The Wrong Man (5 page)

Ashley pushed her hair back from her face and tried to listen.

“Goya meant to shock. He meant to thrust all the reality of war into the faces of the politicians and aristocrats who romanticize it. Make it undeniable—”

The last words of this statement were lost, overcome by a burst from the nearby table: “I’ll tell you what Derek Jeter’s good at. He’s good at bending over and…”

She had to smile to herself. It was a little like being trapped in a uniquely Bostonian version of the twilight zone, caught between the pretentious and the plebeian.

She continued to shift about in her seat, maintaining a neutral distance that neither discouraged nor encouraged Will, and thought about how she had always been wildly unlucky in love. She wondered whether this was merely something that would pass, like so many moments growing up, or was, instead, a predictable vision of her future. She sensed that she was on the edge of something, but of what, she was unsure.

“Yes, but the dilemma with shocking and showing the true nature of war through art is that it never stops the war, but gets celebrated as art. We flock to see
Guernica
and we revel in the depth of its vision, but do we really feel anything for the peasants who were bombed? They were real one day. Their deaths were real. But their truth is subordinated by art.”

This was Will-the-date speaking. Ashley thought it a wise observation, but, at the same time, one that a million politically correct college kids would have made. Ashley glanced over at the loud baseball players. Even alcohol-fueled, their argument was exuberant. She felt a twinge of doubt. She liked sitting at Fenway with a beer. She loved wandering through the Museum of Fine Art. For one long second she wondered which of the two arguments she really belonged in.

Ashley stole a sideways glance at Will, who she guessed was thinking that the fastest way to seduce her was with all sorts of pompous intellectualisms. This was standard graduate-student thinking. She decided to confuse matters for him.

Ashley shoved her seat back abruptly and stood up. “Hey!” she shouted. “You guys, where you from? BC? BU? Northeastern?”

The table of baseball players quieted immediately. Young men being shouted at by a beautiful girl, Ashley thought, always gets their attention.

“Northeastern,” one replied, half-standing, making a small bow in her direction, with a Far Eastern sense of courtesy, a decorum mostly lost in the rowdy bar.

“Well, rooting for the Yankees is just like rooting for General Motors or IBM or the Republican Party. Being a Red Sox fan is all about poetry. At some crucial point, everybody makes their choice in life. Enough said.”

The boys at the table exploded with laughter and mock outrage.

Will leaned back, grinning. “That,” he said, “was succinct.”

Ashley smiled and wondered if he wasn’t all that bad after all.

When she was young, she thought it would be better to be plain. Plain girls, she knew, can hide.

Right at the start of her teenage years, she had gone through a dramatic phase of opposition to just about everything: loud, stamped-foot disagreeing with her mother, her father, her teachers, her friends, wearing baggy, sacklike, earth-colored clothing, putting a streak of vibrant red next to a streak of ink black in her hair, listening to grunge rock, drinking harsh black coffee, trying cigarettes, and longing for tattoos and body piercings. This phase had lasted for only a couple of months, just long enough for it to come into conflict with just about everything she did in school, both in the classroom and on the athletic field. It cost her some friends, as well, and it made those who did remain with her a little wary.

