I will wake up in the morning, and she will be alive.
I walk past the bathroom and into her bedroom. I can’t find the light switch, but the hallway light bleeds illumination. Her bedroom is a hothouse of luxury. Six or seven creamy blankets wrestle on an egg-shaped bed: some cashmere, some antique lace, some faux fur. There are palm fronds and a gilt makeup table with rows of old-fashioned perfume bottles, dozens of creams and potions for problems I never knew existed. I catch my reflection in the mirror, the spatter of bumps that line my chin. I imagine rubbing her creams there, how my face would beam with a clean, wealthy light that hums, I’m rich. I can afford to glow.
I let my fingers run along the tops of the bottles so they clink playfully together. If my dad were here, he would pocket the most expensive one. And I would complain, say he shouldn’t have done it, and use every last drop, and keep the bottle.
The floor over my head creaks.
I move toward the corner of the bedroom. A wicker swing is suspended from the ceiling, latticed like a birdcage. It sways when I brush it with my fingers. It’s filled with pink frosted pillows. I turn away from it, slowly lower myself inside. It squeaks so loud, I almost jump out, but then it settles.
I sit back, and the room closes warm around me. The darkness folds like wings over me. My eyes drift shut. And every so often I hear the creak of myself suspended.
DEMI
I awake in a panic. I dreamed that I had to pee, AND NO one would let me use their bathroom. I went from door to door, banging, in residential neighborhoods, asking, pleading, and they all said, There’s someone in there! There’s someone in there! Until I broke down screaming, There can’t be someone in every bathroom!
I have the most mundane bad dreams.
But I do have to pee. I struggle to pry myself out of the swing. I expect to feel sore, but my body feels miraculously refreshed, like it’s trying to tell me something. We’ll take this over the tent, thanks very much.
I walk to the bathroom. I try the door. It’s still locked. And the night crashes over me. I twist the knob again so hard, I wrench my wrist.
The woman upstairs crosses the floor, the ceiling.
I knock, but I try not to knock too loud.
Are you crazy? Scream. Get her to call the police.
I hear a door shut upstairs so heavy, it must be the front door. I wait, give her enough time to walk up the steps, unlock and relock the gate. Then I bang on the bathroom door until my knuckles go numb. I yell, “Hey! Hey! Wake up.”
I am shivering now from the cold inside this dark house but also from something else.
If I run now, I can still catch the woman upstairs. Maybe she can help me. I race to the front door, then pull up short. Help me. The words are sown on the backs of my lips.
If the woman in the bathroom is dead—I’m not saying she is but if—and I am here with her . . .
I take a deep breath. Try to focus on the facts:
If she took the drugs Michael gave her.
If she is dead.
And I am here with her.
And who am I? A woman on the street who followed her home.
And she took drugs.
Why am I here?
I don’t think the truth—that I wanted to help her home, that I wanted to see her house, just to see how the other half lived—will fly far.
Who am I? To the police, I am her dealer. I am a woman on the street who sold her the drugs that killed her.
At the very least, I am the woman on the street who left her to die.
Last night, I stopped knocking on the door. I climbed into her swing. I let myself fall asleep. Did I know she was dead? Did I trick myself? Did my mind and my body collaborate against me to let her die so I could sleep one night in a nice house?
You’re a bad, bad person. But that can’t be true. I didn’t know. I still don’t know. The reasonable explanation is . . . The reasonable explanation was . . .
She’s asleep. She was drunk and she’s passed out asleep.
I don’t want to look. And if I don’t look, if I never know for sure, she can live forever in my mind.
I start toward the door. Then I stop.
Maybe she isn’t dead. I need her to be alive. To save her. To save me.
And I can’t leave now.
The woman upstairs saw me. She knows my face, could describe me. If the woman in the bathroom is dead, it’s manslaughter. If I walk away, they will think I’m guilty.
You should have just checked. You should have trusted your tragedy-warped instincts.
I inhale sharply. I think I can smell her. You need to know. You need to find out for sure.
I pull my sleeves up over my hands and scan the guesthouse—is there a key? A credit card I can use to jimmy the door? Could I break the lock?
My heart is revving up, burning a hole in my chest. My eyes land on that statue of a woman becoming an animal.
I stalk toward it. I lift it, grunting with the effort. It’s heavier than I thought.
What if she’s gone? What if I break down the door and the room is empty? What if it’s a trick? Maybe she’s my fairy godmother. Maybe this is all a dream.
We were testing you. We needed to find someone pure of heart.
I lug the statue, step by step, toward the bathroom door. I must pitch it, at an angle, toward the lock. I must be careful. If she is leaning against the door, it could hit her. If she is too close, it could maim her.
“Hey!” I try one more time. “I’m breaking down the door.”
I grunt as I lift the statue over my head.
I never would have thought that I could do a thing like this, bust down a door. But the statue leaves my hands. And the door splits like tinder, not where I wanted it to, but right down the middle. And through the crack I can see the curve of her black-tight-covered feet.
My fingers snake through the break, unfasten the lock. I open the door before I have time to remind myself that I don’t want to see another dead body.
The door moans across the white tiled floor, splintering in its wake.
LYLA
Even though I insisted we meet up, I don’t see Demi the next day or the next. She doesn’t go out as much as she used to. She is settling in. I see her coming up and down the stairs and want to catch her, but I am never quick enough. She waits until the exact moment I’m not looking, then slips past like a fog.
I listen all week, learning her. It’s like I have a special part of my brain tuned in. I hear her in the kitchen. I hear the squeal of her teakettle. I hear her music and her movies. I try to figure out what they are.
“Three Women,” Graham says abruptly one night. He is in his chair scrolling. The music disappears if you don’t listen hard enough. “Robert Altman.” Every so often Graham says something that reminds me he had a girlfriend before me. “He’s a good director,” he adds as justification.
The neighborhood is louder at night than I remember, or maybe I just didn’t notice it before. Bean is always barking—suddenly, ferociously—then lapsing into haunting silence. Cars roar past us above and below. Disembodied laughter floats from a party across the canyon.
One afternoon, I go for my walk along the reservoir and slow when I reach our street, encouraging the universe to provide a meeting. I notice the big white van again parked just kitty-corner to my gate. Margo hasn’t moved it after all. I imagine a team of analysts crowded inside behind a wall of screens, watching our every move. Maybe this is part of the game. Maybe she is watching me.
My pulse throbs inside my neck. I hurry to the gate, pull out my key to unlock it, but it’s already open. I step inside, try to push it closed behind me, but it squeals on its hinges and ricochets away, snapping back open.
I step down into the courtyard. The gate is busted. The wood is cracked and the hinges are broken. It won’t swing shut. It just snaps back against the wall.