Ghosts of Bergen County (7 page)

“Who are you looking for?”

Mary Beth looked down, where a girl in pigtails stood squinting up at her. She was one child, by herself, no one Mary Beth knew or thought she knew. She clutched her phone in her fingers. “Catherine,” she said.

“Oh.” The girl squinted harder. “Who's Catherine?”

Mary Beth realized her face was contorted. She could feel it now, as the girl regarded her. She often wished she could get outside of herself so that she could see what she was really like. She let her muscles go. She tried on a smile. “
My
Catherine.”

“I don't know Catherine.”

Mary Beth held her smile. “What's your name?” she asked.

“I'm not supposed to talk to strangers.” The girl turned and ran across the field.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Ferko was on Sixth Avenue, on the wide sidewalk between Forty-Eighth and Forty-Ninth. He could see his office building now, the white façade and the blue-flecked windows. He was planning on shutting his computer down. Prauer was gone. Grove was dead. Ferko had nothing, really, to do. He would go home and investigate Mary Beth's burst of energy. He hoped it was something sustainable, something that his presence wouldn't quell. Maybe this weekend would shed light on things in a way that all the therapy they'd attended, both separately and together, in fits and starts, hadn't.

From his seat on the plane, in his descent into Newark, he'd looked for landmarks—I-287 or the Parkway—but found only farms and fields, industrial parks and towns, residential developments buffered from other developments and highways by thin stands of trees. A pastiche, random and indiscernible. And if you were in this landscape, you could have looked up into the sky and watched the plane descend. Unless you heard the brakes squeal and your attention was drawn to the street, where the blue car dragged the green stroller, paused, and then left.

Now there was a break in traffic, and he crossed Sixth Avenue. His phone rang, a number he didn't recognize. He answered anyway.

“Ferko?” There was interference, other voices competing with the caller.

“Yeah?” he said.

“Shit.”

“Who is this?”

“Jen.”

“Jen? Where are you?”

“Fuck.”

“What happened?”

“I got hit by a car.”

“Jesus. Are you okay?”

“I'm scraped, but my bike's fucked. Can you come here?”

“Of course. Where's
her
e
?”

“Where's
her
e
? Fifth and Thirty-Eighth.”

“Where're the police?”

“No police.”

“What about the driver?”

“Here, looking like a moron. He's Chinese. Doesn't speak English, or pretends not to. His daughter is drawing flowers on the sidewalk with chalk. He offered me three hundred dollars. I'm asking for five. He's got it. I saw his wallet.”

“Are you sure you're okay? If he walks—”

“No police,” she said. “No doctors. I know what I'm doing.”

Ferko was standing on the curb, just north of his building, when Lisa Becker and George Cosler emerged from the revolving door. They turned and walked south. Coffee? Cocktails?

“Can you come?” Jen asked.

“I'm on my way,” Ferko said, and he recrossed Sixth Avenue.

He found Jen ten blocks later, sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk with the bike before her, like an abstract sculpture. Her elbow was bleeding. She held a piece of paper against it. Her shoulder was scraped. She could have written a sign on cardboard, shaken a cup, and collected money.

She saw him and stood. “I asked for five and he gave me seven. I really don't think he understood what I was saying. I could have done better. I should have acted crazy. Oh, well. I'm rich.”

“You don't look rich.” Her pants were torn at the ankle. The bike's front tire was flat, the wheel bent. The chain was off the front sprocket and lay on the sidewalk like a dead snake.

“Well, I am.”

“Let's see this.” He touched a corner of the paper she held to her arm. It was printer paper, folded in quarters. She turned from him, but pulled the paper away to reveal the cut, which wasn't deep, but big—about four inches up, across her elbow, and three inches wide. He thought he saw the United States, turned on its side, in the outline.

“Not bad,” she said. They admired it. “I'll have to put my mannequin aspirations on hold.”

“Wear long sleeves.”

“The fall lines don't come out until July.” She looked at him. “Get a cab, will you? Something big enough for a bike?”

“You're keeping it?”

“Yeah, I'm keeping it.”

“You've got seven hundred dollars. Get a new bike. One with gears.”

