An Anonymous Girl (22 page)

Is it ethical to destroy one blameless woman’s life if it means there’s a chance of protecting other women from future
harm?

I need an escape from my thoughts. If I did drugs, now is when I’d be reaching for a joint. But I don’t lose control that way. There’s another outlet I crave when the pressure gets to be too much.

Noah thinks I’m the kind of girl you cook for and only kiss on the first date. But that’s not who I am anymore, ever since that evening with Gene French. Maybe because I trusted him so
much, now it’s hard to be emotionally vulnerable with men. Even if Noah were in town, he’s not what I’m looking for tonight.

I think instead about the guy who just texted, and how he stared after me when I walked toward the museum. With him, I can just be an anonymous girl.

So I text him again:
Any chance you’re free for a drink now?

I briefly think about Noah with the dishcloth tucked
away in his jeans as he cooked for me.

He won’t ever know,
I think.

All I’m going to do is see this guy for a few hours. I’ll never need to talk to him again.

Friday, December 14

After you file your report on your encounters with Reyna and Tiffani, the phone remains silent for an agonizingly long stretch of time. When Thomas finally calls at 9:04
P.M.
, the cup of peppermint tea has been freshened three times. Nearly two pages of the legal pad are filled.

“I’m so sorry I didn’t see your text earlier,” he begins.
“I was running around Christmas shopping and I didn’t hear my ringer because the stores were so packed.”

Thomas typically does leave holiday shopping until the last minute. And the rush of city noises can be heard in the background.

Still, suspicion swells. Would he truly have not felt the vibration of his phone?

But his excuse is readily accepted, because it is even more vital that
he enters the experiment blind.

A bit of light chatting ensues. Thomas says he is worn out, and is heading home for an early night.

Then he utters one final sentence before hanging up.

“I’m looking forward to seeing you tomorrow, gorgeous.”

The teacup clatters into the saucer, chipping the fine china. Fortunately, he terminated the call before the noise erupted.

During the
course of our marriage, Thomas freely bestowed compliments:
You’re beautiful. Stunning. Brilliant.

But never gorgeous.

In the errant text that he addressed to me, though, it was the term he’d used for the woman he confessed to having an affair with.

Experiencing emotional phases of dark and light is universal. A healthy and loving partnership can provide a supportive infrastructure
during a downward trajectory, but it can never erase the pain that infuses an individual during pivot points such as the death of a sister, or the infidelity of a husband.

Or the suicide of a young female subject.

This seismic tragedy occurred at the beginning of this past summer: June 8, to be exact. Our marriage suffered, Jessica. Whose wouldn’t? It was difficult to summon the energy
to wholly engage. Visions of my subject’s earnest, brown eyes intruded at all hours. A retreat both emotionally and physically resulted, despite Thomas’s reassuring words: “Some people are beyond help, my love. There’s nothing you could have done.”

Our marriage could have recovered from the estrangement formed during this time. Except for one thing.

A season later, in September, the text
he said was intended for the boutique owner with whom he’d had a one-night stand landed on my phone. The bright, chiming noise seemed to reverberate throughout my quiet office. It was 3:51
P.M.
on a Friday afternoon.

Thomas likely sent it at that particular time because his own office was empty, too; clients typically depart at ten minutes before the hour, leaving a small window for the therapist
to attend to personal needs before the next patient is welcomed.

During that summer of internal darkness, my office hours were also maintained, Jessica. No patient was turned away. This was perhaps more vital than ever before.

Which meant the nine vacant minutes that followed the receipt of the text could be spent staring at Thomas’s message:
See you tonight, Gorgeous.

It was as though
the words expanded until they blotted out all else.

As a therapist, one often witnesses a client’s attempt to rationalize, to make excuses, as a defense mechanism to quash overwhelming emotions. However, those four words could not be ignored.

When just one minute remained before new clients would be ushered in to both of our offices, the trancelike state broke. A reply was transmitted
to Thomas.

