Love Is Red (20 page)

The hours are measured in bad cups of coffee drunk under the harsh, deadening lights specific to police stations, the patient way they take me through “did you?” and “did you know?” and “did you know where?” and “how?” and “when?” but there are so many things I don't know. Andrea was a very private person. We are great friends—we
were
great friends—but there were still many doors she didn't open. The smaller the space, the neater you have to be. That's the way you survive in the city. You keep some private rooms for yourself. But they're trying to do their best and I'm not officially being interrogated, I'm not a suspect even, though they—

They found her in the apartment. They found her in her bedroom. In our apartment. Andrea, dead in the apartment. Andrea tied and gagged and murdered on her bed while I—

I would have been home, home and showering and getting ready. The police don't say it, but I work it out. He was in the apartment. When Andrea came home to meet the window-guard guys—

I'll wait for them, you enjoy your gala, you deserve it.

—the Sickle Man was waiting for her in the apartment.

“Excuse me,” I say, “but where is . . . ?”

They point, I'm off and running, and in the small fluorescent acid-yellow bathroom I throw up and up and up. I can't stop shaking. He was in the apartment. He was in the apartment. I was getting ready, listening to the radio, while Andrea was dead. Andrea's dead and I'm alive. It's like a bad urban legend. While I'm fantasizing about my evening ahead, my roommate lies dead, tied up on her own bed, and I never suspect a thing.
Fuck.
It's a bad movie. It's bullshit. It's a joke. It can't be real. It can't be real. It is real.

Finally I emerge, shaken, gray.

More questions and more and
where will you be staying?
The officer wants to know.
Which friend will you call?
It's now 3:14 in the morning.

The pennies, I should have counted the pennies.

“With me,” says a man's familiar voice. “She'll be staying with me.”

It's David.

“How did you, when did you?”

“Hold on.” He turns to the officer. “You don't need to question her anymore tonight? No? Let me give you my information where you can reach me.”

They have mine already and will be in touch within twenty-four hours and then we're left and right down the hallways and out the door; it feels like an escape, but not for Andrea.

I can't, I can't deal, but I turn to David, who is supporting me, and is a miracle. “How?”

“I had a bad feeling about letting you go by yourself and then when you didn't text me . . . You looked so terrible, and anyway, I just thought I'd swing by and that's when I found out . . .” His voice trails away but the rest is clear.
When I found out that Andrea was dead.

I have no sense of time anymore. It seems to me that no sooner do we get into a cab than we get out because we're here.

David's place is cozy but still elegant. I knew it would be. His bookshelves are overflowing. There are nice touches: little throw rugs on the wooden floors, a black-and-white print of a Parisian café. There are lush plants that, astonishingly, seem to be green and thriving. I have but to look at a houseplant and it withers and dies.

His bedroom is massive. A king-sized bed in the corner, sheets a masculine metallic blue-gray. There's an antique-looking desk and chair in the corner, carved from a dark wood.

“It's Shaker,” he says when I ask. Anything to make small talk. “Okay, I'll take the couch,” he continues. He actually looks apologetic. “It was a two-bedroom but I made the extra room into kind of an office.” He is thorough. “Clean sheets on the bed.” A large T-shirt to sleep in, boxers, an extra toothbrush.

My teeth are chattering, but I'm not cold.

“You're in shock. We'll fix that in a minute.”

He makes me some tea with honey and lemon and a massive shot of whiskey. We don't talk. I'm grateful. Next to my bed he
has placed a glass of water and two white pills. “Take them if necessary.”

“Thank you.”

“Need anything else? I'll be in the other room.” As if I am a child who is scared of the dark.

I'm not scared.

I'm fucking terrified.

“David?” He waits in the doorway. I look at him. It was David who ID'd her body. I couldn't do it. I thought I would be able to but I wasn't. Now he stands in the doorway and I try to form the words I need to tell him. “Thank you for this, for this and for everything.”

