Chapter 45
Before
Frankie
Turns out, the management company had a set of keys to my apartment.
By the time I pick them up, Thalia has also called me back, offering to help.
But I can’t bear to return her call. If I hear her voice I’ll fall apart.
So instead of responding to her, I walk over to the East River, then south.
My thoughts keep returning to what I will do with Richard’s daughter’s surprisingly comfortable flip-flops—keep them, wear them, throw them out.
The comfort of minutiae is sometimes not small at all.
I walk all the way to the bottom of Manhattan and across the Brooklyn Bridge, watching the tourists ambling by in a steady stream.
Lives going on in the face of mine falling apart again and again.
Richard destroyed my paintings and trashed my studio—finally, the thought I’ve been avoiding sticks.
And then he swooped in to the rescue. Did he just get lucky with the Senator’s texts starting up again at the same time?
Richard couldn’t have been responsible for those.
No one knows about the Senator except Noah.
When I’m finally back at my building, I ask my elderly neighbor Hans to stand by while I double-check that the apartment is empty. He agrees, though he seems both suspicious and confused as he stands in the entryway in his dress pants and striped tank top.
“Okay, it’s fine. You can go,” I say apologetically when I’m done.
“You are sure?” he asks, scowling. This is the most Hans and I have ever spoken. I resist an overwhelming urge to hug him.
“Yes, thank you.”
After he’s gone and I’m finally home alone behind my closed apartment door, the levee breaks. I start to cry. I slide down until I’m kneeling on the floor, elbows against the hard wood.
There is nowhere left for me to go, and I am scared. Really, really scared. And so, finally, I call the police.
“You’re saying someone broke in this morning?” the operator asks, not attempting to hide her skepticism.
“Yes.”
“But they didn’t take anything? And you didn’t actually see anyone. And now they’re gone.”
“They were here,” I repeat. My voice is shaking.
“Okay,” the operator says. She may very well believe me, but she also doesn’t sound concerned.
“He’s been harassing me. He also broke into my art studio and trashed that.”
I’m pretty sure it was the Senator who broke into my apartment, Richard my studio. But what difference does it make if they are two different people? That’s the police’s job to figure out.
“Then there’s an open case. You should call those detectives directly.”
“I didn’t report the first incident.” A long pause. “It’s someone who—it’s an ex-boyfriend. He’s really angry.” I almost say it out loud: He raped me. I almost do. “I’m scared. Can you please just send someone?”
Maybe by the time they get here I’ll finally be ready to tell the whole story.
“I’ll put in a report,” she says, then lowers her voice.
“Listen, if they don’t show up within an hour, call back.
And maybe say there’s someone in your apartment right then?
You hear what I’m saying?” Lie—that is the point she is making.
Lie, when here I am finally trying to tell the truth.
“With a crime in progress, a car goes out right away.”
“Thank you,” I say. “I will.”
After I hang up, I manage to paint the rest of the day.
I am so amped on adrenaline, I don’t even notice that the police never arrive.
When I finish, I swear I’ve only been working a few hours, but it’s dark when I step back and see what I’ve been up to in the hours lost to my unconscious.
It’s a portrait of me. More realistic than anything I’ve ever done.
I’m sitting alone in the apartment, facing the windows, wearing my favorite painting overalls.
It could have been a mournful, lonely image.
But there is something strangely hopeful about it.
Almost celebratory—but quietly so, like a whisper.
I sit for a long time on a kitchen chair some distance away from the canvas, just staring at it.
I can feel my whole body unspooling. That person in the painting—she is going to be okay. She is okay.
I’ll call the police again. I’ll keep calling until someone comes. Until someone makes the Senator—and Richard, I guess—answer for what they’ve done.
I stand, raise my brush again to quickly smooth over one last overly harsh edge before I make the call. But then a creak right behind me, the floorboards.
I freeze.
Someone is there. In my apartment.
They’re already right behind me.