were trapped in cutting-room scenes from
“For fuck’s sake, Ames, stab me or something, but I don’t think I can take much more of this civility.”
And for the first time in eleven years I heard Amy laugh. In a sense, to hear it brought me low, lower than her rage and disappointment ever could. Because in her laughter came the realization of what all that empty space in my life had been since I ran away from New York. It made me ache with guilt and regret-neither of which I was wont to do-because I had so wantonly and foolishly pissed away the only deeply loving relationship I’d ever had. Yet, at the same time it filled me with a strange joy to know I had made her laugh again, that I still could evoke in her something more than just rage. Her laughter encouraged me there might be enough left between us to build on, enough for me to hope.
“Wrong kind of restaurant,” Amy said, her laughter calming. “Writers have thick skins and it would be too much trouble to shove a chopstick through your heart.”
“At least you give me credit for having one.”
“Oh, I never doubted your heart. I still don’t. Your heart wasn’t the organ that caused our problems.”
“You think?”
“You’re such an ass, Kip Weiler.”
“True enough. So, Amy Anne Sanger-Weiler-Moreland, how would you like to date again?”
She didn’t answer right away, distracted by something over my right shoulder. Then she said, “Date? What are you going to do next, ask me to the prom?”
“It’s a thought. I do look good in a tuxedo. No, I don’t want to lose you again is all, and clearly there’s some stuff between us that we’ve got to deal with. I never want to feel the way it felt the other night and-” I cut myself off, noticing Amy’s eyes drifting away once again. “Amy!”
“Sorry. What were you saying?” But even as she asked, her eyes wandered.
“What are you staring at?”
Her eyes remained fixed over my right shoulder. “All through dinner, there was a woman standing at the window behind you. At first, I hardly noticed her, but she’s still there and I’m pretty sure she’s staring at us.”
I went cold inside and forced myself not to turn around. “Amy, do me a favor and stop looking at her, okay?”
“All right, sure.”
“Look right at me, please.”
Amy turned her head so that she locked her eyes on mine. “What’s going on, Kip?” she asked, a false smile on her lips.
“Is she twenty, twenty-one years old, athletic build, about five eight with long, straight blond hair, high cheekbones, and blue eyes?”
“Who is she?”
“Is that her, the woman I described?” My whisper was as cold as my blood.
“That’s her. She’s really quite beautiful. Who is she?”
“I can’t explain it, Amy, because I don’t understand it myself. I’m going to get up in a minute as if I’m going to the bathroom, but I’m not coming back. Pay the bill and I’ll send you a check tomorrow.”
“What about your coat?”
“Leave it here and tell the waitress I’ll come back for it later.”
“What’s going-”
“Amy, please just do it.”
“Okay, okay.” She relented, if not happily.
“What’s she wearing?”
“What?”
“What’s she wearing, the woman outside?”
“A ski vest, blue maybe, over a brown hooded sweatshirt, sweatpants … I can’t tell much more. It’s dark outside.”
“Good.”
“Is she a stalker?”
I smiled involuntarily. “I guess, in a way. I don’t know for sure.” I stood up, making a show of asking the waitress where the restrooms were. When the waitress left, I turned back to Amy. “I’ll call you soon. Tomorrow, if I can.”
With that, the false smile on Amy’s face collapsed completely.
I walked towards the bathroom, but shouldered my way into the kitchen. At first, no one reacted, the chefs and sous chefs too busy fussing with clanging woks, cleavers, and cutting boards to worry about yet another asshole tourist who’d stumbled into their domain instead of the men’s room. It was only when I didn’t say “excuse me” or turn back around that anyone paid me any mind, but by then it was too late. There was an open side door about ten paces to my left that let cold air into the steamy kitchen and led out onto East 4th Street. I didn’t hesitate and ran out through the door. No one came after me, but I slammed into a parked car. When I looked up, Renee, thirty feet away, was staring at me. She ran and I ran after her.
Forty-Two
What Amy couldn’t see, what she couldn’t have seen, was that Renee was wearing running shoes. I noticed because she put distance between us almost immediately. If I hadn’t started running again, she would have lost me after a block. Even so, I wasn’t exactly outfitted for a mad dash through the East Village. I was dressed in a sweater, sports jacket, flannel slacks, and beat-up old dress shoes, which, like the rest of my wardrobe, were desperately in need of euthanasia. And one thing I knew about Renee from seeing her nude, from feeling her powerful clench, was that she was in incredible shape. If I didn’t catch her quickly, I knew I would lose her.
I called out to her, pleading for her to stop, but she kept her eyes looking forward, never wavering. We attracted some attention from other people strolling along Lafayette Street, but not an undue amount. This was New York City, after all. I stopped calling to her, not only because it didn’t seem to be having an effect, but because it made me swallow big gulps of near-freezing air that hurt my throat and threw my rhythm out of whack.
Suddenly, Renee veered off her dead-straight path, cutting a jagged line through sparse but oncoming traffic across to the east side of Lafayette. Instead of trying to lose me she continued uptown along Lafayette. It was only when she got to Astor Place that she turned east and then south by Cooper Union where Bowery splits into 3rd and 4th Avenues. I’d lost sight of her for a few seconds after she turned onto Astor. When I picked her trail back up again as I turned right onto 4th Avenue, she was almost exactly the same distance ahead of me as she had been the entire time. It was at that precise moment I realized that Renee wasn’t trying to lose me at all, that she would have actually had to wait for me on 4th to maintain the same distance between us. It all made a perverse kind of sense, the same kind of twisted sense my last few months in Brixton had been about. Renee’s lingering in plain sight outside the restaurant, her running shoes and sweats, her steady pace, her easy-to-follow course weren’t about escape, but capture, my capture. I was being led somewhere, hopefully not to slaughter.
I had a choice to make and not much time in which to make it. Knowing that I was being baited, I could have just stopped running, about-faced, and headed back to the Peking Brasserie. I could have taken control of the situation. Briefly, I fantasized about the stunned look on Renee’s face if, when she turned, I was no longer there. Would she then start chasing me? I thought about the surprise I would see on Amy’s face at my return, but I didn’t stop running. I knew I wouldn’t. I didn’t even hesitate. There was no hook in my mouth, no line attached to the hook, no reel pulling me in, though there might as well have been. There was only the bait and that was enough.
Writers are curious bastards, more curious than cats. Besides, even understanding as little as I did about what was really going on, I knew that any attempt to seize control of the situation would be temporary, a delaying of the inevitable. Bad news is better than no news and I didn’t feel up to sitting around waiting for the next time Renee would show up unannounced, nor did I want to risk upping the ante. If she’d been willing to appear outside a
