But with a suicide, an autopsy wouldn’t. The coroner would find drugs in the boy’s system. They would look at his neck and windpipe and know he’d hung himself. They’d pull up his shirt and find an exit wound. Sylvie thought about Warren Givens hunched over his thighs on that bench. She thought of him going through life’s simple motions. Buying milk at the store. Turning on the taps to take a shower. Stopping to have his car washed by students raising money for their school’s sports team.
Friday was also the day she’d received a follow-up call from Geoff, asking if she was coming to the party he was throwing for his wife’s birthday on Monday, the same party he’d mentioned at the board meeting. “It’s just a casual thing,” he said. “Melinda certainly isn’t expecting a gift. And no need to dress up.”
Sylvie felt put on the spot. She hadn’t been to a party since the very last one she and James had attended together, the day before his aneurysm. Coincidentally that party had been at Geoff’s house, too. James hadn’t wanted to go, but Sylvie had been annoyed with him and demanded that he go. It was at that party that she’d brought up the nameless woman again, even though Sylvie had promised James she was strong enough to let her go.
If Sylvie went to Geoff’s party, she would have to stand in the very same rooms where she and James fought, among many of the same people. And yet she didn’t know how to say no, so she told Geoff she’d be delighted. Geoff sounded pleased and surprised, as if he’d expected her to decline.
The longer Scott stayed on her side of the house, the less Sylvie wanted to bring up the task of cleaning out his suite and fixing the leak. For they were making strides; the latticework of their relationship was getting stronger and stronger with every hello they exchanged, every detail she learned about him. If she said something and the leak was fixed, Scott might retreat back to his side of the house and all they’d accomplished would be undone. Who knew what they’d eventually talk about, what they’d eventually admit to one another.
But then Scott walked into the kitchen on Sunday morning and said, “I called a guy to pump out the water. He’s coming Monday. Maybe I should show you where it all is in case I’m not here.”
Sylvie stood up straighter, shocked. Monday was his meeting. Was that what he was referring to when he said in case I’m not here?
The mildewed smell swept around them like a cloak as soon as they opened the door. Some of the water had spilled over the side of the plastic bucket Scott had placed by his bed, leaving a warped puddle on the parquet floor. There was a big yellow stain on the ceiling where all the water had seeped through. Scott had had the sense to pull the mattress off his bed.
Neither of them said anything for a while, looking glumly at the mess. Scott crossed the room and opened his closet. “Oh.”
Sylvie walked over, too. All his clothes were damp. There was still a considerable puddle on the closet floor, pooled around Scott’s piles and piles of sneakers. When she looked up, there was a second yellowed Rorschach-blot over the metal hanging rod. The leak had turned the plaster soft and rippled.
“Shit,” Scott said. He touched an oversize sweatshirt, then another. He kicked the sneakers with his foot.
“The shoes will dry out,” Sylvie told him. “And we can wash the clothes.”
She lingered on his jeans and Tshirts. Nothing of Scott’s looked remotely appropriate to wear, say, to a meeting with teachers. Not that she meant to think about it; it had just crept in there.
She tried not to sweep her eyes around the rest of the apartment, for fear Scott would accuse her of prying into his private space. The television and various stereo components, a network of boxes and devices and consoles below it, most with little green LED windows, seemed unharmed. Scott’s speakers did, too; they were arranged around the space, two in the front corners, one in the front middle, and two in the back corners—James had helped him set them up that way for theaterlike surround sound. Sylvie noticed a postcard pinned up to his refrigerator of an African-American girl in a short, tight argyle sweater-vest, her breasts spilling out at the vest’s V-neck. The girl wore a minuscule pleated skirt with her kneesocks pulled all the way up, and she had one hand at her ultrared lips. Shhh.
“She’s very pretty,” Sylvie mused, pointing.
Scott followed her gaze and winced.
“Well, I mean, her face,” Sylvie tried again.
The girl had a soft, round face and maple-colored eyes. Sylvie had always tried to be diplomatic about the girls Scott gravitated toward, pretending not to notice the obvious thing about them, pretending—and often succeeding—that their race didn’t matter. She was curious about a lot of things she didn’t dare bring up—the science behind the girls he preferred, the mechanics of attraction. Did it come down to rebellion—did he choose girls who were the furthest from her as humanly possible? Or was there some genetic proclivity about all of it that Sylvie would never understand?
“She’s got a pretty face,” Sylvie repeated. “Though she’d go much further in life if she didn’t dress like that.”