The Night Before(25)
“No!”
Joe grabbed her by the shoulders, but he had no words to calm her.
The message was from a woman with the screen name secondchance. It was short. One word. All caps.
DO YOU KNOW THIS MAN? Had been the question.
The answer was brief.
RUN.
THIRTEEN
Laura. Session Number Nine. Two Months Ago. New York City.
Dr. Brody: I’m sorry, Laura. It must be very hard to carry such a heavy burden.
Laura: Which one? I’ve always felt burdened by something.
Dr. Brody: The guilt.
Laura: Ah, right. That one.
FOURTEEN
Laura. The Night Before. Thursday, 9:30 p.m. Branston, CT.
We don’t make it far.
He takes the same way back, and we are stopped at a light on Grand Street. A bodega is on the right, young men with their pants halfway down their asses crowd around the entrance. Yes, they still do that in downtown Branston. They haven’t gotten the memo.
On the left, two old women sit on the stoop of a dilapidated town house, their knees spread wide even though they wear skirts. There’s nothing to see but white granny panties, and they couldn’t give a shit.
Jonathan plays music again. He hasn’t spoken since we got in the car down by the water.
Finally he does.
“I have a confession,” he says.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“So what is it?”
Do we really need to go through all of this? Just spit it out.
He sighs. He says, “Okay.” Of course.
Then he tells me. “I Googled you.”
I shrug. “I Googled you. I thought that was normal.”
“What did you find?”
How is this now about me? I don’t have a confession. Not one I’m willing to make.
Still, I answer, seeing as we are playing a little game.
“Nothing, actually. No Jonathan Fields matched your picture. But I didn’t try very hard, to be honest. There are a lot of you.”
He sighs again. He says, “Okay.” Again. “My last name isn’t Fields.”
Fuck.
“What is it then?”
“Fielding.”
“And you lied because…?” My heart bangs against the walls of my chest.
“That woman—the one from the bar—she found my ex-wife using my last name. She tried to friend her on social media. Facebook and LinkedIn. Followed her on Instagram. We don’t speak much, so I didn’t know. I couldn’t warn her. They started messaging each other.”
“That’s crazy,” I say. And it is.
“It was benign at first, but then she started asking questions about me, and when my wife—sorry, my ex-wife—got suspicious and cut her off, she started saying all this stuff about what an asshole I was and how could she have married me and what kind of an idiot was she because I probably cheated on her the whole time. Stuff like that.”
I think about this as the light turns.
“So why are you telling me now?”
“What do you mean?” He doesn’t glance at me because he’s driving again.
My heart slows, the volume clicked down to a tolerable level. This all sounds reasonable in the world of online dating.
Not that I would know. But that doesn’t stop me from accepting his explanation.
“She didn’t flip out on you until you slept with her on the third date and then ended things. Which, I have to admit, still has me curious about what happened in that bedroom that you found strange but turned her into a strung-out addict for more of you and whatever it is you had going on that night.”
This gets me a smile. Or maybe a snicker.
“Don’t you think you should have waited to tell me? You haven’t even given me a fighting chance to go psycho on you yet.”
Another smile. Another light. This time we have an empty street corner on one side, and a deserted park on the other. He takes the opportunity to look at me.
“It’s the first time I’ve lied about my name. It feels wrong. Like if we ended up seeing each other again, it would be too late to tell you and then I would have messed things up.”
Sweet. Jesus. Christ.
He might want to see me again. Happy.
Lying will mean the end. Sad.
Confusion sets in. I’m not good with confusion.
“So,” I say, struggling now. “Is that your confession?”
Light turns. Car doesn’t move. He doesn’t see the light because he’s looking into his lap with his eyes closed.
“No,” he says.
Now I’m worried. What’s so bad that he can’t even drive the car?
A pimped-out pickup truck pulls up behind us, lights blinding as they pour into the Toyota. Then a honk. Jonathan Fields—scratch that—Fielding—drives through the light and pulls over at the curb.
“I Googled you,” he says again.
“I know. You said that.”
“I found you.”
The engine hums as it sits idling. We are beside the park, which has a fence running along the side of the road. Not a soul in sight now that the wifebeaters have driven past. I consider my options. They aren’t good.
Did he stop here on purpose to tell me that he’s found me?