Don't You Cry(44)

It’s dark in the room, not black, but still dark, the full moon trying hard to find its way in. It glints from behind the obese clouds, the light flickering on and off, as does the light from the flashlight in Pearl’s hand as she presses the power button again and again. On, off.

I think of Pops, sitting all alone in the house across the street, watching the blinks of light from the window. Damn squatters, I hear him say. Damn squatters are living over there again.

But no, I think. Not squatters. Pearl.

These things are mutually exclusive; they are to me at least. This girl cannot be a squatter because, well, because she just can’t. She deserves more than this, more than the dirt, the grime, the filth. She deserves better.

I come into the living room slowly, not quite sure what to say or do. This is the living room, I know, because there’s a couch here still, a plaid sofa, and the remnants of what was once a fireplace, a cast-iron insert surrounded by a marble mantel that’s covered in dust, Pearl’s finger now traced through it like a road map.

On the floor beside her feet lies a blanket, a holey, moth-eaten blanket, and a flat cushion, one that I’m guessing she took from the sofa, a place to lay her head. The fabric matches the couch, the blue country plaid that I have trouble believing was ever in style. But it was. Once. Long ago. My heart splinters a little bit, thinking of Pearl laying her pretty head on that ratty pillow and spending her night sleeping on the dirty, rigid floor. Before me, she wraps her arms around herself and shivers. It’s no more than fifty-some degrees, I’d bet. My eyes rove again to the fireplace, the hearth empty and cold.

“You’re sleeping here?” I ask, though the answer is obvious, and I want to tell her about the rats, the bugs, the signs outside that say No Trespassing and Not Approved for Occupancy, but I don’t. I’m guessing she already knows about these things. She doesn’t answer my question, but simply stares, her bewildering eyes trying hard to read mine, as mine do her. Instead, I say, “You know they say this house is haunted,” and I wonder if I should say more, about Genevieve, about the little girl that died in a bathtub, her spirit said to haunt all who enter this home. But I don’t. I don’t have time to say a thing before she smiles at me, a confident smile, and says decisively with a shrug of her shoulders, “I don’t believe in ghosts.”

I smile back at her and say, “Yeah. Me neither,” as my hands inadvertently find their way to my pockets, coming across the chocolate croissant. But my smile isn’t confident at all, and my words come out thick and breathy as if I’ve swallowed cotton and can hardly find the voice to speak. They shake, too, as do my hands. I might even wheeze. I draw the croissant from my pocket, flattened now and a tad bit pathetic, and offer it reluctantly to Pearl. She shakes her head and says to me, “No.”

Before me, she stands: an ingénue. That’s the way she looks to me. The girl next door or, maybe, the damsel in distress. Something along those lines, or maybe that’s just who I want her to be. She looks tired, cold and maybe even a little bit scared. Up close, I see that her clothes are shabby—and not, of course, shabby chic, but the kind that looks like she’s been trekking across the country for days, sleeping on some dirty, dusty floor. But still, she brings out the introvert in me, that kind of antisocial loner who doesn’t know the first thing about talking to girls. It has nothing to do with her, but rather the fact that she is a girl—a woman—and a pretty one at that. That’s what makes my hands shake, what makes my words hard to find, makes my sight line fall to the repulsive floors beneath my feet instead of into her eyes.

“What’s your name?” she asks me, and, glancing at her quickly, transiently, I say that it’s Alex.

But when I ask her her own name, she says sagely, “My mother told me I shouldn’t talk to strangers,” and it’s the smile on her lips that says it all. She isn’t as bashful as she’d like for me to believe. There’s a bit of playfulness going on here, maybe even subterfuge, but I can’t say that I mind. In fact, I kind of like it.

“You’re already talking to me,” I say, but still, she’s not going to tell me her name. I don’t pry. There could be any number of reasons why she won’t. She’s on the run, here to hide. She’s in trouble with the police, or maybe even some guy. It’s none of my business. I think of her and Dr. Giles, the way her eyes gazed through the café window at him. The way I saw her yesterday, ebbing away on the street, his eyes watching as she disappeared over the hill at the far end of town. Had she been there already, in the blue cottage, talking to him? I don’t know. I’m guessing her being here has something to do with him, that maybe she’s a patient, but the way she stares out the café window with fascination and curiosity, maybe even a bit of nostalgia mixed in, I think that it might be more than that. There might be something more to it, something that goes beyond the realm of a doctor-patient relationship. But that’s just a hunch, some bedtime story I’ve made up. I don’t really know.

“How long have you been staying here?” I ask, and she shrugs.

“A couple days,” she says. “I guess.”

There’s a cheap motel in town, a bed-and-breakfast and one of those extended-stay hotels. There are summer rental homes, beach homes, a campground or two. But I’m guessing these are things she can’t afford, so I don’t tell her this. I’d give her money if I could, but I don’t have money. Though it’s hard to see in the murkiness of the room, I look, anyway, for signs of maltreatment or abuse, such as healing bruises, a fractured bone, a limp. Something to tell me she’s on the run from something or somebody, but there’s none.