Missed Connection, page 23
She looks into my eyes. “Are we an us?”
“There’s no escaping this if there isn’t an us.”
She attempts a smile. “You’re the only good thing in my life right now.”
I nod. “And you make me happy too. Lola.”
My reveal interrupts her line of confession, but the window of opportunity inched open, so I decided to squeeze through. Her face blanches as if she just saw that proverbial ghost and when she moves to voice a reply her words get snagged in her throat. Outside, jarring sirens and swirling lights announce the charge of two police cruisers down 11th Avenue, and I use this small twist of fate to lighten the sudden discomfort between us. “Rumor has it they’re on their way to assist with a stabbing victim.”
Her face grows a smile as real as my pain, and I mirror it with one of my own. Despite our saga’s painful chapter, despite the loveless pasts bringing us here together, it’s a much needed (and openly embraced) lighter moment that once again demonstrates how much we belong together.
She asks, mostly to herself, “Why am I laughing? What’s wrong with me?” Tears paint her cheeks, damp strips of unfettered emotion.
With her hands still in mine, I explain to her that she’s laughing because of the change taking place inside her: this unstoppable transformation that will help preserve her life and keep her by my side as my partner in crime for years to come, despite our transgressions. I waste no time and implement the devil’s therapy; it had helped me to understand what was happening inside of me, and now will help her understand that laughing at her indulgences can help ease the pain. Twist them into something right. “With trauma comes change. It affects everyone differently. Normal people cower from it, crawl into protective holes and wish it all way…”
(…one one-hundred, two one-hundred, three one-hundred…)
“…but you and I? We’re not normal. We’ve experienced hardships sprouting from similarly dark sources…”
…lack of love, loss of love, pursuit of love…
“…and we’ve spent our entire lives responding to them in unique yet similar ways. We’ve been through more anguish than most, and not just for the past few days, but for many years. Like me, you’ve seen and experienced painful abuses that started when we you were a child. Right?”
She slowly nods.
“Do you see? I understand how you’re feeling. It’s like you’re changing into somebody else, right? Someone that’s not you. Lily, I’d like you to meet the now you. The tragedies you’ve encountered—that we’ve encountered—have forced you—us—to evolve into someone—something— unfamiliar, something terrifying and invigorating all wrapped up into one massive sense of self. It’s as if there’s this offensive instinct inside you hatching free, forcing you to live out your life differently, in a definitive ‘kill-or-be-killed’ manner. I can see it in your eyes, plainly as I see it in my own eyes when I look in the mirror, that it’s there inside of you, changing you into the very same something I’ve already become.” The now me.
She nods again. Anyone else listening would think I’m insane…
The devil: You always have been.
…but to her, I’m making perfect sense. She understands. She’s like me.
The devil: Like HIM.
“I know this all sounds crazy, but I know. I’ve experienced what you’re going through right now. On the outside you’re beaten down, jaded, ready to give up on life. But on the inside, deep down, the opposite is happening. Tell me if I’m wrong—even given what just happened in the alley, you feel empowered and unafraid, as if you can do anything, take on anything you want no matter the circumstances, or possible consequences.”
She breaks her silence. “I spent my whole childhood, even my teen years, being scared. But now, with you, I feel different. Like nothing I’ve ever felt before. Stronger. More powerful. In spite of what I just did, I feel good and right about it. Justified. No longer oppressed. But…it’s also scaring me.” She looks down at her hands…hands that moments ago were stained with human blood. “I mean, am I a monster?”
I shake my head. “I was scared just like you are, but only at first. I even asked myself that same question. But once you welcome it, listen to the devil inside, allow it to command you, you’ll become the best possible version of you.” I tap a fist against my chest and it hurts like hell. “I know this all sounds crazy, but you have to trust me. It’s in me, and it’s in you too.”
The devil: Evil…
With the color creeping back into her face, with her eyes finally finding their equilibrium, she says, “You really do know me Peter, don’t you?”
“More than you know.”
She forks a potato into her mouth. “So then how did you get my real name?”
