With a Little Luck: A Novel (26 page)

“Some guard dog,” the cop scoffs.

“Stay here while we go in,” the other one orders. “Look, I don’t mean to worry you, but there has been a rapist in this neighborhood recently. He’s been targeting single women about your age. Actually, pretty much women with your build and hair color.”

I gasp. I reflexively touch my hair and decide I’m going to dye it red or blond. Or buy a wig. Or shave it off. Or move.

The policemen radio for backup and enter my building while I continue to freak out.

“Oh my God!” I say. “I have to move. I’m moving. I’m moving tomorrow.”

“Well, if this is the guy, the rapist guy, then you’re fine now—they caught him,” the Good Samaritan says.

“My apartment will never be the same,” I say.

I pace and pace, and then hide behind a tree because I don’t want the rapist to see me and know that I fingered him in his rapist bust and then come after me in a few years when he gets out on good behavior or because of overcrowding. I’ll never be able to sleep peacefully. I’ll have to keep tabs on his jail time and hope he shanks
someone and gets locked up for good. But if he doesn’t and he gets out, I’ll never be free.

“They’re coming out,” my new friend says.

I hear yelling and peek around the tree to see two cops pushing a handcuffed man out the door. A handcuffed man whose name was the first word I spoke at six months of age: “Daddy.”

Oops
.

I step out from behind the tree. “Daddy, what are you doing?”

“You told me I could stay with you!” he shouts. “You told me where the extra key was!”

“But I paid your bill! I didn’t think you would come if you had electricity at your own apartment!” I exclaim, relieved and embarrassed.

“This is your father, ma’am?” the police officer asks, and it’s only when he ma’ams me that I make the connection: This is the same officer who almost arrested me for breaking and entering into Nat’s apartment.

I send up a silent prayer to the big guy upstairs.
Please don’t let them recognize me. Please don’t let them remember me. I’ve already had a bad enough night. Please?

“Yes,” I say. “That would be my father.” I don’t even look at my dad when I say it, and really he’s done nothing wrong—I told him he could stay, I told him where my hide-a-key was. Yet I feel a little violated. I guess because of the complete and sheer terror I felt when my knee inched up to find its comfortable place and instead found a suspiciously pointy vertebra. And the fact that my dad thought it was totally fine to just crawl into my bed? What is that? Aren’t dads supposed to sleep on the sofa?

“Wait,” Officer Ma’am says. “Aren’t you that woman who was painting her friend’s apartment a few months ago?”

Thanks for nothing, Lord Almighty
.

“No,” I say, standing up into my lie a little straighter. “I don’t believe so. I’m terribly sorry for this inconvenience. May I go back upstairs now?”

“We’ll still need to fill out a report,” he says. “You know the drill.
Same as last time.
”

Damn it
.

When all is said and done, my dad follows me back into my apartment, and I make eye contact with him for the first time since I ID’d him.

“Dad, I really wish you would have told me you were coming.”

“I thought that was implied in the me asking you if I could stay with you and you saying yes.”

“But then I said I was paying your bill,” I say, a little higher-pitched than normal.

“Well, the lights weren’t back on, and I wanted to watch TV.”

“Fine,” I say. “It’s fine that you came. I was just surprised … to find you in my bed. Didn’t Moose bark when you came in?”

“Not that little guy. He was asleep before me. I’m sorry, honey. I’m sure I scared the shit out of you.”

I make a mental note to look into getting Moose some guard-dog training ASAP. “Yes.” I nod. “You did.”

“I couldn’t get the remote to work in the living room, so I came into your bedroom to watch the
SVU.
” Again with the “the” in front of things that don’t have or require it. “I was lying on top of the covers, and then I fell asleep with the TV on. I woke up at some point and turned it off, and I guess I forgot where I was and just got under the covers.”

“Yes, I guess you did.”

“I’m sorry, baby.”

I can’t stay mad at him. He didn’t mean to terrify the living shit out of me.

“It’s okay, Dad,” I say.

“You want me to go?”

“No, of course not. Especially not now that I know there’s a rapist out there.”

“There is?”

“Yes, and I’m his type!”

“You’re everybody’s type,” my dad says in that dad way that somehow makes you feel better and reminds you that no matter who breaks your heart, you’ll always be Daddy’s girl.

But then I snap out of it and remember the rapist. I don’t want to be the rapist’s type. I imagine him having a thin mustache like a fourteen-year-old boy or a smarmy Frenchman. Only menacing and fat. With a stocking over his head, but I know that mustache is underneath. And I hate him all the more for it. What kind of asshole wears a mustache like that? A rapist, that’s who.

I pull out my laptop and start Googling recent rapes in the area. My dad sets himself up on the couch, and when nothing of note turns up, I vow to get myself a police scanner tomorrow.

They say there are no accidents. Everything happens for a reason, blah, blah, blah. I’m not sure I believe it. I mean, of course I believe it, but I also believe that you can cherry-pick which things you want to attach that theory to. So when a week after I’ve decided in my mind that Ryan is not the enemy, and I’ve exhaled for the first time because I can finally put my pesky fear that everything bad happens in threes to rest, I notice Clover Boy, “Lucky,” the guy who told me to pick up the penny at Swingers that day, I decide to chalk
it up to an accident. The elevator doors are closing on him, and I see him lunge forward to stop them, but it’s too late. That, I think, is what was meant to happen. He was meant to miss the “open doors” button, because I belong with Ryan. Then Ryan proves me wrong.

