The Safekeep(50)

There came a knock at the door. Isabel ran the tap as if she was washing her hands, and then closed it. Again, a knock, and then Eva saying her name quietly—through the wood: “Isabel.”

Isabel threw away the paper towel. She opened the door, hesitant, a small crack, and Eva said, “Oh, just—” And pushed her way in, locked the door behind her; she was red-faced and angry-looking and still reaching for Isabel: reaching for Isabel’s arms, her neck, pulling her in. Isabel pulled away and began to form a question and Eva just shook her head and said, “Shh, don’t talk,” and “Come here come here,” and handled Isabel—her hands, her arms, pulling them around her, all the way around her. “Hold me,” she said. “Just hold me.”

Isabel did. Isabel folded into her—the both of them clunking messily against the door, Eva’s back to the wood, Isabel collecting her: scooping her in, up, mouth to the sweat on Eva’s skin. Beyond the bathroom, the kitchen staff shouted at one another; the restaurant continued on in a babble.

“I’m still here,” Eva said. “I’m still here.” She kissed the shell of Isabel’s ear, and then again, and then again.

Back at the table, Isabel asked: “How is the wine?” Her voice was scraped thin.

Eva put down her glass. There, too: the mark of her lipstick to the rim. “The wine is good,” Eva said. She continued eating her fish, flake for flake. After a while she paused, said, “What are you staring at me for?”

“You should eat,” Isabel said. The words came out muddily, she had to clear her throat.

“What do you mean, should? I’m eating.” She gestured with her fork. “I’m eating.”

“I know,” Isabel said, and could not explain herself further.

Crickets accompanied them on the ride home. Isabel turned on the radio and immediately turned it back off again. She parked in front of the house, and Eva reached for Isabel in the moment Isabel went to open the car door and she said: “Can we stay here for a while?”

Isabel settled back. Eva still held on to her arm.

“Here?” Isabel asked. “In the car?”

Eva said, “Yes. I don’t—I don’t want to go in yet. Can we just…”

The house was a dark shape against the sky. Two proud firs. A single star came out under the waning moon; a beauty mark dotted under a coy eye. The hot season’s night rustled in the way that winter’s never did, bugs dry in the brush, things that had business in the dark.

Isabel now felt it, too: the looming. The doors, the windows, and what lay behind them. She could not put a word to the fear, only that it was Eva’s, and now it was hers, too.

She looked to Eva. Her curls had given up in the humidity, had drooped and then puffed up. Her lipstick had smudged further. In the dark, in the dim light of the night, Isabel could see the line of her profile in contrast: her parted lips, her cheek, her jaw. Peach fuzz and bone.

Isabel took Eva’s hand and kissed it. Held it close to her face, her mouth, kissed it: Eva’s knuckles and the papery skin on the back of her hand and the webbing between her fingers. Eva made a sound. Isabel closed her eyes and repeated Eva’s name into the heart of Eva’s palm, the very middle of it.

“I only upset you,” she said. “I only want to be close to you and all I do is upset you. Eva. Eva.”

Eva cupped Isabel’s cheek. Isabel hid that hold, and Eva said, “This is all there is, Isabel. This is all we have. We should make peace with that, yes? Yes, Isabel?” She was quiet about it. “It is what it is,” she said. “I will have to go with Louis. You understand that, don’t you, Isabel?”

“No,” said Isabel.

“Darling,” Eva said.

“You can’t.”

“Isn’t it better than nothing?” Eva said. “Isn’t it enough?”

Isabel took a breath to answer and found that she had no answer to give. Found that she did not know the precise meaning of the word enough, the way Eva used it—not what it meant in relation to another, in relation to her. She had held a pear in her hand and she had eaten it skin and all. She had eaten the stem and she had eaten its seeds and she had eaten its core, and the hunger still sat in her like an open maw. She thought: I can hold you and find that I still miss your body. She thought: I can listen to you speak and still miss the sound of your voice.

Isabel opened her mouth to Eva’s skin and then bit the heel of Eva’s hand—hard. Eva jumped, hissed, didn’t pull away—swayed closer. This, too, Isabel knew about her now: What she liked. How she liked it. Isabel soothed the bite. Eva touched Isabel’s face, her mouth. Her teeth, the shape of them under Isabel’s lips. The night was foggy and distant.

“Let’s go,” Eva said.

“Inside?” Isabel asked, and Eva took a while to answer: a hesitation. “Sure,” she said then. “Inside. Sure.”

The house was a held breath. The windows blank eyes, watching them enter. The furniture was asleep, the fruit in the bowl on the table—asleep. Eva’s hand was loose in hers. They parted between the kitchen and the dining room: Eva wanted a glass of water, and the phone rang in the other room, and so Isabel went to pick it up.

She said, “Isabel speaking.” She was distracted, her mind in the kitchen still—two steps behind, held away from her. She had an eye on the doorway.