Dream Girl(71)

She was mocking him, he can tell, but he doesn’t know why.

“It’s a habit,” he said. “One thing I’ve done right, consistently.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, offering him a sincere smile. “Walk me home tonight? It’s lovely out, our first real autumnal evening.”

The word autumnal grates—so pretentious—but it was a beautiful night and what harm could there be in a walk? “Where is home these days?”

“I’m staying at a friend’s place at 102nd and West End. We can walk through Riverside Park.”

He did and didn’t regret what happened on the bench. Margot, with her praying mantis limbs, her voracious mouth—he counted himself lucky that he got out of this relationship without her biting his head off.





April




GERRY IS TRYING to wean himself from all his medication. Senses must be sharp! He cannot afford a sleep so drugged and heavy that he misses another homicide, possibly his own. Funny, it doesn’t occur to Leenie to watch him swallow his pills. Maybe she believes him to be addicted by now, or at least keen for his nightly oblivion. At any rate, he holds the nighttime pills under his tongue until she goes back downstairs, eager to be reunited with her manuscript. He then takes them out and crushes them as best he can, shutting them inside whatever hardcover book is on his nightstand, sprinkling the dust on the rug. It’s not as if Leenie even pretends to clean anymore. She leaves that to a housekeeper who comes every other week, the only outsider who still enters the apartment. Can the housekeeper save him? It seems a lot to ask, given that he doesn’t even know her name. Carolina? Carmen? Carmela? No, that was the wife on The Sopranos. Anyway, her English isn’t very good and Gerry speaks no Spanish at all.

It strikes Gerry that he has a very bad bargain in this fake marriage, a “wife” who provides the minimal care he needs and focuses most of her energy on her writing.

It strikes Gerry that this is who he would have been as a wife.

Although neater. He has always been a generally tidy man, even when living alone, and his years in New York made him vigilant about food waste, which attracted cockroaches and rats. From his bed, he can see the dishes piling up in the kitchen. And there is a smell. She has thrown something in the bin and not bothered to take the trash out despite the fact that it is a short walk to the utility room with the trash chute. An old television theme song plays in his head. Moving on up, moving on up. Here he is, in his dee-luxe apartment in the sky, and he might as well be in the ghetto.

Maybe things were better when he was taking his pills.

But he is grateful to have his senses when the phone rings at two A.M. His cell phone, though, not the landline. Changing up the game, are we, Leenie? He grabs it on the first ring. There is a short silence, although he can hear breathing on the other end. If ever a pause was pregnant, it’s this one. He waits, wondering what he will do if “Aubrey” speaks to him again. Then he clearly will be crazy or demented, because Victoria and then Leenie played the part of Aubrey, and Victoria is dead. Then again—he never saw Victoria’s dead body, he has only Leenie’s word for it—

“Gerry Andersen? Is that you, Gerry Andersen?” A female voice, unfamiliar, definitely not one he has heard before. A slurred voice. Someone has drunk-dialed Gerry.

“This is Gerry Andersen,” he says. He listens intently. Is Aileen moving downstairs? Will she try to eavesdrop? He thinks of himself as a child, stealthily picking up the heavy phone in the kitchen when his father made calls from the bedroom, the need to place one’s finger on the button, then let it slide out slowly, so there would be no telltale click.

“Why didn’t you answer my letters? Why did you ignore me? We could have worked something out. I didn’t mean to make you angry. I only wanted what was fair—”

“Who is this?”

The voice continues, heedless and emotional. “I know I should have hired a lawyer, but I don’t have money to hire a lawyer. That’s the whole problem. It’s a catch-22.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He feels as if he should, though. A thought tantalizes him. Letters, letters, what letters? Everything started with a letter, but there have been no letters since, not according to Leenie. Has she been meddling with his mail?

The woman is weeping now. “They always say not to make ultimatums unless you’re prepared to follow through. And maybe I was foolish and maybe people would think I’m the bad person in all this, but you’re the bad person, Gerry Andersen. Not because—but because—because it wasn’t what I wanted, it was disgusting and wrong, even if you didn’t realize that. I still can’t get over it and I can’t talk to anyone about it.”

“Who is this?”

His question prompts a wave of sobs. “Jesus, are there so many of me you can’t remember? You really are a sick fuck.”

He tries again, his voice gentle, his ear still cocked for any sound of Leenie. “You said you sent me letters. Where did you send them?”

“To New York, of course. Where you live.”

“Lived. I’ve been in Baltimore since last year.”

“Oh.” Chagrined snuffle.

“And how did you get this number?”

A sniffle, a few ragged breaths. She is calming down. “There are online searches. I spent thirty dollars to see what I could find out about you. Got your address, this number. I thought you would respond to the letters, I really did. Once you knew—I thought you would have to do the right thing.”