But she did. She opened her eyes. She put the knife down and walked back to the bedroom, to the unmade bed and its creased plane of sheets, and lay down. There was the ceiling again. The anger was ebbing away, but in its wake was a hollowness that could be filled by anything. She closed her eyes and waited. She imagined feathery slivers of ash falling from the ceiling. Silvery and soft, they depressed her body to the bed. Flakes caught on her eyelashes and gathered in the hollows between her arms and chest and legs. She was muffled under a mound of silver ash, it hushed all sound.
Only then, in the quietness beneath, did the new feeling arrive. It was shame. Shame that she had quit her job, shame that she did not paint, shame that she had married Frank, shame that he was in love with someone else, shame that she had run to Anders for comfort, shame that he had discarded her, shame that Frank drank like he did, shame that they let Jesus die, shame that Frank had let her tear apart the whole apartment looking for her before coming clean about what he’d done, shame that she’d covered for him and told everyone that Jesus had escaped, shame that it was her secret now too, shame that she was too afraid to leave him when she said she would, shame that her mother was dead and she could not ask her for advice, shame that her mother didn’t want to be her mother enough to not be dead, just shame, shame, shame.
She wanted to pull apart the threads that held the last twelve months together, unpick the stitches like a dress being let out for someone new. She wanted to be the someone new. She lay there while sunlight filled and retreated from the apartment. Her phone rang once, then again. Cleo endured the sound for ten shrill rings, then pulled herself up from the ash heap and answered.
“There you are. Why do you pretend to be busy? I know you’re not.”
It was Quentin. He was going to pick up a vacuum he’d found on Craigslist and wanted her to come with him in case the seller tried to murder him.
“What makes you think they won’t murder me too?” Cleo said. She was surprised by how natural and light her voice sounded. It frightened her how easy it was to fake her own happiness.
“Well, he won’t be expecting you,” said Quentin. “And it’s much harder to murder two people at once.”
The fact that Quentin was buying a vacuum secondhand was typical of his peculiar mixture of extravagance and frugality. He could happily drop thousands on a lambskin trench coat or Japanese anime figurine, but spending money on anything remotely useful, like cleaning supplies or cable, grieved him deeply. He was perhaps his pharmacy’s most dedicated card member, collecting points with a fanatical enthusiasm. It was the side of Quentin she was oddly most fond of, however; the same side that meant he almost exclusively wore the socks given free on airplanes, the side that hand-drew a birthday card for her every year, that smoked cheap Polish cigarettes and ate cereal he bought in bulk off the internet. The other Quentin—scornful, rich, invulnerable—was harder to tolerate.
“This vacuum is really worth being raped and murdered for?” she said.
“Jesus, no one said anything about rape,” said Quentin. “But it is a Dyson Ball Compact with three of the five original heads.” Cleo was quiet, looking at her arm. Quentin exhaled down the phone. “That means yes.”
Cleo let herself be cajoled into meeting him in an hour, felt the relief tinged with resentment that came with doing what other people wanted her to do. She stood in front of her wardrobe, frozen. Just the act of picking something to wear felt insurmountable. Very slowly, she slipped on a pair of jeans. Good, that was half the work done. She picked up one of Frank’s cashmere sweaters and pulled it over her bare torso. It smelled of his cologne, tobacco leaf and spice, and another scent that was uniquely Frank. She tugged it off and put on one of her own sweaters instead. She looked at her shoes. It was bitterly cold outside, boots weather, but she was not sure she could remember how to tie her laces. She pulled on thick socks and cautiously slid her feet into a pair of slip-on sneakers. She was doing well.
Waiting for the elevator, she listened for the neighbor. Often, when walking past his door, Cleo could hear the opera music he liked to play seeping into the corridor. It was a beautiful, soaring sound. But today there was only silence.
When she met him outside his building, Quentin was wearing a midnight-blue silk pajama suit adorned with tiny gold arrows under a large fur coat with a pair of old running sneakers. Quentin had always had the dual ability to make expensive things look like they’d been plucked from dumpsters and inexpensive things look prohibitively expensive.
“Nice pajamas,” said Cleo.
“It’s my Jack Nicholson–goes-to-a-Lakers-game look,” said Quentin pushing a pair of thick-framed gold glasses onto his nose. He eyed her approvingly. “You look thin.”
Cleo had put on Frank’s heavy camel topcoat and cinched it at the waist with one of her vintage belts. She did a little pirouette on the sidewalk in front of him.
“It’s depression!”
Quentin shrugged. “Best diet I know.”
Cleo found she was disappointed that he didn’t bother to inquire further. They were walking toward the end of his block, where traffic was already building up on the avenue. The yellow light of headlamps splashed and pooled in slush puddles along the sidewalk. Quentin checked his phone.
“We’re late.”
“Want to run for this light?”
“Running is for children and thieves,” said Quentin.
He was pulling off his gloves to light a cigarette when his eye caught something across the street. Cleo saw him inhale sharply. Quentin’s face was preternaturally expressive; his emotions seemed to live just below the skin’s surface, like fish that survive in the shallows. His eyebrows alone could register fear, hope, disappointment, relief, in the space of a breath.
“What?” asked Cleo.
“Nothing,” said Quentin. “I thought it was Johnny for a second.”
“Where?” Cleo scanned the other side of the street for Johnny’s orange hair.
“Stop,” he said. “It wasn’t him.”
They waited for the light in silence. It changed, and Quentin strode across ahead of her.
“How is Johnny?” she asked, catching up with him on the other side.
“How should I know?”
“I thought maybe you two still talked.”
A crowd of schoolchildren ran past, trailing shrieks like colorful ribbons of sound behind them. Quentin pivoted to sidestep them, and Cleo saw him grimace just slightly as he turned away.
“Sorry,” she said. “To bring it up.”
Quentin faced her again and bared his teeth in a grin.
“That balding nobody?” He flicked his half-smoked cigarette into an ice-rimmed puddle scarred with light. “He’s already forgotten. Actually, I’m kind of seeing someone.”
Cleo raised her eyebrows in surprise.
“I didn’t know you had a new boyfriend,” she said.
“Alex is not my boyfriend,” retorted Quentin.
“Oooh,” teased Cleo. “It’s Alex, is it?”
“I’ve told you his name before,” said Quentin. “You just don’t remember.”
Cleo frowned. She was fairly sure he had not.
“Look,” continued Quentin. “He’s just this guy I … see sometimes. It’s unpredictable. He’s very dark and Russian.”
“Delightful,” said Cleo.
“I don’t know if I’d call him that,” said Quentin. “But he’s definitely something.”
Cleo gave Quentin a sidelong glance.