A. Rich - The Hand That Feeds You

I pointed to Chester.

“And the other two are being held in East Harlem?”

“I’m not even allowed to touch them.”

“Steven told me the whole story.”

I began to cry. “Did he mention that I can’t afford a lawyer?”

McKenzie got up to get me a cup of water from the cooler. “I’m not in it for the money. I mean, look around.” He motioned to the animal photos on the wall. “Those clients didn’t pay and I got judgments in their favor.”

“What was the elephant accused of?”

“Jasmine attacked her circus trainer. I was able to prove that she was defending herself against the trainer’s use of electrical prods.”

“But she didn’t kill the trainer.”

“He was lucky.”

McKenzie told me what he would need first: Cloud’s veterinary records and an evaluation from the American Temperament Test Society.

I asked what the chances were of saving her, and he gave what I took to be a stock reply that deflected the question, but which would prove to be an understatement: “I’m good at my job.”

“Steven has a lot of admiration for you.” I found myself in tears again, for which I apologized.

Faye rose and came to console me.

He said to Faye, “Good girl,” and then to me, “She’s good at her job.”

• • •

Daylight had folded into gloom by the time I opened my new front door (the cops had broken down the old one). It was the first time I was going to spend the night.

The bathroom and the bedroom were the only rooms I hadn’t gone into when I was last there with Steven. He had had the bathroom door replaced — it would take me a while before I understood why. And who had hung the new shower curtain? — a hotel standard, white, ribbed cotton over a clear plastic sheet. The collection of sample-size shampoos from hotels had been removed — disposed of? The toilet paper was a brand I had not used before; the wrap covering the rolls featured a cartoon of a playful puppy. Though the cleanup crew had replaced what was visible, they had not removed the contents of the medicine cabinet. On Bennett’s shelves I found his razor in place. I lifted it using a length of the Cottonelle toilet paper and carried it to the kitchen, meaning to put it in a Ziploc bag for DNA. Then I realized how crazy that was: his body was in the morgue. I threw it away.

In my bedroom, almost all the furniture had been removed. Rugs, too. A new mattress was on a standard-issue, metal bed frame against the wrong wall. I always slept on the right side of the bed, and I never slept next to the wall. I had told Bennett about an episode of The Twilight Zone I had watched as an impressionable child, in which a little girl, asleep next to a wall, fell into the fourth dimension; the wall closed behind her. At first, Bennett found my habit charming, but the last time we’d met in Maine, he had said, “If you love me, you’ll sleep next to the wall.” I didn’t see how doing that would show him I loved him more than my telling him I did. I remember thinking that was a standard red flag for any number of controlling pathologies. I moved next to the wall, but I didn’t sleep. He made love to me the next morning with a ferocity that seduced me once again. He could always seduce me even though I knew that he prided himself on being able to do so no matter what he had done.

I found clean sheets and made the bed. I ordered Chinese food from the corner place and sat at my kitchen table sorting through junk mail and bills. Nothing that couldn’t wait.

I opened my laptop and watched CNN. I might have been the only thirty-year-old in Williamsburg watching news at that hour. I kept watching after the Chinese food came. Not until I finished did I notice I had not used any soy sauce. Normally I mixed it with hot mustard and drenched the food. No wonder I hadn’t tasted anything.

A quick survey of the cabinet I used for liquor showed that I had only a half bottle of tequila and some old rum. So much for the Scotch I thought I wanted.

The bedroom had no reading light. I guess the professionals couldn’t get the blood off the watered-silk lampshade I bought at the Meeker Avenue Flea Market. I lay down and closed my eyes. The mattress was firmer than my old one. The sheets had a higher thread count; Steven must have splurged. Yet no amount of physical comfort could go up against the images that owned that room. The memory of what I had seen conjured symptoms of shock and grief — I started shivering and crying. Why would I think I could enter the death room, much less sleep in it? Had I lived anywhere but New York, I would have had the choice to move, but in this rental market that was not an option. Still, I did not have to sleep in this room.

The kitchen was not safe either. I remembered the mornings that Bennett had scolded me for leaving the counters littered with crumbs when, the fact was, he had made himself something to eat during the night after taking Ambien and had not remembered the common side effect of sleep-eating. Sometimes he did not remember making love to me. Or so he said. At those times, he swore that the one thing he could never forget was how much he loved me. Even though it was corny, I allowed myself to be persuaded.

I carried a glass of rum into the living room. It would not be the first night I had slept on the couch. If I could sleep. And how could I? The TV was in the bedroom (wall-mounted), but I still needed company, which left books.

I wasn’t up for the Immortals, nor did I give a shit about the life of Winston Churchill. I was hardly going to reread Crime and Punishment. I didn’t want to reread anything. Scanning the shelves, I stopped at a title I didn’t recognize: Dangerous Liaisons. I’d seen the movie years before, but I didn’t remember buying the book. This paperback copy was well worn, with many pages dog-eared. I saw comments written in the margins, but couldn’t tell if they were Bennett’s. I realized I didn’t know his handwriting. His taste in books had not been parochial. He sometimes left behind novels I was happy to discover — Doris Lessing’s The Fifth Child , for example. It mattered to me that we liked the same books.

Here was something underlined: “They are imprudent creatures, for in their present lover they fail to perceive their future enemy.” I backed up and saw that this was a woman speaking about other women.

In the film of this novel about decadent French aristocrats in the 1700s, two former paramours entertain each other with stories of their sexual conquests. The Marquise and Valmont make an art of destroying those they have seduced, those who have come to love them. They care nothing for these discarded souls; for them it is all about the game and their ultimate allegiance to each other. But when this allegiance is compromised, when the Marquise accuses Valmont of falling in love with one of his objects of desire, the game turns deadly.

Had Bennett underlined it or had he bought the book used?

Also underlined: “A man enjoys the happiness he feels, and a woman the happiness she gives…. The pleasure of one is to satisfy his desires and that of the other above all to arouse them.”

I hoped that someone else had underlined this because it made me livid. It contradicted everything I felt about the way he had been with me.

I carried the book to the couch. Oh, the memory of the body!

But then I remembered other things. Bennett always showered immediately after we made love.

Bennett made me finish any dessert I ordered, until I stopped ordering dessert. Then he gave me an expensive leather skirt that was a size too small. A compliment or an admonishment?

These things did not happen at once. Plenty of time passed between these skewed acts to override my instincts and give him the benefit of the doubt, which is, after all, the godly thing, a virtue. This was the guy who would stop and turn me so that we could see ourselves reflected in a store window—“Look at them,” he would say. Pride, or arrogance?