“Me, too,” Sam says. “As soon as I heard about it, I decided to come here and finally talk to her.”
Jeff tilts his head. With his shaggy hair and big, brown eyes he looks like a spaniel faced with a bone. Hungry and alert.
“So you knew Quinn was in New York?”
“Over the years, I kept tabs on both her and Lisa.”
“Interesting. For what reason?”
“Curiosity, I suppose. I liked knowing they were doing OK. Or at least thinking they were.”
Jeff nods, looks down at his plate, pushes the linguini from one side to the other with his fork. Eventually, he says, “Is this your first time in Manhattan?”
“No. I’ve been here a few times before.”
“When was your last visit?”
“Years ago,” Sam says. “When I was a kid.”
“So before all that stuff happened at that hotel?”
“Yeah.” Sam gazes at him from across the table, eyes narrowed, on the razor’s edge of a glare. “Before all that stuff.”
Jeff pretends not to notice the sarcastic edge placed on that last word. “So it’s been a while, I guess.”
“It has.”
“And Quincy’s well-being is the only reason you came here?”
I reach out to pat Jeff’s hand. A silent signal that he’s out of bounds, taking things too far. He does the same thing to me when we’re visiting my mother and I get too argumentative about her views on, oh, everything.
“What other reason could there be?” Sam says.
“I suppose there could be plenty,” Jeff replies, my hand still heavy over his. “Maybe you’re seeking some publicity in the wake of Lisa’s death. Maybe you need money.”
“That’s not why I’m here.”
“I hope so. I hope you only came here to check in on Quinn.”
“That was always Lisa’s wish,” Sam says. “To have the three of us meet, you know? And help each other.”
The mood has irrevocably shifted. Suspicion hovers over the table, humid and sour. Impulsively, I raise my glass. It’s almost empty again, a thin circle of red swirling around its bottom.
“I think we should make a toast,” I announce. “To Lisa. Although the three of us never got the chance to meet, I think she’s here in spirit. I also think she’d be pleased to see at least two of us together at last.
“To Lisa,” Sam says, playing along.
I slosh more wine into my glass. Then more into Sam’s, even though it’s still half-full. When our glasses clink over the table, it’s too hard, too loud, the crystal a hair’s breadth from cracking. A wave of pinot noir breaches the edge of my glass, splashing onto the salad and breadsticks below. The wine seeps into the bread, leaving behind splotches of red.
I let out a nervous giggle. Sam pops out one of her shotgun-blast laughs.
Jeff, not amused, gives me a look he sometimes whips out during awkward work functions. The Are-you-drunk? look. I’m not. Well, not yet. But I can see why he thinks I am.
“So what do you do for a living, Sam?” he asks.
She shrugs. “A little of this, a little of that.”
“I see,” Jeff says.
“I’m between jobs at the moment.”
“I see,” Jeff says again.
I take another sip of wine.
“And you’re a lawyer?” Coming from Sam, it sounds like an accusation.
“I am,” Jeff says. “A public defender.”
“Interesting. Bet all types of people come your way.”
“They certainly do.”
Sam leans back in her chair, one arm crossed over her stomach. The other grips her wine glass, holding it close to her lips. Smiling over the rim, she says, “And are all your clients criminals?”
Jeff mirrors Sam’s stance. Reclined in his chair, clenching his wine glass. I watch the two of them face off, the half-eaten meal heavy and unsettled in the pit of my stomach. It reminds me of my eating disorder days, when everything I ate created the irresistible urge to throw it all back up.
“My clients are innocent until proven guilty,” Jeff says.
“But most of them are, right? Proven guilty?”
“I suppose you could say that.”
“How does that make you feel? Knowing the guy sitting next to you in court in a borrowed suit did all those things he’s accused of?”
“Are you asking me if I feel guilty about it?”
“Do you?”
“No,” Jeff says. “I feel noble knowing that I’m one of the few people giving that guy in the borrowed suit the benefit of the doubt.”
“But what if he did something really bad?” Sam asks.
“How bad are we talking about?” Jeff says. “Murder?”
“Worse.”
I know where Sam’s going with this, and my stomach clenches even more. I put a hand over it, rubbing slightly.
“It doesn’t get much worse than murder,” Jeff says, also knowing what Sam’s up to and not caring. He’ll gladly follow her to the edge of an argument. I’ve seen it happen before.
“Have you represented a murderer?”
“I have,” Jeff says. “In fact, I’m doing so right now.”
“And do you like it?”
“It doesn’t matter if I like it. It needs to be done.”
“What if the guy killed several people?”
“He still needs defending,” Jeff says.
“What if it’s the guy who hurt me and killed all those people at The Nightlight Inn? Or the guy who did all that shit to Quincy and murdered her friends?” Sam’s anger is palpable now—a heat pulsing across the table. Her voice picks up speed, each subsequent word getting harder, rougher. “Knowing all of that, would you still happily sit next to that motherfucker and try to keep him out of jail?”
Jeff remains motionless, save for a slight working of his jaw. His eyes never leave Sam. He doesn’t even blink.
“It must be convenient,” he says. “To have something to blame for everything that went wrong in your life. To be able to come into a stranger’s apartment—my apartment—and tear him to pieces because of a horrible thing that happened—”
“Jeff.” My throat is parched, my voice soft and easy to ignore. “Stop.”
“—to you in the past. To blame him in some way for something he had nothing to do with. Quinn could do that. God knows, she has every right to. But she doesn’t. Because she’s managed to put it behind her. She’s strong like that. She’s not some—”
“Jeff, please.”
“—messed-up victim who skipped out on her family and friends instead of trying to move past something that happened more than a decade ago.”
“Enough!”
I leap from my seat, tipping my wine glass, its contents gushing over the table. I sop it up with my napkin. White fabric turning red.
“Jeff. Bedroom. Now.”
We stand by the closed door, facing each other, our bodies a study in contrasts. Jeff is calm and loose, arms at his sides. Mine are a straightjacket across my chest, which lifts and falls in exasperation.
“You didn’t need to be so harsh.”
“After what she said to me? I think I did, Quinn.”
“You have to admit, you kind of started it.”
“By being curious?”
“By being suspicious,” I say. “You were giving her the third degree out there. This isn’t court. She’s not one of your clients, Jeff.”
My voice is too loud, ringing off the walls. Jeff and I both look to the door, pausing to see if Sam heard us. I’m sure she did. Even if she has managed to miss my increasingly shrill tone, it’s obvious we’re again talking about her.
“I was asking her pretty rational questions,” Jeff says, lowering his voice to make up for my volume. “Don’t you think she’s being evasive?
“She doesn’t want to talk about this stuff. I can’t blame her.”
“That still gave her no right to talk to me like that. As if I’m the one who attacked her.”
“She’s sensitive.”
“Bullshit. She was egging me on.”
“She was defending herself,” I say. “She’s not an enemy, Jeff. She’s a friend. Or at least she can be.”
“Do you even want to be friends with her? Until yesterday, you seemed perfectly happy having nothing to do with this Final Girls stuff. So what’s changed?”
“Other than Lisa Milner’s suicide?”
A sigh from Jeff. “I understand how much it’s upset you. I know you’re sad and disappointed about what happened. But why this sudden interest in becoming friends with Sam? You don’t even know her, Quinn.”