I peer into the yard. My front door is closed. So is Demi’s. But someone could be inside the yard with me. I imagine them hiding in the trees, buried under the porch. Should I call the police? What if this is a setup? What if someone is watching me?
I look at the van poised along the crumbling LA curb, with its wheels tilted haphazardly toward me. The license plate is from Maine, all the way from Maine. What is it doing here? It’s too conspicuous to be accidental. It’s all part of the plan. What plan?
I walk toward it. A blue quilt hangs over the front window, like the drop cloths painters use, hiding what’s inside. A shadow plays along it, only I can’t tell if it’s coming from inside or if it’s my own reflection. My back bristles.
A dog barks and I turn to find Margo five feet away from me. “Do you see anything in there?”
I step back. “Just my shadow.”
“What happened to the gate?”
I look behind me to where the gate is snapped open. “I don’t know,” I say, moving toward it.
“What an interesting development,” she says like it’s happened on television.
She flicks Bean’s lead back and forth. The fountain gurgles. I look at Margo’s face for signs of orchestration. It’s been pulled in so many directions, it’s impossible to derive an intent. Bean growls at the van. Margo jerks the lead. “No!”
My voice drops. “Is this part of the game?”
“You know we don’t interfere. It’s all down to you. Or her.”
“So you think it was her?”
Margo shrugs. “It would take some nerve to break into your own house.”
Demi has a key, but the other night I found her trapped inside the gate. Maybe she lost it, but wouldn’t she just ask for another? Wouldn’t that be preferable to blowing the gate off its hinges? I frown. “Who is this woman you chose?”
Margo’s lips pucker. I wonder again if this is part of her plan, to pit me against an absolute psycho, to make sure I lose, to get rid of me once and for all. Wouldn’t that be clever, to make it look like it was my fault? Maybe Demi isn’t the subject of the game. Maybe I am. Maybe Margo planted Demi here, like a bomb set to detonate my marriage. I know she blames me for what happened with the last tenant. How far would she go to punish me?
The answer is always: further than I’d have thought.
“Well.” She smirks and reveals her dimples. Her eyes sparkle like Graham’s do when I catch him off guard. “Perhaps you should consider this a kick up the ass. Stop stalling. We’re starting to get bored.”
“I have a plan,” I lie. I will make one.
“How quaint. Do keep us informed of any new developments.” She steps off the curb, drags Bean sideways until she rights herself, then trots along beside her with a big doggy grin.
* * *
I CROSS THROUGH the broken gate and approach the stairs leading down to the guesthouse. The stairwell curves and drops precipitously.
I wrinkle my nose. “Hello?”
I place a foot on the top step, grip the railing, take a deep breath. I haven’t been down here in ages, not since Elvira left. We used to have dinner together on the porch, share a bottle of wine. Never Mo?t, she used to promise, grinning wickedly. A heavy feeling clogs my throat as I descend.
Just below the house, the hillside drops. It’s so steep that they have secured it with trees, created a forest fortress, to stop the earth from eroding. It doesn’t affect us up above because we can see over the treetops. But the guesthouse is surrounded by a thicket of trees that holds the dark in. So the air has a fat, moldy taste. So it always smells of mulch. So mildew and fungus coat the pipes, line the wooden support beams beneath the porch, gather invisible in the hot bathroom. Every six months, we ask the tenant to pour root killer down the toilet.
I reach the patio. I stand beneath the awning of Demi’s front door. The shades are drawn. I can’t tell for sure, but it seems like the lights are out. She was loud this morning, banging around like she knows she’s in a trap.
I pull back the screen and knock lightly on the front door. Quiet hovers in the air. I step back. The trees hang shadows over the back porch, across all the windows where the curtains are drawn. Every curtain drawn, every shutter pulled down at two in the afternoon. She’s hiding something, but what?
LYLA
Graham is thrilled about the gate. He came home after seven and spent ten minutes trying to fix it himself, in his superfine suit, with a hammer from the toolshed. “Did you do this?”
“Of course not. Why would I destroy our front gate?”
“To throw her off-balance. To scare her.” A scrim of sweat brightens his skin. He peels off his jacket, tosses it onto the patio furniture. “That’s always a good idea. People in a panic will do foolish things.”
“I didn’t do it.”
He frowns, as if disappointed, then brightens. “Did she?”
“She isn’t home,” I say, glancing at the street. She could come home at any moment, find us here discussing ways to scare her.
“Of course,” Graham says, forcing the gate shut and holding it that way, puffing slightly as he speaks, “she won’t admit it.” He releases the gate and it snaps back so fast, he leaps out of the way. He wipes his forehead, kicks the wood so it crackles. “It’s like a fucking booby trap.” He shakes his head and walks away. If something doesn’t offer immediate gratification, he moves on quickly. “Did the security system go off? Did anyone try to come inside the house?”
“No. Not that I know of.” I follow him in, carrying the hammer and his discarded jacket.
“Why would someone break the gate, then not come in?” He takes off his tie, loosens his collar. “It must have been her.” His eyes brighten.
“I don’t think she could do this.” I try to imagine Demi, the pale teenage-sized woman I met on the stairs, attacking the gate, forcing it so hard that the whole system snapped. “She’s thinner than I am.” I always think of people’s weight in relation to my own.
“She was struggling with the lock the other night,” he says. “Maybe she just lost it.” The dinner our housekeeper made is on the table. He pops off the plate cover and shovels it in without sitting down, starved by his exertions with the gate. “Maybe she’s nuts. Maybe we’ve got a crazy woman living down there.”
“Do you think Margo is setting me up?”
He bristles like I have crossed a line. “Of course not. I would know about it. Margo tells me everything.” He’s right, but it annoys me, thinking about their special relationship.
I hang his coat on a hook by the door, drop the hammer there, too. The housekeeper will put it all away. “There’s a strange van outside,” I say.
“I saw that. Disgusting. If you’re going to drive a serial killer van, at least invest in some bleach.” He chokes a little, coughs into his fist, then pours himself a glass of Mo?t.
“And Bean is barking all the time. Have you noticed that? I wonder if there’s somebody in there.”
“What, living in a van? Don’t be absurd.” One of Graham’s deepest blind spots is poverty. Not just poverty—he doesn’t believe in the middle class either. What’s the difference? Point is, they don’t have any money.
“People do live in vans,” I argue. “In Venice.”
“Where do they shit?” he asks like that ends the argument. “This neighborhood is going downhill.” He takes his seat at the head of the table. “Where’s the dressing? We need to move higher.”
I bring the dressing he likes in from the kitchen, then take my seat kitty-corner to him. I recite, “She moves in and the gate gets broken. The dog won’t stop barking. This strange van appears. It’s all a little weird, don’t you think?”
“She couldn’t have broken the gate.” He scoops salad into his mouth and keeps talking. “She’s tiny.” Like I didn’t make the same point two minutes ago.
“How do you know she’s tiny? Have you seen her?” My voice is suddenly threadbare, thinned.
“I caught her coming in.” His voice stays even, but he has a lofty look, a halo that circles his crown. He gets this way with the tenants: dreamier, more beautiful. It’s almost animal, the way it comes on, sharpens over time. He looks the way a peacock does right before it kills—I mean, fucks—like something crafted by the hand of God.