Jim being a bit of a muck-a-muck, it made the news. Then the feminists got a-hold of it, the real bully-girls who consider murdering your boyfriend a form of self-expression. They wanted the case dismissed out of hand. And a lot of people agreed they had a point this time. Susan, it was found, had bruises all over her torso, was bleeding from various orifices. And Jim had pretty clearly been wielding a nasty-looking sex store paddle when she went for the knife. According to the political dicta of the day, it was an obvious case of long-term abuse and long-delayed self-defense.
But the cops, for some reason, were not immediately convinced. In general, cops spend enough time in the depths of human depravity to keep a spare suit in the closet there. They know that even the most obvious political axioms don’t always cut it when you’re dealing with true romance.
So the Manhattan DA’s office was caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. Susan had gotten a good lawyer fast and had said nothing to anyone. The police suspected they’d find evidence of consensual rough sex in Susan’s life but so far hadn’t produced the goods. The press, meanwhile, was starting to link Susan’s name with the word “ordeal” a lot, and were running her story next to sidebars on sexual abuse, which was their way of being “objective” while taking Susan’s side entirely. Anyway, the last thing the DA wanted was to jail the woman and then release her. So he waffled. Withheld charges for a day or two, pending further investigation. And, in the meantime, the prime suspect was set free.
As for me, all was depression and confusion. Jim wasn’t my brother or anything, but he was a good buddy. And I knew I was probably the best friend he had at the network, maybe even in the city, maybe in the world. Still there were moments, watching the feminists on TV, watching Susan’s lawyer, when I thought: How do I know? The guy says one thing, the girl says something else. How do I know everything Jim told me wasn’t some kind of crazy lie, some sort of justification for the bad stuff he was doing to her?
Of course, all that aside, I called the police the day after the murder, Friday, the first I heard. I phoned a contact of mine in Homicide and told him I had solid information on the case. I think I half-expected to hear the whining sirens of the squaddies coming for me even as I hung up the phone. Instead, I was given a Monday morning appointment and asked to wander on by the station house to talk to the detectives in charge.
Which gave me the weekend free. I spent it anchored to the sofa by a leaden nausea. Gazing at the ceiling, arm flung across my brow. Trying to force tears, trying to blame myself, trying not to. The phone rang and rang, but I never answered it. It was just friends-I could hear them on the answering machine-wanting to get in on it: the sympathy, the grief, the gossip. Everybody craving a piece of a murder. I didn’t have the energy to play.
Sunday evening, finally, there was a knock at my door. I’m on the top floor of a brownstone so you expect the street buzzer, but this was a knock. I figured it must be one of my neighbors who’d seen the story on TV. I called out as I put my shoes on. Tucked in my shirt as I went to the door. Pulled it open without even looking through the peephole.
And there was Susan.
A lot of things went through my mind in the second I saw her. As she stood there, combative and uncomfortable at once. Chin raised, belligerent; glance sidelong, shy. I thought: Who am I supposed to be here? What am I supposed to be like? Angry? Vengeful? Chilly? Just? Lofty? Compassionate? Christ, it was paralyzing. In the end, I just stood back and let her enter. She walked into the middle of the room and faced me as I closed the door.
Then she shrugged at me. One bare shoulder lifted, one lifted corner of her mouth, a wise guy smile. She was wearing a pale spring dress, the thin strings tied round her neck in a bow. It showed a lot of her dark flesh. I noticed a crescent of discolor on her thigh beneath the hem.
“I’m not too sure about the etiquette here,” I said.
“Yeah. Maybe you could look under ‘Entertaining the Girl Who Killed Your Best Friend.’”
I gave her back her wise guy smile. “Don’t say too much, Susan, okay? I gotta go in to see the cops on Monday.”
She stopped smiling, nodded, turned away. “So-what? Like, Jim told you everything? About us?” She toyed with the pad on my phone table.
I watched her. My reactions were subtle but intense. It was the way she turned, it was that thing she said. It made me think about what Jim had told me. It made me look, long and slow, down the line of her back. It made my skin feel hot, my stomach cold. An interesting combination.
I moistened my lips and tried to think about my dead friend. “Yeah, that’s right,” I said gruffly. “He told me pretty much everything.”
Susan laughed over her shoulder at me. “Well, that’s embarrassing, anyway.”
“Hey, don’t flirt with me, okay? Don’t kill my friend and come over here and flirt with me.”
She turned round again, hands primly folded in front of her. I looked so steadily at her face she must’ve known I was thinking about her breasts. “I’m not flirting with you,” she said. “I just want to tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
“What he did, that he beat me, that he humiliated me. He was twice my size. Think how you’d like it, think what you would’ve done if someone was doing that to you.”
“Susan!” I spread my hands at her. “You asked him to!”
“Oh, yeah, like, ‘She was asking for it,’ right? Like you automatically believe that. Your buddy says it so it must be true.”
I snorted. I thought about it. I looked at her. I thought about Jim. “Yeah,” I said finally. “I do believe it. It was true.”
She didn’t argue the point. She went right on. “Yeah, well, even if it is true, it doesn’t make it any better. You know? I mean, you should’ve seen the way it turned him on. I mean, he could’ve stopped it. I’d’ve stopped. He could’ve changed everything any time, if he wanted to. But he liked it so much… And then there he is, hurting me like that, and all turned on by it. How do you think that makes a person feel?”
I am not too proud to admit that I actually scratched my head, dumb as a monkey.
Susan ran one long nail over the phone table pad. She looked down at it. So did I. “Are you really going to the cops?”
“Yeah. Hell, yeah,” I said. Then, as if I needed an excuse, “It’s not like they won’t find someone else. Some other guy you did this stuff with. He’ll tell them the same thing.”
She shook her head once. “No. There’s only you. You’re the only one who knows.” Which left nothing to say. We stood there silent. She thinking, me just watching her, just watching the lines and colors of her.
Then, finally, she raised her eyes to me, tilted her head. She didn’t slink toward me, or tiptoe her fingers up my chest. She didn’t nestle under me so I could feel the heat of her breath or smell her perfume. She left that for the movies, for the femme fatales. All she did was stand there like that and give me that Susan look, chin out, dukes up, her soul in the offing, almost trembling in your hand.
“It gives you a lot of power over me, doesn’t it?” she said.
“So what?” I said back.
She shrugged again. “You know what I like.”
“Get out,” I said. I didn’t give myself time to start sweating. “Christ. Get the fuck out of here, Susan.”
She walked to the door. I watched her go. Yeah, right, I thought. I have power over her. As if. I have power over her until they decide not to charge her, until the headlines disappear. Then where am I? Then I’m her Lord and Master. Just like Jim was.
She passed close to me. Close enough to hear my thoughts. She glanced up, surprised. She laughed at me. “What. You think I’d kill you too?”
“I’d always have to wonder, wouldn’t I?” I said.
Still smiling, she jogged her eyebrows comically. “Whatever turns you on,” she said.