Under My Skin

“Yeah,” I lie (again). “I’m okay.”

* * *

Detective Grayson agrees to meet me in Washington Square Park for lunch. So around noon I head out. The coolish autumn morning has burned off into a balmy afternoon as I grab a cab to avoid even worrying about the hooded man.

The normalcy of the morning—emails and the ringing phone, conversations about understandable things like contracts and wire transfers—has washed over the chaos of yesterday and last night, my dreams where they belong, the grainy, disjointed images faded into the forgotten fog of sleep. I don’t have the urge to look over my shoulder every moment as I make my way under the triumphal Washington Square Arch and into the park. My chest loosens and breath comes easier. Grief and trauma, I remind myself, are not linear experiences. There are good days and bad ones, hard dips into despair, moments of light and hope. My new mantra: I’m okay. I’m okay.

Grayson sits on a shady bench near a hot dog vendor, by the old men playing chess. He already has a foot-long drowning in relish, onions, mustard, ketchup and who knows what else. It seems to defy gravity as he lifts it to his mouth. A can of Pepsi sits unapologetically beside him. No one else I know would even dream of drinking a soda, in public no less. It’s one of the things I like about him, his eating habits. It reminds me of Jack. Jack and I would be walking home from a client dinner that had consisted of tiny salads and ahi poke with some slim, fit photographer who turned in early so he could make a 6:00 a.m. yoga class, and Jack would make us stop at Two Guys Pizza, where he’d scarf down two slices.

God, when did people stop eating? he’d complain.

I grab a similarly gooey dog, and take my place beside Grayson. He grunts a greeting, his mouth full. He’s sporting his usual just-rolled-out-of-bed look, dark hair a mop, shadow of stubble. He’s wearing a suit but it needs a trip to the dry cleaners, his tie loose, a shirt that has seen better days. Still, there’s something virile about him, maybe it’s the shoulder holster visible when he raises his arm, the detective’s shield clipped to his belt.

The leaves above us are bold in orange, red, gold, but they’ve started to fall, turn brown. I dread the approaching winter, the holidays where I imagine I’ll drift between Layla’s place and my mother’s, a ghost—people giving me tragic looks and whispering sympathetically behind my back.

Jack and I used to have our whole ritual. We’d put the tree up by ourselves the weekend after Thanksgiving, have a big party for all our friends. On Christmas Eve, we’d go to my mother’s house, where she would show off whatever new man she was dating, drink too much, then try to pick a fight with me—honestly because I think it’s the only way she knows how to connect. We’d spend Christmas Day at our place with Jack’s mother, Sarah. We’d plan the meal for months, then hang around in our pajamas all day—cooking, watching movies, playing Scrabble. It was my favorite day of the year.

Last year, just months after losing him, I couldn’t even get out of bed. The holidays passed in a grief-stricken blur with the phone ringing and ringing. Layla, Mac, my mother coming by to try to coax me out of bed.

It was Mac who finally got me up, convinced me to come to join them for Christmas dinner. “We’re your family,” he said, pulling open the blinds. “You belong with us. I know it hurts but there’s no way out of this but through. Show the kids that you’re not going to let this crush you. Show them that they’re not going to lose you, too.”

Guilt. It works every time. He offered his hand, which I took and let him pull me from bed and push me toward the bathroom. As I ran the shower, I heard him call Layla, his voice heavy with relief. “I got our girl. She’s coming.”

It seems like yesterday and a hundred years ago.

“Funny you called,” says Grayson now. He’s prone to manspreading so I leave a lot of space between us.

“Oh?” I take a big messy bite of the hot dog, and try not to spill anything on my shirt. Yellow mustard and white silk are not friends. Actually, white silk is no one’s friend. Wearing it is like a dare to the universe: go ahead, bring it on—coffee, ketchup, ink—I can take you.

“I’ve got something maybe.” He does this thing, a kind of bobblehead nod. “Maybe. Might be nothing.”

There’s a file under his Pepsi can.

“They brought some punk in this weekend for armed robbery,” he says when I stay silent. I wait while he devours that dog in three big bites. It’s impressive. He wipes his mouth with gusto, maybe building suspense.

“Perp was caught in the act, more or less. A couple of uniforms brought him down as he exited the bodega in the East Village. I think he got like two hundred bucks if that. Anyway, he tells the arresting officers that he knows something about a murder in Riverside Park last year, so they call me in.”

My whole body goes stiff; my appetite withers. Putting the hot dog in its paper tub beside me, I try not to think about that dark day, not let the barrage of images come sweeping in. But it’s a flood, the uniformed officers in my lobby, the cold marble as I sank to the floor, the gray interrogation room. Weird details like a ringing phone that no one picked up, the scent of burned popcorn somewhere in the station.

