Ladykiller (5 page)

“One word about counseling cocaine addicts,”Tim said.
Reuben looked at him with great expectation.
Tim giggled. “It’s not what it’s cracked up to be.” He fell apart

laughing, rocking back and forth.
Reuben, after a moment, joined him with a huge belly laugh.
Rose looked bewildered.
Tim said to Rose, “It’s not what it’s
cracked
up to be.”
Rose finally got it.
Dr. Solomon, the tired and aging head of the center, came in and
stopped. He looked vaguely about, ever the academic surprised by the
real world. Tim got up to pour a cup of coffee. Reuben assumed a
blank expression. Rose was now laughing alone.
“Rose?” Dr. Solomon said. “Are you all right?”
Flustered, Rose took a moment to recover. She glanced at
Reuben, who faced ostentatiously away. “Reuben,” she said, “you crazy
old coot.” Reuben relented and chuckled at her.
“Megan,” Nita called, “let me show you something.”
Happy to be rescued and pleased that Nita wanted to see her,
Megan rose from the sofa and crossed the room to kneel at Nita’s side
as she pointed to a line in the file.
“Look, it’s Gloria Steinem and Susan Faludi,” Tim said. He and
Reuben howled some more.
Nita murmured to Megan, “To think I’ve got the overnight shift
tonight with Tim.”
“I can come in to keep you company,” Megan offered.
“No, thanks. You have schoolwork to do.” She shook her head.
“God, Reuben last night and Tim tonight. I don’t know which is worse
professionally. A burn-out like Reuben or a dilettante like Tim.”
“Nita, my dear,” Rose called across the room, “I do need to have
another little talk with you, if I may. My homeless ladies are all upset
about this serial killer. I don’t know what to tell them.”
“Fine, Rose,” Nita said. “Any time.”
Megan said softly to Nita, “Do you always solve everyone’s
problems?”
Nita said to her, equally softly, “It’s my curse.”
As the staff members settled down for the meeting to start,
Megan stayed kneeling next to Nita. Dr. Solomon smiled distractedly
and poured a cup of coffee. As Megan looked around the room, she
saw Reuben. He was staring fixedly at Nita.
Weeks ago, Reuben had taken snapshots of the two women at
work, much to their annoyance.
He had the Polaroids stuck on the dresser mirror of his
shadow-haunted apartment. Nita and Megan.
Now that his wife was dead and his two daughters had escaped to
the suburbs with their husbands, Nita and Megan were the only
women in his life.

Nita’s small studio apartment bespoke the scholarly life. Bookshelves
laden with weighty tomes filled most of the wall space, drinking in the
scant light from the two windows. Her desk, from its spot in the exact
center of the floor, dominated the apartment. Her computer dominated the desk. Books and papers were neatly piled next to it.

A narrow bed, meant for one, occupied a corner of the room.
Beside it, a small clock radio played moody, nocturnal jazz.
“We’ll be back with more soothing sounds for all you city folk in
need of soothing,” the announcer said in a mellifluous baritone that
echoed Miles Davis’ saxophone. “But first the news.”
Nita stood next to the room’s only bright spot, a large aquarium.
She stared at its colorful, darting denizens, their eyes blank, their
beautiful tails idly swishing through the glowing water. Carefully, Nita
sprinkled fish food upon the smooth skin of water. Never too much or
too little. Her fish were robust, happy, at peace. And so pretty.
“The death toll mounted to more than one thousand in the Peruvian earthquake...”
The fish tank was a perfect society. Regulated. Idyllic.There were
no surprises.
“A presidential commission declared that a cure for cancer lies
many decades away, if ever . . .”
Once, one of the fish at the crisis center’s similar tank had taken
ill and started attacking the other fish. With ruthless dispatch, Nita
had destroyed them all and started anew. She watched in delight as her
fish swallowed their crumbs, grateful.
“The latest in a series of brutal slayings in Manhattan has stepped
up the pressure on the police department for action.The police admit
they have no clues in the seemingly random series of killings.The latest victim of the .45-caliber killer was found early this morning—”
Nita turned abruptly and snapped off the radio. She grabbed her
coat and purse, and marched off to work, into the unforgiving night.

