Say You're Sorry (28 page)

“Well, dear, maybe they weren’t his size.”

Julie had to bite her lip to keep from screaming. “Bigfoot’s shoe size? Huge. That’s what I bought. Huge! Hell, Ma, I’ve never even seen him!”

Not that Julie hadn’t tried to confront her neighbor. Many’s the dawn Julie had grabbed her robe and raced up the stairs hoping to catch him. But she’d never been successful. She could feel him skulking behind his peephole. He knew what she looked like, while he remained Mr. Mystery Man.

Once or twice, she’d lost it and pounded on his door. “I know you’re in there, you son of a bitch!”

Another time, she’d crept up and crouched against his door so he couldn’t see her through the peephole. She’d waited for a long time, but still he didn’t show. He could smell her out there, she was sure of it. A Wall Street wolf, he had a predator’s keenly developed sense of danger.

“Or how about the mountains, dear?” Mom was still on the line, still pitching. “Remember how much you used to love the mountains when Daddy was alive?”

Oh, yes. They’d had lots of sweet times back then. Hot dogs on the grill. Toasted marshmallows. Ghost stories round the campfire. Her father, a loving, patient man, had spent many an hour teaching her how to cast into fish-rich streams. And how to shoot a rifle. Julie had never been afraid of guns. She’d loved the smell of the oiled blue steel, the snick of the cartridges’ slide. Julie was a natural, a good shot. She’d punched many a tin can right out of the blue sky. She wasn’t bad with a handgun either.

“I could fly down, take the train back,” Julie heard herself saying, that reptilian part of her brain knowing, before she was conscious of it, why.

*

“I’m going to shoot him,” Julie said to her friend Cassandra, the two of them waiting to pick up orders at Lippi’s service window.

“I thought your little trip chilled you out.”

“I wish. Bigfoot never takes a vacation. He’s right there, every morning, six on the dot.” Julie picked up her two dishes, one scallop, one sea bass. Who could stomach anything heavier? Heat Wave Grips Northeast for Seventh Week! It had actually been cooler in North Carolina.

“I’ve got a friend back home who can put a curse on your neighbor. Want me to call?”

“No, thanks. A couple of slugs ought to do the trick.”

Cassandra’s eyebrows took a hike halfway up her forehead.

“Whoa, girl. You feeling all right?”

“No, Cassandra. Actually, I feel like shit.”

Sleep deprivation will do that. A night or two causes that feeling like a hangover or the flu, headachy, a kind of all-over malaise with which most people are familiar. Weeks, months, years can wreak much more serious havoc. Julie constantly wobbled on the edge of tears. Some days, she couldn’t speak at all. Her chest thrummed with exhaustion, and a deep breath was impossible. Her dulled brain ached constantly and felt as if it were bouncing off craggy places inside her skull. Perhaps, she thought, her intracranial fluid had evaporated. She could feel her bones too, within her skin.

She said, “It’s bad, Cassandra. Really bad. I really do think I’m going to have to kill him if he doesn’t stop walking on my head.”

But Cassandra was no longer paying attention to Julie. “Wouldn’t mind having him walking wherever he wanted to.”

Julie turned to see a tall lanky man she’d noticed in the restaurant a couple of times before. He had the kind of looks that grabbed you, even in Lippi’s, where movie stars were thick on the ground—a thatch of dark hair shot with silver, a wide sexy mouth, dangerous brown eyes.

“He’s probably an ax murderer,” Julie said. “Those gorgeous ones usually are.”

“Whatever. He’s still got to eat. And he’s in your station. Now you go, girl. Sell him some expensive wine. Earn yourself a big tip.”

The handsome man had a heartbreaking smile. “Good evening yourself,” he replied to her greeting. Then he and his dinner companion, an older man, proceeded to order a lovely meal: quail eggs with caviar, a frisée salad, lobster ravioli, a hundred-dollar bottle of Champagne. They were fun to serve, savvy diners without pretension. They both flirted with her, mildly.