“I’m sorry,” he says. He rubs at the stubble on his jaw. “I knew this was going to be hard.”

He’s watching me with a kind of curious squint. It’s warm, but it’s knowing. Dark brown eyes, soft at the edges, heavily lashed like a girl’s. He’s taking it all in, filing it away—the moments, the details, the gestures, things said and unsaid. There’s something sad in that gaze, and something steely. I wonder if I could get it. If I had a camera in my hand, could I capture everything his eyes say. Sometimes there’s not enough light; sometimes there’s too much. Some people you just can’t get. They won’t let you.

“I’m okay,” I lie (again). It’s the easiest lie to tell because it’s the one people want to hear the most. That you can take care of yourself, that they don’t have to worry. Because in a very real sense, they can’t help. Most of the time, we’re on our own.

He tosses the tub, the napkins, into the nearby trash can and lifts the file. It looks small in his thick hands. He picks at the edge with his thumbnail, opens it.

“Anyway, this mope says he knows a guy who claims to be a killer for hire. For a thousand bucks, he’ll kill anyone with his bare hands.”

The words sound so odd, so ridiculous. I nearly laugh, like people laugh at funerals, the tension too much.

“My guy, the armed robber, let’s call him Johnny for the sake of clarity, was on a bit of a bender, so his memory—it’s cloudy. Johnny says he met this killer for hire at a bar, and the guy got to bragging. I brought a healthy skepticism to the situation, naturally. But I gotta admit some of the details fit. Like, he knew Jack only had five bucks on him, that the assailant smashed Jack’s phone to a pulp. Little things that weren’t out there in the news.”

“So,” I say, feeling shaky and strange. Those few bites of hot dog are not agreeing with me. “You got a name? He’s in the system? Saw if the DNA matched?”

Detective Grayson shakes his head, leans forward.

“No name. Johnny didn’t know the guy’s name, street-smart enough not to ask. But he gave the sketch artist a description. It matches accounts of a man witnesses saw fleeing the park the morning Jack was killed.”

I appreciate how he often uses Jack’s name, doesn’t call him “your husband” or “the victim.” I feel like he knew Jack, that they might have been friends. The detective is exactly the kind of guy that Jack liked—smart, no bullshit, down-to-earth.

Grayson hands me the file and I open it. The black-and-white pencil drawing stares back at me, full of menace. Head shaved, wide deep-set eyes, thick nose, heavy brow. There’s something about it, something my brain reaches for, but then it slips away. It’s like when I try to force myself to remember those missing days. There’s trulynothing there, just a painful, sucking dark.

“Anything?”

I shake my head. “Nothing. I don’t know him.”

“Johnny says he was a big guy, maybe 6 feet, well over 200 pounds. Ripped, thick neck, big hands.”

There’s that familiar tightness in my chest, that feeling that my airways have shrunk when I think about him out there. I imagine Jack lying on the path. I see wet leaves and blood, the curl of his hand on the pavement. I’m sorry. I should have been with you.

“He’d have to be big, right?” My voice catches. “To overpower Jack.”

Detective Grayson puts a hand on my forearm, easy, stabilizing.

“It’s something,” he says softly. “The first something in a while.”

“A killer for hire.” The words don’t feel right in my mouth. “A thousand dollars. To kill someone.”

“The random mugging,” he says. “It never sat right.”

“But who would hire someone to kill Jack?”

He takes a swig of his Pepsi. “You tell me.”

“No one,” I say. It sticks in my throat and I cough a little. “Everyone loved Jack.”

Grayson pulls himself out of his constant slouch, twists a little like he’s trying to work out a kink. I notice he’s saved a bit of his hot dog bun, has it clutched in his hand. He tosses it, and a kit of pigeons clamor, their pink-green-gray feathers glinting in the sun.

“I’m going to go over all my files again tonight,” he says. “See if this new information sheds light on anything old. We’ll find this guy. And when we do, maybe he can answer that question.”

We’ll find this guy. “How are you going to find him?”

“I went to the place where Johnny says they met,” says Grayson. “They’ve got the sketch up behind the bar. Patrol in that area is on the lookout.”

It seems impossible that you could find someone that way, just hoping they come back to a place they’ve been. And anyway, there’s that part of me that thinks: What does it matter if we catch him? Jack is not coming back. Not even if the guy, whoever he is, gets caught and goes to the electric chair. What does it fix? Nothing changes.

I imagine a trial that drags on, a conviction, or not. Years and years of appeals, tied up in more rage, misery, grief. Jack wouldn’t like it. Let it go, he’d surely say. Everyone dies, somehow, someday. Don’t let this eat whatever’s left of your life.