The Craving (30 page)

“Is there a hotel he frequently stays at, or has relatives stay at?”

“No, not really,” Alison said.

“No or not really?” Tyler asked.

“No,” Alison said.

“What about other women in his life? Is there someone he works with who’s been calling? An ex-girlfriend? Somebody he texts with, chats with on Facebook?”

“No, the only one I’m kind of suspicious of is our babysitter, this girl Christina.”

“Girl?”

“Well, she graduated from college but lives with her parents across the hall. Actually she’s with my son right now, but I don’t think she’s really having an affair with Simon. I think it’s just paranoia.”

“If you’re paranoid, there’s usually a reason for it,” Tyler said. “It sounds like things have been rough for a while between you two.”

“No, not really,” Alison said. “I mean, we used to have problems, like all couples, but nothing like this. Our problems really started when he lost his job and became a stay-at-home dad and met these other dads in Battery Park. That’s when he really changed and started developing all of these problems. I think they were a bad influence on him, especially this guy Michael. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it has nothing to do with them. Maybe he’s been cheating on me for years and I’ve just been oblivious.”

“Well, I’m going to find out what’s going on,” Tyler said, looking right at Alison’s eyes. “I guarantee that.”

Alison liked Tyler’s confidence. It made her feel secure, like she had an ally.

“Thank you,” she said. “That’s all I want at this point. Some kind of closure.”

“Well, here’s what I want to do,” Tyler said. “I can try some of the likely hotels, but it’ll be faster if I can just tail him and see what he’s up to. You said he texted you?”

Alison nodded.

“Great,” Tyler said. “So here’s what we do. Text him back. Tell him you want to talk to him. Phrase it however you want, just leave it vague, and tell him something that’ll make him want to meet you somewhere.”

“But I don’t want to meet him.”

“You won’t,” Tyler said. “Pick a busy spot, like Grand Central Station; can’t get more public than that, right? You won’t show up, but I will, and then I’ll tail him. Does your husband, Simon, know where the bar at Cipriani is?”

“You mean the one up the steps?” Alison said. “Yeah, we’ve been there before.”

“Perfect,” Tyler said. “Tell him you want to meet him there sometime today, as soon as possible, five o’clock would be perfect on my end. I’m working on a couple of other things right now, but I want to get right on this today, and five’s as busy as it gets at Grand Central. So you arrange a time to meet him, and then I find out who he’s with, where he’s staying. If all goes well, in a few hours you can have the closure you’re looking for.”

He made it sound so simple.

“You make it sound so simple,” Alison said.

“Hey, that’s why you came to me, right?” Tyler smiled. “So why don’t you text your husband right now and see what he says?”

Alison typed, then deleted a few texts, then fiddled with the wording in one and finally sent:

She thought he’d think it was unusual to suggest meeting at Grand Central and might suspect it was some kind of setup, especially considering she’d called the police on him yesterday. But she thought mentioning that she wanted to see him away from Jeremy made sense—it was the best explanation she could come up with, anyway.

While they were waiting to see if Simon wrote back, Tyler went over his fee. He explained that he normally charged five hundred dollars a day plus expenses, but because she was a friend of Vijay’s he’d do it for four fifty. He estimated it could take anywhere from one to three days to get the information he needed, but they agreed they would talk again if the case seemed to be dragging. All of this seemed reasonable to Alison. Tyler asked for the first day’s fee up front, and Alison charged it on her Amex.

Still waiting for some response from Simon, Alison and Tyler talked about what a great guy Vijay was, and Tyler told a funny story about how in college Vijay got lost on a road trip to Syracuse and wound up in Buffalo. Then he asked about her work, and he seemed genuinely interested in what she had to say. It had been ages since Simon had asked her about her work, and lately he had been completely self-absorbed. It was such a relief to be with normal guys like Vijay and Tyler, who were attentive and supportive. It made her realize how much had been missing in her marriage.

Alison’s phone vibrated, announcing an incoming text.

Reading from her phone she said, “He said he’ll be there at five.”

“Perfect,” Tyler said. “When he texts you, asking where you are, say you couldn’t make it, something came up, but don’t cancel until he texts you. I’ll be in touch later on and let you know how it’s going. How does that sound?”

“That sounds wonderful,” Alison said.

“All I need is a photo of your husband,” Tyler said. “Hopefully you have one on your phone or online somewhere.”

“I have pictures on my phone,” Alison said.

She found a couple of photos of Simon that were taken last month when they’d taken Jeremy to Central Park together. It was shortly after Simon had lost his job and his weird behavior had started. She
remembered how a few minutes after the photos were taken he’d climbed with Jeremy to the top of some very high rocks and then jumped off, leaving Jeremy up there alone. He’d been so careless, so irresponsible, but now she realized that the behavior had foreshadowed everything that had come later—how he’d checked out, abandoned the family, gone off in his own crazy fantasy world.

“Everything okay?” Tyler asked.

“Yeah, fine.” Alison forced a smile. “What’s your e-mail?”

Tyler gave her his address, and then, as she was sending the pics, he said sincerely, “I promise. It
does
get better.”

Leaving the office building, Alison was excited. Soon she’d get the closure she needed and find out what big secret Simon was hiding. At this point it was only a matter of time.

S
imon had left the Ramble and was heading across the romantic Bow Bridge when a man with a heavy Italian accent said to him, “Will you take a photo?”

The guy was young, in his twenties, obviously a tourist, out for an early-morning stroll in the park with his wife or girlfriend, also twenty-something.

