She hadn’t realized — not for weeks, months, perhaps even years— that she had come to resent him.
It could have been the bouts of irrational jealousy, or the little orange pills that sent him into spirals of mania. It could have been, she reasoned, the drugs. She hated the drugs. But if she were being honest with herself, she knew it had little to do with any of that. She had put up with him— every brilliant, loathsome piece— for over ten years. In the end, Delilah suspected the love had simply evaporated, leaving behind only the powdery remains of what had been dissolved within it: anger and a dash of bitterness.
“Madam, you have a lunch meeting scheduled with the Cretneys at eleven-thirty.”
Delilah almost didn’t hear him. She blinked slowly, tilting her gaze up towards her expectant butler. “Cancel it for me, won’t you Gerard? Actually, why don’t you clear my whole day?”
The space between Gerard’s eyebrows furrowed, but he obliged. “Should I call for a doctor?”
“No.” A wry smile twisted up one side of her face. “That won’t be necessary.”
As the click of her butler’s footsteps faded, Delilah made her way to one of her husband’s many closet chambers. Absently, she ran a hand across a row of pinstripe seersucker suits (his summer collection), felt the silk of his jewel-toned dress shirts glide like water across her skin. She wondered, not for the first time, how he acquired his immaculate taste.
He’d looked expensive that first night. Emerald tie and silver cufflinks. He made an obscenely large donation during the charity gala auction. Delilah, who had been wrapped in designer chiffon since the day of her birth, inquired about his family name. When she didn’t recognize it, she was intrigued.
Later, friends and acquaintances alike often remarked that their attraction seemed inevitable, like the collision of two potent gravitational fields. He was handsome, magnetic— pale skin and incisive gaze and whip-sharp smile. She was the epitome of her old money upbringing— silky red hair and satiny red lips and 60’s starlet measurements. Her father had been not-so-discreetly escorted to a rehab clinic only two weeks prior, and she was dressed to kill in navy blue. He crossed the banquet hall in long, purposeful strides when he spotted her.
“James,” he’d said. “James Engstrom.”
Delilah’s fingers found the cold steel of the safe, hidden in the closet wall behind a rack of peacoats. She spun the dial with deft fingers, entering a familiar chain of numbers, and the safe opened with a beep. Perhaps if this had been harder, if he hadn’t entrusted her with the password himself, it would have felt less like betrayal.
The safe was big enough to walk into, messy in places she had yet to organize herself. There were rows upon rows of files, meticulously labeled but stacked haphazardly. Every date, every name, every transaction, her husband was meticulous in that regard. There was enough in them, she knew, to jail several men for life. She picked out a few, the ones that were most potent. She hesitated for a moment.
When James had called a week after the Gala, she’d expected to be wined and dined. For him to subtly brag about his credentials over a flute of white Bordeaux. Their first date had not been at a lavish restaurant. Neither had the second, the third, the fortieth.
“Delilah Bard.” He had spoken her name liltingly, as if the very sound pleased him. “What does a girl like you do for fun? Besides dressing in silks and stealing hearts, that is?”
His smile was all teeth and mischief. They were at an amusement park of all places, which was unfortunate only because she’d dressed for Michelin stars. He took one look at her Louis Vuittons and threw his head back in laughter.
She considered his question. Her practiced, proper answer would have been ‘music’ or ‘fashion’, but the date was improper and he was improper and—
“Investments. I like to play the stock market.”
His eyebrows shot up towards his hairline. He grinned. “I think I know what our second date will be.”
They were seated close, their thighs pressing as they waited for the roller coaster to ascend the hill. Delilah startled when she turned to see him staring at her, eyes dark and pupils blown wide. Like he was a predator. Like she was prey.
They kissed, and it felt as if she had been flayed open, thin protective skin removed and flesh exposed as a current jumped between the notches of her spine. He tasted like mint and bad decisions, and she was hooked. When he helped her off the ride, the satiny red of her lipstick was smeared across his jawline.
Delilah shut her eyes, then opened them. The wall of files still surrounded her, and she suddenly wished to be anywhere else. She cared for him; it was undeniable. It may not have been love—not anymore— but this...She slipped the files into a briefcase. Closed the latch. Steeled her heart.
