The Black Widow (2 page)

Alex never imagined, buying this house, that the underground bunker would ever be used for anything more than extra storage . . . and perhaps a conversation piece.

But then, there were a lot of things Alex never imagined back in those days.

Ordinarily at this hour Gaby would be forty-odd blocks south of here in her office on East 53rd Street, dealing with the usual deluge of Monday morning messages and e-mail.

As a senior editor at Winslow Publishing, she technically works only Monday through Friday, but some of her authors assume she’s available 24/7, in keeping with their own unorthodox work schedules. E-mails and voice mails pour in all weekend long, sometimes increasingly frantic ones. Gaby learned early on that there are very few, if any, true editorial emergencies that require weekend attention, though a couple of literary divas might beg to differ.

Today the office is closed for the holiday. Instead of tending to flooded in-boxes, she’s home, just pouring her first cup of coffee. According to the microwave clock it’s almost ten-thirty, which means she got . . .

Let’s see, that would be a whole five hours’ sleep—six, counting the first hour.

As always, she’d drifted off soon after climbing into bed at eleven, only to be jerked back to consciousness at midnight.

She wasn’t awakened by a thunderstorm, though they were in the forecast last night. Nor was she alerted by the incessant sirens, horns, and car alarms in the street four stories below—she’s accustomed to city noise, having been born and raised in Manhattan. And God knows it wasn’t Ben’s snoring that woke her.

Back when they lived together that never bothered her—a claim that flummoxed both Ben’s older brother and his former college roommate, who only half jokingly presented her with noise-canceling headphones at their wedding rehearsal dinner.

Back then she found the rhythmic sound of her husband’s snoring as soothing and reassuring as the warmth of his hand resting on her back as she drifted off. It wasn’t until later—toward the end of their marriage—that it filled her with rage.

How, she’d wonder, could he be sleeping so soundly, as if nothing had happened? It wasn’t fair.

His snoring, which wasn’t—and then was—a problem is no longer a problem. Not hers, anyway. Maybe it’s somebody else’s, in the new apartment he rented in their old neighborhood. Maybe it isn’t. Maybe he still sleeps alone, just as she does . . . when she actually manages to sleep.

It’s been years since she made it through a night without waking in the wee hours. Two and a half years, to be exact.

November twelfth—that was the day everything changed. The
night
everything changed.

The night Joshua died.

Her baby. Her beautiful baby with a cherubic face and a pile of soft black curls and round dark brown eyes so like her own and Ben’s—they looked alike, as so many married couples do, and so their son resembled both of them.

Gaby abruptly lifts the cup she just filled from the carafe. Coffee splashes onto the countertop.

She grabs a sponge to wipe it up right away. If she doesn’t, it’ll stain the ugly white laminate.

Her old kitchen, the spacious one in the last apartment where she lived with Ben, had granite counters. The polished stone never stained.

“See that?” Ben said when they first moved in. “This stuff is indestructible.”

“Nothing is indestructible.”

“Really? Look. You can set down a cookie sheet right out of the oven.”

She cringed when he did just that, with a steaming tray of those horrible freezer french fries he loved so much. But soon enough she, too, was putting hot cookware directly on the counter.

Then she moved in here, forgot, and did the same thing. Now there’s a faint scorch mark on the laminate that no amount of scrubbing will completely erase. Every time she looks at the scar, she thinks of those granite countertops, of Ben, of Josh . . .

And she remembers that nothing—
nothing
—is indestructible.

She tosses aside the sponge and lifts the coffee cup to her lips, sipping so that the cup won’t be so full. The liquid is hot—much too hot—burning the back of her tongue, blistering the roof of her mouth.

Perhaps it will leave another scar. No shortage of those around here.

Gaby carries the coffee away from the tiny kitchen alcove, past her unmade futon. When she moved into the studio six months ago, she promised herself that she’d fold up the pullout every morning and stash the bedding in the closet.

She hasn’t done it once. Why bother? No one but Jaz has ever visited her here, and that was only once, when her cousin insisted on coming to see the new place.

“It’s nice,
mami
,” Jaz said, handing over the potted plant she’d brought as a housewarming gift. “Tiny, but nice. With some curtains, some new furniture, pictures on the wall, it’ll be cute and cozy.”

Maybe. But there are still no curtains, new furniture, or pictures. There is, however, plenty of evidence of her hobby, her livelihood, her passion—though
passion
is a strong word for anything that pertains to her life these days. But she’s an avid reader, and an editor. The shelves in her apartment are lined with books, and there are stacks of them everywhere—towering on the tables, on the floor, and, precariously, atop the cardboard carton shoved into the corner.

