“Then she asked if I’d driven him to it, if a part of me liked the idea…liked to picture him…” Stephanie’s throat closed up and she shook her head and looked at me. “She asked if I even knew what David…liked, if he talked to me about what he did with his women. With her. If he ever did those things to me. She said she’d tell me about it, if I wanted. She said she’d teach me.”
My stomach twisted and my neck prickled with cold sweat. Stephanie sniffed, and drank some water. “There was more, but I think you get the drift.”
“What did you do?” I asked.
The little smile came again, and lingered. Stephanie’s eyes held mine. “She was sitting there, smiling, so beautiful…it was hideous. She was hideous, and I wanted to kill her. I wanted to hit her with something, or wring her neck, and if I’d had a gun then, I would have shot her right there.”
My mouth was dry and it was hard to get the words out. “What did you do?” I asked again.
Her laugh was bitter and angry, an echo of a more familiar Stephanie. “What I did was cry, John. I cried like an infant and I ran out of there. I ran until I found a taxi, and I cried all the way home.” Stephanie shook her head and wiped a hand across her eyes.
“When did you see her again?”
“I didn’t.”
“Never?”
Stephanie squinted at me. “Never.”
“You didn’t fight, there in her apartment? You didn’t hit her?”
“No, for God’s sake. I wish I had slapped her- I wish I could’vebut I didn’t touch her.”
“There was no violence?”
She sat up and her face hardened. “I said I never touched her.”
“Did you threaten her?”
“I…I was angry. I yelled and cursed and told her to leave us alone. I might have said some other things-”
“What other things?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Did you threaten to harm her? To-”
“I told you, I don’t remember everything I said.”
I nodded. “Did she have any signs of injury that you saw? Any bruises or cuts?”
She squinted again. “No, nothing like that.”
“What else did she say to you, besides the questions?”
She shook her head. “That was all. There was nothing else.”
I looked at my notes. “Did you tell David what you’d done?”
“I…I was embarrassed.”
“Did her calls stop?”
“I don’t think she called here again, but it didn’t seem to help David much. He was worse than ever, almost panicked. I didn’t know what to do, and then he went to you.”
“How did you know about that?”
Stephanie stared at the rug. “I saw you together, at breakfast. I…followed him.”
“You’ve been doing a lot of that.”
She colored again. “I’m not proud of it. I was frantic- I didn’t know what was happening to him, or what to do. Then I saw the two of you, and I thought that you were involved somehow with all this- that you had somehow dragged David into it. I don’t know- I wasn’t thinking straight.” She looked up at me. “It was pitiful, I know.”
I took a deep breath. “Tell me about that Tuesday,” I said.
“Which Tuesday?”
“Three weeks ago yesterday. It would’ve been the Tuesday after you saw Holly- the day before you saw David and me at breakfast. Take me through that day.”
And, with starts and stops and stumbling, she did. Like David, she’d spent much of that day downtown- in and out of her office, at meetings, and on conference calls. And as with David, it was her after-work hours that were more difficult to account for. Presumably, there were people from her yoga class who could testify to her presence there, but would the clerks in the shops on upper Madison recall her- another well-dressed woman who’d browsed but hadn’t bought? Would they swear to it in court? And then there was her trip to the movies.
“I walked down to Seventy-second and Third. I was supposed to meet Bibi Shea, but I wasn’t in the mood, so I called her and canceled.”
“So you were by yourself at the movies?”
“I didn’t feel like talking.” Shit.
“You walked there?” Nod. “It was a cold night.”
“I wanted the air.”
“Did you pay cash for the ticket?” Another nod. “What was the film?” Stephanie told me the name, and the time she thought the show had started, and the time it had gotten out. She didn’t remember the previews. “Did you see anyone you knew?”
“No.”
“What was David doing all that time?”
“As far as I know, he was home. He was here when I left, and here when I got back, asleep- or passed out.”
I paged through my notebook and ran her through the dates and times once more. Then I looked up.
“Besides her questions, what else did Holly say?”
She shook her head. “You asked me that already, and I told youshe didn’t say anything.”
“She didn’t tell you anything?”
Stephanie shook her head impatiently. “No.”
I took a deep breath. “She didn’t tell you she was pregnant?”
Stephanie’s brows came together and her lips pursed. “No,” she said after a while.
“The police dropped that on us yesterday. David didn’t mention it?”
Stephanie touched her fingers to her neck. Her smile surprised me. “It must’ve slipped his mind,” she said, and she chuckled bitterly.
“They want to know if he could be the father. And I imagine they’re wondering how you would’ve reacted to that news.”
“Did David have an answer?”
“He said it wasn’t his, and that if Holly had said so, you wouldn’t have believed it.”
“He wasn’t lying about that; I wouldn’t have believed it.”
“Because he’s sterile?”
Stephanie’s brow went up and she nodded slowly at me. “It’s not the word the doctors used, but it amounts to the same thing. His sperm count is low, and the few that he has don’t swim, and they die if you look at them funny. He told you?”
“David doesn’t tell me much. I guessed.”
“We got tested a few years ago. We’d been trying and…” She shook her head.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?” she said quickly, and her eyes narrowed. “Clearly, it’s worked out for the best.”
I paged through my notebook one last time. Stephanie stood and dug a brown plastic bottle from the pocket of her jeans. She popped the lid, and tipped a white pill out.
“He’s got vodka; I’ve got Ativan. But at least mine’s prescription.” She put the pill on her tongue and drained her glass and set it on an end table. “Are you through?”
“I am,” I said. But Stephanie wasn’t. She folded herself in the chair again and looked at me.
“Did he say anything about why?” she asked.
“Why?”
“Why this whole thing. Why these women? Why the lying? Why he’s bound and determined to turn his life- our lives- into shit?” Her voice was firm and steady, as if she’d rehearsed her questions. She didn’t wait for an answer.
“You know what surprised me as much as finding out about the women? It was realizing that David wanted me to find him out. He was like a kid with a secret, squirming to tell. I don’t know if he wanted to see what I would do- if I would get mad, or leave, or forgive himI don’t know what he wanted. I just know there’s a part of him that’s been waiting for all this.”
“For all what?”
“For this. For some kind of punishment.”
“Punishment for…what?”
“You think I understand it?” she said, shaking her head. “But he’s been this way as long as I’ve known him- one part thinking that he’s forever been shortchanged, and another that thinks any good thing that happens is more than he deserves. And that’s the part that’s been waiting- to get caught, to be punished.” Stephanie closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. “It’s a twisted quid pro quo with him: every good thing matched with some self-inflicted pain. I should have known something big was coming when he finally got the M and A job.” She looked up and studied my face.
“You have no clue, do you?” she asked. I shook my head. “Of course you don’t- how could you? All you Marches, in your own little worlds.”
“Have you talked to David about this?”