Don't You Cry(65)

Quinn

“Slow down,” Ben says to me as I sit on a tweed Breuer kitchen chair and he presses a bandage to my hand. “Tell me what happened.” His face is close, a measly six inches away, so that I can smell the soy sauce on his breath when he speaks.

There are dried tears clinging to my cheeks. My hand is covered in blood.

On the kitchen chair, I tremble. In fear and because I’m cold. It’s cold in the room. There’s a blanket spread across my lap, a chunky blue throw. I have no clue how it got there. Somehow or other, I’m missing a shoe. My shirt is torn at the sleeve, right where that homeless man wrenched on my arm, pulling the muscles and ligaments this way and then that, the skin fiery red. Ben opens the freezer door and reaches inside for ice, filling a plastic bag with it. He lays that on my forearm and I blanch. It’s cold.

There are three chairs blockading the front door at my request. Ben never once said it was silly or stupid or asked why. He just did it, sliding the mod plaid chair across the room, scurrying into Esther’s bedroom to retrieve the IKEA desk chair.

He didn’t ask why. He just did it.

Esther’s cell sits on the table beside me, the message still there when we press the Home button to revive the phone.

Payback’s a bitch, it says, the text coming from some unknown number.

“She’s watching me,” I say to him as he pours me a glass of red wine and sits at the table opposite me on his own chair. His eyes are warm, a nice contrast to my cold.

“Drink this,” Ben says. “It’ll help calm your nerves.” He slides the cup across the table to me. It isn’t in a fancy wine glass. Rather, a red plastic cup. A smart decision on Ben’s part, considering my current state. My hands shake as they lift the cup. Under the table, Ben’s hand covers my knee. His touch is warm and reassuring. Soothing.

I say it again. “She’s watching me.”

Esther is watching me.

Ben and Priya were feasting on dim sum at some dive in Chinatown when I called, hysterical and crying. “What do you mean you can’t find the file?” he said on the phone to me. “I left it on your desk this afternoon.” Then he said to Priya, there in the populous restaurant on Cermak so that I could hear his crafty words over the noise, “I’m so sorry, babe. There’s been a mix-up at work. A missing file. I have to go.”

And then he left Priya in Chinatown, and brought me takeout: crispy sesame chicken and an egg roll to boot. And a bottle of red wine. He arrived in the doorway, his face overcome with signs of worry: the trenches of his forehead, the concerned eyes. He wore a smile, but it was utterly bogus, meant to bolster my mood.

“I got here as fast as I could,” he said, his voice bleeding with sympathy. He’d changed from his office attire into something far less formal than what I was used to seeing him in at work—jeans and a heather-gray hooded sweatshirt. But his hair was perfect and he oozed the crisp, cool cologne that made me dizzy and numb. Euphoric.

“I hope Priya wasn’t mad,” I said when he arrived, but he shrugged it off and said it didn’t matter, anyway. Truth be told, I didn’t really care whether or not Priya was mad; I was just so happy he’d come. So relieved. They were just finishing up their meal, and then Priya planned to bolt, anyhow, thanks to a heavy dose of homework. That’s what Ben tells me. He offered to help—or keep her company at least—but she’d said no. “She had too much to do,” said Ben, and I made believe I saw in his eyes a certain satisfaction that I needed him, that unlike Priya, I couldn’t do this alone. I needed his help and his company.

And so he washed and bandaged my hand. He moved the chairs. He got ice for my arm. He poured me wine.

My knight in shining armor.

And I told him what happened: about my visit with Nicholas Keller, the commute home, the creepy homeless man touching my hair, the text message on the cell phone.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were going to see Nicholas Keller?” he asks, sitting before me, a look of concern and kindness is his eyes. He runs a hand along my arm before finding its way back into his lap.

“I didn’t want to bother you,” I admit, and it’s true. Ben has been so good to spend so much time and energy helping me figure out where Esther has gone and what she’s up to. She’s his friend, yes, but it seems somehow like this is more my problem than his. But going to see Nicholas was also an impulsive decision on my part. I hardly knew where I was going until I walked out my front door and hopped on the Red Line, getting ferried underground. It wasn’t so much of a well-hatched plan as it was a spontaneous one, one that suddenly feels stupid. I should have asked Ben to tag along. I should have sat beside him at Nicholas Keller’s kitchen table and the both of us should have heard with our own two ears how Esther killed his fiancé.

Ben leans in even closer, his hand now kneading the denim of my jeans so that my barely beating heart almost completely stops working. “I would have gone with you. It wouldn’t have been a bother. That’s what friends do,” he says, and I nod my head sluggishly, thinking of course this is what friends do. They don’t stalk each other down and make attempts on their life.

And then I repeat for a third time or maybe a fourth, “She’s watching me,” and he says, “Maybe,” and then in that take-charge no-nonsense way that I like, “We need to call the police.” He releases his hold on my kneecap and sits back in his chair. But suddenly he feels far away, too far, the six-or eight-inch distance now transforming into eighteen, the slope of his body concave versus convex. I find myself leaning in, hoping to bridge that gap. Come back, Ben.