I’m so shocked, I laugh. “You hit him.” I rush down the stairs.
Her eyes slide in and out of focus. “He was trespassing.” Her fist loosens.
I reach her patio. “He was huge.” I’m awed. “Weren’t you scared?”
She tugs at her coat collar like a hoodlum in a fifties film. “I’m not scared of anything.” When her eyes find mine, I believe it. Who is this woman living under our feet?
I hesitate on the patio, trying to re-form my plans. I wanted to befriend her. I need to get to know her. “Do you want to come upstairs?” I offer my most radioactive smile. “Get to know each other?”
* * *
I OPEN THE front door and walk to the kitchen. She stands just inside. She looks at the windows. Not all at once but piece by piece, mapping them.
“It’s so dark downstairs—”
“I like it.” Her voice is rough, abrupt.
I glance at our windows. It’s like a display case up here. “Do you want tea? Or coffee?” Who are you? What do you like? What is your weakness?
“No, thank you.”
“Water?”
“I can only stay a second.”
Even I don’t work that fast. Making someone like you is the ultimate magic trick, a total sleight of hand. Now you SEE the good! Now you DON’T see the bad!
I scrape my mind for something about me that might sound normal in conversation. I went for a walk yesterday, today and tomorrow. I have a husband. I live in a house. I can’t find anything halfway normal. I am not a human being. I don’t have a soul.
“So. You work in tech?”
“Yes.”
“How is that?”
She shrugs. “A job is a job.”
“What do you like to do for fun?”
“Nothing.” It’s like she can read my mind, see my intentions.
“You do nothing for fun?”
“I should really go.”
“Wine?”
“I don’t drink.” Alcohol would make this easier, but maybe there’s something there.
“Me either,” I say. “I mean, hardly. Alcoholic parents,” I lie. She flinches. “You, too?”
“My parents are dead.”
“I wish mine were,” I say before I remember that is not something you say to someone with dead parents. “They’ve basically disowned me.” I wait for her to ask why so I can tell her I’d rather not talk about it.
“I’d better go.”
How rude. I hate when people don’t want to know everything about me, especially things I can’t tell them.
“No. Please, stay.” Margo would be better at this. She would make Demi want to stay. Graham would make her beg.
“I can’t.”
Her expression is set. This might be harder than I thought. She seems determined. Graham was right: She has a toughness about her, an adversarial quality. Her muscles are tight. She stands away from me, but always with her eyes on me, always expecting the worst. She doesn’t seem to trust me. At the least, she doesn’t like me. It annoys me.
What I hate about people, what I really hate, is that they can make up their own minds about you. If I want a jacket, I can buy it. The jacket doesn’t have to want me back. But a person does.
“You seem very cagey,” I say, which doesn’t put her at ease.
“I have work—I have a really important work call. Sorry.”
I rush to the door but she’s already leaving. Usually they want to stay. Usually they are grateful to be invited, gushing over the house and all the things in it.
I reach her and her eyes go wide. It’s like she’s afraid of me. Like she knows what the game is. What if I am being set up? What if she and Margo are in this together?
“Did Margo put you up to this?”
Her lips part. “I don’t know who that is.”
The very idea shocks me and I stumble. “This is her house, and yours—you’re living in her house.”
“Oh, that Margo. I got her mixed up.” She’s lying. Of course, she is. No one forgets Margo. “I’d better go.”
“Another time,” I insist. She crosses the courtyard without answering.
LYLA
I tell Graham about the man in the courtyard. He is thrilled. He leads me to the sofa, where we sit together drinking Mo?t as the sun sets, and he asks me to describe him, recite the moment over and over.
“How tall?” “Were you scared?” “Then what?”
He is shocked that Demi punched the man. “How very cunning! I like a person who can think on their feet.”