I don’t hesitate. It all needs to come out anyway, sooner rather than later: “Same place I found out about Greg Strand.”
She freezes in mid-sip, puts down her cup, and directs her gaze back out the window: a failed attempt to hide fresh tears.
I say, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
She waves a hand at me then wipes her eyes with a napkin. “No…it’s fine. One less painful thing I need to tell you about.”
It’s painful for me to see her so upset. I shift in my seat and my ribs scold me for doing so, the smarting of just getting my ass handed to me in full bloom now. I take a deep breath then begin my sordid tale, starting with my encounter at the peepshow and the bouncer with the crazy eyes who came looking for me.
“His name is George but everyone calls him Popeye. And just for the record, I don’t work there.”
“Then what were you doing there?”
“Long story.”
Here I go again: “I already know about Greg’s business, and his cousin Odie.”
She looks at me as if I’m a big fucking surprise party she just walked into, eyes and mouth stuck in an oval what-the-fuck shape. She shakes her head, looking scared for my life. “These are dangerous men into dangerous things. You cannot be involved with them in any way.” She leans in, and with grit added to her tempered voice, utters, “I don’t know what you know, or how you found out, but if Greg finds out, he will send someone to hurt you. That’s a promise.”
“That’s how I found out,” I say, my tone smug.
“What do you mean?”
“He sent someone to hurt me.”
She slaps a hand over her mouth as if trying to keep her words from escaping, eyes darting sideways as if one of Greg’s dangerous men might be seated nearby. “How are you still breathing?”
I answer cockily, “I handled him.”
“Handled? What does that even mean?” Her voice is fully-sober-sounding now, and sharp with concern, as if I just revealed a terminal diagnosis.
I tell her what it even means, providing every detail about my confrontation with Popeye. How he had Jolie’s key to the apartment, how I immobilized him and tied him up and made him talk about Greg. I tell her that I’d stepped out—I’ll tell you what I was doing in a minute—and when I returned, my apartment door was open and Popeye had a steak knife in his heart.
This time she uses both hands to cover her mouth, waiting a moment before asking, “This was earlier tonight?”
I look at the time on my phone. 4:10 a.m. “About four hours ago, give or take. Has to be Greg, no?”
She shakes her head. “No. Popeye is loyal and Greg and Odie love him for it.” She pauses a moment, then says, “Greg probably figured out you were on to him, and saw no option but to step in. Popeye is Greg’s number one, so if Greg lost contact with him, he would have gone there himself to check things out. Bet you that Jolie was there with him, too. Those two are fucking connected at the hip! I can’t say for sure what happened next, but I know Greg better than anyone, and know for sure he didn’t hurt Popeye.”
“Which means…Jolie?”
“Bank on it. You of all people should know how batshit crazy she is. Sorry to break the news to you Peter, but she’s not just the bitchy housewife you once knew. She’s very bad news now. Greg’s gotten to her, just like he did to me years ago.”
I’m having trouble wrapping my head around the 110-pound mother of my daughter stabbing a 300-pound bouncer to death, batshit crazy or not.
The devil: Your girlfriend just stabbed a douchebag.
Touché. I sure know how to pick them.
“Is it possible Greg sent someone else there to check on him?”
She shakes her head. “Popeye’s the only guy Greg would offer a side job to. And Odie…he has no idea what Greg and Jolie are up to—he’d be pissed to no end if he found out Greg was onto a big score without him.”
“Big score…as in rob my father?”
No longer surprised at my knowledge of Jolie and Greg’s misdoings, she says, “And here I was worried sick about having to tell you all of this. Yes. That was Jolie’s plan, right from the start. She knew about the safe and came to me with the idea of introducing me to your father for the housekeeping job. Told me she needed money to pay off some debt, and that she’d give me ten percent. All I had to do was get the combination to the safe. That’s it. The problem is, I never got it. The only thing I was able to get a hold of was the password to his computer, and that got us nowhere. That’s when Greg got involved. And that’s when things changed between us.”
