Good Rich People(22)

My mouth starts in the shape of this new person. We should go someplace, indoors and warm, lock the bad world out. But it readjusts, too stuck in its old ways to say anything but “I’d better get back down.” Maybe the woman downstairs will be awake. Maybe she will let me out and I can go back where I came from.

“It was so nice to finally meet you.” Her smile will haunt me, with the food in the fridge, the castle cut in shadows above. “We’ll have to meet again sometime.”

Please, God. Design a world, take everyone out, leave only us two players. So we have to meet. Again and again and again. “Sure—”

“Tomorrow.” She smiles like she wants to swallow me whole.

That’s when the dreamy feeling turns, when reality sets its teeth. The longer we speak, the more she will remember me. And the woman downstairs is. And the woman downstairs might be. “I don’t think I can do tomorrow.”

She takes one step closer, keeps me in her crosshairs. “I think you can.”

A stunned laugh pops from my lips. I look down the stairs, lose my balance and see a vision, like reality is an egg that cracks open with wine.

I see myself walk back into the guesthouse. The woman downstairs is gone. I am the woman downstairs. I take food presents from my fridge and I eat them all. I dress in the woman’s clothes, pull books from her shelves, sit on her sofa and gaze out her window. Everything and the view are mine.

I want it bad enough to call it a premonition. I am changing. I am changed already.

Her life is mine.



* * *





WHEN I REACH the front patio, I pause to scan the hill below. I could slide down the hillside, carefully, from tree to tree, to the valley below where the fence is weak, hemmed with other people’s yards and balconies. I could escape that way and never come back. The trees mutter their agreement. But something stops me.

I look at the door—wooden, innocuous—but facing me. Unlocked, so dangerously unlocked. I let the doorknob settle in my hand. I open the door. I slip back into the guesthouse. A beguiling silence stretches over everything, holds the statues and the rugs and the crooked bookshelves still.

I cross quickly to the bathroom and knock on the door, then shiver when I hear footsteps overhead, the woman upstairs crossing over me.

I lower my voice and speak into the bathroom door. “Hello?”

She is probably passed out. Wait until the woman upstairs has gone to bed, too. Give her half an hour to fall asleep. Then leave. One day she will realize you are not the woman downstairs. It won’t matter. You will be far, far away from here.

I imagine going back to my tent with all these new things to haunt me: the packed refrigerator, the spooky woman upstairs, and, worst, the silence on the other side of the bathroom door.

What if I stayed? Just to make sure. I can tell the woman in the bathroom I was worried about her; I didn’t want to leave her. If she asks me to leave tomorrow, what difference does it make? And maybe she won’t. Maybe she will wake up with fresh eyes and a swollen heart and think, I can help you, and I will. I really will. It would be so easy for her.

A heavy stupor passes over me, as if my body was only waiting, so patiently, for me to give it the all clear. To say, It’s safe to relax now. It’s safe to rest and sleep and dream.

I will wake up in the morning, and she will be alive.

I walk past the bathroom and into her bedroom. I can’t find the light switch, but the hallway light bleeds illumination. Her bedroom is a hothouse of luxury. Six or seven creamy blankets wrestle on an egg-shaped bed: some cashmere, some antique lace, some faux fur. There are palm fronds and a gilt makeup table with rows of old-fashioned perfume bottles, dozens of creams and potions for problems I never knew existed. I catch my reflection in the mirror, the spatter of bumps that line my chin. I imagine rubbing her creams there, how my face would beam with a clean, wealthy light that hums, I’m rich. I can afford to glow.

I let my fingers run along the tops of the bottles so they clink playfully together. If my dad were here, he would pocket the most expensive one. And I would complain, say he shouldn’t have done it, and use every last drop, and keep the bottle.

The floor over my head creaks.

I move toward the corner of the bedroom. A wicker swing is suspended from the ceiling, latticed like a birdcage. It sways when I brush it with my fingers. It’s filled with pink frosted pillows. I turn away from it, slowly lower myself inside. It squeaks so loud, I almost jump out, but then it settles.

I sit back, and the room closes warm around me. The darkness folds like wings over me. My eyes drift shut. And every so often I hear the creak of myself suspended.





DEMI



I awake in a panic. I dreamed that I had to pee, AND NO one would let me use their bathroom. I went from door to door, banging, in residential neighborhoods, asking, pleading, and they all said, There’s someone in there! There’s someone in there! Until I broke down screaming, There can’t be someone in every bathroom!

I have the most mundane bad dreams.

But I do have to pee. I struggle to pry myself out of the swing. I expect to feel sore, but my body feels miraculously refreshed, like it’s trying to tell me something. We’ll take this over the tent, thanks very much.

I walk to the bathroom. I try the door. It’s still locked. And the night crashes over me. I twist the knob again so hard, I wrench my wrist.