The Hand That Feeds You (10 page)

Their breakfast cost $21.12; they left me a tip of less than a dollar.

•  •  •

I saw one more patient at Rikers that day—a walk in the park compared to the exhibitionist joker. After, Amabile dropped me back at my apartment and asked if I wanted him to go in with me. I said I was okay and thanked him for his kindness and concern. We had stopped seeing each other when I had met Bennett, and I was glad we had remained friends.

After he drove off, I walked to Mother’s and got a veggie burger, sweet-potato fries, and a Diet Coke, aware of how pointless it was to drink Diet Coke with fries.

I opened all the apartment windows because the smell of the cleaning solvents was still pervasive. A Buddhist friend offered to come in and “smudge” the place to neutralize the horror, but could I continue to live here even after such a ceremony? I felt dizzy and found that I’d been holding my breath. I put the bag of takeout beside my computer, had a couple of fries, and checked my Hotmail account.

I’m the person you’re looking for. There are others, too. You are not the first woman to comment on the familiarity of my experience. The man I knew as “Peter” is about five-feet-eight, carries a little too much weight for that height, is dark-haired with a small scar across one eyebrow—not particularly attractive but it didn’t matter. He has an assurance about him that is charismatic. Did the man you were involved with fall for you very quickly? Did he bring you Bvlgari Green Tea perfume and insist you always wear it? Did he hate your pets? If you want to talk, I’d prefer to do it in person and in a public place. Are you in Boston? I can meet you at Clarke’s bar right outside South Station on the Atlantic Avenue side. I’ll be wearing an orange hand-knit scarf. Is this convenient for you?

The next morning I took a train to Boston.

C
larke’s bar was closed. Not for the day, forever. A
FOR RENT
sign was in the window. I couldn’t remember if she had said to meet her inside or outside, but when I saw the sign, my memory settled on outside. I stood there for thirty minutes. Why? The same reason I walked up and down the rue Saint-Urbain looking for Bennett’s omelet place. I noticed a policeman on the corner and started toward him, then realized that I wouldn’t know what to ask him. I had no name for her, only knew that she worked for the police department and that she had fallen for the same man.

Had she changed her mind about meeting me? I concluded that she was brave by posting the letter in the first place, and by the fact that she was an officer. Maybe an emergency came up? We hadn’t exchanged phone numbers. I e-mailed her and then walked across Atlantic Avenue to a coffee shop to wait. I chose a booth with a view of the shuttered Clarke’s bar. After my third cup of coffee, I decided to go to the closest precinct, where I imagined she worked. In her posting on Lovefraud, she had said she was an incident-reports analyst. How many young, female incident-reports analysts could there be at a precinct? I had brought a picture of Bennett, or half a picture, the one I had found on my coffee table, left by the cleanup crew. I had cut my likeness out.

The precinct was ten blocks away, a large brick building that might once have served as an orphanage or a library. It was statelier than the local 90, the Brooklyn precinct I passed by every day on my way to the J train. The local 90 could never have been anything but a police station.

The officer at the front desk was being harassed by an older woman who demanded to know where they’d taken her son. I waited until the officer calmed the woman enough to get her to take a seat again.

“I wonder if you could help me,” I said in an authoritative voice, one I’d mastered in order to speak to police officers and criminals alike in my professional capacity. “I’m from John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. I have an appointment with your incident-reports analyst. Could you tell me where I might find her?”

“Him, not her. Second floor. But I need to see some ID.”

I showed my John Jay photo ID and told him I was looking for a woman.

“Gerald Marks is our new guy. You’re not talking about Susan Rorke, are you?”

“I might be. I know this sounds confusing, but I don’t know the name of the woman I’m meeting, just her job and that this is the closest precinct to where she suggested I meet her today. Do you know where I can find this Susan Rorke?”

“Miss, I’m sorry to tell you, but Susan died six weeks ago.”

“The woman I’m looking for quit her job, moved to New York, and then came back here sometime this summer.”

“Susan did leave her job, but she came back just before she was killed.”

“You said she died. She was killed?”

“Miss, I can’t give you the details of an ongoing investigation.”

