“No!” Jennifer shouted, turning. “I won’t.”
“Honey. Jennifer, please,” Tom said. “You just told me. There are two, maybe three people dead. We’ve got to get on top of this situation. What happened to you has got to be drug related—the Colombians are on to you. If it isn’t, if we’ve got a simple mugging, you’re still okay. I mean, you’ll be viewed as a female Bernhard Goetz. No one is going to send you to jail. Look. We go to the police. We start a public relations campaign. No jury—”
“But I’m not Goetz!”
“Jennifer, you’ve admitted to me that you killed a person. And you may have just killed two others.” He nodded toward uptown. “I’m an officer of the court, for God’s sake. I can’t—”
“Please! Please!” She went toward where she had dropped her coat on the chair. “I’m sorry I came to you. I’m sorry I compromised your goddamn position.” She was crying as she grabbed for her coat.
Tom leapt to his feet, swearing, and seized her arm.
“You’re going to sit down here, Jennifer, and we’re going to prepare a defense. You’re a wanted woman. I’m not going to let you damage your life and career.” He pulled her away from the door, but she jerked loose from him.
“Leave me alone, Tom. I’ll work this out myself.”
“Jennifer, sweetie, you’re not being rational.” He moved toward her with his arms out, as if to embrace her.
She backed away. “Don’t touch me.”
The tone of her voice stopped him. She saw the sudden fear and apprehension in his eyes, and that pleased her.
“Please, Jennifer, you need help,” he offered, but kept his distance.
Jennifer realized she was no longer in control of her own body. Her heart was pounding, and she felt a surge of strength in her limbs. My God, she thought. I am a monster.
She looked up, into the mirror behind Tom’s couch, and stared at herself. Her own brown eyes looked frightened, not enraged. Her face was ashen, and what makeup she had put on that morning had worn off. Her hair needed to be combed. It frightened her to see how unkempt she looked, but her face wasn’t disfigured. She didn’t look like a monster. She took a deep breath.
“Jennifer, are you okay?” Tom whispered, alarmed at the expression on her face.
“I don’t know,” she confessed.
“What happened just then?”
“I don’t know. I get angry, enraged, and then
” She started to cry, deep sobs, but this time Tom came over and wrapped his arms around her. She collapsed in his embrace and let herself be comforted.
“I’ve got to get you to bed,” he finally said, after her sobs had abated. He leaned over and easily picked her up. After settling her into his bed, he pulled a heavy quilt up over her. “Are you warm enough?” he asked, arranging the quilt over her shoulders.
Jennifer nodded and pulled her legs up. She cuddled against his pillow and seized his hand in her fingers. “Don’t leave me,” she pleaded.
“I won’t,” he whispered, sitting on the edge of the bed.
She kissed his fingers, then laid her cheek against the warmth of his palm and fell asleep still holding on to her lover’s hand.
When Jennifer woke, the room was dark and silent. She came awake slowly as if she were swimming to the surface of her life. Then she recognized her surroundings, realized she was in Tom’s apartment, and immediately grew apprehensive. She sat up and swung her feet over the side of the bed.
She heard voices. Or at least one voice. Without her shoes, she moved quickly and quietly to the closed bedroom door and pressed her head against it to listen. Silence. Carefully, she opened the door. The empty living room was glowing like a Vermeer, with the clean yellow light of the winter sunset.
She noticed that Tom was in his office beyond the living room. She saw his shadow as he paced in the small room. He was probably on the phone. He always paced while talking on the telephone. She crossed the room, her feet silent on the hardwood parquet floor. At the office door, she paused and looked inside.
He was standing at his desk, looking out the window at the Hudson River. The sunset froze him in profile, softened the edges of his dark features. He was listening to someone, then whispering his replies. When he turned to pace back across the office, she stepped to one side of the door and stood in shadow. Her heart was in her throat.
He came to the threshold and stood looking across the long, darkening room to the doorway of his bedroom.
“No,” he said to someone, “she is still asleep. Yes, I understand. Yes, I’m letting her rest.” He stepped away from the open doorway. She heard the leather of his chair stretch as he sat down, and when she chanced a glimpse inside, she saw that he had swung his legs up over the edge of his desk and was leaning back in the chair, running his fingers through his hair. It was one nervous habit that always annoyed her. It left his hair standing up.
She moved stealthily from the dark corner to the other side of the living room, forcing herself to be calm. After picking up her fur coat and purse from the chair, she grabbed her boots from where she had left them by the front door. She moved quickly across the living room, through the swinging door, and into the dark kitchen.
She knew there was a service door off the kitchen, and behind it the back stairs and an elevator. She had used the exit before to do laundry in the basement.
Jennifer slipped off the chain lock and stepped into the lighted back stairwell. Her heart was racing. With trembling hands, she slowly pulled the door closed behind her. She kept imagining she heard Tom running after her, grabbing her before she could escape. She pressed the elevator button and then, too frightened to stand and wait for it, took off down the back stairs, her stockinged feet slipping on the concrete steps.
She reached the lobby level and stopped in the stairwell to slip on her coat and shoes. Then she opened the heavy steel door and looked out at the empty lobby. She saw the doorman outside under the entrance awning, helping a woman out of a taxi. Jennifer stepped far enough into the lobby to see that the front elevators were closed. Tom had not yet discovered that she was gone. Running to the entrance, she grabbed the now empty taxi and, brushing past the old woman and the doorman, slid into the backseat and slammed the door. “Uptown!” she shouted.
“Where, lady?” He picked up his clipboard to note the address.
“Uptown. Hurry, please.” She glanced at the entrance of the building, half expecting Tom to come barreling out after her.
“West Side or East, lady?” the driver asked, still waiting and watching her in the mirror.
“Uptown! The East Side.” Jennifer was trembling. “Hurry!” She glanced around again. The doorman and the old woman were moving slowly toward the glass door. She didn’t see Tom.
The taxi finally moved. The driver steered with one hand as he put aside the clipboard.
“You got to tell me, lady. The East Side is a big place.”
He laughed, trying to make a joke of her indecision. The car bounced out of the apartment building’s cul-de-sac and turned onto the side street.
Jennifer sank into the seat, exhausted by her fear. She was thankful that she had gotten away from Tom, but she didn’t know what to tell the taxi driver. Where in New York City would “a wanted woman” be safe?
She opened her purse to take out a tissue and wipe her eyes, and there, stuffed into the cluttered purse, she saw the newspaper clipping she had meant to give Eileen, the one about Phoebe Fisher, the channeler. She pulled it from her purse and scanned it, looking for an address, then leaned forward and spoke to the driver.