Graham is away on one of his golf trips. He goes almost every weekend, comes back with complicated stories about breaks and birdies, which he recites like someone trying to pass a test.
“I thought you would want to see her,” I said yesterday morning. He was leaving straight after work, so that was the last time I saw him.
He shrugged. “You can tell me what happens.” That is a big part of the game: the story. It is always told over ornate private dinners, too many cocktails, expertly arranged views. It’s recited like the winners write the history books. The others can’t interfere with the game. They’re supposed to wait for the story. In fact, they’re not really encouraged to interact with the tenant at all. It can throw off the game. It’s also part of the reason that Margo and Graham are so unhappy with me about what happened with the last tenant. I wasn’t supposed to talk to her, let alone befriend her.
“You need to come up with a plan,” he reminded me, kissing me once on either cheek, last on the lips. “Margo doesn’t think you can do it.” Of course she doesn’t.
“She didn’t think I could marry you either, but look how that turned out.”
He tightened his tie in the mirror and walked out the door.
* * *
WHEN I ARRIVE home later that day, there is a large moving van parked in front of our house. Furniture is piled on the side of the street. I walk slowly, analyze it. Demi has unique taste.
There is a marble statue that looks like a woman but could be some kind of animal. There are two elaborately carved wooden structures, like towers. I think they might be bookshelves but I can’t be sure; you couldn’t fit many books on them. I don’t know where she found them. Everything is unexpected. Nothing is functional. Her taste makes my skin feel tight.
Graham would detest it. He would call it creepy and weird. He thinks anything that isn’t classic is a sign of madness.
I stay in the courtyard for a while, organize the plants as the movers journey up and down the stairs. I am hoping to get a glimpse of Demi, but she’s not here. Good move.
Finally, I go inside the house but I don’t close the blinds, even though the movers can see inside.
The housekeeper is there. “Is that your new tenant?” she asks.
“No,” I say. “It’s her things.”
Once they finish with the big furniture, they start with Demi’s shoes. Her collection. They descend the stairs with boxes piled three high: Louboutin, Lucchese, Pierre Yantorny. It’s like watching a processional, a funeral for shoes.
The housekeeper makes me tea and I sit on the corner chair, the one set so you can look out onto the street and not be noticed. It takes them three hours to unload everything.
“You’re very curious,” the housekeeper says.
I bristle. “So are you.”
I try to find Demi in her furniture, the human inside the possessions. But all I can think about is how invaded I feel. It’s like she is crawling inside my womb.
LYLA
She doesn’t arrive Saturday night. I stay up late. I lie on Graham’s side of the bed. Our bedroom window looks out onto the courtyard. I have lifted the bottom of the shade. I watch the space, clamped by nerves.
Sometimes I see shadows cross themselves, ferried along by headlights or security lights, a rush of wind through the trees, and I think: She’s here. But she isn’t. She never comes.
All of Sunday, I pace the floor. Occasionally, the housekeeper annoys me.
“You seem tense,” she says.
Finally, I dismiss her. “It’s Sunday. Shouldn’t you have the day off?”
Graham comes home on Sunday afternoon. He doesn’t mention Demi, but I know it bothers him that she’s not here yet.
He sets up at his desk at the far end of the living room, the apex, so the entire view crams in around him. He pulls at his collar and rubs at his neck, releasing his scent like a scratch and sniff. I try to think of things to do that feel like actual things, but end up moving from the kitchen to the window, to the bedroom and back, like a thing trapped.
“Can you stop pacing?” Graham says. I can’t blame him. I am annoying myself.
I perch on the sofa under the window that looks out over the stairwell that leads to the guesthouse. “Do you think she’s down there and we just can’t hear her?” The sound from below is not always reliable. It’s something we’ve often wondered about. Sometimes we won’t hear a thing for days, when suddenly a sentence breaks through, clear as a bell, like the person below is standing in the room with you.