“Thank you. Astrid. I really appreciate it.”
“No problem.” She is looking at me like she pities me, but it can’t be because she knows what was inside. That wouldn’t inspire pity. That would inspire a phone call. Fear. She must think that I have gross trash, that I am some gross person, leaving things to rot.
“Thank you,” I say again and regret it. I don’t want to draw attention. It’s too late for that, I caution myself.
She turns back to the fountain, pierces the surface with her finger.
My knees stay buckled as I journey down the stairs. My mouth is coated in panic. When I step inside the apartment, when I shut the door behind me, my legs shake so badly that I have to sit down. I can barely see the apartment around me. I am having a panic attack, some blast of conscience. I want to cry but no tears come. I want to throw up but my stomach is empty.
It’s so unfair that I covered up a murder and might get discovered. While upstairs they have a hell-themed garden more beautiful than any heaven I can ever hope to get to.
* * *
THE GUESTHOUSE HAS shrunk in my absence. It has a sickly, close feeling: heroin and sweat and strife. I take a shower but even her toiletries have taken an ordinary caste. They smell the same as the last time I used them. There is nothing artful about them, nothing unexpected.
I sit in the living room and try to read a book, but what’s the point? Books don’t transport you. Money does.
Michael comes home with a bundle of flowers so decadent and disparate that I recognize them immediately. “Where did you get those?”
He plucks a vase from the end table and takes it into the kitchen to fill with water from the tap. At the kitchen counter, he arranges the bouquet, tugging a daisy, spreading a rose’s petals. “Found them.”
I stand in the doorway. “You went into her garden.”
“You did.” How does he know that?
“I was invited. I went with Graham. It’s his mother’s house.” He shrugs, slips a square of foil from his pocket and chases a line. “This house reeks of heroin. How did you know I was there?”
“Saw you. I was in the red garden. The one with roses.” Lust.
“What were you doing in there? Do you want to get caught?”
“Looking at the flowers,” he says through smoke.
The flowers are already starting to die down here. “It’s not our garden. You can’t just walk around in there.”
He snorts. “Yes, I can. You ever seen a place like that? You ever seen anything so beautiful?”
“I don’t know,” I lie.
He chases another line, then leans against the counter. “They hoard beauty, too, along with their money.” He speaks like an oracle, a heroin prophet. “The world is a beautiful place, or it would be, but they take it all. All the beauty, and what do we get? Broken sidewalks and spattered blood.”
“Write a poem about it.” I hate when people are high and right.
“He’s good-looking, isn’t he?”
“Who?” Like I don’t know.
“But you’d better watch yourself,” he counsels me, shaking his lighter at me. “Bet you he’s bad. Bet you he’s worse than we are. Money is immoral. Money is the only thing God doesn’t forgive.” That’s convenient for him.
I rest my shoulder in the doorframe. “He said he wanted to help me.” My voice is weak with hope.
“He thinks you’re someone else.”
I trace the cracks in the molding. “Maybe if I explained to him what happened, how it was an accident.”
Michael springs from the counter. “No.” He pushes around me through the doorframe, carrying his flowers. He sets them in the corner, then sits on the floor beside them, just staring at them.
I should leave it. I don’t know why I want to convince Michael of all people, but all people are gone. “A person like that could . . . he could get us out of this for good.” I say “us” but I mean “me.” Michael knows it. “He could fix everything—he actually could.” That much money, you could do anything. Anything.
“No.”
“You said not to be poor-minded,” I persist. “You said to be the reason. This is an opportunity.”
He shakes his head, shuts his eyes. “Rich people are not opportunities. Poor people are opportunities. Dead people are opportunities. You can’t trust someone who doesn’t need anything. Trust me.”
I want to point out that I watched him kill someone, and he wants me to trust him? But I don’t want to remind him. I don’t want to remind me. He will just tell me again that he did it to save me, but save me for what? This half-life hiding in the guesthouse while right over our heads there’s a castle and I have the key.