To Ashley’s surprise, the only adult who she’d been able to speak with in any modestly civil fashion during this portion of her life had been her mother’s partner, Hope. This had surprised her, because a large portion of her inwardly blamed Hope for the breakup of her parents, and she had often told friends that she hated Hope because of it. This untruth had bothered her, in part because she believed it was more what her friends wanted to hear from her, and she was unsettled by the idea that she might comply with their perceptions for that flimsiest of reasons. After grunge and Goth, she had gone through a khaki-and-plaid preppy stage, followed by a jock stage, then a couple of weeks as a vegan eating tofu and veggie burgers. She had dabbled in acting, delivering a passable Marian the Librarian in
The Music Man,
written reams of heartfelt diary entries, fashioned herself at various times into Emily Dickinson, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Carry Nation, with a touch of Gloria Steinem and Mia Hamm. She had worked building a house for Habitat for Humanity and had once gone along with the biggest drug dealer in her high school on a frightening visit to a nearby city to pick up a quantity of rock cocaine, an event that had turned up on a police surveillance camera and prompted a call from some detectives to her mother. Sally Freeman-Richards had been furious, grounded her for weeks, shouted at her that she’d been extraordinarily lucky not to be arrested, and that it would be hard to regain her mother’s trust. Separately, Hope and her father had reached more benign conclusions, talking more about adolescent rebellion, with him remembering some pretty stupid things that he had done while growing up, which had created some laughter, but had mostly reassured her. She didn’t think she was consciously setting out to do dangerous things in her life, but Ashley knew that on occasion she engaged in a risk or two, and that she was fairly charmed to have avoided true consequences up to that point. Ashley often thought she was like clay on a potter’s wheel, constantly turning, being shaped, waiting for the heat blast from some furnace to finish her.

She felt adrift. She did not particularly enjoy her part-time job at the museum, helping to catalog exhibits. It was a stuck-in-a-back-room, stare-at-a-computer-screen sort of job. She was unsure about the art history graduate program she was waiting to hear from and thought sometimes that she had fallen into these fields only because she was adept with pen, ink, and paintbrush. This troubled her deeply because, like so many young people, she believed that she should only do what she loved, and, as yet, she was unsure what that might be.

They had left the bar, and Ashley pulled her coat a little tighter against the evening chill. She realized that she should probably have been paying attention to Will. He was good-looking, attentive, and might just have a sense of humor. He had an odd, loping stride at her side that was disarming and, probably, on balance, was someone she might consider more carefully. But, she recognized, as well, that they’d been walking for nearly two blocks and only had fifty yards to go before they reached the door to her apartment, and he had yet to actually ask her a question.

She decided to play a small game. If he asked her something she thought interesting, then she’d give him a second date. If he only asked whether he could come upstairs with her, then he was going to get dropped.

“So you think,” he said suddenly, “that when guys in a bar argue about baseball, they do so because they love the game, or because they love the argument? I mean, ultimately, there are no right answers, there is only team-based loyalty. And blind loyalty doesn’t really lend itself to debate, does it?”

Ashley smiled. There was his second date.

“Of course,” he added, “Red Sox love probably belongs in my advanced abnormal-psychology seminar.”

She laughed. Definitely another date.

“This is my place,” she said. “I’ve had fun tonight.”

Will looked at her. “Maybe we could try a slightly quieter evening? It might be easier to get to know each other when we’re not competing with raised voices and wild-eyed speculation about Derek Jeter’s predilections for leather whips and outsized sex toys and the orifices where they might be imaginatively employed. Or deployed.”

“I’d like that,” Ashley said. “Will you call me?”

“I will indeed.”

She took a single stride up onto the first step to her apartment, realized that she was still holding his hand, and turned back and gave him a long kiss. A partially chaste kiss, with only the smallest sensation of her tongue passing over his lips. A kiss of promise, but one that implied more for days to come, although not an invitation for that night. He seemed to get this, which heartened her, for he stepped a half pace back, bowed elaborately, and, like an eighteenth-century courtier, kissed the back of her hand.

“Good night,” she said. “I really did have a nice time.”

Ashley turned and headed into the apartment building. Between the two glass doors, she turned and glanced back. A small cone of light stretched from a bulb above the outer door, and Will stood just on the back side of the wan yellow circle, which faded quickly in the encroaching rich black of the New England night. A shadow creased his face, like an arrow of darkness that sought him out. But she thought nothing of this, gave him a small wave, and headed up to her place feeling the natural high of possibility, pleased with herself for not even considering a one-night stand, the hookup that was so popular in the college circles that she was just on the verge of emerging from. She shook her head. The last time she had given in to that particular temptation had been truly awful. She had been reminded of it earlier when her father had called out of the blue. But, just as quickly, as she hunted for the key to her apartment, she dismissed all thoughts of bad nights past and let the modest glow of this night fill her.

