She Wanted Me To Have It
I didn’t believe her. I told her I did, but I didn’t. She smiled at me in a half-hearted or perhaps a whimsical way and said, ‘thank you.’ She whispered the two words to me and looked away. Her soft hair, straw colored and wavy, veiled the side of her face in a cascading shade of brilliance as she looked down at her hands.
I felt a surge of male adrenaline. Here was a woman who just a year ago was one of the up and comings of our group, a bright and shining star. One trip to Rome and she came back a recluse. Now she sat before me, a damsel in distress or that Victorian lady, even the mad Ophelia. I once pictured myself (me and several men of our mutual acquaintance), falling in love with her. She published in the New Yorker before she graduated from college; she contemplated a job at The Washington Post and she just a year ago, all blogs, rags, newspapers and magazines were ready to publish her journalism. She was a like a dog with a bone when pursuing ‘the truth’ and everybody wanted her.
That was a year ago. Now this up-and-coming journalist was soliciting help from me in a busy bistro in New York. From me! And looking like a girl from a 1940s golden Hollywood film, telling me stories about the supernatural. Things I used to laugh about in catechism class at age 8. This is the 21st century. My Baby-Boomer father would have succumbed to her soft strength, I did not. I pocketed my anxiety about her, along with my surge of Freudian awareness, paid the bill and walked away.
She was a third generation fallen away Methodist, for Pete’s sake. What was she doing holding onto a crucifix and asking me questions for? When we were sophomores in college, we were lovers for a brief time and afterward we would laugh at the moralist who would shake their finger at us. No moralist shook their finger at us, but still it was something to laugh about.
So, I left her there, at the cafe. I paid the bill and asked if she needed any money. She shook her head and wouldn’t look at me. “Thank you, Michael,” she said again. A bum found her the next day, cold and dead. The police questioned me and determined that I was the last to see her alive–outside of her murderer.
I did not kill her.
I did not.
I was at a party that night, celebrating my best friend’s engagement to a wonderful woman; strong, long legged, and well put together. She an attorney and he an up-and-coming doctor. Neither of them beyond child-bearing years, despite the time it took for them to fall in love between their accomplishments. Does that sound cynical?
I can still see her, living, breathing and frightened, sitting across from my incredulous self. “Michael, nothing is certain. Have some faith in me. I’ve seen hell, please help me. You’re the only one I know who was religious. Help me! What I saw was real. He snapped her like a twig and rose several stories. He looked right at me while he killed her and smiled. I know he is here. I left Rome right away, but he is in New York.”
“I want to help you,” I said, reaching forward squeezing her delicate hands. I was sincere. Her hands, warm to my touch but only because they had held the warm paper coffee cup. She looked frail, suffering. I told her to stop, to leave it alone, but would she listen to me? No, she had to know the truth. What truth? That such things existed, that the boogeyman was walking about New York, jet setting to Rome and picking his victims at his leisure around the world? And since when did she worry about crime stories, the money and fame were in social issues, everyone knew that.
She was broke when she died. It shocked me; I mean, she had money. Her parents found old stuff in her apartment; rosaries, history books that looked handwritten, stuff that should have been in a museum. Her parents couldn’t understand why she would have such superstitious things around her.
Don’t think me a total brute, please. I would have taken her with me the night of the engagement party, fed her, introduced her back into the fold of our mutual friends, even though she looked a walking scarecrow, but she said no.
Anyway, so I’ll talk to this priest who called me and let it all go, get back to my life. He said he got my number from her. I will not wreck my life running after things that drive a sane person mad and raving about guys who levitate and break necks. Demons left the world with leprechauns and the fairy queen, right? I’ll get this Roman Catholic priest off my back and walk away. I’ve had it with thinking about it.
Yeah, she made me take the rosary she was carrying. She said she worried about me being seen with her. I took it; she wanted me to have it.