Gun Church (31 page)

Of course, it was at that precise moment, the moment I let myself fully consider what I’d given up to come up here, that Amy called. I didn’t much believe in God and the things people labeled as miracles did little to convince me otherwise, but it was at times like these that made me consider which was the more cruel: a cold and random universe or a god with a perverse sense of humor? With all due respect to Blaise Pascal, I chose to believe that no god was better than a cruel one.

“Hey, Ames, what’s up?” I asked as if last week hadn’t happened, as if the last twenty years hadn’t happened.

There was silence at her end, but a noisy and weighty silence. Then she said, “I need to see you.”

“It didn’t work out so well the last time. I seem to remember you sneaking out of your own studio.”

“I know,” she said. “It’s more complicated than I thought it would be. I love you, Kip. Like my art, it’s like an affliction. I was so happy to see you and be with you again that I never realized how much it hurt, all the shit you pulled when we were together. When you were inside me … ” There was silence again. “It never felt that way before, even when I was furious with you. Last week it was as if I was orgasming in spite of myself.”

“I felt it too. Fucking was always easy for us, but it’s different now. We aren’t who we used to be. I don’t want to hurt you anymore, Ames. I don’t want to hurt anyone anymore.”

“Then come to dinner with me tonight.”

“Just dinner, right?”

“Just dinner. Just talking,” she said.

“Just dinner. Okay. Where?”

“I don’t know. What would you like?”

“Chinese food. I haven’t had good Chinese food in seven years.”

“I know the perfect place. It’s on Lafayette in the Village. I’ll get the exact address and text it to you. Be there at eight.”

She hung up before I could have second thoughts. Too late. Second thoughts were all I seemed to be having lately.

It had been so long since I had good Chinese food that I forgot how good
good
could be. I mean, the only Chinese food in Brixton was in the frozen food aisle of the supermarket and it was about as Chinese as frozen pizza was Italian. But the restaurant Amy chose was more than just good. It wasn’t the standard Chinatown noodle shop or corner take-out, not by a long shot. No gloppy chicken chow mein on generic porcelain plates at The Peking Brasserie. The dining room was totally upscale, the service impeccable, with a menu consisting of gourmet variations on familiar dishes from many regional Chinese cuisines. In Brixton and its surrounding counties, regional cuisines were defined in terms of beef jerky and chewing tobacco.

Amy was already seated when I arrived and our hellos were so awkward and uncomfortable we might just as well have been on a blind date. We managed a fairly neutered embrace and chaste kiss. On the one hand, that made me want to run and not stop until I got back to Brixton and crawled into bed with Renee. No awkwardness or pretense with Renee. No need for apologies or penance. Just sex. On the other, I wanted to pull Amy to the red-carpeted floor and fuck her right there in the restaurant to show her how silly it was for her to hold my past against me. For chrissakes, the Kipster was as dead as Stan Petrovic. Then it struck me: maybe that was the problem. She was stupid for the Kipster. For me, maybe not so much. I could not help but wonder if Amy saw my transformation into an adult as a betrayal, as turning my back not only on who I used to be, but on who she had been, as a damning of our shared history. The waitress’s arrival prevented me from wondering aloud.

“Drinks?”

“I’ll have a Chardonnay,” Amy said, anger as plain on her face as her nose.

“Ginger ale and oolong tea for me.”

“Ginger ale?” Amy raised her eyebrows in mock surprise.

“I drink a little bit, but drinking was never the big issue for me, was it?”

“No, Kip, it was more cunts and coke.”

I nearly spit out my water. I’d heard her use the word before, but I was taken aback by the bitter edge in her voice.

“Come on, Ames, that was a long time ago.”

“Not for me,” she said, patting her hand on her chest over her heart. “In here it was yesterday.”

“Then what was last week all about: standing in the snow, resting your head on my shoulder? You think I’m such an ass that I couldn’t read your code? First thing you brought up was your failing marriage. You did everything but announce your intention to finally get a divorce and then there were the portraits. And Jesus, Amy, you couldn’t fuck me fast enough once you got the preliminaries out of the way.”

“I didn’t notice you resisting.”

“Because I wasn’t. Because I’ve missed you for ten years. Because I didn’t want to lose you in the first place.”

