I maneuvered around him to the sidewalk, students rushing by on either side of us. I had nowhere to be for hours, until 5 p.m., when I’d promised Rosemary I would meet her in the dining hall for the last supper of the semester. I fell in with the pace of the crowd, hoping he’d get lost. Ever since the rape, Rosemary watched over me like a mother, never leaving me alone too long, but on that day, she had finals stacked up.
“Did all of you conspire to kill him?” He yanked me to a stop and said it with such fierceness that a guy walking by with his arm slung over his girlfriend’s shoulders stopped short, forcing the crowd to detour around them. It seemed like Bradley wanted other people to hear.
“You OK?” The towering, buffed-up stranger was talking to me but shooting Bradley the “I can beat you into cherry pudding” look he’d probably been shot his whole life.
I answered for him. “Yes. I think so. Yes. He’s leaving. Aren’t you leaving?” I didn’t want to make a scene. I didn’t want anyone to recognize me, or him.
Bradley let go of my arm, seething. A dark flush crawled up his face like an angry surf.
“Yeah, I’m leaving.”
“Good thinking, bud.” My anonymous protector reattached himself to his girl and walked on, but slowly, his face turned toward us, making sure.
“Is this the kind of finesse you use to get all your stories?” I asked heatedly.
“They’re firing me, bitch. I can’t let that happen right before I graduate. I need to know what you girls said to the police. If they’re arresting anyone.”
“So this is personal.”
“Yes,” he said. “This is personal. Don’t forget it.”
He seemed so small in person that I had forgotten him. A spider I flicked away.
Three weeks later, I was on a plane to Italy.
23
Mike was already snoring on top of the covers, chest bare, boxers on, black plastic reading glasses slid halfway down his nose, a file placed open and upside down on his chest. Tanner Kohl’s. Someone else I didn’t know.
The small TV on the bedroom dresser exploded with a low-volume cheer as an Illinois coach lost it, charging a ref, screaming, permissible unless he took that behavior out into the street.
I snapped it off, along with Mike’s reading light. I slipped off his glasses and set them on his bedside table, picked up the file and rested it on top of the short stack on his dresser.
His files, my files, Caroline’s files. Way too many files.
I shook out my new quilt lying at the end of the bed, watching the lucky birds fly and gently float back down.
As soon as the fabric brushed his skin, Mike shifted on his side, still sleeping, to settle into a more comfortable nest. I prayed that I was doing this mundane routine for him when he was eighty, when every bit of passion was dried up, settled into memory fuzz like a good book.
Sleep did not come so easily for me. My mind circled like a Ferris wheel in a never-ending loop.
Questions with no answers.
Round and round, round and round.
One person in particular was still stuck on the ride. I couldn’t see her face as she whizzed past. She was just a name on a slip of paper.
Alice.
The next morning I approached my laptop, tucked into a tiny alcove in the breakfast area. The built-in desk was designed for old-fashioned writing with a pen or pencil. There was just enough room for my laptop, not an inch to spare.
A few wooden slots attached to the wall above it were perfect for mail and bills, and we’d dutifully started filling them up. Mrs. Drury’s relatives had bequeathed us the small scratched wooden stool that slid out of sight underneath. I noticed my rear end didn’t fit on it as easily as it did five days ago when I’d paid the electric bill.
I ran my fingers across the laptop keys like it was a piano that needed tuning. Four months ago, this Mac laptop loomed large in my world, an addiction. Technological crack. I’d never been a big texter, but I checked my Facebook and email so obsessively in New York that Mike whined that it interfered with our sex life.
As soon as I passed the riskiest stage of the pregnancy, the need to reaffirm my existence every day disappeared. I no longer wanted to update my status on Facebook to share a picture of an especially nice pastrami sandwich from Zabar’s with 522 friends. I was connected to another human being in the most intimate way possible and it filled me up.
Since we’d arrived in Clairmont, I checked email once a day and had fallen completely off the Facebook wagon. Now I was thinking Facebook could be a very useful tool.
But first, Bradley Hellenberger. I typed his full name and journalist into a Google search, immediately rewarded with dozens of hits. He hadn’t fallen into a ditch. He was a managing editor for a prominent online newsmagazine in New York. This was going to be easier than I thought.
I clicked the third link, which promised a bio. When the picture flashed up, I thought I’d made a mistake. The guy who appeared beside the short profile was dark-complected with brown hair. Intelligence and ego radiated out of his eyes. This man was definitely not a light breeze. And definitely not poor, skinny Bradley with the small nose holes.
My eyes traveled over the bio. By the second paragraph, I began to get the sense that something was very wrong. This Bradley was that Bradley. Or at least, their history was the same.
Bradley graduated magna cum laude from Windsor with a double major in journalism and history the same year that I was raped. He began his career as an investigative reporter on the Windsor newspaper, with stories that received national attention in papers around the country.
He worked as a writer and editor at The Wall Street Journal and The Philadelphia Inquirer before going to work for magazines. So The Wall Street Journal hadn’t blown him off after the controversy. He was a two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He made his home in New York City with his wife and three children.
It didn’t mention a cosmetic surgery overhaul.
The Bradley I met thirteen years ago on the steps of the liberal arts building wasn’t the real Bradley. I’d met an imposter.
Why?
My hands were suddenly ice-cold.
It entered my mind that maybe Lucy could help. Maybe she even knew Bradley Hellenberger. My best friend happened to be a reporter in New York journalism circles, with a generous freelance contract writing for Vanity Fair.
Lucy had the voice of a poet and the eye of a cynic. She told me she’d never write fiction, because life was way more bizarre and fascinating than anything she could dream up. I specifically remember the day the Joseph Fritzl case broke. The Austrian monster who had locked his daughter in the basement and proceeded to rape her for twenty-four years and father her seven children, never letting her see the sun.
I remember saying, “And nobody knew. Nobody knew.”
Lucy and I were sitting companionably on the patio of a small SoHo café, finishing a bottle of wine. She tapped out her cigarette and threw me an intense look I won’t ever forget.
“Emily, honey,” she said quietly, “of course somebody knew.”
That’s one reason I picked Lucy as my best friend. She was at home with me in the scarier places.
I punched speed-dial No. 3.
“Hello. Lucy Blaize.”
“Lucy, it’s Emily.”