Choices
Mike was inside Tanya Kriel when the phone rang. He knew who it was instantly and his mind spun through array of possible responses: let the machine pick it up? At almost two in the morning? If he didn’t answer the phone that would only lead to more questions and confrontations. Answer it and act as if she had just awakened him? But he couldn’t fool Cindy and he knew it. He could just hear her: “Why the fake ‘sleepyhead’ stuff? Is someone there with you?”
The phone rang again. It seized him up inside like a police siren, like the flashers in his rearview mirror. Tanya was staring up at him. He had lifted himself off her by the full extension of his arms. He looked like he was doing some kind of stretch in yoga class. He looked down at her face. She was baffled and frustrated, but also concerned. She didn’t know what was going on yet, and a call this late usually meant trouble of some kind—a heart attack or a car crash.
Mike eased out of her with the familiar physical tug of reluctance. He pushed himself off to her side and sat up at the edge of the bed. The phone rang again. If he didn’t pick it up before the next ring, Tanya would get to hear Cindy’s grating late night message. That would be bad.
He picked up the phone.
“Mike?”
“Cindy, where are you? What’s going on?”
“Are you alone?”
“Of course I am. It’s two in the morning.”
Cindy was crying.
“What’s happening? Are you all right? Where are you calling from?”
“I’m—I decided to…I’m at the Logan Airport Hilton. I’m taking the first flight tomorrow.”
He put it together. She must have fled the party, and rushed home to pack. Then the mad rush to the airport to make the last flight out. He had been upstairs with Tanya when her plane was lifting off. He forced himself back to moment.
“The first flight?”
“To New York.”
“Wait a second—I don’t…What’s going on?
Mike heard Tanya shifting on the bed behind him. His furnace kicked on. The wind was steady against his house. The phone line was alive with the imminence of the unspoken.
“Cindy?”
“I have a date with Mark Toland tomorrow. I’ve been dreaming about him for years. Now there’s no reason not to see him.”
“Except your marriage.”
“Are you going to lecture me about fidelity? It would never have occurred to me if you hadn’t—”
“So this is revenge?”
“It’s reality. You changed the rules. Things have to be different after that. This is the way things are now. If Mark Toland had wanted to undress me last year I would have told you about it and it would have been exciting. You always liked the idea of other men being attracted to me. I might have even flirted a little, let him look down my dress or at least say I did, just to get you revved up. But to actually let him do anything…”
“Jesus.”
“Please, Mike.”
“What—I can’t have a reaction to this?”
“You can react. But you can’t make me feel guilty and you can’t expect anyone to sympathize with you. No one’s going to do that. It’s like watching a mugger get robbed. People cheer when that happens.”
“So you’re doing it to hurt me?”
“No, Mike, it had nothing to do with you. I’ve been in love with Mark Toland since the ninth grade.”
“Why call me, then? Why wake me up at two in the morning to tell me about it?”
“I don’t know. But I didn’t wake you up.”
He expelled a long breath. “No. You didn’t.”
“I hate this.”
“Don’t do it.”
She sighed. “I mean all of this.”
“Come home.”
“Give me a reason.”
Tanya walked around the bed. Mike noticed she had gotten dressed, but she was barefoot. She held out her hands, elbows tight to her body, and let her palms curl up as if tugged by her eyebrows. She might as well have said, “What the hell is going on, how long is this going to take?” He answered with a lifted arm, one finger up, miming “Give me a little more time, I’ll explain later.”
“Cindy—”
“Forget it. I have things to do in the city anyway.”
“What things?”
“Just—appointments. I don’t really feel like going into it.”
He squeezed the phone so hard his knuckles hurt. This was much worse than the planned adultery. He mashed his eyes shut.
“You don’t want to tell me? Fine. I’ll tell you.”
But Tanya chose that moment to give up on him. She raised her arms again but the gesture this time was different. She might have been throwing two crumpled pieces of paper at him. She shook her head and bent down to grab her shoes. Her back was to him as she started for the door. Mike covered the phone with his hand.
“Wait—”
She gave him a thin, tired smile. “You’re a little too married for me, Mike. Sorry.”
Then she was out the door. When he put the phone to his ear again, Cindy said, “She’s there.”
“What?”
“That girl. She’s there with you.”
“She’s leaving.”
“You were with her in our bed.”
“Cindy—”
“You better go after her, Mike. Don’t let her leave angry. Tell her you’re getting a divorce. It will be interesting, telling the truth for a change.”
She hung up.
Mike heard the front door close. A minute later he heard Tanya’s truck start up and pull out of the driveway.
He fell back on the bed. For the moment he had no energy, but he knew what he had to do. First thing: wash these sheets. Then he had to try and sleep for a couple of hours. He dug his fingertips into his forehead, staring up at the ceiling, which definitely needed to be taped, spackled and repainted.
He sat up, swiveling the Rubik’s cube of logistics. He hadn’t gotten the chance to say it, but he knew the appointment Cindy was talking about. She was going to see her family doctor, who worked with Planned Parenthood and enjoyed a profitable sideline in clean safe abortions.
Mike was pacing now, hyperventilating. He had to stop her. And he would, he’d talk her out of it. He just needed to think. It was early Sunday morning, that was a huge advantage. She couldn’t see the doctor until Monday. Mike had time to get into the city. Billy’s check wouldn’t clear until Tuesday at the earliest, but that was okay. He could dip into the thousand dollars he had stashed in case the IRS attached his bank account. He could show her a nice time in the city if he got the chance,, and replace the cash out of Billy’s check next week. And he had an old Hy-Line ticket left over from the summer, when a some emergency had forced him to cancel a trip off-island. Those tickets were good for a year.
The first boat was 7:45. He’d be on the road by 9:30.
His clients Josh and Emily Levin kept an old Acura sedan in the Steamship Authority parking lot for just this sort of occasion. They always spent the month of December in Nevis, some little island in the Caribbean. He had the key to their brownstone on West Seventy-fifth Street. He knew their alarm code and they had long ago given him an open invitation to use the house when they were away. He had painted the place top to bottom five years before.
He could stay over and be at the doctor’s office bright and early, well-rested. The office was on Eighty-second and Madison, with a coffee shop across the street: an excellent surveillance post. And the coffee was pretty good.
This was doable.
Mike took a breath. He had good friends. More than that, he had allies. He had partisans. People like Josh Levine and Billy Delavane would always come through for him. What was that phrase? It took a village—to raise a kid or keep your marriage going or stay solvent. Well, fuck the village.
He had a platoon.
And he had hope. Cindy couldn’t have decided yet. She would never contemplate some random sexual dalliance on the eve of such a huge step. Maybe she was using Mark Toland to help her decide. Either way, Mike would be there to keep her from making the mistake.
Mike felt infallible that morning, as he got ready to leave. But he wasn’t. In fact he was making a terrible mistake, one in a long string of accidental blunders. Every move Mike had made for the last month, now including this trip to Manhattan, taken together and viewed with the cold eye of the law, would combine in the diabolical machinery of circumstance to cast him as the primary suspect in Nantucket’s most gruesome and notorious murder, ever. In less than a week he’d be in jail and facing the very real possibility of life in prison. If he’d known all that, he would have gone anyway. But he would have left a paper trail.
He was going to need one.