Before
Frankie
“Don’t look so worried!” Brooks barks out a strange laugh that makes him seem completely fucking deranged. “We can help each other, Frankie. That’s why I’m here.”
“Brooks, you need to leave.” My voice is trembling. Sweat has gathered on my upper lip. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but you need to get out of my apartment. Right now.” I motion toward the door.
Space between us. That’s what I need. But Brooks doesn’t budge. And he’s still blocking my path to the door. I think again of Van.
“You were here earlier?” I ask, trying to distract him as I take a step back. I adjust my fingers on the handle of the knife, try to imagine using it. But my palms are damp. My grip could easily slip. “In my apartment this morning?”
“I’m here now so that we can both get what we want. You with Richard. Me with Gretchen,” he says, ignoring my question. “The second I realized it was you on that mountain, I knew. And then Richard got so fixated on you—and the answer was clear. You were the answer. To all my problems.”
“Oh my God. You knew the Senator?”
“The Senator, yeah.” He smirks. “Adam used to drink a lot. Back when we worked together at Sinclair, Williams. And he talked way too much,” he says, his mouth twitching. “Ironic, given the NDA.”
“You’ve been the one texting me?” A 508 area code could have been anyone. Anyone who knew I had good reason to be afraid of someone from Massachusetts. And I fell for it. I fell for the whole thing. No wonder he didn’t want to talk on the phone. Think. “Leave right now or I’ll call the police.”
Brooks smirks as he pulls a phone from the back pocket of his filthy-looking khakis.
My phone. I must have left it in the other room.
“That will be difficult without this.” He tucks it back into his pocket.
“I just need you to hear me out, Frankie. Then I’ll go.
” But the look on his face—even he doesn’t believe that.
I feel the scraper in my hand again. Brooks isn’t a big guy, but he could still easily overpower me. What if I miss? All of this seems much simpler in the movies. So certain and swift.
Think. Think. Think. Talk your way out of this, Frankie. Pretend you’re listening. “Okay, Brooks. What is it?”
“Richard.”
“What about Richard?”
“I saw you leave Richard’s, Frankie. I know you and he—”
“Nothing. He and I, nothing,” I say. “I was locked out. That’s all. Richard and I are just friends.” My voice is trembling.
“Friends,” Brooks snorts. “I was there on the mountain, Frankie. I saw it. We all saw it. He was infatuated—and so were you.”
“Nothing happened then, either, Brooks.” Although that isn’t the complete truth, is it?
He starts to laugh—too hard and too loud. “I want Richard’s wife, and you want Richard. It’s an even trade. We help each other. Everyone ends up happy.”
Sore loser. That’s what the tension on the mountain was about. Brooks wanted Richard’s wife. He still wants her.
“I don’t want Richard.”
“Yes, you do,” Brooks says. He shrugs. “You know what? Okay, fine. Let’s pretend you don’t.
We can still make some kind of arrangement.
Gretchen is hanging by a thread. All she needs is to hear that you two have had an affair and she’s going to leave Richard.
I know it. She just needs someone to say it—a woman, someone who’s not me.
I’ve been trying to tell her for years. Do it and then you can run off with some other guy, for all I care. ”
“Do what, exactly?”
“Call Gretchen and say you slept with Richard. Then I’ll leave.”
There’s no way he’s just going to go. I raise the scraper. “Get out, Brooks. Now.” He stares at it for a long moment. When he looks up, he does not seem surprised or afraid.
“Before you think of doing anything crazy with that—whatever it is you’re holding—I wrote an email that will send automatically to my wife tomorrow if I’m not around to stop it, explaining that you and I have been having an affair, you’ve been acting unstable, and you have a history.
If you know what I mean. So if anything happens to me, she’ll be sure you’re prosecuted. She is one vengeful bitch, trust me.”
“Leave, Brooks. Now.”
“Fine. Then how about money?” he goes on. “You and I both know you’re willing to do all sorts of things for money.”
“Did you push Van?” I ask.
He just stares and stares at me, his face chillingly expressionless, eyes empty. He doesn’t jump to deny or defend. He doesn’t do anything. It’s like he’s not even in there anymore. Like no one is.
I wave the scraper in front of me. “Get the fuck out of my apartment, Brooks.”
“I will, just as soon as you make one quick call.” He holds my phone out again.
But we both know he’s not leaving me alive to tell everyone the truth afterward.
Run. It’s my only option. I stare down at the phone in his hand and count—one one-thousand, two—
I launch myself toward the door. Sprinting across the apartment. Arms pumping.
I am knocked forward. My knees crack against the hardwood. And Brooks’s hands are on the back of my neck. Shoving me down against the floor, my face pressed to the side. But the scraper. It’s still in my hand. And I am just an animal. An animal about to die.
I shove back once with all my weight. But it’s no use. The rest is a blur. A struggle. Brooks shouts, “Knock it the fuck off!”
And then, suddenly, my arm is free for a second—one second—and the scraper knife is swinging. Swinging. I am swinging it. Until it sticks, sickeningly. With a wet, tearing sound.
Brooks freezes, grabs his neck. The awful gurgling sound he makes. The blood is everywhere.
And it’s all over me.