The Lost Night (Page 24)

Damien lifted his pointer finger. “Pedophilic slumlord? I know the type.”

“Exactly. Apparently he died in a fire the winter before last.”

“Whoa. Like, arson?” Tessa asked.

“Unclear.”

Damien leaned forward. “Maybe he killed Edie and then God struck him down for it! That would explain everything.”

Tessa played along. “You’re right! Case closed. Let’s go celebrate.”

We raised our water glasses, and Damien downed his rosé.

“Oh, I almost forgot, I have something for you,” Damien said to Tessa. He rushed off to the foyer and I fought down a flicker of hurt, that Damien was already done with this topic. A moment later, he returned with a little bag from the neighborhood’s most bourgeois baby shop.

Tessa reached inside and pulled out a gray onesie with the words FUCKING ADORABLE splashed across the front.

“I love it!” She rose to kiss his cheek. “Although I’m not sure how Will is gonna feel about our kid having fucking on his or her chest.”

“Well, the store also had adorable pink and blue things, but until you do a highly Instagrammed gender reveal, I—”

“Sex!” I corrected.

Damien turned to me. “What?”

“It’s a biological sex reveal—we won’t know the gender until they’re old enough to have a gender identity.”

He lifted his palms. “Linds, you can’t be yelling ‘Sex!’ while I’m speaking and expect me to keep my train of thought. On that note, I gotta go—I have a date tonight. Lindsay, keep us posted on the murderous hottie, ’kay?”

He and Will left at the same time, an odd couple with Will’s skinny legs popping out of his gym shorts and Damien’s muscled body encased in well-tailored resort wear. Tessa set her feet on the coffee table and leaned back.

“You doing okay, Linds?”

“I don’t know. I think so. I just…that video. Christ. I’d give anything to just go back in time and be a fly on the wall, see what happened next. Fuck, I’d give anything to make the camera keep recording. Literally.”

“We’ll figure it out. It’ll be okay.”

I nodded. “I hate that she was cheating on Alex,” I blurted out.

Tessa raised her eyebrows, waiting.

“I mean, I guess it makes me mad. That she was doing that. And then I’m mad at myself for judging her because, c’mon, she’s dead.” Something that’s always bothered me about cheating: It seems so greedy. I would gladly take just one partner. You need two?

Tessa nodded. “I mean, cheating sucks, but it happens. Either way, you’re not wrong for feeling your feelings.”

“Have you ever been cheated on?” I asked.

She kind of laugh-sighed. “Okay, I’m going to tell you something,” she said. “Years ago, I became totally convinced that Will was cheating on me. We had kind of a rough first year of being married, and then he was traveling all the time for work and coming home late, and I just thought, ‘Dammit, I’m one of those women. I’m the idiot wife.’ ”

I could barely hide my shock. Sweet, boring, definitely-not-as-hot-as-her Will? “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t tell anyone.”

“So what’d you do?”

“Oh god, this is embarrassing. I installed a keystroke logger on his computer.”

“A what?”

“A keystroke logger. You can get it at, like, Office Depot. It records everything someone types so you can see it remotely.”

I frowned. “Why not just hack into his computer? Or, like, look at it when he wasn’t around?”

She shook her head. “You can clear your search history. You can delete emails and texts. This shows you everything they’ve ever typed.” She bowed her head. “I can’t even look at you. I know, it’s so bad.”

“No, I get it. You just wanted to know. So what’d you find?”

“That he’d been seeing a therapist. Because he loved me and was afraid he was gonna fuck things up. I felt like such a crazy person.”

“Oh my god. Well, I’m relieved about that ending. And you’re not a crazy person. Love makes people crazy.”

“Fear makes people crazy,” she added, or maybe countered.

I nodded slowly, unsure of what else to say. I’d always thought their relationship was close to perfect, the Platonic ideal. Knowing about this rocky patch, even all those years ago, made me feel sad for Tessa, but also…what was that soft fizz? Relief?

“Sorry, I’m not helping,” she burst in. “I’m just saying shit. But listen, it’s gonna be okay.”

