by Wendy Walker
“And then a few years later you kissed him.”
I pretend that wasn’t really a question and move on.
“Okay,” I say with the most engaging smile I know how to make. “Your turn. First kiss?”
Jonathan Fielding starts to tell a sweet story about some crush he had in ninth grade. It’s a script from an after-school special. But my mind is reeling, so his words bounce away.
Rick Wallace. The bottle spins, starts to slow. I see it turn past Gabe and the nameless guy and I cannot believe what is in my heart. I hate Rick Wallace. I hate how he used to terrorize us. It slows more as it passes Noelle. I remember the look on his face when I hit him with that stick. When he felt the power of my rage.
It stops. It points to Rick Wallace. Gabe starts to get up, but there is no time for him to stop it. We move to the center of the circle. Rick grabs the back of my head and kisses me with more than his mouth. He kisses me with years of his own hatred. With fantasies of vengeance. I can feel it all in the heat of his breath. But then I feel something else—his body responding to my mouth. My breath. Telling the hatred it will have to wait.
That day when I was fourteen, I felt, for the very first time, the power of sexual desire. Until then, until that moment, I had been the girl who acted like a boy. Who had fists for hands. Who climbed trees that swung over our house and punched holes in walls and swore like a truck driver, horrible obscenities flying from my little pink lips. Shock and awe. I had an arsenal of weapons to use against anyone who dared be my enemy. To use against the enemy inside myself. The unrest. The longing.
But nothing as powerful as this one.
I left the fort. Left the woods. Left Rick Wallace. And I ran home as fast as my legs would carry me.
But I did not outrun it. That night I dreamed about Rick Wallace. About his mouth on my mouth and his hands on my body. I dreamed of his body releasing the hatred. The hatred relinquishing its power in the face of this greater force, this desire. And what was left in its place was the one thing I craved.
Love.
Jonathan Fielding’s voice has left the room. The story ended.
“That’s a nicer story than mine,” I say even though I haven’t heard one word of it. Still, it’s a pretty safe bet.
Silence. Longing stare.
“I want to kiss you,” Jonathan Fielding says.
I don’t say yes. I don’t say no.
He leans across the sofa. He only has one hand free because he’s holding his drink. It pushes against the drink in my hand and scotch spills on the black leather. He takes my glass in his other hand and he places our glasses on the bare floor.
With both hands now, he gently takes my head like it’s a baby bird and pulls me to him. He closes his eyes but mine stay open.
His breath touches my cheek. His mouth is on my mouth. His hands hold my face.
And it all rushes over me. A tidal wave. A mud slide.
I’ve been kissed a million times. I’ve been through it a million times. Still, it washes me away.
We move through the stages. I know them well. Lips pressed together. Soft, almost still. A breath taken and released. Heat. We come together again, this time lips part. A breath shared. A hand moves from my face to the back of my head. Fingers in my hair. Palm closing, taking hold of me. Desire pounding at the door as his tongue sweeps over mine. This gentle kiss growing furious with passion.
Love. Evasive love. Always running away. But now a kiss, full of promise.
I close my eyes and feel the surge of power, the intoxication. It’s so familiar.
I think of Rick Wallace, lying on the ground.
I think of Mitch Adler, lying on the ground.
Jonathan Fielding. What to do with this kiss? With the promises it makes? I don’t even know you. It’s too soon for promises.
I know I have no right.
But I hate you now for making them.
TWENTY-ONE
Rosie. Present Day. Saturday, 2 a.m. Branston, CT.
What would Laura do?
Rosie thought about the story as she drove home. The seduction. The brilliant seduction. The hours of talking, getting inside Sylvia Emmett’s head. He made her feel something for him just so he could viciously take it away. So he could make her hate herself more than she hated him.
Laura would have been a moth to a flame. Talking and talking. Interpreting his words in a way that satisfied some fantasy of him.
And then a kiss. That’s how it always began.
Why can’t you just leave it at that? See what happens. See if he’s worth it.
It was easy to give advice, stand on higher moral ground. And it was easy to judge. Laura and her wolves.
She pulled into the driveway and turned off the car. Then she sat, thinking.
What would Laura feel?
A kiss that got inside her, that found the need. She would be hopeful. She would lose herself to it.
And if he walked away, indifferent, making sure she knew that he had deceived her?
What would Rosie do if Joe walked away after a lifetime of friendship? After they’d become lovers? If one night they made love and then he told her he didn’t care? If he told her he didn’t want to be with her?
She tried to imagine it. Joe had been devoted from the first moment she’d held his eyes a second longer than she ever had before. In the hallway of their school. Talking like they always had, in a circle of friends. She’d caught him looking at her and she’d known. It had been so easy. She’d looked back and held his eyes. It had made him blush, and that night he had kissed her for the first time.
But what if that had not been the case? What would she have done? What if there was another scenario?
She would have turned to that boy in her history class who was always flirting with her. She would have flirted back and maybe even gone out with him just to make Joe see that she had options, that she had moved on. That’s what people do, right?
