Rough Trade

had some time to contemplate the repercussions of what he’d done—twenty-six seconds to be exact—that he’d elected to move on to plan B.
    Any cop will tell you that all kinds of people try to make a death into something that it’s not. Somebody has too good a time at a party where there are drugs, and his buddies take him for a ride and dump his body in the country. Grandpa dies surrounded by girlie magazines with his pants around his ankles, and the family gets him dressed before the police show up. An argument gets out of hand, and a son’s hands end up around his father’s throat. Appalled by what he’s done, the son throws the body down the stairs, hoping the death will be put down to the fall.
    And then, of course, there was the business of the key. I couldn’t believe I’d been stupid enough to allow myself to become an accessory to murder. I made a silent vow to hand it over to the police the very first chance I got.
     
    I did not go to the new apartment intending to end things with Stephen Azorini. In a way it’s frightening to realize that if it had been any other day, we probably would have just continued on our old, familiar path. But the tightness in my chest should have warned me that there was too much in my life that was beyond my control. That instinct would propel me to change what I could, if only to conserve the resources I would need to deal with what I could not.
    I started out with the best of intentions. A check of the past day’s voice mail messages revealed a rambling communication from Mimi letting me know that the fabric that we had ordered to cover the panels in the dining room had finally cleared customs and been delivered to the apartment. Anxious that it might be inadvertently dirtied or damaged by one of the workmen, she suggested that Stephen or I take it home for safekeeping until we were ready to use it. I hopped a cab and told the driver to wait for me while I darted upstairs to grab it. I was surprised when Danny, the night doorman, told me that Stephen had just gone up himself.
    I found him standing in the kitchen, examining the newly laid tile backsplash, his aquiline nose no more than two inches from the ceramic surface. “I don’t think these are perfectly straight,” he said, without looking up.
    Of course, there were many possible responses to this. “Nothing is ever perfect” certainly springs to mind. Or, “You’ll never notice because it’s going to have a stove parked in front of it.” In a million years I wouldn’t have predicted what actually came out of my mouth, which was “I can’t live here with you.”
    “What did you say?” inquired Stephen, straightening up and turning to face me, a look of surprise on his face.
    “I said I can’t live with you,” I replied, feeling a kind of preternatural certainty flowing through me. I wasn’t at all sure of what I was doing, but I knew in my bones that I had no choice but to go ahead and do it. “The whole thing was a mistake.”
    “You’ve chosen quite a time to come to this realization,” remarked Stephen, obviously taken aback.
    “I guess you can’t always choose when enlightenment is going to strike,” I said. Then, to cover the awkward silence I added, “I realize that this is going to be inconvenient.”
    “Inconvenient?” echoed Stephen incredulously. “What is wrong with you? Have you gone off the deep end? Both our names are on the deed. We’ve been jointly named in a lawsuit. It’s not going to be inconvenient, it’s going to be a nightmare.”
    “I’ll buy back your share of the apartment and pay you for everything you’ve spent on the renovation to date,” I replied, with the strange sensation of being outside of myself looking in. “The real estate department at Callahan Ross will take care of the conveyance of the deed and make sure that your name is removed as a defendant in any pending suits.”
    “Are you going to give me a reason for this remarkable decision?” asked Stephen in a puzzled voice.
    “I don’t want you to think that it’s because I’m afraid,” I said slowly. “Actually, it’s just the opposite. Moving in here with you would be the coward’s way out. And some things happened to me today to make me realize that no matter what, I’m not a coward.”
     

CHAPTER 18
     
     
    The management committee met in the largest of the firm’s nine conference rooms, a formidable quintet of Callahan’s most senior partners arrayed somberly