The Night Before(54)
“Look,” Kimmie said. “It was over a year ago, okay? I only went there a few times and it was late. I was drunk. And after I found out who he was, I wanted to forget. I wanted to forget everything about him.”
Gabe was busy now, on his phone. Rosie took a long breath to slow her mind. She wanted to reach through the phone and shake the information right out of this woman, but then she remembered about Sylvia. About the cruelty. There could be other things Kimmie didn’t want to remember.
“Okay,” Rosie said. “Can you tell us what he was like? What it was like to be in his apartment, alone with him?”
“That’s kind of personal, don’t you think?” Kimmie said, suddenly indignant. Or maybe just defensive.
“Nothing like that. I just meant, was his apartment nice, inviting? Was he nice? Was he a gentleman? Did his mood ever change?”
“Was he a gentleman … hmmm … let me think.” Kimmie was now sarcastic. “Well, he took me on three dates before he expected sex. We went to his apartment, which was a total bachelor pad. Nothing in the fridge. Everything black and silver. Should have been my first clue. But he said he had just gotten divorced, like a month before, so I bought it. It made sense. God, I even offered to help him decorate. Can you believe it? I was such an idiot.”
“Not at all,” Rosie said. “It sounds like he was very good at what he did—conning women.”
“You have no idea. He knew exactly what to say to me, exactly how to get inside my head. He talked about his dead father because my father had died when I was young. He talked about living life for the moment because you never know when it will end—again, something I was drawn to because of my father’s young death. And he made me feel like I was the first woman he’d been with since his cold ex-wife, who didn’t sleep with him for years. The thing is—the reason I started to wonder about him—if you can believe it, was how he was in bed. I mean, a man who’s been in a shitty marriage for ten years and who hasn’t had sex for a long time, and now is at the free-sex buffet—you would think he would be a little eager beaver—quick on the draw, you know what I’m saying?”
“Yes,” Rosie said, imagining Joe after going four months around the time of Mason’s birth. He was like a man in the desert suddenly finding an oasis. “But he wasn’t like that?” Rosie asked.
“No. He has it all down to a routine. He goes for a quickie off the bat, like he’s trying things out—a shark taking that first bite, getting a taste before coming back for the kill. So he made excuses for me to stay so he could go again, go in for the kill. And that’s when things got strange. It started with dirty talk—really filthy stuff. And then he got demanding. Some of the things he wanted to do—well, I’m sure he found other women willing to do them to get a Saturday night date. But I wasn’t into it. I left feeling disgusted, but it didn’t stop me from coming back again. I came back for one last date and that was when I found out the truth. He left the bedroom to get another drink and I pulled his wallet out of his pants pocket. When he came back, I was dressed and heading for the door. I made up some story about a friend who was drunk and stranded at a bar. He didn’t care a whole lot. Walked me to the door. No kiss. No nothing. He didn’t get his second round, so he was disappointed. I swear to you—I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t found the wallet. If I’d stayed for the second round that time. It felt like he knew exactly what he wanted at each turn and that he was going to find a way to get it.”
Gabe looked up from his phone, distracted and seemingly unaffected by a story that Rosie found horrific, and eerily similar to that of Sylvia Emmett’s. “Can I text you some pictures of apartment buildings on Maple? If we drive there now, maybe you can tell us which one looks like his? Maybe you’ll remember the number or the floor?”
There was a long silence.
“Hello?” Rosie said. “You still there?”
“Yeah,” Kimmie said with a sigh. “I can pull up images on my computer. I can probably find it for you. Jesus, though, don’t tell him we spoke, okay? I would hate for him to think that I gave him even one second of thought after I walked out that door.”
“Of course,” Rosie said.
“And when you find the right building, it’s apartment 2L. I remember it. I remember thinking that L stands for ‘Liar.’”
THIRTY-ONE
Laura. Session Number Ten. Two Months Ago. New York City.
Laura: I’ve been thinking about what you said—about there being someone from my past I tried to fix.
Dr. Brody: Yes. I remember when I said that.
Laura: It’s my father, right? The first man a girl loves.
Dr. Brody: And the one who loves her back. Who teaches her she’s worthy of love.
Laura: I can see that. Only, it wasn’t my father who was broken. It was my mother. He cheated on her. Left her for another woman. She was always crying. Worrying. And she didn’t hide it well. She used to talk about it in the kitchen with Mrs. Wallace and anyone else she could lure inside.
Dr. Brody: Sometimes things aren’t what they seem. Especially when they’re things from when we were young. Our memories are not static. They’re not pictures of reality. Sometimes they’re not true at all, but rather fiction that we need to believe so we can make sense of things.