Lisa Unger: Die For You

No answer. No eye contact. I saw a sheen of perspiration on his brow. I let the silence hang between us, hoping he’d fill it, but he didn’t. Finally, I told him about the phone call, trying to keep my voice even, to keep the sound of it out of my head. Rick sank into the seat across from Marcus’s desk, rested his head in his hand while I spoke.

When he didn’t say anything, I said, “I’m calling the police again.” I reached to pick up the phone.

“Wait,” he said, looking up, startled. No, not startled, stricken. “Just wait a second.”

I let my hand rest on the receiver. “Rick, what is going on?”

Then there was thunder on the stairs outside the entrance to the office. The door exploded open and suddenly Ricky was up from his seat and I was up from mine, so quickly the chair on casters went careening, crashing against the wall behind me.

We were both frozen as a dozen people stormed through the door, weapons drawn, dressed in black from head to toe except for the white letters emblazed center mass: FBI.

Time seemed to slow and stretch. The men fanned out, moving behind desks and through the loft like rats in a maze. We were spotted by a tall, lanky woman with short-cropped blond hair as she headed in our direction; she started yelling at us. Her words were unintelligible to me; all I could see was the gun pointed in our direction. I watched Rick put his hands on top of his head, lower his chin to his chest, and close his eyes.

I thought, He’s been waiting for this, expecting this moment. What have they done? I stood stunned, mute, my fingers touching the edge of Marc’s desk, feeling like the bottom had dropped out of my life and I was free-falling through space.

WHEN I MET Marc, I had already resigned myself to the role of spinster aunt. And I was actually okay with that, maybe even relieved, after the parade of losers and weirdoes I’d had trekking through my life over the previous years. I had started to see myself as a dating oddball, as the kind of woman who couldn’t manage to fit herself into a relationship. For me, the problem wasn’t meeting men, a very common New York City complaint. I couldn’t swing a dead cat without meeting a man-in the grocery store, in bookstores and cafés, on a subway platform. The problem was that no matter how auspicious the start, things just never lasted, never bloomed into anything permanent. I’d start to get that cool, apathetic feeling, begin to dread phone calls or zone out during dates. And if that didn’t happen, he’d stop calling me, eventually disappear altogether. I rarely even got to the ugly breakup phase. Generally, there was just a slow fade to nothing.

“You know, Izzy” my sister, Linda (married, two gorgeous kids, outrageously successful photographer, older than me by five years, thank God , or I’d have to kill her), said one night over conciliatory Pinot Grigio, “have you considered that there’s just no give to you? That you’re looking for someone to fit into your life exactly the way it is now? You’re not willing to bend or shift anything”

I bristled at this statement, thought it was patently untrue. “When it’s right, I won’t have to,” I said defensively.

An ever-so-slight eye roll, a sip of wine.

“Right?”

She held my gaze for a moment, gave a quick shrug. “Well, in a sense. But more like when it’s right you don’t mind so much doing a little shifting and bending.”

“Fight the good fight, Iz,” called Erik, the perfect husband, from the kitchen. “Make them bend.”

“Shh,” said my sister as he walked into the room. “You’ll wake them up.” The kids: Emily and Trevor.

“Did you bend?” I asked Erik.

“Hell, yes , I bent. I’m still bending.” He flopped his lean form onto the low suede chaise across from us, inviting himself into the sister talk session. He rolled his head back for maximum drama.

“Oh, please.” My sister smiled at him, eyes glittering, reaching out with her bare foot to knock him on the knee. The way she looked at him embarrassed me sometimes-naked adoration. They adored each other. There was none of that insidious bickering or sarcasm, none of the whispered comments or veiled insults so common in my friends’ marriages. Not that they never fought. Oh, they fought. But it was always so aboveboard , so earnest, and over quickly. Healthy; they were very healthy. Sometimes it made me sick.

I remember thinking that night, I’ll never have this. It’s just not going to happen. With this thought, instead of despair, my system flooded with a strange relief. I’d given up at twenty-eight years old. It felt good, a justified surrender.

“What about Jack?” She’d asked the question and I had answered it so many times that I just got up to refill my glass without comment.

AND THEN THERE was Marcus.

His first words to me: “I’m a big fan.”

I smiled and thanked him for his kindness, took the book he held out to me. The first thing I noticed about him were his hands, how large and strong they were. I’d just finished a reading from my recent novel in a small bookstore to a small crowd who had, with the exception of this gentleman, all promptly left without buying a single copy. Outside, the wind pushed at the door, causing the little entry bell to jingle. Snow fell in fat, wet flakes that didn’t bother to stick to the ground and make themselves pretty. I signed his book with a black Sharpie, thinking about my pajamas and down comforter, Seinfeld reruns . Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the clerk at the counter issue a yawn. Other than the three of us, the store was empty; it was nearly nine o’clock.

I handed the book back to the stranger and then he just stood there for a moment, awkward. He was working up the nerve to say something. I expected him to start talking about the book he was writing, ask about getting an agent or publisher. But he didn’t.

“Thanks again,” I said. “I appreciate your coming out on such a terrible night.”

“I wouldn’t have missed it,” he said.

I stood up then and took my coat off the back of my chair, barely registering the tinkling of the bell over the door. By the time I turned around, he was gone. I was so tired that night, so wanting to go home that, other than his hands, I hadn’t really noticed much about him, wouldn’t have been able to pick him out of a lineup. This was unusual for me. I absorbed details, energies, like a sponge, couldn’t even stop it if I wanted to. The curse of the writer. But not that night. Fatigue, maybe, or just a single-minded focus on trying to get home? Or was it something about him, his energy, that allowed him to be overlooked, go unnoticed? Whatever the reason, I didn’t think about him again as I said my farewells to the clerk and headed out onto the street.

He was waiting for me outside the door under a large black umbrella. I felt a little jolt of fear.

“I’m not a stalker,” he said quickly, lifting a hand. He must have seen the alarm on my face, how I quickly turned back toward the shop door. He released an uncomfortable laugh, glanced up at the falling snow, maybe embarrassed that he’d frightened me.

“Is it crazy to ask you to have dinner with me?” he said after an uncomfortable beat.

“A little,” I said, appraising him, looking into his eyes, assessing his body language. He was tall, powerful looking. His shoulders square, hand tense, gripping his umbrella. He didn’t look like a nutcase, with his expensive leather laptop bag and good shoes. He wore a dark wool pea coat, with a gray cashmere scarf. His eyes were stunning in the lamplight, a wide, earnest light blue. An amused smile played at the corner of his mouth; his jaw looked as if it belonged on a mountain somewhere. I realized I was shivering, all exposed flesh starting to tingle.