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And now? He was asphyxiating on the civet of a Winter Mantel reed diffuser.
Which somehow seemed worse.
He wanted to hurl the diffuser out the window. Lacquer over the rose-vine wallpaper with a pleasing gunmetal gray. Pull the duvet onto the floor to make a nest at a breathable altitude.
From downstairs he heard a creak of warped wood grinding.
He thumbed up the ecobee system. The cameras had been placed with amateurish dipshititude, offering limited vantages of key areas.
But sure enough, one of the kitchen windows had been shoved open.
Evan was on his feet, through the door, padding downstairs.
His ARES 1911 gripped in both hands, pointed down at the floor.
He swung around into the kitchen and spotted Deborah curled up on the cushions of the bow window. A cigarette projected from the knuckles of one slender white hand, and she was leaning to exhale through the gap she’d opened in the sash pane. She wore slippers and a white bathrobe secured high at the throat.
The muted television displayed a youthful Caucasian couple with vigorously bright faces kissing in a haze of soft falling snow before a Christmas-drenched house.
He holstered the pistol before she turned around.
“Caught in the act.” She offered him a smirk, her lips pale, bare. “I smoke and my husband pretends not to know about it. I have to be respectful to maintain his suspension of disbelief, you see. No hard evidence.” She closed her eyes into another drag and shot the smoke expertly out into the night air. That winning grin, ever so slightly compromised on the left side. “I’ve come a long way, baby.”
The magazines had accompanied her onto the cushions.Soap Opera Digest, US, Star. One cover featured her leaving this very house; the wind had drawn back her hair, which looked brittle and thinning, and her face had been captured in an unflattering light, the stroke damage evident. The headline readBEAUTY TURNED TO BEAST!
She followed his gaze down. “Ah,” she said. “They’re awful, sure. But it’s not them. It’s everyone who … gobbles this up. There’s been renewed interest in yours truly since they’re doing a rebootof my show.Winds of Time.” She took in his blank reaction. “You’re not exactly the demographic.”
“No, ma’am.”
On the TV a Hallmark Channel logo popped up briefly. Now the couple were at some sort of festival outside a barn among townsfolk sporting an array of holiday sweaters. Everything soft and warm and soothing like a not-too-hot bath. Evan could understand why Deborah might want to slip into this well-lit world devoid of shadows and sharp edges.
“Another paparazzo caught me at the Whole Foods perusing artisanal mustards. I told him, ‘Darling, make us look younger. It’ll sell more rags.’ And see?” She tugged another magazine from the stack, already open to an internal spread of her grinning coyly:LOOKING GREAT AND LIVING LIFE AT 60!“To be clear, I am fifty-nine. They’re shocked to report that I’m still ‘living life’ rather than just slowly decomposing after the midcentury mark as women are wont to do.” Her eyes held a kind of soulful depth. “That’s the cost of being an icon. Even a low-rent one. You see the disappointment on their faces, everywhere you go. They’re angry with you.”
“For aging?”
Another draw set the cigarette crackling. “For not staying a fantasy.”
Something on the television drew Evan’s focus. There she was, Deborah Seabrook, among the other actors at the snowy festival, wearing a whimsical scarf and pristine winter gloves. She gave the young man from the previous scene a maternal embrace and leaned close to offer him what seemed to be a few words of wisdom. Watching her perform the bland if tender role, Evan felt something twist inside him.
“Sounds claustrophobic,” he said.
“That’s a good word for it,” Deborah said. “One needs to have a face to the public that seems personal but really isn’t. You don’t want it to be truly personal, and turns out they don’t either.”
She caught the direction of his focus, her own eyes ticking to the television. A cruel hall of mirrors: Deborah watching Deborah twine her sweatered arm in that of her fictional son as they traipsed through fake falling snow.
She gestured at the kitchen chair nearest, and Evan sat. “And then something happens that … rips a hole in the universe, and you realize that you’ve only been playacting all along.”
She stubbed out the cigarette on the outside of the windowsill and then balled it up in a tiny preserves jar she produced Houdini-like, from a bathrobe pocket. “When those two police officers knocked on our door, I was holding a cup of coffee. I had to tell myself to set it down. My hand was trembling, so I knocked it over. Then I had to tell myself not to worry about the spill. It was dripping onto the carpet there”—a gesture through the wall—“and I had to tell myself not to worry about cleaning it up. Or the stain. That nothing I had ever worried about before mattered anymore or ever would again. How foolish and petty all my thoughts and concerns were. Pain just … skinning me alive, unwrapping me. I feltbare. And I could see the world with all its terribleness everywhere around me.” She studied him. “I’d imagine you see that now and again. With your work.”
“Yes.”
“People at their most naked? Their most real?”
“I don’t see people any other way.”
“What a blessing.”
He did not respond.