I thought for a moment. “Can you do me a favor and look into the landlord for me?” I asked. “Anthony Stiles. I did a cursory search and found the fire, but maybe—”

“I’m on it.” She nodded emphatically, then finished a scribble in her notepad with a dramatic dot. Stiles, cross the t, dot the i. Stick a needle in my eye.

“But, Tessa, I know you’ve got a lot going on with the baby and work and everything else. So please don’t feel like you need to—”

“You’d do the same for me,” she interrupted.

“Can I at least take you out to dinner this weekend to say thank you?” I pressed my palms together. “Or we can order in some Thai and watch movies that’ll make you really excited about motherhood. Like Rosemary’s Baby!”

She giggled. “I wish, but Will and I are going up to the house on Friday. The city smells are getting to me.”

“Rain check, then,” I told her, careful not to let my face fall. The house in Saugerties. Coincidentally, they’d closed on it the same weekend when, a few years back, a pipe had burst under my kitchen sink. For weeks, I had to sleep in hotels as contractors ripped at the cabinets and floor. Tessa had called to check in from their new pinewood cabin, and the heavy envy I’d felt had been almost too much to bear: Here I was stuck with no partner, no dream job, and no apartment, and Tessa was rounding the bases with home number two. I’d cried often that month, ugly sobs that took me by surprise as I blow-dried my hair or got ready for bed.

* * *

In the morning, I rode the subway clutching a greasy pole and thinking about Alex. A suspect so obvious, it was laughable: the cuckolded ex-boyfriend, spurned and right there that evening. I was standing in the break room, making a cup of coffee, when a circuit connected—a cuckolded ex-boyfriend, recently spurned: We had another one of those in the cast. Why didn’t anyone suspect him?

I’d found Greg’s architecture firm back when I’d first broke into my old email—no contact info, just a physical location and a generic [email protected] email address. The address was in DUMBO, a cobblestoned neighborhood in Brooklyn, just one subway stop from my office. I blocked out a fake lunch on my work calendar. Greg, I’m coming for you.

At noon, I emerged at High Street and wandered the wrong way for a while, confused by the area’s angled streets and sudden dead ends from the two bridges plunked there. Eventually I found Greg’s building, a block-long behemoth with bookstores on both ends. No doorman, so I rode the elevator to the fourth floor. No receptionist there, either, so I wandered the hallways, watching the numbers until I came upon suite 418.

It was one of those open offices, sunlit and dissected by four absurdly long tables, hip men clacking away at computers along them. Many were standing and the rest were rolling around on Aeron chairs. Ringing the whole space were beds of snake plants and zanzibars, thick and green and leaning gently toward the windows.

“Can I help you?”

The only person free from the long tables was a tall guy at a standing desk near the door. I realized with a little jolt that he was almost intimidatingly hot: thick black hair, big brown eyes, a sharp suit in contrast to everyone else’s hoodies. I smiled and clacked over. “You look like you run the place.”

He grinned. “I’m just an assistant,” he said.

“So not yet. Got it.” I leaned on the desk. Thank god I’d thought to apply lipstick on the subway. “And yet you’re the only one with your own desk. Seems like there’s nowhere to go but down.”

He shrugged, looking pleased. “No one cares what I think about open offices. But yeah, I don’t mind being on my own over here.”

I giggled like he’d said something wickedly clever. “So I’m looking for someone I think works here,” I said. “Greg Bentley?”

“He does!” he said. “But he’s not in right now.”

I felt the same complicated release I get whenever someone doesn’t pick up the phone: relief and annoyance. “Oh, is he traveling?”

“He’s on paternity leave. Another…four or five weeks at least.”

“Well, that’s exciting! Boy or girl?”

“A boy.” Lucky kid. Life like a game set to one level easier.

“That’s great. Wow.”

“He’s picking up his messages once a week,” he said, doing something on his computer. “I can pass something along?”

“Oh, that’s okay.” There was a sudden joyous shout from a corner. I turned and saw that one of the frosted glass doors along the back wall was marked PLAY.