He reached down and patted his stomach. Three or four pounds off would do it. He was breathing heavily now, only three hundred yards down the road, but he pressed on, determined. This exercising was not just for him; it was for Michelle, too. His fiancée, just hours from now, if all went well. Tonight was New Year’s Eve, and he had the ring and the dinner reservations, and a woman who loved him, and the sun was shining, sparkling on the park’s little lake, and he could see his breath in the crisp December air, and he felt good despite the complaints from his knees and the crick in his side. He felt even better after he breezed past a little old geezer in a fancy running outfit, but then was brought down to earth as a couple of pastel-suited girls bounced past him, chatting merrily without even pausing for breath.
He smiled at himself. Okay, so he’d have to keep at this for a while to get his wind up. Not a problem. Maybe he wasn’t a great runner, but he was a damn good detective. He was moving forward inexorably on the Sperry case, and he had a strong hunch that something was going to pop very soon on his private investigation. Balfa’s girlfriend was holding something back, and either she’d give it up voluntarily or he would pry it out of her. He shrugged off these thoughts, rolling his head like a boxer warming up. He had the day off; for once he was going to have a personal life, and to hell with work.
He was loosening up, despite the cold, and wondered if he was hitting some kind of stride. If those things were kicking in—what were they called?
Endorphins.
Life was a lot different here in the park when you weren’t zipping by in a sealed-off car. He listened to the steady shuffle of his footsteps on the asphalt and to the jagged rhythm of his breath. He started noticing the different kinds of trees, and the way a goose waddled down to the water’s edge, and then he was pondering why the goose hadn’t flown farther south for the winter, and where its comrades were, and soon—pleasantly, and for the first time since he had looked down at the boy in the box—he wasn’t thinking about much of anything at all.
HE DIDN’T BAT AN
eye at the prices on the dinner menu, even though they were so high they would have made both of his parents faint. He didn’t bother hiding the ring in any desserts. He didn’t even wonder which knee to get down on. That morning he had had a major realization—an epiphany, really—and it had come from the most unlikely source.
He had come back from a run—he liked the way that sounded, even though it had been more of a
plod
—and taken a hot bath. He came out feeling good and sporty, as if he were in a locker room. He went into the kitchen in search of breakfast, turned on the little TV over the microwave, and there was Regis Philbin with some pert blonde, and they were chatting jovially with some singer Jack didn’t know, a handsome young guy wearing a cowboy hat and boots.
“How did you pop the question?” Regis was saying. “Did you take her for a carriage ride around Central Park and open a bottle of champagne?”
The singer shook his handsome head and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. He had a shy, modest manner that clearly drove the women in the studio audience wild. “I didn’t do any of that,” he said. “No violin players, no hidin’ the ring, no pretendin’ or foolin’ around. I just wanted it to be a really simple moment, you know.
Authentic
.” The camera cut to several middle-aged women in the audience, nodding their heads, mesmerized. “I took her hand and told her that I loved her and that I hoped she would spend the rest of her life letting me make her happy.” A number of women in the studio audience wiped their eyes.
And that was it. Jack stood there in his kitchen, open-mouthed, holding two eggs he was about to crack over a frying pan.
Keep it simple.
What a fool he had been, thinking that the moment should be about some clever trick or elaborate setup, when all he needed to do was speak from his heart.
Now here he was in this too-fancy Midtown restaurant, with red leather booths and subdued lighting glowing from behind polished wood panels on the walls, but it was okay, it still felt
right
. Michelle was wearing a dress that he loved, and she looked gorgeous. (He noticed several model-like women sitting with rich older men, and they looked glamorous in a superficial way, but he was proud to be here with his date.) He didn’t fidget, didn’t check to see if he had remembered the ring. He didn’t for one second wonder if he was doing the right thing. He just felt it, in his heart, like he was floating, like he was in the
zone
, Michael Jordan swooping serenely up for a three-point half-court
swish
.
A waiter went around with a silver tray handing out noisemakers and party hats. The countdown to midnight was coming up, but suddenly Jack didn’t want to wait anymore—he didn’t want the moment swallowed up in a crowd of shouting revelers.