Laura would need something different. If she didn’t turn to violence, she would walk away, filled with pride. She would not let this stranger, this old divorced man from a website think he’d hurt her. But then, when he was gone and she had no way to find him again, the anger would build and she would need a target. Someone else who’d hurt her and hadn’t paid.
The man in New York. Asshole. Laura had left with no resolution. No answer. But unlike Jonathan Fields, she knew where to find this one.
Rosie rushed inside, to her computer this time, at a small desk in the corner of the kitchen.
She knew his first name. Kevin. But nothing more. They’d tried to find him earlier with no luck. The two friends she’d called—Jill from work and the roommate, Kathleen—hadn’t known either.
But now she had a thought. She went into her emails and searched for him. Seven old messages came on the screen. All from Laura. She knew which one she was looking for—it was from May—at the start of things. She was with him at a hotel across the street from his office. She’d told Rosie the name.
And there it was.
Laura: Guess where I am.
Rosie: Work? It’s Tuesday at 3.
Laura: I’m drinking champagne at the West Hotel. Kevin only had an hour.
Rosie: I thought you said he was good in bed. ☺
Laura: Haha. He works across the street, so we had the WHOLE hour.
Rosie: Jealous ☹
* * *
She hadn’t been jealous. She’d been worried. Laura was on a high. Emailing and texting with details about her adventures with this new man. Kevin. She kept saying that he was different. That he was good to her. That he loved her. But she seemed manic. Anxious. Her words were different, but her mood was the same as with all the others.
Rosie logged into the findlove.com account and clicked on the search they’d used to get those pictures—the ones with Jonathan Fields. Divorced. Thirty-five to forty. Income $150,000+. She hadn’t noticed it earlier, but she could see it now. Jonathan Fields was the best looking ma
n on the page. He looked younger than forty. And there was something about him—the smug smile, the way his head tilted. It was arrogance.
He reminded her of all the others. Most of all, the last one Rosie had known. The one from Laura’s junior year. Mitch Adler. He’d tortured Laura all summer, casting her down a long, winding roller coaster that hadn’t stopped until the night of the party. That night in the woods. Rosie had seen it unfolding. He’d come with another girl. A sophomore from the public high school—his school. He’d made sure Laura saw them together. Rosie had been on the other side of the fire with her friends, with the older kids who were in college. She’d glanced over now and again to check on Laura, the way she always had. She’d seen Mitch walking up the path, this new girl right behind him. Laura had pretended not to see. She’d found some friends near a cooler of beer.
When Rosie had looked again, Laura was gone. So was Mitch, but the new girl was by the fire, forlorn. There had been a game playing out and Rosie had known it wouldn’t end well. But she had been so tired of it. Tired of being Laura’s babysitter. She had not looked across the fire again until she’d heard the scream.
Rosie checked the time. It was four a.m. The room was still. Outside, nothing but darkness. The world was asleep, but time was not. She heard the clock tick above the sink, relentlessly. Every second that passed felt like another step deeper into a life where Laura was never found.
She got up. Grabbed her keys, her purse, and headed back to the car.
* * *
The West Hotel was on Ninth Avenue between West Twenty-third and West Twenty-second. Rosie was there by five thirty.
She parked on the next side street, then walked back to the front of the building. She looked up at the windows and imagined Laura looking out from one of them, sipping champagne. Watching for her new love to step outside his office and make his way to her.
Kevin. She didn’t even have a last name. She turned to face the buildings across the street. A cab drove by. Then a delivery truck, the metal ladder pinned to the side clanking as the truck hit a pothole. The sky was orange with the morning sun. Time was slipping away.
She started at the top of the block, reading the names on the sides of the buildings that had offices. How was it possible that she hadn’t asked what he did or how they’d met? Just like that night at the fire, she had grown tired of looking after her sister.
There could easily be two hundred people who worked on this block. Dental offices. A deli. She didn’t care how long it took. Or how crazy she felt. Exhaustion was spinning her thoughts. Apartments. A doughnut shop. She went inside and got a coffee.
“Have you seen this woman?” she asked the man at the counter, showing him Laura’s picture from her phone. He shook his head.
“How about a man named Kevin who works on this block?”
Nothing. She didn’t have a picture. Why would she? She hadn’t bothered to ask for one. Hadn’t wanted to know. She had not wanted to see the train go off the tracks.
She took a long sip of the coffee, then snapped on the lid.
Back outside. A print shop. More apartments. A dry cleaner.
She heard herself asking the questions—Do you know a man named Kevin? Do you know this woman? Some faces reflected the absurdity. Others mirrored her concern and asked if she was all right. Others, still, answered quickly then fled. She could be anyone. She could be dangerous.
Each doorway, each building—some reaching into the sky with dozens of offices on each floor. She stopped and asked anyone she could find. She was careful not to miss anything. An hour passed. Then another. The sky was light. She’d expanded her search two blocks both north and south. So many buildings were still closed.
On the verge of starting down a new block, she looked back up the street and spotted a woman opening a building that had been closed when she’d passed it. She ran to the doorway and slipped inside before it could close again.
