Beautiful Lies

in something that I’m not sure would have been good for either one of us.”

“We just left him there,” I said, and was surprised to hear my voice crack, feel tears rush to my eyes. I put my head to my hand, rubbing at a headache that was now pressing at the back of my eyes.

“He was dead,” he said, and seemed to realize that he sounded cold and harsh. “I’m sorry, Ridley.” He leaned into me. “I’m sorry it happened. I’m sorry you had to see it. And I’m sorry I didn’t do a better job of protecting you. But—I mean—it’s not as if we could have helped him. Or even that we knew who’d shot him. The only thing that would have come from calling the police would have been a lot of questions. I just wanted to get you out of there.”

I saw him focus on something over my shoulder and I turned to look at the television screen. A young reporter with a blunt blond bob was standing in front of Van Cortlandt Park, police officers milling about behind her.

“An unidentified man was found murdered this morning in Van Cortlandt Park, located in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. Discovered by joggers, the man appears to have died from a gunshot wound to the head,” the reporter said with an odd cheeriness to her voice, as if she were reporting on the progress of a parade.

Behind her, I could see a fleet of squad cars, and the place where I’d sat was cordoned off with yellow crime-scene tape. A coroner’s van blocked the entrance to the park. I wondered how many people had passed Christian Luna’s dead body slumped on the bench before someone figured out he was dead. How many people had jogged by thinking he was just another bum taking a nap in the park? We’d left him to be discovered like that, a man who might have been my father. No matter what he might have done, he didn’t deserve that. Did he?

The reporter continued: “Police say that while they can’t be certain until ballistics tests have been completed, the bullet appears to have come from a rifle, and the trajectory indicates the shot was fired from a rooftop across the street.” The camera panned to the buildings across the street from the park, the residential apartment buildings and row houses we’d sat in front of for hours. “Again, these are just initial reports and cannot be verified without further investigation.

“Witnesses say that a woman and man were seen leaving the park shortly after midnight, but so far no one has come forward with a description. Police say that while these two are not suspects at this time, they are wanted for questioning.

“This is Angela Martinez reporting, New York One News.”

I got up and turned the television off and stood staring at the blank screen.

“Holy shit,” I said, whispering to myself more than anything. “I cannot believe this. What is happening to my life?”

I spun around to look at Jake. He sat still, looking unbelievably calm. “Did you hear that?” I demanded. “We’re wanted by the police.”

I started walking the length of the room.

“For questioning,” he said, as if it was nothing. Maybe it was nothing to him, but to someone who’d never had so much as a parking ticket, it seemed like a pretty big deal.

“Jake,” I said, stopping in front of him. “We have to go to the police.”

He shook his head. “Forget it. Not an option. Anyway, the police are the least of our concerns.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Think, Ridley,” he said, pointing to his temple. “Who killed Christian Luna? And why?” Actually, believe it or not, in my monumental selfishness, it had not even occurred to me to wonder who had killed Mr. Luna. I was still trying to deal with the fact that a man had been murdered before my eyes. The reasons why hadn’t even begun to dawn.

“Nobody knew we were going to meet him,” Jake said. “We didn’t even know until an hour before.”

“So maybe it was just an accident. I mean, like something random,” I said, reaching, not wanting to even consider the other possibilities.

“A shot like that?” said Jake with a sharp exhale. “No way.”

“Then what? Someone was following him? Or tapped his phone?”

“Maybe. Or someone was following you.”

“Me?” I said, letting go a little laugh. “Why would anyone be following me?”

You’re thinking, Is she nuts? The man in my building, the man in the pizzeria, the man I’d seen on the train. In my frazzled mind, all of these things still remained nebulous and unconnected. But I did think of the man on the train. Remembered his dead eyes and the case he’d carried. Had he been following me? Or was he some random weirdo? There was no way to know.

“Seems like,” said Jake, “if someone had been following him with the intent to kill him, they could have done it before they did. When he was walking up the street to the house, for example. If he was the target, it would have been much easier and less risky to hit him when he was alone. But maybe the shooter, whoever it was, didn’t know who the target was. Wouldn’t know until you led them to him.”

“I saw someone on the train,” I said. “He might have been following me but he got off before I did.” I wondered with a sickening twist in my stomach if I had inadvertently led Christian Luna’s killer to him.

“What do you mean?” asked Jake, concerned. “Why would you think he was following you?”

“He was staring at me. He smiled at me,” I said. It sounded lame as I described how the man had inched closer to me when he thought my eyes were closed. How he waved as the train pulled away from the station.

“But he got off the train before you?”

“Yeah.”

Jake shrugged. “Could have been some freak. It’s hard to say.”

I sat down beside him again and tried to turn this information around in my mind and draw some conclusions, but I just couldn’t get my head around it. Instead, that moment when Christian Luna fell toward me started playing again and I put my head back in my hands.

“Ridley—” he started, putting a hand on my back. But I stood up before he could finish. I walked into the bedroom, pulled on my jeans and socks, grabbed my shoes. Jake slid forward on the futon and looked at me with worry.

“I can’t do this right now,” I said. He nodded and looked down at the floor. I turned my eyes from him; I didn’t want to see how beautiful he was. I didn’t want my growing feeling for him to cloud my judgment about what I needed to do next.

“I need to think.”

“Ridley, wait,” he said, standing. “You need to be careful.”

“I will be. I’m just going downstairs for a while.” He nodded and sat back down. The look on his face—kind of compassionate and worried, a little hurt—made me feel like a bitch. But I left anyway.

If he had come over to me, put his arms around me, I would have melted into him. Not that it was an unattractive option, but I was starting to see my real self through the fissures that had opened in the fantasy of my life. If I turned to him now, scared and weak, how could I know if what I felt for him was love or just need? And if I turned to him in need, how could I face whatever it was he was hiding from me? Of course, none of these thoughts were fully formed at that moment. The only thing I knew was that I had to get away from him and from this nightmare. As fast and as far as I could.

I went back to my apartment. As soon as I closed the door, everything that happened last night and all the fear I’d felt up in Jake’s apartment seemed as though it was behind a sheet of bullet-proof glass. The familiar space wrapped itself around me and for a few merciful minutes I was just Ridley again.

An angry “5” blinked accusingly on my machine. When was the last time I’d checked my messages? Wednesday morning? Thursday? It was Saturday now and I felt like I’d been away from my life for a month. There was a pleasant and then a terse message from Uma Thurman’s publicist. The Vanity Fair editor wanted to know if I’d been able to connect with Uma and if the article was a go. There was a pleading message from Zachary: Wouldn’t I please call so we can clear the air about some things? The last message was a hang-up.

A few days earlier, I would have rushed to return all these calls, anxious that I’d been out of the loop, let things slide. But that morning I just lay on the couch, listening to these voices bounce around my apartment, overcome by a kind of emotional lethargy. I felt like I’d left a part of myself in the park where Christian Luna had died, the part of myself that knew how to handle the simple things like returning phone calls. I lay there for a while,