Wilde Lake(60)

“You mean he broke into her place to masturbate?”

“Or he breaks in, thinking’s he found a vacant place to spend a night. It’s the holidays. She’s got no trees, no lights. Looks like a safe bet. Maybe that’s why he’s lurking, sizing the place up. But he screws up, picks a place where someone’s not away. She comes home and he’s got, you know, one hand full. She screams, he freaks out. She’s between him and the door. He panics. What’s the defense going to argue, that she brought him home for consensual sex? That he broke in to sleep there, found her dead body, then stayed to jerk off? That he broke in before she died, jerked off and left, then reset the thermostat on his way out because he’s worried about climate change?”

“I’ll worry about the defense’s case,” Lu says, a little curt. Her mind is racing. A jury will love the DNA because juries love DNA. But they might get stuck on it, too. The presence of semen doesn’t make it a sex crime, and there’s no need to alter the charge, anyway. She’s already got murder one. But she should go ahead and tell Fred now, not make him wait for discovery. Because if Drysdale wants to confess now, she’s fine with it. She told the cops to test the bedspread, it’s her legit victory. Oh, yes, she’ll welcome a confession, but not to a lesser charge. It will be murder one or nothing; the only negotiation will be on the length of his sentence. Under those circumstances, the win goes into her column, no asterisk.

This makes the day a winner in her book. Then she finds a pint of raspberry chocolate chip in the freezer. And while she’s eating it from the carton, her phone buzzes, a text from a familiar number, although it is one that she has never entered into her Contacts.



NEXT WEEK?



Her first instinct is to say yes, but then she thinks about the timing. The week after Valentine’s Day. Ugh. So she types back only:



Maybe



Who’s she kidding? It’s probably going to be yes.





I’M DREAMING OF A WHITE (TRASH) THANKSGIVING


Our fathers spoke and Randy was granted permission to attend our Thanksgiving dinner. He arrived at 1 P.M., bearing a bottle of crème de menthe in a paper bag; the seal was broken and the bottle appeared to be about three-quarters full. My father thanked him with grave courtesy and placed it on the butler’s bar alongside his cut-glass bottles of clear and amber liquors.

“Won’t you get in trouble?” I asked Randy while we played checkers in my room. “For taking that bottle?”

“I didn’t take it,” he said.

“Randy—it’s not even full.”

“Okay, I took it, but my dad will never know. He’ll think one of my sisters took it and they’ll blame one another, or even their boyfriends. I’ll be fine.”

Randy had a cunning streak. Was it always there or was he coming into it now that he was almost eleven? I just hoped he wouldn’t use his cleverness to try to kiss me. I made sure the door to my room stayed open, and I tried not to turn my back to him at any point. But he seemed far more interested in my stuff than he was in me, pulling board games off my shelves, exclaiming over such ordinary things as playing cards and Trouble, which I considered way too babyish for fourth graders.

At dinner, he was polite about my father’s dryish turkey, the cold Parker House rolls, the reheated cornbread dressing. That is, I assumed at the time he was trying to showcase his good manners. I realize now that our lackluster meal seemed like a feast to Randy. Dinner done, Randy, as our guest, was exempt from cleaning, not that he objected with even token protests. While AJ and I washed the good china and silver by hand, Randy sat with my father in front of the football game, a plate with a slice of (store-bought) pumpkin pie on his lap. He looked terrified, too terrified to eat. He perched on the edge of the wing chair and balanced that plate of pie on his lap, unsure what to do. Eventually, he began to pick at it with his fingers, one crumb at a time, careful not to let any crumbs fall from his plate. His fingers inched closer and closer to the glop of Reddi-wip I had added to his slice.

“Use a fork, Randy,” I said, coming out to the living room with my own piece of pie.

“That’s not good manners, Lu,” my father said.

“Eating with your fingers isn’t good manners—” I started. My father stood and summoned me back to the kitchen, where I received what can only be described as a tongue lashing. Manners, my father said in a low, hard whisper, are about making one’s guest feel comfortable. When someone who didn’t have the privilege of my upbringing came into our home, it was my duty to demonstrate good manners without calling the guest out. This lecture went on and on.

“But how’s he going to learn?” I asked. “Maybe he doesn’t notice what he’s doing wrong. And other people won’t be nice. They’ll laugh at him. At least I’m nice. But, Jesus, Dad, he’s just white trash.”

And that’s how I ended up in my room on Thanksgiving Day. I’m not sure if it was the “Jesus” or “white trash.” Possibly the combination. Or maybe it was because I was carelessly loud and Randy overheard what I said. My father urged him to stay, but once I was exiled, I don’t think Randy could get out of there fast enough. He had come to our house for a respite from fighting.

Ah, well, holidays always end badly, don’t they? Anticipation builds up; anticlimax is inevitable. Confined to my room, I found the deadness of the day especially acute. It didn’t help that AJ was pacing the halls like a tiger, unused to being at home. Toward early evening, “his” phone rang and he pounced on it.