“Don’t go,” Saffy said. “I just want to talk—”
“You’ve got it wrong,” Jenny mumbled, as she backed toward the swishing doors. “Please, just leave us alone.”
And then she was gone. An ambulance screamed past as Saffy stood abandoned, her cigarette flaking ash onto the sidewalk.
*
What was it like? Kristen had asked, once. You know, with Travis and his friends?
Saffy couldn’t describe those years—though on the surface, she tried. She told Kristen about the underground parties, the makeshift campsites, dens draped in smoky curtains. Their crew had moved from house to house, party to party, indifferent and impulsive. Saffy had felt safe, swaddled in such recklessness: it was easy to self-destruct when you had nothing, really, at stake. When Saffy yearned now, she did not yearn for the drugs themselves or the high they provided, cheap and flimsy—she yearned instead for the freedom. The knowledge that though she walked a tightrope between life and death, it hadn’t really mattered which way she fell.
Now, Saffy trudged back to her car, glistening in the parking lot sun. She knew she should return to the precinct; she’d missed half a day of work already. But as her pager buzzed incessantly, she recognized a sliver of that old self, desire ticking like an activated bomb. She threw the pager beneath a sweatshirt in her trunk and pulled the scribbled address from her pocket.
As Saffy sped down the highway, she felt manic. She passed a stretch of boutiques and restaurants, then wound into a suburb—the houses scattered awkwardly, like Monopoly pieces thrown onto a board. Vermont looked like New York, Saffy thought, only with an extra layer of polish. Saffy pulled up to a single-story home with peeling paint and a cluttered porch, braked at the curb.
And there he was.
Ansel.
He crouched at the top of the driveway in the midday light, wearing a pair of plastic goggles. He looked vaguely the same, distended with age but still handsome in a conventional, nondescript way. He was sawing the legs off an old chair, the sound buzzing hostile through the car window. Saffy watched as he handled the chain saw, flecking dust in a cloud around his head. There was Lila’s ring, the only evidence she really needed—but there was also this. The way Ansel held himself, like he was above it all.
One, two, three with the fox.
One, two, Lila.
For a thrilling instant, Saffy considered approaching. She could do it. She could walk right up to him, one hand threatening the gun on her hip.
Ansel would squint, remembering.
Saff, he would say. This time, she would have the power. She would be the one to fear. Please, forgive me?
Saffy did not approach. She’d only have one chance, and this was too important. She needed Moretti, confidence, experience, that needling expertise. Saffy tore out of the cul-de-sac, toward the border of Vermont and back around the lake. She left the radio off and let the highway cocoon her, savoring the vitality that only this work could give. It was a feeling no person had ever managed to match.
There had been flings, fizzling and temporary. There had been boys behind bleachers and men in dusky bars. One real relationship: Mikey Sullivan, a trooper from Unit C, whom she’d met in Basic School. Saffy still missed Mikey’s smell after a shower, all aftershave and steam. As farmland melted into mountain, Saffy remembered their last night together. They’d slipped into bed after a lazy dinner of spaghetti and Corona, Mikey’s hand sliding into the waistband of her jeans. He’d wriggled on top of her, same as always, his breath like red sauce, arms like a cage. As he pressed into her, Saffy swelled with a sudden emptiness, a void that needed urgent filling. She had reached for Mikey’s hand, pressed his palm to her throat.
Squeeze, she’d ordered.
And for the tiniest instant, he had. As Saffy’s vision blurred and the room began to spin, she glimpsed a shadow of the thing she did not realize she’d been chasing. It felt like a breath of oxygen, even as she gasped for air—it felt like a younger, freer self, one who cared significantly less about survival. She had missed that danger. She had missed that liberation.
Mikey had pitched away, panting. The yellow lamp had flicked on, his disgust evident in the bright. As he grabbed his keys and stormed out, his discomfort hurling the shame onto her, Saffy recognized the monster in her own body. A wild creature, reaching out hungry, starving for annihilation.
She glimpsed that same craving in Jenny Fisk—an ask, for suffering. It was the scariest thing about being a woman. It was hardwired, ageless, the part that knew you could have the good without the hurt, but it wouldn’t be nearly as exquisite.