A. Rich - The Hand That Feeds You

I called McKenzie instead. He answered his own phone — because I had called his cell phone. If I could trust my sense of him, he sounded happy to hear from me. But I could not trust my sense of him, so I trampled over it. In my preoccupation, I rushed into the business at hand. I told him I needed to check out something in the police report on Bennett’s death: “Don’t you have a copy of it?” I told him what I needed to verify.

He offered to stop by my apartment with the police report after work. I did a quick inventory of everything that needed cleaning, thought, the hell with it, and thanked him.

An hour later, I was pushing an old straw broom across the floors. I had never been able to figure out a Swiffer. I popped open a plastic container of premoistened, antibacterial cloths with bleach and went down on my knees to scrub the bathroom floor. I wished Steven had not replaced the door so quickly. But if McKenzie brought over a photo that showed no scratches on the inside of the door, I would let it go. Till then, I gave myself over to a Zen-like approach to cleaning. I slowed my movements, cleaned mindfully. You couldn’t help but be thorough in that state of mind. I should do this more often, I thought. Then, naw.

I had been listening to “You Go Down Smooth” by Lake Street Dive on earbuds, my iPhone safe in my pocket, when the music stopped and the ringtone sounded. The number had a Maine area code. Renee was furious. She told me she did not appreciate my giving her number to a crazy person, that she had been harassed by the woman, who accused her of lying about the death of her own son. Renee said that the woman claimed to be engaged to him. She didn’t need this, Renee assured me, and would I please respect her privacy from now on.

“I did not give that woman your number,” I said. “Renee, I’m so sorry.”

But the woman who spoke next was not Renee, but Vanessa, as angry as she’d been at the funeral. “This may be some big joke to you — all you gals claiming to be engaged to my dead brother — but we don’t think it’s funny, and you’re destroying my mother.”

“It’s not a joke. Nothing about it is funny.”

“Then tell this crackpot to leave my mother alone,” Vanessa demanded.

“I don’t have any say in this. She’s delusional.”

“You’re all delusional.” Vanessa hung up.

• • •

I needed to walk off the effects of the conversation, and the questions it raised, so I stuck a credit card in my coat pocket and headed for the expensive cheese shop. I’d need wine, too — or not. What do you serve someone who is coming over with police photos of your dismembered and mauled ex-lover? I chose pitted kalamata olives, the priciest cheese sticks on the planet, and several bottles of a local craft beer called Evil Twin.

I had just turned onto Grand Street when I saw McKenzie. He didn’t see me. He wasn’t on a bike this time. I hadn’t spied on him before. I had been at his side while walking, but from this distance I saw him objectively. He did spring forward on the balls of his feet; would-be jocks in high school walked like that, and I hadn’t liked it then either. He didn’t swagger, and he didn’t racewalk, as though his time were more valuable than someone else’s. He walked confidently, as though he walked to a tune in his head that I would have liked to hear, too.

Though I felt dishonest about it, I kept watching him without making my presence known. I followed him, keeping half a block away, until he reached my stoop. Then I ducked behind a parked FedEx truck to the count of ten, stepped back onto the sidewalk, and called out his name, rushing forward as though running late.

I noted that his smile belied the grim contents of his briefcase. Where we might have hugged if we were meeting in a bar, at my doorstep I had a bag in one hand, keys in the other, and stairs, lots of stairs, ahead of us. I hesitated in the entry, not wanting him to watch me walk up five flights, but realized he would insist I go first. It wasn’t as bad as the era of loft beds, when couples undressed before climbing the ladder, one person giving the other who followed an unfortunate view.

Steven was the only other person who had been inside my apartment since Bennett’s death. I suddenly wondered if McKenzie would be creeped out by being there. Too late now. Olive appeared and barked a warning before recognizing the man who had given her a provolone sandwich. She sat at his feet, wagging her tail like crazy. He crouched to greet her and she wiggled until she was a blur. “I can’t believe no one ever called to find you,” he said to Olive. I offered to hang up his coat. In taking it off, he had to put down his briefcase, now a loaded centerpiece on the table.

“I admire your courage in moving back here,” McKenzie said.

“If I didn’t, I’d keep moving and never stop.”

“Still, it’s brave.” He wasn’t going to let me deflect the compliment.

I saw how wrongheaded I had been to buy snacks — I wasn’t entertaining. I did offer him a beer.

When I returned to the living room, I saw that McKenzie had a manila folder on his lap. “It’s comfortable, isn’t it? Steven bought me this couch.” I wanted Steven in the room with us.

McKenzie knew I had looked at Susan Rorke’s crime-scene photos, but I did not protest when he offered to edit these photos of Bennett’s crime scene for me. He went through them himself. I watched him look at what I refused to see again. But I did see it again — in McKenzie’s expression. Finally, he held out one photo. The bloody prints on the tile floor of the bathroom were my footprints. I must have pulled down the shower curtain when I hid in the tub because it was balled on the floor. A bra was drying on a towel rack.

A band about eighteen inches high ran the width of the door; the gouges looked to be nearly a quarter of an inch deep, overlapping where the dogs had tried to claw their way through, and lighter than the surrounding wood because they had gotten beneath the stain.

I didn’t even have to point a finger at what I saw. McKenzie, I knew, was seeing the same thing.

“I think he wasn’t alone,” I said. “I think someone came over and the dogs were in the way. What I need to know is who let them out. Do you know someone I can hire to hack into an e-mail account?” And I told him my suspicions.

He wrote down an e-mail address, hackyou@gogo.jp.com, and slid it across the table. “I didn’t give this to you.”

“How much does he charge?”

“She. Less than three months of Internet.”

“That means everyone can afford to hack,” I said.

“Everyone does.”

Olive had settled on his lap. I remembered the cheese sticks and olives in the refrigerator. I asked if he had time for another beer. Without consulting his watch, he said that would be great.

I assembled a small plate of things from the cheese store and brought it out to the living room with another beer for him. I had a memory of having done exactly this with Bennett. It threw me so much that I did not get a second beer for myself.

McKenzie had moved from the couch to the bookcase. When he turned around, he was holding a piece of brain coral the size of a fist that I had found on a beach in St. Croix and used as a bookend.

“Have you ever been night diving?” he asked.

“The one time I went, the visibility was so poor, all I saw was my flashlight.”

“It’s spectacular. The hard corals bloom and the reef turns phosphorescent. A whole different set of fish come out, even more beautiful than the daytime crew. At night”—he held up the bleached coral—“this is the color of a sapphire.”

I couldn’t ask if he was planning to go diving with Billie anytime soon, so I said, “Are you planning to go diving anytime soon?” I hated how timid and suspicious I had become.