Ace strutted along the deserted overpass beside Grand Central Station. Below on Park Avenue, bright-eyed stampedes of cars swished,
moving to the rhythms of the city, rhythms that trilled inside Ace’s
head. He shouted.

He knew every one of their names. He knew everything about
them. He could see their faces. The dumb friendliness of Evelyn, a
tentative smile that slid very easily into fear.

Ace climbed onto the balustrade, spread his arms like a tightrope
walker, and took a step. The air from the speeding cars below
whooshed past him.

“Lucy Cristides,” he shouted. Lucy, sweet, pathetic, entirely out
of control. She might have even liked him.
Another step. Hard to maintain his balance. He swayed in the air
currents pushing up from Park Avenue.
“Kimberly Worth.”What a snotty bitch. She had looked at Ace as
if he were dog shit smeared on the sidewalk. Of them all, she deserved
to die the most.
Two more steps. Getting the hang of this now. He smirked in triumph.You only win by taking chances. The taillights of the speeding
cars shone like cinders.
“Lydia Daniels.” Ace actually had liked the hooker. Until he
scraped together the fifty bucks she charged for street trade, a brief
session in her room. He remembered how she had laughed as she
pushed him off her, laughed at his forlorn look, laughed at his mumbled apology. “I wish they were all like you. I’d have a lot more time,
wouldn’t I, darling?” she said as she got into her clothes and left to
meet Jackie Why. He should have done something to her then.
Women. They felt great, smelled great, moved great. And yet
they always ended up making him feel miserable.
And then came the ultimate woman. The ultimate ballbreaker,
the icicle queen, the number one dispenser of disapproval. He
shouted her name loud enough to shake his lungs, leaning his head
back and bellowing at the silver-pulsing sky.
“Nita.”
The sky shook.Ace realized he was teetering over the edge of the
balustrade, tilting dangerously above the relentless whiz of traffic below. He spun his arms like propellers. And then . . . and then . . .
righted himself.
He hopped jerkily down from the balustrade, onto the firm concrete safety of the overpass sidewalk. And he laughed maniacally, as
though hearing every obscene joke in the world for the first time.
Tonight, he knew, was Nita’s night.The next time he uttered her
name would be in person.Tonight.

The night outside Megan’s apartment had come to noisy life at this late
hour. She idly thumbed through the course catalog, circling possible
classes to take, sitting on her large bed in her bikini underpants and an
“I Love New York” T-shirt, drinking a Diet Coke, her menagerie of
stuffed animals around her.A car alarm on the street was whooping like
Curly in an old Three Stooges movie. No one, to be sure, was stealing
the rusty jalopy that contained the alarm.The pavement-shaking vibration of a passing truck had set it off. But for ten minutes, the Stoogemobile would torment the neighborhood. The wail of a police siren
sounded out on the avenue, completing the symphony.

In the ideal society, alarms and sirens would be unnecessary.
Megan, weary of the polysyllabic course descriptions in the catalog,
closed her eyes. Megan could see Nita describing the best way to
reorder urban society, watch the white-hot dedication transform her
lovely face as she talked. Nita’s words had an intense ring to them:
“People wring their hands and say,‘Nothing can be done.’ Nonsense. It
can be done.You’re doing it. I’m doing it, right here, right now.”

The couple in the apartment above began to make love. Megan
opened her eyes and looked at the ceiling.Their bed, directly over her
own, bumped and creaked like a ship in a hurricane. Megan had gone
to a party once in their apartment and had wandered into their bedroom, placing her coat on their noisy bed.

Megan sighed and tried to get back into the course catalog. She
turned the page. There was his name — Robin Tolner — attached to
the course on clinical methodology. A course she should take, and
soon. She would wait until the following semester when someone else
taught it.Why was Robin listed as teaching it now? He was supposed
to be taking his sabbatical this year, going to Peru to study the culture
of Third World crime and poverty. Maybe he had postponed it until
fall.

His wisdom and learning had nourished her for six delirious
months,introduced her to starry vistas beyond anything she had imagined. His passion for the mental gymnastics of academe had bedazzled
her. Robin Tolner had been everywhere and knew everything: the best
Thai restaurant in London, the best wine from Australia, the best
chamber ensemble in Vienna. He could ski like a champion. He played
Debussey on the piano with a master’s touch. And he had told her that
he loved her.

