The Ex (22 page)

They stood in the lobby of the Wharman Hotel near Columbus Circle. It was a small, mostly residential hotel, with wood paneling, a modest registration desk, and a single elevator with an old-fashioned brass arrow-and-numeral floor indicator above its door. Rates were reasonable because the Wharman hadn’t the amenities of the larger hotels, no restaurants, bars, shops, or ballrooms.

The desk clerk was in his early twenties and sharply dressed in a blue suit, white shirt with red tie. He had neatly trimmed dark hair and a smooth complexion and looked more like a leader in the Young Republicans than a hotel employee. If there was a bellman, he was nowhere in sight.

Clutching Michael’s hand, Molly stood off to the side near a chair and table and watched David check them in. At her feet on the waxed parquet floor were Michael’s folded stroller, a suitcase, and a large dufffle bag.

She found herself studying David’s face. He was obviously under more strain than he usually allowed her to see. Like her, he was trying hard to hold everything together and keep his world from disintegrating.

The young desk clerk turned away from him to swipe his Visa card, and David quickly wiped a hand over his face, massaging his Adam’s apple between thumb and forefinger as if his throat was constricted. His expression became placid and he glanced toward her and smiled to let her know he was thinking of her; he was hiding behind his facade again.

When he’d gotten the room key, he came over to her and lifted the duffle bag and suitcase. Without a word, she picked up the stroller and they went with Michael to the elevator.

David set down the suitcase and pressed the button with the Up arrow. After a pause, the brass arrow on the floor indicator trembled as if stuck on 12, then began moving spasmodically toward lower numbers.

“Did we remember to pack my electric razor?” David asked.

She knew he was trying to restore normalcy, to get her mind off what had happened to Muffin. The horror in the bathtub. Who had done it and why.

“I’m not sure,” Molly said, not looking at him.

The arrow stopped at 4, then within a few seconds began lurching downward again.

“No matter. It isn’t far. I can go back and get it, along with anything else we forgot.”

“No!” she said vehemently. “You will
not
go back inside that apartment tonight. None of us will!”

The elevator arrived and they waited for a man cradling a bouquet of roses to make his exit, then they stepped in and David set the luggage at his feet and pressed the button for the fifth floor.

“Okay, Mol,” he said reassuringly when the elevator door had closed. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll go into work late again tomorrow. We can go to the apartment together in the morning after dropping Michael off at Small Business.”

“Julia,” Michael said, at the mention of Small Business.

“All right,” Molly said. “We’ll do what has to be done there, then we’ll get out. We don’t live there anymore.”

He leaned close and kissed her cheek. “Another thing we can do tomorrow is sign the lease for the new apartment.”

The elevator door slid open, David stooped and picked up the suitcase and duffle bag, and they walked down a wide, gray-carpeted hall illuminated by indirect lighting set in carved wooden sconces on the pale green walls.

They stopped before the door to room 512.

David unlocked then swung the door open. He reached inside and flicked a wall switch.

After standing aside to let Molly and Michael enter, he followed with the luggage.

The room was small but high-ceilinged, well appointed with a dresser, desk, and a TV with a VCR on it on a wooden stand near the foot of the bed. Molly noticed right away there was no scent of tobacco smoke; David must have anticipated her wishes and asked for a nonsmokers’ room. There was a large closet with sliding doors, one of which was a full-length mirror. What she could see of the bathroom was all gray tile and modern, with gleaming chromed plumbing and frosted-glass shower doors. Nothing like the apartment’s old bathroom where Muffin—

She veered her mind away from vivid and disturbing images, concentrating instead on the room. It was cool and quiet, with light beige walls that were almost white. Here and there hung restful framed prints. Two of the prints were very stylized fox-hunting scenes, erect, red-coated riders on horses leaping over hedges to race over a green expanse of field bordered by trees. It was a bright, sunny day in the prints and everyone other than the fox was having a fine time. The room’s carpeting was a dark green that matched the green in the fox-hunting scenes as well as the long green drapes and green, padded headboard. There was a small roll-away bed in a corner for Michael. The wall switch had turned on a tall brass floor lamp with a cream-colored shade that cast a soft light over everything.

