The Safekeep(4)

“Tonight was lovely,” Eva said.

“Mm,” Isabel said, washing her hands.

“I really have been wanting to meet you, you know. You most of all. Louis has told me so much. You live in the old family home, right? In the house where you three grew—”

“I did not invite you here tonight.”

Eva was caught in a breath, mouth moving a moment. There was a sheen of sweat under the line of her collar. Isabel was annoyed by the very act of looking at her right then. Annoyed by the tight seams of her dress, the dark roots of her hair, the painted eyebrows. How humiliating, she thought, to have a bad performance show so plainly.

Then Eva laughed. A single, humorless laugh. “Well!” she said. “Don’t you speak your mind!”

Isabel dried her hands. “I don’t mean to be rude.” This was a lie. “But you will be gone soon.” She made sure it came through clearly: “He will be bored of you, and I’ll never hear of you again.”

It didn’t have the desired effect. “Oh,” Eva said. She tilted her head. “We’ll see.” It wasn’t the same voice she’d used before, not the same voice that laughed nervously over every exchange, not the same voice that apologized—oh sorry, oh I’m so silly I’m sorry—when knocking over a glass, scraping a knife too loudly on the plate.

Isabel looked at her and caught a flash of something in her expression—a fissure, something, but it was gone very quickly and immediately Isabel couldn’t say whether she’d imagined it. If it had been there at all.

Isabel made to leave. Eva didn’t move from her perch, watched her go, gaze steady. Keen. Outside on the street it was hot and wet all at once, a misty drizzle in the air. The sea pushed into the streets, the smell of salt. Louis asked, “Where is Eva?” And Isabel said, “Am I responsible for her now?”

Hendrik hooked his arm into hers. She held on. Louis said, “You were terrible tonight. You were terrible to her.”

“Oh, pooh,” Hendrik said.

Louis took a step closer, trying not to raise his voice. “What will it take to get you two to—”

But then Eva joined them again. She was fixing her hat. It was very red. Her lipstick had been redone. It was noticeable now, how short she was in comparison: the three of them were all tall, all narrow. “What did I miss?” she said, and the voice was back again: higher than before, lilting. She seemed to think it made her softer. It didn’t, Isabel thought. It didn’t at all.

Louis sweetened at her presence and turned from them. “Nothing,” he said. “What could possibly happen without you around?”

She liked that. Went peach-cheeked, leaned into him, then quickly insisted the night could not yet be over—it couldn’t possibly be over! “Come over for drinks, oh please, oh, you must!”

“To—Louis’s?” Hendrik asked. Louis had a sparse, small room in a second-floor apartment near his work. It was old and badly kept, a moldy shower, and he shared the house with a suspicious little man with a heavy brow and rimmed glasses. But the rent was covered by his engineering company, and Louis was often abroad. Isabel never came by for anything other than to pick him up, drop him off.

“Oh, it was a dreary place, wasn’t it? But I’ve helped him redecorate, haven’t I, darling? And it’s really very lovely now, oh, you should come by, if only to see.”

“You’ve helped Louis redecorate.” Hendrik said it like a punch line. Eva didn’t notice, only confirmed enthusiastically. Isabel didn’t want to go. The night had gone on for long enough. She said as much, claiming train times, and how dark it was getting, but then Hendrik leaned in and whispered a wry Oh come on don’t you want to see her decorations?

It was decided: they would go. One drink, only the one. “Oh, of course only one,” Hendrik said.

It was a short walk down the boulevard. Louis lived nearby. There was no reason for him and his girl to have been late to the restaurant, no reason other than not having left the house on time, and why would they not leave on time? An answer came to Isabel, a sharp, unpleasant answer—a flash of an image, of a bed. The things people did alone in rooms together. She looked away from it physically: turned her face to the sea. The setting sun was a distant spill of light behind a blanket of gray. The sea pushed in and in, roiling and then pulling away, roiling.

Then Eva paused, fell into step beside her, said she needed a moment away from “the boys”—some sort of conspiratorial word. Isabel scowled at it. They walked onto Louis’s street. The wind calmed here. Taller buildings, little gardens. Eva began a soft prattle, Isabel’s speech back at the restaurant seemingly forgotten. She was not saying anything much, just commenting on the gardens, posing her statements as questions: Weren’t the begonias blooming nicely? And shouldn’t she just love a garden of her own? It seemed like this was a question for Isabel, but it wasn’t, immediately followed up with a quick and distracted sigh of: “Oh, but I would just be terrible at it, wouldn’t I? I would just be terrible at having a garden, I’d kill just about anything I’d try to grow, I just know it.”

“Then don’t get a garden,” Isabel said. Eva pursed her lips into a hard line.

Upstairs, when they entered Louis’s room, Hendrik squeezed Isabel’s arm harshly—a message. Out loud he only said, a creak in his voice, “Oh, how lovely!”