Gun Church

Forty-Two

What Amy couldn’t see, what she couldn’t have seen, was that Renee was wearing running shoes. I noticed because she put distance between us almost immediately. If I hadn’t started running again, she would have lost me after a block. Even so, I wasn’t exactly outfitted for a mad dash through the East Village. I was dressed in a sweater, sports jacket, flannel slacks, and beat-up old dress shoes, which, like the rest of my wardrobe, were desperately in need of euthanasia. And one thing I knew about Renee from seeing her nude, from feeling her powerful clench, was that she was in incredible shape. If I didn’t catch her quickly, I knew I would lose her.

I called out to her, pleading for her to stop, but she kept her eyes looking forward, never wavering. We attracted some attention from other people strolling along Lafayette Street, but not an undue amount. This was New York City, after all. I stopped calling to her, not only because it didn’t seem to be having an effect, but because it made me swallow big gulps of near-freezing air that hurt my throat and threw my rhythm out of whack.

Suddenly, Renee veered off her dead-straight path, cutting a jagged line through sparse but oncoming traffic across to the east side of Lafayette. Instead of trying to lose me she continued uptown along Lafayette. It was only when she got to Astor Place that she turned east and then south by Cooper Union where Bowery splits into 3rd and 4th Avenues. I’d lost sight of her for a few seconds after she turned onto Astor. When I picked her trail back up again as I turned right onto 4th Avenue, she was almost exactly the same distance ahead of me as she had been the entire time. It was at that precise moment I realized that Renee wasn’t trying to lose me at all, that she would have actually had to wait for me on 4th to maintain the same distance between us. It all made a perverse kind of sense, the same kind of twisted sense my last few months in Brixton had been about. Renee’s lingering in plain sight outside the restaurant, her running shoes and sweats, her steady pace, her easy-to-follow course weren’t about escape, but capture, my capture. I was being led somewhere, hopefully not to slaughter.

I had a choice to make and not much time in which to make it. Knowing that I was being baited, I could have just stopped running, about-faced, and headed back to the Peking Brasserie. I could have taken control of the situation. Briefly, I fantasized about the stunned look on Renee’s face if, when she turned, I was no longer there. Would she then start chasing me? I thought about the surprise I would see on Amy’s face at my return, but I didn’t stop running. I knew I wouldn’t. I didn’t even hesitate. There was no hook in my mouth, no line attached to the hook, no reel pulling me in, though there might as well have been. There was only the bait and that was enough.

Writers are curious bastards, more curious than cats. Besides, even understanding as little as I did about what was really going on, I knew that any attempt to seize control of the situation would be temporary, a delaying of the inevitable. Bad news is better than no news and I didn’t feel up to sitting around waiting for the next time Renee would show up unannounced, nor did I want to risk upping the ante. If she’d been willing to appear outside a restaurant when I was with Amy, there was no telling what she might be willing to do the next time.

Seeming to sense my deliberations, Renee picked up the pace, widening the gap between us, willing me forward. If I couldn’t decide, she would help me choose. She couldn’t’ve known the decision to keep following her had already been made. I matched her speed and followed her past the entrance of Cooper Union’s Foundation Building and down East 7th Street. We kept at it across 2nd Avenue, across 1st, but between 1st Avenue and Avenue A, Renee slowed her pace considerably. I began making up the ground between us in big chunks. Finally, when she was just west of Avenue A and Tompkins Square Park, she stopped completely, turned, and waited for me to catch her.

I didn’t quite accept it was Renee until I was a foot away from her, her chest heaving, a panting cloud of white vapor in front of her face. Her cheeks were raw and red from the cold and her eyes watery, but, god, she was lovely. Screw me if, under the anger and confusion, I wasn’t excited to see her. Even this close, I couldn’t accept it was really her. Then her face turned from neutral to dead serious.

“Your wife is beautiful, Ken. She has the prettiest eyes.”

“What’s going on, Renee? What’s this all about?”

“I miss you all the time. It really hurts.”

“I miss you, too. I think about what I gave up to come here, but-”

“He’s watching us, so be careful.”

“He?”

“Jim.”

“Hug me.”

“Hug you?”

“Please, hug me. I need you to hug me.”

I did as she asked. Her body was so terribly familiar in my arms. Everything about her-from the feel of her hair on my face, the floral scent of it, to the heat of her breath on my neck-all seemed so natural, but something was wrong. She tensed in my embrace and put her lips close to my ear.

“Go along with him,” she whispered. “Do what he asks. Things aren’t what they seem and they never have been.”

“The package with the manuscript chapter, did you-”

“Forget that. It’s too late now. I hoped you would understand.”

“Understand what?”

She didn’t answer, but I felt her hand slide beneath my jacket, along my belt line, and down into my back pocket. She let her hand linger there in my pocket for a moment before removing it. It was an odd little moment of intimacy between us.

“What was I supposed to understand about the chapter, Renee?”

She untangled herself from my arms and stepped back. “Renee! Don’t you mean Zoe?” And before I could react, she slapped me across the face. “Which one of us were you fucking all those months, Ken, me or Zoe?”

I was stunned and cold again inside and sick to my stomach. I was being pulled in so many directions it rendered me immobile. But there must have been a question on my face, because Renee answered it.

“That’s right, Ken, Gun Church. I’ve read every word of it and so has Jim. You should have changed your password. Pandora was just too easy for me to guess.”

“Fuck!” I heard myself say.

“Jim’s in his truck on the corner by the park. I don’t know why I care, but I do, so don’t upset him. If he gets pissed, you’ll put Amy in danger.”

With that, she walked back in the direction we’d come. I was reeling, barely conscious of the passage of time and when I looked up, Renee was completely out of sight. I was so unsteady, I might not have moved at all, but her warning about Amy had gotten my attention. Somehow I put one foot before the other and made it to the corner.