The Better Liar(75)

Albert pushed the envelopes across the table toward us. “Oh, here’s the check,” he said, turning his attention away immediately. “I didn’t even see it arrive.” He took out his wallet.

“Oh, no, we should pay,” Mary said. “We invited you. Leslie?”

“Yes,” I said after a moment. “Sorry. Yes.” I fumbled in my purse and found my credit card; Albert sat back and folded his knobby hands as I tucked it into the bill.

“So that’s it, right?” Mary added as the waitress came back to take the bill. “We don’t need to do anything else?”

Albert patted her arm. “We’re all finished. Thank you, dear. And thank you for dinner, Leslie.”

I picked the envelope up off the table and stared at my name on the front. It was sealed. I slid my thumb under the flap.

“Well, don’t open it now, honey!” Mary exclaimed.

But I’d torn the flap open far enough that I could see it: PAY TO THE ORDER OF LESLIE VOIGT FLORES. FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS AND ZERO CENTS.

There it was: the finish line.





46


    Mary


Leslie started the car. I held my check on my lap, between my thighs, running the sharp edge under my fingernail. The ragged flap of her own check stuck out of the top of her purse. “We can’t go to the bank until tomorrow morning,” I said.

“You’ve got your passport,” she answered distractedly. “We shouldn’t go together. Have I given you Robin’s Social Security number?”

I looked at her long, sharp profile. “I did good, right? I did Robin right?”

The light turned red, and Leslie slowed to a stop. “Yeah,” she said, glancing over at me. “You were perfect.”

I grinned. The seconds ticked by, the car so quiet that we could hear the muffled sounds of someone else’s music from the next lane.

The light turned green. It took Leslie a moment to press the gas. “Hey,” she said. “Do you want to go somewhere?”

“Like where?” I tugged on the top of my dress.

“It’s a surprise.” Leslie reached a long stretch of avenue and sped up. Her features flickered in the intermittent light from streetlamps and passing cars, the shadows of her nose and brow slipping over her face like liquid.

    I bit my lip.

“You’re leaving in the morning,” she said. “So tonight’s the last night for us.”

I thought about Dave on the lawn chair, timing Eli in the three-meter dash. “You don’t want to go home?” I said.

Leslie shook her head, but she kept going east, toward the mountains. I shifted in my seat when we passed the sign for her neighborhood, its silver metal lettering gleaming. “I just have to stop to get something,” she said at last, pulling into her own driveway. She didn’t turn the car off. The headlights against the closed garage door created a stagelike effect; Leslie’s shadow was enormous in the spotlight, moving silently beside her as she crossed the driveway and disappeared into the dark.

I slumped into the passenger seat and waited for her. The sound of my own breaths seemed to gain volume.

A tap on the window startled me. Leslie was just outside, her face flushed. I opened the passenger door an inch. “Turn off the car,” Leslie whispered.

I crawled across the console and pulled the keys out of the ignition, shutting off the headlights. “I thought you just had to get something,” I said when I was out of the car.

“Shh,” Leslie said. “People are sleeping.” I saw that she was holding a bottle of wine.

She saw me looking and the corner of her mouth lifted. Then she motioned for me to follow her. She didn’t go back into the house; instead we set off down the sidewalk, past the dioramic windows of her neighbors.

I stopped in front of the third house, where long, thin windows clustered around a breakfast nook. The family sat at the table with plastic cups, a longer, more formal table abandoned in the dimmer room beside them. I watched as the little girl leaned down to confer with the dog. “See, it’s not even that late,” I said. “They’re not sleeping.”

    Leslie, ahead of me, kept walking.

I followed her around a corner to a cul-de-sac, where the house on the left was half-hidden by an enormous six-foot fence. The gate was chained shut, and a plastic lock with a keypad hung from the chain. Leslie crunched over the landscaping to the lock and pressed the keys quickly. The chain came free and the gate swung open. Leslie glanced over her shoulder. Something behind the fence lit her face with an eerie greenish glow. “You ready?” she whispered. Then she disappeared into a stranger’s yard.

I glanced around the empty street behind us. Wind swept across the ground, rattling the dry-leaved bushes like chandeliers.

Then I stepped through the gate, the chain clanking as I closed it behind me.

“Oh—” I began, and Leslie clamped a hand over my mouth. I started to laugh behind her palm.

“Shh,” she said. “We’re not supposed to be here.”

It was a swimming pool, taking up almost the entire length of the yard. Lights were set into the sides of the pool where shallow steps led into the water, sending a wavering glow over the dark perimeter. A wooden deck near the house held a wrought-iron table and two chairs, the bistro umbrella that shaded them during the day flapping wildly in the sudden wind. The surface of the pool rippled.