The Cloisters(84)

The image of Rachel and Leo together came to me in a rush, and I couldn’t help but see them together in all the ways people could be. It embarrassed me that these images planted a seed of desire in my stomach, a pull that made me want to know more, to know everything, a pull that made me wish I had seen it, that it had happened in front of me.

“You know Rachel,” said Moira, now watching me the way a cat would watch a fly tangled in a spider’s web, with curiosity as it spun. “She never commits to much for very long. She only agreed to stay on this summer because Michael left. She was supposed to be in Berlin. She was never supposed to be here, it was just”—she waved her hand—“chance. I always wondered if she stayed because of Leo.”

With that, Moira slid off the desk and walked out the door, leaving me holding a stack of books against my chest with one arm, the heavy plastic trash bag in the other. The quiet of the library, with its long oak tables and green leather chairs, its rib-vaulted ceiling and small, angular Gothic windows, seemed all at once suffocating. I felt the need to throw myself into crowds of people, to drown out the thoughts that were being knitted together in my mind.

Let’s talk, came the text message from Leo.

That was all he said, but it was all it took for me to leave everything at The Cloisters behind that day. I ran down the subway steps, checking my watch while I waited for the train. At his stop, I walked as quickly as I could until I was nearly at a run by the time I reached his apartment. But I wasn’t prepared to see him looking the way he did, an ankle monitor above his foot and a deep gash across his cheekbone. He held a pair of holed sweats up by the waistband, his hair pulled back, his skin pale.

He didn’t say anything when I got there—no invitation or explanation—just an open door. He turned back into the apartment, where a partially eaten sandwich sat on the kitchen table.

“What do you want, Ann?”

“You slept with Rachel,” I said, still out of breath.

Leo leaned against the counter, where empty coffee cups idled and crumbs from hastily prepared breakfasts collected. I wondered what he had told his roommate about the situation.

“So?”

“You didn’t tell me,” I said, left a little off balance by the casualness of his tone, the coolness of it. I took a seat at his table to steady myself.

“Did you tell me every person you had slept with? Was that information I needed to know?”

“No, but—”

“Come on, Ann. There’s nothing cute about the babe-in-the-woods routine. You’ve spent a lot of time with Rachel. You know what she’s like. You’re not that innocent.”

I wanted him to tell me everything about their relationship. I wanted to know if he thought her breasts were better than mine, how she smelled, if she liked oral sex, whether she had spent the night in the same bed he and I had slept in, deliciously high on good weed and cheap beer. He was right, I wasn’t that innocent. I didn’t know if I ever had been.

“I just wish you had told me.” My voice came out almost a whisper.

“Why? Would it have mattered?”

“It might have.”

“Really, Ann? You would have avoided me? Or maybe you would have avoided her? No. I don’t think so. You’ve enjoyed getting involved at The Cloisters. I’ve watched it. Our little drama. You fit right in, like the missing piece.” He paused to get a glass out of the cupboard, his back to me. “Even I felt like you were the missing piece.”

I didn’t know what to say, except that the way he positioned me as something necessary and interlocking with him, with Rachel, made me feel both awful and excited.

“Before you came,” he said, “things always felt claustrophobic. Rachel and I. Rachel and Patrick. Moira recording every movement. The same cast of characters every day, the same monotonous work. Trim the shrubs, rake the leaves, grow the seedlings. And then you came. There was something about you. I could tell Rachel felt it right away. You broke it open, the old game, and made it into something else. You made us all believe that something new was possible.”

“You talked about this, about me? You and Rachel?”

Leo nodded. “You know, she and I, we share something. We believe that doing things well sometimes means a higher cost of business. You can’t be successful anymore through the old channels. There’s too much competition, too much money, too many kids with trust funds that don’t have to write at night between bartending shifts and day jobs. I didn’t expect Rachel to get that, but she did. She knew how competitive it was, even for someone in her position. We were both willing to do what it took.”

“Patrick,” I said.

“Yes, for her, Patrick is what it took.”

“You didn’t kill him,” I said.

Leo laughed. “I didn’t.”

“The belladonna.”

“I didn’t kill him, Ann. Why would I? I was selling things on the side and making pretty good money doing it. It meant I could quit my second job and write in the evenings. Rachel helped me find someone to fence them. She knew the whole thing; she was the one who suggested it. I’ll never forget how she put it. Letting them loose into the wild, she said. We were repatriating them. And so we sold them. She never took a cut, although I offered her twenty percent. But it wasn’t about the money. I think she liked the excitement of it. She liked pulling one over on Patrick, both personally and professionally. We didn’t just do it at The Cloisters, either. Sure, we got caught at The Cloisters, but I’ve taken things from the Beinecke and the Morgan, too. Letters, manuscript pages, a handful of first editions. With Rachel’s access, it was easy. But I’d like to keep the money from a few of those sales. So I’ve decided not to divulge Rachel’s part in this side business of mine. How do you think I made bail? I wasn’t even sure I was going to tell you, but—”