Whisper to Me(116)

Me: (through gritted teeth) “We don’t know there’s a killer. Paris might have just left town. Split.”

“You believe that?”

Me: silence.

“Just saying,” said the voice. “He’s not going to just go away, is he?”

“So?”

“So the only way to really make yourself safe … to make any girl in this town safe … is to get the killer. To put him behind bars. Or in the ground.”

I pursed my lips.

There was a logic in that.

SEE? NOT THINKING CLEARLY.

“Anyway,” said the voice. “Horowitz hasn’t been in town long enough to be the killer.”

Huh.

Well, that was true.

“So,” said the voice. “Now that lover boy is gone, what do you have to lose?”

Nothing.

Nothing, I realized.

I had nothing to lose.

“I’m not doing anything till the boys are gone. They’re still in the apartment. We only just … broke up. It’s too soon. When they’ve gone … Then I start again.”

“Okay, but Paris could still be alive. She could be in a basement right now, fighting for her—”

“Shut up.”

And, miracle of miracles, the voice did.

But just then Dad shouted up from downstairs. “Cass! The boys are moving out tonight. Ahead of schedule. I don’t know what **** you pulled, but it worked. Your one? Skinny kid? He looked an awful lot like he’d been crying.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Well … You wanna talk to me about it, you can.” A cough. Embarrassed. A pause. “So anyway, I want you with me on cleaning duty tomorrow. Got new guys coming in on Saturday.”

“Whatever,” I shouted down.

“You want me to come up there?” he shouted back menacingly.

I seethed. “No,” I called. “No.”

“Then be ready to clean tomorrow. Eight sharp. And don’t go anywhere till then. I’m going back to the restaurant—we have an inspection tomorrow. I want you in that room and nowhere else.”

Again, I didn’t say anything. After a while I heard him walk back from the stairwell to his study.

**** you, Dad, I thought.

“So,” said the voice. “No calling Horowitz tomorrow, if we’re cleaning with your dad.”

“No,” I said. “****.”

“We’ll have that apartment sparkling in no time,” said the voice. “Might finish up early. After all, I made you do all that practice.”

“Ha-ha,” I said.

It sounded hollow.

As hollow as my life had become.

As hollow as your eyes, when I didn’t tell you the truth.





I wrote you a note.

It was a short one. It said:

The truth is that I hear a voice that isn’t there and I go to a group to talk about it and that guy you saw me with was Dwight, the cop I talked about, who goes to group too. I’m not interested in him. I just kissed him so you wouldn’t know I was crazy.

I want you.

Only you.



I folded it up.

I had no intention of giving it to you.

But better late than never, right?





It was when I was cleaning your room that I found it.

It was on the floor just under your nightstand—you must have knocked it off in the night or something and not realized in the morning. You had other things on your mind of course. The necklace, with its little blue pendant. Your mom’s necklace, the one you usually wore. I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t been on my knees, with the handheld vacuum cleaner.

I picked it up and held it in my hand for a moment. The metal of the thin chain was cold and silky against my skin, like water. I closed my hand around it, then I put it on. It made me feel closer to you, though I didn’t deserve to. Then I kept cleaning. I got the dust balls from under the bed, picked up a couple of books you had left behind. Your Ovid, your Middlemarch. I loved that you had a copy of Middlemarch.

Then, dusting the top of the wardrobe, I found a small instrument—a banjo, I think. Or a ukulele. I remembered you playing me a Beach Boys song by that pool on the roof. It felt like the last time I was happy. Maybe the last time I would ever be happy. I figured you had brought it with you and forgotten about it, up there on the wardrobe.

Before I left your bedroom—well, not your bedroom anymore—I took off the necklace. I showed Dad the necklace and the banjo in the den. “He left these,” I said.

He nodded. “I’ll call him. Tell him to come pick them up.”

But it wasn’t you who came for them.

You know that already of course.





I woke up early. Sun was streaming through the window, sharp, rhomboid.

“Is it over?” said the voice.

“One more thing,” I said.

I put the note I had written you in my pocket and left the house—Dad was at work—and walked down the street to the beach. Then I went right up to the water. The sun was hard and flat on the waves, the ocean made of beaten metal.

I took the note out of my pocket; it felt toxic against my skin. I didn’t want it anymore. It’s stupid, but I didn’t want it in the house at all. I didn’t really understand why I had written it even. I felt like … like the truth was a poison that might hurt me, like it was bad luck, an evil talisman. Like you might find it and hate me more than you already did, or fear me, which would be worse. (I wanted you to hate me. I wanted not to see you recoil from me. Can you understand that? I guess I will find out soon. It’s nearly time to send this.) Anyway, the note. It felt like: An exposure.