I stayed for a few more beers. John left after his second martini and I slid over and joined the two women, introducing myself. Their names were Laurie and Nicole, and both were waitresses, one at a fish place in Portsmouth, and one at the dining room of another seaside hotel two miles away. Sunday night was their going-out night. All they wanted to talk about was Ted and Miranda, the tenor of the conversation alternating between respectful and salacious. By eight, the Livery was nearly full, and another couple, friends of Laurie and Nicole, had joined us. Mark and Callie were in their thirties, also in the restaurant business, and a lot of what had been said about Ted Severson’s murder was repeated after they sat down. I stayed and mostly listened. I’d already decided that I wasn’t going to Cooley’s till the following night. Even though I had been drinking light beers, I’d had too many, most of them bought by my new friends, and I felt too drunk to trust myself in a conversation with Brad Daggett.
As it neared closing time, and as the group got louder, I asked again about the possibility that Miranda was screwing around up here in Maine.
“I don’t think so,” said Laurie, who had designated herself the closest-to-Miranda in the group. “If she was, then I don’t know when she was doing it, because she was only ever here at night, and she always went straight up to her room at the end of the night. No, I don’t think she was doing anything up here. I mean, slim pickings around these parts.”
“Yeah, there is,” Nicole said.
“No offense, Mark. You’re taken, but seriously, I doubt it.”
“She’s fucking gorgeous, though. It makes you wonder,” Mark said, and his girlfriend, Callie, nodded heartily in agreement, as did Nicole and Laurie.
“Was she?” I asked.
“Oh, my God, yes. She was like model gorgeous. Totally hot.”
“She must have gotten hit on?”
“If she’d gone other places, sure. Like Cooley’s. But not here, not really. This is not exactly a pickup bar.”
“Sidney would’ve picked her up,” Callie said.
Again, they all reacted, nodding their heads. “Yeah, Sidney’s obsessed,” Laurie said. “Lily, Sidney’s the bartender here most nights. She was totally in love with Miranda but, you know, that only went one way.”
I learned nothing else, and when the bar closed at ten, I went back to my room, got into the boxer shorts and T-shirt that I slept in, and slid into bed after loosening the sheets. I couldn’t sleep if my feet were tucked completely in. I turned the bedside lamp off, and the room became intensely dark, a blackness that I wasn’t used to. Where I lived in Winslow was quiet, but my street had streetlamps, and my bedroom was never completely dark. I tried to think of Ted, but the blackness of the room made me remember where he was now, and as I wound down into sleep, it was Miranda that kept entering my consciousness, her eyes an inch away from mine, her touch on my wrist becoming a grip, her sharp nails growing like talons and digging into me.
CHAPTER 19
MIRANDA
That night in Orono—after eating bad take-out Chinese food and watching my mother struggle to ask me questions about my dead husband instead of telling me about her pathetic life—I lay in the undecorated guest room on a twin bed that was the only piece of furniture in the room. The walls were a horrible lemon chiffon white, and even in the dim light from the streetlamps outside, I felt oppressed by their tackiness.
I was wide awake, still worrying about Brad and his ability to keep his shit together, and still wondering why Ted had gone to Winslow on the day that Brad had killed him. I’d been saying the name—Winslow, Winslow—all day to myself. I was still sure that I knew someone who lived there. Clearly it was someone Ted knew as well, and I wracked my brain, going through all of our friends, to try and figure it out. So far, nothing.
I chewed at the skin around the nail of my thumb until I tasted blood, then made myself stop. I thought of getting up, going downstairs to look for the cigarettes my mother was pretending she didn’t have, but knew that if she heard me, she’d come out of her bedroom and yak some more. Instead, I tried to masturbate, the only sure way I knew of getting myself to sleep. I pictured blank-faced men, as I always did, but their faces kept getting replaced by Ted’s or Brad’s and I eventually gave up, resigned myself to a sleepless night. I stared at the ceiling, and at the occasional fan of light that wheeled over it when a car passed outside on the road.
I must have fallen asleep because I woke with my mother standing over me in a pink robe, her hair still damp from the shower.
“Jesus, Mom,” I said.
“Sorry, Faithy. I just wanted to look at my peaceful sleeping daughter.”
“That’s exactly the point. I was peaceful and sleeping.”
“Go back to sleep, then. I’ll be downstairs in the kitchen. I’ll keep your breakfast warm.”