“Sure,” Simon said.

The guy handed Simon his camera, wincing a little when he got close. Funny, Simon was so adept at detecting scents—for example, the scents of the guy’s cologne and the girl’s perfume were prominent—but was oblivious to his own body odor. After a night of running around the Ramble as a werewolf he doubted he smelled very pleasant.

“Where do I press?” Simon asked, embarrassed, wanting to get this over with as soon as possible.

The guy showed him where the button was, and Simon took a shot of the happy, smiling couple posing with the buildings of Central Park West, including the Dakota, above the trees in the backdrop.

“Perfect,” Simon said.

“Thank you very much,” the man said, wincing again as he took his camera back.

“Yes, thank you,” the woman said.

Simon noticed the woman was wearing a small, shiny diamond ring. They were probably newlyweds, on their honeymoon in New York. As they walked away, giggling and holding hands, obviously in love, Simon remembered how he and Alison—back when things were good—would take long walks in the park, holding hands, never running out of things to talk about. She still hadn’t responded to the text he’d sent yesterday. The image of her wielding the knife was still fresh in his mind and, though he wanted to go home, he knew going back now would probably be a bad idea, especially if it caused another scene in front of Jeremy. Besides, he knew he couldn’t trust himself around his family, not until he somehow got hold of the remedy Volker had mentioned. While much of Volker’s story about Nazis and werewolves had seemed bizarre, given what Simon had experienced himself and how similar it was to most of what Volker had described, he had no reason to doubt any of it. If Michael had invented a beer that could turn men into werewolves, why couldn’t there be another beer that could turn them back?

There was a public bathroom, Simon remembered, adjacent to the Boat House restaurant, on the other side of the lake. A few minutes later, Simon arrived there. At the early hour, the restaurant was closed, but there were a few homeless guys in the restroom—two were washing up in the sinks, and the other was sprawled, asleep, next to
a urinal. All the men had very pungent, very distinctive scents. Simon waited until one of the guys was through at the sink, then took his turn, splashing water on his face and then bending over and dousing his whole head.

“Man, you stink,” one of the homeless guys said to him.

Simon knew if this guy told him he smelled, then he must really stink. In addition to his stench, the T-shirt he was wearing was torn at the seams, thanks to his transformation, and his sneakers had holes in them from where his clawed feet had poked through. Feeling his hairy face, he knew he needed a shave desperately. He hadn’t shaved since yesterday morning and had the equivalent of what used to be a week’s growth of facial hair.

He took off his shirt, noticing that his chest was very hairy as well, and splashed water over his armpits and then rinsed the shirt and wrung it out the best he could. Then, wearing the damp shirt, he left the bathroom, wondering,
How has my life come down to this?

He took out his cell and texted Charlie:

It was seven twenty-eight now, which gave Simon plenty of time. He would have loved to go to an H&M or wherever and get some new
clothes, but stores probably wouldn’t open till ten or eleven. Besides, he had a more pressing need—to eat meat.

He exited the park at West Seventy-second and frustratingly couldn’t find a place with any decent meat—there were just coffee shops and bakeries filled with carbs.
Carbs.
How could anybody want carbs? Simon had no idea how he used to have a scone or muffin for breakfast and feel satisfied.

Heading straight, toward Broadway, he passed a newsstand—the
Post
and
News
both had pics of Charlie crossing the finish line of the marathon on their front pages. The
News
headline was
BLAZING FAST
and the
Post
’s was
ON FIRE
. Simon shook his head but was too hungry to stop and read either of the articles.

Finally, he found a diner. He went in and sat at a booth, planning to order a big plateful of bacon and sausage. He must’ve really built up an appetite from running around as a werewolf last night because the odor of the mingled meats was so intense Simon had to resist an urge to barge into the kitchen and gobble up whatever meat he could find.

Then an older, gray-haired Greek guy came over and said, “Sorry, you’re gonna have to leave.”

“What?” Simon was confused.

“Come on, out of here,” the guy said.

Simon didn’t understand what was going on until he noticed that the guy was wincing the way the Italian couple had been wincing. He realized that what with his partially ripped, wet T-shirt, overgrown facial hair, and reeking body odor he probably seemed like some crazy homeless guy.

“Oh, no, you don’t understand,” Simon said, trying overly hard to enunciate his words as a lame attempt to prove that he wasn’t some kind of bum or drug addict, that he was actually educated and together. “I
live in the neighborhood. Well, uptown. Not
too far
uptown, on Columbus and Eighty-ninth.”

“You gotta go,” the guy said.

“Wait, look.” Simon took out his wallet and showed he had credit cards and cash. “I can afford to buy food here. You have to serve me.”

“I don’t have to serve nobody I don’t wanna serve,” the guy said. “Now get the hell outta my diner before I call the cops.”

Simon was going to insist on being served, but he was afraid if he got too angry he might turn into a werewolf. So he left the diner and went into a deli, to the first meat he saw—beef jerky—and bought two big handfuls, charging whatever it cost on his Amex. Then, resting on a bench in Verdi Square, near Seventy-second and Broadway, he tore into the jerky sticks, engulfing them almost as fast as he could open the wrappers. He was completely absorbed in eating—he had fifteen or twenty of them—and then noticed a woman passing by with her daughter, maybe ten years old. The daughter was staring at him, and then her mother noticed and pulled her along. When they were farther ahead the woman assumed they were out of earshot and whispered to her daughter:

“Never stare at crazy people, sweetie.”