely on the lips. You might quickly hug anyone you knew. You might even meet someone at a party, take him home and sleep with him, never to see him or hear from him again. But to join hands and stand holding each other that way, with the electricity of possibilities flowing between you? The tenderness of it, the promise of it, is only something you share with a few people in your life.

  His pull was irresistible.

  “Really?” I said, feeling a wash of relief and gratitude.

  “Really.”

  “Okay.”

  I felt the skin of his hand, hard but warm against mine. I could see all the facets in the gems of his eyes and I could feel that gaze searching me inside. I could sense the many layers of the stranger before me and I was afraid, intrigued, and deeply moved. When he guided me into his arms and held me there, the lines of our bodies melted into each other. I placed my cheek to his throat and felt his pulse throbbing. I was on the precipice of some yawning darkness, glad to have even this uncertain ally.

  I don’t know how long we stood like that. A long time, I think.

  Finally he said, “So this guy wants you to call him.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” I said, lingering a second in his arms and then pulling away. I sat at the table.

  “Doesn’t that seem weird to you?”

  “Why?”

  “Well, think about it,” he said, sitting across from me.

  “First of all,” I said, “why did you assume it was a man?” I had made the same assumption and was wondering what it was that led him to that as well.

  He considered
it a second. “The handwriting is masculine, for one thing. And the article says the woman in the picture is dead and the little girl missing.”

  “Okay, why do you think it’s weird that he’d send a note?”

  He shrugged. “If this guy thinks he’s your father and that you’re the little girl in this picture, then he’s been looking for you for a long, long time. And it means his daughter was kidnapped. If your child was missing, for whatever reason, and you’d spent all these years looking for her and suddenly thought that she might be alive and well, wouldn’t you come running, call the police, something more drastic than sending a note and a picture?”

  I thought about it a second. “Maybe he’s uncertain. Or afraid.”

  He shook his head slowly. “Maybe,” he said. “But maybe he’s got something to hide himself.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, picking up the newspaper clipping. He seemed to be considering something but stayed silent.

  “What?” I asked finally. “What are you thinking?”

  “I have a friend,” he said, turning his eyes on me. He seemed suddenly unsure and held up his hands. “Listen. I don’t want to overstep my bounds with you.”

  I figured that he was thinking about last night when I’d scurried away from him, when he thought he’d scared me off.

  “If anyone’s overstepping their bounds,” I said, “it’s me dumping all of this on you.”

  He hesitated another second. Then: “This friend of mine, he’s a detective,” he said, not looking at me but at his feet. “Someone I grew up with. He might be able to help.”

  If you’re wondering why he would be helping me, I didn’t know. But I was more grateful than curious. Men who are attracted to you will pretty much do anything, right? Right.

  eight

  I went east toward the river. In this new skin, I couldn’t think of anything else to do but wander. Wandering is not new to me. I’ve done a lot of it and New York City is the perfect place to lose yourself for a while—permanently, if you want to. You could walk a hundred blocks and pass a thousand people and no one would ever notice you, even if, five minutes ago, your face was on everyone’s television, on the front page of every paper. That fast, you could become a ghost. I was already losing myself, slipping through the fissures that were suddenly appearing in the facade of my life. I was vapor. I wafted down Eighth Street toward Tompkins Square, past the newly gentrified tenement buildings that held within their walls the energy of generations of strife and poverty, now gutted and newly painted, fitted with picture windows boasting trendy East Village boutiques. In that gleaming glass I caught sight of a woman who didn’t know who she was anymore, who didn’t know from where or from whom she came.