Anna Pitoniak - Necessary People

I was reading a novel from the free shelf at work—publishers sent everything to us, even though the only authors we ever had on Frontline were politicians hawking their campaign books—when my phone started to buzz. “Do you need to take that?” the pedicurist said, already rising from her stool.

This wasn’t one of those spas with hushed voices and silenced cellphones. They knew the reality of their clientele. How much work had been conducted from this very chair, by New Yorkers pretending to take vacation but really just relocating their career-focused selves a hundred miles east? Negotiations, conference calls, divorce settlements, you name it.

“It’s fine,” I said, gesturing at the frightened-looking woman to sit down. She probably had PTSD from previous clients. “Just a few e-mails. No problem.”

A tornado had ripped across Kansas the night before, and Rebecca was going to anchor from the scene for tonight’s broadcast. The rundown was being scrapped as a result, including a story I had worked on. It was one of those Community Cares segments, a feel-good story about a New Jersey mother with an autistic toddler who had formed a support group for other parents like her. She was genuinely lovely, and shy, and hadn’t wanted the publicity. I had to twist her arm to allow a camera crew into the support group. Now I’d have to call and tell her the segment had been bumped. And by bumped, I mean it would never air, but I wouldn’t say that.

“I have to make a quick call,” I said to the pedicurist. “But you can stay.”

She nodded, and continued applying polish to my toenails, wearing that expression that so many waiters and taxi drivers and housekeepers and executive assistants have managed to perfect—those whose job it is to pretend they have gone temporarily deaf.

After making the phone call and answering several e-mails, my mood improved. I didn’t feel like myself if I wasn’t working. I tried to explain this to Oliver at lunch—a luxurious lunch with wine and oysters, check and check—when he looked at me crossly for responding to e-mails between the appetizer and the entrée. He had taken the day off; why couldn’t I?

See, the things that Oliver liked about me now were the things that would eventually have to disappear, if we stayed together. That’s how it was done, in his world. He wanted to be the kind of man, he thought he was the kind of man, who was progressive and modern and supportive of his ambitious partner. But he also lived in a world of definite rules. After marriage, the women gave up their high-powered jobs. They hired caterers for the dinner parties they were expected to host. Society absorbed them. It was forgotten that they had ever lived anywhere that wasn’t New York. This weekend felt like an audition for that role. The woman painting my toenails had no idea that I’d grown up in the cruddiest town in Florida.

Oliver wanted to go for a drink before dinner, at a place in Sag Harbor that made the best martini on the East End. This wasn’t just his opinion; the New York Times had declared it so. He treated culture like big-game hunting, bagging specific items for his collection. But when we got there, the door was locked and there was a sign in the window: CLOSED FOR RENOVATIONS. REOPENING ON MEMORIAL DAY.

“Damn it,” Oliver said. “I wanted you to see this place.”

“Should we head straight to dinner?”

Oliver looked at his watch. “But our reservation isn’t until 7. This is so frustrating.” He frowned, and glanced down the street. Summer was several weeks away, and the town was quiet. He said, “There. I guess we can get a drink there instead.”

The bar was on the next block. It was shabby but comfortable, neon signs in the window and TVs behind the bar tuned to a basketball game. We took a table in the corner, the legs uneven and rickety, the surface sticky with spilled beer.

“Well.” Oliver looked annoyed. “Not exactly what I had in mind.”

“You know, it’s the weirdest thing,” I said. “This place feels familiar.”

Oliver arched an eyebrow. “Have you been here before?”

“No,” I said. “I’ve never even been to Sag Harbor.”

Our conversation was stilted and stiff, a hangover from our lunchtime bickering. We made our drinks last, the melted ice turning them watery, Oliver checking his watch every few minutes. Whenever the Knicks scored, and the men at the bar erupted in cheers, he startled.

Finally, it was time to leave. Oliver paid the bill and I lingered in the restroom, smoothing my hair and reapplying my lipstick. Dating Oliver initially felt like payback. Stella had taken over my turf—well, I could take over hers, too. And he reminded me of her in certain comforting ways. But sometimes I thought, what am I doing? Oliver thought he had finally found someone who preferred him to Stella. But that’s ultimately where the problem lay. Oliver wasn’t an adequate replacement for Stella; I’d never love him the way I loved her.

I left the restroom and saw Oliver outside, hands shoved in his pockets and jacket collar turned up against the springtime chill. At the door, I glanced back one more time. That’s when I spotted the man clearing the empty glasses from our table. Rolled-up sleeves, tattooed forearms, bar towel tucked in his back pocket.

He saw me at the same moment I saw him. Then, suddenly, I put it together.

“Stella?” he said, stepping closer. “It’s Stella, right?”

“I—uh, I’m not sure—”

“I remember you.” He smiled. “It was, what, three or four years ago? You came into the bar over in East Hampton.”

My mouth opened and closed without making a sound.

“Don’t you remember me? I’m Kyle. We, uh, you know.” He blushed. “I always wondered if I’d run into you again. And here you are. Stella. You don’t forget a name like that.”

“I think you have the wrong person,” I finally said. Outside, Oliver was glancing over his shoulder, looking impatient. “I’m sorry. I have to get going.”

“Wait!” he said. “You’re making me feel crazy. You really don’t remember?”

“I just—sorry. I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I could feel Kyle’s eyes following me as I walked away. I had to grip the doorknob hard to keep my hand from shaking.

The world is a place of brutal chaos, which is what makes it so easy for a crime to remain unsolved. If the criminal has done an adequate job of erasure, the world will supply infinite explanations to fill the vacuum. What happens to the missing woman? Maybe she has a psychotic break and slips away from her life in the middle of the night. Or she crosses the road at the wrong time and is hit by a car. Or a man kidnaps her and takes her prisoner.

This is why, from the very beginning, I knew my plan would work. Stella, who blazed through life with equal parts dazzle and risk, supplied enough material for dozens of theories. She was part of that sisterhood of glamorous women who met untimely ends, the Diana Spencers and Grace Kellys and Marilyn Monroes of the world. No one would say it out loud, because it reeked of victim-blaming, but I’m certain there were people who looked at Stella Bradley’s story and thought, that girl was always trouble. A sickening thought pattern, but for my plan to work, I had to take advantage of it.

Because when you have a woman like that at the center of the story—beautiful, wild, trouble—then who bothers to look very closely at the peripheries of her life? Suspicion sweeps through the darkness like a lighthouse, illuminating the ex-boyfriend or the town loner, but it doesn’t linger for long. Especially not on those who are quiet and ordinary, whose very faces indicate their forgettability. Who, as Thoreau would put it, will go to the grave with their song still in them.