The more he tries to convince me his life is his choice, the less I believe it.
I want to be alone. It doesn’t seem fair that he is invading my dream.
Every time he leaves, I hope he never comes back. Every time my eyes shut, I see him disappear.
DEMI
I am careful about our trash. I don’t want the woman upstairs to see me carrying empty bottles and crushed cans, bloody paper towels and used needles, so I wait until she goes out.
She goes out only once a day, for almost two hours exactly. I keep my ears pricked for when this happens. I keep the house clean, while Michael quietly fills it up with junkie debris. I collect it, pack it away with care so the bottles don’t knock together when I walk.
I wait for her to leave; then I encourage Michael to go. “Now’s the best time. Before she comes back.”
That afternoon, he pushes back, whining and delaying, but I know he will leave, needs to leave, because he has run out of drugs.
“I’ll go later,” he says.
“She’ll be back later.”
“So what? Have you seen her? She just sits there like a doll.”
“Her husband will be back later.”
He scoffs but I know he’s afraid of him. He passed him on the street once. He said he reminded him of “Christian Bale in that movie.” American Psycho.
Now he takes another shower, coats himself in rose-scented bodywash, then puts on her long black coat. “I’m coming back,” he says at the door.
“I know.” The pressure ticks in my mind.
I clean the house slowly. I enjoy cleaning. It’s a luxury I have never been able to afford.
Once I am finished, I slip on a pair of alligator pumps and I take the trash out. I pass through the hole in the wall. The gate is gone. They still haven’t replaced it, which is strange. Michael claimed he didn’t break it, but he lies about what he had for breakfast, so I take that with a grain of salt.
I think of Demi stalking the streets in stilettos with her neck snapped. Ghosts have never scared me before. In fact, I always thought it would be nice to be a ghost because you don’t have to worry about health insurance. But there is something about having things to lose that makes me afraid in a different way. I used to be numb, accepting everything that came, but now I feel almost more vulnerable.
I walk the bag far down the street so the trash won’t be connected to me. Walking back up the street, I notice a big white van parked across from the duplex. The windows are blacked out with makeshift curtains. There is a spray of dried dark liquid down one side. I wonder who it belongs to. I imagine the FBI coiled inside behind a wall of buttons and screens, watching me. Or a family of human mice piled up inside, trying to survive.
For a second, my imagination takes on a supernatural aspect. I see a big writhing octopus, the monster of my guilt, crammed inside, waiting to get out. And when I walk down the stairs, its tentacles will shoot out and chase me, blast through any obstacle.
The van doesn’t fit in this nice neighborhood. I walk away from it fast, like it’s chasing after me, like I brought it here.
Paranoid, I think. You’re being paranoid.
My eyes dart to the courtyard as I pass. Light gathers in pools everywhere, like some sweet oasis. I wish I could collect it, take it down with me, set a bundle of light in the middle of the room and let it glow, illuminate everything.
I steady my hand on the railing as I continue down the stairs.
Suddenly, I hear something pounding, racing toward me. Denial pops like a balloon in my ears. Panic explodes and I know: They’re here. They’ve come to get me, like I knew they would.
I leap, kneecap cracking, down the stairs and toward the woods, but it’s too late. A body falls against me. I crash into the door, grasping for purchase, almost knocked off my feet. Then I smell Demi’s rose-scented bodywash. It’s her! She never died! She wants her life back!
I wheel to face her and I see Lyla watching from the top of the stairs. Then Michael pushes past me, soaked in Demi’s perfume. My hand reaches out on instinct, makes a fist, punches him right between the shoulder blades.
“Bitch!” he snaps.
“Don’t come back!” I snap back.
He dives down the hill, all the way to the fence. I picture Demi’s body lurching over the fence. I shut my eyes until the image floats away.
When I open them Lyla is still there, dressed in clothes that seem to pull away from her, afraid to touch.
“You hit him.” She looks right at me and my stomach twists. I feel sick.
Be normal, I instruct myself. Be a human being. But it’s too late for that. I’ve become something else. Or else a human being was never what I thought it was. . . . “He was trespassing.”