Peter Spiegelman - Red Cat

“I found out about this one not long after New Year’s. She left a message-‘David, why don’t you call?’ or something like that. David had seemed more tense than usual, and he’d been drinking more, and I knew something was eating at him. Then I heard that message, and I knew what.”

“Did you say anything to him?”

She managed another smile, this one bitter. “You think there’d be much point to that?”

“Probably not.”

“I didn’t think so, either, but I tried anyway. He actually got angry at me- he got angry at me-and then he just lied. ‘Nothing’s wrong, busy with the new job,’ things along those lines. I knew it was crap, but…” The muscles in Stephanie’s jaw tightened as she worked her anger back into its pen.

“How did you meet her?”

Her face darkened, and she shook her head. “She was downstairs, if you can believe it. It was a Thursday night and I was coming back from yoga. I came up to the front door, and there was a woman in the lobby, shouting at the doorman. Her voice was all breathy and theatrical, but it was familiar too, though I didn’t know from where. For some reason, I stayed out on the sidewalk and listened. And then I realized she was shouting about David.

“ ‘Don’t lie to me. Don’t tell me he’s not home when I just saw him go in. March- Apartment Ten-A.’ She sounded crazy, and then I knew who it was. She stormed out after that, and passed right by me. I was shocked by how she looked…how beautiful she was.”

“You spoke to her?”

“Not then.”

“Then how-”

“I followed her,” Stephanie said, and her cheeks colored.

“Followed her where?”

“To Eighty-sixth Street, and onto the subway, and then I followed when she got off in Brooklyn, all the way back to her apartment.” Stephanie saw something in my face and shook her head. “I didn’t plan it- it just happened. I couldn’t take my eyes off her, and I…had to do it.”

Shit. “Is that when you spoke to her- at her apartment?”

“That was the next day. All that night, I thought about…” She paused, and squeezed her eyes shut, and pinched the bridge of her nose. She said something under her breath- a curse maybe- and looked up. “David was worse than ever that night, snapping at everything I said, and drinking… When it was all abstract, when the women were faceless, it was easier to pretend. But hearing her voice, seeing herI couldn’t take it. I couldn’t stop thinking about her, about the two of them, and I had to do something. So the next day I went to see her.”

“What happened?”

“It was terrible. She was laughing, and…I never saw a camera, but David told me she recorded it.”

“We only saw a part of it. I need to know the whole thing.”

Stephanie hunched her shoulders and drank some water. “I said my name in the intercom, and she knew who I was right away, and started laughing. She let me in to her apartment, and I sat, and for the longest time she didn’t say anything. She just stared at me and waited. The apartment was horrible- tiny and dark- and that building…But somehow, the way she looked at me, she made me feel- I don’t know- as if I were underdressed or something. Finally, I just said what I had to say.”

“Which was?”

“I told her to leave David alone. I told her to find her own husband and to stop harassing mine. She didn’t say anything for a while; she just kept watching me, as if I were some sort of specimen. And then she laughed again. I got angry- angrier- and said some other things.”

“What things?”

“I cursed at her, and she laughed harder. Finally she started talking.”

“About what?”

Stephanie looked out the window, at a solitary figure slowly circling the reservoir- a plodding black shape against the blue-white snow. Her face stiffened and ridges appeared at her jawline again. “She asked questions…about me and David.”

“What questions?”

“She asked why I let my husband fuck other women.” The words caught in her throat and a red patch appeared on her neck. “She asked how I could be married to him and let that happen- why I’d married him in the first place if I was going to let him do that. Why I stayed married. Why I put up with it all.

“Then she asked if I’d driven him to it, if a part of me liked the idea…liked to picture him…” Stephanie’s throat closed up and she shook her head and looked at me. “She asked if I even knew what David…liked, if he talked to me about what he did with his women. With her. If he ever did those things to me. She said she’d tell me about it, if I wanted. She said she’d teach me.”

My stomach twisted and my neck prickled with cold sweat. Stephanie sniffed, and drank some water. “There was more, but I think you get the drift.”

“What did you do?” I asked.

The little smile came again, and lingered. Stephanie’s eyes held mine. “She was sitting there, smiling, so beautiful…it was hideous. She was hideous, and I wanted to kill her. I wanted to hit her with something, or wring her neck, and if I’d had a gun then, I would have shot her right there.”

My mouth was dry and it was hard to get the words out. “What did you do?” I asked again.

Her laugh was bitter and angry, an echo of a more familiar Stephanie. “What I did was cry, John. I cried like an infant and I ran out of there. I ran until I found a taxi, and I cried all the way home.” Stephanie shook her head and wiped a hand across her eyes.

“When did you see her again?”

“I didn’t.”

“Never?”

Stephanie squinted at me. “Never.”

“You didn’t fight, there in her apartment? You didn’t hit her?”

“No, for God’s sake. I wish I had slapped her- I wish I could’vebut I didn’t touch her.”

“There was no violence?”

She sat up and her face hardened. “I said I never touched her.”

“Did you threaten her?”

“I…I was angry. I yelled and cursed and told her to leave us alone. I might have said some other things-”

“What other things?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Did you threaten to harm her? To-”

“I told you, I don’t remember everything I said.”

I nodded. “Did she have any signs of injury that you saw? Any bruises or cuts?”

She squinted again. “No, nothing like that.”

“What else did she say to you, besides the questions?”

She shook her head. “That was all. There was nothing else.”

I looked at my notes. “Did you tell David what you’d done?”

“I…I was embarrassed.”

“Did her calls stop?”

“I don’t think she called here again, but it didn’t seem to help David much. He was worse than ever, almost panicked. I didn’t know what to do, and then he went to you.”

“How did you know about that?”

Stephanie stared at the rug. “I saw you together, at breakfast. I…followed him.”

“You’ve been doing a lot of that.”

She colored again. “I’m not proud of it. I was frantic- I didn’t know what was happening to him, or what to do. Then I saw the two of you, and I thought that you were involved somehow with all this- that you had somehow dragged David into it. I don’t know- I wasn’t thinking straight.” She looked up at me. “It was pitiful, I know.”

I took a deep breath. “Tell me about that Tuesday,” I said.

“Which Tuesday?”

“Three weeks ago yesterday. It would’ve been the Tuesday after you saw Holly- the day before you saw David and me at breakfast. Take me through that day.”

And, with starts and stops and stumbling, she did. Like David, she’d spent much of that day downtown- in and out of her office, at meetings, and on conference calls. And as with David, it was her after-work hours that were more difficult to account for. Presumably, there were people from her yoga class who could testify to her presence there, but would the clerks in the shops on upper Madison recall her- another well-dressed woman who’d browsed but hadn’t bought? Would they swear to it in court? And then there was her trip to the movies.