But the smell came in so hard, our insides shriveled. There’s nothing that smells like a dead body. There is nothing that sticks to the back of your mouth, coats your nostrils, burns your windpipe. And it stayed for days. It stayed, really, forever in the hallway. So even years later I would be feeling my way along the wall when the overhead lights went out and I would choke on a sudden gust of death smoke still oozing from the seam of things.
Nonetheless, there is some hope in this memory. If a dead body can survive six months without getting caught, how long can I live? Does anyone ever really know their neighbors? Does anyone care? We all want privacy, our own cocoon. We pay for it.
I think of Lyla, her Gothic appeal. Maybe I should ask her to help me. I can knock on her door, smile and say politely, Could you please help me carry a few trash bags out to my trunk? Sorry about the smell! Just some junk I don’t need!
I almost laugh, feel it bubble wickedly up my throat, but it dries abruptly when the knock from my imagination barks on my own door.
I switch off the music. My eyes go right to the body, her profile in repose, waiting for a spell to bring her back to death.
I don’t move. I keep my mouth shut. I should have left the music on, shouldn’t have alerted the person outside to my presence. It’s too late now.
And it is late. It’s after dark. Why would the neighbor be knocking now unless they knew something was wrong? Unless they knew.
Does the body smell? Did someone contact them? Did someone call the police? We saw this girl in the village and she wasn’t smiling, Officer. We knew something must be VERY wrong.
They knock again so loud, I think the whole neighborhood will hear. A dog starts barking, louder and louder, as if it is getting closer, as if it is tracking me down.
I have to answer. I have to do something.
“Hey!” A gruff voice calls. A shadow runs along the window. “Hey, it’s me! I know you’re in there!”
It’s worse than I imagined.
DEMI
I hook the body with my hands and drag it into the corner. Her wallet falls from her pocket. I kick it under the sofa. I pile pillows to distort the body, cover everything with a blanket from the back of the sofa.
He knocks again so loud, I’m afraid the woman upstairs will hear.
“One second!” I call. I rush to the door, then glance back at the body to make sure it’s fully covered. I think I see whispers of the strands of her hairs on the floor, then realize it’s just the fringe on the blanket.
“Open the door.”
I fumble with the lock, swallowing hard terror. I don’t know what I’m doing, what I’m thinking. The dog is still barking wildly in the canyon, my telltale heart.
Michael is standing on the patio. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him stand straight. He is always stooped, as if trapped in a world too small for him. At his full height, he is shockingly tall.
He is swaddled in his tattered blanket. He moves with the swagger of someone at the end of their rope. He opens the screen, steps into the apartment. His eyes move quickly, frowning at the weird art, the statues and the carved bookshelves.
“Is she here?” His voice drops as if she wouldn’t have heard him pounding on the door. His eyes flicker toward the bedroom.
“No,” I breathe. I lock the door behind him.
He smiles and his limbs loosen, right at home. He follows the hum of the refrigerator. He flicks on the kitchen light and opens the fridge. “Beer!” He takes one out, cracks it open. He offers it to me first.
I shiver, repelled. Maybe a little jealous of how easy it is for him to take. “No, thank you.”
“Where is she?” He takes a long gulp.
“How did you find me?” I counterquestion.
“I followed you the other night.” He sips speculatively. His eyes follow the ceiling. “I was gonna wait for you but I ended up in this garden. This place is like a maze. Have you seen the castle on the hill?”
I stop my eyes from darting to where her body lies. It’s lucky that it’s dark. It’s lucky that it’s crowded and strange and haunted, the type of place a body fits right in.
“She’s away. She had to go away for a while, but she wanted someone to keep an eye on the place.”
“A while,” he repeats. His smile disappears fast but I see it. Never kid a kidder. He knows something is wrong, but he could never guess what.
Suddenly, he crosses the room, walks right toward Demi as if guided by God. He stops just short of her body and he looks at the books on the shelves.
“The Kid Was a Killer,” he reads, removing the red-and-yellow paperback from the bookcase and slipping it in his back pocket. “I bet you she doesn’t even reads these, bet you she has them because of the way they look.” He talks like Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver, but it’s an act I think he cultivates. In LA, the best actors are acting for their lives.
“I bet,” I repeat, trying to think of how I can get rid of him fast.
“Hmm.” He takes another long pull of his beer; then he swivels, lands hard on the couch. “Makes sense, you house-sitting.” He stretches his arms along the back of the couch. “Who doesn’t invite a homeless woman they just met to house-sit?”
“I’m not a homeless woman,” I snap. “And she wanted to help me. She said I was smart.” The screech of the gate ricochets down from above.
“They know you’re here?”
“Of course they do.”
“What a lucky break.” He pounds his chest until he burps. “When’s she coming back again?”
“Soon.”
He nods, finishes the drink and sets the can carefully on a coaster. Then he stands. “Lot of nice things in here. Valuable, I bet.”
“You can’t take anything. She’s coming back.”
He nods again. “Still. She couldn’t notice everything. Things go missing all the time. Maybe just something small? What do you think?”
“No.” I set my chin.
“Jewelry. A little ring or something. Something she wouldn’t notice.”
I swallow again. I feel stiff all through me. I feel stupid. This was all my fault. I shouldn’t have gone to the market. I shouldn’t have left the house. I should have locked the doors and hid.
I go to the jewelry closet; I slide out one thin drawer.
Michael lights up and strides over. He smells of urine and my nose twitches like I am twenty-four hours and a whole world away from him.
“This one. And she probably won’t miss this either. Or this.” He fills his pockets with diamonds and pearls. He can’t help himself.
“Michael, we don’t want to get caught.”
“Sure,” he says, sliding one last ring into his pocket. “When she comes back.” His eyes have this beautiful lilt to them, lashes darkening on the ends. In another life, he could have been anything: a drowsy playboy, a Greek archer, a serial killer in a broken-down truck waiting for his next victim to come along and save him.
Like every poor man I know, like my father, he has this air of having chosen this life—more, of having stolen it. But I guess that, like my father, there are nights when it hits him—all at once because he stores it away—that none of his dreams have ever really come true.
“You should leave,” I say. “I’m not supposed to have anyone over.”
He doesn’t look concerned. “I want a shower.”
“What?”
“I want a shower. You got one.” I feel a wave of guilt. It will be the death of me.
“Okay. But we have to hurry.” I lead him quickly to the bathroom, eager to get him away from the body at least. I forget about the door until it stops me in my tracks.
It yaws like an abandoned horror movie set.
He goes still, clicking the scene into place. “What happened here?”
“I don’t know,” I decide, looking at the axed door. “It was like that when I got here.”
He clucks his tongue, then passes through the busted door and shuts it behind him. I can hear every move he makes as he takes off his clothes, as he climbs into the shower. The steam oozes through the break in the door, filling the house with a balmy hothouse scent.
My ears go hot. My mind is sealed in panic but most of all I just feel guilt, guilt at the disgust I have for him, the anger that he is here taking what is meant for me.
When he comes out of the shower, he still looks dirty, but now he glows with it. His clothes seem stiffer; his jeans hang off his slicked hips.