The Craigslist Murders - Brenda Cullerton [22]
Feeling a surge of energy course through her veins, she began her speed walk. She was covering sixty, seventy blocks a day now. She had the pacing down to an art. It wasn’t about being the first to cross when the light went green; it was about being the last to slither and squeeze through the threat of solid red. There was no room for the fainthearted or the cautious on these marathons of hers. On a good day, speed-walking was a metaphor for life; a reminder that she knew exactly where she was going and refused to waste a minute getting there.
Much like her relationship with Craigslist, the walking was also a means of reinforcing her connection with the city. Every belch of steam that shot up in the street, every gust of warm air that whooshed up from the grates beneath her feet and caressed her legs, reminded Charlotte that the city was breathing; that it was part of her. Forced to stop briefly at Canal for the rush of traffic coming in from New Jersey through the Holland Tunnel, she laughed out loud.
There’d been a blind item on Page Six of the Post this morning: Some network anchorman had been caught screwing his kid’s nanny on (what else?) the nanny cam. How ironic is that? Charlotte hooted to herself. The guy doesn’t even know the system’s up and running. And there he is, caught with his pants down by his own wife.
Serves ’em both right, Charlotte giggled. She wondered if this was the same guy her friend Tom worked for. Every night, the guy had a sixty-minute head massage before going on the air.
“For what?” Charlotte had asked Tom, “So he can read better?”
When the light changed, she was already halfway across Canal and marching past the Soho Grand Hotel. Twice a week, Tom also worked on the anchorman’s wife and their two teenage kids. The wife, like Vicky, was thinking about becoming a Buddhist. Charlotte had seen photographs of her private mediation room in New York Magazine’s Tranquility Issue. It was a vast 1,000-square-foot space with a magnificent view of Central Park, complete with a $40,000 head of Buddha. Charlotte was no expert in Buddhism, but she did know that the religion came into being for people who had nothing. Not the other way around. Did this woman actually aspire to having nothing? No. She wanted it all. Being a Buddhist was just another way of having more. Of having peace of mind plus the Jimmy Choos, the Gulfstream, Christmas in Parrot Cay and the ranch in Wyoming.
Deafened by the sound of horns, Charlotte caught a glimpse of a cab driver shaking his fist at her and shrieking. “You crazy! You crazy bitch!” She’d been walking so fast, she’d stepped right into the middle of traffic on 23rd Street. Sweat was trickling down her neck.
Damn! Glancing at her wristwatch, she realized that she was going to be late for the dealer who’d called about the Murano. She’d have to jump on the subway.
Charlotte despised the subway. It wasn’t just the fear of being trapped in a tunnel. It was all those people crushed up against her. Touching her. Charlotte didn’t like being touched by strangers. And some of them stank. Spritzing herself with a dose of Caleche (“Every girl needs a signature scent,” was one of her mother’s style mottos), Charlotte ran down the stairs of the station, bought a single trip Metro Card and hurried through the turnstile. Gingerly pushing her way into a car on the number 6 train, she sat down, closed her eyes and began to hum, softly, to herself.
When Charlotte had been frightened or uncomfortable as a child, she’d developed this trick of singing. One of her teachers at Chapin had told her that there were these Aborigines in Australia who believed the whole world, everything in it, from stones and lakes to the seas, mountains, and even man, had been literally sung into existence. It was the most romantic thing Charlotte had ever heard. But when she started singing herself to sleep at night—the only thing that