Dream Girl(39)

It’s the handle of his father’s old letter opener, Acme School Furniture, and it’s been plunged into Margot’s left eye up to the hilt.

Light fills the room; the crimson sunrise has yielded quickly to a blue sky with cumulus clouds skittering by like sailboats. It’s going to be a gorgeous day. Oh, say can you see? Oh, say can you see? Oh, say can you see?





PART II





GIRLS





March 13




THUD, THUD, THUD. Thud, thud, thud.

It’s a familiar sound, but Gerry can’t identify it, not with the blood pounding in his ears and his mind darting around, trying to make sense of the tableau before him.

Thud, thud, thud.

Maybe it’s the telltale heart, although how would one bury a body beneath a floor of poured concrete? If only. If only there were a heart still beating inside that black puddle of cloth, if only a brain were still humming inside Margot’s damaged skull.

Thud, thud, thud.

It’s Aileen’s heavy tread on the stairs. Shit. She always comes up to say goodbye in the mornings, although Gerry usually feigns sleep to avoid conversation with her. Maybe he should do that now, play possum. Maybe he is asleep. A dream would be dreamy. This is a dream, it has to be a dream, and when he awakes, the shape will be gone, in the same way the apparition disappeared that one night. Opioid-fueled delusions, dementia, who cares? All that matters is an explanation for what he thinks he sees on the floor. He closes his eyes. Maybe his eyes were always closed.

Thud, thud, thud.

Then—nothing. The moment of silence stretches out. He keeps thinking she will scream and when she doesn’t, it gives him hope. Her breathing is regular, in and out, a little huffy as always after she climbs the stairs, but normal, measured.

“Oh my,” she says. “What happened here?”

He opens his eyes. There stands Aileen in her puffy coat, arms akimbo, the not-so-little teapot, tall and stout. Her knitting bag dangles from the crook of her elbow.

“I don’t know, I honestly don’t know,” Gerry says. “She showed up yesterday, but I sent her away. She attacked me, she scratched me, and I fended her off, but I didn’t—I wouldn’t. And that was earlier, when Victoria was here. I didn’t—I couldn’t—I don’t know how—”

“She sneaked back in,” Aileen says. Or asks. Her calmness is surreal, but she is a nurse, she has seen things that others have not.

“She must have. I don’t know how. She knows I have to leave the front door unlocked, maybe she hid in the stairwell between the floors—”

He sounds ludicrous. Could he have done this? That sounds ludicrous, too, the idea of Margot spending hours in a stairwell. But Victoria was here until five and there was no body on the floor when Aileen arrived at seven. This has happened overnight. He is proud that he can pinpoint this, then appalled. Margot is dead, in his apartment, and not even she is drama queen enough to plunge a letter opener into her own eye.

“This is bad, Mr. Andersen.” For once, he is grateful for Aileen’s flat aspect, her gift for understatement.

“I guess we need to call the police,” he says.

“Sure,” Aileen says, although she doesn’t move. “Obviously, it was self-defense.”

“Yes,” he says. “I mean, I think. I don’t remember anything.” He wonders if sleep-murdering is another potential side effect of Ambien. “Any statement I give would be inherently false.”

“You need time,” she says. “The worst thing to do in an emergency is go off half-cocked without a plan.”

“Yes,” he agrees fervently. “Maybe call a lawyer or—”

“No, not a lawyer. Trust me,” she says. “I can take care of this.”

“How?”

“Trust me,” she repeats. She takes off her coat, drapes it over a chair. He does not remonstrate with her for this. “Put yourself into my hands.”

Not the image he would have chosen, but he will do exactly that. He has to. He literally cannot imagine what it would be like to follow any other course of action. To call the police or a lawyer. To tell Thiru. No, he will trust Aileen.

She continues with appealing confidence, energized by this new task: “Cancel Claude. Then call Victoria and tell her not to come in today.”

“On what grounds?”

“You’re the writer. Make something up.”

He does. He calls Victoria and tells her that he needs her to drive up to Princeton and inspect its special collections. “I want to find out what the experience of accessing my papers will be like for future researchers,” he says. “Tell them that you are interested in seeing the collections of Toni Morrison and, say, F. Scott Fitzgerald.”

“Do you think those are the best, um, comps?”

An impertinent question, but he doesn’t have the luxury of challenging Victoria’s assessment of his place in American literature. Although, he can’t help noting to himself that his body of work is larger than Fitzgerald’s.

“My thinking is that those will be two of the most in-demand, that library staff should be used to scholars asking to see their papers. If they can’t handle this request, then I can’t expect them to do well by those who might want to examine my papers.”