The Better Liar(49)

Those were the earrings Leslie had been wearing that first night, when we’d met in the parking lot. She’d put them in the desk sometime between then and now. I glanced up at that wedding photograph. There were the earrings I was holding. On Christine’s ears this time, as she looked timidly into the camera, clutching her new husband’s arm. In a dozen years she would be dead. In a few decades, Leslie would be the only one left in this house, laboring on her knees to pack her family’s things into each labeled cardboard box.

I shoved the earrings back into the envelope and replaced them underneath the phone in the drawer. It took me three tries to get the lock to catch. Leslie should have picked a better place to hide the phone. But I knew why she’d been drawn to this one. The kids’ drawings, the Christmas ornament. It was where her father had stored the private objects of his life.

I got slowly to my feet. I needed to get out of this fucking house. It was as full of secrets as Leslie’s house was bare.





34


    Mary


Back in my rented coupe, I checked my reflection in the rearview mirror. My eyelids felt puffy and heavy, but I didn’t look any different. I studied my face for a moment, thinking about what Nancy would see in it, and then I got my lipstick out of my bag and applied it carefully. It was too dark a color for daytime, but that was all right. I’d look like I was trying to impress her.

La Cueva was a winding road that peaked right before the valley drop-off into the foot of the mountains. The government had marked a portion of the land just off the road as a picnic site. I pulled into the bare-dirt lot and got out. It was a clear, sunny day, and I could see for miles, until the roofs blurred together into the purple band of the horizon. In the other direction, the mountaintops were still white here and there with snow, although it was nearly gone, drained into the arroyos below.

I leaned against my car for almost ten minutes, sunning myself like a lizard. It was bad for my skin, but I didn’t care. After the close, dark interior of the house on Riviera, I felt like I needed to be covered in sunlight.

The cop car pulled up beside me, crunching pebbles under its tires. A Crown Victoria. I hadn’t seen one of those in years. All the cop cars in Vegas were SUVs or those ugly, round-nosed Camaros. I half expected Nancy to get out looking like Officer Krupke, but her uniform was modern and close-cut, black trousers and black collared shirt with a patch on the sleeve. She looked slim-hipped and serious in it, like those old photographs of young men in khaki. I saw her throat move as she swallowed, and suddenly I couldn’t tell if I was pretending to want her or not.

    “Nancy,” I said. In two steps she had crossed the distance between our cars and pushed me up against the coupe, her hands tipping my head back, lips on my neck. I let out an inadvertent breath as she kissed me and slid her hands down my body, pulling my hips toward hers. “Is this okay?” she mumbled, not looking at me.

“Yes—yes,” I breathed, flattered by her impatience.

“We should get in the car,” she said, glancing at the road. I nodded.

The back of the Victoria was easy-scrub leather, scalding after half a day’s trapped sunlight, and I instantly broke into a sweat despite the air-conditioning as Nancy pushed me inside. “You canceled your flight,” she said, biting me on the shoulder hard enough to hurt.

I added a little extra to my gasp, and fumbled for the buttons of her uniform. “Please, Nancy,” I said, and then she was crushing me onto the seat, mouth hot against mine.

“You missed me,” she said, pulling my shirt off.

“Uh-huh.” I glanced up at her. She was wearing a sports bra under her uniform shirt, and I pushed my hands underneath it, groping, until she yanked it over her head. “I’ll show you.”

It was cramped and hot in the Victoria, and Nancy laughed a little hysterically as I sank down into the well of the seat. It was easy to make Nancy come—she was so sensitive that I had to pin her hips in place with one arm—and I did it over and over again until she was half sobbing, covering her face with her hands.

I climbed up into her lap, straddling her, waiting for her heart to slow. After a while she opened her eyes and tilted her face up, and I kissed her, slacker this time than the last.

“I want to fuck you,” she said. “Not with my hands. I feel like you’d like it.”

    “I’d like it,” I said, realizing as I said it that I was telling the truth. Realizing it probably wouldn’t happen. I’d disappear, and then Robin would disappear too. A funny sinking feeling entered me.

“Next time, then.” She touched me gently, running her nails down my back. I leaned into it—it felt hypnotic, like she could tell exactly where I needed it—and she trailed her lips across my chest. “You’re so beautiful,” she said, resting her cheek against my breast. “I feel nervous to even look at you.”

“I know,” I said, leaning forward again and grazing her cheek with my nose. But I didn’t know—not really. I was fascinated by the people who fell in love with me. It came over them like a fever, turning them sweaty and desperate, ready to fall to their knees at a moment’s notice. In return what I felt was a kind of hunger. Was it love if you only consumed it? I thought about how I’d made Paul say I love you, I love you, I love you, like a child writing lines on the blackboard.