The Better Liar(13)

“That’s a good vision,” I said, nudging her gently with my shoulder. “This is nice. I see why you do this.”

“Okay, now you.”

I closed my eyes again. It took me too long to come up with something. I could feel Mary fidgeting on the decorative pillow next to me. “I want to know what to do when I wake up tomorrow,” I said finally. “I want to have a plan.”

    “Perfect,” Mary said. “Now don’t you feel better?” She picked up Pop Rock and shuffled over to her backpack to tuck him away again. I lifted myself off the decorative cushion, slipping a little, and re-placed myself on the bed.

Mary wandered back over to me and sat down, then seemed to change her mind and stood up again. “I have to pee,” she said, and headed placidly toward the bathroom.

She paused as she crossed in front of the television, brushing pieces of crushed peanut off the sole of her foot. The light from the TV turned her two-dimensional, silhouetted like a child’s portrait. There was something familiar about the curve of her forehead. For a moment she really could have been Robin. A more perfect Robin, a Robin the way she should have looked, in another life.

The idea filtered through my disordered thoughts, spreading itself across my vision. A solution. A way out.





7


    Mary


“Do you still want to watch this?” I said over my shoulder, picking bits of peanut out from between my toes. “We could find something else.”

“Whatever you want.” Leslie’s eyes looked half-unfocused in the dim light of the bedside lamp. I’d expected sharing a room with her to be sort of chummy, like a sleepover, and for a while it had been, but now the booze was burning off, leaving a sheen of grade-school sweat on her. I was still a stranger, and now we were alone in a hotel room. The intimacy of it was creeping in. I saw her fingers seize and release the coverlet, kneading it like a stress toy.

I picked up the remote and clicked through a football game and two channels of cartoons. American Graffiti was on the next channel, just at the part with Toad and Candy Clark where they play that song, the “I Only Have Eyes For You” song. “Oh, this is good,” I said, faking cheer, turning toward the bathroom.

I stumbled backward. Leslie had appeared in front of me. I hadn’t heard her leave the bed. We were practically nose to nose.

“Mary,” she said, grabbing my arm. A sour smell rose off her, liquor and something stale, like when you’ve slept too long. “Do you want to come to New Mexico with me?”

Even drunk, I still had my waitress’s reflexes; I reacted to her invading my space by letting my muscles go gluey under her fingers. “What?” I said, laughing, letting the drunkenness carry me along.

    “Nobody knows Robin’s dead yet,” she said. “You could pretend to be her.”

I stared at her, a leftover smile on my face. American Graffiti went on playing in the background.

She released my arm. “It’s acting, right?” she said. “You want to be an actress. It’ll be like practice. You’d only have to do it for a few days. She just needs to be there, at the lawyer’s office. That’s all that’s in the will. And then you could have her half of the—”

“What?” I repeated, interrupting her.

“Fifty thousand dollars,” Leslie breathed. “That’s Robin’s inheritance. She’s dead. She can’t use it. It’s yours. You can have it all. Cash. That could give you a good start in LA, right?” She tilted her head. “And your ex…He’d never find you again.”

I giggled, shrieky. “You’re so drunk,” I said. “You need to go lie down.”

Leslie followed me as I retreated toward the bathroom. Her skin reddened as she spoke. Strands of hair were stuck to her cheek. “You look like her, Mary. At least, you look enough like her, and nobody in Albuquerque has seen her since she left ten years ago. All you have to do is show up and sign the papers with me. I’ve got her old passport if anyone asks for ID.”

I didn’t want to antagonize her, so I said something like “Hmm” or maybe “Okay,” and I stroked her lank hair a little bit, the way you stroke a nervous dog.

Leslie grabbed my stroking hand. “Mary, Robin was using a fake name to avoid her creditors. Rachel Vreeland. She died under that name. The only person who has my contact information is the landlord, and he doesn’t have my real name.”

“He doesn’t have your real name?” I was getting drawn in.

“I told him it was Leslie Vreeland when I was looking for her.” Her gray eyes protruded slightly above puffy lower lids. “He let me in to see her. I was going to call him tomorrow, but if I don’t call him…if she just stays Rachel Vreeland to him and to everybody else…it’s like Robin Voigt is still alive. Legally.”

    “Until they, like, investigate, and send you to jail.” I scrunched my toes against the carpet.

“No one’s going to investigate. It was an overdose. She was an addict. And anyway, if they did, you’d be long gone with the money by then. All they’d find in Albuquerque is me. And I don’t know your last name.”

I opened my mouth and she put her hand over it. “Don’t tell me your last name,” she said, as if I were the idiotic one.