Thursday, October 29
Today was so close to being a normal day that it felt oddly peaceful. A storm chaser would liken it to the eye of the hurricane, and soldiers would recognize it as a temporary truce on opposite sides of a battlefield. Calm, quiet. A sense of the rare, delicious ordinary.
I worked a full day at the Stone Rose, spending more time than usual chatting with the regulars. Charlie told me how his grandchildren bought him a La-Z-Boy chair for his eightieth birthday and even mentioned he’d missed seeing my face lately. Jim and Linda ordered matching macchiatos and told me about their CrossFit gym, which they refer to as “the box.” I listened not so much with interest as with pleasant comfort.
Brenda signed up the Rose to be a part of a Halloween window-decorating contest, and for two hours, a troop of ninth-graders painted away. Their amateurish strokes turned into something quite impressive: a pumpkin patch under a full midnight moon, overlooked by a ratty, old scarecrow whose face conveyed a profound loneliness, an expression I would not have thought possible with window paint. Brenda chooses a window all to herself, where she paints a mesmerizing depiction of Simon, a beautifully imaged vapor of a ghost, rising up in the form of steam from a coffee cup. Simon is smiling and holding in his left, ethereal hand a blueberry scone, just like the ones we sell at the Rose.
Before leaving the shop for the day, I check the news online once again for anything about Jimmy. The story seems to have remained local, and there’s been nothing more detailed about his death other than a small explosive charge killing him. Nothing being ruled a homicide, and no mention of a woman fleeing the scene. Just the all-encompassing term ongoing investigation. Jimmy’s behavior was described as “erratic” by witnesses, and I wonder who those witnesses are since really I was the only one to whom he spoke. Still, I’m grateful nothing has led the police to my door. Yet.
Back home, the sun sets through my kitchen window as a cold October wind whips up the trees in my front yard. I build a fire and prepare a simple dinner, which I eat sitting on the floor in front of the flames. It feels good, the heat on my face and arms, and I try not to think too much about the evidence of Freddy Starks’s murder burning to ash in this very fireplace. I try to sustain a sense of normalcy, of comfort, but don’t try too hard, for often that’s when it slips fastest through my fingers.
Then the doorbell rings, and in an instant, all feelings of security disappear. My body tenses against my wishes, a Pavlovian reaction. It’s just after six o’clock, and I can’t imagine who’s on the other side of the door.
But I can imagine, can’t I?
Is it so hard to picture Mr. Interested at my door, in whatever form he takes shape? In a brief, strange moment, I picture a man at the door in a tuxedo, getting on his knee and flashing me an engagement ring. I don’t know why that enters my head, but it’s nicer than picturing a maniac with a knife and a rope.
I slide an iron poker from its hearthside harness and grip it in my right hand. It feels wonderfully assuring, an extension of my own hand. My brain instantly processes the amount of damage I could do with this, which makes me think of all the blood that’s already been spilled and cleaned in this room.
I creep up next to the door and slide the curtain an inch away from the window, then peer outside.
Richard.
The tension drains from my body, causing my shoulders to slump. I lean the poker against the wall, deactivate the security system, and open the door. Richard seems even taller and more gaunt than usual, and his cheeks are a gray, ashen hue.
He holds up a bottle of wine.
“Can we talk?” he asks.
I take the bottle.
“Sure. Guess we never did have that bottle of wine earlier, did we?”
“No, we didn’t.”
He walks inside and looks around, as if expecting to find I’m not alone.
“I know you were gone for a few days and just got back. You sure this is a good time?”
I close the door and lock it. “I’m surprised you want to talk to me at all.”
“I just…just need to work through some things. Out loud.”
“Of course,” I say, a little worried about what he means. “Do you want to take off your coat?”
“Sure.” He shrugs off his bulky army coat, revealing his long, wiry frame beneath a black T-shirt and faded jeans. His arms are even paler than his face, and blue, ropy veins track down his biceps and into the crooks of his elbows. For the first time, I notice the bottom of a tattoo poking out beneath his right sleeve.
“I didn’t know you had ink,” I say, pointing to his arm.
“Oh, yeah, yeah.” His left hand goes up as if to cover his tattoo for a moment, but then he pulls up his sleeve, revealing what looks like the pi sign, only with a line along the bottom as well. “It’s my birth sign. Gemini. I know, it’s stupid. I was young and drunk. Suppose I could’ve gotten something much worse.”
