“I don’t want the money,” I told her. “I want the life.”
“Stupid girl, you’ll lose them both.” She turned her back on me, faced her own reflection in the mirror. I could still see her, but as far as she was concerned, I had disappeared.
I knew I shouldn’t tell Graham what she had said but I did, on the third night of our honeymoon, when he still couldn’t get it up to sleep with me. I told him the whole story, my valiant parts, Margo’s wicked insistence.
Once I had finished, he said flatly, “Margo knows everything.” Then he walked out onto our deck and jumped into the ocean. He didn’t come up for so long, I thought he might have drowned.
When he finally surfaced, he looked hypnotized. He padded into our luxury hut dripping wet. “I need to call her,” he said.
“I don’t care.” I jumped up and embraced him, let him soak me. “Don’t you see? It doesn’t matter. I love you anyway.”
He pushed me off. “How can you love me anyway?”
He called Margo, and he shut the door on me. He spoke to her for over an hour. I would have given anything to know what she said to him, what he said to her, what they decided. When he came to bed, I thought something would change. But he slipped in beside me; he put his arms around me. He held me like a husband does. We never spoke of it again.
I tried to put it out of my mind, but every so often it bubbled to the surface, throwing me off-balance, catching me off guard. I told myself it was a trick, a lie Margo made up to scare me, until the night Elvira died. I saw the look on Graham’s face: not a smile, not a smirk, but his dimples were showing. And I wondered for the first time if it wasn’t a lie; if it was a mercy. He will destroy you and everything you love. It’s in our blood.
There my mind stops before it goes too far. It doubles back on itself. It promises me I’m fine. He married me. He must have had a reason. He must know, deep down, I’m good enough. He must love me, in some way.
He won’t destroy me, not by accident, not by design. I’m smart. I can keep up with him. I can’t give up. I need to stop thinking about it. All of it. It won’t get me anywhere. Elvira is dead. I need to stop dreaming about her. I need to focus on the game. It’s my turn. Once it’s over, things will go back to normal. Tragedy will take its place at a distance. I need to be the destroyer. I need to destroy Demi’s life fast so we can all move on.
I know I can win. I have it in me. I can prove to Margo and Graham that I belong with them. I’m out of practice, but I’m a goddamn killer. That’s how I got Graham. That’s how I got the house. That’s how I got everything that everyone wants.
I have a plan.
I’m going to do the most heartless thing a woman can do to another woman.
I’m going to make her my best friend.
LYLA
I am awake before Graham the next morning. I make him coffee, cut his grapefruit.
“I’m going to do it today,” I tell him. “I have a plan.”
Graham just nods sleepily. He is not a morning person. His eyes are dull. His skin is plump with sleep.
I wait until he leaves, until a sociable hour; then I get dressed. I select my grayest outfit, my most expensive understated shoes. A bottle of Mo?t for a housewarming present.
I step out the front door. A man is standing in our courtyard.
There is a homelessness epidemic in Los Angeles. They rent vans out in Venice for people to live in. Charities and churches offer swaths of lawn for people to camp. Downtown there are tent cities with shopping cart traffic.
It’s easy not to see it up here in the hills, in a city where no one walks. It’s easy to drive from one place to another and barely even glimpse it. To avoid it. Even so, there are times when I pass over a body on my walk to the reservoir, times when my car brakes suddenly as someone barges across the street, always bleeding from somewhere: a nose, an ankle, bloody fingers. Times when you notice a pile of trash and realize people have been discarded there, too.
This man is tall, over six feet. He stoops but it only makes him seem taller. He has dark dreaded hair and a hooked, crooked nose. He has a fancy woman’s jacket but no shirt. His chest is speckled with mud or blood. I look at him. He gazes back at me, over his shoulder with a grim expression, like we are locked in some endless loop, prisoners in twin purgatories.
I have this funny impulse to invite him inside. He could be my Rasputin. I could be his Alexandra.
“What—,” I start.
He coils, ready to run. My muscles clench. But instead of racing onto the street, he dives down the stairs toward the guesthouse. I follow him. My bra tightens. My heart appears in my chest, beating. I leap down the stairs. I hear Demi scream. She is standing in front of her door, face ashen.
The man freezes on the stairwell, halfway between her place and mine. He looks up at me, then down toward her, trying to decide who is the weaker link. He makes his choice, barreling down the steps so she falls flat against her front door.
He whooshes past, and as he does, she swings her fist and smacks him between the shoulder blades.
“Bitch!” he grunts in surprise as he crashes down the hillside.
“Don’t come back!” she roars as he dodges through the dense trees. A murder of crows explodes from the branches. At the bottom of the yard, he scales the lower fence and is gone.
Demi watches the yard, hand still clenched in a fist. Her feet are twisted into alligator pumps. When she is satisfied he won’t come back, she turns to me. Her eyes are wild with alarm.
I’m so shocked, I laugh. “You hit him.” I rush down the stairs.
Her eyes slide in and out of focus. “He was trespassing.” Her fist loosens.
I reach her patio. “He was huge.” I’m awed. “Weren’t you scared?”
She tugs at her coat collar like a hoodlum in a fifties film. “I’m not scared of anything.” When her eyes find mine, I believe it. Who is this woman living under our feet?
I hesitate on the patio, trying to re-form my plans. I wanted to befriend her. I need to get to know her. “Do you want to come upstairs?” I offer my most radioactive smile. “Get to know each other?”
* * *
I OPEN THE front door and walk to the kitchen. She stands just inside. She looks at the windows. Not all at once but piece by piece, mapping them.
“It’s so dark downstairs—”
“I like it.” Her voice is rough, abrupt.
I glance at our windows. It’s like a display case up here. “Do you want tea? Or coffee?” Who are you? What do you like? What is your weakness?
“No, thank you.”
“Water?”
“I can only stay a second.”
Even I don’t work that fast. Making someone like you is the ultimate magic trick, a total sleight of hand. Now you SEE the good! Now you DON’T see the bad!
I scrape my mind for something about me that might sound normal in conversation. I went for a walk yesterday, today and tomorrow. I have a husband. I live in a house. I can’t find anything halfway normal. I am not a human being. I don’t have a soul.
“So. You work in tech?”
“Yes.”
“How is that?”
She shrugs. “A job is a job.”
“What do you like to do for fun?”
“Nothing.” It’s like she can read my mind, see my intentions.
“You do nothing for fun?”
“I should really go.”
“Wine?”
“I don’t drink.” Alcohol would make this easier, but maybe there’s something there.
“Me either,” I say. “I mean, hardly. Alcoholic parents,” I lie. She flinches. “You, too?”
“My parents are dead.”
“I wish mine were,” I say before I remember that is not something you say to someone with dead parents. “They’ve basically disowned me.” I wait for her to ask why so I can tell her I’d rather not talk about it.
“I’d better go.”
How rude. I hate when people don’t want to know everything about me, especially things I can’t tell them.
“No. Please, stay.” Margo would be better at this. She would make Demi want to stay. Graham would make her beg.