She shooed him with her fingers. “Get the cab. No one's gonna pick up a bleeding woman with a broken bike.”

And so he did, a full-size van that fit the bike on the floor when Ferko wedged the bent wheel over the backseat. He got grease on his fingers, and he rode to Jen's place with the backs of his wrists on his thighs, fingers in the air, like a surgeon after scrubbing.

She lived in the East Village, on Twelfth Street. The cab cost nine dollars, but the driver didn't have change for Jen's hundred-dollar bill. Ferko paid.

He retrieved the bike from the back. Her building was a walk-up, and he carried the broken bicycle to the fourth floor. She keyed the door, which had three locks. She used only one.

“Set the bike in the corner,” she instructed.

“This chain is a mess. Do you want me to put anything under it? Newspaper?”

“Ha, ha. You're funny.”

He knew that he wasn't. But Jen was. Both ha-ha funny and strange.
Enigmatic
was the word. It made him uncomfortable. What was he doing in her apartment, anyway?

He kicked some books and papers out of the way and leaned the bike against the wall, behind where the door had swung open. He propped the bent wheel against the frame. The floor was wood, parquet, the tiles loose beneath the molding, where the wall met the floor.

The apartment was a studio, a single room that was smaller than his bedroom, a kitchen with a half wall, and a closet you walked through to get to the bathroom. In the center of the main area was a rug, a nearly square section of red shag. Ferko followed Jen into the kitchen, where roaches scrambled on the counters and ducked for cover. She ran the faucet and turned her elbow under the water.

“Do you have bandages and disinfectant?” he asked.

“Are you kidding?” she said. The water ran. “Do you remember my dad, Dr. Yoder?”

“Vaguely.” Ferko squinted. An image came to him of a short man with straight, black hair. “Did he have a beard?”

“He still does. He was an ER doc at Valley. He sends me a first-aid kit every year. I've never had a need. I finally get to use one. He'll be thrilled.”

“I thought he was a rabbi.”

“Ha! That's a good one. I'll tell him you said that.”

In fact, Ferko wasn't sure if he'd ever contemplated anything about Dr. Yoder. But now that he had the image in his head, rabbi seemed right. That or Hasid. Something bookish. Not an ER doctor.

Jen splashed water, pumped soap from the dispenser onto a dish towel, and went to work on the wound. “Can you grab one of those kits? They're on top of the cabinet in the bathroom.”

He poked his head inside the closet, a walk-in with no door. Her clothes hung haphazardly on wire hangers from two wood poles supported by brackets, above which a single white shelf held cardboard boxes, a dozen or so, stacked to the ceiling. Clothes lay on the floor, flung there after use or having fallen from hangers. Two nested laundry baskets leaned against the wall in the corner.

The bathroom was tiled—blue and green. It reminded Ferko of a fish tank, though one with a darker hue. It didn't help that she'd duct-taped a green plastic trash bag over the window. He turned on the faucet to wash the bicycle grease from his hands. There was no soap at the sink, but he found a sliver on the edge of the bathtub. He dried his hands with a peach-colored towel. Then he found the kits, five or so, uniform in size, on the cabinet above the toilet. He selected the top one and took it to her.

She was sitting on the sofa when he returned, a clean paper towel on her arm. “What do you need?” he asked, and opened the kit on the cushion next to her.

“Cotton balls.” She stood and went through the closet into the bathroom.

A drawer opened and shut, and she returned with several cotton balls smushed in her fist. She rolled them onto the open lid of the first-aid kit like dice.

“Have a seat,” she said.

When he didn't, she said, “There's beer in the fridge.” She looked up at him, hovering. “I'll take one if you're going.”

Ferko put his hands in his pockets. “Medicinal purposes,” he said.

She grimaced.

The refrigerator was half-size, like you'd find in a college dorm room. There was a Styrofoam box of takeout and four bottles of beer. He grabbed two. The roaches were back on the counter, paying Ferko no mind. The bottles were twist-offs. He didn't see a trash can. He was afraid of what he might find under the sink, so he left the caps on the counter with the roaches.

