Locust Lane(82)

For now, however, this was where she had to be. He knew things she needed to know, such as how the police and courts worked out here. Every second she spent in Emerson convinced her more deeply that she was being handled. That delicate boy hadn’t done this. It was Jack Parrish, with his GTI and his smirk. But they were hiding that fact, because of corruption or indifference or just a simple desire to wrap things up.

There was something else, as well. Something more elusive but also maybe even more important. Patrick knew about the pain. Not loss, but this agonizing, tantalizing presence. His daughter wasn’t dead to him. Somehow, he’d kept her alive. She still spoke to him. Maybe it was tearing him up but it was also keeping him on his feet. Danielle knew that if she thought about it too much or talked to someone with an ounce of sense, she’d see the madness in it. The man was a raging alcoholic who might as well have a LOST SOUL label sewn to the inside of his expensive suits. But as long as she stayed with him, just him, then the terrible reality of her daughter’s death could be replaced with the possibility that she didn’t have to vanish so completely. And so she stayed with him.

After he finished telling her about Emerson, he told her other things. He explained how money worked, which, surprise surprise, was not at all how Steve Slater believed. He told her about a TV program he’d just watched about the siege of Stalingrad; he explained why Brahms was actually better than Beethoven. But it wasn’t all about his universe. He asked about her life and listened, really listened, when she told him about the men and the jobs and the childhood where cruelty was just how people expressed themselves. He asked about the tattoos and she told him how she’d never felt in control of her body when she was a girl. People were always touching her and looking at her in ways that made her feel like property. And sometimes there was other stuff she’d rather not discuss. But with the tats she was in charge. This wasn’t the skin she’d been given but the skin she’d taken. She was writing herself. If you touched her, you were touching the flesh she created.

“Show me,” he said.

Normally, a slappable request, but from him it felt natural. And so she took off her blouse and she showed him. She knew she didn’t look so hot unclothed these days, certainly nothing like she had when she was Eden’s age. But she also sensed he didn’t care about that. He genuinely wanted to read what she had written.

“What’s this?” he asked, grazing her left shoulder with his fingertips.

“It’s called an Ouroboros.”

“This heart is amazing,” he said, almost touching her naked chest above her bra.

“Hurt like hell, though.”

He ran his fingertips along her right triceps.

“And these Roman numerals…”

“Eden’s birthday.”

She supposed she could slip off her skirt and tights and show him what was down there, the half-moons and vines and skulls and ankle roses. But he got the point.

“Okay, and now the masterpiece.”

She reached behind and undid her strap, then quickly crossed her arms in front of her chest to keep the bra from falling. She turned her back to him. She pictured what he was seeing. The still-vibrant colors and the upturned beak. The spread of the wings and the flames.

“Whoa.”

“I had to go to New York for this one. The guy who did it was a real artist-to-the-stars type. It’s on his website. My claim to fame.”

He was touching it with both hands, like a blind person.

“Do me up,” she said, before this became something else.

She turned after he had.

“Anyway,” she said. “That’s me. Illustrated version.”

They slept together but they didn’t fuck. It wasn’t something they decided. It was just how it played out. He stripped down to his boxers, she finally took off her skirt and tights. But neither of them went farther. He ran his hands over her body, so lightly that there were moments when she could barely feel his fingertips. His body was like everything about him. Slender, beautiful, soft. They kissed but it wasn’t the sort of kissing that led anywhere except to sleep. He paced during the night; she drowsily told him to come back to bed. On Saturday morning, she went home to change and decide if she wanted to do whatever they were doing. Animals had got at the casserole dishes neighbors left on the front porch. There were messages on the machine she didn’t play. The kitchen sink had developed a drip. The house was starting to settle into a terrible emptiness. She could feel her daughter drifting out, like smoke through an open window.

She slept until the afternoon and when she woke she wanted to see him. He came to get her in the evening. He’d already been drinking but he drove just fine. He took her to an expensive restaurant in Brookline. They ordered a hundred dollars’ worth of sushi and barely touched it. Instead, they drank sake, hot and smooth. He was in some sort of state now, talking and talking, weaving webs with his words, entangling himself in his own thoughts. Something was both rattling and exciting him. It felt dangerous in a way she couldn’t define.

Her head was spinning by the time they were back in the car. They returned to Emerson, to a part of the town where she hadn’t been yet. The houses were even bigger than the Bondurants’ here. He pulled onto a street called Fox Chase Lane and parked in front of a particularly grand one. She knew who lived here before he even said a word.