The Clairvoyants(19)

“She said ‘curly,’” I said.

“Regardless,” Anne said. “I would like to paint you.”

I couldn’t discern where the music was coming from—and then I saw speakers in two of the lower-story windows. From this angle you could see the house’s blistered paint, its peeling wood siding, the way the house, like the landscape, seemed dead or dying. The wind picked up and jangled the glass bulbs of the strung lights together.

“Who’s playing this awful stuff?” Geoff said.

“I like it,” I said. I did like it. But Del gave me a strange smile, as if she thought I was making it up.

Geoff and Anne went down the terrace steps, and it was just Del and me. There had been years of birthday parties when it was just Del and me, separate from the others—in paneled basement rec rooms, a long table covered with a paper cloth holding soft drinks and bowls of chips, the paper streamers drooping from the ceiling. Maybe our clairvoyant game had left its mark on the neighborhood children, or word had spread about us in the hallways at school. Were we really able to see their dead? Or was it all an elaborate hoax? The other children didn’t like either possibility. We were invited by their mothers out of a sense of decorum.

In our teenage years, Del was sneaking off to upstairs bedrooms at parties, slipping away with boys in cars, leaving me to find my way home alone. She was a wonderful mimic, and she could pattern her conversations with boys on those she overheard with other girls, with actors on television—none of it very original. She learned to flirt at an early age and it annoyed me only because it seemed so dishonest. Much like her role in our clairvoyant game—Del was a fabulous fake.

I stood by her on Anne’s terrace. She had no qualms about abandoning me, but I wouldn’t leave her side. No one approached us, and I wondered why we’d even come.

Del said she wanted a whiskey sour, the drink our parents had at the cocktail hour.

She stepped over to the bar. “I just love them.”

I knew she was making fun of me for claiming I liked the music. I followed her to the bar and poured myself a glass of red wine, the glass monogrammed and too flimsy to be used outdoors. When I turned around, a man was so close that I nearly spilled wine on his wool sweater. Del was behind me at the bar, filling a glass with ice.

“Did you find your cat?” he said.

He had one of those smooth-cheeked faces that flush in cold weather. The kind that mislead you, instantly, into believing the person is younger than they really are, or that they retain a childlike innocence, and, so, are incapable of having any ulterior motives. His eyes were almost a gold color—a brown like ale. He was tall and broad-shouldered in his corduroy jacket, but the most unusual thing about him was his wide-brimmed beaver-skin hat. I wasn’t sure how he recognized me—it had been dark the first time we’d encountered each other, and I wouldn’t have known him without the lost cat reference. I considered pretending I wasn’t who he thought I was, but he was watching me, almost waiting for the lie. I suspected he would have a quick comeback, had even planned it out before I replied.

“I didn’t find her,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Hopefully someone’s given her a new home.”

And then Del appeared, taking my glass of wine, jumping into the conversation. “Or she’s been mauled by a loose dog, or struck by a passing car,” she said. She looked up at the man over the rim of her glass. Before we’d even introduced ourselves, Del was there. “Remember that book about the four kittens we used to have when we were little?” she asked me. She reached out and grabbed my wrist. “The house cat, the ship’s cat? The alley cat had to live through the traffic in the streets and the bad weather, and fight off the other bigger, angrier cats? I used to say that was me.” I could feel Del’s cold fingers.

“No, I don’t.” I pulled my arm away. “Where’s your drink?”

“You were the housecat,” Del said. “Muffy, or Miffy. Sipping milk from a china saucer.” Del held her hand like a paw and stuck her tongue out in a dainty way to imitate the cat sipping.

“I’m William Bell, by the way,” William Bell said. He held out his hand and I took it in mine, aware of the heat of him, the brightness of his eyes.

“Martha,” I said.

“Or Muffy,” he said.

Del held her hand out once he’d released mine. “I’m Delores, her sister.”

William seemed hesitant to take her hand, suspicious of another lie.

“We came with Geoff,” I said. “I rent an apartment in his house.”

“Sure, Geoff,” William said.

I wondered if Geoff had mentioned me to him. I wondered, then, what Geoff might have said.

“The girl was from here,” Del said. “The missing one.”

I could rarely predict what Del would say, or to whom. It was almost a comfort that this much of our relationship hadn’t changed.

“She is,” he said. He looked around him as if to assess the group of people. “Most of these people grew up here.”

“Did you?” Del asked.

William slipped a hand into his jacket pocket. “I did,” he said. “Born and reared.”

“So all of you knew her? She was a friend?”

Del sipped my wine, and I wanted to reach out and dash it from her hand.