Eve is on the verge of her 21st birthday that Spring: a smart strong happy outgoing person grown up in Oakdale, Long Island, and moving now from Bay Shore into dynamic relation with the world, through her college-course pursuit of a career in social work. She loves her Jewish family, old friends from Connetquot High School, home-cooked meals, horses, stupid movies, music (most lately, The Beatles): the first thing they love together is walking the great city streets holding hands, and talking and talking.
“Eve and I were not what anyone would consider popular at Connetquot,” writes a close girlfriend (posted among other fond comments with “Eve, Spring, Flowers” at WordPress). “Other girls were sometimes mean to her,” and although Eve is “rather shy and fragile,” people close to her know “one of the sweetest people I ever met.” “I always felt she would contribute a great deal to society” because “she had such a lovely personality…from deep within.” “She seemed to have blossomed after high school.”
Eve’s love for her family and her own life’s hopes are a painful mix these days. Just a year ago, her mother has died young of cancer, and Eve hides the grief still in her heart. As she lives now to honor and care for her father and younger sister, she also “just has to get out” of their devastated home awhile, to find her way. And out comes her current situation—for she had jumped too fast into living with a boyfriend who, she avers, is boyfriend no more. She’s stuck in a very uneasy living-space and longs to break out in new directions.
Weekly February dates for lunch become home-cooked dinners at the writer’s midtown mouse-hole, and always a fresh red rose sprayed with baby’s breath in his hand or on the table. He’s holding back most of a million kisses as Eve urges him, “Go slow, go slow”: she says the last thing she wants is new commitment, even as a girlfriend recalls that at the time, “she seemed the happiest I had ever known her to be.” To him she seems endearingly grateful for any little kindness, such as taking her by crosstown taxi to the evening’s last Long Island Railroad train, and constant offers (staunchly declined) to see her all the long way home. “There’s nothing to worry about, I know everybody,” she protests.
Eager to show what a patient, understanding fellow he could often pretend to be, he croons a few after-dinner songs with acoustic guitar. “Like James Taylor?” “Some,” Eve shrugs. So, he plays, and as sure as it happens that two people instantly know they belong together, he can see her slowly melting toward the world he longs to give.
Well the sun is surely sinking down
but the moon is slowly rising
so this old world must still be spinning round
and I still love you
It won’t be long before another day
we gonna have a good time
and no one’s gonna take that time away
you can stay as long as you like
Soon, one mid-week morning, Eve rides into Manhattan early and just shows up with breakfast at the writer’s door. Spring sunshine pours down through tall windows onto his ratty little table where they sit (talking, talking), and life between them is in full bloom. Her planned spontaneous visit happens in the same days when Eve starts a diary (later shared with the writer by authorities):
I bought this book to write in because I am very confused with the things I’ve been doing and feeling lately….I think I have a problem with guys and love. I don’t want to fall in love and don’t want a commitment. But it seems as if they do….I definitely don’t. I do want a guy to care….I really don’t know what exactly I want out of a relationship.
I know that right now I like Jack….I know that he likes me too, but I told him not to push….But so far he seems like a nice guy. He is honest, and he thinks that I am funny.
Although Eve hates and dreads office-gossip, she stops by his Macmillan writer’s desk as work allows, and there one morning he invites her on a writing-trip to talk with his WWII-veteran uncle in Asheville, North Carolina. “What? When are you going? All that for a stupid book?”
“Stupid book? I think you should go away now,” he says with obviously fake umbrage. Within hours an enormous red rose lands on his desk, with a card: Jack, Sorry. Hope this helps, Eve. He brings the bloom home and it unfolds like no rose he’s ever seen.
March 12 1980. I think I am in trouble now. I think I am really starting to like Jack more than I wanted to. I have a feeling that this time I am the one who is going to be hurt. I asked him if he dates other girls and he said yes. And that bothers me, but I can’t show it. I don’t want him to think I care too much, or too little. I really don’t want to lose this guy. He is really good to me and makes me feel good, I’m glad we’re taking it slow like I said. But now I think about him more than I want to. I am afraid. I really don’t want to fall in love with him, and I am so scared of being hurt.
Nine days later—Friday March 21st—they glide down Third Avenue from Macmillan to his place on 36th Street. Under red evening sky young street-poplars bloom out yellow and purple. Sharing wine, laughing, kissing, talking challenges and hopes: he’s rolling a smoke, Eve comes from behind to wrap his neck and nuzzle, and the man dissolves. “Eve, don’t be afraid. But I love you. I love you and I want us to move in together.” Alright, she replies. Because I love you, too.
Their first declaration, sealed with a long, long kiss. Now, some dinner? And that stupid movie she wants to see?
It’s stupid alright, but she can’t stop chatting comical queries in her seat, nor can he stop kissing her. Back outside and tiring out, Eve takes on a serious stomach-ache (or at least first lets it show): they go back to his apartment to wait for the night’s last LIRR train, and it’s the usual debate about his seeing her full-home. “How can I not worry? You even say sometimes that you think someone has followed you from Bay Shore station to your house.”
“Yes, and I know you mean just sleep here, but I have to go. I have commitments Saturday with friends and family. But then I’ll come back: we’ll eat deli and look for apartments in the paper.”
“Can I kiss you again, Eve?” “Yes.”
Now she’s falling asleep in his arms. “Promise you’ll wake me for the train.” Yes, but he can pretend to fall asleep too, till it’s too late. He awakens her. They careen across town in a cab with shattered shock absorbers, and “Eve’s curse” of menstrual pain is worse by the time they’re half-arguing again on the stark subterranean platform. There’s a minor flood in the station and a hubbub of late-night fans just out of a game at Madison Square Garden. “See, lots of people,” Eve protests. “I told you, I know everybody. Yes, I promise to cab it from the station home, it isn’t three blocks. Thanks, Jack. Now, good night.”
Kiss. Through the train’s big windows as it loads, he watches Eve find a seat. It won’t be long before another day. And then, she’s gone.
***
A visiting out-of-town college friend takes this photo during that very weekend of waiting, after he learns by phone that Eve never made it home. Three days of brain-boiling agonized worry, and then on Tuesday March 25th (Spring Equinox), the bottom drops out from under Spring and the universe. A Suffolk County Homicide detective says that Eve has been found, murdered, and that this kind of thing is “an everyday event.” The man with the last friendly face she saw rightly becomes their prime suspect, until his alibi, their lie-detector and a much later DNA test prove out.
(To be continued)