“You got a funny way of showing me you didn’t want to lose me, because you fucked just about every—”

“Your Chardonnay,” the waitress said, interrupting Amy’s rant. “And your ginger ale and tea, sir. Would you like to hear our specials this evening?”

I raised my index finger and gave a slight nod at Amy. “Just give us a minute.”

“Very good, sir. I’ll be back shortly.”

Amy and I pretended to study our menus and when the waitress returned, we listened to her description of the specials as if she were reciting the lost teachings of Christ. We ordered without much enthusiasm. In fact, what had been billed as an evening of just talk, and began as an evening of Amy airing old grievances, had become an evening of anything but talk. Amy seemed to have lost her zeal for upbraiding me and I was at a loss for exactly what to say. We waited for our food in uncomfortable quiet, the both of us looking anywhere but at each other.

At least when dinner was served, we had something to keep us occupied. Amy made polite conversation about things I forgot as soon as she said them. I was equally polite in my responses.
Do you really think so? I see. Yes, he’s very talented
. It was all so terribly stilted and soulless that I felt like we were trapped in cutting-room scenes from
The Remains of the Day
.

“For fuck’s sake, Ames, stab me or something, but I don’t think I can take much more of this civility.”

And for the first time in eleven years I heard Amy laugh. In a sense, to hear it brought me low, lower than her rage and disappointment ever could. Because in her laughter came the realization of what all that empty space in my life had been since I ran away from New York. It made me ache with guilt and regret—neither of which I was wont to do—because I had so wantonly and foolishly pissed away the only deeply loving relationship I’d ever had. Yet, at the same time it filled me with a strange joy to know I had made her laugh again, that I still could evoke in her something more than just rage. Her laughter encouraged me there might be enough left between us to build on, enough for me to hope.

“Wrong kind of restaurant,” Amy said, her laughter calming. “Writers have thick skins and it would be too much trouble to shove a chopstick through your heart.”

“At least you give me credit for having one.”

“Oh, I never doubted your heart. I still don’t. Your heart wasn’t the organ that caused our problems.”

“You think?”

“You’re such an ass, Kip Weiler.”

“True enough. So, Amy Anne Sanger-Weiler-Moreland, how would you like to date again?”

She didn’t answer right away, distracted by something over my right shoulder. Then she said, “Date? What are you going to do next, ask me to the prom?”

“It’s a thought. I do look good in a tuxedo. No, I don’t want to lose you again is all, and clearly there’s some stuff between us that we’ve got to deal with. I never want to feel the way it felt the other night and—” I cut myself off, noticing Amy’s eyes drifting away once again. “Amy!”

“Sorry. What were you saying?” But even as she asked, her eyes wandered.

“What are you staring at?”

Her eyes remained fixed over my right shoulder. “All through dinner, there was a woman standing at the window behind you. At first, I hardly noticed her, but she’s still there and I’m pretty sure she’s staring at us.”

I went cold inside and forced myself not to turn around. “Amy, do me a favor and stop looking at her, okay?”

“All right, sure.”

“Look right at me, please.”

Amy turned her head so that she locked her eyes on mine. “What’s going on, Kip?” she asked, a false smile on her lips.

“Is she twenty, twenty-one years old, athletic build, about five eight with long, straight blond hair, high cheekbones, and blue eyes?”

“Who is she?”

“Is that her, the woman I described?” My whisper was as cold as my blood.

“That’s her. She’s really quite beautiful. Who is she?”

“I can’t explain it, Amy, because I don’t understand it myself. I’m going to get up in a minute as if I’m going to the bathroom, but I’m not coming back. Pay the bill and I’ll send you a check tomorrow.”

“What about your coat?”

“Leave it here and tell the waitress I’ll come back for it later.”

“What’s going—”

“Amy, please just do it.”

“Okay, okay.” She relented, if not happily.

“What’s she wearing?”

“What?”

“What’s she wearing, the woman outside?”

“A ski vest, blue maybe, over a brown hooded sweatshirt, sweatpants … I can’t tell much more. It’s dark outside.”

“Good.”

“Is she a stalker?”

I smiled involuntarily. “I guess, in a way. I don’t know for sure.” I stood up, making a show of asking the waitress where the restrooms were. When the waitress left, I turned back to Amy. “I’ll call you soon. Tomorrow, if I can.”