He raised his champagne glass. “To the most beautiful woman in the room.”
Michelle clinked glasses with him. She hadn’t eaten much this evening, said she was saving up for the post-midnight snacks, but that was okay. This wasn’t about having some kind of perfect meal—this was about starting their future together, and he didn’t care if it happened over a couple of Big Macs.
He pushed aside the votive candle in the middle of the table and reached out and took Michelle’s hand. “You know what?” he said, brushing aside the cowboy’s words, which were still bouncing around in his head. “I know this has been a crazy year, what with my time in the hospital, and…you know…” He didn’t want to mention September 11, not now…“And then there was my little swim, and everything. But even so, I wanna tell you that these have been the best few months of my life. Because of you.” He looked down for a moment, embarrassed to find himself choking up. Still holding on to her hand, he reached into his pocket, pulled out the little velvet ring box, and set it on the table. “Will you marry me?”
Michelle’s eyes widened. “Oh my God,” she said. She pulled out of his grasp and knocked over her water glass as her hand flew up to cover her mouth. “Oh my God,” she repeated, and her eyes crinkled up.
A nice couple at the next table realized what was going on and they smiled encouragingly. Jack grinned back. As he mopped at the table, Michelle began to cry. He reached out to offer his napkin, but then realized that it was wet.
Michelle cried, and cried.
After a minute, Jack’s grin faltered.
She couldn’t seem to stop.
He reached out for her hand again, but she just shook her head and blubbered something through her tears.
“What’s this?” he said gently.
“I’ve been seeing someone.”
He stared at her, bewildered, a foolish grin still plastered on his face. “You’ve been going to a shrink?”
She shook her head, weeping. “I’ve been
seeing
someone.”
He sat there, frozen. After a minute, he heard words coming out of his mouth. “I know I’ve been busy at work and all…”
She shook her head again. “It’s nothing to do with you. I didn’t plan it. It just happened.”
“Michelle…” He reached out for her, but she stood abruptly, knocking her silverware off the edge of her plate. It clattered to the floor, causing several nearby diners to look over.
She grabbed her purse and fled.
“W
E JUST GOT A
report that he’s been sighted out at Rye Playland.”
“Huh?” Jack looked up, and then up higher, at Gary Daskivitch’s big frame planted in front of his desk in the Seven-six squad room.
“Sperry,” Daskivitch said. “Somebody called and said they spotted him on the water slide.” The detective shook his head. “This guy really gets around. So far he’s been spotted at Katz’s Deli, the top of the Empire State Building, and the ice skating rink in Central Park. What’s next: The stage of a Broadway show?” Daskivitch grinned, waiting for Jack to share his appreciation of all these nutty phone tips, but he just nodded absently.
“Okay,” he murmured. “Put somebody on that.”
Daskivitch’s eyes widened. “The
water slide
? Are you kidding?”
Jack frowned. “Sorry—I wasn’t paying attention.”
“You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
The young detective stared down at him, dubious, but then his phone rang and he turned away to his desk.
Jack sat gripping the metal arms of his chair.
Fine.
He shouldn’t have come in to work this morning, he knew that, but what was the alternative? To sit home wondering if Michelle was ever going to call him back?
Last night he had settled the bill at the restaurant, then gone out looking for her, but she wasn’t waiting by his car. And she wouldn’t answer her cell phone. She wasn’t waiting for him when he finally gave up and went home. He had thought of going by her place, but then he realized that if she wasn’t there, he didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to know anything more about what had just happened. It was impossible to believe; his mind just couldn’t accept it.
He had lain down on his bed, fully clothed, with all the lights off.
