And Now She's Gone(72)
He brushed her cheek with his knuckle. “She has no idea that somebody just as fucked up is chasing her down.”
“Just as?”
“More fucked up.”
“I always try to be number one in everything.”
He walked with her to a parked company Yukon and tossed her the key. “You should switch up cars more regularly. People know the woman in the silver Camry.”
“Got it.” She held up her bag of Hawaiian souvenirs. “Mahalo.”
“Bring me a biscuit,” he said, “but none of that butter, though. That shit’s weird.”
“You could come over later and retrieve them.”
“I could.” Nick squinted at the sun, which was starting its color descent to late afternoon dandelion. In that light, he looked tired, creased, the middle-aged man who had never stopped moving, who kept his brain filled with tasks and changes, plans and escape routes—not for him but for his clients who needed guides from this world to the next. Darkness that could never be navigated—by Gray or anyone—spilled from him, and she would bring him biscuits and the weird honey butter just to make him smile, just to prick a hole in him and see light, even for a second.
FIVE YEARS AGO
LET NO MAN PUT ASUNDER …
Some species in the animal kingdom evolve to resemble, behave, and smell like other animals. Ants, for example, are delicious but are dangerous to eat. They’re arrogant and confident creatures as they go about their day gathering and stowing food. Jumping spiders mimic ants and sneak unchallenged into their nests. These spiders are never spotted immediately by a colony that numbers in the thousands, and those spiders eat that colony’s baby ants.
Chameleons and octopi mimic to survive, too, blending into backgrounds so well that they practically vanish. And it isn’t until they stick their poisonous spines into their prey or have stolen eggs from another creature’s nest or have gulped another animal whole that the victim finally realizes that the enemy had been there all along, living in its nest, on its piece of bark, or on her couch in her living room, all this time. By then, it’s too late.
* * *
Mrs. Dixon still drove a red Jaguar. She still lived in a two-story Spanish-Californian with a silver porch light and a succulent garden. She also was switching cell phones every eight weeks because she suspected that her husband was tampering with them. She couldn’t prove that he had. If she had taken apart any of those phones, there wouldn’t have been anything she would have recognized, that she could have pointed to as proof. No, “Aha! You did this! You’re spying on me!” indications.
Sean would have never admitted that he tapped his wife’s phone, but he always hinted that he had. He knew things. Points of conversation that he wouldn’t have known if he hadn’t been listening. “Did Avery tell Martin that she gave her mother ten grand to buy a car?” he asked over dinner once. “Did Zoe change her mind about getting lipo?” He casually dropped these items into conversation, sprinkled these tidbits like caramelized walnuts in a salad.
Each time, Mrs. Dixon gawked at him.
Sean would smile, satisfied that he’d caught her off guard yet again.
And then she would purchase another phone, under names she’d known throughout her life: Twyla, Naomi, Faye. She’d keep the old phone as a ruse. At one time, she was carrying six cell phones in her red Balenciaga bag. Didn’t matter, though. Sean only needed her to take a three-minute shower or to go out the front door to accept sandwiches from her neighbors—it only took him a minute to download his Inspector Gadget doodad onto her newest smartphone.
On this Tuesday in August, she’d fallen asleep as she had been preparing arroz con pollo for dinner. She’d fallen asleep because that’s what pregnant ladies did if they sat still for more than a minute. This time, she awakened to discover that she’d burned the rice.
It was late—that sherbet-colored sky beyond the kitchen’s new French doors (shatterproof, the salesman had boasted) warned her that she had less than an hour to maneuver.
Sean would be home soon.
The house stank—the smell clung to the smooth blue walls and had sunk into the cushions of the slate-blue suede couches, joining the reek of sadness and despair that haunted 595 Trail Spring Court.
She dumped the rice and the pot into the trash can and ordered Chinese food. Orange chicken for him, kung pao beef for her. She opened all the windows, then schlepped back to the couch to watch Special Delivery.
At 6:37, the black Range Rover rolled into the garage. She could hear the bass of the stereo and Biggie’s thick voice rapping over Herb Alpert’s “Rise.”
Sean entered from the garage. He wore basketball shorts and Air Jordans and smelled of a woman’s perfume. Anise’s perfume. “What did you burn?” The first words out of his mouth.
“Chicken and rice,” she said, watching television. “But don’t worry. I ordered Chow’s.”
Sean walked over to the couch. He didn’t respond—he was too busy staring at his wife’s hair, styled that afternoon into a short Halle Berry haircut. Finally, he said, “You cut your hair. You look like a fuckin’ dyke.” He turned on his heel and climbed the stairs. The floorboards above her creaked and the pipes whooshed as the knobs on the shower demanded water.