“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Well—whoops”—as my glass nearly slipped out of my fingers; I saved it and took a long gulp. “Ahh. That’s beautiful gin. What was I . . . ?” With a finger-snap and a point at Leon, who was glaring: “Right. The thing is, dude, yeah? I know a lot of people. And I don’t know anyone, like not one person, who can honestly say that the worst thing they’ve ever done is dumping someone. Maybe my friends are just a shower of arseholes, I don’t know. But it’s either that or you’re a total saint.”
In the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of Melissa, tugging at a strand of hair and looking worried: my tone was bothering her. I tried to shoot her a covert glance to reassure her that I knew what I was doing, I had a plan, but I was in no state to pull that off and it came out as a cross-eyed leer.
“Johan really loved me,” Leon said. “God help him. And now, wherever he is, he’s stuck for life doing the same thing I did: obsessing about how, sooner or later, whatever he’s doing is all going to go tits-up. Like I infected him.” With a defiant stare at me: “If what you want to hear is that that makes me a bad person, then yeah, I think it probably does. Does that make you feel better about whatever it is you’ve done?”
“Not really,” I said. “But then you didn’t want it to, did you?”
The thing was, and I wasn’t sure what to do about it, I believed him. I hadn’t believed Susanna, or not all the way, but every word of this rang true—this kind of self-indulgent emo shite was right up Leon’s alley. And I had finally, laboriously, figured out why that story had gone through me like ice. If the worst thing Leon had ever done was hurting specky Johan’s feelings, then clearly he hadn’t killed Dominic. Whatever was going on here, I had got it all wrong.
“What have you done?” Leon demanded. “This was your stupid idea to begin with, now you’re sitting there giving me shite because my ones aren’t dramatic enough for you— What’s yours?”
It hadn’t been Susanna, either. There was no way a skinny teenage girl could have hauled Dominic up that tree. Which meant the reason they were nudging the cops towards me—and they were, I knew they were, one of them? both? not just the hoodie but where else would that photo have come from, who else would have said I had problems with Dominic?—that wasn’t to save themselves. Malice, pure and simple? Could they really hate me that much, and I had never noticed? What could I possibly have done to either of them to make them think I deserved this?
I was on the verge of full stoner paranoia. The apartment windows were tick-tocking back and forth again, but it didn’t feel funny this time; it felt sinister, as if they were working up the momentum to rip free from the building altogether and come swooping down at us. I knew if I didn’t pull it together I was going to end up rocking and whimpering in some corner.
“Forget it,” Susanna said, on a yawn. She pulled herself up to sitting and knuckled one eye. “Let’s go home. Toby can make his confession next time.”
“No,” Leon said. “If I’m going to spill my guts, I want to hear his one.”
Melissa was looking at me with her head tilted, questioning and anxious. It was the sight of her that steadied me. After her story, there was no way I could let her down by coming out of this empty-handed; it was unthinkable. There was something here, even if I had been wrong about what it was, and I needed it.
I closed my eyes and took a couple of deep breaths. When I opened them again the windows stayed still, more or less. I smiled at Melissa and gave her a little nod: Don’t worry, baby, everything’s going according to plan.
Susanna was poking Leon with her foot, trying to make him move. “I’m in tatters. If we don’t head, I’m going to crash out right here. How strong did you roll those?”
“Get a drink of water or something. I want to hear Toby’s.”
“You go home if you want,” I said to Susanna. Actually, I liked that idea; Leon would be easier to wrangle without her there. “Zach’s probably tied Tom up and set him on fire by now.”
“Leon. Come on. We can split a taxi.”
“No.”
Both of us knew the mulish set of his chin: he was going nowhere. Susanna rolled her eyes and flopped back onto the terrace, but she kept watching us.
“OK,” I said. “You need to swear you won’t tell anyone.”
“Oh for heaven’s sake,” Susanna said. “Mutually assured destruction. You think I want people finding out about me and Dr. Mengele?”
“No, I mean it. I could get into serious trouble.”
She gave me an eye-roll and held up her little finger. “Pinky swear.”
“Whatever,” Leon said. “Spill.”
“OK,” I said, and took a breath. “So this spring, right? we had this show going on at the gallery?”
I fumbled and stammered my way through it—which didn’t take much acting; this wasn’t a story I had wanted to tell Melissa, ever. I kept one eye on her (not happy, clearly: upset, disappointed? angry? what?) and the other on Leon: slouched back against the wall giving me an increasingly disgusted stare, occasionally taking an ostentatiously large swig of G and T when some detail was just too much for him.
“So,” I said, finally, on another very deep breath. “There’s mine.”
I had deliberately picked something relatively innocuous, something that would give Leon every excuse to come after me, especially after the way I’d gone after him. And sure enough: “Oh. My. God,” he said, lip curling. “You’re trying to claim that’s the worst thing you’ve ever done? That?”
“Listen,” I said, rubbing at my nose, properly shamefaced. “That could have scuppered the whole show. These kids, that was their one chance to make a better life for themselves, and I could have wrecked it. And I was”—what was it Dec had said—“I was dissing them, their lives. Making a joke out of them. I didn’t really get what a big deal it was at the time, but now—”
Susanna was giving me a look of profound skepticism. “I should have told you,” I said to Melissa. “I just didn’t want to upset you. I was working my way up to it, and then . . .” She shook her head, one brief quick move: Don’t worry about it or Don’t give me that or We’ll talk about it later, I couldn’t tell.
“Hold the phone,” Leon said, eyebrows up. “That’s your big moral crisis? You fooled a bunch of people about some paintings? And you gave me shite because mine wasn’t dramatic enough?”
“Everyone has breakups, man. Not everyone feeds a line of total bullshit to hundreds of people—”
“Total strangers. And no one got hurt.”
“Well, yeah,” I said, mildly miffed. “Total strangers. I wouldn’t do anything to anyone I love. I know you would, you just said that, but—”
“Or,” Susanna said coolly, “Leon figures the things he’s done to people he loves are more serious than the things he’s done to total strangers. And you don’t.”
Some part of me noticed that she seemed a lot less fucked up than the rest of us, which I didn’t like. “No. No no no.” I waved a finger at her. “That’s what I’m telling you. I don’t do stuff that would hurt people I love. People who love me.”
I made it good and self-righteous, and sure enough, Leon’s head went back. “Oh. My. God. You are unbelievable, do you know that? You’re in your own world, it’s like talking to an alien—”
“Dude, what are you on about? Give me one example of me doing something to anyone who—”
“OK. Fine. I, just for example, when Dominic bloody Ganly started making my life hell, I went and told you. Do you even remember that?”
He was sitting up straight, glaring at me through his hair like a bristling cat. “What are you talking about?” I said.
Leon let out an angry laugh. “I’m not surprised. It’s not like you gave much of a fuck at the time.”
“Jesus,” I said, putting up my hands. “Su, give him some more hash, quick.”
“Leon,” Susanna said.
“No. I don’t care if he’s messed up or whatever, he’s being a total—”