For a moment she couldn’t process what he’d just said.
Instead, as she stared at the man’s unfamiliar features, other phrases kept
tumbling through her brain: wrong apartment, wrong building, wrong street,
wrong day, wrong something.
But then, finally, his words
computed: “I’m Matt Healy.”
So where was the other Matt Healy?
The one who was supposed to be serving her chili or stir-fry or whatever guys
whipped up when they invited you for dinner? It felt as if she’d accidentally
exited a building from a different door than the one she’d entered and was on
the wrong street now, momentarily discombobulated.
“I—I don’t understand,” Kit
stammered. “Is this some kind of joke?”
He smiled. Pleasant seeming, not
acting at all cagey. For the first time, she really took in his appearance.
Nice enough looking. Strawberry-blond hair. Blue eyes. He was dressed casually,
in an untucked, long-sleeved dress shirt and a pair of brown cords, but he
exuded a buttoned-up vibe. Lawyer/banker type.
“Well, not a joke I’m playing,” he said. “Why exactly are
you here?”
“To see a man I know named Matt
Healy. We had plans.”
He shrugged. “Like I said, I’m Healy
and I don’t believe we’ve ever met.”
“But the doorman,” she said, really
flummoxed now. “He—he told me to go right up.”
“Yeah, I know. He rang to say someone
named Kit was on the way up. I said I wasn’t expecting anyone but by that time
you’d hopped on the elevator. I figured he got the name wrong, and it was
probably a friend of mine dropping by to say hi.”
Instinctively, she bit her lip,
trying to think, trying to make sense of the rabbit hole she seemed to have
fallen down. Maybe, by a freakish chance, there were two guys named Matt Healy
in the building. But this was the apartment number Matt had given her. A
revelation fought its way across a threshold in her mind. Had she been played? Tricked for some reason she
didn’t understand?
“Look,” the guy said, “maybe there’s
an explanation. Do you want to come in for a minute and we’ll try to sort it
out?”
Down the long hall, the drone of a TV
leaked beneath the door of another apartment but that was the only sound. No,
she certainly didn’t want to come in.
Shaking her head, she wondered what
to do next. Her confusion began to morph into anger. If the man she’d had dinner
with hadn’t wanted to see her again, why set up this whole charade tonight?
The guy flipped over a hand in a kind
of “I’m-as-stumped-as-you-are” gesture.
“I’m sure this isn’t any fun for
you,” he said, “but let me at least help. I bet there’s more than one Matt
Healy in New York. How did you get the address?”
“From him. We met in Florida a few
days ago and he invited me for dinner.”
He took a slow breath and brought his
hands to his mouth steeple style, holding them there. She wondered if he might
be amused by her predicament, but his expression was intense and a couple of
seconds later he raised an eyebrow in alarm.
“Oh God, I think I know what’s going
on,” he said. “A week or so ago, someone robbed me. I mean, they stole my
wallet. I cancelled my credit cards but the thief would still have my license,
which of course has my address on it.”
It felt as if someone had kicked her
legs out from under her. Did this mean that the man she’d slept with was a
thief? She could see him clearly in her mind’s eye. Confident, self-possessed,
a bit mysterious. But no way had there been a hint of anything criminal.
“I really should go,” she said. She
wanted to get as far away as possible from apartment 18C.
“No, wait.” The guy’s voice was
almost pleading. “I can understand why you don’t want to come in. For all you
know I’ve got the real Matt Healy hogtied in here. But I don’t and I really
need to hear more details from you. This guy may have stolen my identity. Would
you be willing to go someplace public with me? There’s a little bar a few doors
down from the building.”
“Okay,” she said finally. Though the
idea had nada appeal for her, it seemed unfair not to help him.
“Let me just grab my jacket,” he
said.
“I’ll meet you in the lobby,” she
told him. She needed a minute alone and a chance to think.
In the elevator, she flopped back
against the wall and groaned. Maybe there was
an explanation. Somewhere the real Matt Healy had to be waiting for her, maybe
right this minute popping a cork from a bottle of wine or stirring a stew pot
in anticipation of her arrival.
She checked her phone, where she’d
programmed Matt’s info when he’d called on her way to the airport. She groaned
again as she saw that she was definitely at that address. There was a chance,
of course, that she’d taken down the details incorrectly. But it was too huge a
coincidence that a building she ended up in erroneously would have an occupant
with the same name in the very same apartment.
What if the guy in the apartment
really wasn’t who he claimed to be? An imposter. But about a minute later, when
he hurried around the corner from the elevator bank into the lobby, the
concierge nodded at him and called out, “Evening, Mr. Healy.”
There seemed little room for doubt
now. She’d been hoodwinked.
They stepped outside and Healy—yeah,
she had to start thinking of him that way now—gestured toward a building a
couple of doors down. As they reached the entrance she saw that it was an
Italian restaurant, one of those faux rustic ones with yellow and white checked
tablecloths and chairs with woven twine backs. The kind of spot you’d pick for
a second date, not where you’d debrief a person about a con artist. There was a
small bar, though, and Healy suggested they grab stools there rather than a
table.
The bartender greeted him by name,
just as the concierge had. Kit realized glumly that unless she was part of some
massive Bourne movie kind of conspiracy, the guy sitting next to her was who he claimed to be. And the man
she’d met five days ago wasn’t. When she’d first encountered him shopping in
Islamorada, she’d thought of him as Mr. X, and now he was no more than X again.
Healy asked what she wanted to drink
and she told him a cappuccino. She’d briefly considered a glass of wine, just
to take the edge off, but she needed a clear head to come to grips with what
had happened. He ordered a scotch and water himself and took a quick swig as
soon as it arrived.
Healy had seemed unruffled when she’d
first shown up on his doorstep, but she could sense his tension now—in the
stiffness of his body, the way he jiggled the plastic straw that had been in
his drink.
“I appreciate this,” Healy said.
“When I lost my wallet I thought cancelling six credit cards and ordering a new
license was the worst of it, but the situation is clearly more complicated.
What did this guy tell you he did for a living?”
“That he’d run a tech business but
had recently sold it. Is that what you do?”
“No, I’m a portfolio manager at a
hedge fund. You said you were in Florida when you met this guy. Where exactly?”
“Islamorada. He was staying at the
same hotel I was.”
“And he told you he was headed back
here? Did he say when?”
“Today—and he promised to make me
dinner.” Of course, the missing meal was hardly the issue. She’d slept with a
man, formed a connection with him, and had been hoping for more. And it had all
been a sham.
Healy’s body seemed to tense even
more.
“Sounds like he might actually still
be there, in Islamorada.”
“He said he was going to Miami,” Kit
said. “But I guess that might have been a lie, too.”
Yes, maybe it all had been a lie. Certainly if he was busy pickpocketing people,
he hadn’t recently cashed in on a tech company. But what about the drive south,
being a sculptor, the Boho sister in Miami, the girlfriend who’d moved back to
Melbourne? It stood to reason that every detail had been make-believe, part of
a devious scheme to sound enchanting and lure her into bed.
Healy ran his finger around the ri
m
of the glass, saying nothing for a moment. She was sure he was wondering if she
had slept with the guy in Florida and was smarting now from being stood up and
made a fool of. Well, she
was
smarting. She felt humiliated.
Many thanks to Ellie at Canelo for inviting me to be part of the blog tour, The Wrong Man is out now!
