The Elizas: A Novel(102)
“English?” Dot asked.
“Yes, okay,” the cop said, and Dot felt relieved. “Is there a problem?”
Dot breathed in. It was the last breath she would take, she realized, as a free person, as a person with secrets. But maybe that was okay. Maybe this was growth. “There is a problem,” she said. “I hope you can help.”
EPILOGUE
Three Years Later
I’VE NEVER BEEN to the Hotel Vetiver before now, and for that I am grateful. When I came here a few months ago to scout a location for this party, I’d walked through the dining rooms and ballrooms as a stranger—there were no associations, no tickles of memories. The hotel is so brand-new it still smells like Home Depot. All the staff is so young they were probably still in high school three years ago when I was cycling through my troubles, and all of the guests are so old and moneyed that they probably have no time or interest in the Dr. Roxanne show or contemporary fiction. I hate that three years have passed and I’m still on the lookout for people I might know or who knew me—past ghosts, past oglers. I’ve run into a few women who’d been at that Dr. Roxanne taping; a couple of them came up to me right away, recognizing me, gushing about how good I look, how healthy, and that they loved the book. Others back away quickly, their mouths puckered in a half laugh. I only know they were in the audience because I hear the whispers. If you were at that show, you won’t forget it anytime soon. Probably the only person who doesn’t have a crystal-clear memory of that day is me.
Desmond and I walk into the ballroom together hand in hand. Posey, rail-thin, her three babies long since evicted, greets us as promised in the lobby.
“There are a lot of people here already. We’ll do dinner first, and then the silent auction, and then you’ll say a few words. Read from your new novel if you like. Everyone is dying to hear what it’s about.”
I feel that same jump of nerves I always get before getting up in front of a crowd. It hasn’t gotten much easier for me, but at least now I can actually do it.
Posey’s neck turns sharply toward her phone, which is ringing. “Gotta take this.” She scampers away.
Desmond touches my arm. “You’ll be fine,” he says into my ear. He smells like sandalwood; his hair has been cut to show off his angular face and his blazing blue eyes. I’ve only seen him in a suit a few times, but he looks deliciously handsome. When he came out of the bathroom with it on, I’d jumped on him and tore it off again, so beguiled by his tall, thin body in all that black wool.
“And if you’re not fine, if you need to get the hell out of here, I scoped out all the exits,” Desmond continues. “There’s one only about fifteen steps away to your left. And there’s another to your back that will lead you through a really long hallway and out into this Dumpster area—that one might be best. No one will be gawking at you out by the trash cans.”
I grin at him, then kiss his cheek. “Thank you.”
There are about twenty round tables that seat ten people each. Desmond seems to know the way, guiding me to a front table marked with the number 1. My mother and Bill are already sitting. Gabby’s with Dave, her old boss and now fiancé. His son, Linus, a boy as pale and fragile as I had been at his age, sits next to them. Kiki has brought the new occupant of my bedroom in Burbank, someone named Theo I’m not sure if I like yet. Even my old friend from high school, Matilda, has come out, dressed in the same black spidery gown I used to borrow from her. I don’t dress in so much black anymore, though. My hair has a few highlights in it, even. It’s just something I’m trying. A new version of myself.
Everyone smiles when they see me, each of them expressing varying levels of enthusiasm—Bill braying and opening his arms for a hug, Gabby clutching Desmond’s and my hands, my mother coolly nodding though at least looking half-decent in makeup and a dress, Kiki cheering and sharing news of Steadman, whose store burned down last year in a blaze of animal hair and bone and who moved to Tunisia. It was my mother’s idea to have the release party for my new book, Pawns. Personally, I would have preferred something a little less stuffy—this has the feel of a fund-raiser or a reception for a wedding where the bride and groom aren’t 100 percent sure about getting hitched—but as my mother was the one who planned it all, I can’t help but feel flattered.
Waiters deliver endive salads and bottles of wine. In the center of the table is the cover of Pawns: stark white, with two black chess pieces side by side, a pen-and-ink of an institutional building in the background. I started work on the book about a year after The Dots came out. Not because it took me that long to come up with the idea—the idea came, actually, at the Oaks, as the story is about two men in a mental hospital who bond over their love of chess and their messed-up heads and lives. Jim and Pablo, the original chess players, were invited to this, too, invitations sent to the Oaks, where they’re both still living, but they declined to come. I don’t think they ever leave that place. It took me so long to start the new novel because I had to completely recover, and once I did, I had other things to do first. I ended up doing exactly what Dot did in the novel—exactly what Albert suggested. I turned myself in.
The Dots ends before we find out what happens to Dot—is she extradited to the States? Does she go to a Dutch prison? I wish I’d written a scene—at least it would have given me a template for what I was about to do. As it happened, I had to go in blind.