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“You’re stalling,” Marsha says, and I sigh, looking up from the beer.
“You’re right: I did disappear,” I begin slowly, still trying to decide what the best story for Marsha would be. “You talked to my parents, though, right? They must’ve told you what happened.”
“What they knew, which wasn’t much.” Marsha picks up her beer. “Nor did it make any sense, what with the FBI sniffing around us like bomb-detecting dogs.”
“Uh-huh.” I instinctively glance around and see two of the men who’ve been following me around the hospital at a table on the opposite side of the bar. Three tables over are two more of my stalkers, and I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the guy at the bar before as well.
Well, that decides it. The “bomb-detecting dogs” are out in full force, and I have no doubt Marsha will be questioned shortly after our conversation.
In fact, there’s no guarantee she’s not working with them right now.
As soon as the thought occurs to me, I feel like a horrible friend, but that doesn’t make the suspicion go away. It makes too much sense. We’ve known each other for a number of years—I met Marsha when I started my residency at the hospital—but we’ve always been more work friends than anything else. For one thing, Marsha’s always been single and on the hunt, whereas I was married and working eighty-hour weeks. I could never accompany her on the girls’ night outings she loves, and she found sedate activities like family dinners boring, so our friendship tended to revolve around the hospital and our conversations rarely ventured beyond the superficial. She was kind and supportive after George’s accident, always ready to lend a sympathetic ear on a coffee break, but she never went out of her way to involve herself in the messier aspects of my life.
Marsha is a good friend, a fun friend, but not the kind of friend who’d take to calling my parents every week—not without a nudge, at least.
A nudge that could’ve easily come from the FBI.
Of course, it’s just as possible that I’m way too tired to think straight—either that or being with Peter has made me far too paranoid. Still, on the off chance that my suspicions are right—or on the far more reasonable assumption that I can’t expect Marsha to lie to the FBI for me—I decide to go with the victim version of the story.
Unfortunately, that means I have to go back to the beginning and explain about George. And since I’m pretty sure that the FBI would not want me to reveal any classified information, I need to get creative here as well.
My head hurts just thinking of all the half-truths and lies I’ll have to keep straight.
By the time I’m done spinning the beginning of the tale, Marsha’s eyes are wider than the burger I’m devouring. “George was on this Russian assassin’s hit list? Why? What did he—”
“I never learned all the details, but it had something to do with a mafia story George ran.” I decide to use the FBI’s original lie to me as justification for Peter’s actions. “In any case, he broke into my house, waterboarded and drugged me to find out George’s location—and then he killed him.”
I let Marsha digest that while I stuff two fries into my mouth. I really am starving. When I see that she’s about to launch into more questions, I say, “So yeah, that’s how we really met. You see why I couldn’t tell this to my parents, right?”
She nods, her face sickly pale underneath her foundation and her salad forgotten in front of her.
“Right,” I continue. “So it took me a while to start getting over that, and then you invited me for a night out with Andy and Tonya. We went to that club downtown, remember? The one with the cute bartender who later asked about me?”
Marsha nods again, still mute.
“That’s when he approached me again,” I tell her. “Right there at that club. That’s why Andy thought I was acting weird when I bailed: I’d just been approached by my husband’s murderer and ordered to meet him the next day at Starbucks. And things just went downhill from there. He had cameras installed all over my house, he followed me everywhere I went, and when I tried to escape to a hotel, he showed up in my room and… Well, never mind that.” I let Marsha draw her own conclusions—which, judging by the horror on her face, are far worse than what actually happened.
I feel awful about that—my instinct is to shield my friend from the dangerous mess in my life, as I’ve been shielding my parents—but this is what I told the FBI and I have to stick with it. Besides, it’s all true, or at least factual. The only part I’m withholding is my own confusion about all of this—my unwilling attraction to the man I should’ve only hated and despised.