Inside that box: a collection of Ben’s belongings. She never opened it, but she watched him pack it with his high school yearbook, old family photo albums, a few precious childhood toys, and his baseball card collection. Somehow it got mixed in with her belongings when they separated.

She’s always meant to call him and tell him that she has it. But that would mean opening the door that had slammed shut between them, and she hasn’t felt ready to do that yet.

The box is too large to tuck away on a closet shelf, and she’s not hardhearted enough to throw away his mementos, so there it sits, where she has to look at it every day, taking up four precious square feet of the apartment’s measly few hundred.

Gaby sinks into a chair by the open window, clutching her coffee cup with both hands, stifling a yawn. She got more rest last night than she usually does, but it still wasn’t enough.

An hour or so after drifting off she was awakened, as always, by a familiar stab of dread: the awareness that something was terribly wrong.

If only it had happened that night, November twelfth.

But back then she fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow and stayed that way until something tangible—the baby’s cries, the alarm clock, Ben, in the mood for wee-hour romance—woke her.

That night, she slept straight through, opening her eyes to bright light streaming in beneath the drawn blinds. Ben was snoring beside her, still with a half hour to go before the alarm would rouse him for work. Josh was in his crib in the next room.

The doctors, the marriage counselor, and her own therapist all said that even if Josh had been sleeping right beside their bed that night, he still would have died.

But what about the cold he’d had in the days before? The damned cold he’d caught from Ben, who got sick after he insisted on running the New York Marathon as planned, even though he wasn’t feeling up to it.

Some studies have linked the common cold with sudden infant death syndrome, others are inconclusive.

But all babies catch cold sooner or later.

Colds aren’t deadly.

Intellectually, she gets it: the very nature of sudden infant death syndrome is that it strikes inexplicably and without warning. You lay your baby down to sleep, never imagining that the next time you see him he’ll be stiff and cold, the way Joshua was when she wandered into his room to check on him that terrible morning.

Wandered—not rushed—because even when she woke up to find that he’d slept through the night, she wasn’t concerned. She took her time in the bathroom and detoured to the kitchen to start coffee before opening the nursery door, never sensing that anything might be wrong.

She thought he was sleeping, picked him up . . .

The horror, the utter shock of that moment, will never lose its grip on her soul. Never again will she wake up in the morning and assume that all is right in the world.

Things are different now, so different . . .

Now that she knows that terrible things happen in the night.

The test was negative.

As in
not pregnant
.

Alex tosses the white plastic indicator stick into the wastebasket, along with the packaging promising that it provides the earliest and most accurate over-the-counter test available, capable of detecting pregnancy hormones in urine several days before a missed period.

Maybe it’s just too early.

Maybe, in another day or two, with another test, there will be two lines in the little window just like on that happy day years ago—and the one before that.

The first time, Carmen—ever the pack rat—wanted to save that plastic stick, the one that confirmed they were going to become parents at last, after months of vainly trying to conceive.

“Are you serious? That’s disgusting! There’s pee on it!”

“I don’t care.” Of course not. Laid-back Carmen . . .

Alex turns abruptly away from the wastebasket and heads back downstairs and into the kitchen.

Hearing the door to the utility cupboard creak open, the cat materializes instantly, knowing that’s where his food is kept.

“What’s the matter, Gato? Are you hungry again?” With a sigh, Alex grabs a can of Friskies from the shelf, opens it, dumps it into a bowl, and sets the bowl on the floor. “You’d better eat it this time. Last time, you made a big fuss and then you didn’t even touch your food.”

Purring loudly, the cat promptly strolls over to the bowl and begins eating.

“How about some milk, too?”

Alex carefully opens and closes the fridge, covered in so many magnet-held crayon drawings that not an inch of door remains visible. “There you go. There’s your milk. Good kitty.”

It’s nice to have a pet in the house. That wasn’t possible back when Carmen was here, but now it doesn’t matter. Alex doesn’t have allergies, thank goodness.

Once Carmen was gone, Gato showed up meowing on the doorstep, almost as if he’d been waiting until the coast was clear.

“And I adopted you,” Alex tells the cat, “because that’s what people do when someone needs a home. They take them in and keep them and love them. Right?”

Gato seems to lift his head and nod in agreement.

Satisfied, Alex takes a flashlight from the utility cupboard, closes the creaky door, and descends the basement steps.

