She dressed, blow-dried her hair and the rest of that day she spent on the couch, eating potato chips and watching a string of old movies – Casablanca, The 39 Steps, and finally Rear Window. An outfit lay on the bed, waiting for her. Black Lycra leggings, and an Underarmor top. She dressed, put on her running shoes and tucked her hair into the black Nike ballcap. Before leaving her apartment, she stretched her legs, back, arms, and shoulders.
On the street, she broke into a light jog to warm her muscles, find a rhythm, adjust her breathing. After Mother died, she and her sister had been placed into separate boarding schools. Both in Virginia, a hundred miles apart. It had been in boarding school when she had found her love of running. A year after Mother died, she turned thirteen. Neither sister went home for weekends. Her gym teacher had been a cross-country champion in her youth, and had given the bug to her. She loved being in the open country on Saturday mornings, watching the sun come up over the endless wheat fields, her lungs fit to burst. No one around her. Just her thoughts, and plans. The running helped keep the dark thoughts at bay for some years. Now, as a young woman, she no longer felt the need to keep those demons in check. At fourteen she had given serious thought to strangling another girl in her class. Melanie Bloomington. Even the name made her want to be sick. Melanie wore her hair long, in impossibly complex pigtail knots, her skin pink and perfect, just like her class test scores – nothing about Melanie Bloomington was less than perfect.
She thought it would be fun to strangle Melanie in the toilet block. Get her into a stall, grab her school tie and pull and twist and yank until Melanie’s perfect pink face was red, then purple and then blue and quite dead. And then, she could touch Melanie’s face, her eyes, her lips. But this could not be done in school. It would cause a panic. Too much attention. Still, it was hard to resist.
One Sunday morning, she found herself in a small wood on the edge of the vast school grounds. She stopped to examine a flower, its bright yellow petals looked like velvet and as she reached for it she heard a noise. A rustling and bleating. She stepped carefully over a large fallen tree trunk, and in a clearing up ahead she saw a fawn. It had become trapped in the remnants of an old post and wire fence, which must have demarcated some old boundary before the wood grew unchecked and swallowed it up. The fawn was near death. A large, murderous raven sat on a large stone some distance away. It could smell the blood as surely as she could. It was waiting for the fawn to die – which, from the look of the animal, would not take very long. Three legs had become entangled in the rusting barbed wire, and during the course of struggling to get free, it had managed to almost sever its foreleg.
The smell of blood was strong now. She approached the creature, who did not panic when it saw her coming toward it, slow and low, whispering softly. Either it hoped for rescue, or it no longer had the strength to resist. From her backpack she produced a penknife – one she had bought in a local store with her allowance. It had a pearl handle, and a sharp little blade. The fawn struggled when it saw the sunlight catch the blade, but she calmed it.
It would be a mercy to kill the fawn. She knew that.
Instead, with excited fingers, and trembling breath, she stroked the animal. The feel of its fur beneath her hand, its smell, its heartbeat – ragged and fast.
The fawn died slowly.
Afterward, she washed in a stream and ran back to the school dorm, knowing that the fawn’s sacrifice was what had saved Melanie Bloomington. For now, her appetite had been satisfied. Her desire, sated.
Running kept those desires in check, and that made her feel almost normal. She used to think she had been cursed. That these thoughts and feelings were a sickness. It wasn’t until she graduated from school that she realized her willingness and joy in inflicting pain on others wasn’t a handicap, or a curse or a sickness – it was a gift. Six weeks after graduation she met Melanie Bloomington for coffee and shopping in Manhattan. The fawn a distant memory, her appetites raging. Melanie was excited about her summer. She was one week into her summer vacation – travelling the United States for a month with a backpack, trying to find herself before she started college that September. The day after she met Melanie, she went for her first long run in Manhattan, and smiled as she ran past the diner where she and Melanie had met for coffee the previous day.
Now, years later, she still liked to run in the city. It was simply another one of her many pleasures. Running in New York was almost as much fun as running in the country. It was a series of steel, glass and concrete valleys. All of them her playground.
She increased her pace and it wasn’t long before she found herself on 2nd Avenue. She passed the juice bar where she used to pick up special fruit smoothies for her father. She crossed the street just before Trump Tower, and took in the reinforcements and armed guards outside the building.
She didn’t care for politics on that scale. Her father had met Trump on numerous occasions and didn’t much like him but knew how to use him. Life was just a game for the powerful, and those who were prepared to do what no one else would. This, she had learned from her father.
A little further and she was at Central Park. She took the sidewalk that ran along the east side of the park and checked her watch.
22:28.
She increased her pace again, finding new gears. Her legs began to move faster and faster until she was in full sprint. This was of necessity, so she could be sure not to miss her target. This run was not cathartic – purely business and pleasure. She thought again of her first run in Manhattan. The day after she met Melanie before she was heading out on her summer of self-discovery. Poor Melanie didn’t find herself that summer.
Melanie’s body was never found.
At ten-forty she slowed down as she came to the entrance to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. There were people leaving via the main entrance, dressed in cocktail dresses and tuxedos. She took a seat on the steps and caught her breath.
A few minutes passed before she saw him.
Medium height. Grey hair in a side parting. A tuxedo beneath a cashmere overcoat and scarf. He was talking to two elderly women, and held out an arm for each of them as he escorted them down the steps. His name was Hal Cohen. For fifteen years he had been her father’s political strategist, mayoral campaign manager, chief fundraiser, and accomplice.
As they reached the bottom of the steps, the ladies thanked Hal.
She stood up, quite suddenly. Fast enough to catch his eye.
When Hal saw her, his smile faded. He quickly returned it to his face as he waved goodbye to the ladies who made their way to the crosswalk. He stood there for a moment, his hands in his coat pockets. His breath misting in the night air as he contemplated what to do next.
He bowed his head, and casually made his way over.
‘Did you have an enjoyable evening?’ she said.
‘It was a fundraiser for a friend. Enjoyment wasn’t on the menu,’ said Hal. He placed a hand on her shoulder, in a paternal fashion, and said, ‘I’m real sorry about your dad, kiddo.’
That’s what he always called her: kiddo. When Hal began to help her father into political office, he came to the house to talk to him, meet her mother, meet the family; make sure there were no skeletons in the closet. He said if there were skeletons, he would need to know so he could bury the whole closet at the bottom of the East River.
‘Thanks. He always liked you. Said you could fix anything. I need to talk to you, Hal,’ she said.