Page 39 of Liquids

“Yeah, our apartment,” she repeats, narrowing her eyes at me again. “I need to talk to him about some repairs.”

Repairs? He has an apartment? With her? And he’s fixing it up … so … so … they bought this place? He told me about the trailer and his mom’s farm, but he never mentioned this. Maybe the trailer is the place he takes women to fuck them, Carly. Holy shit. I mean, she could be lying about all this stuff, but it’s hard to lie about an apartment. Names are on deeds, and you can look up that kind of thing. Maybe I will. He said he had nowhere to live … Well, no, actually, he didn’t say that. He said he needed somewhere to hide. And he did have other places to stay. Clearly. He could have gone to his mom’s. Or, it appears, an apartment he has with Sadie. Fuck, I’m an idiot. Am I so desperate to find a good guy that I’m an easy mark?

“Whatever he’s told you, don’t believe it,” she says.

“Yeah, I’m getting that,” I say as I stare at my socks.

“Honest to God, he’s always got some tall story, some line to feed you.” She shrugs. “But …” She looks down at her hands. “… he’s decent in other ways.” Her chin juts out again.

If she’s lying, she’s a stellar actress. And I understand only too well all the other ways in which he’s decent. How come I wasn’t aware of his relationship with Sadie when I picked him up? All I’d heard was that he was a womanizer. And you’d do well to remember that about him, Carl. None of this sunshine-and-flowers bullshit. You’d think with Marge and her posse, I’d be on the hotline to the best inside information there is. Those old gals talk to everyone and know everything. Now I’m thinking it’s a very fine line between him being blunt with a twist and someone who’s an out-and-out asshole.

I’m on my own for a lot of reasons, and I thought he was on his own for good reasons, too. I guess I didn’t push hard enough into what those things were. I’m willing to bet there are a lot of women in this town who think like Sadie does about him. How many are given the story about the house on the beach?

“Okay,” I say, because, at this point, I have no idea what to say.

She tosses her hair over her shoulder, turns around, and clomps down the stairs in her fancy shoes, and I watch her tiny ass sway in her designer jeans and turn and shut the door, then lean against it. Why are men never the something special you think they are? Maybe I shouldn’t believe everything she’s told me, but I think it’s also clear I shouldn’t be believing everything he’s told me, either. I eye up the vodka on the countertop. Five minutes, Carly. Five minutes of death around the block, then you can have a drink.

When I arrive back sucking in breaths like I’m about to die, my mind is still buzzing, and I don’t feel like drinking, like, at all. Goddammit, I could do with someone to talk to. I don’t want to talk to Marni; she’ll just tell me to move on. I could maybe talk to Brit, but she clearly worships the ground Rig walks on.

But there is one person I know I can talk to, so I get in my car and head out to the church graveyard. I pick some flowers by the side of the road on my way, and when I get there, I take my trowel out of the trunk, my grass shears, a plastic bottle filled with water, and soap and a small dish so I can wash the vase I have on the grave. I spend an hour tidying it all up and adding the flowers and another hour lying on the grass next to Charlie under the tree, rambling on about Rig and how much I was hoping it would be different. I don’t know where my hoping for something better came from or how it started, but it feels like it’s been a noose around my neck all my life.

Then I tell Charlie how much I miss him and how I wish he was still here, and I start to cry.

13

DOUSING

By late afternoon, as I’m stomping around the apartment and cursing the ground Rig walks on, more footsteps scuff on the metal of the stairwell outside my front door. When I glance out the window for the second time, Marni’s head of blonde curls flashes past. She’s dropped by and not sent me a text first? I don’t think she’s ever done that. When I open the door, she pushes into the kitchen looking weary and pissed.

“What’s up?” I say.

She shrugs off her coat, toeing off her shoes in the entryway. “Rig, that’s what’s up. I presume he’s holed up here?”

“He was for a few days. He’s gone back to the rigs now.”

“Carl, that fight … A lot of serious people lost a lot of money. I’ve kept my mouth shut.” She blows her curls out of her face. “But it’s costing me. I’m getting a load of hassle.”

“Why are you being hassled?”

“There weren’t many people in the bar the night you left with Rig, but there were some. I asked one or two people to keep quiet, but … now they’re asking for favors in return.”

“What kind of favors? And you can tell them he’s not here, Marn, because he really isn’t.” I sweep my hand around.

As soon as the words are out of my mouth, a loud thumping starts up on the door, and when I peer out of the window, two huge guys are standing on my doorstep. Honest to God, I’ve never been so popular. No one ever visits this shithole of an apartment, mainly because I never invite anyone. And who would? As I said, it’s a shithole. And no amount of Rig’s cleaning and fixing can disguise that.

I open the door. “Can I help you?”

A hand comes out and lands on my collarbone, and I’m shoved backward as they barrel into the kitchen before I can say anything. One of them walks right past Marni, through my living room and into my bedroom.

“Excuse me?” I shout after him.

“Where is he?” the other one growls.

“What are you? The Miami Vice goon squad? You don’t just come in here and march through my apartment.”

He grins at me. “What you going to do about it?”

Fortunately, Marni has just as much attitude as me, because her phone is already pressed to her ear. “I’m calling the cops,” she says, examining a nail.