I do not think this was intended for me.

The phone was then silenced and my four
P.M.
appointment, a single mother struggling with anxiety that was exacerbated by her teenage son’s belligerence, was utterly unaware that anything was amiss.

However, Thomas must have canceled his final appointment of the day, because fifty minutes later, after the agitated mother was escorted
out, he sat slumped in my waiting room, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, his face drawn and gray.

In the wake of Thomas’s text, data was amassed.

Some information was offered by Thomas. Her first name: Lauren. Her place of employment: a small, upscale clothing boutique near Thomas’s office.

Other information was independently collected.

A brief phone call to the boutique
at noon on a Saturday was all that was required to verify Lauren’s presence on the premises. It was a simple matter to wander inside and pretend to be absorbed in the colorful fabrics.

She was ringing up a customer with easy chatter. The boutique contained one other sales clerk and several other shoppers. But she was the one who drew the eye, and not just because of her history with my husband.
You look a bit like her, Jessica. There’s a similarity in your essence. And it was easy to see why even a happily married man would be susceptible to her overtures.

She completed the transaction and approached me with a warm smile. “Looking for anything special?” she asked.

“Just browsing,” she was told. “Can you make a recommendation? I’m going away for the weekend with my husband and
I’d like a few new outfits.”

She recommended several items, including the unstructured dresses she’d picked up on her recent buying trip to Indonesia.

A brief conversation ensued concerning her travels.

She was exuberant and brimming with joy; she wore her zest for life.

After Lauren was allowed to prattle on for several minutes, the encounter was abruptly terminated. Nothing was
purchased, of course.

The meeting answered a few questions, but it raised others.

Lauren still has no idea of the true intention of my visit.

A drop of bright red blood stains the white china saucer.

A Band-Aid covers my tiny wound. The broken teacup remains on the table.

Thomas is not a tea drinker.

He prefers coffee.

The legal pad rests on the desk next to the teacup.

The question at the top of the yellow lined page, written in all capital letters, can finally be answered:
WHERE WILL THEY FINALLY MEET?

Every Sunday, following his squash game, Thomas enjoys a simple routine: He reads
The New York Times
at a diner two doors down from his gym. He pretends this is because the location is convenient. The truth is that he craves their greasy bacon and fried
eggs with a heavily buttered bagel. Despite a marriage filled with so many overlapping regimes, our Sunday-morning routines were always divergent.

In thirty-six hours, Thomas will indulge his weekly craving.

And you, Jessica, will arrive to provide a different sort of temptation.

Sunday, December 16

I spot Dr. Shields’s target the instant I step into the diner that’s filled with the clatter of dishes and the buzz of customers’ conversations. He’s alone in the third booth on the right, his face partially obscured by his newspaper.

Yesterday Dr. Shields called to tell me she had a check for a thousand dollars for my work on Friday night.
Then she gave me this assignment: Find a certain man, at this particular coffee shop, and exchange phone numbers. It was uncomfortable enough to flirt with Scott at a hotel bar, but doing the same thing without the dim light and alcohol seems a hundred times worse.

The only way I can do it is by imagining my family’s expressions when they learn they’re going on vacation after all.

Sandy
hair. Six foot two. Tortoiseshell glasses. New York Times. Gym bag.
Dr. Shields’s description runs through my mind again.

The man checks every box. I walk briskly toward him, poised to say my opening line. He looks up just as I reach his table.

I freeze.

I know my next line:
I’m sorry to bother you, but did you find a phone?

But I can’t speak. I can’t move.

The man in the booth
isn’t a stranger.

I first encountered him outside the Met Breuer four days ago, when we both stopped to help the woman who was hit by a taxi. We were two strangers bound together by serendipity—at least that’s what I assumed.

I saw him again after he texted to tell me Marilyn was okay, and I suggested meeting for a drink.

He sets his newspaper on the table. He looks almost as surprised
as I feel. “Jess? What are you doing here?”