We’re in the middle of a live show and some woman is on the phone, telling Ryan that she has a fear of the unknown, when he announces that “everybody has a fear of the unknown.”

“It’s natural,” Ryan says. “Don’t beat yourself up about it. It’s not like you have some irrational fear of William Shatner.” He winks at me as if this is okay. As if he didn’t just totally betray me right then. Does he think this is something to joke about? Doesn’t he get it? Yes, it’s an irrational fear. But it’s my fear. My private fear.

“That’s silly,” the woman says. “Who would have a fear of William Shatner? Nobody has a fear of William Shatner.”

“Au contraire, mon frère,”
he says in his best betraying-me French. “Berry here is terrified of Shatner.”

“That’s not exactly true,” I say, and the look I give Ryan could melt the skin off his face. He should know what’s in bounds and out of bounds by now, but he doesn’t seem to look at all apologetic. He needs to stop before this gets out of hand.

“It’s absolutely true,” Ryan says. “Berry has about a bazillion superstitions.… That’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

“Ryan,” I say, in that way that you say someone’s name instead of saying “stop.”

“Are you going to deny it?” he asks me.

I press the mute button and hiss through my teeth, “What are you doing?”

Ryan completely ignores this and un-mutes us. “Berry doesn’t want me to talk about this. But I think it’s good for her to talk about it. Isn’t admitting the problem the first step to getting better? Isn’t that step one of Shatner-phobes Anonymous?”

“You’re an ass,” I say, and at this point I don’t care who hears it.

“Note she’s not denying it, folks.”

There are “ooohs” and “oh, no, he didn’ts” coming from the control room.

“Yes,” I finally say into the mic. “I jokingly told Ryan that I had a fear of William Shatner one night when I felt bad for him because of … well, we don’t need to get into details, but let’s just say he was feeling a bit vulnerable.…”

The caller laughs the understanding laugh of a woman who gets what I’m hinting at. “Say no more,” she says. “We’ve all been there. You tell him, ‘It’s okay.… It happens to everybody.… We can try again later.… Let’s just cuddle.’ ”

“Exactly,” I agree. “Only in my case, I knew just coddling him and saying it would all be okay wouldn’t be enough, so I tried to put the focus on me, and I made up a stupid story about being afraid of William Shatner.”

“Nice.” Ryan laughs. “Well played.”

“And he bought it?” The woman laughs, too.

“Men are idiots,” I say, but I’m not laughing. I’m looking straight through Ryan when I say it. Yet he’s got a smile plastered on his face. Clearly he doesn’t get the severity of this indiscretion. He doesn’t get that he’s just totally betrayed my trust. But he should know by now. He should know this isn’t some cute quirk he can use for a bit. This matters to me, and that should matter to him.

As soon as we wrap the show I get up, throw my headphones down, and storm out, replaying everything that led up to this. Clover Boy. Maybe he was a warning sign. Maybe I misread everything. Ryan comes after me, perhaps only now realizing how truly pissed I am.

“Wait up, Ber. You’re not seriously mad about this, are you?”

“Yes, Ryan,” I say. “I seriously am.”

“It was no big deal.”

“It was a big deal to me.”

“C’mon,” he says, and tries to reach for me, but I recoil. “Really? You’re really gonna get that mad over this?”

“Ryan, I told you that in private. I was sharing with you. That was between us.”

“I didn’t realize it was that big a deal. I thought we were just jousting out there. It was good radio. If I can let our entire listening audience think I can’t get it up, I think you can be okay with them knowing you have some silly fear.”

“It was not ‘good radio,’ ” I say. “It was my personal business. Not everything is about ‘good radio,’ Ryan. Some things are sacred.”

“Your fear of William Shatner is sacred?”

“You don’t get it,” I say.

“No, I guess I don’t.”

“Wow,” I say, shaking my head at myself. “You were the third asshole.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“It means … this shouldn’t have gone as far as it did. It means I should have listened to the facts—to what I knew to be true the minute I met you. It means … we’re done.”

“Yeah?” He steps back, shaking his head in disbelief. “Over this? Then you really are crazy.”

“Whatever, Ryan. Then I’m crazy.” I make air quotes when I say the word “crazy.” “But I’ll tell you what: I’m not crazy enough to waste any more time on you.”

“That’s great, Berry. Except we have a show together.”

“And that’s really unfortunate.”

“Unlucky, you might say.”

We stand there facing each other, and I’m shaking like a leaf. I can’t believe it’s come to this. I can’t believe I let myself like him as much as I did. And now this.

“I did this for you,” I say. “I never wanted to do a talk show.”

“Yeah. Well, I guess I should have listened to you, then. I guess I should have paid closer attention to your bad vibes and your sixth sense and the twelve yellow lights on your way to work this morning.”

I don’t say anything back, because I’m about to start crying and he doesn’t deserve to see my tears. And because once I start crying, I won’t be able to stop.

I turn around and walk away. I know he’s just standing there, watching me go, but I don’t look back, I can’t look back.

“Your relationship ended because of William Shatner?” Natalie says, when I call her from behind closed doors in my office.

“Didn’t you hear that? If we’re breaking it down, yes.”

“You’ll make up.”

“I don’t want to make up,” I tell her. “If he’s that clueless that I was sharing something with him—something that wasn’t for public consumption—and he can go and announce it to millions of listeners—”

“Let’s not get carried away about the size of your audience, there, chief.”

“I don’t care if we had an audience of five people. Even if nobody was listening, it doesn’t change the fact that he would do that.”