“I like it,” I say, not sure if I mean it or not.
He pulls his sleeve back down.
“Have a seat on the couch,” I tell him. “I’ll go open the wine.”
He does, and a minute later, I return with two glasses and set them on the coffee table, then go back to grab the bottle. I pour us each a glass, place the bottle on the table, and then sit, leaving a cushion of distance between us. For a brief moment, I have a flash of sharing a couch in a dark room with Melinda Glassin, which feels like a year ago. Or maybe it didn’t happen at all.
“I haven’t been sleeping much lately,” he starts. “I can’t get what happened here out of my mind. I mean, did that all really take place?” He runs his fingers through his hair as he looks down at the floor.
“Yeah, it did,” I say. “What happened was terrible. I think about it, too. But you had nothing to do with it, Richard.”
“I know, I know.”
“You were trying to help. I didn’t expect Thomas to do what he did. I didn’t want that, but it happened. That man was going to kill me, Richard.” The last thing I need is a guilt-torn Richard going to the police to wipe his conscience clean. “Even if we’d dropped him off at the hospital and he got fixed up, he was going to come back for me. I know that doesn’t make what happened in here any easier, but it’s the truth.”
“Alice—”
I talk over him. “And no matter how you feel, you weren’t involved, but if the police find out, it could make things very tricky. We need to make sure this stays with us. God, how you must hate me for making you a part of this.”
“Alice, you aren’t listening to me.”
I lean back on the couch.
“What?”
He leans forward and sets his wine on the coffee table.
“I don’t hate you. I want to help you. Any way I can.”
I shift my weight just a fraction away from him.
“I don’t need you to save me, Richard.”
“I didn’t say that. I said I wanted to help.”
“Why? If you were smart, you’d move out. Get as far away as you could.”
“It’s hard to explain,” he says.
And for a moment, I have a flash of what he’s about to say. It’s something ridiculous, like he’s falling in love with me. Or that he feels we’re supposed to be together.
“What is it, Richard?”
“It’s just… Well, this is going to sound strange. But I don’t feel guilty or bad about what happened. And maybe I should. Hell, I’m a nurse, aren’t I? But I feel just the opposite. He was going to hurt you, and then…what Thomas did. Once I got over the shock, I realized…I realized it gave me a rush, you know? The power of that moment. That man came here with a plan, thought he was in control. And then, bam.”
Richard grabs his wine and takes a larger gulp, either to steady his nerves or to keep his lips from speaking more.
“Wow,” I say. “I was not expecting you to say any of that.”
“I know. Maybe that makes me a freak.”
“No, it doesn’t. I just wasn’t expecting it.”
“I don’t know what to do now,” he says. “My life is so boring. I just do the same thing every day. And then…what happened, happened. It was like someone injected adrenaline right into my heart. I couldn’t sleep for nearly three days. My mind is constantly spinning. And then you disappear for a few days, and I don’t know what’s happening, and I worry about you.”
“I’m fine, Richard.”
“I know, I know. You can take care of yourself. But even…with all the stuff going on in your life, you at least have this excitement going on.”
“Excitement? Are you kidding me? I would trade the excitement of having a maniacal stalker and panic attacks for a thousand boring lifetimes.”
“I know. I don’t mean it like that. It’s just that…” He lifts his arm and points to the middle of my living room. “He died right there. A man was tied up and bleeding, and then Thomas just killed him. Right there. And I saw the whole thing. I was part of it. I suppose I’m still trying to process all of it, and part of what I’ve learned in the past week is how incredibly insignificant my life is.”
“Richard, my life is a constant struggle for air. None of it is fun, or exciting.”
“I’m not trying to make light of it,” he says, and I can see in his face he means it. “But I want to help. I want to be a part of it.”
“There’s nothing you can do.”
“How do you know that? I mean, have you found the guy who’s stalking you?”
“No.”
He drinks more, and I feel the need to catch up.
“Well,” he says, “at least tell me what’s happening. I know a little from what you told me, but…” Then he lifts the bottle of wine. “Here we are.”
I’ve always felt unusually comfortable around Richard, which is to say somewhat comfortable. And now, in his eagerness to talk, there’s something almost boyish about him, a quality I’d never expect to shine through his hallmark seriousness.
