“It was amazing. Until the last day, when he got this phone call that completely changed the mood. He wouldn’t tell me anything about it but something obviously happened and, in his words, it wasn’t good news,” Emmy said, unwilling to breach Eric’s privacy despite his appalling behavior.
“And then later there was another call from the same guy I think, and I kind of overheard it — we were in a narrow, echoing street — and he was saying things like, 'I don't believe it' and 'She's not like that'... At the time I thought they might be talking about me, but now I know for sure. He was warning him about something."
"About me?" Jake said, incredulous. "When he was shouting in the hallway he kept accusing you of..."
"Wait, whoa! There was shouting in the hallway?" Nat said, stunned.
"Yeah, there was. And punching, too," Emmy muttered.
"Oh my God — why didn't you say anything when you came in this morning?"
"I don't know, Nat, I didn't want to talk about it. I was upset... I mean, the guy went crazy, okay? He accused me of blackmail or something, I can’t even imagine what about. Like I was after him for his cash, and I was in some sort of alliance with Jake."
Emmy turned to Jake, who was still looking puzzled.
"I don't even know how he knew your name, except that he must've been running checks on me and my acquaintances or something. And he obviously knew that we were, you know…”
As she said it, the extent of what that meant was sinking in. This was Eric, the man who'd spent the past year or so searching for his brother, who was used to dealing with private detectives and police searches, and he'd been investigating her. Because despite everything, apparently, he didn't trust her and had to find out who she'd been fucking, and all of her past history, all the while professing to be taken with her and romancing her down Venice's canals.
All of a sudden, Emmy felt sick.
"Jesus, I can't believe this," she groaned, laying her head on her hands.
"What a douche," Natalie said, disgusted. "You think he really investigated your love life?"
"I don't see how else he'd know who I was," Jake said. "And it must have been some pretty thorough checking — I mean, it's not like I’ve even been in the country recently."
Emmy didn't reply. She was busy running the past few weeks through her head and wondering exactly when Eric started deeming it worth digging into her past, whether he'd already read up on her past lovers when they first slept together, or whether he’d waited until he'd invited her over to his pad.
Abruptly, she remembered that he already knew she didn't have a live-in boyfriend the first time they had dinner, and she shuddered.
"You know what? If he thinks he can get away with this kind of gross interference in my personal life, he can fuck right off. And I'll have another of those, please," she said, pointing at her empty beer glass.
◆◆◆
The rest of the week continued in a similar vein — Emmy worked late, then went out for a drink, sometimes with Nat, sometimes with Gina, whose indignation on her behalf dwarfed everybody else's (but who resisted the temptation of crowing 'I told you so'). Jake was a regular fixture in the background. He was still staying at her apartment — as he usually did when he was in town — but he’d moved to the couch, and was behaving like a best friend, for which Emmy was grateful.
He brought her Kleenex when she had crying jags — not that often, but still — shared ice cream from the carton, and didn't judge her when she knocked back a neat whiskey or two before bedtime. They hadn't really had a chance to develop their platonic relationship before, and it was reassuring to discover its extent — the foundation of their friendship solid even without the cement of sexual intimacy.
The going was rough, though. Once the white hot anger of the initial confrontation had died down, all Emmy was left with was an immense feeling of desolation — how could it all end like this, in some miserable doorstep argument over a perceived deception? It seemed such a colossal waste, and it hurt. Soon she was going to have to confront the gnawing sense of loss worrying at her center.
But the grieving process was spectacularly derailed