The Better Liar(67)

A muscle in my thigh twitched, as if something had bitten me. “What?”

“You know…” He sighed. “Did you say anything to her, did you…”

“Did I tell her about your disgusting habit?” I asked. I thought about rocking my knee sideways to touch his, to show I was joking, and then I remembered what Nancy had said at the Frontier, about men who wanted to be in control.

He shook his head. “I don’t mean that. Just if you guys fought, or you told her—I don’t know.” He shifted his weight onto the edge of the step, jostling the blanket, which slipped off his back onto the porch steps.

“I didn’t tell her anything,” I said. “If there’s something wrong with Leslie, it was wrong before I got here.”

“Yeah, whatever,” he said, putting his hands on his knees like he was about to stand.

“Dave?” I said. “Are you ever scared?”

He cocked his head. “Of what?”

“Of her?” I said, unable to stop my voice from ticking up at the end.

Dave laughed, and just like before it warmed me against my will. I found myself unable to really believe it could be like Nancy had said. He didn’t seem like the kind of man who could hurt anybody. But neither did Sam, with his round belly and pink ears. “Sure,” he said. “She’s, you know, five foot ten, wicked serve. Play volleyball against Leslie, fear for your testicles.”

    “Oh,” I said. “Right.” He stood up, and I reached for him. My fingers brushed against one of his knees, where the bone protruded knobbily; it made me feel sort of tender toward him, as if I knew him, maybe because I could imagine him as a teenager, all that stark bony flesh. “Hey, do you have another joint?” I asked, wanting to keep him with me a second or two longer.

He stared at me. I thought about Leslie finding his messages with Elaine, all that money gone to some other woman. I thought about Paul and the girl at his house, that girl who’d looked like me, my replacement. For a second they almost looked the same to me, Dave and Paul; I could have wanted to kill him too, if I’d loved him more. If I’d loved him as much as Leslie did. “I don’t do it that often,” he said finally, moving toward the door.

My hand stayed in the air where his knee had been, hovering uncertainly, so that it looked like I was saying, over and over again, Hello, or maybe So-so. “Could you put me in touch, then?”

“With my dealer?” His hand closed over the doorknob. “I guess so.”

“What’s his number?”

“Hers,” he said, fumbling in his pocket for his phone. “Um…” He read me the number, then added, “Elaine. Tell her you’re my sister-in-law, it’ll be fine.”

“Elaine,” I repeated, my fingers pausing against my own phone screen, which lit me sickly from below.

“Don’t tell Leslie, okay?” he added, opening the door.

“Right,” I said, tapping Elaine Campbell’s name into my phone. “I won’t tell Leslie.”

He went inside, pressing his fingertips against the glass door to keep it from slamming. I stayed seated on the porch, staring at the way the streetlight picked out the small downy hairs on my thighs.





43


    Mary


The inside of the Bernalillo County jail was so ordinary—a little tan lobby with linoleum floors and plastic plants. I don’t know what I expected. Bars over everything, maybe, or a big hefty guard at the door. The only guard was the clerk sitting at a desk protected by Plexiglas, chewing on the nubby end of a pen cap.

Nancy had walked in ahead of me and she went up to the clerk. “I’m here to see one of the prisoners, Francis Clery.” She slid her badge into the well beneath the glass.

The clerk studied it briefly, then glanced up at me. “Who’s that?”

“This is Robin Voigt. She’s going to sit in.”

I held my breath. He pursed his lips. “Okay,” he said at last. “ID.”

I fumbled in my purse.

After the clerk was done taking my information, Nancy and I went to sit in the plastic chairs lining the far wall. They were textured to feel like sand, and my hands started sweating as soon as I gripped the edges. I let go, trying to relax. My body drifted toward Nancy—close, too close—and I whispered, “How long until we can go in?”

Nancy was straight-backed. “Depends on whether he’s in the middle of a structured block of time. Could be five minutes, could be an hour. He can refuse to talk if he wants. Then they’ll come out and tell us to go.”

    I didn’t know what I’d do if that happened. I ran my tongue over my teeth, thinking.

There was no television in the lobby, no reading material—which was the only thing that distinguished it from a dentist’s office. I stared at the peach-colored metal door. It had a little window cut into the top, crisscrossed by thin metal bars. Almost the only thing.

It was nearly an hour before an officer came to the door and nodded at us. I had been watching Nancy play Words With Friends on her phone. She was a terrible speller, which she tried to hide from me by tilting the screen away, but I could tell. I watched her laboriously assemble D-A-C-K-E-R-Y and frown when the game kicked it back to her.