My ears go hot. My mind is sealed in panic but most of all I just feel guilt, guilt at the disgust I have for him, the anger that he is here taking what is meant for me.
When he comes out of the shower, he still looks dirty, but now he glows with it. His clothes seem stiffer; his jeans hang off his slicked hips.
“I want a coat,” he says. “A big warm coat.”
I find him the biggest and the warmest, anything to get rid of him. Still he hovers in the house, cracks open a beer, gazes out over the falling yard, admiring the view in near total darkness.
“This is a nice setup.” He turns to grin at me, cosseted in her big black coat. “I’ll have to come back. Say hi.”
“I wish you wouldn’t.”
His face crumples, like he’s really wounded. “Hey, that’s not very nice. You know, in a way, you owe all this to me.”
I mouth the word Sorry but I can’t say it. I move to the door, open it for him. There is a moment when I think he will ask—no, demand—to stay. He looks out the window, transfixed by his inability to see anything. Then a dog barks, and he flinches.
“It’s creepy down here.” The can makes a cracking sound as he squishes it.
To my relief, he starts toward the open door. I’m safe. Then he darts suddenly, inexplicably, toward her body like my life is a farce run on irony, and he reaches toward it, grabs at it. I squeal as he seems to wrestle with it. “I’m taking a blanket,” he explains, and he jerks it hard and the pillows leap up and her face is exposed, wrenched sideways by the upset but still beautifully lit in angelic repose. “Oh, my God.”
I shut the door.
DEMI
He sits on the couch. He has switched to red wine, body-finding booze.
“What were you planning to do with her?” he asks again. This is the one point he is sticking on, as if to emphasize how lucky I am that he showed up.
“I bought zip ties. Trash bags. Bleach.”
“A saw?” He watches me blanch. “I gave her straight H.” He throws back wine from the bottle. “It must have been something else she was taking.”
I don’t say anything, but I do wonder why he followed us, why he waited all day, hoping to run into me, as if he expected something like this to happen.
He scoots forward, heels scraping the floor. “You know what we should do? We should put her in the camp. I bet they wouldn’t even—” He bumps the wine bottle, catches it before it falls. “I bet you they wouldn’t even look into it if they found her there.”
“They’d still ID her. They’d find out she’s some rich woman. Then they’d care.”
He slips a crinkled rectangle of aluminum foil out of his pocket, sticks a short plastic straw in his mouth and chases heroin with a lighter, then sits back with bright eyes like he’s been enlightened. “We take off her fingers. Take out her teeth. I had a friend once burned to death by a heater in his tent. We could set her on fire.”
“That’s horrible.”
He scowls. “I’m trying to help you.”
I say nothing. I know he’s right. I need him; that’s the worst part.
He nods, as if my silence is agreement; then he runs another line of heroin and coughs. “You got ID on you?”
“Hers?”
“No, yours. We put her in your tent. Leave your bag outside with all your shit in it, personal stuff, whatever you got. They got a license, cops don’t need to ID the body.” He claps his hands together. “Open, shut.”
“But what if they do ID it? Once the body leaves here, we lose control.”
He leans back on the couch. “Do you know how many homeless people die in this city? Ha.” His shoulders jerk on the laugh. “You think they ID every body? They don’t even count. They don’t want anyone to guess how many people actually live on the street.”
My resolve wobbles. This isn’t what I wanted. I didn’t want Michael. I wanted her life for mine. I wanted control. “Maybe we should just leave. Leave the body. Leave the apartment. Take a few things with us.”
He smirks. “I won’t stop you.”
“You’re staying?”
He shrugs. “When a tornado drops a house on you, you live in it.”
“What if we get caught?”
“The police don’t have time to look into everything, especially in this town. People govern themselves; most of them are just too dumb to realize it.” He taps his temple with his finger. He reminds me of my dad, the things I loved and hated about him, the things I envied.