Things You Won't Say (23 page)

Christie had just tossed her head and laughed, as if her insides weren’t being pierced, while the others in the car went suddenly silent. Funny how certain memories could smack back into you as crisply and powerfully as if they were occurring all over again. She could still feel the warm sun on her face, and hear the echo of the song that had been playing—Bon Jovi’s “Always.” To this day, she reflexively reached to switch off the radio whenever she heard his voice.

She’d told herself she’d never be like her mother, but had Christie fared any better in relationships? A lot of men had whispered they’d loved her, but none had loved her well. None had ever cupped her face in his hands, or stared deeply into her eyes, the way men in romantic movies did. No one had ever moved past her in the kitchen, putting one hand on her hip to gently steer her aside, the movements so practiced they seemed flawlessly choreographed, the way she’d seen Mike do with Jamie. Mike had good hands; Christie would give him that. They were as strong and well shaped as the rest of him.

Christie turned off her car and headed into the hotel, bypassing the check-in desk since she already had the key to the room. She stepped into the elevator and hit the button for the seventh floor, then stared at the numbers lighting up atop the doors. When she reached her floor, she walked down the long corridor, fit her key into the slot, and stepped in.

She paced the room, feeling unsettled. Something was off, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. Maybe the bad energy from last night’s cheater still lingered here. She tried to open a window, but they were fastened shut, probably to prevent suicides, she thought. Finally she opened the minibar and took out a small bottle of gin and another of tonic and mixed herself a drink, taking a big swallow. She flopped back on the bed and picked up the remote control and began flicking through channels. Half an hour passed. Her glass was empty, so she got up to make another drink.

Finally, just as she was reduced to reading the card listing the hotel’s outrageously priced menu for M&M’s and Oreos, she heard a rap on the door.

She stood up, not bothering to put on her shoes, and went to look out the peephole. On the other side was a guy named Jim, whose face was already blending into those of the other losers she’d tricked. He was tall and thin, with graying hair and glasses and an overbite, and he probably didn’t deserve his wife.

Scumbag,
Christie thought as she pulled open the door.

“Hi there,” she said. For some reason she couldn’t summon her usual enthusiasm for her job. She tried to shake off her dark mood and smile seductively.

“Hey, baby,” Jim said. Did he even remember her fake name?

He walked into the hotel room like he’d paid for it—like he owned it—and when the door shut behind him, he engaged the flip lock that would prevent it from opening, even if someone had a key. “Don’t want a maid interrupting us,” he said as he leered at her.

Christie tried to smile back, but she knew it looked forced. What was wrong with her today? It seemed impossible that the gloss had worn off her new job so quickly.

Jim strode to the minibar, shedding his coat. “I see you got started without me,” he said back over his shoulder.

Something about this guy really chafed her. She rubbed her hands up and down her arms, feeling goose bumps, and not the good kind.

“I couldn’t wait,” she purred.

He poured vodka into the other cut-crystal glass and didn’t add a mixer. He took a healthy swig, sat down on the edge of the bed, and patted the spot next to him.

She walked over, feeling as if she were moving through mud. She had to get in the game. Elroy was watching and listening to everything, and she felt like she might still be on probation.

“So,” she said. “Tell me what you like.”

“I like you,” Jim said. “Come here.”

When she’d “bumped into” Jim at the coffee shop he frequented every morning before work, accidentally grabbing his red-eye latte instead of her own cappuccino, the word that came to mind was milquetoast. Why was this guy contemplating extramarital affairs rather than geeking out by playing video games? In high school, she wouldn’t have let him give her his lunch money.

Men had all the luck, she reflected. Just because this guy had a steady job and presumably wasn’t wearing fishnet stockings under his Dockers, women were probably lining up to sleep with him. It was D.C.’s fault. All the pencil-necked policy wonks had warped the expectations of single women in the city. Jim clearly thought he was George Clooney’s rival. Just look at him, patting the bed again, expecting her to heel like a dog.

She tried again. “Now that you have me here, whatever will you do with me?”

Jim just smiled. How many teeth did he have crammed into that mouth, anyway? It looked like more than the usual number.

