“I want to listen to music,” he says, untying the tiny knot of one bead, setting the others on the floor where he can see them. “Led Zeppelin.” Dead-body music.
“Michael, please.” This was supposed to be my chance, and it feels like I’m losing it to my past, like I’m cursed, can never escape. And it’s not fucking fair. I’m so close.
His eyes catch mine, shiny in their whites. “We’ll keep it down. Wouldn’t want to disturb anybody.”
I march to the computer. I put Led Zeppelin on Spotify.
“I’m going in the other room,” I say. He takes a needle sealed in plastic and a box of Narcan out of his pockets and sets them neatly on the floor.
The house is open-plan, so there is no door between the living room and the bedroom, just a long hall. I can’t escape him. I tell myself that even this is better than living on the streets. I tell myself not to be greedy. I tell myself this is enough.
When has that ever been true?
* * *
I IGNORE MICHAEL as much as I can, which, it turns out, is not a lot.
He gets high and watches Pixar movies on Demi’s desktop, cradled in the corner of the house. He keeps them on low volume, nodding out so he has to watch them over and over, trying to catch all the parts he missed. Finding Dory, Toy Story 4, Cars 3. They play in a near constant loop—breaking only for the occasional art house film to prove he is a man of taste.
He goes in and out of the apartment as he pleases. His belongings slowly filter in, too. His tent folded up beside him, his sleeping bag, even the cardboard he used to sleep on.
His most prized possessions are his “paintings.” They are not actually paintings but collages, which is enough to convince him he’s an artist. They are filled with cutout penises and breasts with clever words like “FUCK” and “PUSSY” written between them—in case the images alone are too obscure. Whenever he goes out, he always checks with me, oddly coy. “Hey, will you keep an eye on my paintings?” It’s almost endearing, how important these hideous creations are to him.
He pawns Demi’s things. We split the money. I buy food and things we need for the house. He buys heroin. He insists it’s what Demi would have wanted. I can’t fault him. She would absolutely want him to kill himself.
I am shocked that we haven’t been caught. So shocked that I begin to feel divorced from the event, like I never even did it.
When I’m lonely, we talk. Michael is just like anyone. His mind is a network of contradictions and booby traps and strange perversions; his are just more obvious.
Like most poor men I know, he is convinced he is gaming the system. He brags about how he doesn’t have to work, how he stole his brother’s identity and now gets food stamps for two people, how he’s walked out on multiple hospital bills.
He tells me how tough he is, how many fights he’s been in; he walks me through all the strange trials of his existence, all the times he survived when he shouldn’t have. That is the thing he is most proud of, his survival, as he shoots himself up and dares himself to die.
The more he tries to convince me his life is his choice, the less I believe it.
I want to be alone. It doesn’t seem fair that he is invading my dream.
Every time he leaves, I hope he never comes back. Every time my eyes shut, I see him disappear.
DEMI
I am careful about our trash. I don’t want the woman upstairs to see me carrying empty bottles and crushed cans, bloody paper towels and used needles, so I wait until she goes out.
She goes out only once a day, for almost two hours exactly. I keep my ears pricked for when this happens. I keep the house clean, while Michael quietly fills it up with junkie debris. I collect it, pack it away with care so the bottles don’t knock together when I walk.
I wait for her to leave; then I encourage Michael to go. “Now’s the best time. Before she comes back.”
That afternoon, he pushes back, whining and delaying, but I know he will leave, needs to leave, because he has run out of drugs.
“I’ll go later,” he says.
“She’ll be back later.”
“So what? Have you seen her? She just sits there like a doll.”
“Her husband will be back later.”
He scoffs but I know he’s afraid of him. He passed him on the street once. He said he reminded him of “Christian Bale in that movie.” American Psycho.
Now he takes another shower, coats himself in rose-scented bodywash, then puts on her long black coat. “I’m coming back,” he says at the door.
“I know.” The pressure ticks in my mind.
I clean the house slowly. I enjoy cleaning. It’s a luxury I have never been able to afford.
Once I am finished, I slip on a pair of alligator pumps and I take the trash out. I pass through the hole in the wall. The gate is gone. They still haven’t replaced it, which is strange. Michael claimed he didn’t break it, but he lies about what he had for breakfast, so I take that with a grain of salt.
I think of Demi stalking the streets in stilettos with her neck snapped. Ghosts have never scared me before. In fact, I always thought it would be nice to be a ghost because you don’t have to worry about health insurance. But there is something about having things to lose that makes me afraid in a different way. I used to be numb, accepting everything that came, but now I feel almost more vulnerable.
I walk the bag far down the street so the trash won’t be connected to me. Walking back up the street, I notice a big white van parked across from the duplex. The windows are blacked out with makeshift curtains. There is a spray of dried dark liquid down one side. I wonder who it belongs to. I imagine the FBI coiled inside behind a wall of buttons and screens, watching me. Or a family of human mice piled up inside, trying to survive.
For a second, my imagination takes on a supernatural aspect. I see a big writhing octopus, the monster of my guilt, crammed inside, waiting to get out. And when I walk down the stairs, its tentacles will shoot out and chase me, blast through any obstacle.
The van doesn’t fit in this nice neighborhood. I walk away from it fast, like it’s chasing after me, like I brought it here.
Paranoid, I think. You’re being paranoid.
My eyes dart to the courtyard as I pass. Light gathers in pools everywhere, like some sweet oasis. I wish I could collect it, take it down with me, set a bundle of light in the middle of the room and let it glow, illuminate everything.
I steady my hand on the railing as I continue down the stairs.
Suddenly, I hear something pounding, racing toward me. Denial pops like a balloon in my ears. Panic explodes and I know: They’re here. They’ve come to get me, like I knew they would.
I leap, kneecap cracking, down the stairs and toward the woods, but it’s too late. A body falls against me. I crash into the door, grasping for purchase, almost knocked off my feet. Then I smell Demi’s rose-scented bodywash. It’s her! She never died! She wants her life back!
I wheel to face her and I see Lyla watching from the top of the stairs. Then Michael pushes past me, soaked in Demi’s perfume. My hand reaches out on instinct, makes a fist, punches him right between the shoulder blades.
“Bitch!” he snaps.
“Don’t come back!” I snap back.
He dives down the hill, all the way to the fence. I picture Demi’s body lurching over the fence. I shut my eyes until the image floats away.
When I open them Lyla is still there, dressed in clothes that seem to pull away from her, afraid to touch.
“You hit him.” She looks right at me and my stomach twists. I feel sick.
Be normal, I instruct myself. Be a human being. But it’s too late for that. I’ve become something else. Or else a human being was never what I thought it was. . . . “He was trespassing.”
“He was huge. Weren’t you scared?”
I am more scared of her. I remember the real Demi’s warning, that Lyla was “totally bonkers.” She does seem a little off. She is like a painting where the artist got everything right except the feeling you get when you look at it.
“I’m not scared of anything,” I lie.