My chair squeaks. “What was she like?”
“Small.” He shrugs. “But she has a sort of toughness to her. You can tell she’s poor.”
“I thought she was quite pretty. Like an ingenue.”
He grunts. “Don’t fall in love with this one, too.” Like he doesn’t do the same thing: obsess, search for himself inside of a stranger, search for a version of himself he can live with and then find—surprise! He is still the same monster after all.
“How can I fall in love? I’ve hardly even seen her.” I gaze at my untouched plate. “I think she’s avoiding me.” The more I think about it, the more it does seem like a setup. It’s hard to believe that Margo would share the rules of the game with an outsider but maybe she did. Maybe she is trying to throw me off-balance. Maybe she is trying to scare me.
He moves his salad across the plate, concentrating. “What’s your plan?”
“I’m still getting to know her—”
“They’re all the same.” He coughs into his fist. “They want what we have, and they can’t get it.”
“I want to impress you,” I say. “Do something really spectacular.”
“Well. You’re taking forever.”
It’s been only a couple of weeks. I don’t want to rush it. They don’t. Once Margo took six months to cuck a separated banker. Even Graham takes his time, setting up elaborate scenarios with lost bunnies and wild horses. He draws them in, then pushes them away, bringing their longing to an artful crescendo. Of course, when it’s my turn, it’s suddenly not fast enough.
But it’s not just that. I can see it in Graham’s face, even with no stars out. His temples are tight. His jaw has a light pulse. What happened last time plays on his features, threatening to deepen his shallow.
It was frightening. It caught us all by surprise. It changed the game.
LYLA
That night I can’t sleep. Graham smells his strongest at night, all that exposed skin and the single malt whisky he drinks pushing out through his pores, forcing his scent into the air, where it hovers like a mind-bending fog over our rumpled white bed.
When I shut my eyes, I see Elvira, her dark hair in the fountain spiraling so it was almost indistinguishable from the tendrils of blood.
Some nights, when I’m especially tired or especially drunk, I have dreams about her. In my dreams she’s always played by Nicole Kidman, and she’s the one targeting me. I’m at my parents’ house before they disowned me. I’m sitting in the corner in time-out when she knocks. I’m at school taking a test and she shows up, note in hand, to get me out. I’m working at a hot dog stand and she’s next in line and she says, “I want you. Let’s go!” I always wake up at the point where I get in her car, so we never escape. We never go anywhere. She just keeps showing up with the promise that we can leave now forever.
But tonight, I can only see her dead. The way her face was turned up out of the water, like she could still breathe. How she looked like a doll of herself, something you could buy, and break, and discard.
I think of Demi in the courtyard rattling the gate like she knew, like Elvira’s ghost told her: Escape. Escape this place where death blooms like a body at the center of a fountain.
Graham’s eyelids throb as his sleep deepens. If he could see what I see—but maybe he can. I called him as soon as I found her body. He was away on one of his golf trips. “Don’t call the police,” he said. “Wait until I get there.”
When he got there, three hours later, he just stared at the body. He had a new expression—not a frown or a smile but one that revealed his dimples. The first thing he said was “It’s so interesting, isn’t it? When people surprise you. I’m never surprised anymore.” And then he called Margo and she called her police.
I am sure she paid to keep it quiet. “It’s the scandal,” Margo explained to the police unnecessarily. “We’re worried about how her family will take it.” Elvira didn’t have a family—Margo was always careful with that—just a sister in some bumfuck town. A sister who managed to track down our house number.
I picked up the phone when she called one afternoon. She kept repeating, “I just want to know why. I just want to know why.” I hung up and called Margo. Elvira’s sister never called again. Margo probably paid her, like she does everyone, to disappear. Like she once tried to pay me.
On my wedding day, she called me into her dressing room and asked me, “What’s your number?” Simple. Straightforward. Just like that.