I lift my now almost-empty glass. “Pour us some more, and I’ll catch you up on the latest episode of Mister Tender’s Girl.”
Richard smiles, and though his teeth are far from perfect, in this moment, he’s lovely.
He fills my glass.
• • •
A bottle and a half later, my head spins comfortably, like I’ve just walked off a scary roller coaster and survived. Somehow I’ve managed to do all the talking and kept up my share of drinking.
The wall clock chimes eight thirty, and we’ve had nothing more than smashed grapes for dinner. But I’m not hungry. I just feel a lulling, heavy pull toward sleep. Richard is more awake than ever, energized by my stories.
“I can’t believe that about your ex-boyfriend,” he says. “I read about that online.”
“I’m constantly worried my name is going to come up in connection with it. I don’t know how I can keep in front of this much longer. I just want to…disappear.”
“Seems that’s not an easy thing to do. You tried it before. This Mr. Interested still found you.”
“All I did was change my name when I moved here, and I wasn’t even aware at the time someone was already watching me. God, I just want a do-over. A fourteen-year do-over.”
Richard leans his head back on the couch, which is the most comfortable position I’ve ever seen him assume. “But that’s not going to happen, of course. And you don’t really want to keep running, do you? I can’t imagine.”
“No,” I say. “It’s a fantasy, disappearing. Creating a whole new world for myself. But it wouldn’t matter. I can never escape what happened to me. What’s in my mind. Moving again and getting a new social security number won’t change any of that. Besides, there’re good things in my life, and I don’t acknowledge that enough. I love my coffee shop. The people I work with. My house. And Thomas. I can’t leave Thomas.”
“So then, if you can’t get a do-over, and you’re not going to disappear, your only other option is to find Mr. Interested and stop him.”
I nod, almost amused by how simple this all sounds. “And somehow not get tied to the deaths of three people: the drug dealer three years ago, Freddy Starks, and Jimmy. Mr. Interested knows about all of them, and God knows how he plans to use that information.”
Richard briefly touches my arm, and the graze is so light, it could be an accident.
“And you think he’s the person who found you the night of your stabbing?”
“He told me as much.”
“And that maybe it wasn’t an accident he happened to be there at that time?”
“It’s hard to say. I mean, could I actually have known him back then? How would the twins know him? According to Melinda, he sent her letters in jail, and she had no idea who he was. But she’s crazy, so who knows what to believe?”
Richard hmmmms and we both sit and stare forward, each of us slumped on the couch, relaxed, casual, and with less space between us than at the first glass of wine. I never would have thought discussing my stalker with my tenant would lead to a pleasant evening. A day ago, I was curled in a ball in my mother’s house, succumbing to whatever drugs she thought I needed.
After a long, comfortable pause, Richard says, “There’s something not right.”
“Not right?”
“Yeah, from your story. Something’s missing.”
“I told you everything that happened,” I say. Which is true. Richard now knows as much of what’s happening to me as I do. I told him what we did with Starks’s body, my flight to London, my visit to Gladstone Park. Charles Glassin. The twins. My messages from Mr. Interested. Jimmy. My panic attack last night and my conversations with my mother. Everything.
“Don’t you think it’s weird your parents used to hang out with the twins’ parents?”
“Everything about all of this is weird, that included,” I say. “But on the scale of weirdness, I’d put that way over on the side of not so much. I mean, it sounds like they just got together socially a few times.”
“It’s hard to wrap my head around,” Richard says, “but there seem to be connections to Mr. Interested and your past. I mean, you even said you think he’s the guy who found you in the park, and maybe he knew what was going to happen. That maybe he wrote the original letters to the twins telling them to hurt you. You’re right in what you told me: he seems to have some kind of hero complex. Hurt you, then help you.”
“Keep going,” I say. I’ve been through this in an infinite loop in my head, so I’m anxious to see if he has a different perspective on everything.
“Your father writes the warning message in the book, telling you basically not to trust anyone,” he continues. “You only know he wrote that sometime after your stabbing, but you don’t know who or what he was talking about.”
“Right. I’m fairly certain it’s his handwriting, and the cover art and first panels are his. But not the other panels.”
“He was drawing out the adventure story he used to tell you?”
I nod. “When we were kids. Chancellor’s Kingdom. It’s where Mister Tender came from. I don’t know, maybe he was drawing the whole backstory as some form of closure or something. He only drew the first few panels.”