“Just another hotel room,” David said, hoisting the suitcase onto the bed to unpack, “but it looks comfortable.”

To Molly it looked like much more than that.

It looked like sanctuary.

Molly knew Deirdre had probably left for work, but she still felt a sense of foreboding, a tingle of fear, as she crossed West Eighty-fifth Street with David to enter their apartment.

They’d overslept that morning. David had left the Wharman while Molly was getting herself and Michael dressed, and returned with some orange juice and a cinnamon roll from a nearby bakery for Michael’s breakfast. After delivering Michael to Small Business in a cab, Molly and David had a leisurely breakfast on Amsterdam. The truth was, after what had happened to Muffin, and all that had gone on before, neither of them was anxious to return to the apartment.

But here they were, Molly nervously glancing up at their windows as they crossed the street, David staring straight ahead and setting a slow pace.

The building seemed to engulf her as they entered the foyer, but she said nothing as they walked to the elevator.

In the second-floor corridor, her heart was racing as David fit his key in the door to their apartment. Even the harsh grating of the key in the lock was now an unfamiliar sound. Full of their possessions though it might be, this place was no longer home.

David opened the door and entered first.

Molly saw him stop and stand still. She heard him mutter, “Good Christ!”

She went in and stood beside him. What she saw seemed to strike her in the stomach. It took her breath away and made her physically ill.

Then angry. Boiling angry.

The apartment had been viciously vandalized. Molly’s desk drawers had been removed and the contents dumped on the floor. The desk itself was upside down. One end of the sofa, the end where Molly usually sat, had been slashed and the batting yanked from it to protrude in obscene bulges of cotton and horsehair from the gaping material.

David walked around slowly, staring in disbelief. “God! Look at this!” He used the toe of his shoe to nudge one of the desk drawers that had been hurled to the floor and lay upside down and broken. “What kind of sick, vicious animal would do something like this?”

“I’m not surprised,” Molly said, barely containing her fury. “It was Deirdre.”

David stopped and stared at her. “I don’t know—”

“Don’t, David! Goddamn you, don’t tell me this wasn’t Deirdre!”

She was glad he chose not to answer as they walked through the rest of the apartment.

“Notice?” Molly asked.

David nodded. “It’s only
your
things.”

It became increasingly clear that only objects connected with Molly had been vandalized. Her pillow was slashed. Her clothes had been pulled from the closet and ripped. Brush and comb and cosmetic bottles had been thrown to the floor. The T-shirt she usually slept in was draped from a drawer pull in tatters. Bright red lipstick was smeared wildly on her dresser mirror, as indecipherable as if it were scrawled in a foreign language.

Molly went to examine something glittering on the floor.

Shattered glass. A framed wedding photograph of her and David, which had been wrapped in paper on the back of a closet shelf, was broken from its frame and lay in the middle of the glinting fragments of glass. The image of a younger David, grinning in his tuxedo, was untouched. The smiling woman on his arm, Molly, had been shredded with a sharp blade.

Molly looked at him. “Who’s crazy now, David?”

“Mol. I never said—”

“Never mind,” she interrupted. “We both know what you thought.”

In a way she was glad Deirdre had done this. Deirdre’s duplicity, the danger that she posed, were out in the open now; no one could say they were merely in Molly’s mind. What had been done to the apartment was an explosion of malice and violence that proved Molly was the sane one. Deirdre was mad.

“I’m sorry, Mol…” David was saying remorsefully.

Molly ignored him as they returned to the ravaged living room.

“I’m going to call the police,” he said, and walked to the overturned desk. Near it on the floor lay the phone-equipped answering machine. He replaced the receiver, then gripped the machine and stood up. He paused.

Molly could see the glowing green digital numeral on the machine.

“There’s a message,” David said.

He propped the machine against his hip and pressed the Play button.

Beep.

