Die For You

inside that strange tacky purse and rested it on the gun, feeling quite able to use it if necessary.

As I walked, all the events of the last-was it only twenty-four hours?-played in my mind: that horrible screaming on the phone, Fred’s blood pooling on the marble floor, the lovely Camilla, her throat cut. I had the cold realization that I was, as Trevor suspected, terribly out of my league. I thought about my sister, how worried she must be, how furious she’d be when she learned I pulled a gun on Erik. She’d know then how desperate and stupid all of this had made me. I had a moment of clarity, my footfalls sounding loud on the concrete in the quiet night; I should call Detective Crowe and tell him everything I’d learned, then call that lawyer, get in a cab and turn myself in. I should take all the good advice and help that had been offered and stop being an ass-for the sake of my family, if for not for myself. I stopped in my tracks and took Camilla’s phone from my right pocket, Detective Crowe’s card from my left. I could have dialed, ended it right then and there.

I thought of S, her mean, dead eyes and perfect body. Again, the rise of bile in my throat. Pure rage had a taste and texture that I was starting to recognize. I tucked the phone and the card away. I couldn’t let anyone else write the end to this story. I had to do it myself.

Don’t try to find me or to answer the questions you’ll have. I can’t protect you-or your family-if you do.

I could hear the sound of his voice in my head, as clearly as if he were beside me.

Protect me from whom? From your other self, this shadow that was living with me, sleeping in my bed for five years? Detective Breslow asked me if he’d had a history of mental illness. Maybe he did. How could I know? The man I saw in Camilla Novak’s apartment was my husband, the man I knew. Not some deranged madman who’d finally gone off the edge, not someone unrecognizable in insanity. It was him, perhaps merely, finally, unveiled.

I KEPT WALKING, turning left onto Eighty-eighth Street and moving past stately town houses until I reached the one I knew well. As I rang the bell, I thought, not for the first time: How in the world does he afford to live here? A three-story town home on the Upper East Side of Manhattan? The Gold Coast. Unaffordable to any but the super-rich. Even the merely rich were just riffraff in this rarefied world. I’d been crass enough to ask once before.

“You made me rich,” he said. I laughed. Without Marcus’s income, I certainly wouldn’t have been living in an Upper West Side duplex. I’d still be in my apartment in the East Village.

“I haven’t even made myself this rich.”

“You do all right.”

“Seriously.”

I didn’t recall the answer now. It’s true that when he’d moved in that it was a skeleton of what it would become, with exposed rafters and wires, sagging staircases, water stains on the ceilings. He’d spent years restoring it, doing most of the work himself. Five years after closing, it was a showplace. Every time I came to see him, he was in the middle of some element of the restoration. It always reminded me of Fred, how he spent years fixing everything that was broken in our old house.

“They say a man who feels the need to build a house believes that he hasn’t accomplished enough with his life,” Jack told me. He was laying a hardwood floor in the upstairs hallway. I was sitting in the threshold to the bedroom, my feet up on the door frame and a beer in my hand-very helpful. I’d been married a year; Marcus was away on business. Or so I believed at the time. Who knows where he really was?

“Is that how you feel?” I asked him.

He brought the hammer down hard a couple of times, the sound echoing through still mostly empty rooms.

“I don’t know,” he said finally. I remembered our night together then. It came back in a vivid flash and I felt heat rise to my cheeks. I remembered his breath in my ear, I’ve always loved you, Isabel. What had I said to him in return? I didn’t remember.

“What about that woman you were seeing? An editor, right?”

“She thought I needed too much revision.”

My chuckle turned into a belly laugh and then we were both doubled over, tearing and clutching our middles.

Jack answered the door as quickly as if he’d been standing right behind it. He looked worried to the point of frantic.

“Christ,” he said by way of greeting, throwing his hands up in relief. “It’s almost eleven. I’ve been freaking out. Your sister’s been calling and calling.”

“What did you tell her?” I asked, stepping inside.

“That I hadn’t heard from you. She knew I was lying.”

He grabbed me by the arms and looked me up and down.

“You look awful,” he went on. “That bandage is bleeding through.”

I put my hand to it and realized it was wet. He dragged me down the narrow hallway to the large bathroom past the gourmet kitchen-all granite and stainless steel as if it lived in a showroom, gleamingly clean as is only possible for a man who eats takeout seven nights a week. I’d watched delivery men carry the granite in, helped Jack unwrap the appliances.

In the bathroom mirror, I saw what he saw and I almost wept. Awful wasn’t the word-wrecked, defeated, that same pasty-ill look that Ivan had. I remembered the wound on his chest, how his bandage was bleeding through, too. I felt a bizarre camaraderie for the big, unstable man.

“This is infected,” Jack said with a grimace as he removed the bandage. “Stay here.”

I sank to the floor as soon as he left, sitting on the plush bath mat and leaning against the wood vanity. I heard him pound up the stairs and then come back down a minute later. He knelt on the floor beside me. I cringed when I saw the peroxide in his hand, the mass of cotton balls, gauze, and antibiotic ointment. He dabbed some of the peroxide on a cotton ball. He was in his element-he was a caretaker, the fix-it guy.

What about Jack? My sister’s favorite question, asked after every dating snafu and failed relationship. He’s such a good guy. He cares about you. It’s obvious.

It’s obvious we’re friends. There’s nothing else but that.

That’s enough for a start. It’s not all lightning bolts and shooting stars.

You sound like Mom.

“Isabel,” Jack said, poised with a dripping ball of cotton, the scent of antiseptic heavy in the air. “This is really going to hurt.”

“Good,” I said. “I like consistency.”

He gave me a look that was somehow amused and compassionate and then ruthlessly went to work on my injury while I tried to be stoic, but couldn’t stop a flood of tears welling from a deep place within me.

Jack just kept saying, over and over, “I’m sorry, Iz. I’m so sorry.”

* * *

“WHAT ARE YOU doing here, Ben?”

Her breath came out in big clouds. She pulled her coat tightly around her.

“Get in the car,” he said softly, not meeting her eyes. “It’s cold.”

“Ben. I’m not getting in your car. My children are sleeping inside that building.” She turned around and pointed to the large white structure. She had an uncomfortable fluttering in her chest thinking of them sleeping a few stories up next to Fred’s hospital bed. Either of them could wake, walk over to the window, and see her standing in the parking lot, talking to a strange man in his car. There would be lots of questions she couldn’t answer.

He’d seen her exit the building; she could tell by the way he straightened his posture and checked his reflection in the rearview mirror. Did he think she’d be happy to see him here? Was he that delusional?

“Just for a minute. Please, Linda.”

She could smell the heavy, sharp odor of too many cigarettes smoked in close quarters. He looked tired, edgy, was listening to the blues. She wasn’t familiar with the song. A sad-voiced woman wailed about her lost man-her voice eerie, tinny, floating up to Linda’s ears.

“No, Ben. What are you doing here? Did you follow me?”

He nodded, looking sheepish but not ashamed. Almost as if he thought she might find it funny or charming. She didn’t.