CHAPTER SIX

JAKE

Her call comes just seconds after the window curtain twitches.

“You left me a present.”

“It’s a thank-you for letting me in. I figured it would give you some peace of mind to know where I was and what I touched.”

“I didn’t let you in. You picked the lock!”

Her indignation makes me smile. I give her another wave and walk toward Hudson. We’re both on the West Side so I decide to walk back to my office rather than catch a cab. I need to clear my head and the exercise would do my leg good. “You let me in. Or at least you gave me permission by going to the bedroom.”

“So now you know all my secrets.” She sounds nervous, as if I’m going to start blabbing to reporters about what I saw in her apartment.

“They’re still your secrets. I’m hired to protect you, not to bring you more harm by revealing your secrets. That’s why we have a nondisclosure agreement.” As the sun warms my skin, I wonder what it’s like to be locked inside the four walls of an apartment. Does she open her balcony windows? How often does she feel the sun on her face or the wind in her hair? “Is the author thing a big deal?”

“Meaning will it hurt my sales if it is revealed that I’m not male? Who knows? I already don’t do book signings,” she sighs. “I didn’t want to use a male pseudonym because of where it got me before. I had to fight for the ambiguous first initial, but I knew if I used my real name it would be tainted by everything that had gone on in the past. I wanted the books to succeed or fail on their own. Not because people felt sorry for me or because they hated me for something other than my writing.”

“That makes sense. How many people know you’re M. Kannan?” That could narrow my suspect list considerably.

“Oliver. His parents. My therapist. My editor.” She ticks them off one by one. “There might be a few other people in the publishing house, but we also have a nondisclosure agreement and they’d pay hefty damages if they broke it.”

“But the resulting publicity could be good for them,” I suggest.

A foul stench hits me as I reach Hudson. Being indoors isn’t all that bad. Natalie’s apartment smelled like cinnamon and lemons.

“I don’t want to sound like an asshole, but we’re doing pretty well on the publicity part.”

A metro bus speeds by wrapped in an advertisement for the upcoming movie. “Good point. Do you think the note is from someone in your past or your current life?”

“Past,” she replies firmly. “It has to be. My life . . . it’s so small now and everyone in it is a friend. I can’t imagine someone I know and love doing this to me.”

Just because you don’t want something to be true doesn’t mean it isn’t. But I suspect she knows this. “If it’s someone from three or four years ago, then he has a real hard-on for you to be coming back after all this time. Can you make a list of the most determined guys who threatened you?”

“It wasn’t just guys. A few of the worst were women.”

That surprised me. “They threatened physical harm?”

“No, but they sent me other stuff. Women know how to hurt other women so well.” She pauses. “Will it be very difficult if I don’t want to delve into the past? I mean . . . yes, God, I did not like getting the note, and yes, it set me off, but digging through all that shit is only going to make me more stressed out.”

“Why don’t you have someone forward it to me?” My leg is starting to ache. I probably shouldn’t have planned to walk this far with this prosthetic. I’d traded out the blade for my normal device with the vacuum-sealed socket and the carbon foot. It’s not made for strenuous activity, such as walking forty blocks. And while I’m fairly comfortable with the fact that I’m walking around with a fake limb on my leg and arm, I don’t enjoy the looks of pity when I have to turn on my vacuum pump to adjust the fit of my socket. It’s noisy as fuck and it makes it harder to convince people that they really don’t have to feel sorry for me when I’m grimacing in pain because the damn device isn’t fitting well as my stump swells or shrinks.

I face the street to hail a cab.

“Can we talk about something else?”

“Like what?”

She takes a deep breath. “How about a picture of what you’re wearing?”

I look down at my jeans, Windbreaker, and T-shirt. “It’s not flannel. I promise.”

“No picture?” She’s disappointed. Maybe she wants to see my prosthetics. Did Oliver tell her? She never said a word before. When I meet women, it’s the first thing they check out. I don’t hide it, because if they’re turned off by the fact that my left hand and foot are made of steel, plastic, and synthetics, I’d rather know that up front than later when I’m taking my clothes off. But for some reason I don’t want to acknowledge, I don’t want the focus on those things just yet.

“I’m six feet three. Weigh about two sixty.”

She’s silent. Am I too tall for her? Too short? A cab stops as I’m scratching the side of my shorn head. Why do I care?

“So not a runner’s body?”

“I’m not sure what a runner’s body is.” That’s not the comment I expected. “Because I do run.”

“How long?”

“Depends, but usually about six miles a day.”

“Six miles?” she yelps. “That’s like half a marathon.”

I cover the phone and give my address to the cabbie who stops. Returning to Natalie, I correct her. “It’s a quarter of a marathon.”

“It’s a marathon compared to what I run.”

As if the distance is what’s offensive. Of all the things about me I figured she wouldn’t like, the fact I work out isn’t one of them. Most women like my body, if they can get over the stumps. They coo over my muscles and wonder how I can even have any on my left side. I’ve had more than one run her tongue over the ridges of my abdomen. The last woman I slept with—a financial reporter, whom I stopped seeing because she was a little too snoopy for my taste—told me that my physique and big cock made up for a lot of deficits. Come to think of it, I probably dumped her for more than a few reasons.

“You have a treadmill so how much do you run?” I ask.

“Three miles with no resistance either. I run flat with no incline.”

“Three miles is a lot.”

“I could never keep up with you.”

“Did you plan on racing me?”

“No, but it’d be nice to run outside.”

I’ve never run with a woman, never wanted to. But I could picture Natalie running beside me along the Hudson River, telling me I’m going too fast or too slow in her sultry voice. My jeans start to get a little tight and I shake my head. Getting turned on by just a voice is a first for me.

“If you go early enough, the route along the Hudson is pretty empty.” I rub my chin. Am I asking her to run with me? Maybe the cell phone radiation is scrambling my brains. This is probably the longest conversation I’ve had with a woman not in my family.

The cabbie stops at my townhouse and I hand him two twenties and climb out. “Keep the change,” I mouth.

“Yeah, man, thanks,” he says and his voice is an intrusion on whatever weird intimacy that Natalie and I had developed over the phone.

She senses it too, because she clears her throat awkwardly. “Gosh, look at the time. I can’t believe I kept you on the phone this long. I’m so sorry. You must think I’m totally friendless and weird. Anyway, um, send me a bill for this and whatever else.”

“Natalie,” I say gently. “I enjoyed talking to you.”