He set down his drink on the nightstand, then stretched out a hand toward her. She danced backward. “Tell me,” she said. She needed to get him to say it before he got too close.

But suddenly he stood up, reached for her, and crushed her against him. His hands were everywhere, fingers scrabbling up her skirt like roaches.

“Wait!” she yelled. She tried to pull away, but he was surprisingly strong for such a thin guy. His arms gripped her like a vise and he seemed to have sprouted four hands. They poked between her thighs, pulling at her thong and making the elastic cut into her legs. His tongue was wet and thick, jamming its way between her lips when she opened her mouth to yell, as effective as a gag.

He pushed her back onto the bed, her knees buckling as
they crashed into the edge of the mattress, and then he was on top of her, reaching for his belt buckle. She couldn’t breathe. He was pushing into her lungs and pinning her with his body. Where was Elroy?

The extra lock. He couldn’t get in. She was vaguely aware of someone pounding on the door.

She tensed her neck muscles and jammed her head forward, banging Jim’s forehead with her own. He cried out and lifted a hand to his forehead, and she wiggled out from beneath him. Her blouse was torn, and she clutched it, trying to cover herself.

“What the fuck are you doing?” she yelled.

“Jesus, I think you gave me a concussion!” he said.

“You had no right,” she said. She was shuddering uncontrollably. “No right!”

“Oh, come on.” His glasses were askew and there was an ugly red mark forming on his forehead. “You wanted this, you cocktease. You were practically begging for it in the coffee shop.”

Christie was struggling to put on her shoes, her own head beginning to throb. She could still feel his insistent fingers running up her thighs and into her panties, taste his stale breath in her mouth.

“You loser,” she spat out. She felt tears form in her eyes.

“Oh, I’m the loser,” he said. He wasn’t coming after her anymore, but his attack wasn’t over. He’d just changed his weapons to words. “Listen, you fat bitch, keep loading on the makeup and dyeing your hair because you’re probably a dog underneath it all. What’s the problem, you want money or something? I’ll pay you twenty bucks. That’s what you’re worth.”

“Shut up,” Christie said. “Just shut up!” Why wasn’t her shoe going on? She twisted her ankle and jammed it on. She ran for the door and flipped the lock, and there was Elroy, his phone raised to his ear.

“Never mind, cancel security,” he was saying as she fled down the hallway. He ran after her, calling for her to wait, but she just sprinted faster. She burst out the exit door and tore down seven flights of stairs, her vision blurring.

“Christie!” she could hear him yelling.

“Get away from me!” she yelled back as she ran through the lobby. People were turning to stare at her, well-dressed businessmen and women in nice suits. Respectable people, their mouths forming circles of surprise as they watched the spectacle that was Christie, with her smeared makeup and torn blouse. No one bothered to try to help her, to ask if she was okay. Fuck you, she thought. If she’d had enough breath she would’ve shouted it.
Fuck you all!

She found her way to her car and took off instantly, blaring her horn at someone who was trying to reverse out of a parking spot. She ignored the attendant who was waiting for her ticket in his little booth, and since there wasn’t a physical barrier, she sped out of the lot. Let the cops send her a ticket.

She wove through the streets until she pulled up in front of her apartment building. She parked haphazardly and ran inside, shedding her clothes the minute she hit the bathroom. She blasted the hot water and stood under it, shivering, scrubbing at her body with handfuls of body wash. She stayed until the water turned icy, but she couldn’t erase the marks the creep had left on her body. They were like tattoos, imprinting her shame and rage, forever staining her.

Christie wrapped herself in a fluffy robe and turbaned her hair into a towel, wincing as it rubbed against the tender spot on her forehead. The woman who looked back at her in the mirror had red-rimmed eyes with fine lines cobwebbing them. All her years of sunbathing, of taking her youth for granted and coating her body with baby oil and putting reflective tinfoil behind her head, were coming back to haunt her now. For the first time, she could see an unmistakable resemblance to her mother.

She turned away abruptly, went downstairs, opened the freezer, and took out a tub of Häagen-Dazs dulce de leche. She let a spoonful dissolve on her tongue, then she ate another, faster this time. She crammed more into her mouth, barely noticing when some dribbled down the front of her robe.