Everything—even the mildew smell—is similar to the way it was that first day the Realtor showed them the house. A treadmill and a couple of weight machines take up one half of the room. On the far wall, the one that has no windows, a tall bookshelf seems to have replaced the door that led to the bomb shelter.

But it hasn’t. Alex constructed it to conceal the door.

It wasn’t easy for someone lacking in carpentry skills, but thanks to the Internet, it was at least in the realm of possibility. All you had to do was Google the phrase,
How do you build a bookcase to hide a door?
and a list of instructional links popped up.

Alex crosses the basement, takes the last book from the row on a middle shelf, and pulls a camouflaged latch. The bookcase swings forward, rolling on castors concealed behind the bottom strip of molding. Alex opens the door to the underground bunker meant to protect a long-gone family from nuclear fallout that never materialized. The flashlight beam reveals the room’s lone occupant, huddled beneath a quilt on the cot across the room. The figure stirs, sitting up with a squeaking of bedsprings and a jangling of wrist and ankle shackles, squinting into the bright light.

“Bad news,” Alex says. “I thought you’d want to know. It was negative again. We’ll do another test in a few more days, but if it’s still negative . . . well, you know what that means, don’t you?”

No reply.

“All right, then I’ll remind you. It’s like I said in the beginning. You only get three strikes before you’re out. And just in case the next test is negative . . .”

Leaving the rest unsaid, Alex clicks off the flashlight and closes the door, moving the bookcase into place with a heavy sigh.

Back upstairs, Gato has vanished, and the food and milk sits barely touched on the floor where Alex left it.

“Hey! Where did you go?”

The cat is nowhere to be found, and now isn’t the time to conduct a thorough search. Not for the cat, anyway. No, it’s time to sign into the online dating account again and launch the hunt for a new prospective candidate. Just in case . . .

Chapter 2

On Tuesday morning Gaby arrives at work well before 7:00
A.M.
Last night was one of those nights when she couldn’t fall back to sleep after waking up, not even after taking an antihistamine for her allergies. She finally decided she might as well get an early start on the day after the long weekend.

The receptionist’s desk is deserted as she steps off the elevator on the twenty-sixth floor and unlocks the glass door with her electronic key card. She makes her way through darkened corridors, past rows of bookshelves holding recently published titles, cubicles housing assistants’ desks piled high with more books and manuscripts, and her colleagues’ closed doors.

She unlocks her own, flips on a light, and drops her tote bag on the lone guest chair. It usually doesn’t discourage coworkers from plopping themselves down there to distract her with chitchat once the day gets under way, but it never hurts to try.

She sits down at her desk with a large coffee and bagel she bought from the cart on the corner, same as she used to do way back in her entry-level days as an impoverished editorial assistant. Back then, as a recent City College grad, she was still living with Abuela, her Puerto Rican grandmother, in a tiny walk-up just off the Grand Concourse in the Bronx.

Later, when she was married to Ben, she upgraded to espresso and scones from various coffee chains. He made good money and encouraged her to spend it. Now that he’s gone . . .

Well, the comfortable lifestyle is by far the least of what she misses. But it was nice—while it lasted—not to worry about affording the daily basics on her publishing salary.

Their divorce agreement was straightforward, with virtually no shared assets and no custody issues. Her attorney cautioned her not to move out of their apartment and advised her to go after spousal support, among other things, but she just wanted it to be over as quickly as possible.

She doesn’t regret that decision. Lingering in dead-marriage limbo would have been even more excruciating than finding herself completely on her own again, seemingly overnight.

She sips her coffee and finds it too weak for her liking. That’s ironic. Most days it’s too strong.

All right, Goldilocks, time to get down to business.

Reluctantly turning her attention to her computer screen, she signs into her e-mail account.

It takes just over an hour to go through her in-box and address the issues that have arisen since she left the office Friday evening. She checks her voice mail, too, and returns a call to a British author who touched base yesterday wanting to brainstorm titles. It goes straight into voice mail: “I’m busy writing. Leave your number and I’ll call when I finish the bloody book!”

Gaby leaves a brief message, then hangs up and checks the clock on the computer screen. It’s still too early to return the other calls.

Now, while the office is still quiet, would be a good time to get some manuscript reading done, but first . . .

She logs into her InTune account.

The familiar logo pops up: a pair of musical notes—beamed notes, the kind connected by a bar across the tops—that have smiling faces. Jaz told her that the Web site had originally been created to match couples based on their musical tastes, just as other niche sites match them based on religion, income level, hobby—any number of societal subcategories. InTune has maintained its music-themed name and logo, but has since morphed into a mainstream dating site that seems to be favored by the vast majority of New York singles.