“But Mr. Interested somehow got ahold of it. Doesn’t that mean he maybe knew your father?”
“I thought about that,” I say. “He could have, but he could also just be an obsessed fan and ransacked my father’s place after he died. I have no idea.”
“There was something your father wanted to warn you about, but he never sent you that book. He never warned you of anything in the time you spent with him before he died.”
“No.”
“So maybe whatever your father was referring to was either not an imminent threat, or he didn’t really believe it himself.”
“I have no idea. It could be nothing,” I say. “I mean, it was a quote from a penguin, after all.”
My hand is just next to his leg, the knuckles lightly grazing. It’s barely perceptible, but it feels nice to touch someone.
“You said Charles referred to bad decisions he’s made. With his wife.”
“He said…” I close my eyes and see Charles in his little house, wearing his painfully sad expression. “He told me not to chase ghosts. That he and Margaret made some bad decisions. I think he even said associated with the wrong people, or something like that, and he wondered if it affected how they raised the girls. But he never said what those decisions were.”
“You didn’t ask?”
“I wanted to, but he seemed so upset. Then he changed the subject. Asked about my mother.”
Richard sits up, and I take my hand off his leg.
“I think there’s something in their past that’s connected to all of this. What was your mom’s reaction when you told her you saw Charles?”
“Fairly dismissive. But she was surprised, for sure. Said they used to go drinking together, but that she didn’t really care for them. Especially Margaret.”
“Why Margaret?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “She was like Charles. Quick to change the subject.”
“So Charles was cryptic and your mom was dismissive when talking about their past. Do you know where Margaret is now?”
Close, I remember. “Charles said she moved to New York soon after I came to the States myself. But I have no idea if she’s still there.”
“Let’s find out,” he says. Richard reaches into the front pocket of his jeans and slides out his phone. “Glassin, right?”
“Yes,” I say, then spell it for him. “But I can’t imagine she kept the same name. She might have remarried, or just changed it because of the association.”
He stares at the screen, and I lean over to catch a glimpse, and as I do, my hair falls forward against his chest. It’s a small, intimate moment. It catches me off guard for just a second, but I’m soon pulled back into the search results on his phone.
“A number of hits,” he says, thumbing down through the results. He refines the search to Margaret Glassin New York.
The very first result is a New York Post article, dated four years ago. It’s an arts-and-entertainment piece about the gentrification of certain sections of Brooklyn and the efforts to keep the character of existing establishments while appeasing millennial tastes. There are several examples of local business owners bemoaning the changing neighborhood.
One of those business owners is Margaret Glassin, who, according to the article, moved to New York from London over a decade earlier.
“Holy shit,” I say, reading what kind of business owner Margaret Glassin is. “She owns a bar. A bar.”
Richard reads from the piece. “‘Margaret Glassin came to New York over a decade ago, hoping for a fresh start after a painful divorce.’”
“There’s nothing in there about the stabbing,” I say. “No one bothered to look her name up.”
“No need to,” he says. “Just a fluff piece, really.” He keeps reading. “‘She’s currently the owner of Maggie’s on Franklin Avenue, in a building where a bar in one form or another has operated for over fifty years. Glassin told us her drink menu consists solely of ale, gin, whiskey, and beer, and she actively resists all hipster demands for elaborate mixed drinks.’”
This is the extent of Margaret’s mention in the article, but it’s enough to make me certain it has to be the same person. Charles and my mother never referred to her as Maggie, but still, it lines up perfectly.
“Google the bar,” I say.
He does. “Still there,” he says. “What are you thinking?”
I rest my hand on his arm. “I’m thinking I should go talk to Maggie,” I say.
He smiles and nods, and I expect him to ask to come along. But he doesn’t. Then, as I look back down at my fingers on his forearm, I once again notice his tattoo peeking out from under his sleeve.
Gemini.
Then another word suddenly pops in my head.
Twins.
Isn’t that the symbol for Gemini? Twins?
I remove my hand and straighten on the couch, no longer feeling quite as comfortable as I was a moment ago. It’s a stupid tattoo, and it doesn’t mean anything other than his astrological sign, and I would normally think nothing of the association with twins. But there’s that always-present question, the one etched in my memory with my father’s perfect, flowing script.
Alice, what did the penguin always tell you?