It was the older man, on his way to the men’s room at the end of the night, who stopped Julie and pressed a card into her hand. Too bad, he was much too old and not the one she would have chosen. “I’m sorry,” she was about to say, “but my boyfriend….”

“Please call my son.” He smiled. “He’s too shy to ask you himself. I swear he’s a great guy, though probably I’m prejudiced.”

Julie stared at the business card for a long time.
Jonathan Lemmon
. He was with one of the big Wall Street brokerage houses.
Jon Lemmon
.

*

“I’m going to shoot him,” Julie whispered to herself the next morning at six a.m.

She lay in bed staring up at the ceiling. She thought that she could see the footprints there.

It was just a coincidence, right?
John Lennon. Jon Lemmon
. It didn’t mean a thing.

Her upstairs neighbor was not the man whose card was tucked in her purse.

(Was he?)

She jumped up, found the card, and dialed the office number printed there, Jon Lemmon’s private extension. He wouldn’t be in, of course. It was way too early.

(And perhaps he was still upstairs.)

(And perhaps she was losing her mind.)

“Hi, this is Jonathan Lemmon. Sorry I’m not in to take your call, but leave your name and number and I’ll get back to you soon.”

It was the voice of the man she’d met the night before. Julie had never heard the voice of the man upstairs, not even the baffled tones of an answering machine. Only his footfall.

Julie hung up without leaving a message.

Then she fell back on her bed, clenching and unclenching her fists. Tears ran from the corners of her eyes and onto her pillow. She was going crazy. She had stepped way over the line. She no longer knew what was real and what was imaginary. Her sleeplessness was killing her.

*

“I’m going to shoot him.”

The actress up on the stage delivering that line was young and thin like Julie, but blond, whereas the sleek curtain of hair Julie pulled back to gaze at Jon’s profile in the theater was inky dark.

Jon caught her look and aimed his wonderful smile at her. She felt the electricity down her thighs. She’d been tingling with excitement since he’d answered the message she’d left at his office the second time she’d called. He’d seemed so pleased. Dinner and the theater? He just happened to have house seats for the biggest hit on Broadway. Cassandra, what an angel, had agreed to work her shift for her.

Julie found Jon easy to talk with. So sweet. Funny. With lovely manners.

“Feel like a nightcap?” he said as the actors took their final bows. “How about the bar at the Rainbow Room?”

Oh, yes, indeed. For she was Cinderella at the ball, dreading not the pumpkin but Jon’s turning into Bigfoot, fearful of hearing his step overhead moments after arriving home. It was an insane notion, she knew that, but she couldn’t help herself. She wanted to stay here forever, at the top of Rockefeller Center, gazing out across the dazzle that was Manhattan, the center of the universe, her adopted home. She had a Cosmopolitan, a drink first created at this very bar, then another. She didn’t want to go, didn’t want to know. But she couldn’t drink all night.

“Ready?” Jon was smiling at her.

She slipped from the barstool, and his hand grazed the small of her back. Oh, God, how long had it been since she’d felt like this? Had she ever, really? Exactly this way?

Jon saw her home. The very most a woman expected in this city was that a date would put her in a cab and hand the driver a twenty.

But maybe Jon wasn’t just seeing her home. Maybe he was going home too. Maybe all he had to do was take the elevator one floor up.

Yet he didn’t release the taxi. “I’ll just be a minute,” he said to the cabbie. He kissed her hand at her lobby door. “I’ll call you tomorrow,” he promised, then watched until she was safely inside.

She couldn’t very well wait to see if he paid off the cab and sent it on its way. She blew a kiss to him as the elevator doors closed.

But once in her apartment, she waited. And waited. And waited. She counted to one hundred, but there wasn’t a peep from above. She strained and strained, but all she heard was the ringing of her own ears, then a fire engine outside.

Finally Julie undressed, climbed into bed, and slipped between her smooth cool sheets. She stretched languorously, happier than she’d ever known she could be, and nodded off.

It was after two a.m. when Julie awoke to the familiar echo of hard-soled shoes. “I’m going to shoot you,” she whispered into her pillow, then plummeted effortlessly back into the void.

