“You really think you can get him to tell you where he’s staying?”
Charlie nodded. “Sure. I can even go there and hog-tie him, if that’s what you want. You’ll have to do me a better favor for that, though.”
“Suzie says asking you for help is like summoning up the devil. The devil might grant your wish, but afterward, you’re out a soul.”
Charlie bit her lip, looked up at the streetlight. “Like you said, I barely know Suzie. She must be thinking of somebody else.”
“Maybe,” Doreen said. “But all that stuff you did—even back in the day, the stuff people said—you’ve got to be angry at someone.”
“Or I could have done it for fun,” Charlie said. “Which would be pretty messed up, right? And since I am doing you a good turn, it’d be polite not to mention it.”
Doreen gave one of those exhausted sighs that mothers of little kids seemed to have welling up in them at all times. “Right. Sure. Just bring him home before he winds up like you.”
Charlie watched Doreen go, then got into her Corolla. Buckled her seat belt. Tried not to think about the job Balthazar was offering, or who she used to be. Thought instead of the ramen she was going to boil when she got home. Hoped her sister had fed the cat. Imagined the mattress waiting for her on the floor of her bedroom. Imagined Vince, already asleep, feet tangled in the sheets. Shoved her key in the ignition.
The car wouldn’t turn on.
2
KING OF CUPS, REVERSED
The wind whirled down the tunnel of Cottage Street, stinging Charlie’s cheeks, sending hair into her face.
Her Corolla still sat in the parking lot of Rapture. No matter how many times she twisted the key or slammed her hands against the dashboard. Jumper cables hadn’t done a thing to resuscitate the car, and tow trucks were expensive.
She’d considered calling Vince, or even a cab, but instead she’d gotten the vodka out of the trunk and done a couple of sulky shots straight out of the bottle, standing there feeling sorry for herself. Looking up at the sky.
The last of the leaves had turned brown; only a few still hung on branches, drooping like sleeping bats.
A car had slowed at the stop sign. The driver called out a vulgar proposal before he hit the gas. She flipped him off, although it seemed unlikely he noticed.
It was nothing Charlie hadn’t heard before anyway. She saw herself reflected in her car windows. Dark hair. Dark eyes. A lot of everything else: breast and butt and belly and thigh. Too often, people acted like her curves were some engraved invitation. They seemed to forget that everyone gets born into bodies they can’t just kick off like slippers, figures they can’t transform as though they were shadows.
Another gust of wind sent a few leaves into the air, although most clotted together along the edges of the road.
And that was when Charlie had decided it would be a great idea to hoof it the mile and a half home.
It was a nothing walk, after all. A stroll.
Or it would have been, for someone who hadn’t been on her feet all day and half the night.
The term “pot-valiance” occurred to her, too late.
She passed a darkened bookstore, in the window a fall display of pumpkins with plastic vampire fangs jammed into their carved mouths. They rested toothily beside horror novels and a decorative dusting of candy corn, their orange bodies just beginning to sag with rot.
The whole street was shuttered. Pulling her coat tighter, Charlie wished that Easthampton was like some of the surrounding college towns—Northampton or Amherst—full of enough tipsy students stumbling through the late-night streets to justify at least one pizza place staying open after the bars closed, or a coffeeshop for up-all-night overachievers.
All the quiet gave her too much time to think.
Alone on the dark street, Charlie couldn’t escape Doreen’s words. But all that stuff you did—even back in the day, the stuff people said—you’ve got to be angry at someone.
She kicked a loose chunk of cement.
When she was a kid, Charlie had been a mop of black hair, brown eyes, and bad attitude. She’d gotten into one kind of trouble after another, but along the way, she learned she was good at taking things apart. Puzzles, and people. She liked solving them, liked figuring out how to get at what they were hiding. To become what they wanted to believe in.
Which made her consider the Adam thing again. It couldn’t hurt to play it through. Distract herself from the night.
Charlie fished out her phone and typed: There’s a volume in the Mortimer Rare Book Collection at Smith College that I’m sure contains something important. I can pay you. Or we can work out a trade.