The Better Liar(17)

He snickered and turned back to his coffee as I headed for the exit.





11


    Leslie


Someone had pulled the plug, or maybe there had been a power outage; the bedside clock read —:—. Next to me, my phone went fbbbbbb against the mattress. I swiped green. “Hello?” I whispered.

“Oh, shit, I woke you up,” Dave said in my ear. He sounded so close, like he was in bed with me. “I’m sorry.”

I sat up. “No, no. I’m fine.” I yawned a little, feeling my jaw pop, and glanced over at the other bed.

It was empty.

My heart began to pound. “What time is it?”

“It’s a little past ten. Wait, is Las Vegas Pacific time? It’s nine for you, then.”

“Nine already?” The room still smelled sour. Me, maybe—I’d slept in my clothes—or Mary’s cigarettes from last night.

Her duffel bag was gone.

“You didn’t pick up last night,” Dave said. I could hear rattling in the background. “Have you been out for like ten hours?”

“I guess so.” I crawled out of my bed and leaned over hers to look in the gap between the bed and the wall. No duffel. “It was a long day.”

I stepped away from the beds and stumbled toward the bathroom. My mouth was sticky. Bits of peanuts littered the carpet between the beds and the door to the bathroom. I pushed it open and turned on the light.

    “Did you find her?”

It took me too long to answer, standing there in my wrinkled clothes staring at myself in the bathroom mirror.

I was alone.

It was over.

Finally I said, “Yes.”

“Well, that’s great! She’s in Henderson, then, right?”

I put Dave on speakerphone on the nightstand and went over to my purse and pawed through it. I’d left my wallet unbuttoned last night; it was lying half-open on top of everything else. I tossed it on the floor and pulled out the iron-free dress and pair of underwear I’d packed. “No.”

Television in the background. Dave’s voice was tinnier on speaker. “What do you mean? She wasn’t at the address?”

I took my wrinkled clothes off, my fingers clumsy on the buttons. “I—”

There was a rattling noise and a knock on the motel-room door. I yanked the dress over my head and hurried to open the door.

Mary was standing there, makeup-free, in cutoffs and that utility jacket from yesterday. She held up a Walgreens bag. “You said she was blond, right?”

“Is that her?” Dave asked from the nightstand.

All the breath went out of me in a rush. I snatched up the phone and switched speakerphone off. “Yeah. I think she’s going to, um, come with me,” I said, voice wobbling. “We might be back late tonight. I’ll text you.” I looked at Mary as I said it, but she only pushed past me into the musty room, rummaging in the Walgreens bag.

“Good.” A pause. “I’m missing you, baby.”

“Me too,” I said automatically. “Dave, I—”

The television in the background shut off, and Dave laughed. “Eli says—”

“What?”

“Eli says—”

    Mary finished tugging on her tank top and turned to face me as she sat on the bed, crossing her legs. She opened her mouth, then closed it again. There was something uncertain about her expression, a slackness to the muscles there. “Can I call you back?” I said into the phone. “I need to talk to…”

“Robin?” Dave asked.

“Yes,” I breathed.





12


    Mary


“Was that your husband?”

Leslie nodded. She was in a shapeless navy shift dress now, still wearing those pearl earrings. The skin around the earrings was red and irritated from where they’d dragged against the mattress in her sleep.

She was just standing there, clutching her phone. I held up the box dye and wiggled it. There was a picture of a frowning woman on the cover with a platinum Cleopatra bob. “Didn’t you say Robin was blond?”

Leslie let out a breath. “You mean it?”

I shrugged my jacket off and hung it over the chair. “It’s just a week, right?”

“Yes,” Leslie said almost before I stopped talking.

“And we never see each other again.”

“Yes,” Leslie said, “yes—I’ll get you a burner phone, you can toss it as soon as you leave.” She shut her mouth on whatever else she was going to say. Her eyes were red-rimmed, makeup caked in the corners.

“I want to get out of here,” I confessed. “I need to not be where—where Sam is.”

    “What about your parents?” Leslie asked. “And your car? Will anyone come looking for you if you’re gone for a whole week?”

“Wow, Leslie,” I said.

She blanched. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I know you didn’t.” I glanced down. “No. No one will come looking. I don’t have…people like that, people who would worry.” I shrugged. “It’s just me. And you now.”