Lisa Unger - Die For You

Camilla, resplendent in shades of blue, a simple blouse and flowing skirt, flippy sandals on her feet, was waiting for Raine by the subway station. She was like a breeze of clean air in the filth of the city around her. Raine kissed her quickly and together they descended below the street.

He rode between two cars and watched the couple through the thick, dirty window that separated them. They were oblivious, totally wrapped up in each other, one of Raine’s arms around her shoulder, the other holding her delicate hand. She looked up at him with that wide-open smile. Raine seemed like a different person, animated, laughing, relaxed, not like the gargoyle he usually was, staring joylessly at his screen, skulking over his sandwich in the break room, grunting his replies to questions, issuing terse one-line e-mails. To look into Camilla’s face, you’d imagine he was the most charming, charismatic bastard who ever walked the face of the earth.

When they exited uptown, he followed them again, watched as they entered a beautiful prewar building on the Upper West Side. A doorman in a navy blue uniform pulled the door open for them, and they disappeared. Left behind on the street, a terrible current of covetousness rushed through him. It literally caused him to feel nauseous when he thought of the hovel he lived in out in Williamsburg, shared with his disgusting slob of a brother. Even earning the kind of money that would make him a king at home, he lived like a pauper in this whore of a city, where everything he’d ever wanted was right in front him but always out of reach.

He’d learned quickly that the only certain way to succeed in this country was as a thief. The wealthy Americans of everyone’s dreams hadn’t worked their way to the top, hadn’t gone from rags to riches through hard work and good morals, as they would have everyone believe. The wealthiest had either gotten lucky-like Marcus Raine-or gone crooked, stolen and cheated and killed to earn their riches. They were pirates. This didn’t make him angry. It made him hungry. It made him creative.

Ivan, unlike Marcus, had had no interest in getting an education and a job, had already aligned himself with an unsavory element. Almost as soon as they arrived, Ivan connected with two brothers who ran with the Albanian mob. Their crimes were petty-ATM heists, transporting Albanian girls who thought they were going to be models and wound up addicted to meth, wrapping their lithe bodies around poles in filthy strip bars. But Ivan was making more money-much more-even though he had a limited intelligence, wasn’t much more than a child in some ways. Ivan was always the one who treated at clubs and dinners out.

On the long ride home to Brooklyn, he’d thought about why he’d come to this country, what he’d hoped to accomplish here. He didn’t want to be a paycheck player, someone who lived by another man’s rules. He hadn’t imagined himself a slave to a company, asking permission to take time off for sickness, his only free hours squeezed in between grueling work days and the two weeks a year he was allotted for holiday. Suddenly, it seemed to him that Ivan, whom he’d always regarded as slow and essentially lazy, had been right all along.

When he got back to their apartment, Ivan was lying on the couch surrounded by a field of fast-food wrappers. He’d unapologetically unbuttoned his pants to allow his belly to expand and was staring blankly at the television set. Ivan breathed heavily, evenly, like someone sleeping though he was obviously awake. He lifted a hand in greeting.

“Ivan,” he said, closing the door loudly behind him and placing his laptop bag on the floor near his brother’s feet. The place was a hovel-a couch they’d rescued from the curb, an old table with two plastic chairs, futons for beds. Sheets acted as curtains. The place hadn’t been cleaned since the last time he’d lost his patience with the filth, about a month earlier. But he didn’t care about that at the moment. “I’ve been thinking.”

“What have you been thinking?” Ivan asked apathetically. The massive Sony television and surrounding equipment-a PlayStation, audio system and speakers, DVD player-filled the far wall. Ivan might not shower for days, but he took his audiovisual very seriously. Where all the equipment had come from a few weeks earlier, whether bought or stolen, he didn’t know and didn’t care to know.

He told his brother about Marcus Raine, about the ideas he’d had. Ivan had a good laugh. “All these years I’ve been saying that you work too hard for too little. What finally changes your mind? Just one pretty girl?”

He couldn’t say what had changed his mind. At the time, he thought it was Camilla, the force of his desire for her. But, no. It was as if he’d lost the will to keep swimming against the current of his life. He’d just stopped kicking, stopped stroking, and let the flow take him. Ivan had a good laugh, patted him on the back, and congratulated him on seeing things as they were. And then they got to work. It seemed like so long ago. It was. A lifetime. He was a different man with a different name then.

CAMILLA WAS BEAUTIFUL even in death. He stood over her still body and remembered how warm her skin had been, how wet she always was for him. He imagined that she’d sensed his evil and, instead of repelling her, it excited her. He’d been wrong about that, though. When she saw him, really understood what he was, she’d turned against him.

He crouched down and pushed back the collar of her white shirt and saw the lace of her bra over the swell of her perfect breast. French and Italian women were always lauded for their sensual beauty. But Czech women, with their fine, hard features and their slim, long bodies, went unmentioned. Maybe it was their apparent lack of warmth, the unyielding quality of their aura-like Prague itself. Compared to Prague, Paris paled. But Prague was a side trip, somewhere Americans might spend a few days on their European tour. No one dreamed of Prague the way they did Paris. Paris glittered and danced for her audience, had already lifted her skirts and offered her treasures to the world. Prague still stood in the wings, holding herself aloof, offering nothing but coy glimpses of her perfection.

“I should have killed you long ago,” he whispered.

Then the buzzer rang, the sound startling him so badly, he felt as if he’d been jolted by an electric shock. He froze in his crouch by the body, and felt every breath he took until the buzzer rang again. Then there was silence and he waited. He heard a few buzzers ringing in other apartments. Whoever was down there was hoping someone would just open the door, maybe expecting a delivery or a maid. And then he heard the sound of the door unlocking, opening quickly and then slamming, the sound carrying up the stairwell. And then it was quiet. It was quiet for so long, he started to relax.

When the knob started to turn, he remembered too late that he hadn’t locked it behind him.

As soon as I exited my sister’s apartment, I saw her. She sat in an unmarked Caprice across the street, trying to hide behind a newspaper. But I recognized Jesamyn Breslow by the blond crown of her head, saw a flash of her face as she flipped the page of the newspaper. That’s why it had been so easy for me to get away. They wanted me to, thinking I might lead them to my husband.

I wanted to walk over and pound on her window, rage at her for following me when they should be doing some police work of their own. Tell her that I didn’t know any more than they did and was following the pathetic leads they unwittingly gave me. But instead I headed to the N/R station on Prince Street. I heard the car door slam and knew she had gotten out and was following me on foot. I walked fast, eventually ducking into the station.