Susan pulled herself out of the tub, bath foam sliding off her naked body onto the floor, and immediately slipped and banged her face on the edge of the sink. The shock of pain cleared her head and she grabbed a towel, then wrapped it around her at the chest and started downstairs.
Get out of the house. She had to keep saying it in her head, over and over again. Because when she stopped, she started thinking about sleep. About how nice it would be to just close her eyes for a second, and then get out of the house when she woke up. But she wouldn’t wake up.
Get out of the house.
She lost the towel. She didn’t know when. She must have dropped it. But she was naked, stumbling down the stairs, tears running down her cheeks. No, it wasn’t tears. It was blood. From hitting the sink. She was bleeding. The blood ran into her mouth, a sweet coppery tang.
She got to the front door and saw someone standing on the other side of the glass. It took her a minute to recognize him out of uniform. It was Officer Bennett, from the Arlington, their protector, their assigned security detail.
He’d come to save her.
She reached the door and turned the knob to open it, but it wouldn’t turn. It was locked. She was locked in the house. She motioned with her hand to Bennett, pointing to the knob to indicate that it was stuck, to get her out.
He just stood there.
She turned the knob again, but it wouldn’t budge. Something was wrong. The dead bolt was in the right position. The door should open. She pounded on the glass, her hands leaving wet prints on the window. “The bee’s dead,” she shouted.
Bennett just stood on the other side of the door staring at her, and then he held up her house keys. It was a brilliant sunny day, and behind him Susan could see the blue sky, not a cloud in it, and the bamboo that her mother had planted in a glazed pot on the front porch, and Susan’s favorite rhododendron bush, emblazoned with scarlet flowers.
She was dizzy. It reminded her of a time in college when she’d had too many pot brownies and passed out on a friend’s beanbag. She’d slept with her face on her hand and she’d woken up with an imprint of her watch on her cheek. She started to sink to the ground.
There was something she was supposed to do. Get out of the house.
She could call someone. But the phone was so far away.
There was a sound then, and she looked up to see Bennett’s face flat against the glass, eyes closed. He stayed there for a moment, like a kid pressing his face against a window for laughs. And then he slid down the glass out of sight and Susan heard the sound of his body hitting the wooden porch.
The door opened and someone picked her up and began to drag her out of the house. She felt the backs of her heels hit the door jamb, and then the steps down to the front yard and then she was on grass. The grass felt cool and soft and she was glad that she could finally sleep. She looked up and she saw her mother.
“Hi, Mom,” Susan said sleepily.
“I hit him with the Buddha,” she said.
Susan forced herself awake. Breathe, she told herself. Her chest heaved, filling with oxygen, her head clearing an iota with every breath. “Jesus, Mom,” she managed. “You killed a cop.” She closed her eyes. “Call nine-one-one. Call Henry. Don’t go in the house. Carbon monoxide leak. Bennett. He locked me in.”
“I don’t have a phone,” Bliss said.
Susan’s mother was not good at problem solving. This was just the kind of insurmountable obstacle that could paralyze her for hours. They didn’t have that kind of time. Susan lifted herself up and grabbed Bliss by the lapels of her polyester paisley pantsuit. “Use the fucking neighbors’,” Susan said.
Then she folded back down in the grass and passed out.
CHAPTER
53
When Susan woke up she had an oxygen mask over her mouth and was being tended to by two paramedics. A wispy cloud drifted overhead. It looked like a jackrabbit. Susan turned her head and vomited on the grass.
“Sorry,” she said to the paramedics.
A uniformed cop was walking by with the Buddha in a large plastic evidence bag. Bliss was following behind him. “I’ll get that back, right?” Bliss asked.
Henry squatted beside Susan. She heard his knees crack as he settled onto his haunches. His black jeans rode up and she could see that his cowboy boots had tooled pictures of a Native American-style eagle on them. “You feeling better?” he asked.
Susan took off the oxygen mask. “Is he dead?” she asked.
“Unconscious,” Henry said.
Susan felt a light-headed rush of relief. Her mother hadn’t killed him. “Did Bliss tell you what happened?” she asked. One of the paramedics had put the mask back on and the words came out muffled through the plastic.
Henry rubbed the back of his neck. “She said she came home to check on the goat and found you naked and banging on the door and Bennett outside.” He glanced over at Bliss, who stood arguing with the cop who held the Buddha, and he raised his eyebrow. “She perceived him as a threat and clocked him.”