We spent the rest of the evening talking, mostly about me and my life, the business. He would lean close, laugh at my sarcasm and self-depreciating humor like the prince of my dreams. I forgot about my beer, and he didn't drink at all.
We met again the next week, on Saturday. We talked most of the evening, again. There was a woman -maybe in her late forties and blonde- at the bar, staring at him, obviously jealous, which gave me a pang of pride.
Because his car was in the shop, I dropped him at his apartment. This time he kissed me goodnight.
On Monday, he brought flowers to the office -red roses, a little corny, but I felt special anyway. When he passed Maria on his way out, he barely acknowledged her, which meant he scored points with me, big time. Most guys would go for Maria first, but Jonathan didn't. He wanted me.
Now I was parked in front of his apartment building, my wet palms sliding off the steering wheel. I hadn't heard from him since Monday, and it was now Friday. Was I being too clingy, too desperate?
The thought of spending another day or even a moment waiting by the phone made me get out of the car quickly. The cold spring air cooled my head a little, and I took deep breaths while walking the cold, musty halls of the apartment building. His building was one of those impersonal colossal blocks of concrete, stacking as many units as possible. I looked for number 213, remembering how he'd cracked a lame joke about it being an unlucky number.
When I got to his apartment, the drab blue door was cracked. Yellow tape hung from the doorpost, crime scene tape, giving me the feeling of being inside a bad movie or maybe a Halloween party. I stood, unsure if I should run or call the police, when the door opened and a man looked me up and down with piercing, disapproving eyes.
"Yes?" he said, holding the door like he was about to shut it in my face. He was my height -average, but short for a man, blond and he had a cleft lip, which I couldn't help staring at.
For a moment I thought maybe I was at the wrong door. "Jonathan Allen?" I asked.
The man narrowed his eyes. "What is your relationship to Mr. Allen?"
What was my relationship with Jonathan? Deserted girlfriend? "A friend," I said and forced a smile.
The man glanced over his shoulder. "I am Detective Hanson. You should come inside." He opened the door and I was forced to bend my head to walk underneath his arm. He smelled of the outdoors, like fresh dirt and rain.
The air inside the apartment was stuffy and reeked like a very bad gas station toilet. The front door opened right into the square and dark living room, with a vinyl rent-a-furniture sofa and black lacquer side tables the only pieces in the room. To my left was a tiny galley kitchen, brown and grimy, with paper plates, soda cans and pizza boxes littering the counter and floor. To my right was the door to what I presumed to be the bedroom, cracked just enough for me to see a man's broad back, with brown hair and a brown suit. Not Jonathan.
"What's going on?" I said and turned to face Detective Hanson.
He motioned for the sofa.
I sat.
Detective Hanson made an elaborate effort of opening a notepad and testing his pen on the paper. He looked up at me. "What was the nature of your friendship?"
"We're dating. I haven't heard … Where's Jonathan?"
"He was murdered Monday night," Detective Hanson said in a matter of fact voice, looking at me intently.
"Dead?" I said.
"Yes."
"But I saw him Monday… He's dead?" I was surprised by how I was shocked but not really upset. "What happened?"
"He was stabbed in his bedroom. His girlfriend called us when he didn't show for a meeting," he said, looking at his notepad but studying me out of the corner of his eye. "We found him in bed, naked, steak knife still in his chest."
I nodded.
"So it appears there was some competition," he went on. He chewed on his pen, and again, I stared at his lip. It gave his stern face a somewhat boyish look.
"Competition?" I repeated.
"Your Jonathan had two girlfriends," he said and scribbled something on his notepad I couldn't see. "Possibly more?"
"I just met him two weeks ago." I sat up, composing myself now, like someone was breaking up with me and I was keeping my poker face. "It really wasn't anything." Suddenly, the air felt too stale to breathe. I stood very quickly, clutching my car keys.
Detective Hanson closed his notepad and stuck the pen inside his jacket. He stood. "If you can give us your information for future questioning…"
I reached in my back pocket and pulled out a business card, which I handed to him on my way to the door.
He took it and nodded.
"Bye," I said and walked outside, hurrying to the exit of the apartment building, welcoming the crisp April air.
"Dead?" Maria said, her perfectly tweezed eyebrows high. "Conning his girlfriends. Jeez." She shook her head and drank her soda.
It was Friday evening, and we were at our usual window seat, looking out at the parking lot and our own reflections in the glass.
I picked at my fries and took a big gulp of beer, trying to calm my jittery hands. I hadn't been able to stop thinking since my stop by Jonathan's apartment that afternoon. The yellow crime scene tape, the nasty kitchen, the thought of what had happened behind the bedroom door. Jonathan dead. Stabbed. Naked.
"Wow," Maria said. "Are you ok?" She peered into my eyes.
I shrugged unconvincingly.
"What do you think happened?"
"I don't know."
Maria continued to look at me, waiting for me to say more.
"The more I think about it, the more I realize I don't really know anything about Jonathan," I said. I ate a limp French fry. "We mostly talked about me. Kind of embarrassing."
"He didn't tell you anything about himself?"
I shook my head, going back over the conversations we'd had. I was ashamed to admit I had talked a lot about me, my family, and the business. College. "The university," I said, now remembering. "He said he went to the University of Colorado for a semester, about the time we went."
Maria nodded, lost in thought.
Suddenly, I noticed a car outside the bar. An old American thing, couldn't tell what exactly it was. But I could see a man sitting in the driver's seat. And I couldn't be entirely sure, but I thought he was watching us.
The lights turned on, blinding me momentarily. When the car maneuvered out of the parking lot, I could see his profile through the driver side window. And I thought I recognized Detective Hanson.
Was I a suspect? Did he think I was the murderer?
"Excuse me?" A blond woman leaned on our table, heavy make-up but tasteful, wearing a pant suit. I recognized her, she was the woman I saw at the bar a few weeks ago, when I was here with Jonathan.
"Hi," I said, unable to think of anything else to say. Who was she?
"We both knew Jonathan," she said.
"Yes."
"He took more than I could bear, and… I wanted to thank you." She touched my shoulder and left.
I looked at Maria in puzzlement. "What was that about?"
Maria grinned. "She thinks you took care of the problem."
On Monday, after a blurry weekend of take-out Chinese and lots of TV, I was ready to get back to business. We'd gotten some last-minute orders for Easter and a baby shower, so I spent most of the morning configuring the baskets and getting them ready for shipping.
After lunch, I sat at the desk, swiveling in the big chair, too restless to work. My mind kept going back to my conversations with Jonathan. I couldn't believe I had spent so much time talking about me. How vain and self-absorbed was I?