*

“I’m going to shoot him.”

“Who?” Jon said lazily, drugged by their lovemaking.

“The bastard who lives upstairs. Wait and see. He’ll wake us up at six.” She paused. “You are staying over, aren’t you?”

“Unless you kick me out.”

“No way.”

“Good. Tell you what. If he wakes us, I’ll go upstairs and blow his brains out. But right now…” He reached for Julie’s warm flesh, held her tight.

“You would never torment your neighbor like that?” She couldn’t help herself. She had to ask.

“Never. I’m only interested in tormenting you.” He nuzzled that little indentation at the top of her breastbone, then tickled her ribs.

She fell happily into his heat, a delicious contrast to the icy air from the AC. Jon Lemmon was so wonderful. He was the best thing that had ever happened to her.

“What are you giggling about, you sexy wench?”

“I was just thinking. When I first heard your name, I thought you said John Lennon.”

“I get that sometimes.” His tongue was lazy and oh so sweet as it traced a route south. “But somebody shot John Lennon dead a long time ago.”

“I know. In 1980. Shot him stone dead.”

*

“I’m going to shoot him.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, Julie, but I thought you said your neighbor had laid off. Or, we agreed, perhaps it’s that you don’t hear him as much anymore since Jon’s come into your life. Since you’re happier, more relaxed.”

Julie stared across the room into her shrink’s kindly face. He was such a nice man. He truly did care about her, she’d always felt that. He wanted to help her. But what was he going to say when she told him that the apartment upstairs was silent only on the mornings that Jon was in her bed? He was going to think she was really crazy. He might even want her to check into a hospital for observation.

“Let’s go to your place,” she’d said to Jon more than once. He’d told her he lived in a loft in TriBeCa, on North Moore. The night before, she’d really pushed.

Jon said, “Sure, hon. We will. But, like I told you, I’m in the middle of renovations. It’s such a mess. I don’t want you to see it like this.”

“But I’d love to. The before and after, you know?”

“Okay. But wait until there’s a floor in the kitchen. A couple more weeks.”

*

“I’m going to shoot him,” Julie moaned into her pillow. “When he gets back, I’m going to shoot him.”

Jon had been gone for a week, on business to Hong Kong, he said.

He’d called her a couple of times. He was awfully sweet on the phone. But after each call, she’d been more miserable than before. She couldn’t shut off the questions in her head. How did she know where he was calling from? He could be anywhere. Though for sure he wasn’t upstairs. There hadn’t been a single sound from there since the moment Jon had left for wherever he was. Was Jon really John? Julie couldn’t stop weeping. She hadn’t slept a wink.

*

She’d figured out how to prove it once and for all. Julie had a plan. She knew exactly what to do. All she had to do was wait.

Jon’s plane had arrived at JFK two hours earlier. One hour to claim his bags, go through customs. Another for the ride in from the airport. And now, right on schedule, came the first footfall.

“No!” Julie screamed in anguish. “No, please God!” Her heart was broken, her worst fears realized.

For a moment, she forgot her plan. Instead, she grabbed for her broom and pounded and pounded as if, with the force of her pain, her fury at the unfairness of it all, she could change the reality of the man upstairs. She pounded so hard, the handle broke through the plaster ceiling, and dust and debris drifted down around her.

But the sound didn’t stop. Instead, the footsteps grew louder and faster. The man, Jon, oh Jon, stepped and stomped and kicked. He tangoed. Do-si-doed. Riverdanced. She pounded again and again, and he clogged. His Wall Street shoes smacked the hardwood in a fusillade of blows. Then, finally, he bellowed. His voice was muffled, but she could understand the words. “You bitch!” he cried. “You crazy bitch!”

His words snapped Julie back to her plan. It was now or never, do or die. Julie snatched up the phone and dialed Jon’s number, the number he’d given her for his loft in TriBeCa. “Please, God,” she prayed, but there it was, the incontrovertible evidence. The phone rang once in her ear, as it rang upstairs, and then it stopped. Julie doubled over at the anguish in her gut.