“Do you think I should check? To see if she’s down there? Just in case?”
Graham leans forward a little, peering below. “The curtains are closed; she’s not there.” Like it’s that simple.
“But maybe she likes to keep the curtains closed. Maybe she doesn’t like people seeing everything she does.” I scan our wall of windows, but we are so high, only the birds can see inside.
He sits back, rubs his neck. “Lyla, you’re obsessing.” He doesn’t say this unkindly. “Why don’t you go for a walk or something? Try to think about something else.”
“It wouldn’t hurt to check.”
Graham groans, goes back to his work. “She’s not down there.”
I prepare to go for a walk. I select the perfect gray outfit in case she’s there and sees me, in case she comes in as I’m going out. I stop at the door to put on my shoes. Graham looks up, smiles at me.
“You’re the prettiest girl in the world,” he says. I feel an almost overwhelming spike of dopamine, but then it drops away, when it used to last and last.
And I want to run to him, to hold on to the good, but I know that if I do, he will immediately say, I’m working, I’m tired. You’re being silly now. Not because he doesn’t want me, but because he only wants me at the right distance: not too close, not too far. Like an abstract painting that only comes together in one spot marked on the floor in an empty gallery. His love is farsighted. If I get too close, it blurs.
I don’t go downstairs to check if Demi is there. Instead I take the same walk I take every day. On the way back, I find Margo and Bean parked outside a great white van. The windows are covered with old blankets. Bird shit runs down the side like blood.
“Where did that come from?” I ask.
Margo’s chin jerks in my direction. “It’s an eyesore. We’ll have to pay to have it moved.” Bean is sniffing frantically, clawing the asphalt. Margo never bothered to have her trained. She wanted her to be herself, so she often acts in the most animal fashion. She barks once and then rapidly, one on top of the other. “Bean!” Margo jerks her leash but looks a little proud.
“I don’t think you can have it moved. You don’t own the street.”
“Don’t be silly.” Bean lunges. The collar catches her in the air. Bean whimpers and comes to Margo, who squats and makes a fuss of her. “That’s all right, my darling girl, my vicious little girl.” She stands. “This neighborhood is going to hell.”
Margo owns half the neighborhood. There are other houses on our street, but I don’t think people live in them. On occasion I will see someone rambling along the street, looking startled, as if they’re not sure how they got there. But I never see the same person twice. That is what Margo likes about the neighborhood, what she likes about Los Angeles in general: You will never find a city where people care less about what you get up to.
“Have you met the tenant yet?” Margo asks, regripping the leash so she can tug Bean away from the van and toward the gate that leads to her garden.
“No. She hasn’t arrived.”
“You’ll let me know every detail”—the gate screeches as she opens it—“as soon as she does.”
LYLA
Demi arrives just after midnight. Graham and I are in bed, at the stage in our sleep pattern where we turn our backs to each other. Graham sleeps on the side closest to the gate, so when I hear her, I shift to his side and peer through the opening below the shade.
He gasps, awake. “What are you doing?”
“I thought I heard something,” I say, knowing I heard her.
“Get your elbow—” I move it. “It’s probably that silly woman living downstairs.” He is half asleep, so I try to be quiet, but she is struggling to unlock the gate, turning the key this way and that, jangling the fence, swearing under her breath. Graham comes together; anger puts his parts in place. “Does she have to be so fucking loud?”
She is still struggling.
“The lock must be stuck. Should I help her?”
“It’s late.”
I start to get up when the gate screeches, then bangs limply against the wall. “Fuck.” That’s her, Demi, outside our house.
I see her move down the stairs. First, her shoes, curled black and witchy, as she swivels on the step and locks the gate behind her. “Fucking shit,” she mutters. It sears through Graham. He yanks the comforter over his head.
She wears a big black coat, as if she’s just come in from some terrible ice storm in the middle of Los Angeles. Her face is a smear beneath wild hair and then she’s gone, down below to her guesthouse.
I lie back in bed with my heart pounding as she moves down below. I can’t hear her footsteps or her words if she says any, but I catch the flush of the toilet, the bang of a closet door. We are so close. Her place is actually part of ours, the same house, on another floor.
Graham moans and punches an opening in his cave of covers. “I hate when they wake me up.” Then he moves to my side of the bed and buries his head in my chest.
* * *
GRAHAM IS SUCH a snob; it turns him on to think there is someone literally below him. If I kiss him when she’s downstairs, he groans like he wants her to hear.
All week long, I get glimpses, but they are quick. She leaves early. She comes home late. She never sleeps, and neither do we. I know I will have only a minute to catch her as she passes to make it seem natural and spontaneous. I wait on the patio for hours, and she arrives the moment I leave, like her watch is set to avoid me.
Graham checks in every day.
“Have you met her yet?” and “Have you talked to her?”
I run into Margo and Bean out on the street. “Where is your mystery tenant?” Like all of this is my idea.
By Thursday Graham is actually angry. The housekeeper has cooked another amazing dinner. No stars are out tonight. It’s too cloudy. There is only a fog that smells like ashes.
“You haven’t even met her. You’re not even trying.” Graham pouts, then licks his fork.
“I am trying. She’s never here. That’s what happens when you choose someone with a high-powered job. They work.”
Graham frowns and puts down his fork. “It’s no fun when it’s your turn.”
“I never wanted a turn.”
“Margo was right.” It’s my least favorite set of words, and he knows it.
I put my hands on the table. “What do you want me to do, Graham? Set a booby trap? Move in downstairs?” My neck is hot, like he’s onto me. The truth is, I have questioned my intentions. Maybe I really am not trying. Maybe her watch isn’t set to avoid me; maybe mine is set to avoid her. Way deep down, I don’t want to do this. My heart is treacherous.
“I want you to get her to like you. You can do that, can’t you?”
It burns and he knows it. “You want me to seduce a stranger.”
“You’re seducing me.” He strings his fingers together, sets his chin on top. “Let’s make things more interesting. Get it done and I’ll fuck you.”
The word pops a bubble in my brain. So much of our relationship is a tacit agreement never to mention that fact that Graham can fuck me only under certain circumstances, ideal conditions. Not temperature, a different kind of heat. His heel scrapes the floor as his legs shift under the table. “Seduce her, promise her the world and ruin her.”
That is the game Margo and Graham like to play. They invite a bootstrapper to live in their guesthouse. Someone who has climbed the ranks, someone self-made, woman or man. Then they conspire to make them lose everything, but spectacularly: a sex scandal, criminal charges, fraud.
But first, the player befriends them. They get to know them. “Poetic justice,” Margo once said, “is so much more satisfying.”
“Annihilate her,” Graham continues. “Her job. Her money. I want her to lose everything,” he says, beautifully transfixed.