Molly immediately recognized Deirdre’s voice:

“Hi, David and Molly.” She sounded jarringly normal and cheerful in the middle of such chaos. “This is you-know-who. I hope you like the way I redecorated your apartment. I guess you’ll be busy for a while admiring it, making little personal changes. That’s okay. Idle hands are the devil’s playthings. And don’t be concerned about Michael. I’ve already picked him up at Small Business, so you two can enjoy the rest of the day without worry.”

Molly and David stood motionless for a few moments.

Then the full impact of what Deirdre had said hit Molly in a violent rush.

She was across the room in three strides and grabbed the phone from David.

“It’s a bluff, Mol,” he said. “We dropped Michael off at Small Business not much more than an hour ago.”

But Molly was already punching out Small Business’s number on the key pad. “Damn her! I’ll kill her if she’s taken Michael!”

David gently but firmly worked the receiver from her clutching fingers. She glared at him.

“You’re in a rage, Mol. Let me talk. Let me see what Julia has to say.”

She knew he was right. If Julia had let Michael leave the school, she didn’t know what she might say or do.

She surrendered the phone to him then backed a step away and watched him hold the receiver to his ear and listen to the ringing phone at the other end of the connection.

Molly waited, fighting back her temper and fear for Michael. She could faintly hear the Small Business phone ringing, seeping from the receiver’s earpiece.

“Yes, please,” David said abruptly, tightening his grip on the phone. “I’d like to talk to Julia…” He stared inquisitively at Molly.

“Corera,” she said, assuming he couldn’t remember Julia’s last name.

“Corera, please. I need to talk to her. Yes, I know, but it’s very important.”

He stood waiting, not looking at Molly, for more than a minute.

Then he grew rigid and stood straighter as the receiver returned to life.

“Julia. This is David Jones. That’s right, Michael’s father. Remember, his mother and I dropped him off at the school a little over an hour ago? We need to know if he’s still there.”

Molly saw his expression darken and her heart almost stopped.

After several seconds, he said, “I don’t know. No, there is none. We don’t know. Yes, thanks, Julia…”

He slammed down the receiver.

“What did she say?” Molly asked.

“Julia said Aunt Deirdre came to the school half an hour ago with a note from you saying there was a family emergency. She said they knew Deirdre at the school. She’d been there several times before to see Michael. Trusted her because Michael knew her and seemed fond of her.”

“So they gave him to her,” Molly said with a quiet rage. “She’s got him! David, she’s got our son!”

He was obviously alarmed by her expression, by the emotion vibrant in her voice.

“Mol, listen!”

It made her even madder that he would try to calm her. “You listen, David! I’m going to kill her! You hear me? I’m going to fucking
kill
her!”

“Jesus, Mol! Wait!”

But she was already out the door and in the hall. Fueled by a hate and desire she knew would scare her if she paused to think about it.

No time or patience for the elevator. She was aware of David following her as she strode down the hall to the door to the landing, then tromped up the stairs and down the fourth-floor corridor to Deirdre’s apartment.

She began pounding on the door with her fist.

“Deirdre! Damn you! Open this door!”

She felt David grip her upper arms. He pulled her back so she couldn’t reach the door.

At first she was enraged, thinking he was trying to restrain her to calm her. Then she saw his flushed features, the tightness to his jaw, the look in his eyes she’d seen only a few times during the early, sometimes vicious and hurtful arguments of their marriage. She knew he’d had time to assimilate what had happened and shared her concern and anger.

When he was sure she wasn’t going to interfere, he took a step back and raised his right leg. Then he shot his foot out so the flat of it struck the door just below the knob.

The door gave but didn’t open.

Molly felt like standing next to him so they could kick together. She actually moved toward him.

But he kicked again, with a loud grunt and much more force, and the doorjamb splintered around the lock.

The door flew open and bounced off the wall so hard it would have closed again if David’s momentum hadn’t carried him forward so that he struck it a second time with his shoulder. It hit the wall again, but not as hard. Brass screws and metal pieces of the lock clattered over the wood floor.

Molly and David exchanged frightened but determined glances.

She followed him into Deirdre’s apartment.