Free A Stranger Like You by Elizabeth Brundage Page B

her—and I’ve never had the decency to tell her. I think about her and I get a stomachache. It’s not the same with my wife. There’s something about Hedda that makes me—” He stopped himself and shrugged it off.
    “What?”
    He shook his head. He looked upset. “Whole, I guess.”
    “Whole?”
    Tom nodded. Hugh had been in love only once. The girl had worked in the billing department. Once they’d ridden up on the elevator together. She’d been crying over something, her face turned away. Her lips were pale, chapped—it was winter—and her cheeks were rosy, burned by the wind. Around her neck was a scarf the color of cornflowers. If she were a painting, he had thought, her surface would be cracked and yet it was exactly the damaged nature of her features that intrigued him. He’d put his hand on her shoulder and said, “It’s going to be all right.” She’d smiled, briefly, her eyes glassy, and nodded appreciatively, and then the elevator doors opened and she walked out. He never saw her again because she never came back to Equitable Life. He tracked down her address, a walk-up apartment on 43rd Street, but the apartment was empty and the superintendent would not supply her forwarding address. Still, for a period of time, the memory of that day in the elevator remained fresh in his mind, and he would think of her from time to time, grieving over the life they’d never had together.
    “She makes me feel complete,” Tom added.
    “My wife is just the opposite,” Hugh admitted. “I’m like rejected merchandise. I think if she could she’d return me with a whole list of complaints. Not only would she want her money back, she’d want to speak to the store manager.”
    “Sounds to me like you need to get back on the shelf.” Tom stood up and staggered into the bathroom to take a piss. The sound of his urine hitting the toilet seemed alarmingly loud. When he came out he was holding something—an empty soap dish. His face was pale, and his hand trembled slightly. “May it please the court,” he said gravely, presenting the empty soap dish to an imaginary jury. “Apart from me, she has one single obsession: her skin. It’s one of her few vanities—uses this terribly expensive black soap—never goes anywhere without it—it’s a soap for fucking witches, looks like charcoal, never misses a night, and where is it?”
    It wasn’t there because Hugh had thrown it into her bag, attempting to produce, in the minds of the police, the possibility that she had left on her own accord. “Look,” Hugh said, scrambling for some clarity. “I’m sure there’s a perfectly good explanation, Tom.” Saying his new friend’s name aloud made him feel important. “Maybe something happened to her. Something bad.”
    But Tom shook his head. “Bad things don’t happen to Hedda Chase. She’s with him ,” he pointed to the cell phone. “The fucking tart,” he muttered.
    “Couldn’t it be . . . couldn’t you be jumping to conclusions?” Hugh attempted to speak clearly. “What if something happened? You never know these days. There are lots of bad people out there.”
    “Let me tell you something about that woman,” Tom said, his voice lit with spite. “Nothing happens by chance—it may appear that way—but trust me. She’s strategic. She’s got all the moves planned out way before anyone else has even sat down at the table.”
    Hugh felt a fresh surge of hatred for Hedda Chase—almost to the point where he could rationalize what he’d done—like maybe even he’d done Tom a favor. He swallowed the rest of his drink. “I hope, for her sake, you’re right.”
    Like a pair of drunken comrades they took the Bronco and stopped at a package store on Franklin for some beer. It was nearly two a.m., but the city was alive. All the creeps had crawled out of their dark little corners. The extras, he thought, the filthy, ugly, stinking people you rarely saw in daylight. They were nocturnal, like all the