“Thank you, Mr. Miller. I don’t know what I’d have done without you.”
I stood, buttoning up my blazer. “We’ll discuss your expectations, and I will relay my recommendations based on the evidence.”
Amanda Gispen stood up, one hand clutching the pearls around her neck, the other reaching for another handshake.
“I want this man to rot in hell for what he did to me. He could’ve raped me. I’m sure he would have, if it wasn’t for the flight attendant. I want him to know he’ll never be able to do that to anyone else.”
“Trust me, Ms. Gispen. I’ll do everything in my power to ruin Conrad Roth.”
CHAPTER FOUR
CHRISTIAN
Past
Like all things born to die, our relationship started at the cemetery.
That was the first time I met Arya Roth. On the fifth or maybe sixth time Mom dragged me along to Park Avenue over summer break. Administration for Children’s Services had been raiding apartments in Hunts Point the previous winter, removing neglected kids from their households, after Keith Olsen, a boy down my street, had died of hypothermia in his sleep. Everyone had known Keith’s father traded the family’s food stamps for cigarettes and women, but no one had known just how bad the Olsens were doing.
Mom knew ACS was a bitch to handle. She wanted to keep me, but not enough to ask Conrad and Beatrice Roth to let me stay in their apartment while she worked. This resulted in Mom leaving me outside their building six days a week to fend for myself from eight to five while she cleaned, cooked, did their laundry, and walked their dog.
Mom and I developed a routine. We took the bus together every morning. I drank in the city through the window, half-asleep, while she knitted sweaters she would later sell for pennies at the Rescued Treasure thrift shop. Then I would walk with her to the arched, white-brick entrance of the building—so tall I had to crane my neck to see the full height of it. Mom, clad in her uniform of yellow, short-sleeved polo shirt with the logo of the company she worked for and blue apron and khaki pants, would lean down moments before the jaws of the grand entrance swallowed her to squeeze my shoulder and hand me a wrinkled five-dollar bill. She would hold the note for dear life as she warned: This is for breakfast, lunch, and snacks. Money doesn’t grow on trees, Nicholai. Spend it wisely.
Truth was, I never spent it at all. Instead, I’d swipe stuff from the local bodega. After a few times, the cashier caught me and said I was welcome to the expired stash in his storeroom, as long as I didn’t tell anyone.
The meat and dairy stuff were nonstarters, but the stale chips were okay.
The rest of my schedule was wide open. At first, I loitered in parks, burning time people watching. Then I realized it made me really angry seeing other kids and their siblings, nannies, and sometimes even parents spending time together on the lush park lawns, swinging from monkey bars, eating their prepacked lunches with their star-shaped sandwiches, smiling toothlessly at cameras, collecting happy memories and stuffing them into their pockets. My already profound sense of injustice expanded in my chest like a balloon. My poverty was tangible and palpable in the way I walked, talked, and dressed. I knew I looked shit poor and didn’t need a reminder by seeing the way people eyed me. With detached concern usually reserved for stray dogs. I was an eyesore in their pristine existence. A ketchup stain on their designer outfit. A reminder that a few blocks away, there was another world, full of kids who didn’t know what speech therapy, time-shared vacation houses, or gluten-free brunches were. A world where the fridge was mostly empty and getting spanked every now and again filled you with a sense of pride, because it meant your parents gave half a shit.
The first few days were soul crushing. I counted down the seconds until Mom got off work, ogling my cheap wristwatch like it was purposefully slow, just to see me sweat. Even the gummy hot dog Mom bought me from a street food vendor once we got back to our neighborhood, out of guilt and exhaustion from a day of fawning over another family, didn’t soften the blow.
On the third day of summer break, I found a small private cemetery, nestled between the edge of Central Park and a bus-tour booth. It was hidden from view, was empty most hours of the day, and offered a vantage point of the Roths’ building entrance. It was, ironically, heaven on earth. I barely ventured out of the cemetery in the days that followed. Only briefly, when I needed to find a tree to pee behind, looked for cigarette butts to smoke, or raided the expired stash at the bodega, padding my pockets with more than I could eat so I could sell the remaining food for half price in Hunts Point. I would take the food and hurry back to the cemetery, where I would lean against the gravestone of a man named Harry Frasier and stuff my face.
It wasn’t a morbid place, Mount Hebron Memorial. To me, it looked like everything else in the neighborhood. Neat and impeccable, with roses that always bloomed, carefully trimmed bushes, and paved pathways. Even the gravestones shone like the leather on a brand-new pair of Jordans. The few cars that were parked by the office cabin were Lexuses and Porsches.