My first instinct is to turn and walk out the door. My mouth is dry and it’s hard to swallow.

“I just—I mean,” I stutter. “I was just walking by and thought I’d grab a bite.”

He blinks.

“What a coincidence.” His eyes linger on my face and panic sweeps through me. “You don’t live around here. What are you doing in the neighborhood?”

I shake my head and push away an image of him leaning forward in the darkened bar just two nights ago, his hand grazing my thigh. After three drinks, Thomas and I went back to my place.

“Um, a friend told me I should come because the food was good.”

The waitress swings by with a carafe of steaming coffee: “Top you off, Thomas?”

“Sure,” he says. He gestures to me. “Do you want to sit
down?”

The restaurant feels stuffy and overly warm. I unwind the taupe wrap from around my neck, leaving both sides dangling down the front of my jacket. Thomas is still looking at me suspiciously.

I don’t blame him.

I never learned what the morality test was in the museum. But in a city of eight million, what are the odds that I’d randomly run into the same person twice in four days,
both times on assignment for Dr. Shields?

Everything feels so topsy-turvy that I can’t gather my thoughts. Another image intrudes: him kissing his way down my bare stomach.

I can’t say anything to Thomas that would explain my presence here. Who is he to Dr. Shields? Why did she pick him?

I feel sweat prickle my armpits.

The waitress returns. I’m still standing.

“Anything for
you?” she asks me.

There’s no way I can sit across from him and eat.

“You know, I’m not really hungry after all,” I say.

I look at Thomas more closely—his green eyes behind his tortoiseshell glasses, his olive skin and his dirty-blond hair. It hits me that Dr. Shields assumed the guy I was talking to at the exhibit was Thomas, since she thought he had sandy hair. She lost interest
as soon as she realized it wasn’t him.

So this is a do-over.

But what is Dr. Shields going to say when she learns I’ve slept with the guy whose phone number I’m supposed to get?

I’m aware I’m fingering the edge of my wrap. I break eye contact with Thomas and pull it off, tucking it into my bag and anchoring it with the paperback book I’m carrying.

“I need to go,” I say.

He
raises his eyebrows. “Are you stalking me?” he asks.

I can’t tell if he’s kidding. I haven’t talked to him since he left my place around one
A.M.
yesterday morning. Neither of us texted the other; it seemed pretty clear what our encounter was.

“No, no,” I say. “It was just—I made a mistake.”

I flee out the door.

I already completed my assignment days ago. I have Thomas’s number
stored in my phone. And he has mine.

When I’m a block away from the diner, I call Dr. Shields to tell her I’m en route to her town house. She answers midway through the first ring. Her silvery voice is edged with strain: “Did you find him?”

“Yes, he was right where you said he’d be.”

I’m about to duck into a subway station when the beep of an incoming call interrupts her next question.
All I can make out is: “. . . phone . . . plan?”

“Sorry,” I say. “Yes, we have each other’s numbers.”

I hear the breezy sound of her exhalation.

“Wonderful, Jessica. I’ll see you soon.”

My heart is thudding.

I don’t know how I’m going to manage to sit across from her and tell her I slept with the guy in the experiment. I could say that I would’ve told her about meeting Thomas,
but she cut me off when I was talking about the taxi accident during our last session.

I have to do it. If I’m not honest, she’ll find out.

I release a breath.

It’s silly to think Dr. Shields will be upset with me, I tell myself. I made an innocent mistake. She can’t hold it against me.

But I can’t stop shivering.

I check my voice mail. One message.

I know who it’s from
even before I hear his voice.

“Hi, it’s Thomas. We have to talk. I think I know the friend who sent you to the diner. She’s . . . Look, just call me back as soon as you can.”

He continues: “And please, don’t tell her anything.” There’s a pause. “She’s dangerous. Watch yourself.”

Sunday, December 16

You finally met my husband.

What did you think of him? And, more important, what did he think of you?