The plan had been for Megan to accompany him to Peru. She
would even have gotten credit as his research assistant. His wife and
two kids, certainly, would not go along.The dungheaps of South America were no place for a family. But a wonderful place for Megan and
Robin. “Everything’s cheap,” he had told Megan. “We’ll have servants.
They’ll bring us meals in bed.” She had laughed in naked delight.

Then, a few weeks later, Professor Robin Tolner told Megan that
seeing each other anymore wasn’t a good idea.After all, he was a married man. Robin had spoken and acted so coldly, as if he were a loan
officer come to foreclose on her home.

Several weeks later, Megan heard that he had taken up with
another student, a long-legged blonde named Lisa. Maybe Lisa would
be going to Peru.

The rhythm of the bed upstairs changed, got faster, more urgent.
Megan often wondered whether her neighbors had heard her and
Robin. Not that Robin ever made any noise. She remembered
how clinically composed he looked, in the middle of the wildest lovemaking, how he watched her appraisingly as she came.

Closing the course catalog and pressing it to her chest, Megan lay
back and listened. She could almost feel Robin, deep inside her.
“No.” Megan tossed the memories out of her head. She reached
for the phone and quickly stabbed out the number she knew as well as
her own name.
Nita’s voice answered, low and controlled, but it was only her
machine. Megan listened to the message but hung up without a word.
She had forgotten that Nita was working tonight. If she left a message,
Nita would think she was scatterbrained. And of course, she wouldn’t
disturb Nita at work.
Once, after two glasses of wine, Megan had made the mistake of
confiding in Nita her affair with her married professor. Nita slashed
Megan’s psyche with two searingly accurate comments: “He probably
wears leather patches on his elbows.” He did. And: “If it were me, I’d
have killed him.” She wished she had.
The bed upstairs bucked so much it threatened to crash through
Megan’s ceiling. A siren went screaming past her window. Who
knows? Maybe another Ladykiller murder? Megan held the catalog
tightly against her and brought her knees up. At least her neighbors
had each other to hold against the terrors of the night. Megan worried
about Nita, out in it alone.

Reuben was there already when Nita arrived at work. With the desk
lamp shining across his face, he looked like a gargoyle, his enormous
nose casting a misshapen shadow on the wall.

