The Clairvoyants(63)

Del put her hand on my forehead. “Are you sick?”

“Let’s do the séance,” I said to her. “Like we used to.”

“Not now,” Del said.

“Who would you like to bring back, William? What about your old girlfriend, Mary Rae?”

Del sat down beside me, the dish towel tight around her hand.

“We can ask her if you were a good boyfriend,” I said to William.

He stood, stiffly, by the window. I thought he might yank the curtain from its rod.

“What about that boy you liked?” I said to Del. “The one they found on the golf course?”

Del took my glass before I could stop her, and she crossed the room to the kitchen. Geoff stared at the joint in his hand and leaned back into his chair. William left the window and came to the couch, the candle sputtering at his movement. The room grew cold with their silence. I almost regretted speaking up, but I sensed they were playing a game with me. I lay back and closed my eyes, overcome by a wave of exhaustion. Geoff told another story—this one about an old girlfriend who’d rejected him and later died. Though I’d been asleep all day, I felt myself succumbing again, a dizzying fall. Geoff leaned over, and I felt him lay his coat over me.

“You two might have tried to speak to her. I’d love to ask her a few questions,” he said about his dead girlfriend.

Del spoke, and then there seemed a shaving away of time, and Del was at the sink, and Geoff was at the door, saying good night. William murmured, and Del spoke again, more caustic. The water ran in the sink. “What did you do to her?” Del said.

“What are you talking about?” William said.

I wanted to awaken, but I was not really asleep. I tried to sit up and accuse them but I could not. William walked across the room and then I felt him lift me in his arms.

“Be careful with her,” Del said.

“She’s out,” he scoffed.

The door to Del’s opened and I felt the draft coming from under the front door, and then I was being carried, and William was fumbling with the door to our apartment. He deposited me on the bed, and I expected he would lie down next to me, remove his clothes to sleep. I tried to reach for him, but found I could not. I sensed him standing over me, watching me, but I couldn’t open my eyes. Then he moved about the apartment, opening the drawers, emptying their contents. “Damn witches,” he swore under his breath.





26




I awoke shivering and sore. I had no memory of having sex, but I felt as if William had scraped my face with the beginnings of his beard. Through the ice-covered windows, light came in tinged an eerie blue. William moved around the apartment. He had emptied the bureau drawers, had slid out the drawers themselves, and was now meticulously returning the drawers and the clothing. If he’d spent the night dismantling the entire apartment, had he found the loose cedar plank and, so, the portfolio? When he had finished refitting the drawers and putting the sweaters away, he pulled the bureau out from the wall and ran his hands down the back and discovered Mary Rae’s necklace. He held up the plastic bag and the light shone through the amethyst pendant. He met my gaze.

“You look like you’ve been turned to stone,” I said.

“You’re awake.” He flushed.

According to my mother’s travel clock, it was eleven a.m. William sat on the bed. His face seemed entirely changed. Even his eyes were altered, the gold-colored warmth in them gone, as if he were somewhere else and dealing with a dire circumstance—not sitting with me on the edge of the bed we’d shared as a married couple these past months.

“Remember when you called me Galatea?” I said.

He unzipped and rezipped the plastic bag’s fastener. “I do,” he said. But it wasn’t enough to bring him back to me.

He held the bag toward me. “Hey, what is this?”

His voice sounded earnest, almost gentle, as if coaxing me to confess.

“I found it in Geoff’s car,” I said. “I know I shouldn’t have taken it. It’s probably one of his friends’. But it was so pretty.”

William watched my face, like an interrogator, like Detective Thomson, whose eyes were always assessing.

“Why did you hide it?” he said.

The weight of him tipped the bed and drew me toward him, but I resisted. “I know it’s stupid. I wanted to keep it, so I hid it. It’s a habit I’ve had since I was little.”

William shifted and the bedsprings groaned. “What do you mean?”

“Well, Del would take everything of mine,” I said. “I had to hide things from her.”

“You shouldn’t have to hide this.” He slipped the necklace from the plastic bag. “Put it on.”

He leaned forward, and his hands slid around my throat to fasten the clasp.

“What if it’s one of the girls’?” I felt the cold of the stone and thought of it held between Mary Rae’s fingers.

“Just say you found it.” He stood and looked down at me. “It looks pretty on you.”

I pushed myself up on my elbows. I felt a wave of weakness pass through me, and then a trickle of something slip into my underwear. I slumped back down. Could I ask him if we’d had sex?

“Are we still going to Buffalo?” I said.