She wondered how long it might take for Will-the-first-date to call her and become Will-the-second-date.

Will Goodwin lingered in the darkness for a moment after Ashley had vanished inside the second door. He felt a rush of enthusiasm, a devil-may-care kind of excitement about the evening past and the evening to come.

He was a bit overwhelmed. The girlfriend of a friend, who had passed on Ashley’s number, had informed him that she was beautiful and bright, if a bit mysterious, but she had exceeded even his fantasies in each regard. He thought he’d just managed to avoid the “boring” tag by the narrowest of margins.

Hunched over against a quickening breeze, Will stuck his hands deep into his parka and started walking. The air had an antique quality to it, as if each shiver it delivered were no different, passed down exactly the same with the same October chill that had sliced through generations who had traveled the Boston streets. He could feel his cheeks starting to redden from the night’s determination, and he hustled toward the subway stop. He covered ground quickly, long legs now eating up the city sidewalk. She was tall, too, he thought. Almost five ten, he guessed, with a model’s lithe look that even jeans and a baggy cotton sweater hadn’t been able to conceal. He was a little astonished, as he dashed between traffic, crossing the street midblock, that she wasn’t inundated with guys, which, he supposed, probably had something to do with an unhappy relationship or some other bad experience. He decided not to speculate, but to simply thank whatever lucky star had put him in contact with Ashley. In his studies, he thought, everything was about probability and prediction. He wasn’t sure that the statistics he assigned to clinical work with lab rats could necessarily apply to meeting someone like Ashley.

Will grinned to himself and went bounding down the steps to the T.

The Boston subway, like that of most cities, has an otherworldly feel to it, when one passes through the turnstiles and descends into the underground world of transit. Lights glisten off white-tiled walls; shadows find space between steel pillars. There is a constancy of noise, as trains come, go, and rumble through the distance. The outside world is shut away, replaced with a kind of disjointed universe where wind, rain, snow, or even bright warm sunshine all seem a part of some other place and time.

His train arrived, making a high-pitched, screeching sound, and Will boarded quickly, along with a dozen others. The lights in the train gave everyone a pasty, sickly look. For a moment, he speculated about the other passengers, all either wrapped up in a newspaper, buried in some book, or staring out blankly. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes for an instant, letting the speed and sway of the train rock him a little like a child in his mother’s arms. He would call tomorrow, he told himself. Ask her out and try to engage her on the phone a bit. He sorted through subjects and tried to imagine one that would be unexpected. He wondered where to take her. Dinner and a movie? Predictable. He had the sensation that Ashley was the sort of woman who wanted to see something special. A play perhaps? A comedy club? Followed by a late-night dinner at some place better than the usual burgers-and-beer hangout. But not too snobbish, he imagined. And quiet. So, laughter and then something romantic. Maybe not the greatest plan, he thought, but reasonable.

His stop arrived, and he bounded up and out, moving quickly, but a little haphazardly, as he rose through the station, out to the street. The Porter Square lights sliced through the darkness, creating a sense of activity where there was little. He hunched over against a blast of cold wind and worked his way out of the square, down a side street. His own place was four blocks distant, and he worked his memory, trying to decide on the right restaurant to take her to.

He slowed when he heard a dog bark, suddenly alarmed. In the distance, an ambulance siren broke through the night. A few of the duplexes and apartments on the block had the glow of television screens lighting up windows, but most were dark.

To his right, in an alleyway between two apartment buildings, Will thought he heard a scraping sound, and he turned in that direction. Suddenly he saw a black shape rushing toward him. He took a step back in surprise and held up his arm to try to protect himself and thought that he should cry out for help, but things were moving far too quickly, and he had only a single moment filled with shock and fear, and the vaguest of terrors because he knew something was coming at him fast. It was a lead pipe, and it swung through the air with a swordlike hiss, bearing inexorably down on his forehead.