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“It’s nothing personal,” I said, fumbling a little. “It’s just that I have a collage to finish for this show, and a bunch of paid assignments, too.”
“Right,” he’d said, the word dripping with sarcasm. “Well, goodluckto you then.” Then he turned on his heel and strode away.
I started to head in the other direction, my stomach clutching from the nastiness in his tone but relieved to be done with him. Suddenly a voice called out my name from behind me, and it took me a second to realize it belonged to him.
“Want to hear something thatispersonal?” he said as I twisted around, half facing him. He was now about ten feet away from me, and I just stared, not sure how to respond.
“You’re acunt.”
For a second, I remained frozen in place, stunned by the viciousness of his insult. But then I turned back around and started hurrying away. It had taken me a few days to cleanse that exchangefrom my mind and forgive myself for not having his number the moment he’d spoken to me at the bookstore. He’s just a garden-variety asshole, I’d told myself, a guy pissed about having nothing to show for two dinners and a couple of cappuccinos.
But maybe it’s more than that, I think now. Maybe he’s creepier than I realized, and still in a rage about being blown off. And he does know where I live. He’d insisted on walking me home after our first dinner, probably hoping I’d invite him up. It had been stupid of me, I realize, to let him see my building. But would he really have gone so far as to pick my lock and go through my possessions?
I try to chase the image from my mind as I wash my face half-heartedly and peel off my clothes, leaving them in a heap on the bedroom floor. Finally, I crawl under the covers.
Then to my surprise, I hear Tuna pad into the room. She leaps onto the bed, landing with a thud, and curls up right next to me, something she’s never done before.
I’m tempted to put my arm around her, but don’t want to come across as needy and send her scampering back to the couch.
Since it’s chilly tonight, and the heat in the building is barely on, I pull the duvet up to my neck. As exhausted as I am, I can tell that I’m too keyed up to fall asleep. What if the intruder, having seen how little effort it took to break in, comes back? He won’t be deterred by a cheap security chain and an IKEA end table.
Could it really have been Deacon? I wonder again. My stomach twists, thinking of him here, his toxic presence polluting my private space. I don’t need this, especially right now, with everything else going on.
And then, as if out of nowhere, another memory of my night with C.J. surfaces: him stroking my hair after we made love, pushing it back a little from my face with almost hypnotic movements. I remember thinking at that moment how wonderful it would be ifsomeone did that to me every night, that it would make it so easy to drift off to sleep.
I was actually a pretty good sleeper in those days, unless I was feeling tense about some of my coursework, but after that weekend I became a full-blown insomniac, sometimes taking hours to fall asleep and waking often during the night from bad dreams.
I flip onto my back and stare up at the cracks in the ceiling, which swim a little in the near darkness of the room. Though much of what happened that night with C.J. feels hazy to me, some memories are still hovering, ghostlike, around the fringes of my mind. What if within them there’s a clue to C.J.’s motivation, something he said or did that appeared insignificant at the time but really wasn’t?
What I’ve got to do, I realize, is summon as many of those memories as I can and comb through them for details—despite everything else that will be dredged up, too.
13
Then
AFTER WE’D HAD SEX, I WONDERED IF C.J. EXPECTED ME TOhead back to my own room, and I asked myself if that’s what I wanted, too. But when I came out of the bathroom a couple of minutes later, I saw him smile at me through the dimness and he asked if I was hungry.
“Um, yes,” I said. “Starvingactually.”
He chuckled. “How about some lobster rolls then? I mean, isn’t that what this town is famous for?”
“Well, beans too, I guess,” I said, laughing. “But lobster will do.”
It didn’t take long for room service to arrive, and we devoured the rolls in bed, along with a bottle of San Pellegrino. I liked that he’d ordered sparkling water instead of champagne or wine, because it seemed to say our encounter wasn’t something we’d simply done under the influence.
While we ate, I suggested a couple rounds of Two Truths and a Lie, a game I loved playing occasionally with friends. I sensed he wasn’t interested in sharing much in the way of personal details, but I was curious to know more about him, and I figured that the gamewould be a way for him to divulge a few things easily enough—and without me seeming to pry.
“Sure, why not?” he said.
I did learn a few things about him, though they didn’t add up to a whole lot: He’d climbed the Grand Tetons a few years ago. He was allergic to apple peel. And as a college student, he’d done a term abroad in Vienna.
When we’d finished our food, he took the plate from my hands and set it along with his own on the bedside table and then pulled me into an embrace. We made love again, this time even more intensely. Afterward, collapsing back onto the pillow, I thought again about returning to my room, but before I could summon the energy, I fell fast asleep.
I woke with a jolt at around five thirty Sunday morning. It was still dark out, with no light seeping in yet from the sides of the thick, silk curtains, and I realized after a moment that a dream had forced me awake. One about Chloe. She’d been whispering, saying something I couldn’t hear or understand, and though I urged her to speak up, I still failed to make out her words. As I tried to replay the dream, my heart began to thrum. I loosened myself from the tangled sheets and sat straight up in bed.
A couple of things about Friday night suddenly didn’t make sense to me. While I was asleep, my subconscious must have downloaded and sorted out details from that evening and was highlighting certain data in red. Though my sister’s phone might be beyond repair, couldn’t she have borrowed the cell phone of the guy she was with to make contact with someone on Saturday morning? She might not know my number by heart, but surely she knew our mom’s landline.
And since she didn’t know many numbers by heart, how was it she’d already memorized this new flame’s digits and could call him from the car on the borrowed phone?
