First Born(72)

KT would have loved this place. I know I still need to be careful – but I also feel a strong urge to experience this life one last time. KT’s life. It’s balancing risks, it’s always about balancing the risks. For these final hours in this city, surely I can risk being more like KT.

I let the server choose the dishes for me. All I say is I’m medium hungry, because that’s true, and that I don’t want puffer fish, because I read it’s potentially fatal if it isn’t handled properly. Especially the liver. I read that only the most experienced chefs in the world are qualified to prepare the delicacy. He says they don’t offer it in the restaurant.

The food is sublime, each dish better than the last. My first taste is salmon sashimi, just tipping my toe in the water. This is the real deal: salmon so velvety and soft it melts on my tongue. It’s not fishy. It’s not cold and hard. It’s divine.

My favourites are the eel, the yellowtail sashimi with jalape?o peppers and ponzu, and the black cod. I savour the flavours and the textures. Maybe KT ate good sushi a hundred times in her twenty-two years, in Aruba with James Kandee, in Paris with James Kandee, in Hong Kong with James Kandee, but she never experienced this. The undiluted joy of mono-dining at a quiet table during an off-peak lull; each mouthful a surprise and a delight. I am determined to fully enjoy this moment.

Dessert is green tea ice-cream. I pay, and tip the waiter thirty per cent, because he’s outrageously attractive and he did a good job. Credit where credit is due.

I feel like KT when I walk to the New York Public Library and then wait in the centre of Bryant Park for Violet to appear. I feel cosmopolitan and cultured. Less afraid. Less of a perennial outsider.

There’s construction work going on in the park. I find two green chairs, each one with a small table attached, and try to figure out what they’re building. Someone talks about the marathon and someone else nearby talks about a Christmas market. Then the woman’s husband corrects her, saying they’re building an ice rink, same as they always do, it’s a tradition like the big tree outside the Rockefeller Center.

Violet arrives and bursts into tears when she reaches me. I didn’t expect this from her. Not because she didn’t like Scott – I know all too well that she liked Scott very much – but because she’s a hardened New Yorker, and because I never saw her cry like this for KT. There are people staring at us out of the corners of their eyes. She says, ‘I’m sorry, it’s just . . . shit, can we go somewhere?’

‘Sure.’

We walk north and we do not speak. She loops her arm around mine and I like that. It’s as if we’re in a play or something.

‘You want to talk in my room?’ I ask.

‘In the Ritz-Carlton?’

‘Hardly! That was just for one night. No, I’m back in the hostel. Come up?’

She nods, and when we get there I unlock the door with my key and go inside. I glance at the door next to mine, wondering who’s sleeping in Mum and Dad’s bed. My room smells fusty.

Violet sits on the bed. There’s a six-pack of bottled water under there, a back-up I bought in case my suite is compromised in some way. She says, ‘Like . . . only a block away from here, in his hotel bed, murdered.’

‘I know. It’s utterly horrific.’

‘I told the police there’s a madman on the loose. A psychopath. Some guy killing Columbia students.’

‘What did they say?’

‘They said what you said. That there’s a chance they may not be connected. Not connected? You believe that? A girl, and then her boyfriend? Same school? Of course they’re fucking connected.’

‘It’s a nightmare.’

I’m still surprised his body was found so quickly. I’d expected him to be discovered after forty-eight hours, some manager or cleaning supervisor knocking on the door and yelling a warning, then opening the door. But within twelve hours? Did I forget something? No, I did not. The door sign was on, I know that. Maybe he bled out so much it dripped through the floor to the ceiling below? Scarlet raindrops. No, that’s impossible. Not with all the towels and bedding. The smell? Even though I turned the air-con down to sixty Fahrenheit? There wouldn’t have been any smell.

‘What are you thinking about?’ she says, opening her water bottle.

‘My sister,’ I lie.

‘Oh, Molly, fuck, this is even worse for you, I know it is. I liked Scottie so much but this is much harder for you. Goddamn, I wasn’t thinking, I’m sorry.’

‘Grief isn’t a competition,’ I say. ‘Mum told me that before she left for London. Saw it on Dr Phil or something.’

Violet smiles. ‘I’ve talked to some friends, some people who knew Scott, and people who knew Katie, but those two mixed in such different circles, you know. Not many people were friends with them both. Talking to you, it helps make sense of it all.’

‘There’s no sense in any of this,’ I say.

‘Amen to that. I hope whoever did this rots in hell.’

‘Oh, I think they probably will.’

‘Scottie’s parents are on their way down from Connecticut. His dad’s not well as it is – heart arrhythmia and a pacemaker – so I’m not sure how they’ll cope with all this.’

‘Thank God they have each other,’ I say. ‘Mum and Dad have been supporting each other these past weeks. People talk about marriage being outdated, but my parents lean on each other for support. If they’d divorced years ago, as they almost did – money worries, you know – I don’t think either one of them would have survived this.’