It takes Gaby three tries to remember the password. She’d changed it last night from the original one she and Jaz had created, worried that if her well-meaning but meddling cousin still had access to the account, she might use it to pose as Gaby, flirting with strangers left and right . . .

Which is the whole point of these sites in the first place, right?

But her style isn’t nearly as brash as Jaz’s. Plus, she’s looking for a very specific type of man.

“Oh, really?” Jaz said yesterday afternoon, after uploading the Central Park photos and helping her finish her profile. “What type is that?”

All right, so maybe she doesn’t know exactly what she’s looking for. But she definitely knows what she doesn’t want: a fling with a jerk who’s trolling around online for easy bait.

“Who wants that?” Jaz asked with an easy shrug. “Listen, we all want the same thing. Love. So come on . . . are you ready to let this account go live?”

“Not yet.”

“You’ll never be ready.”

“I will be. Just . . . let me get used to it for a few more days.”

“Why wait? The sooner, the better. Don’t you want to see how many guys you attract?”

“What if there are none?”

“With those pictures? Come on,
mami
, you know you’re beautiful.”

Beautiful?

There may have been times in her life when Gaby really did feel beautiful. A long, long time ago. Definitely when she was a little girl, and her daddy used to come home on leave to visit her at Abuela’s. He always called her “Bonita”—pretty little one.

But he went to Iraq and never came back. Not because something happened to him over there. No, he still sent e-mails from time to time—from Iraq, but later from Las Vegas, from Texas, from California. So far as she knew, he was still alive and well, safely back in the States. He just stopped visiting. Stopped calling her Bonita.

Right around the time she realized he’d left her behind for good, teenage Gaby decided her hair was too wild, her skin too dark, her hips too wide, and her features too exotic to conform to anyone’s idea of beauty.

Years later, when she and Ben fell in love, he complimented her all the time. Not just on her looks, of course. But it meant a lot, especially when she was pregnant and ballooning toward two hundred pounds, to see the desire in his eyes and hear him say sweet things without sounding sappy. Somehow, he managed to convince her that she was beautiful—and that he loved her, would always love her, no matter what.

Interesting that the two men in her life who professed their adoration eventually abandoned her.

So. Beautiful? No, she doesn’t think of herself that way.

But Jaz, ever her personal cheerleader, promised, “As soon as your dating profile goes live, guys are going to come crawling out of the woodwork.”

“Like
cucarachas
. Terrific.”

Her cousin rolled her eyes. “Only you would compare guys to cockroaches. What am I going to do with you, Gabriela?”

Leave me alone,
Gaby wanted to say.

But of course that’s not what she really wants.
Alone
has come to mean lonely.

Anyway, Jaz really does have her best interests at heart. She isn’t just a cousin, she’s the sister Gaby never had—though sometimes she also likes to act like the mother Gaby never had.

Jaz’s own mother, Tia Yolanda, had—along with Abuela—truly been the mother Gaby never had. Not since she was a toddler, anyway. Tia Yolanda and Gaby’s mother, Gloria, were sisters. Cruelly, the lupus that killed Gloria when she was just in her twenties also took Tia Yolanda’s life a decade later.

After that it was just Abuela looking out for both Jaz and Gaby, who have always,
always
, had each other’s backs.

And so, sitting here on a cloudy Tuesday morning, sipping watery coffee from a paper cup, Gaby signs into the dating Web site and finds that her profile has gone live. As Jaz predicted, a number of guys have reached out, interested in connecting. Like her own page, theirs only show first names.

Gaby skims through the messages, ruling them out one by one.

Jack: too pushy . . .

Greg: too boring . . .

Eli: too creepy . . .

And then . . .

All too familiar.

First the name catches her eye, then the postage-stamp-sized photograph attached to the response, which consists of only one line:
Fancy meeting you here.

Ben.

Online, a person can be anyone he or she wants to be.

That’s the beauty of these Internet dating sites. You can call yourself by another name, make up an exciting background and glamorous career, even use a photo-shopped head shot—within reason, of course. You don’t go and shave fifty pounds off your body or twenty-five years off your age, and you don’t claim to be a celebrity or a billionaire, because those are things you obviously can’t pull off once you meet someone in person.

But early on, when you’re trying to bait the trap, so to speak, you really have to offer something that will tempt anyone who comes across your profile.

The picture he just uploaded to his latest page on the InTune Web site hasn’t been digitally altered, but it is a few years old. In it he’s wearing a red sweater. He read someplace that a splash of red attracts the opposite sex when it comes to online photos.

