David Handler: The Cold Blue Blood

She would meet Stan at either Wadsworth Falls or Laurel Brook Reservoir. Both were deserted at this time of year. She would bring a blanket. If the weather were good they would spread it out on the grass and do it there. If it were bad they would do it in his car. Sometimes he pulled up in the Range Rover. Sometimes a pickup truck. Once he came in a minivan. She thought he might possibly run a car dealership. Or might be a building contractor of some kind-his hands knew hard work. They were large and surprisingly strong. But he told her nothing about himself. Stan was a bit unusual that way-most men, in Torry’s experience, could not stop bragging about themselves. Not Stan. He was modest. And extremely private. He never once came to her apartment. He never came to the Purple Pup again. And he never gave her his phone number. He would simply call her at the Pup and tell her where and when to meet him.

The lovemaking was not particularly inspired. Not as far as Torry was concerned. But it was quick and it was harmless, except for that time she got poison ivy all over her in a place where she couldn’t exactly scratch it. Only once did Stan ask her to do something that bordered on the slightly kinky. But Torry didn’t mind. In fact, it was kind of fun checking into that hotel all by herself. Playacting. Wearing that wig. Being all mysterious and sultry. Every man in the place had eyes for her. And the intrigue sure seemed to excite him. When he knocked on her door he was so hot he came the instant he got inside of her.

That was the only time she ever met Stan somewhere other than in the woods.

Torry was not someone who permitted herself to dream big, like those people who were always buying Lotto tickets. Still, she did allow herself to fantasize what it would be like if Stan ever divorced his wife and the two of them got together for real. They would have a home with a backyard on a tree-lined street somewhere. An investment portfolio. A college fund for Stevie. Sure, she dreamt about it. She was human, wasn’t she?

And then one night he wanted to end it.

He seemed very tense and preoccupied when they got out of their cars. Didn’t say a word as they strolled down the trail for a ways by the light of his flashlight. She carried the blanket. When they reached a nice little clearing she stopped and spread it out on the cool, wet spring grass in the moonlight. She knelt on it, her arms held out to him. Stan just stood there, motionless.

“What is it, honey?” she asked.

“This has to be the last time, Torry,” he said, his voice choking.

“Your wife getting suspicious?”

“H-How did you know?”

Torry shrugged her soft shoulders. “It happens,” she said, wondering why it always had to happen to her.

“No hard feelings, kid?”

Kid. He had never called her that before. “Of course not, Stan.”

“You’re very mature.”

“That’s me, all right. I’m a big girl now.”

They fell into silence. Suddenly, there was very little left to say.

She took a deep breath and released it slowly. “Listen, Stan, you’re a real nice guy. I like you. If things ever change, call me, okay? Maybe we can pick up where we left off or something.”

He let out a strangled sob. “I-I don’t think that’s ever going to happen.” That was when he reached inside his jacket and pulled out the . 38 caliber revolver and aimed it right at her head. His gun hand was shaking so badly that when he fired it the first shot merely glanced off her forehead, stunning her. Torry did try to grasp what was happening to her. Did try to react, to move, to do something. But she could not. Because none of this was happening. It could not be happening. Although it did occur to Torry, in the final seconds of her life, that she should never have trusted any man, even one who had nice manners.

And then the second shot caught Torry directly over her left eye and pitched her back over onto the blanket and she was gone.

Mitch Berger was sprawled on his living room sofa at two in the afternoon watching The Manchurian Candidate and devouring his fourth Krispy Kreme honey-dipped of the day when the woman he worked for buzzed his apartment.

For Mitch to be home in the middle of the day watching an old movie on TV was not unusual. He was the lead film critic of the most prestigious-and therefore the lowest paying-of the three New York City daily newspapers. And while he did have a desk in midtown alongside of the paper’s other eminent culture vultures, he generally worked at home. His books were here. His VCR was here. His lair was here.

But for his editor to show up at his apartment unannounced was most unusual indeed. Shocking, even.

Lacy Mickerson was a tall, edgy tuning fork of a woman in her late fifties, an immaculate dresser who favored gray flannel pants suits and claimed to have bedded Irwin Shaw, Mickey Mantle and Nelson Rockefeller in her youth. As the paper’s arts editor, she was one of the most influential cultural arbiters in New York, if not the whole country. It was Lacy who decided which shows and films merited extra attention. It was Lacy who had hired Mitch away from a scholarly film journal the year before when the man who had been the paper’s reigning film critic since Truman was in the White House finally agreed to hang up his flashlight pen. Mitch was young for such a heavyweight job, thirty-two. The same age William Holden had been when he played Joe Gillis in Sunset Boulevard. But he was uncommonly knowledgeable when it came to films. In fact, Lacy believed Mitch had seen virtually every film that had ever been made. He hadn’t, although he had written two highly authoritative and entertaining film reference guides, It Came from Beneath the Sink and Shoot My Wife, Please, which catalogued and critiqued the worlds of horror and crime films, respectively. As a critic, Mitch was considered witty, informative and enthusiastic. As a person he was considered unusually modest. He did not have a swelled head. He did not think his opinion mattered more than anyone else’s did. In fact, he still could not believe that someone was actually paying him to go to the movies.

The day she hired him, Lacy predicted that Mitch would win a Pulitzer before he was forty.

Right now she stood there looking around at his living room with keen disapproval. Mitch had a very desirable parlor floor-through in a turn-of-the-century brownstone on Gansevoort in the West Village’s meat-packing district. Hanging over the fireplace was a framed poster made from a rare Sid Avery black-and-white group photograph featuring all of the cast members of Ocean’s Eleven. When Maisie was living with him it had been a photograph of Georgia O’Keeffe that hung there. When Maisie was living with him it had been spotless, too. Now it was dingy and cluttered. Books and videos and magazines were heaped on every available surface. Clothes and food wrappers were strewn all over. The sky-blue Fender Stratocaster that Mitch had recently bought to ease his pain was propped against the monster-sized stack that went with it-a pair of Fender twin reverb amps, piled one atop the other, with a signal splitter on top and two foot pedals, a wa-wa and an Ibanez tube screamer. He could blow out all of the windows on the street if he wanted to. Every tenant in his building had been sure to let Mitch know they hated him for buying it.

There had been a cat, but Mitch had given it away. He could not bear to look at it after Maisie was gone.

Mitch reached for his remote control and stopped the tape of The Manchurian Candidate, even though it was right in the middle of the landmark garden club scene. He cleared space for Lacy on the love seat. He offered her a doughnut. She accepted one. Krispy Kreme doughnuts were considered a great delicacy among New York foodies. Lacy was a consummate New York foodie.