The first time she saw him using them, she almost hadn’t noticed. He was leaving for a few hours to ‘tidy up some things at work’, promising to make it up to her with a date in the evening. Just as he left, she saw a flash of orange as he swallowed the pill with a swig of coffee. Later that night, there was a manic intensity to his eyes as he drummed his fingers incessantly against their table. He was louder, pushier, funnier than usual, and despite his charisma, Delilah felt something drop in her stomach. Her father was in his fifth round of unsuccessful cocaine rehab. To her, Mania was an old bedfellow.
Much, much later, he told her it was Ritalin, a stimulant pill; a ‘focus medication’ that made him smarter, more productive. She never dared to try and take it away from him, even on days when his headaches turned him vicious and his heart rate soared above 150. She knew better than to get between men and their stimulants.
“Gerard,” Delilah called after closing the safe behind her and donning a navy pantsuit. “Where’s the chauffeur? I have a meeting I need to be at.”
Her butler cocked his head in confusion. “I cancelled your appointments for the day, Madam. Don’t you remember?”
“It’s last minute. And important.”
“Very well. I’ll tell Eric to prepare the car.”
On the days her husband’s associates came to visit, she used to go out, directing poor Eric all across the city. She’d phone up old friends and head to a bar on the East Side. She’d sip martinis and throw back whisky, hoping that the alcohol would erase her knowledge of what was really in the shipments her husband managed. Sometimes, men would ignore the diamond on her finger and try to buy her a drink. Other times, she’d run into an old flame or a colleague.
When she got home, they always fought. Somehow, he always knew every minute detail of her night. On good days, he demanded she stop speaking to her friends, stop going out. On bad days, he said nothing. He kissed her on the mouth and treated her to foie gras. Her husband was as patient as he was jealous. He knew how to bid his time.
The next day, she was sitting alone at a cocktail party hosted by one of their mutual friends, drinking wine and wishing it was vodka. Her gaze tracked her husband’s hand as it inched flirtatiously up the woman’s spine, brushed casually across her collarbone. Delilah’s fingers strangled the stem of her glass, and she wasn’t sure if it was the woman she wanted to kill or him. She knew he had no intention of cheating, not really, but the image of the woman’s lips hovering inches from his ear was enough to make Delilah run every red light on the drive home.
Her husband tended to forget, however, that she was a vengeful creature.
A week later, she showed up to his work function (a criminal law firm, the irony) in her plunge-back Givenchy sex dress. The co-worker James was speaking to flushed an unfortunate shade of pink when he saw her. From across the room, Delilah thought she could hear her husband’s molars crack.
And so the cycle repeated, on and on and on and—
When they reach the police station, Eric opens the door for her. She stares at him, frozen in place.
“Madam?” He grips her hand, prepared to help her out of the car. “Is this not the right place?”
“No,” she breathed. “It is. It’s the right place.”
The police officer who called her over had a shiny badge that read ‘NYPD’. The resolve she’d worked up is nowhere to be found, and she only managed to sit, ramrod straight and silent, as he poured over the files she handed him.
It was too late now. Too late to take it back.
Once, four years ago, she almost asked him to choose. She’d been forced to visit a shabbier part of the city to make a business proposition. She didn’t know—didn’t want to know— the details. On her way back, she ran into one of them, tired eyes and hollow cheeks and cracked bluish lips. It was a boy, short and barely out of his teens, but suddenly it was her father instead and she was fifteen again, in the bathroom bending over him, afraid that he is dead or dying and—
She had sobbed the whole way home. Eric graciously avoided looking in the rearview mirror. She resolved, in the comfort of the backseat, that she would make him choose. His illicit part-time job, or her. When he returned home, she took a deep breath, drew herself up to her full height and she was ready. But then he’d kissed her sweetly and asked about her day and she can’t because she’d been here before and he wouldn’t choose her. That night, in the throes of passion, he whispered, I love you. Like he meant it. I love you. The words made her angry. I love you—
They never chose her.
“Delilah?”
Her husband’s face was panicked, forlorn as the police escorted him out in handcuffs. She’d expected him to be... angrier.
“Delilah—”
Her name was a question, a plea, but she had no answer for him. She turned her face away.
“Delilah!”
His voice was desperate, wanting, yet he still said her name like the sound of it pleased him. But it was too late. For both of them.
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