Under My Skin. Lisa Unger

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СКАЧАТЬ with the Universe to just let me wake up. This had to be a nightmare. Grayson’s grim face, the gray walls, the flickering fluorescent lights, all the stuff of horror movies and crime shows. This wasn’t my life. It couldn’t be. Where was Jack? Why couldn’t he make it all go away?

      Finally, my mother showed up with our family attorney and they took me home. I remember stumbling into my apartment—our apartment, falling into the bed we shared. I could still smell him on the sheets. I remember wailing with grief, facedown in my mattress.

      Take this, honey. My mom forced me to sitting, handed me one of her Valium tablets and a glass of water. I didn’t even hesitate before drinking it down. After a while, the blissful black curtain of sleep fell.

      For a while, I know Detective Grayson suspected me. After all, I would inherit everything—the life insurance payout, the business, all our assets—when Jack died. But I think at some point he realized that for me it was all ash without my husband. Then he became my ally. If you remember anything, no matter how small, call me.

      The case, it bothered him. Always. Still. Stranger crime is an anomaly. A beating death of a jogger—it grabbed headlines. The city parks are Manhattan’s backyard; people wanted answers and so did he. Jack was a big, strong guy, fast and street-smart. He’d traveled the world as a photojournalist, dived the Great Barrier Reef to find great whites, trekked the Inca Trail, embedded with soldiers in Afghanistan, attempted to summit Everest. It never, ever felt right that he’d die, a random victim, during his morning run. He had a phone and five dollars on him. A year later, his case is still unsolved.

      “But maybe Dr. Nash is wrong?” suggests Layla. “Maybe it means something.”

      Now it’s my turn to go silent.

      “Let’s do it tonight,” Layla continues. “Work out, eat, talk it all through. In the meantime, call Dr. Nash and Detective Grayson.”

      Layla, queen of plans, of to-do lists, of “pro” and “con” columns, of ideas to turn wrong things right. She corrals chaos into order, and heaven help the person who tries to stop her.

      “Okay.” I release a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. “That’s a plan.”

      I flash on that moment at the bar, that man, again. Who was he? Someone real? Someone I know?

      “You’re okay, right?” asks Layla. “You’re like—solid?”

      “Yeah,” I lie (again). “I’m okay.”

      * * *

      Detective Grayson agrees to meet me in Washington Square Park for lunch. So around noon I head out. The coolish autumn morning has burned off into a balmy afternoon as I grab a cab to avoid even worrying about the hooded man.

      The normalcy of the morning—emails and the ringing phone, conversations about understandable things like contracts and wire transfers—has washed over the chaos of yesterday and last night, my dreams where they belong, the grainy, disjointed images faded into the forgotten fog of sleep. I don’t have the urge to look over my shoulder every moment as I make my way under the triumphal Washington Square Arch and into the park. My chest loosens and breath comes easier. Grief and trauma, I remind myself, are not linear experiences. There are good days and bad ones, hard dips into despair, moments of light and hope. My new mantra: I’m okay. I’m okay.

      Grayson sits on a shady bench near a hot dog vendor, by the old men playing chess. He already has a foot-long drowning in relish, onions, mustard, ketchup and who knows what else. It seems to defy gravity as he lifts it to his mouth. A can of Pepsi sits unapologetically beside him. No one else I know would even dream of drinking a soda, in public no less. It’s one of the things I like about him, his eating habits. It reminds me of Jack. Jack and I would be walking home from a client dinner that had consisted of tiny salads and ahi poke with some slim, fit photographer who turned in early so he could make a 6:00 a.m. yoga class, and Jack would make us stop at Two Guys Pizza, where he’d scarf down two slices.

      God, when did people stop eating? he’d complain.

      I grab a similarly gooey dog, and take my place beside Grayson. He grunts a greeting, his mouth full. He’s sporting his usual just-rolled-out-of-bed look, dark hair a mop, shadow of stubble. He’s wearing a suit but it needs a trip to the dry cleaners, his tie loose, a shirt that has seen better days. Still, there’s something virile about him, maybe it’s the shoulder holster visible when he raises his arm, the detective’s shield clipped to his belt.

      The leaves above us are bold in orange, red, gold, but they’ve started to fall, turn brown. I dread the approaching winter, the holidays where I imagine I’ll drift between Layla’s place and my mother’s, a ghost—people giving me tragic looks and whispering sympathetically behind my back.

      Jack and I used to have our whole ritual. We’d put the tree up by ourselves the weekend after Thanksgiving, have a big party for all our friends. On Christmas Eve, we’d go to my mother’s house, where she would show off whatever new man she was dating, drink too much, then try to pick a fight with me—honestly because I think it’s the only way she knows how to connect. We’d spend Christmas Day at our place with Jack’s mother, Sarah. We’d plan the meal for months, then hang around in our pajamas all day—cooking, watching movies, playing Scrabble. It was my favorite day of the year.

      Last year, just months after losing him, I couldn’t even get out of bed. The holidays passed in a grief-stricken blur with the phone ringing and ringing. Layla, Mac, my mother coming by to try to coax me out of bed.

      It was Mac who finally got me up, convinced me to come to join them for Christmas dinner. “We’re your family,” he said, pulling open the blinds. “You belong with us. I know it hurts but there’s no way out of this but through. Show the kids that you’re not going to let this crush you. Show them that they’re not going to lose you, too.”

      Guilt. It works every time. He offered his hand, which I took and let him pull me from bed and push me toward the bathroom. As I ran the shower, I heard him call Layla, his voice heavy with relief. “I got our girl. She’s coming.”

      It seems like yesterday and a hundred years ago.

      “Funny you called,” says Grayson now. He’s prone to manspreading so I leave a lot of space between us.

      “Oh?” I take a big messy bite of the hot dog, and try not to spill anything on my shirt. Yellow mustard and white silk are not friends. Actually, white silk is no one’s friend. Wearing it is like a dare to the universe: go ahead, bring it on—coffee, ketchup, ink—I can take you.

      “I’ve got something maybe.” He does this thing, a kind of bobblehead nod. “Maybe. Might be nothing.”

      There’s a file under his Pepsi can.

      “They brought some punk in this weekend for armed robbery,” he says when I stay silent. I wait while he devours that dog in three big bites. It’s impressive. He wipes his mouth with gusto, maybe building suspense.

      “Perp was caught in the act, more or less. A couple of uniforms brought him down as he exited the bodega in the East Village. I think he got like two hundred bucks if that. Anyway, he tells the arresting officers that he knows something about a murder in Riverside Park last year, so they call me in.”

      My whole body goes stiff; my appetite withers. Putting the hot dog in its paper tub beside me, I try not to think about that dark day, not СКАЧАТЬ