She heard a knock and froze with another spoonful halfway to her mouth. Her first thought was that the creep from the hotel had followed her home and that someone had buzzed him into the apartment building. She looked around wildly, her gaze brushing the knives in the butcher block on the counter. She
wanted
it to be him. She wanted to slice into him, to see the pain on his face, to hear him beg.

But then she recognized Elroy’s voice calling her name. She stalked to the door and flung it open.

“Are you okay?” he said.

“I’m fine.” She spat out the words.

“Look, I’m really sorry that happened to you,” he said. “I’ve got it on video . . . if you want to go to the cops, I can show them.”

“And tell them what?” Christie demanded. “That I lured a guy to a hotel room with the promise of sex and he tried to take me up on it? My ex is a cop. Trust me, no one’s going to charge that asshole with anything.”

“Hey,” Elroy said. He moved closer and reached out. When she shrank back, he withdrew his hand. He stood there, blinking in the sunlight, in his white shirt that stretched over his belly and his ridiculous bolo tie.

“Just go, okay?” Christie said. “Leave me alone.”

Elroy looked at her for another few seconds, then nodded. “If that’s what you want. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Don’t bother,” Christie said, in a voice so low she wasn’t sure he’d heard.

She pulled her robe tighter around herself, feeling cold again.

Chapter Ten

JAMIE SAT BESIDE MIKE
in the second-floor walk-up office of attorney J. H. Brown, looking at surroundings that didn’t inspire confidence. The small space was heaped with cardboard boxes that Jamie imagined contained paperwork from other trials. There wasn’t a receptionist, and the nameplate on the door was one of those metal slide-in ones, which seemed to suggest J.H. could load his boxes into a truck and disappear tomorrow. The smell of Chinese food from the restaurant one floor below lingered in the air.

The lawyer himself was nondescript—average height and weight, brown hair, pale skin that looked as if it spent too much time under the fluorescent lights in his office. Jamie found herself studying her reaction to him, wondering how a jury might respond. Would his low voice inspire trust, or the opposite? The lawyer wasn’t making good eye contact; he kept fiddling with a pen. Jurors might not like that.

But it wasn’t as if they had a lot of choice in the matter. He’d called and offered to represent them for a reduced fee, no doubt because of the publicity involved in the case. Their other choice was the union-appointed attorney, the guy who looked barely older than Henry.

“What do you think?” Jamie had asked, covering the phone’s mouthpiece with her hand when J.H. called. “Should we meet with him?”

Mike had shrugged. “Dunno.”

As if she’d asked him to choose cereal or toast for breakfast. She’d wanted to slap his cheek and snap him out of the daze that seemed to be thickening around him. She needed her husband to be by her side, fighting along with her. Jamie had had a chilling thought: If a second-tier lawyer was offering to represent them for a reduced rate, what kinds of attorneys might be flocking to Jose’s mother?

After they were seated and had declined an offer of coffee—Jamie’s nerves were stretched far too tight for caffeine—J.H. pulled a fresh legal pad out of his top desk drawer and reached for a pen. He’d said this consultation would be free. Afterward, they’d need to choose which lawyer would represent them if the case went to trial. J.H. had also let them know that if Mike were indicted, he’d lose his paycheck, which meant he would be eligible to be represented by a public defender at no cost.

“But you need me,” J.H. had said, more cockily than Jamie thought was warranted.

The lawyer took them through a time line of what would happen. The Metropolitan Police Department’s FIT team had already completed their investigation and given their findings to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. That was standard procedure. The next move would be the pivotal one. The U.S. Attorney’s Office would review all the evidence, do some investigating of their own, and decide whether to present the case to a grand jury and ask for an indictment.

If that happened and Mike was charged, he’d be arraigned and probably released on his own recognizance, J.H. said, his voice as bland as if he were reading a grocery list.

Jamie forced herself to listen hard as J.H. talked about what would happen when Mike was arraigned. She flinched at the
word
when.
She wondered what the lawyer knew that they didn’t.