Richard I. Fischer, 42, of Takoma Park, MD, a failed artist whose small illustrations appeared from time to time in a magazine that no longer exists, died Sunday from injuries related to accidental strangulation. An autopsy confirmed that the deceased had ejaculated several times in recent days, while attending an annual conference here in the Outer Beaches area without his wife, Robin Lister, 38, also of Takoma Park. A part-time television executive generally considered to be thin, loyal, and attractive, Lister had been hoping since June to shoot or stab Fischer in the testicles or chop off his penis. His only book, a graphic novel entitled I Have Suffered Greatly, had been out of print for several years, although he’d hoped to revive his career by basing a new semiautobiographical comic upon his recent adulterous experiences. The deceased had been under considerable financial strain and heavy psychological stress and had been looking forward to his annual visit to the Outer Beaches, with its pleasing climate and abundant national seashore. In the evenings he’d enjoyed the sight of many small bonfires behind the motels on the bay, and in the mornings, during his walks among the dunes, along the maze of tall grasses where gay men often came to rendezvous, it had cheered him up to see used, brightly colored condoms, flung into tree branches, dangling in the scrub.
I felt a sharp pain and heard myself groan. I wasn’t dead, or even dying. I’d landed on my back on the kitchen table. Through a quick examination, I detected no serious injuries. Underneath my back, I found a broken pair of Amy’s eyeglasses.
What the hell. I couldn’t even manage to kill myself. The belt lay draped around my neck. The metal prong on the belt buckle had snapped off and was gone. Maybe I’d done it wrong.
Maybe I wasn’t supposed to die yet.
I had to stop this, whatever it was, this experiment—stop treating my life as fodder for a story, stop treating the story as a way to take revenge, as a secret code to friends and lovers, as a suicide note. I had to stop, but I couldn’t.
As a kid I’d climbed too high and fallen out of trees, experimented with the contents of friends’ parents’ gun cabinets, knocked out my front teeth on a dark, twisting road in the family Cherokee after figuring out, at fourteen, how to ease off the parking brake and roll down the driveway. Sexual high jinks, psilocybin, thrill seeking, abortions, back taxes, frivolously, flippantly impractical life goals. Marriage and kids had merely distracted me from the task, the need to hurl myself like a madman, to run the experiment until I’d torched the lab and had to sift through the debris for clues. There was shame from having tried, the tantalizing suspicion that I’d tripped on purpose, and the sickening relief at having failed again to die.
Standing, bending over unsteadily, I gathered things from the floor and put them back in her purse. I picked up her phone. It didn’t ask for a password. She had Sprint, which apparently worked better on this end of campus.
What could I possibly have been looking for? I knew everything from our ten thousand emails, and in these last two days I’d learned more. She’d shipped her seven-year-old to sleepaway camp against her better judgment, four months after brain surgery, still twenty pounds underweight. Her husband forced himself upon her as she lay there grossed out, wondering whose fault it was. She’d agreed to spend eternity buried next to that fascist.
I began scrolling through her latest messages: an overdue notice from the town library, Harry Potter, fifty cents; a note from a tour operator with an outline of the Rapazzo family’s fall cruise off the tip of South America, private transfers, five-star yacht, Magellanic penguins. Lou Ann Haney from her spin class wondered where she’d been all week. Her hair appointment with Gregory was confirmed. A museum board chairwoman apologized for some unintended slight at a social gathering. I saw only bare-bones communications between her and Mike: “home Friday,” “no, can’t, in mideast till 11th.” She hadn’t exaggerated; it was like Morse code. There were polite exchanges between his secretary and wife to arrange his tee times and doctor’s appointments. A letter from the chapter head of a Franciscan monastery in Boston thanked Amy for a generous contribution, a “considerable, sustaining gift.”
I found a spreadsheet from her assistant, Danielle, listing tax-deductible donations from the last two months: a Fukushima relief fund, a hospital in Macedonia, a project to help slow real estate development along sensitive wetlands areas. The donations added up to almost $11 million. It seemed that she couldn’t be bothered to uncap her pickle pen for less than seven figures. What about me? I could ask for a loan at least, a measly three thousand bucks.
I’d already googled her a thousand times, found rumors of political front groups that received Mike’s help, organizations that wanted to put Romney in the White House, to end all regulatory agencies, dark-money cash machines and fake grassroots charities with patriotic-sounding names. I’d tracked down, then wished I hadn’t, publicly disclosed campaign contributions of Michael V. and one Amy D. Rapazzo, backing gubernatorial, House, and Senate candidates, state reps, right-wing candidates from across the country.
One mystery leads to the next, exposes a deeper question, pushes it out into the open. Who was she? How did I end up here?