“Between you and Greg?”
She nods. “And me and Jolie. Greg gets very impatient when jobs don’t pan out right away. Eventually he convinced Jolie that they should brute-force the money out of Nick, and Jolie agreed, the fucking cunt. Your father is such a sweet man! That was last week. I wanted to warn Nick what was happening but Greg made me quit before I had a chance to. When I threatened to call Nick, Greg fucking choked me. Damn near killed me until he was convinced I wouldn’t give Nick any sort of heads-up.” More tears form in her crystal blues and her words break into sobs. “He told me he had no use for me anymore, that Jolie was his ticket to your father’s money, not me.”
Only yesterday I’d told Nick to call an armored car company and get the cash out of there. With Jolie at his side, Greg will have no problem getting inside the house.
“Fucking Jolie. Fucking Greg.”
“I can’t believe I wasted ten years of my life with that asshole!”
While she mourns a breakup that’s the best thing to ever happen to her, I tell her about my first Missed Connection notification and how a shiny barista recognized the girl in the ad and thought it acceptable to let her creeper know about it. She echoes my stalker-fortified romanticism, telling me about how she followed me from work to the library, and then to the park. “I was doing it to get back at Jolie for stealing Greg from me. And vice-versa, I guess. I don’t know! I honestly didn’t know what I was going to do! I was just so pissed and scared and angry. So, I decided to follow you and bump into you, maybe hoping you’d drop and break your camera. It was the only thing I could think of at the moment to get back at Jolie.”
“Guilty by association.”
She nods. “But then, after I saw you up close, how handsome you were in your suit, and how you looked at me, I decided in that moment to kiss you. It was stupid. An impulsive way to get revenge, even if just in my head. But it was the only ammunition I had, you know? Then I realized you’d get the wrong impression…”
“Which I did.”
“…and that I didn’t need to get involved with you and clusterfuck everything up even more. So I just walked away as quickly as I could. The last place I thought I’d end up was back at the peepshow, but it was close by and I wanted to hide from you. Thankfully neither Greg nor Jolie were there.”
“And thus begins chapter one of our saga.”
“I’m so sorry, Peter. Everything is my fault.”
“No. It’s not. I could’ve just let you walk away. But I didn’t. I’m the one who hunted you down. I got involved with you. “
She shrugs. “You must realize by now that us getting together wasn’t supposed to happen. That night at the coffee shop, I was brooding badly over Greg and Jolie. When you showed up, I looked at it as my one and only chance to get revenge on them. But after that first night with you, I felt differently. I enjoyed being with you, and wanted to see you again.”
“Blame me again for writing my number down.” I go on to tell her about Jolie poisoning me with sleeping pills, she did that so she could spend more time with Greg. Did you really think she was going to the gym all those hours? and how three days later I found the pill bottle with her stockpile of credit cards in her gym bag. “It was the evening after our afternoon fuck-fest.”
“Do you now understand why I was asking all those questions about Jolie after our…fuck-fest? I was trying to make you aware of what was happening around you, without actually letting on that I knew anything.”
“You should have told me.”
She pauses, then says, “I didn’t want to reveal my real self to you. I…I just wanted to experience a loving moment in my life, without ruining it. I just wanted to be Lily Dahl, not Lola Dawson.”
I understand.
As I relish in the thought of another fuck-fest with Lily, I explain how I discovered the body of our nanny in our storage locker; this type of uneven thinking—enmeshing sex and murder—should alarm me. But it doesn’t. On the contrary, and with the devil as my witness, it excites me.
She bobs her head and runs her hands through her greasy hair and looks at me through the tops of her eyes. “I know what happened to Carmen. I was there.”
My heart starts pounding heavily, and I hold my breath, waiting for her to start.
Her wet eyes flare and sparkle under the overhead fluorescent lamps. “That wasn’t supposed to happen. Jolie told us that Carmen would be out with Rachel, that they usually go to Central Park from twelve and two, and that we’d have plenty of time to review Greg’s plans to rob Nick. But they didn’t go that day. Rachel must’ve fallen asleep and Carmen was lying in bed with her. We all thought they were out, but they weren’t.