I did a quick calculation. She must have died soon after she posted that letter on Lovefraud, if it was Susan Rorke. But if Susan Rorke had been dead for six weeks, who had responded to my e-mail? I asked the desk sergeant if I might speak with one of her colleagues.

He picked up the phone and said, “Can you come to the front desk?”

A young man who looked as though he had ridden to work on a skateboard appeared in a couple of minutes and introduced himself as Detective Homes.

“She’s asking about Susan Rorke,” the desk sergeant said.

“I might be,” I said again, and explained myself to Homes.

“What do you know about this investigation?”

“Nothing, unless Susan Rorke knew this man.” I handed him the photo of Bennett.

“Where did you get this?”

I sensed the detective had seen Bennett before. I sensed I was going to learn something I didn’t want to know. But I already knew it. “Was this man involved with Susan Rorke?”

“This is my investigation. Please answer my question.”

“He was my fiancé.”

“What’s his name?”

“You tell me.” I didn’t know Bennett in any sense—his history, his capabilities, his motivation. I felt dizzy with ignorance, nauseous.

“Would you come upstairs and look at some photos?”

I said nothing as we climbed the stairs. I needed the handrail. I cycled between confusion and shame at having so wildly misread a man I loved.

The detective’s desk was surprisingly neat. All that was on it was a short stack of folders, one of which he opened after offering me a seat. A woman’s photograph was paper-clipped inside. She looked to be about my age, an attractive woman holding a one-eyed Jack Russell terrier in her lap.

“Do you recognize this woman?”

“I assume this is Susan Rorke. But, no, I don’t recognize her.”

He showed me another picture. This time, Susan Rorke was smiling broadly in a sunny, mountainous landscape. Her head was resting on Bennett’s shoulder.

“Is this the man you claim was your fiancé?”

“How did she die?”

“Please answer my question.”

I was, by turns, sick to my stomach and utterly composed. “May I have a glass of water?”

When had this photograph been taken? Was it before I met Bennett? The detective came back from the watercooler and handed me an old-fashioned cone-shaped paper cup. “When was this taken?” I asked when I finished drinking.

“When was
your
photograph of this man taken?”

“Is he a suspect?”

“Please, I need you to answer directly.”

“Fine. Mine was taken in Maine about a month before he was killed.”

“He’s dead?”

“Maybe you read about it. He was killed by dogs. I’m the one who found the body.”

“This was in New York.”

“Brooklyn. September twentieth.”

“I didn’t know that was who we were looking for.” He excused himself and picked up his phone. I assumed he was going to notify his captain. I felt weightless. Did he think Bennett was a murderer?

When the detective hung up, he gave me his card and said he would be in touch. “How can I reach you?”

I gave him my information and opened my purse. “I think you should see this.” I handed him the Lovefraud letters I had printed out.

I waited until he had finished reading them, then asked him to tell me how she died.

“She fell three stories to her death at the homeless shelter where she volunteered. We believe she was pushed.”

“What makes you think that?”

“There were scratches on the window frame as she struggled.”

“And you think it was Bennett who pushed her?”

“We know him by another name.”

“And you can’t tell me, right?”

“Can I make a copy of that photograph?”

I handed him the scissored half of the photo, and when he brought it back, I couldn’t look at it. I slipped it between the two pieces of cardboard I’d used to protect it in my backpack. But this time I didn’t even unzip the small compartment where I kept it separate from all the crap I’d thrown in—the makeup not used, the empty pens, a half-eaten energy bar with more calories than the Milky Way I’d wanted.

Outside, I had the hackneyed feeling of surprise that the world continued as it had before what I had just learned. When everybody is in the same circumstances, say a community after a tornado has ripped through it, a careful camaraderie prevails. I was alone with my discovery and had never felt so isolated, or afraid.

Another woman might have headed for a bar. But what occurred to me was not something I indulged—I just imagined it. I pictured myself wheeling a small cart with a laundry bag filled with sheets and towels, scented dryer sheets, and detergent. I wanted to wheel my laundry cart into a small neighborhood Laundromat and ask the proprietor simple questions about when to add softener. I wanted to sit in a plastic chair and watch my laundry spin, getting clean. I wanted to fold it, warm from the dryer, and retrace my steps, wheeling home the small proof that I could function in this world and make a small thing better.