Jen had slathered the wound with a generous layer of disinfecting ointment, which looked like jam on a piece of toast. Then she fit a piece of gauze over it. “I'll hold, you tape.” Ferko set the beers on the glass coffee table, next to some rock 'n' roll zines. He stripped out sections of tape, cut them, and affixed the gauze to her freckled skin.

“Good as new,” she said. She picked up a bottle, leaned back on the couch, and drank.

Ferko still stood, but there was nowhere else to sit except the futon, which was unmade, so he straightened his pants and sat next to her on the couch.

He sipped his beer. He sipped it again. After a minute he said, “I should go.”

“No, don't.” That was all. No explanation as to why he shouldn't. It was up to Ferko, apparently, to figure it out or interpret whichever way he saw fit.

“I feel like I'm intruding,” he said.

“Intruding on what? You saved my life. I owe you.”

He considered telling her about Mary Beth, about the phone call she'd made earlier, how rare such a thing was. He'd told her he'd be home early, and he pictured her in that moment, in their bedroom with the door shut and the curtains drawn, spent from her walk past the School on the Ridge, from the phone conversation with Ferko when they were both walking and mostly silent. The clock on Jen's nightstand said it was 4:45, still early.

“You're right.” Ferko leaned back on the couch to match Jen's posture. “You owe me.”

Jen was on her phone, sending texts, checking the screen every now and then. They drank their beers, draining the last drops in unison and placing the empties next to one another on the coffee table. Jen stood and slipped the phone in her pocket. “Let's go.”

“Go? Where?”

“An errand.”

Ferko stood. He checked his phone.

“You don't need to go back to the office,” she said. “Your client died.”

“He wasn't my client.”

“Whatever.”

“He was Greg Fletcher's client.”

She touched the gauze over her wound, poked along the edges. “Let's go.”

“I should go home.”

She retrieved a long-sleeved shirt from a hanger in the closet, slipped it over the tank top, straightened it in the mirror with the buttons unbuttoned. She balanced a pair of sunglasses on her head. Then she turned toward him as though presenting herself.

He watched her watch him. He shrugged. “Let's go.”

She led him out of the building, then east on Twelfth Street. They walked one block. Another. It was a residential neighborhood, with old buildings and rehabbed buildings. An empty park. An art project. There were restaurants and florists. There were kids on skateboards, white and black and Hispanic. Ferko knew about the East Village. He'd lived in New York long enough to remember. It had been a slum. Now it was this. They turned south on Avenue C. Another block. And another. They walked in silence, Jen's desperate chattiness replaced by a grim determination he'd not noticed until now. Graffiti blossomed. Made-up words he could put no meaning to. Jamaicans sat on the steps of buildings, drinking from dark bottles. Music poured from the open windows, a cacophonous mash of horns and drums and guitars. There was a haze, a burning substance he couldn't identify. Men played dice and girls skipped rope, while others, Ferko and Jen included, walked into it or through it, Ferko wasn't sure which.

“Are we scoring drugs?” he asked.

“Shut up.”

“We're scoring drugs?”

“Shut the fuck up, Ferko.” She stopped and faced him. “I'm the buyer and you're the tourist.”

He was this far. And so he did. He shut the fuck up. Another half block, and she turned up a stone path to a gray building that reminded Ferko of a fifties-era vision of a robot's head. A looming head, to be sure, but a head nonetheless. There was a black man in front of an iron gate. He had a shaved head, wore a white tank top and blue pants with white stripes. As Jen and Ferko approached, the man extended his arms, which had been folded across his chest.

“Jen-Jen,” the man said, to which Jen answered, “Ben-Ben.” They hugged. The man had huge arms, covered in tattoos of dragons, knights, and castles. Ben-Ben was one hundred percent medieval, apparently. He was probably six foot three. He looked like a good friend to have. Ferko stepped closer, expecting an introduction. But instead Ben-Ben fixed a scowl on Ferko, and Jen said, “He's with me.”

Ben-Ben stepped aside to let them through the gate. Ferko considered telling Jen he'd wait here, outside, but he didn't know how long she'd be, nor was he sure whether such an arrangement would be cool with Ben-Ben. They walked up the stairs, past a kid—nine or ten, Ferko guessed—bouncing a tennis ball and catching it with a baseball glove.