“There are girls like me who are younger.”
“That only makes this all the sadder. And at nineteen? You’re not that other woman. I mean, my wife would never view you as a romantic rival. But I was upstairs with you. I was undressed. We were undressed. That should never, ever have happened. And so my wife is—was—justifiably pissed off at me. To be honest with you, Alexandra, I’m not sure she would have helped you.”
“I know that expression, ‘other woman.’ I am mere courtesan. Plaything.”
He sighed. Courtesan and plaything were both euphemisms, though each word conjured for him a very different image. The first summoned Versailles. The second? A motorized toy car for a child. But he knew what she meant. He knew exactly what she meant.
“Where is she now?” asked Alexandra.
“She’s in the city with my daughter.”
Abruptly Cassandra appeared out of nowhere and leapt onto the kitchen table, nearing sliding into Alexandra’s cup and saucer. The cat looked at the girl and then at him. He lifted her into his lap, but she was more interested in sniffing the girl’s backpack and boots and jumped back onto the kitchen floor.
“So, if your wife comes home and finds me here?” she asked.
“I would wager, at least at first, that she would be a tad angry.”
“Then I should leave.” It was a statement, not a question.
“No. You can’t leave. Not after what I just saw. Where I just was.”
“You were at work? You get to dress like boys’ soccer coach at work?” She was smiling ever so slightly.
“No. I wasn’t at work. I wish I had been at work, but no such luck,” he said. He sipped his coffee and gathered himself. He had to tell her about her friend. She had to know. “I was just in Brooklyn,” he continued. “I was at King’s County Hospital. I was at the morgue. I was asked to identify a dead body.”
“Sonja,” she said, that smile instantly evaporating and her voice growing wistful and sad. She reached into her jacket pocket for a cigarette. He considered stopping her, but then didn’t. Let her smoke. If a cigarette was going to help her hear this, fine. He had no plan, he realized, no plan at all. He was fumbling in the dark, trying on the fly to figure out what the hell was the right thing to do.
“Yes. Sonja. I’m sorry. I’m very, very sorry. I guess you two were friends.” He watched her light the cigarette with a cheap Bic lighter, and he found himself focused on her fingers and the polish on her thumb. He stood up and found her an ashtray in a cabinet filled with place settings and serving dishes they never used.
“We were friends,” she said. “But I knew it. I knew she was killed.”
“How?”
The tip of her cigarette glowed like a planetarium constellation when she inhaled. “She didn’t call me when she was supposed to. Our signal.”
“Do you know who killed her?”
“I do. Guys who worked for dude named Yulian. Bunch of cue-ball-head babies.”
“How did they not kill you?”
“I wasn’t with her.” She took another long drag on the cigarette. “Maybe it’s good thing we didn’t find that number. I would have used it—gone to the Georgian—and maybe gotten myself killed like Sonja.”
A thought came to him and he sat up a little straighter. How in the name of God had he not realized this the moment he saw her on his front stoop? He recalled what the cop had said to him that morning in the morgue: Maybe if they thought you were a witness to something. But it’s not like you’re hiding one of their girls in your guest room. It’s not like one’s hanging around your sunroom.
“Yes. Obviously they’re after you now,” he said.
“Obviously.”
“Could they be on their way here? To my house?”
“I don’t think I was followed. Maybe they were following me in New York City. But I was at your front door a long time and no one killed me.”
“But they might look for you here.”
She shrugged. “I had to go somewhere.” Then she rose to her feet, saying, “I’ll go. I’m sorry.”