“What are you doing here, Reuben?” Nita asked as she hung up
her coat.
“Tim needed to switch,” Reuben rumbled. He hadn’t taken his
gaze from her from the second she had entered the cavernous room.
“How nice of you.” Nita sprinkled fish food into the tank and
studied the creatures’ movements.
Reuben pulled himself to his feet and lumbered toward her.
She left the tank before he got there and sat at her desk. She
busied herself with the in-box.
After a moment, Reuben turned to her, “Can I ask you a personal
question?”
Her answer came before he finished his final syllable: “No.”
Reuben nodded dumbly and his fleshy face drooped. He shuffled
back to his desk, where he sat mulling what to say next. “I’m really
glad you’re here. Good thing they put two people on duty. These
phone calls.” He shook his head and chuckled. “Some nights, you need
somebody sane to talk to.”
“Just some nights?”
Reuben roared with laughter, as if this were the world’s best
punchline.
“You know,” Reuben said, still chortling, “sometimes I wonder if
I’m on the wrong end of the phone. I guess it takes one to help one,
huh?”
“Whatever,” Nita said absently.
But Reuben, convinced he was getting through to her, warmed
up his best material. “Hey, do you know the difference between an
oral and an anal thermometer?”
She turned a page in a diagnostic report.
“The taste,” Reuben brayed. His guffawing echoed throughout
the large room. His merriment subsided when he realized she was
ignoring him. Chastened again, he tried another tack: “Say, how’s the
thesis coming?”
“It’s coming.” She still was absorbed in the paperwork.
“Good, good. I was figuring that some night when you weren’t
working and you didn’t have to write the thesis, you and I . . . uh,
well. Do you like movies?”
She finally met his eyes. “I used to. Bergman, mostly. But I don’t
have time any more.”
“Well, uh, maybe when you did . . .”
“I never have time,” she said.
“Sure, sure.We wouldn’t have to go to a movie. Maybe a cup of —”
“I don’t have time for much of anything lately, Reuben. Excuse
me, but I want to finish this report.”
“Oh.” His face hung in folds of misery.
The phone rang and he snatched it quickly, eager for a distraction. “Crisis center. Can I help you?” As he talked, he furtively
watched Nita. “Okay . . . Yes, those could be some of the early symptoms. Are you still using intravenous drugs?”
Another phone sounded. Nita sighed, straightened some papers,
and gracefully picked up the receiver. “Crisis center. Can I help you?”
She knew the caller’s identity even before he spoke, knew from his
breathing.
“I’ve been waiting to talk to you,” Ace said softly. “You know who
this is, don’t you?”
Nita tensed. “Of course I do.What can I do for you tonight?”
“I want to talk to you.”
“Couldn’t it wait until morning? Aren’t you scheduled for a
counseling session?”
“I don’t need counseling,” Ace said angrily. “I need you. I need
you to talk to me.”
“Well, you understand we’re
all
professionals here to help you.
Any one of us could —”
“Bullshit,” Ace shouted. “I need you. I love you.You know I do.”
He slid into anguish.“If it wasn’t for you, I’d ... I don’t know . . . Explode or something.”
“Look, I could get you in to see a therapist right now. Someone at
the free clinic who is open at this hour.You —”
“No. I don’t need to see anyone else. I
need
you. Can’t you understand that?”
Nita gripped the phone hard. “I’m
trying
to help. I just don’t
seem to be doing you any good.”
“Why can’t we be friends?” Ace exclaimed with growing excitement.“That’s what I want.That’s what I need.That’s all. Just friends.”
“Certainly. I am your friend. Don’t I talk to you like a friend?”
Reuben, muttering into his own phone, watched Nita.
“I know, I know,” Ace said. “But I want to see you.That’s all. Just
to be with you for a minute. Right now.”
“You can’t.” Nita’s voice was hard. “That’s not possible. I’m sorry,
but you can’t.There are rules that —”
Ace interrupted her, intense, almost whispering, maniacal: “I
can, too. I can get in there. I’m
close
to you.Very close.”
There was a pause. Nita replied slowly, with authority: “Listen.
You get hold of yourself. The center’s closed except for the hotline.
I’m not going to talk to you if you say things like that.You know the
rules.”
“Okay, okay,” Ace said softly, suddenly contrite. “I’m sorry.”
Nita licked her lips, the tension within her contained. “That’s
better.”
“I’ll do whatever you say,” Ace said, miserable. “I’m sorry.”
“Now, why don’t you get some sleep. Come by for the session tomorrow and —”
But Ace hung up on her, smashing the receiver violently into its
cradle.
Nita winced at the noise. Carefully, her mind a jumble of
thoughts, she hung up. Then she stood and grabbed her purse. As she
turned, she almost bumped into Reuben, who held out a cup of coffee
for her. She was startled.
“God, the nuts in this city,” Reuben said. “Why didn’t you give
him to me? I’d get rid of him for you.”
“He hangs up on everyone else but me.”
Nita took the coffee, but her hands were shaking. Some of the
coffee slopped onto the floor. She started past Reuben.
“Hey, are you all right?” Reuben, concerned, followed her as she
walked.
“Listen, I’m a bit shaken up. I’m going home. I’ve never done this
before, but I suspect this will be a quiet night. I’ll spell you for another
shift, whenever you want.”
“Fine. No problem.” He frowned. “Hey, you shouldn’t be walking
home alone. I’ll walk you.” Reuben was surprised — and secretly
pleased — at Nita’s sudden vulnerability.
“No, thanks, Reuben. I’m going now. It’s just a few blocks. I walk
it all the time.”
“Seriously. I’ll go with you. I’ll turn on the answering machine
and call them back later.These wackos can wait a few minutes.”
The phone rang before she could reply. He looked at it, then at
Nita.
“Damn it, Reuben,” Nita said angrily. “You can’t leave. People out
there need you.”
She disappeared down the hall. Her footsteps receded hollowly.
Reuben looked anxiously after her as he reluctantly picked up the
phone.
“Crisis center. Can I help you?”