Jake & Mimi (26 page)

I pull my belt hard through its loops and walk quickly to the bed. I pull my shirt over my head and toss it to the floor,
kick off my shoes and step out of my corduroys. I take the scissors from the floor and I cut her panties away from her. I
turn off the remote, steady her with one hand, and ease the Contour out of her. “No,” she whispers, but she feels my bare
skin on her and knows what’s coming, and her head drops back to the covers in rapture, in sweet, exhausted anticipation. She
trusts me still, despite everything, and as I line her up, she braces one final time, to receive me. I grab the candle from
the nightstand and take a sliver of ice from my drink.

“Your dark prince,” I whisper, and I move the flame toward her thigh. Three inches away, two inches, and suddenly she feels
it, and now, at an inch away, she really feels it, and I move it still closer and in one motion lift the candle and press
the ice hard to her thigh, and she screams in imagined pain, convinced there is flame against her skin, and now as I surge
into her, she screams again, and again, and I’m four, five, six thrusts into her before she realizes that it was ice, that
she is free. I pound her, knowing that her screams found Mimi. In the hallway, maybe, her face in her hands, or at the front
door, reaching for the knob. They found her and pierced her and finished everything between us. So I pound Elise harder, groping
on the covers and finding the scissors and reaching behind me and cutting the tie to one ankle, and then the other. She can
kick and thrust and come at me now, and does she ever, fucking like the freed tigress she is, like no girl ever has, all fury
and desperate need. Quickly to the brink and then over it, spending herself against me once, twice, three times, and still
I pound her. Harder, ever harder, feeling her beneath me, hot, tight, feeling her but not seeing her, and barely hearing her
cries of “Jake” and “God” and “Yes,” even as I pound her harder, hooking her under one knee and pulling her up into me with
each thrust. Barely hearing her but hearing very clearly, from out in the hallway, the click of the front door, and then another
click as Mimi Lessing closes it behind her and walks crying down the long hallway of my childhood, down to the end and then
right, to the elevator, where she stands alone in the quiet hallway while I gather it all inside me, in my old room, set myself,
give Elise a second to say her prayers, and finish us both off.

I
t took me forty-eight years to find the first one.

I glimpsed her through the window of a Park Avenue florist late one spring afternoon. It was the simplest gesture that caught
my notice — the way she wiped her hands on her apron. I stepped into the crowded shop, breathing in the fragrance of fresh-cut
flowers. She was blond, petite, about twenty-two, and she worked behind the counter preparing the arrangements that an older
man, clearly the owner, would call out to her. I watched her as I waited in line, enamored by the grace and quiet concentration
with which she assembled each bouquet, gingerly selecting flowers from the refrigerated vases, trimming them, artfully mixing
in soft ferns and baby’s breath, then tearing a sheet of heavy plastic from the cutter and wrapping her creation with care.
Once finished, she would step shyly to the counter, her eyes rising to meet the customer’s as she held out the bouquet, then
lowering demurely once again.

I ordered a dozen red roses from the owner. He nodded to her, and as I paid him, I watched her open the glass door and choose
twelve of the finest from a vase inside. As she laid them on the arranging table, a quiet “oh!” escaped her. A thorn had cut
her palm. I saw two drops of blood fall onto the green stems. She put her palm to her mouth and glanced quickly at the owner,
whose back was to her, and then at me, smiling in a way that both asked my pardon and secured the secret between us. She pulled
a leaf from a vase of flowers and pressed it deftly to her palm, holding it there with her thumb as she completed the arrangement,
then glanced at the owner again as she stepped to the counter and extended to me the stunning bouquet. Her eyes, filled with
innocent thanks, rose to mine and held them, and then she looked down at the counter once more.

I had found her. The woman who would close the wound.

Within a month I had gained access to her apartment and prepared it. And within a week she had betrayed me.

“Her latest,” she called them.

I listened through my speakers as she spoke on the phone to a friend of “her latest.” She described their actions together,
sparing no detail. I turned off the stereo and stood for a few minutes in my quiet living room. I thought of everything I
had risked. When I turned on the stereo again, she was saying that she missed a man she had met a month ago. Missed what it
was that he could do to her.

“There’ll be others,” said her friend, and then they laughed. Schoolgirl laughs, grotesque.

Three nights later the young florist brought home a man she had met that evening at a rock music concert. That night he became
her “latest.”

Her last.

T
out est prêt.”

Madame Brodeur’s words, two hours ago. We met at La Boheme, the coffee shop around the corner, and over espressos she took
me line by line through ten single-spaced pages. A wedding and reception for 180 guests, and there isn’t a detail she hasn’t
attended to. The order of the receiving line, the length of the gift table, the tip envelopes for the Boathouse valets. Two
hundred other details, at least, and it wasn’t until she’d checked off the last one that we rose from the table.

“Tout est prêt, Mimi
,” she said. “Everything is set.” She smiled and took my hand in hers. “All you have to do is come.”

I lift my wineglass off the coffee table, lean back into the pillows of my couch, and take a long sip.

It is nine o’clock on Tuesday night, and I am alone in my apartment. Alone on April 16 — V-Day, as we call it at the office.
There’s still the corporate filing deadline a month from now, but the worst is over. I’ve survived another tax season.

