I AM RELEASED at three o’clock in the morning. They give me my phone, which has died, and my wedding ring. When I ask the desk where I can charge my phone, they say, “Not here.” There is a pay phone outside but I don’t have coins or a card.
I feel this uncomfortable itching beneath my skin. I feel activated, like someone has stuffed my skin with dirt.
I am in the middle of nowhere: Van Nuys. All the shops have bars on the windows. Everything is shades of gray. It smells of gasoline. Honestly, jail was better.
I walk toward a main road improbably titled Victory Boulevard. I gaze in both directions. To the east, I recognize our hills: shadowed, doomed. To the west are other hills stretching on and on. I have this sudden, wild thought: What if I didn’t go back? What if I went the other way? I gaze west and I feel it, hot on my face like a fire I could walk into. I would burn away, become someone else. Who?
But Margo wouldn’t let me go; I know too much. Without Graham to shield me, she would target me. Graham would probably join her. They would make it game. They would make it fun. They would leave me wrecked.
I have made a point of avoiding looking into the tenants after Graham and Margo are done with them. It hasn’t been hard. We don’t exactly run in the same circles. But one time, by accident, I met one of their victims on the street. They were living on the street.
“You’re that girl,” they said, finger shaking as they pointed like they couldn’t quite place me. “You saw what happened. You know what happened to me.”
I offered them five dollars from my purse. They refused it, so I put in an extra twenty. They took that. It chilled me to know that was the price—that would be the price—of pride once Graham and Margo were through with me: twenty-five dollars. Not even enough to buy a jug of milk, probably.
The prospect of going home to Graham, telling him what happened, is humiliating. He’ll make me tell Margo. She’ll say she was right. I’m not like them. I don’t belong. And what if Graham believes it? What if he decides she’s right? Game over.
I can’t deny that things have not been going well with Graham for a while. Maybe from the beginning. But like other couples have children or jobs or hobbies to distract them from their imperfect pairing, Graham has the game. I let him play. I tolerated it. I didn’t interfere. Until Elvira. That is when the tide well and truly turned. That was why they decided it needed to be my turn. Graham needs me to prove that I’m on his side, needs me to prove that we are the same after all.
But what if we aren’t the same? What if that isn’t the reason I fell for him? What if, like every woman ever, I wanted him, needed him, to change? And he can’t. He won’t.
Why was I ever even friends with Elvira at all? I knew I was interfering, knew it wouldn’t last. Yet I kept on going to her, out for our walks, down for drinks, out shopping. I put myself in Graham’s way. I knew what I was doing. I didn’t want him to destroy her. I wanted her to win. I thought that she was different. She was, just not in the way I thought.
She slit her wrists with a Buck knife from the toolshed, the one with silver horses engraved on the handle. Just that afternoon, we had walked around the reservoir together.
We talked about Graham.
She told me he had kissed her. I told her that was okay. We had an open relationship.
“We’re practically divorced,” I said. “It’s just so complicated when money is involved.”
“But you love him,” she said, insistent.
“It’s just so complicated when money is involved,” I repeated in jest, but she didn’t laugh.
“You should leave him,” she said. It was the first time any of the tenants had warned me. It hit funny, knowing I should warn her. “You’re too good for him.”
“I’m not. I’m exactly the right amount of bad for him.” I remember this distinctly, my trying to turn everything into a joke, her turning it gently back.
“No. You’re too good.”
She was wrong. Wrong and now dead. I’m not too good. I’m not good at all. I’m a bad person and I have to stay bad. I don’t have a choice. I have to keep playing.
It’s like Demi said: The game never ends. Playing is the reward.
I turn east toward home.
I will shower. I will put myself back together. I will sit in the corner at the place where two windows meet and I will design a way to win.
LYLA
The gate is still gone, away with the monks, being prayed over. I cross through the courtyard, ignore the laughter from the fountain. My hair is greasy. My cashmere is bobbly. My mascara dust is sprinkled under my eyes. I look mad. I look like the housekeeper.
I put my key in the front door, but it’s unlocked. I push it open. Graham is standing at the window. He wheels around, rushes toward me.
“Where have you been?” His face is pale. Sweats hang from his hips.
“I thought you were at work,” I say.
His arms grow around me, pull me tight against his chest, where I can feel his racing heart. His scent drenches me, atomized by worry. “I was just about to call the police.” He brushes my hair down, over and over, like he is trying to revive me. “My beautiful wife. I was so worried about you.”
All I can think is You’re supposed to be at work, you’re supposed to be at work. “I need to take a shower.”
He steps back, presses his finger pads into my shoulders. “Where were you?”
All those hours walking and I never thought he would be here. I never thought he would be worried. Even now it’s hard to determine whether this is real or whether it’s a tactic, whether he is running a secret game.
“It’s silly, really.” I don’t want to tell him, don’t want to admit that I failed, but they will find out eventually. I will need him to pay the fine. “I got arrested.”
His jaw goes limp. “Arrested?” The word is zesty on his tongue. He follows me to the bathroom with awestruck eyes. “What did you get arrested for?”
“Trespassing.” I start to undress, turn on the shower.
“Trespassing where?”
“Just at the lake. I’ll tell you the story, but I need to shower first.”
I take off all my clothes. Graham watches me. I step into the shower. He stands there, arms apart, still breathing heavily, concentrating, like he is making or remaking his mind up.
Then he steps into the shower. He doesn’t even take off his clothes. His lips are on mine. His hand slips between my legs. He pushes me against the wall, first softly, then roughly. My brain rattles, like I am waking up, coming home only to find that I have landed in a strange new territory.
“I can’t believe you went to jail,” he growls. “That’s so fucking hot.”
* * *
“I LOVE YOU.” He kisses me on the jawbone. We are in bed together at noon, like it’s a Sunday and we’re hungover, a million years ago.
Graham isn’t going to work. He is hanging all over me like he just invented me, twirling my hair around his finger, kissing my cheeks, tracing my collarbone, sucking my neck. He is wearing the cashmere sweatpants I got him for Christmas, a soft T-shirt with an overstretched neck. We are like an ordinary couple finally. I want to enjoy it but I am distracted. I can hear Demi downstairs, taking one of her endless showers. Graham wants to know every detail.
“My little criminal mastermind.” He kisses my fingernails.
I start with the metal cutters.
“Wait.” He pulls away “You were trying to set up Demi?”
I prop myself up on a pile of pillows. “Well, I wasn’t trying to get me arrested.”
“And you ended up in jail?”
“It was a stupid mistake.” I observe my fingernails. The paint on my left index finger is chipped.
“And a stupid plan. Trespassing? The worst they would do is slap her with a fine.” Like he knows everything. Except he’s right this time.
“I know that now. I’ve never been arrested. How was I supposed to know? I did say she might have a gun.”