The building was right in the middle of the block, right across the street from the hotel, like Laura had said. Rosie searched a directory that hung by the elevators, searching the names. Searching for one name—Kevin. They were health-care offices. All different kinds, from massage therapists to orthopedists. And then, there it was! The name she’d been looking for all morning. Dr. Kevin Brody. Ph.D. Clinical Psychology.
Christ, Laura. She had been expecting a banker or lawyer. Someone Laura would cross paths with at her job. But a doctor? A shrink?
And then a worse thought—her shrink?
She rang the buzzer, knowing before she did that no one would answer. It was barely coming up on eight a.m. And it was Saturday. But the hotel …
She rushed across the street and through the revolving door.
A young man was at the desk just inside.
“Have you seen this woman? I think she stayed here a few times over the summer,” Rosie asked. She held her phone up with Laura’s picture.
The man took the phone and looked closely.
“I don’t know. Maybe. I work the night shift and it’s really quiet. I rarely see any of the guests.”
“She might have come in late Thursday night.”
“Definitely not then. I worked that night and I would have remembered. She’s really pretty. Is she in trouble?”
Rosie looked back to the street and the building where Dr. Kevin Brody worked. She could see her reflection in the glass right beside it. Sweatpants, T-shirt. She hadn’t brushed her hair or showered for almost two days. But it was the anguish on her face that was shocking.
“She might be. She’s missing,” Rosie said. “I think her boyfriend worked across the street.”
“Do you have his picture?” the man asked.
Rosie grabbed her phone and Googled Dr. Kevin Brody NYC. An image popped up from a professional website. She was about to enlarge it and show it to the man at the desk. But then she saw something else. An article just beneath it from the Post.
Local Doctor Killed in Robbery
Rosie’s hand clenched her mouth. She clicked on the article and scanned the contents. It was one paragraph. He was assaulted outside his gym. His wallet and phone were stolen, as well as his gym bag. He died of injuries sustained during the attack.
And then the last sentence, striking Rosie right in the gut.
The beloved doctor leaves behind a wife and two small children.
TWENTY-TWO
Laura. Session Number Thirteen. Two Months Ago. New York City.
Dr. Brody: Change begins with understanding your blind spots. It begins with recognition that something’s wrong even if you’re drawn to it.
Laura: You mean to them, don’t you? The men I’m drawn to? Starting with Mitch Adler.
Dr. Brody: Think about what he asked you to do, how he treated you. It was about power, and you kept giving it to him. You didn’t see that it was insatiable. That he was never going to give you what you wanted.
Laura: But I thought he would.
Dr. Brody: Because he fed you just enough to make you believe. And when he did, it made you feel powerful. You said it felt intoxicating, like a drug. Can you see the pattern?
Laura: And what about now, Kevin? Am I doing it again?
Dr. Brody: We need to be careful, Laura. The lines are starting to blur.
TWENTY-THREE
Laura. The Night Before. Thursday, 11 p.m. Branston, CT.
“Stop.” I don’t know that this word has ever left my mouth before.
We lie on the black leather sofa that smells of scotch, bodies pressed together as we make this treacherous journey from strangers to lovers.
I push him away and sit up. I try to straighten my hair, but my fingers get caught in a tangled mess.
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
“I shouldn’t have come here.”
Now he is sitting beside me. He thinks he understands what’s happening as he reaches for the glasses on the floor.
“Okay,” he says. “Here…” He hands me a drink. I take a sip
.
“I shouldn’t have posted those things about myself.”
“What things?” Now he gets nervous.
“Just … everything. And the pictures and tonight. I shouldn’t have worn this dress and these shoes. I never wear red lipstick.”
“But you look nice. I’m not sure what you’re saying. I get that you don’t always look like this. Made-up, dressed up. I was married for six years,” he says.
This makes me look at him.
“And what about you? What are you hiding?” I ask.
He shrugs and smiles that smile that caught my eye. “There’s really not much I can do. I shaved. Put on a nice shirt.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know.”
Then he gets up, walks to the kitchen. He grabs his keys from the counter.
“Come on,” he says. “I’ll walk you to your car. I don’t want you to be here if you don’t feel comfortable.”
I don’t move. Not one single muscle. I don’t want to leave.
Rosie never understood. I can hear the same conversation looping over and over. It’s the one where she tells me it’s not that complicated. You go on a date. You talk about superficial things. You meet again. You talk some more. Reveal some more. Little by little, you ease into the water, making sure it’s not too hot or too cold or too deep or too muddy.
There’s nothing that time won’t reveal, she said.
But she is wrong about that.
The day Dick left us, he came to our rooms to say good-bye. He came to me first. He stood at the doorway while I sat on my bed.
Has your mother told you that I’m moving out?
I nodded. Our mother told us through tears. Through desperate words and despair that our hugs could not calm. Four arms wrapped around her as she stood in the hallway, suitcases piled beside her.
I’ll see you on the weekends.
I nodded again. I knew it was a lie. He couldn’t leave my room fast enough.
He went next to Rosie. I heard him knock on her door. I heard it open and then close and when it did, I ran from my room and pressed my ear against the hollow wood. Rosie was crying and he was comforting her, making those sounds people make to babies. Shhh. He told her about the weekends and how everything was for the best.