“Good morning,” he says. He’s wearing sweatpants, a T-shirt, and a broad grin. “I’m going to get a cup of coffee and join you, okay? Do you want a refill?”
Marco’s good spirits from last night have apparently carried over to morning. He seems so cheerful that I wonder if maybe he sold another piece last night, although I find that to be extremely unlikely.
“No, I’m good.”
He goes inside to the kitchen and returns a minute later, mug in hand.
“God, this coffee is good,” Marco says. “I had a little too much last night. I was out with Rafael in some dive bar on a Hundred and Seventh, and we ended up closing the place.”
“Rafael?”
“Yeah. One of the other two students. The one at Parsons. We started out with the chick from CUNY, but she bailed at midnight. Then Rafael and I got down to some serious drinking.”
“How’d the rest of the show go?”
“Fine. I didn’t sell anything else, but that one sale was more than the other students made. I don’t think anyone even gave their work a second thought. Rafael’s stuff is pretty—in that you could see it over a sofa in a McMansion kind of way—but there’s no power to it at all. And Mercedes—she’s the girl from CUNY—her stuff is so derivative she should be embarrassed.”
“Derivative” is the worst insult Marco can lodge at an artist. “Pretty” is a close second.
“I’m happy that you sold something and you had a nice time,” I say.
“Not just something. A ten-grand portrait of you. And I have a good feeling about that Matthew guy. Maybe he’ll become a real patron.”
I smile at Marco, but inwardly I’m rolling my eyes. This is exactly what I feared would result from Matthew’s purchase. Marco sees Matthew as the Medici to his Michelangelo.
I’m saved from having to hear more by my ringtone. I should let it go to voice mail, as I usually do when Jason calls and I’m with Marco, but I’m so desperate to stop Marco from talking about Matthew that I say, “It’s Tobias. I need to take it.”
Marco scowls. I wonder if that’s because he suspects that it’s not my director who’s calling, or he simply doesn’t want to be interrupted.
“Hi,” I say, just as I’m getting off the terrace.
“I need to see you,” Jason says. “Right now.”
“I’m sorry, I’m in the middle of something now.”
“Are you with him?”
Damn. He knows about Marco.
“Who?”
“I’m not doing this over the phone. And I’m not asking, Clare. You better come here right now, or my next call’s going to blow up your world.”
This doesn’t sound like Jason. Not the Jason I know, at least. Still, I’m in no position to call him on the threat in case he’s not bluffing.
“You win. Give me twenty minutes.”
“Not a minute more,” he replies. Then he hangs up.
DAY ONE
TUESDAY
Christopher Tyler
25.
In my wildest dreams, I never thought I’d be staring at the corpse of a woman I just fucked. But there you have it. A lifetime of being a nonmurderer, gone in a flash. Never to return.
I will say this in my own defense: there was no premeditation. It just happened. One thing led to another.
That’s where the choice point actually occurred. I could have called the police and turned myself in. Or I could have run. Or I could have begun the cover-up.
You know which one I chose by now.
Moralize all you want about how something like this could never happen to you, and if by some crazy confluence of events it did that you would do the right thing. That’s just talk. Hell, I might have said the same thing. But when you do something without thinking—no matter how horrible—you can’t really say that you could never do something like that, because, by definition, you didn’t intend to do it in the first place. And once it’s done, the calculus shifts dramatically. Nothing I did was going to bring Charlotte back. Which meant that the only question was the degree to which I should be punished for my momentary lapse. A little? Sure, that seems fair. But to have my life destroyed? No, that’s too great a punishment for any person to self-impose. I know society is all gung ho about justice, but I don’t think too many people in my position feel the same way.
I met Charlotte six months earlier. She was sitting in Starbucks having a fight with some black guy, who I assumed was her boyfriend. Women don’t fight in public with a man they’re not sleeping with. He stormed out of the place, leaving her in tears. I figured that made her easy pickings.
Up close, Charlotte was even more beautiful than from a distance. Although her eyes were tear-filled, they reminded me of a flickering flame—all blues and oranges—and her bee-stung lips were nothing short of perfection.
“It can’t be that bad,” was my opening line.
She rubbed her eyes with the tips of her fingers. “What?”
“I’m sorry for intruding. I’ve got a bit of a white-knight thing. And you’re nothing if not a damsel in distress, milady.”
She smiled at me and then wiped her eyes again. “I’m so embarrassed,” she said.
“Don’t be. I’ve been married for six years, which means that I’ve had more than my fair share of Starbucks fights, believe me. My name is Christopher Tyler.”
I made the call on the fly that I’d improve my odds if I told her I was married. People in relationships like that because they think it means you have something to lose as well. It seemed to work, because I got another smile.
“Nice to meet you, Christopher Tyler.” The repetition of my name was another good sign. She didn’t want to forget it. “I’m Charlotte. Charlotte Broden.”
“Nice to meet you too, Charlotte. Can I get you another coffee, or was your fight the kind that requires alcohol?”
I knew this was a ballsy play, but it’s my experience that you need to move fast in these situations or else the woman starts to think twice about where it’s heading.
“I could go for a drink,” she said.
There was a very nice hotel bar just around the corner. I’m partial to hotel bars, even though they charge at least a 30 percent premium, because they’re almost never crowded. I’m more than willing to pay eighteen bucks for a drink if I can carry on a conversation without either of us needing to shout to be heard.
She ordered a gin and tonic without specifying the brand, which I liked. I said, “Make it two,” to start laying the groundwork that we had much in common.
Our banter was easy. We flirted a bit about how I was too old for her, and I complained about my imaginary wife to keep up with her bad-mouthing of her boyfriend. When she asked what I did for a living, I told her the truth—that I’m an investment banker—because women, no matter how independent, don’t mind hearing that I’ve got money. She said she was studying to be a writer.
“I didn’t know people study to be writers,” I said. “I thought they, you know, just wrote.”
“You can learn to do anything better. All it takes is someone sharing their expertise and lots of practice.”