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I cut myself off, realizing I was a little out of breath. “Sorry,” I said. “I could keep going for about, oh, a hundred and eighty pages or so. But I’ll stop.”
“Give me an example,” Sam said. “Like when you said something might change how ‘true’ the book is.”
“Okay, well,” I said, warming to my subject. This actually happened to be a major point of analysis in the chapter I should be at home writing at this very moment. Maybe I could even count this conversation as “brainstorming” time and not feel guilty that I was blowing off my work. “Have you readIn Cold Blood?”
Sam shook his head. “I know you’ll tease me for it,” he said, “but I usually can’t handle those books.”
It caused a warmth to bloom in my chest, the idea that we had enough of a relationship at this point that I had things to tease him about, that he knew me well enough to know I might. And conversely, the fact that he assumed I’d tease him about not having the stomach for true crime made it that much less likely that I ever would.
I briefly explained the basic gist of the book, how Capote had gotten close with the two murderers and conducted many interviews with them in prison to form the narrative of the crime. “What was innovative about the way he wrote it,” I said, “was that it was like you were reading a novel. He used all these fictional techniques of characterization, using juxtaposition in scene cutting to build suspense and drama... and he described all the scenes like he was there. It makes you feel like you’re in that moment, like you’re a voyeur looking in on what actually happened. And in a way he seems more credible for the fact that he never inserts himself in the narrative, like he’s just this objective transcriber of all the action. But it’s like... have you ever seenAmerica’s Next Top Model?”
“Uh,” Sam said, blinking at the apparent change in subject, “not a full episode, I don’t think.”
“Okay, Iwilltease you about that later, but there was this one contestant who went to Yale, right? And in her talking heads, she was always like,Yale thisandYale that, and it made her sound like such a pretentious twat, like she couldn’t help but mention her Ivy League education every fifteen seconds. But I read an interview with her later—don’t look at me like that, it was Murderpedia or Television Without Pity in those days, so you should be grateful I was well-rounded—and she talked about how the producers would alwaysaskher about Yale in the segments. And you were supposed to read the question back in your answer, so it made it sound like she was just blah blah blah about fucking Yale, when really it was the producers shaping the questions and then editing the footage in a way to make it seem like she was talking about Yale all the time.”
Sam was looking at me as if he couldn’t believe I was real. I couldn’t tell if it was in a good way or a bad way, but it made me suddenly self-conscious.
“I can’t put that bit aboutANTMin an academic paper, obviously,” I said. “But I’m just saying, it’s the same idea with Capote. It’s interesting to think about the questions he asked, the things he chose to emphasize, what parts of the narrative are factually true or emotionally true or whether it even matters.”
“I think this round of Solved Mysteries goes to you,” Sam said. “That was very thorough.”
When it came to true crime, I knew I could get a little... passionate. But I resisted the urge to apologize again. For one thing, Sam didn’t look like he needed it.
“So what was the crash?”
“Oh.” He rubbed the back of his neck, gesturing toward the metal rack. “I was trying to get a screwdriver from the toolbox without putting down anything else I was carrying. I knocked that over, and spilled a bunch of stuff, including a can of paint all over myself... it was a mess. Not a very exciting mystery.”
Paint. It had been paint.
We stared at each other. It had been ridiculous of me, really, to bring over the pie in the first place, much less stay to eat it with him, much less basically strong-arm him into showing me his very inoffensive garage.
“I think you get one more,” I said. “You brought me here, and told me about the source of the mysterious late-night sounds. I only told you about my dissertation.”
“To be fair, there were layers.”
“Still.”
Sometime in the last few minutes, Sam had moved closer to me, or I’d moved closer to him, because we were now both standing by the disassembled guitar parts. My fingers itched to touch something, and the guitar was right there, so I ran my finger along the smooth, unpainted wood of the body.
“One more mystery,” Sam said, almost more to himself than to me. “I have a feeling you have a lot of them. You’re a hard person to read, Phoebe Walsh.”
I could say the same about him. I was the one word-vomiting in the most random ways every time we got together. He was the one who tended to keep his own counsel.
His gaze caught mine, before lifting to the top of my head. “How long is your hair?”
I blinked at him. That was what he wanted to know?
“Too long,” I said. “I haven’t gotten it cut since... I can’t even remember. A trim six months ago, maybe.”
“Can I see?”
Why did that feel like he was asking me to undress in front of him? And why did the idea ofthatfeel... scary, sure, but also exciting?
“I haven’t washed it for two days,” I warned, because I was an idiot, and a queen of self-sabotage. Once, in sixth grade, a girl complimented the name necklace I was wearing,Phoebein gold script on a thin gold chain. I’d told her it cost less than five dollars and snapped it in half, just to prove how cheap it was. This was the kind of shit I did when I felt backed into a corner, and compliments or kindness or attention was unfortunately what made me feel that way the most.
I reached up to remove the elastic hair-tie, unwinding my standard bun until my hair fell around my shoulders in dark waves. I scrunched my hands in it at my scalp, shaking it out to try to get it to lose the kinks from being wound up so long. I still had that funny, half-painful feeling around my temples of my hair being pulled back. Maybe Ishouldwear it down more. I might be giving myself headaches with this style.
“So it’s down to about...” I started to gesture, then realized I was about to point to just below my breasts. “Anyway. The more you know.”
