Nine Lives(21)

The way she thought about her premonitions was that they were mostly about change, but always change for the worse. And that’s what death was, of course: just a change for the worse.

But she went out with Jonathan Grant, despite the coldness she’d felt when he asked her. And they had a good time. He talked about his children and his work, asked her questions about her own life. He didn’t try to kiss her, even though she’d already decided that she’d probably let him. But on their third date, he offered her a proposition, starting off by saying, “I believe in straight talk. I think that’s how I’ve made all of my money. So I’d like to put an offer before you.”

She knew what the general idea of the proposition was going to be long before he got into the details, but it was the details that ultimately sold her. He owned an apartment near Gramercy Park and she could live there rent-free. In return he would like to see her once a week for a “physical engagement”—his unfortunate words—and he would also make sure that she received plenty of spending money and gifts.

“We haven’t even slept together,” Alison said. “How do you know you’d like it?”

“Because I like you. I’m not a fetishist, and don’t care what your breasts look like or what acts you’d be willing to do. I don’t care about any of that. I just want to be intimate with you, but I would entirely understand if you want to do that with me first before making a decision.”

So, they did, that night, in a room at the Greenwich Hotel. True to his word, there was nothing strange or kinky about Jonathan’s sexual behavior. He took a pill first, telling her it gave him his best chance of a successful erection, and then he took her to bed, gentle at first, a little boring, but before she knew it, he had taken control, changing their positions until he’d found the one that felt the best to both of them, and she had managed to easily have an orgasm. She lay on the comfortable bed, her body tired and relaxed, while he dialed down to room service for a cold bottle of white.

“So I’ll be your whore?” she said.

“I believe the preferred nomenclature is ‘mistress,’ but you can call yourself anything you want. I’ll understand if you don’t want to do this.”

“What if I meet someone else? What if I fall in love?”

“I’d be happy for you.”

This was fourteen months ago. Despite the premonition that night at the Lodge, she felt as though the change that Jonathan had brought her had been mostly good. Her life was full of pleasure. She no longer worried about money. But she did worry about the purpose of her life, and she worried that she’d entered a kind of trap in this relationship with an older, married man. It wouldn’t last forever, and what would she do after he was gone? How would she go back to a life without the steady income he provided?

The day loomed before her. She texted Doug to see if he was free for lunch, then remembered right after she texted that he had gone to upstate New York for the weekend with his boyfriend.

She paced her apartment, wondering why she was so shaky this morning, her limbs practically tingling. She’d felt strange for a couple of days now, and thinking back, she realized that it had started when she’d received that list in the mail with the names on it. It had been a while since one of her feelings had come over her, and that letter had done it. Which meant change was coming, and the bad kind.

She nearly fished through her kitchen garbage in order to look at the list again, but what would that accomplish? Instead, she called her favorite spa to see if she could get a pedicure appointment later in the morning.





2





SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 8:21 A.M.


He’d left his bedroom window open, and it was cold in the room when he woke up. Despite that, Arthur was under his heavy duvet and was perfectly warm. He lay for a moment, drifting up into consciousness, enjoying the feel of the cold air and his own body heat under the covers, and the way the curtain was flapping in the breeze. Light flickered across half of the high ceiling and he was transfixed by it. Then, as happened every morning, thoughts flooded in: Richard’s death, a strange letter, the FBI agents. He was fully awake.

In the shower, he thought back on those few minutes of quiet bliss he’d had in bed that morning. It was happening more frequently these days, this lapse of time between waking up and then remembering that he’d lost Richard, and that he’d never be able to see him or talk to him again. He was conflicted. He loved these moments of time when he was able to just enjoy the fact that he was still alive, but he was also terrified that Richard was slipping away from him, becoming a half-remembered ghost of his past.

He forced himself to stop thinking about it and planned out his day instead. Saturdays were the hardest day of the week. He didn’t have work, and he didn’t have church, and the day stretched out before him like an endless, empty corridor. There was raking to do, and that would take up some of the day, and he’d been meaning to go see an exhibit at the Mead Art Museum, something called “A Collection of Medieval Devotional Objects,” right up his alley. Between those two things, and eating, of course, plus maybe a movie after dinner, he’d manage to get through this Saturday.





3





SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 11:13 A.M.


Why nine?” Jessica said to Aaron as he sidled up to her cubicle.