Had my dogs saved me?

W
here was the man I knew as Bennett six weeks ago when Susan Rorke was killed?

I was on the train back to New York. I checked my phone calendar and saw that I was right—Bennett had met me that weekend at the Old Orchard Beach Inn, a yellow Victorian on a bluff overlooking the ocean, walking distance to the pier.

Susan was killed that Friday. Boston to Old Orchard Beach, Maine, was a two-hour drive. Could Bennett have pushed her out the window in Boston and driven his rental the hundred miles to a resort village by the sea to spend a romantic weekend with me? Yes, there had been time for him to do that. I had already checked into the inn when he pulled up. When had he bought the white roses he gave me? He kissed me as usual and asked where we could get a drink. I said the inn was serving wine by the fireplace, and he said he wanted a real drink. I remember being surprised by that. He said he wanted to shower and change first. He said he left Montreal at nine that morning; that would have meant he’d been driving for six hours straight, so there was nothing unusual about his wanting to do that first. He seemed cheery enough and was certainly attentive to me. He had an appetite; we ate lobster for dinner, and of course we made love. Did he have any scratches? How hard had Susan fought? Afterward, he insisted we walk by the ocean in the moonlight even though it was chilly. We strolled the boardwalk, which was nearly empty given the hour and temperature. I heard a few snatches of Quebecois from passersby and asked what they were saying. He told me they were looking forward to tomorrow’s exhibition game between the Maple Leafs and the Montreal Canadiens. I thought back to my fruitless search for his apartment in Montreal and wondered if he even spoke French. I googled the National Hockey League schedule and found the Montreal Canadiens had not been in an exhibition game.

Later, in the room, when he took off his pants, I saw a large fresh bruise on his shin. When I asked how he got it, he said he banged it helping one of his bands move some equipment. One of those bands he didn’t represent.

That night I moved to the right side of the bed as usual. The left side was against the wall, and Bennett knew my holdover childhood fear about sleeping next to a wall and slipping through it. Just as I was falling asleep in his arms, he whispered, “If you love me, you’ll sleep next to the wall.” What if I hadn’t obliged him? What might he have done to me? The next morning—oh, I didn’t want to remember our lovemaking. Seeing it through the lens of what I had learned in Boston, it was repulsive. Yet, that night it seemed he never let go of my hand. He was still holding it when I woke up.

I got back to Penn Station a little after midnight. I was exhausted but not sleepy. As soon as I got home, I looked up every article about Susan Rorke’s death in the order the stories were filed.

She was described as a thirty-five-year-old police incident-reports analyst who volunteered at the South Boston homeless shelter every week. Early on, her death was reported as an accident. She had not returned from a break after trying to fix a window shade on the third floor. Ms. Rorke’s body was found in the alley behind the shelter. Police said it appeared Ms. Rorke had fallen from an open window and died on impact. The next article reported that the police were investigating the death as a possible homicide. They were looking for a homeless man who had stayed at the shelter that night. Witnesses said he had argued with Ms. Rorke earlier that evening. The homeless man was found, questioned, and released. The police were still ruling the death a homicide, pending further investigation.

I went on Facebook next. Her profile picture was the same one the detective had showed me, the one-eyed Jack Russell on her lap. I wondered what happened to the dog. I scrolled through the last few months of her postings and found the following: a picture of her left hand, fingers splayed, presenting a view of a diamond engagement ring. The old-fashioned, marquise-cut diamond was approximately one carat, set in either white gold or platinum. The comments below all said pretty much the same thing: When are we going to meet him?

I went to my top drawer and took out the tiny leather box, lined in velvet, that housed the ring Bennett had given me, identical. I was tempted to throw it away but I realized it was evidence. It was proof that I belonged to this sorority of the duped. If Susan and I were sorority sisters, then so was the woman who had written me on Lovefraud and pretended to be Susan Rorke. Even she suspected others. If three, why not four? More?