I nodded slowly. It was one of those weird, high-def moments when the conversation is so real, so important, you’re almost detached, floating a few feet above it.
“See, here’s what’s cool.” He yanked the key from the ignition. “You want space, you want to get away—I get that, I’ve done that, I’ve dated people who’ve been like that. But usually that means they run away from me.” He tapped his sternum. “And you insisted we head west! Together! Makes me feel like a million bucks.”
My voice was round and shy as I said: “I always feel happier around you.”
I glanced his way and saw his chest puff, his eyes shine. So I knew I’d said the right thing. But what I thought first was: Right, because I wasn’t running away from you.
* * *
—
The hotel was on the outskirts of town. A faded mural of southwestern motifs spread across the wall behind the check-in desk, and the blue and tan blankets draped over the armchairs looked filched from a yoga studio. Aaron gamely complimented everything in sight, snapping photos and pointing out details, as if he could sense my disappointment. God, he was kind.
On the elevator ride, a wave of exhaustion hit me. I raised an eyebrow. “Those gummies still accessible?”
The room was a bit more promising, with broad windows and a slim balcony facing a crumply mountain we eventually identified as Camelback. Bristly, moss-green trees dusted the flat expanse between us and the mountain ridge, and the thought spilled out before I could cork it: This reminds me of the Elqui Valley.
There it was—the downward rush of THC, like a choir of Gregorian chanters sliiiding an octave down. A whole bunch of monks. What a funny thought: Silent monks opening their mouths to sing, to give their vocal cords a workout, to let the sound waves crash and echo around them. Also, that’s a funny word, monk. Monk. What was I just thinking about?
Oh, right: how very kind Aaron was. And beautiful, kind Aaron wanted to hold me, to kiss me, to make me feel safe. Safety—what did we call it? The opposite of fear? The thought warmed me and I crossed to the wardrobe, where he was diligently sliding his shirts onto hangers. I slipped my arms around his slim waist and kissed his neck. He turned around, his grin matching mine, and then meeting mine, and then our mouths were moving together in a slow, interesting tango, and then our fingertips and soft skin and all our bodies’ corners, inner and outer, concave and convex, moved like one.
It was all feeling so good, stretchy and wide and endless, until the awareness of Kristen, of Sebastian and Paolo and the LAPD began to build in my mind like charged particles, like the sudden viridescent blare of the Northern Lights, and when I gasped it was out of panic, panic like I’d never known, panic that I’d never, ever, ever be free from my nightmare.
Afterward, we lay spooning in the tangled sheets, watching out the window as the crooked horizon grew umber and then politely faded into the background, black.
“I’m starving,” he announced, propping himself up onto an elbow.
“I’m…I might be too high. I’m feeling a little…anxious.”
“Oh no, I’m sorry. About what?”
About Kristen leaking the photo of me and Sebastian, maybe even sweetening it up with an anonymous tip about its connection to Paolo’s case. Or sending in the molten lump, Paolo’s license number still visible, along with my home address. About the calls I keep getting from Chilean and Los Angeles numbers. About the cops breaking down the door, throwing me on the ground and maybe hurting you, too, in the commotion.
“It’s like—I get to the end of a breath and I worry that I’ll forget to take another,” I said, which was true. “Or that I’ll never have the energy to get up again.” It was a lesser concern, but still it registered: I needed to pee and the bathroom was fifteen feet away, and how, hooooow would I ever cross the distance?
“Aw, babe. Guess these gummies are pretty strong for a newbie. What do you need?” He brought me water and found a nearby spot with takeout pizzas. He woke me to say he was going to pick up his order—the only thing I remember before morning. In my dreams, I saw the mama rabbit, her neck so hacked her head clung by a flap of white-red skin. She kept trying to hop but instead limped and hobbled and zigzagged closer and closer to the edge of a Chilean cliff.
* * *
—
When I woke, Aaron was out on the balcony, frowning at his iPhone screen. He was deep in a photoshoot with a tiny gecko that clung to the glass, loving the attention. He stepped inside and asked how I was feeling, but all I could say was that I needed coffee. Suddenly, being here felt ludicrous. Where would I be safe? Should I leave the country, hide out in Canada, hope that no one would extradite me?
“I didn’t see a coffee maker,” Aaron said. “Should we grab breakfast downstairs?”
Normalcy—I had to maintain it, had to fake it. So I brushed my teeth and stepped into some clothes. I’d failed to plug my phone in, and it had died; with a flare of anxiety, I jabbed the charger into the wall and walked away right as the Apple symbol appeared on the screen.
The sight of food made my innards turn: shiny green apples, one of those conveyor-belt toasters, a cauldron of oatmeal with brown sugar and raisins in canisters nearby. I forced down a banana as we sat on the deck, squinting into the sun and paging through a book of local hiking trails. Walking sounded nice, moving through wide-open space when it felt like cardboard walls were pressing in on me from every direction. We selected the lowest-hanging fruit, and I relaxed at having a plan—a three-mile loop that began just a block away from the property, following a country road and then branching off for a final ascent. “Rewarding views” from a portion along a steep ridge.
As Aaron rose to refill his Styrofoam coffee cup, I allowed myself a dreamy moment: What if this could become our lives? Not scraping peanut butter from tiny plastic tubs near an ugly lobby, but living somewhere new, somewhere beautiful. A fresh start totally distinct from Kristen, the past; here, with the sun stamping our table and lizards flicking by our feet, I could almost convince myself that the madness of the months since Cambodia existed on another plane, a different dimension, with no bearing on this one. Maybe this was Arizona’s magic, all that talk of vortexes and UFOs and the connection to the stars: Here, no one could touch us.
We marched inside and prepared for our trek—snacks packed, sunscreen applied, dorky baseball caps perched on our heads. We were halfway through the lobby when a voice made me freeze.
“Emily!”
Aaron whipped around next to me, but I stayed still as an ice sculpture, fragile as a flake of snow.
“Emily.” It was louder now, closer, and a vault opened up inside me, down and down and down. No.
A hand on my shoulder. Like it was a needle and I, a soap bubble, iridescent and doomed.
I turned and blinked at her. Pop.
“I came as fast as I could,” Kristen said. And she pulled me into a one-sided hug.
CHAPTER 37
POLICE RELEASE SKETCH IN APRIL SLAYING OF SPANISH-AMERICAN BACKPACKER
Los Angeles investigators, working with Chilean officials, released a composite drawing in an effort to track down a woman they suspect is connected to the death of a Spanish-American backpacker last month.