“Don't you dare thank me,” he says. He is serious for once. It's strange. “If you need anything, just call. I'm a light sleeper.” He leaves the door open, letting in a wedge of hall light. Again I'm grateful, but this time I don't thank him. I wait in the dark till I hear him go to bed.

I lie in the darkness, staring up at the ceiling, the one beam of light stretched across the bed. My thoughts move in barbed-wire circles, and each point is pain.

He was in the apartment.

They found Andrea tied up and gagged in her own bed.

This time he made a call.

He called the police.

A call from our apartment.

Lucas is safe with friends.

We've tried to reach her family.

Andrea's answer to any awkward questions was always tight, bright, hard: “It's just us.” Never failed to shut people up.

My friends had thought I was crazy: “Why would you willingly live with a kid who's not your own?” “What are you going
to do about guys?” “How will you bring them home?” “How will you drink?” “Why would you do
that
?” “What were you thinking? It's going to ruin your life!”

But moving in with Andrea and Lucas didn't ruin my life. Having a kid around made me grow up. I couldn't have wild parties till three a.m. or smoke massive amounts of pot, but then again I never had wild parties till three a.m. and pot just made me hungry and exhausted.

I'd liked Andrea almost immediately. She was smart, tough, and funny. She didn't mince words and you knew where you stood with her. She paid our rent on time, was neat but not obsessively so, and respected my boundaries. But the real truth was that I had fallen in love with Lucas. The moment he looked at me with his large soulful eyes and said, “Yes, I can has a cookie,” I was a goner.

He isn't obnoxious or whiny. He doesn't run around the house screaming or crying or throwing temper tantrums. He is a shy, sweet kid. His favorite thing was, still is, to draw—give him some paper and crayons and he will be happy for hours. Andrea is a good mom; she makes it look easy and I know it isn't.

Andrea
, I think now as I lie in a strange bed, and my mind is flooded.

“Hey, mister,” she would say to Lucas, “come over here and pick this up!” Andrea the straight shooter, telling it like it was, but not meanly, never mean. Andrea, who worked hard, Andrea with her back straight and determined. Andrea, who wasn't going to give up. I remember a Sunday night soon after I moved in. I had been watching TV and feeling increasingly melancholy. Andrea had put Lucas to bed and had come through, ostensibly tidying up, but eventually she drifted to the couch and then sat down. Some incredibly bad romantic comedy was playing and I
began misting up when the “I loved you the whole time, only I never realized it until you were gone” speech began. I glanced over to make sure Andrea hadn't seen me, and there she was, tears streaming down her cheeks. We both became hysterical and threw cushions at each other, laughing and weeping, and laughing again. Then Andrea had gotten us some ice cream and we had talked until one a.m.

The memory is bright and warm and it had held us together, that and so many other memories, the conversations over glasses of wine and cups of coffee and mugs of tea and bowls of almonds and during picnics and while walking, and most of all it's Lucas I now think of. Lucas's face when he looked up at Andrea, his squealing laughter when she tickled him, his shy delight when she praised his drawings. Lucas, Andrea's heart of hearts. Lucas, who is somewhere in the city now without her, without his fierce loving mother who fought all fires, her strength and her pride lying somewhere in the morgue.

I reach over and take the two white pills, and lie back. It doesn't matter. I won't be able to sleep. I will never sleep again. Here in the dark I'll admit it. I want Sael. I want his warm broad back, the length of him pressed against me. I want him holding me through this terrible night. He came to me when he had bad dreams. I sent him away. I told him we were over and I meant it.

Once again my mind goes back to Andrea. I lie in a strange bed in a strange apartment, waiting for the darkness to overcome me, waiting for the few hours when I will not have to think about Andrea . . .