The snapshot was taken a couple of Christmases ago, at his former in-laws’ home. He was thinner and more handsome then, still hitting the gym every day and getting a good night’s sleep every night, back before all the trouble started. He had more hair and fewer wrinkles—issues that can be easily remedied with the right imaging software.

Expensive
software—which he can no longer afford, thanks to
her
.

Thanks to her—his ex-wife, who left him for another man—he has to take a little white pill every morning. It’s an antidepressant that causes all kinds of fun side effects, like nausea, dry mouth, and headaches. And, the doctor warned him, even worse ones if he forgets to take it: crying spells, dizziness, even suicidal tendencies. So of course he takes it daily—thanks to her.

And thanks to her, and all the stress and heartache she’s wreaked upon his life, he didn’t even consider taking new pictures for his new online dating profile. When he looks in the mirror lately, he doesn’t like what he sees. When he looks at old pictures, he does. Case closed.

He leans back in his chair and surveys his latest profile.

Any eligible female who stumbles across “Nick’s” tall, dark, and handsome picture will most likely click through to read his questionnaire.

First, she’ll check out his age, thirty-one; his location, Upper West Side; his occupation, architect.

Already impressed, she’ll see that he’s never been married and has no children. That will most likely be met with approval because, really, who wants that kind of baggage?

Not me. Not most single people in their right mind.

With Nick Santana—that’s the name he’ll be using this time—a woman seeking an unencumbered man won’t even have to worry about pets. He lied that he’s allergic, to keep the crazy cat ladies away.

He couldn’t believe how many of those he found when he first entered the realm of online dating. It seemed like such a cliché until he started noticing just how many single women posted photos of themselves cradling kittens, or managed to work feline-centric answers into their questionnaires.

Nick Santana’s questionnaire just covers the basic favorites in every category.

Favorite Food: Italian. Who doesn’t love Italian food?

Favorite Movie:
The Last of The Mohicans.
An oldie but not ancient; suitably rugged, with both historic and literary appeal, plus a romance.

Favorite Music—

Someone clears her throat behind him and he jumps, startled. Turning around, he sees Ivy Sacks, the project manager, standing in the doorway of his cubicle.

“How’s it coming along?”

Ivy is referring to the spreadsheet that has, with a quick click of the mouse, replaced the dating questionnaire on his desktop screen.

“It’s . . . you know. Coming along.”

“When do you think it’ll be finished?”

“Soon. Very soon.”

“Good. I need to get it to Bill before he leaves on vacation at the end of the day.” She pauses. “How about you? Are you thinking of taking a vacation this summer?”

“Me?”

“You have three weeks coming. You know what they say—use it or lose it.”

“I’ll see,” he mutters. Thanks to his ex and all the money they racked up in legal fees for the divorce attorneys, he won’t be able to afford a vacation for a long, long time.

Still, Ivy lingers. “So how are things in the neighborhood? Any more excitement lately?”

“What? Oh—no. Not lately.”

He’d made the mistake of telling her about a drive-by shooting last month just a few blocks from his apartment in Howard Beach, and a break-in on a lower floor in his building. He’d figured that if he emphasized what a rough neighborhood he’d been forced to move to after the divorce, she’d take pity on him and maybe raise his salary. All he’d accomplished was to generate more topics for the small talk she likes to force on him.

“Everything’s been pretty quiet around the ’hood,” he assures her now.

“That’s good. Really good.”

For a moment she just stands there looking at him. Her expression is impossible to read.

“Anything else?” he asks, hands poised on the keyboard as though eager to get back to work on the spreadsheet.

“I was just wondering . . .”

When she trails off, he doesn’t prompt her to continue. He’s tempted to, because she might want to talk to him about a raise or promotion. Then again, what if she’s on the verge of asking him out?

This wouldn’t be the first time, since the divorce, that he’s gotten that vibe.

It’s bad enough that she sent him a friend request on Facebook. He ignored it, hoping she wouldn’t bring it up. She hasn’t. But he still suspects she’s interested in more than a professional relationship.

Not cool. Ivy is his supervisor. She’s also the only woman at the firm who happens to be roughly his age and single. Her facial features and build are far too angular for his taste, and she’s blond—so blond that her hair is almost white, her eyelashes and eyebrows invisible. He likes brunettes. It isn’t just Ivy’s looks that don’t appeal to him, though. He’s shallow, but not that shallow. Her retiring, overly earnest personality makes it impossible to imagine her ever kicking back and having the slightest bit of fun.