With that, the false smile on Amy’s face collapsed completely.

I walked towards the bathroom, but shouldered my way into the kitchen. At first, no one reacted, the chefs and sous chefs too busy fussing with clanging woks, cleavers, and cutting boards to worry about yet another asshole tourist who’d stumbled into their domain instead of the men’s room. It was only when I didn’t say “excuse me” or turn back around that anyone paid me any mind, but by then it was too late. There was an open side door about ten paces to my left that let cold air into the steamy kitchen and led out onto East 4th Street. I didn’t hesitate and ran out through the door. No one came after me, but I slammed into a parked car. When I looked up, Renee, thirty feet away, was staring at me. She ran and I ran after her.

What Amy couldn’t see, what she couldn’t have seen, was that Renee was wearing running shoes. I noticed because she put distance between us almost immediately. If I hadn’t started running again, she would have lost me after a block. Even so, I wasn’t exactly outfitted for a mad dash through the East Village. I was dressed in a sweater, sports jacket, flannel slacks, and beat-up old dress shoes, which, like the rest of my wardrobe, were desperately in need of euthanasia. And one thing I knew about Renee from seeing her nude, from feeling her powerful clench, was that she was in incredible shape. If I didn’t catch her quickly, I knew I would lose her.

I called out to her, pleading for her to stop, but she kept her eyes looking forward, never wavering. We attracted some attention from other people strolling along Lafayette Street, but not an undue amount. This was New York City, after all. I stopped calling to her, not only because it didn’t seem to be having an effect, but because it made me swallow big gulps of near-freezing air that hurt my throat and threw my rhythm out of whack.

Suddenly, Renee veered off her dead-straight path, cutting a jagged line through sparse but oncoming traffic across to the east side of Lafayette. Instead of trying to lose me she continued uptown along Lafayette. It was only when she got to Astor Place that she turned east and then south by Cooper Union where Bowery splits into 3rd and 4th Avenues. I’d lost sight of her for a few seconds after she turned onto Astor. When I picked her trail back up again as I turned right onto 4th Avenue, she was almost exactly the same distance ahead of me as she had been the entire time. It was at that precise moment I realized that Renee wasn’t trying to lose me at all, that she would have actually had to wait for me on 4th to maintain the same distance between us. It all made a perverse kind of sense, the same kind of twisted sense my last few months in Brixton had been about. Renee’s lingering in plain sight outside the restaurant, her running shoes and sweats, her steady pace, her easy-to-follow course weren’t about escape, but capture, my capture. I was being led somewhere, hopefully not to slaughter.

I had a choice to make and not much time in which to make it. Knowing that I was being baited, I could have just stopped running, about-faced, and headed back to the Peking Brasserie. I could have taken control of the situation. Briefly, I fantasized about the stunned look on Renee’s face if, when she turned, I was no longer there. Would she then start chasing me? I thought about the surprise I would see on Amy’s face at my return, but I didn’t stop running. I knew I wouldn’t. I didn’t even hesitate. There was no hook in my mouth, no line attached to the hook, no reel pulling me in, though there might as well have been. There was only the bait and that was enough.

Writers are curious bastards, more curious than cats. Besides, even understanding as little as I did about what was really going on, I knew that any attempt to seize control of the situation would be temporary, a delaying of the inevitable. Bad news is better than no news and I didn’t feel up to sitting around waiting for the next time Renee would show up unannounced, nor did I want to risk upping the ante. If she’d been willing to appear outside a restaurant when I was with Amy, there was no telling what she might be willing to do the next time.

Seeming to sense my deliberations, Renee picked up the pace, widening the gap between us, willing me forward. If I couldn’t decide, she would help me choose. She couldn’t’ve known the decision to keep following her had already been made. I matched her speed and followed her past the entrance of Cooper Union’s Foundation Building and down East 7th Street. We kept at it across 2nd Avenue, across 1st, but between 1st Avenue and Avenue A, Renee slowed her pace considerably. I began making up the ground between us in big chunks. Finally, when she was just west of Avenue A and Tompkins Square Park, she stopped completely, turned, and waited for me to catch her.