living room. There was a note on the coffee table, pinned under his glass of vodka. She had confident, looping script:
Dear Cor,
Used my key and broke into your apartment because I have a migraine coming on and that stuff you have is the best. Didn’t snoop, I promise. Don’t come by tonight because I might be under a sheet with my earplugs in, but maybe I’ll come over if the headache’s gone?? It’s been too long.
Audrey
Corbin had a girlfriend. A fuck buddy, anyway. And now Henry remembered where he’d seen this girl. She lived in the building, a cold-looking blonde with a man’s haircut, always carrying a bag that looked full of books. Always coming and going. She didn’t seem Corbin’s type. Both Claire and Rachael had been dark-haired girls with soft, curvy bodies. This one was hipless, all legs, looked like she’d be knocked over by a warm breeze. But still, they were involved. And it would be so easy to find out her name, what apartment she lived in, how seriously she and Corbin were involved.
Henry felt a great unloosening in his chest, an anticipation of all that was to come. Corbin might be done sharing with him, but Henry wasn’t done sharing with Corbin.
Chapter 31
Her name was Audrey Marshall. She worked in publishing. She’d moved to Boston from New York City. And she lived in the apartment right next to Corbin Dell’s.
Henry got all this information off a simple Google search, preceded by one trip to the lobby of the apartment building with a fistful of leaflets advertising handyman services. The doorman took the leaflets, promising to add them to the residents’ mail, although Henry doubted it. “You don’t need to add one to Audrey . . . Audrey . . .” He snapped his fingers rapidly, as though trying to remember.
“Audrey Marshall,” the sleepy-eyed doorman said.
“That’s her. She has my info. I painted her walls a little while ago.”
The doorman looked a little confused. “When was that?”
“Few months ago, I think,” Henry said as he ducked out the door.
He began to follow Audrey on occasion. She worked strange hours, sometimes not going into the office until midmorning, often not coming back till nearly midnight. And occasionally, on a weekday, she’d stay home. Because of her erratic schedule, it made Henry nervous about breaking into her apartment, something he very badly wanted to do. It wasn’t until he saw her leave one morning with a large piece of hand luggage, a taxi idling at the side of the curb, that Henry felt like the opportunity had arisen. He broke in that night, moving through the empty basement and up a different stairwell. Her back-door lock was a five-pin tumbler, and it took him a while to pick it, but eventually he got in. He kept the lights off, letting his eyes adjust to the dark, then moved through the sparsely furnished space, a lot smaller than Corbin’s but still big for city living. There were books everywhere in the living room, stacks on the floor that formed a cityscape. The living room curtains were open, so Henry moved into the bedroom, where the curtains were drawn. He brought out his penlight and searched through her things. In the drawer next to her bed, he found what he was looking for, a red leather notebook with a rubber band around its middle. He removed the band and opened the book; it was a diary, page after page of the cursive that Henry had seen on the note she’d left for Corbin. He sat on the edge of the bed and began to read; she dated the entries, which were rarely longer than two or three sentences. It was boring mostly—books she’d read, phone calls with a needy sister—but then the mentions of Corbin began and it got a little more interesting. The first mention he found was from a few months earlier, in January:
Hot Neighbor came for dinner. I can’t read him at all. It’s like staring at a blank page, a very hot blank page. We drank two bottles of wine and I thought he was going to make a move but then he was out the door like I’d hit him with a cattle prod.
After that the mentions were more frequent, every few days:
Spent the night with Hot Neighbor in his ginormous place. Slightly weird, but nice. Gave me the Not Looking For Relationship speech.
Finally told Kerry about Hot Neighbor. She asked a ton of questions,