The Better Liar(59)

I let my eyes fall to Nancy’s mouth, her hands.

She bit her lip. “I could let you in for five minutes tomorrow. Visiting hours at the jail start at twelve-thirty.”

The man in the paper hat at the register yelled out, “Next up, next up!”

“Nancy,” I said, leaning forward in the booth, tilting my chin up. “Thank you.”

A flush saturated her face. “It’s only five minutes,” she said. “You know where the station is?’

“Yeah.” I got up from the booth, stretching my sore limbs. “We should go.”

Nancy dropped her eyes. “You’re right.”

As we passed the rows of booths and hanging plants, I saw the student from before. I winked at him behind Nancy’s back, high on my victory. He stared after me, his expression panicked, as if I’d threatened him.

In the dark outside, among the newly sparse cars, Nancy stuck her hands in her pockets. It was raining now, a soft patter turning the dust on the asphalt to rivulets of mud. I couldn’t see her features clearly, but I could feel her eyes on me. “You seem different,” she said. “Than you were in high school, I mean.”

“I grew a couple inches,” I said. “Can’t you tell?”

She didn’t laugh. “I just meant you seem…I don’t know.”

I swayed toward her, letting her wrap her arm around my waist and pull me the rest of the way in. When our lips separated, I said, “I have to go soon. Leslie will wonder where I am.”

    Nancy’s gaze stuttered. Someone was expecting her too. I waited for her to pull away, but instead she kissed me again, harder, pushing me against the wet car. I wondered if she ever thought about leaving her, if she had thought about what could have been, all these years. If there was some way I could stay in New Mexico. If there was some way she could come to Los Angeles. As long as I was Robin, someone would be in love with me.

My skin against the metal started to feel too hot. Like I was getting sick. A fever, maybe. I put my damp hands over my face and Nancy moved to pull them away.

“Robin?” she said.

I didn’t know what my face was showing her. “I have to go,” I said again. “I’ll see you tomorrow. At the jail. Okay?”





39


    Leslie


On the way to pick up Eli I found myself thinking inexplicably of my wedding. Dave and I had gotten married at the Loretto Chapel in Santa Fe in midwinter. It had snowed that year, enough to make driving difficult, and his cousin Dani had almost spun out on the highway. But inside the chapel it was cloyingly hot from the candles and the body heat of so many people packed into the wooden pews. My face was red, and I felt my dress sticking to me as I went down the aisle.

I wasn’t afraid at all. Why wasn’t I afraid?

We’d known each other just over a year at that point. Now, after having been married for nearly five years, I could see that we had been strangers—but it didn’t feel that way at the time.

We had hidden ourselves away from each other for twenty-four hours before the wedding, the longest we’d spent apart since meeting, and when I saw him in the stuffy little chapel my only feeling was relief. I strained toward his observation like a houseplant toward a window. Without him I was tethered to my father, who now addressed me just as he addressed the home aides, with a kind of detached finality; and to my mother and sister, whose memories I dragged with me in our neighbors’ eyes. Dave’s family wasn’t like that; his parents treated him and his sisters like local celebrities, cheering them on and heckling them in equal measure. To him, my tethers were invisible. I was Leslie Voigt, local celebrity; he sought out my opinion as if it were an autograph.

    That night we’d gone upstairs to our room at the inn at two in the morning. We were drunk and it was freezing in the room. I remember struggling to get out of my dress as Dave frowned at the thermostat. “I’m turning it, but the needle’s not moving,” he said.

“Just get in bed,” I said, rubbing my face against the pillow like a cat.

“I’m not going to be bested by a—by a temperature thing,” he said, groping for the word. “Is that the kind of husband you want? A husband who can be humiliated by a…” He paused while I laughed. “A heat device,” he tried. “A dialed instrument—”

I got out of bed, dragging the comforter along with me as a cape, and pressed the power button, then turned the dial. The needle moved. “You idiot,” I said, and licked his cheek.

“I see,” Dave said. “You’d rather humiliate him on your own.”

“Yes.” I wrapped the blanket around both of us, like a cocoon, and we shuffled four-footedly back to the bed, where we collapsed.

He slipped the comforter over our heads. “I love you,” he said, his breath making the air inside the blanket taste like beer. “Are you my wife now?”

I nodded solemnly. He kissed my mouth, then leaned back and examined my face as if to check his work. Then he kissed my cheek, just as gently. Next both my eyelids, my eyebrows, my chin, my ear, directly into my eardrum.

“Loud!” I exclaimed, pushing him away.

He ignored me and kissed my neck, my shoulder, my elbow.

I began laughing, and so did he. We were half-asleep by the time we were finished having sex. I remember him twitching inside me as he softened, his body heavier than usual on top of mine. I let him crush me, feeling that otherwise I might float up to the ceiling. I had the spins and I couldn’t quite focus my eyes. “Baby,” Dave said into my neck, and I thought: I don’t deserve this. This should have belonged to some other woman, and I’ve taken it from her.