The meds I take don’t mix well with alcohol, which has never been much of an issue until tonight, when, after arriving at Penn Station two hours early for Harris Blanchard’s award ceremony, I stopped at a touristy Italian place, where an organist was playing a Doors medley at an ear-shattering volume.
My ex-husband, Matt, loved the Doors. I suppose he still does, but it feels weird to talk about him in the present tense, as we’ve barely spoken in three years. I’d gone into this place solely to get a bite to eat, but by the time the organist had screamed “Mr. Mojo Risin’” into the mic for the tenth or twelfth or maybe the hundred and fiftieth time, I’d downed three vodka rocks, and the cocoon had burst open. Emily was with me. I could smell that fruity bubble gum she used to love, her lily of the valley shampoo. I could hear her laughing along with the girls on the subway, and when I looked at the coat check girl at the Brayburn Club, I could see her face. Get out of here, I wanted to tell her. Get away from him. And then I decided to drink that glass of champagne. . . .
My whole body aches. My throat from screaming, or maybe it’s the man in the cheap suit who did it. The way he’d pinned my arms to my back and wrestled me to the floor, my cheek hot against the smooth wood planks, that smell of pine and old books and his sleazy, spicy cologne. It was an overreaction on his part. A show of force, his forearms pressed between my shoulder blades as though I had any chance of getting away, when he had a hundred pounds on me, easy. I knew it. You didn’t fit in at that place any more than I did. And the way you looked at me. That smile . . . If I’d been sober, if the room hadn’t been spinning and shimmering like something out of a bad dream, I’d have figured that douchebag for the rent-a-cop he was.
“Why would you go to the ceremony in the first place?” Reena says. “I don’t understand why you’d want to be anywhere near that guy.” Reena is one of my two arresting officers, and she is very kind. She knows who I am. She remembers my name from the news five years ago—one of the few people who still do. At the time, she’d been pregnant with her first child, a girl, which made her sympathize with me instead of the rich golden-haired boy with the angelic blue eyes and the premed major. I couldn’t imagine anything worse, she had told me in the squad car, than losing a daughter like that.
Reena and I are in the 13th Precinct house now. I’m being booked, but you wouldn’t know it from the way she talks to me, as though I’m an old friend who’s hit on hard times. When she asks me why I went to the ceremony, her partner, a stoic young man named Officer Ruiz, raises his eyebrows at her and clicks his tongue once, like a warning shot.
Reena says, “Don’t reply.” Both of them have the Miranda warning in mind, I know. But I don’t care.
“I wanted to see him. I wanted to see if he’s changed.”
Reena has large, dark, empathetic eyes, and like me she’s short, which allows her to gaze into my eyes directly.
I keep talking. “He’s taller now. Isn’t that interesting? Someone growing that much between the ages of seventeen and twenty-two? You know how tall Emily was when it happened? Four foot eleven. She was a late bloomer. I bet she’d be a lot taller than me now, if he’d given her the chance to grow up.”
Reena starts to say something, then stops.
“I know,” I say. “I know. Anything I say can and will. Go ahead. Hold it against me. I don’t give a crap.”
My head has cleared considerably. Enough to know that I’ve been charged with disturbing the peace, a violation, and drunk and disorderly conduct, a violation. When Reena initially told me this, I almost corrected her to add “violating an order of protection,” but stopped myself just in time. That order expired a year ago. Until tonight, I’ve done an excellent job of leaving the Blanchards alone.
Reena has removed something from my purse. She replaces it, quick and matter-of-fact, but I’m still able to get a glimpse. A fork from the Italian place. The memory comes to me in stabs, sharp and fleeting. Sliding it into my purse, my palms slippery on the handle. Kill him. Kill them all . . . I had thought it was a knife.