“So what happened?”
She purses her lips and blows out; this isn’t an easy thing for her to discuss, and rightly so. Embrace it, Lily. Let the devil guide you. “Carmen heard everything, including how Greg would ‘kill Nick if he had to.’ She came out of the room white as a ghost and we all kinda freaked out when we saw her. But Greg…he totally lost it! He screamed ‘Who the fuck are you!?’ and…and then it all happened so fast…he just leaped at her and grabbed her by the neck and slammed her against the wall, and then…then he started ripping into her, saying stuff like ‘You saw nothing’ and ‘I’ll kill you if you say anything,’ like he did to me when he thought I was going to tell Nick what was going on.” (…like HE did to you…) “A few seconds later he stops and he’s just standing there not saying anything and he still has his hand around her neck, and me and Jolie, we were just looking at each other like, ‘okay, what’s happening?’ We were in shock, you know? Carmen’s tongue was sticking out and her eyes were rolled up all white, and then…and then Greg just let go of her and she slammed to the floor. Dead. Just like that.”
Now I know how the crack in the wall got there.
She says, “I was too scared to move. I’d seen Greg beat up guys before, but never anything like this. This was whole-other-level shit, you know? He was cursing and pacing and waving his arms around like a crazy man, and Jolie, she must have a magic vagina or something because she was able to calm him down in a way I never could. She just took him into the other room and sixty seconds later he comes back out a rational man. Just like that. She’s the one who came up with the idea to hide Carmen’s body in the storage locker and let you take the blame for it. Greg was on board, of course. He called Popeye to come help him move the body and then seconds later Greg and Jolie were stuffing Carmen into the plastic container.” She starts sobbing. “I heard her fucking bones cracking! When I turned to look, they had her crammed into the bin with her legs bent backward so her toes were touching her face. Jolie was sitting on the lid trying to snap it shut and the whole time Rachel…oh my god, poor Rachel, she was sitting up in bed watching everything. I couldn’t take it anymore, so I just ran out. They didn’t see me at first and I was already on my way down when I heard Jolie calling after me. That was the last straw. I was out.”
This was the day I saw Greg and Popeye on the security footage the police showed me. “Have you seen Greg since then?”
“Just once more, at the club. I went there a few days later because I was out of money. That was the day he choked me. I’m sure you can imagine how scared I was of ending up in a box like Carmen! But he spared me, probably because he’d already paid for the Airbnb he got me. He gave me five hundred bucks and a new burner and his last words to me were, ‘You’re on your own now.’ He put his arm around Jolie and the two of them just stood there, looking at me, waiting for me to leave."
“Well, I’m here for you now.” She smiles and wipes her swollen eyes and I go on to tell her about my two conversations with the police. She freaks out and starts crying again and Ethel the waitress is now paying attention to us from behind the counter, probably wondering if she should call the cops on the physically abused couple. Lily’s scared and I can’t say I blame her. She doesn’t want to go to prison, and neither do I. I promise her that there’s nothing to worry about, that they’re looking for the guy with the neck tattoo in the surveillance footage. But the truth is, I’m freaking out too. They’re going to find Carmen and they’re going to find Chico and they’re going to find Popeye and then they’re going to want to talk to me about them, so, selfishly, I decide not to tell her that the cops kept my camera bag with her pictures in it.
Ethel comes by and asks if we need anything else. I say no and she makes a face and Lily and I go back to holding hands across the table. I look around. Early-risers are beginning to make their entrance, some peering suspiciously at the beat-up guy and torn-up girl in the corner booth. I finish my side of the story by telling her how I moved Carmen’s body into another locker—that’s what I was doing while Popeye was tied up in my darkroom—because I’m an idiot and left my prints all over it when I first found it. Again I leave out an inconvenient truth, this time of my kill-him-or-go-to-prison encounter with Chico.