I'm going up the stairs in my stepfather's house. There are gales of laughter coming from the living room. Now I have the smoked oysters on a plate—I got some at least. Cherry called me a little girl in front
of everyone. She's a bitch, and then Andrea comes toward me wearing a long black dress. She has curved cuts on her arms; there are four in the shape of leaves, with snowflakes in each center. She's wearing small smoky-blue glasses. I can't see her eyes, but she is smiling.

“Katherine,” she says. She speaks softly. I don't know why her teeth are stained red. I look at her red teeth. “Mr. Nakamaru wanted me to tell you three things. They are very important. The first is that . . .” But as she begins to tell me her voice dissolves into a hissing sound, like radio static.

“I can't hear you,” I try to tell Andrea. “I can't hear you. Tell me again.”

She opens her mouth but the static is louder this time and she's moving her lips but I can't hear any words, the static fills my head, white pain will break my eardrums, it's filling my head, Andrea's lips are moving and moving.

“I can't hear you!” I scream. “I can't hear you, I can't—”

“Katherine?” It's David; he's come through and now he turns on the bedside lamp.

I am freezing. I am covered in sweat.
Where am I?
I am in David's bed.
Why?
Because Andrea is dead. Andrea is dead.

“You were calling out,” he said.

I'm fine
, I try to answer, but all that comes out is a watery noise.

“Hey,” he says, “hey.” He sits down on the bed and he draws me in and against his shoulder and then finally, finally the hot stone in my chest liquefies and the tears come. I sob and sob and sob against his clean warm shirt and he holds me. He doesn't tell me it will be all right; he doesn't try to comfort me; he just holds me as I weep and weep and weep until my eyes are hot pinpricks, until I am a mess of weeping, an ugly mottled thing of grief. I don't want him to stop holding me. Let the world consist of this, please, his arms around me. I look up and he's looking down at
me and then, just for a moment in the silence, we both reach across the endless distance and I close my eyes, I feel the warmth of him, his breath and just for a moment his lips, and then he breathes my name. “Katherine.”

I can feel the wetness against his cheeks. I peer up at him through my swollen eyes. “You're crying too?”

“Yes,” he says. He doesn't make a joke or excuses.

“David?”

“Yes?”

“I slept with Sael.”

I have said it. This confession falls from me without effort or weight. My heart is gone; it has spilled out through all the crying. I want nothing in me now. I will not hold anything back or from him. Nothing matters and I want nothing. I am empty. There is nothing now.

I wait for the pressure of his arms to lessen, for him to leave me. Maybe I want his fury, his rage, to feel something other than this grief, this hatred of myself.

“I know.”

I turn to him, surprised despite everything. “You knew?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Well, I've known Sael for a long time now. I know what he's like, what his patterns are. I had hoped at one stage that it was over. You seemed more yourself, but then tonight, when I saw your face as you were looking at him, I knew.”

“Why didn't you say anything?”

He looks at me, half smiles, rueful. “Why didn't you?”

Apparently I am
not
yet empty, not yet poured out. More tears leak out of my eyes, my ever-weeping eyes.

“I'm sorry.” I mean it with every fiber of my being.

“I know. It's okay.” He does not rage or show disgust. He is very gentle with me and this makes it worse. There is no retribution. Only “It's okay.”

But it isn't okay. Nothing is okay. Nothing can ever be okay again. And he holds me. I cry; his arms are wet under my face. After an eternity I am all cried out. There are no tears left. I'm as flat as the sheet I lie on.

“David?”

“Yes?”

“Please.” It's all I say.

Please what?

Please don't hate me. Please forgive me. Please don't be angry. Please don't leave me tonight.
I want to say all those things but I only get to the “please.” I don't have any more words, just “please.”

He looks at me and very slowly he turns out the light.

And in the dark he's there. His arms are around me, and for a while I don't have to think about friends, about murder, about death or little boys who must live without their mothers; for just in this moment and place in the dark, for just a little while, I don't have to think about Andrea Bowers, the eleventh victim of the Sickle Man.