Marisha Pessl - Night Film

Another minute and I was approaching the North Gatehouse. I shot past it, expecting to see her on the landing.

It was deserted. There was no sign of her anywhere.

Yet the longer I ran, the path unspooling like an underpass to some dark new dimension in front of me, the more I found the encounter unfinished, a song that had cut out on an expectant note, a film projector sputtering to a halt seconds before a pivotal chase scene, the screen going white. I couldn’t shake the powerful feeling that she was very much here, hiding somewhere, watching me.

I swore I caught a whiff of perfume embroidered into the damp smells of mud and rain. I squinted into the shadows along the hill, expecting, at any moment, the bright red cut of her coat. Maybe she’d be sitting on a bench or standing on the bridge. Had she come here to harm herself? What if she climbed up onto the railing, waiting, staring at me with a face drained of hope, before stepping off, falling to the road far below like a bag of stones?

Maybe I’d had a fifth scotch without realizing. Or this damned city had finally gotten to me. I took off down the steps, heading down East Drive and out onto Fifth Avenue, rounding the corner onto East Eighty-sixth Street, the rain turning into a downpour. I jogged three blocks, past the shuttered restaurants, bright lobbies with a couple of bored doormen staring out.

At the Lexington entrance to the subway, I heard the rumble of an approaching train. I sprinted down the next flight, swiping my MetroCard through the turnstiles. A few people were waiting on the platform — a couple of teenagers, an elderly woman with a Bloomingdale’s bag.

The train careened into the station, screeching to a halt, and I stepped into an empty car.

“This is a Brooklyn-bound four express train. The next stop is Fifty-ninth Street.”

Shaking off the rain, I stared out at the deserted benches, an ad for a sci-fi action movie covered in graffiti. Someone had blinded the sprinting man on the poster, scribbling out his eyes with black marker.

The doors pounded closed. With a moan of brakes, the train began to pull away.

And then, suddenly, I was aware, coming slowly down the steps in the far corner — shiny black boots and red, a red coat. I realized, as she stepped lower and lower, soaked black hair like ink seeping over her shoulders, that it was she, the girl from the Reservoir, the ghost— whatever the hell she was. But before I could comprehend this impossibility, before my mind could shout, She was coming for me, the train whipped into the tunnel, the windows went black, and I was left staring only at myself.

A large chandelier showered golden light on the crowd as I surveyed the party in the bronze mirror over the mantel. I was startled to spot someone I barely recognized: myself. Blue button-down, sports jacket, third or fourth drink — I was losing count — leaning against the wall like I was holding it up. I looked like I wasn’t at a cocktail party but an airport, waiting for my life to take off.

Infinitely delayed.

Every time I planted myself at these charity soirees, lost scenes from my married life, I wondered why I kept coming.

Maybe I liked facing a firing squad.

“Scott McGrath, great to see you!”

Wish I could say the same, I thought.

“Working on anything cool these days?”

My abs.

“Still teaching that journalism class at the New School?”

They suggested I take a sabbatical. In other words? Cutbacks.

“Didn’t know you were still in the city.”

I never knew what to say to that one. Did they think I’d been exiled to Saint Helena, like Napoleon after Waterloo?

I was at this party thanks to one of my ex-wife Cynthia’s friends, a woman named Birdie. I found it both amusing and flattering that, long after my wife had divorced me, swimming on to bluer seas, a dense school of her girlfriends swirled around me as if I were an interesting shipwreck, looking for a piece of rubble to salvage and take home. Birdie was blond, forties, and hadn’t left my side for the better part of two hours. Every now and then, her hand squeezed my arm — a signal that her husband, some hedge-fund guy ( hedge fungi ) was out of town and her three kids Guantánamoed with a nanny. Only a summons from the hostess to show Birdie her newly renovated kitchen had pried the woman from my side.

“Don’t go anywhere,” Birdie had said.

I’d done precisely that. This wreckage wanted to stay submerged.

I drained the rest of my scotch, was about to head back to the bar, when I felt my BlackBerry buzzing.

I slipped through the door behind me onto the second-floor landing. It was a text from my old attorney, Stu Laughton. I hadn’t heard from Stu in at least six months.