Lisa Unger - Die For You

“I’ll be just a minute,” she called. There was no answer.

“What do you think happened to him?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said, pulling her phone from her pocket and glancing at it, looking for messages.

“I’ll see what I can find out,” he offered. “I know the crime-beat reporter pretty well.”

She’d met Ben at a gallery opening for her work. He was an art critic who’d been less than kind to her in an earlier review. Common, maudlin , were the words that stuck in her mind. But still, she found herself drawn to him. He was a tall, powerful man with close-cropped dark hair and a neat goatee, a small silver hoop in each ear. From the nastiness of his written comments and his striking appearance, she expected him to be verbose, loud or overbearing. Instead she found him soft-spoken, carrying an aura of vulnerability. She found herself watching his face, for that moment when he thought no one was looking, when the muscles shifted and relaxed, revealing the true man. It never came. He was guarded, always.

“Seems like it’s always the people who do the least with their lives who have the nastiest things to say about those who do the most,” she’d said to him the night of their meeting, having had a bit too much to drink. The circle of people standing around them went silent, but she could feel Erik smiling beside her. He liked it when she got feisty.

Ben gave her a slow nod, took a sip of wine. “I’m sure it must seem that way. But how do you feel about all those critics who have nice things to say? Do you hold them in such disdain?”

She had to laugh. It came out deep and throaty and she saw his eyes shine at the sound of it.

“Of course not,” she answered. “ Those critics are obviously brilliant.” And everyone joined in their laughter, relieved that the tension had dissipated.

“I love your work, Linda,” he said, and she saw a flash of arrogance. The way he talked to her in that group, the way he said her name as if they were old friends-it gave her a strange charge. “I hold you to a very high standard. That’s why I’m so disappointed when your work doesn’t meet your abilities. Which, admittedly, isn’t often.”

He raised a glass to her and the others in their group did the same. She could have been gracious here, but she wasn’t.

“So, are you a failed photographer, like so many critics? Do you have stacks of photographs somewhere that no magazine would buy, no agent would represent?”

Linda felt Erik give her a little warning squeeze on her lower back; they both knew wine changed her personality a bit, made her more aggressive, prone to saying things she never would sober. She held Ben’s eyes, enjoying the slow smile that spread across his face.

“No,” he said. “Even as a child my only ambition was to stand in judgment of artistic achievement.”

The group let out a roar of laughter that caused everyone else in the gallery to look at them.

Linda and Ben were fucking within the week.

“That would be great,” she said, moving into him, wrapping her arms around his middle. He was much bigger than Erik, broader through the shoulders, fuller in the middle. She liked this about him, his size. It made her feel safe, even though there was nothing safe about him or anything they did.

“I’ll text you,” he said into her hair.

She broke away from him and unlocked the door, peered out and didn’t see anyone waiting in the slim hallway leading back to the restaurant dining area. She cast him a backward glance and saw a sad look of longing on his face that made her heart catch.

“I’m sorry,” she said, though she didn’t know why.

“Me, too,” he said.

The difference between them was that he wasn’t happy in his marriage. Love had left his relationship long ago. He told her that he stayed with his wife because of their two daughters, ages six and eight. She’d seen pictures of them, both sweet faced, one dark, one light, just like her and Isabel. The sight of them made her feel such acute shame that she had to force herself not to look away when he trotted out whatever new photographs he had with him. She couldn’t imagine bringing pictures of her kids to these meetings, couldn’t understand why he did that.

Linda didn’t know which of them was guiltier in this affair, though she was fairly certain she was doing the most harm. Here she was, someone blessed with love and success and still unsatisfied. As she walked through the restaurant, no one noticed her-none of the diners, not the waitress at the busy counter or the cook over the grill. She loved the anonymity of New York City. You were always alone; no one cared what you did, what you wore, with whom you were sleeping. Everyone was so wrapped up in the dream of their own lives and what they wanted to be that they never saw you at all.

She called her sister again from the cab heading uptown. No answer.

I did as Detective Breslow suggested, starting checking my accounts. At the accountant’s office, there was no answer and no voice mail, though business hours were well under way. Not a good sign. With our computers gone, my normal way of checking accounts and credit cards was out of the question. So Detective Crowe and I walked down to the ATM on Broadway. It didn’t take long to confirm their suspicions; all our accounts had been reduced to a hundred dollars. I stared at the glowing numbers on the small screen and felt a burning in my chest, as if bile was coming up from my empty stomach. Four accounts-a checking, a savings, and two money markets-all empty except for a hundred dollars each, the minimum required to keep the accounts opened.

“I don’t believe this,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” said Detective Crowe, scribbling in his little book.

“Hey, are you done?” Some guy waiting impatiently behind us, shifting from foot to foot, gripping a cell phone in his hand. “You’re holding up the line.”

We moved from the queue and I ducked into a doorway, just so that I could lean against something, get out of the sidewalk crowd. People hurried past; the traffic on Broadway was a river of noise.

“How much are we talking about here?”

“Those are just the liquid accounts,” I said. The concrete beneath my feet felt like sand, shifting and unstable. “I don’t know, maybe around seventy thousand between the four of them?”

He nodded, not offering judgment, just writing, always writing in that stupid little book. I wanted to say something, but inside I was in a free fall, wondering about everything it had taken me so long to earn and grow. I wondered about the investment accounts-the IRAs, the pensions, the stocks. Of course, they would all be gone, too. The weight of it was starting to hit me; everything was gone. A hollow space was opening in my middle and I thought of my mother again.

MARGIE HAS THESE perfect long fingers, always bejeweled unapologetically with all manner of chunky gems.

“An old woman should wear jewels, big ones,” she says. “She’s earned them and they distract from her fading looks. I may not be young anymore, but at least I’m rich. And that’s something.”

That’s Margie.

Except for the night she told us that she planned to marry Fred, I have never seen her lose herself-not in happiness, not in grief. She would smile but never indulge in a belly laugh. She would frown but never yell. As a younger woman, it was hard for me to imagine her as a girl buffeted by the same passions, desires, and ambitions that rocketed me through my education and career. I couldn’t imagine her lost in passion or crushed by disappointment. She seemed as stoic and steady as a stone column. This was a comfort in some ways, because she was always a place to moor in rough weather.