I’ve been seeing someone:
The words kept clanging in his head. He thought of old cartoons he had laughed at when he was a kid, Wile E. Coyote suddenly finding himself suspended in midair after running off a cliff, or Elmer Fudd coated in ashes, staring at the stub of an exploded cigar. All he wanted, all he really wanted, was to just wind back time a few minutes, a few frames, before he had lit the cigar, before he had gone over the cliff, before Michelle had dropped her sudden, utterly mystifying bomb. Before he had taken the little ring box out and set it on the table. He thought of that and was deeply embarrassed, and then hurt in a primal way, like a dog that has been hit by a car, and then a flare of anger snapped open inside of him, a raw liquid lava of fury. His fists clenched, and he felt a pain in the back of his head, and for a moment he thought he might be having a stroke.
Eventually his blood pressure dropped, but he was unable to sleep. At some point he had rolled over and glanced at the glowing green numbers of the digital clock: 3:27
A.M.
He knew he had to go to work the next morning, and he was angry all over again, pissed that Michelle was keeping him up so late on a work night, and he narrowed his focus to this small problem so that he wouldn’t have to think about the big one.
FOR A PARTY RENTAL
company, New Year’s Day was busy, but Michelle wasn’t at work this morning. He hated himself for doing it, but the first thing he had done when he reached the squad room was call her office. They said she’d called in sick.
Now he sat at his desk in the middle of the task force’s buzz of activity and forced himself to plod through a few small tasks, as if nothing had happened, but a strange torpor was sliding down over him. He pictured the face of the woman in Park Slope, the doctor’s wife, after he and Vargas had informed her of her husband’s death. He recalled the odd, inscrutable expressions that had slipped across her face, and her plaintive voice: “No, he’ll be back in a few minutes. He just went for a jog.”
HE WENT FOR A
jog, too.
At four o’clock, after his tour was over, he went home, but the silence and hollowness of the apartment were so overwhelming that he fled. Jumped into his sweats, grabbed his keys and cell phone, drove off to the park.
Once he hit the loop road, he moved forward grimly, hunching his shoulders, with keys clenched in one fist and cell phone in the other. He had called her ten times already, and he wasn’t going to call anymore—he had pledged himself that, not even if the world was about to end, because that small point of pride seemed to be all that he had left.
Seeing someone?
he thought as he set off down the road. Who? For how long? Where had they met? How had she kept it a secret? He considered himself a damn good judge of character—he had to be, in his line of work. How had he misjudged her so profoundly? It was impossible.
He moved on and he didn’t stop, even when his breath grew ragged and he developed a crick in his side. He didn’t want to ever stop, because then he would have to notice how shaky the world had suddenly grown under his feet.
A car horn bleated behind him and he looked up, startled. He was out in the middle of the road and a Parks Department pickup was trying to get by. Chastened, he veered back into the jogging lane. Overhead, the wind sifted harshly through brittle leaves. To his left, the late afternoon sun slanted across the surface of the little lake and filled it with a cold orange fire.
Jack ran.
LATER, WHEN HE WAS
filling up his post-run bath, he stopped the water because he thought he heard the front door open. He stopped breathing, too, and listened for a moment, then unclenched his body and turned the tap back on. She might still walk in any second, though, and he steeled himself for that, trying to anticipate what he might say or do. Maybe he would present her with an elaborate show of indifference. Or punch a hole through a wall.
In the hot bath, he lay back, playing their last conversation over and over in his mind. Had she even said she was sorry? He didn’t think so, but he couldn’t be sure. She certainly hadn’t made any effort to explain. And didn’t he at least deserve that much?
After his bath, he fixed himself dinner, making a production of it. He opened a bottle of wine, which had always seemed a waste during his solo days. He even made a salad, with lettuce she had bought, because he never would have bought it for himself. (She was always telling him he should eat more greens.) Grimly he chopped some carrots, then stopped because he thought he heard the door open again, but it wasn’t the door, and he slammed the cutting board on the floor in a fit of self-disgust. He left the chopped carrots on the linoleum
because fuck the carrots. And fuck health.
He had no appetite.
He carried his glass of wine into the front room. He glanced out the windows at the front walk, then took his cell phone out to make sure it was on.
I’m seeing someone.
Clang, clang, clang. He clenched his fists in another gust of rage.
Fuck her. I’ll change the locks. I’ll put her clothes on the cutting board and chop them into little pieces and throw them on the lawn.