I take a slow sip of chardonnay. It is wonderful, calming. Ferrari-Carano. I remember the sculpted roses that lined the walk
from the vineyards to the tasting room. And inside, on the wall, the place cards from White House dinners. Most of all, I
remember the gaps in the vintages. On harvest day the wine-maker tastes the grapes, and if he shakes his head, they don’t
make chardonnay at all that year. I told this to Mr. Stein when I brought him a bottle, and he said that’s why we don’t have
any wineries on our client list.

I pour a second glass, close my eyes, and listen to the music. Kreisler’s violin concertos, performed by the prodigy Joshua
Bell. It came in the mail one day last year, a giveaway from a classical music station. This song is my favorite. “Caprice
Viennois.” It makes me sad and happy at the same time, like the black-and-white photo of Kreisler himself on the CD liner
notes, standing on the deck of a boat in 1935, his hat raised toward the shore as he leaves for America.

Mark went home an hour ago. I won’t see him again until the rehearsal dinner at The Palm a week from Friday. There’s a tradition
in his family for the groom to spend the final ten days of bachelorhood apart from the woman he will marry. His father says
it goes back to the last century. I’m not sure I believe him, but both of Mark’s brothers did it, too. So an hour ago I kissed
him good-bye in the doorway. I’ll see him at The Palm, and then at the altar.

I walk with my glass to the stereo. I wait out the last peaceful notes of the song and turn it off, then stand for a moment
in the quiet apartment. I pick up a wedding invitation from the credenza. The card is thick and heavy, the color of cream.
I run my fingers over the raised black lettering.
Joe and Dorothy Lessing request your presence at Saint Mary’s Cathedral in New York City at six o’clock on the evening of
Saturday, April 27, for the union of their daughter, Mimi, with Mark Alan Guidry
. I lay the card back on the credenza.
The union
.

I walk into the bedroom and slide open the mirrored closet door. We made love this morning, Mark and I. He kept me with him
every second, his eyes open and on mine. “Forever,” he said at the end. I take a white Deer Bay sweater from the shelf and
put it on, the soft cotton luxurious against my arms. Beneath it I wear a lavender boat-neck top and matching capri pants.
I slip my bare feet into white mesh shoes. I walk back into the living room, look around at the still apartment, and turn
off the light. I step into the hallway and close the door behind me, then walk down the five flights of apartment stairs and
out the front door into the spring night.

The streets are crowded, alive. I step past a humming line of people outside of Tremblay’s, drinking wine on the sidewalk
as they wait for tables. I reach Second Avenue just as a young man is stepping out of a taxi on the corner. I wave to him,
and he holds the door for me. “Thank you,” I say, and slide inside. He closes the door for me.

“Sixty-fourth and First,” I tell the driver. I sit back, lulled by the motion, by the spring breeze through the window. A
recorded voice welcomes me to New York and tells me to buckle up for safety. “Right here is fine,” I say minutes later, and
the driver pulls to the corner. The voice reminds me not to forget anything. I pay the driver and step out into the night.
I walk one long block east, away from the lights, the noise, and then cross the street to the stairs of the skyway. I climb
them and stand at the top.

I can see the river now, fifty yards away. I can see half a mile up and down the walkway. I see runners with flashing night
patches, people walking their dogs, couples arm in arm. And I see Jake Teller alone at the railing, standing where we met
seven days ago, looking out at the black water.

I start toward him across the skyway.

In my bed as a girl, during storms, I would say the names of Connecticut towns. Through each terrifying burst of thunder,
I would recite them as fast as I could. Darien, Storrs, Old Saybrook, New Canaan. As long as I didn’t run out of towns, the
thunder couldn’t hurt me. I reach the curving ramp that leads down to the river walkway.

Last Friday in Elise’s apartment, I opened the front door and closed it again, so that Jake Teller would think I had walked
out. I closed it and sat on my knees in the foyer, whispering the names of Connecticut towns. I whispered them until the end,
until she was finally quiet. And then I let myself out.

I reach the river walkway. He is a good person, I know it. I can’t explain why, but I know it. He turns from the railing and
sees me. He wears slacks and a short-sleeve blue shirt. His eyes take me in, and then he looks away. I walk to the railing
and stand a few feet from him.

“Finish all your accounts?” he asks.

“Yes.”

It’s too hard to look at each other, so we look out at the water. To the south, just before the river curves from sight, I
can see the lights of a single boat moving toward us. At least a minute passes in silence.

“Your parents were killed when you were sixteen,” I say.

Jake looks at me, hard, then back out at the water.

“Who told you?”

“I read your file, at work.”

“My file,” he says quietly. “They don’t just leave those lying around.”

“Mr. Stein once told me where they keep them.”

“He trusted you.”

I watch the water.

“How did it happen?” I ask. “Your parents.”

He is quiet a long time.

“They went off a mountain road in the rain.”

“You weren’t in the car.”

“No.”

“How did you find out?”

Jake rubs the black railing. The boat grows bigger as it glides toward us up the river.

“Tell me something that isn’t in your file, Mimi.”

Even at night, outside, his blue eyes are charged, bottomless.

“Mark’s been the only one, ever,” I say. I grip the railing. The wind, stronger now, stirs the waves.