“Why not?”
“Because, darling, somebody broke it.” He calls me “darling” in excess when he’s drunk. “I’m daring them to come back. Break my house, kill my mother’s dog . . . Ha! I dare you to come back!” he shouts at the empty street.
“Let’s go inside.” I slip my fingers around his shoulder. Drunk Graham is annoying, but managing him makes me feel powerful, like I can hold a dangerous thing in my hands, catch a flame and not get burned. His breath is labored. He’s probably taken pills, too, or whatever designer drug his friends are currently peddling. “Come on, I want to tell you a funny story.”
He is winding down, dropping off from whatever hot plateau he wandered to. He flexes his fingers in and out, admiring their pain. “I don’t think anything is funny,” he says so hopelessly, I almost laugh.
* * *
ONCE WE ARE inside, he insists on another drink. I open a bottle of Mo?t to keep him away from the liquor cabinet. He spreads himself on the sofa, kicks his feet up on the armrest, then struggles to light a cigarette with his solid-gold lighter. “Fucking lighter fluid!” he complains.
I’d better pour myself a drink, too.
He has his hand over his face when I bring the drink, so I can’t see his expression. I don’t see it coming, but then I never do. “You’re so boring,” he moans. “What did I ever do to deserve such a boring wife?”
“You’re drunk.” I hand him a drink. He takes it.
He takes a sip and makes a face. “I fucking hate Mo?t.”
“So do I.” I sip mine and take a seat on the far sofa, away from him. I should go to bed. I should leave in a huff and check into a hotel. But even now, after everything he’s done to me, after everything he’s put my through, I’m tied to him. I want him to like me, need him to love me. For his money, for his beauty, for my punishment—I don’t know. I’m a bad person, and he is the bad in me.
“When I married you, I thought, ‘This is a woman who will never bore me.’ But I’m bored.” He says it like it’s the worst thing in the world.
I wiggle in my seat. “Wait until you see what I have planned for tomorrow. You won’t be bored then.” I try to make my voice sound firm, powerful, but I am starting to doubt myself. Maybe Mo?t isn’t enough. Maybe blowing apart a mansion isn’t enough. Maybe murder isn’t enough.
“Whatever.” He downs the entire glass, then drops it on the floor so it shatters. “What-fucking-ever.”
I down my drink and stand up, straighten my pajamas. “I’m going to bed. Your birthday is going to be unforgettable. You’ll see.” I start toward the bedroom.
“You can’t even do a simple thing.” I stop. I always do. He slides his hand from his face. “Can you? I ask you to destroy some bitch’s life and instead my gate is broken. My mother’s dog is dead—”
“None of that has anything to do with Demi.”
“Of course it does! Of course it does! Demi’s haunting us. She does things without even doing them!”
I hold my ground. “Wait until tomorrow—or wait until you see your present. Then tell me I’m boring. Then tell me you’re bored.”
He puts his hands over his face again, speaks into his fingers so the words are muffled. “You’re not one of us. You have no idea how hard it is when everyone expects you to be like them.”
“I am one of you. You’ll see tomorrow.” I reach the door and check if he is going to follow me. He always does. He needs me as much as I need him. He has to.
“I killed her.” For a second I think he means Demi and I feel this wild terror shoot through me. I don’t know if it’s because I want or don’t want it to be true. His hands slip from his face and he looks so young, so beautiful, like this is the source of his beauty. “Elvira.” He shakes his head like a child who broke his toy. “I was so bored. I was just so bored.”
“I found her body.”
“Yes, you did so well with that.” His voice softens.
Mine gets hard. “You said it was my fault. You said she killed herself and it was my fault.”
“Well, duh.” He is not his most elegant when he is drunk. “It was Margo’s idea. It’s really a classic psychological sleight of hand. You make a person believe they’re guilty and they never suspect you are.” Of course. It’s Rich People 101.
“But . . . why did you do it?”
“I told you: I was bored.” He sits up, suddenly very grave “This is exactly what I mean, darling. This is exactly the thing. You just don’t understand what it’s like for me. We’re just”—sigh—“so very different. It happens all the time—unfortunate!”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Margo didn’t think we could trust you.” He shrugs. “She said we had to get rid of you. I told her to give you a chance to prove yourself,” he adds like he deserves a gold star. “But Margo was right. You’re not like us. You don’t get bored like we do. You don’t like playing with people’s lives.”
“Wait until tomorrow.” I repeat myself because this time he’s listening. “Wait until you see your present. Then tell me I’m boring. Then tell me you’re bored.”
He nods, calming, trusting me. I turn toward the bedroom and his voice follows me. “Lyla? We aren’t playing for your soul. It’s just for fun.”
* * *
SO MUCH OF what I feel lives beneath the surface of me. It only occasionally swells and rises, when under extreme duress. When my husband confesses to murder, for example. Or when I have to wait in line. I can feel it now, this toxic rising, reminding me it’s always there inside me.
I don’t allow myself to even think about Elvira until I am alone in bed, and even then it comes in waves. I feel it washing over me, wrecking me, and then it’s gone, and I’m me again. Whoever that is.
DEMI
Dad always taught me that most criminals are caught because they give themselves away. They want to be caught. We all secretly want to be punished for our sins. We think that we are bad people when really we are just people. We hate our baser instincts, but this is anathema to our survival. We punish ourselves. The way to steal is to not believe you are stealing. The way to take is to believe you deserve it. The way to survive is to believe you’ll never die. And it works to a point.
This might be that point. I am carrying a bag of water-bloated hands and feet and clicking teeth down the street in the Hollywood Hills. I try to look innocent, blessed. I try to look rich.
My heart is racing. The heavy bag is cutting marks into my palms. I have no idea what I am going to do with these hands and feet and teeth once I get them home. I don’t think about that. If I separate it into pieces, it’s totally manageable. I can achieve anything. I can achieve the unthinkable.
This is step one.
I wind back through the twisted streets, trying to remember the path Lyla and I took. I don’t know what happened to Lyla, and she is my biggest threat. There’s a stench coming from the bag—not dead body exactly, but something wetter: seaweed, octopus, rot.
I hear the roar of an engine, magnified in the narrow space. I move from one side to the other. I pass a woman walking her red dog. The dog leaps up, barks viciously at the bag. The woman smiles and tells her, “Good girl. Precious angel.”
I walk faster, steps running together until I am practically flying. I reach our street, turn the corner. Duck past the white van and through the opening. I gush a sigh of relief when I reach the courtyard. Then I see a man crouched over the bushes. His blue suit is stretched tight across his back. I can tell by the quality of the fabric that it’s Graham.
I stop in my tracks. Do I turn around? Do I hurry past?
His back rises. I swing the bag toward the stairwell. It flies through the air, then tumbles wetly down the steps.
“Just picking up trash!” I explain, flinching with every sickening drop. My heart is racing so fast that my chest aches. I need help. I need my heart removed.
His voice is soft, creeping up on me. “There’s a rabbit.”