No One Knows Us Here(24)

I looked up from the pages to find Leo studying me.

“Well,” he said. “What do you say?” Leo smiled and held out his hand for me to shake.

I looked into his eyes, disconcerted again by the shiny black beads of his pupils. He met my gaze and nodded, slightly, as if to say, Go on. I dare you.

My hand reached out, and we shook on it. His handshake was firm, almost bone-crushing.

Then I picked up the pen and signed.





CHAPTER 9


At seven o’clock, a knock sounded on my door, four steady raps. There was Sam, a bottle of wine in hand. He was wearing different clothes. The same jeans with a white T-shirt and different gray cardigan, all the buttons buttoned. Maybe he had changed his clothes because of something he had done earlier that day. Or maybe he’d changed them for me, chosen what he believed would impress me most.

I was still wearing his jeans.

“I like your jeans.” He delivered this line in such a dry, matter-of-fact way, that I wasn’t sure what to make of it.

“Thank you,” I said. It came out sounding flirtatious. I wasn’t supposed to be flirting with him. I was Leo Glass’s girlfriend now, at least technically. Contractually? It still didn’t seem real, not then. I had signed the contract. After I signed, Leo picked it up, flipped through the pages, and nodded as if to affirm that yes, everything was going according to plan. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do next. Go over and start making out with him? Get down on my knees? I was just standing there, and Leo was already seated at the table, scanning something on a tablet. He looked up at me and then waved me away. I’ll be in touch, he said.

Anyway, I wasn’t flirting with my next-door neighbor. I was simply thanking him for rescuing me. Making him dinner was the least I could do. And it was all I would do. This was a very proper, neighborly transaction. That was what I had told myself as I was getting ready. Strictly reciprocal.

Sam gave me his noir-detective inspection, looking me up and down. To make a proper neighborly impression, I should have worn something sensible and matronly. Instead I was wearing a tight scoop-neck top that dipped a little too low. And his jeans. “You clean up nice,” he said.

“You too.” It made less sense when I said it.

I had decided to make waffles for dinner. I didn’t have the equipment to make anything else. That was the downside of working at a kitchen store. I was the proud owner of dozens of specialty items and none of the basics.

We sat in the middle of the dining room, where a table should be. I spread a tablecloth on the floor and plugged the waffle iron into the room’s only outlet. Steam billowed out of it in white clouds.

We drank through the entire bottle of wine and ate waffle after waffle. Sam went to his apartment to fetch another bottle, and I dimmed the lights on the crystal chandelier hanging over us. The light fractured around the room, like confetti.

I felt braver then, in the darkness. Drunker, too. We ran out of waffle batter. We ate through the stack of waffles. Then we were left sitting across from each other. I wanted to skip over this part: the getting-to-know-you part. I wanted to already know.

I wasn’t thinking of the contract I had just signed, the apartment I had just moved into. I wasn’t thinking of how this could ruin everything. I was just—doing what I wanted to do. As if it could be my last chance.

“Here’s what we should do,” I announced. “We should just tell each other everything right now. I’ll tell you my deal, you tell me your deal.”

“My deal?”

“Everyone has a deal.”

Sam looked like he was thinking this over. He narrowed his eyes and stared into the corner of the room. Then he nodded. “You first.”

I exhaled, closed my eyes, and started shaping the story in my mind. Then my eyelids lifted up like stage curtains. I gave my story the luster of a fairy tale, the sad fate of the two orphaned sisters and their beautiful young mother who had died at the hands of their wicked stepfather. My wicked stepfather, anyway.

You know how they died? I began. They drove off the road, off the side of a mountain, in broad daylight, like Thelma and Louise. I raised my hand in the air and flew it in an arc between us, in demonstration. Sam’s eyes went huge.

Jason was driving, I went on. They left no skid marks—just disappeared over the edge.

My mother was young when she had me. Seventeen. Her mother—my grandmother—helped take care of me at first, but then she got sick. We were poor, living in a motel, and my mom was young and beautiful but tired. And very, very sad. I feel like I knew that, even as a little kid. I knew, too, that I was the one who was making her tired. I wasn’t the easiest child.

Everything changed when my poor, innocent mother met Jason with his wavy hair and tan skin and his Listerine breath and his nylon jogging shorts. Jason was the love of my mother’s life. My dad was just some loser she knew from high school who took off for college and was never seen again.

With Jason, she was happy. We moved out of that hotel. We moved into a real house. He was a good dad, too, at first. So I tried to be good, too. To be the perfect daughter. I was terrified of ruining it, of breaking the spell. Terrified that Jason would leave and we’d be penniless and my mom would get that vacant look in her eyes again. When Wendy was born, I was glad. I was thrilled. It meant he was in it for good. That everything would be perfect.