“Seemed to me she couldn’t wait to get out of here.”
I ask if they arrived at the bar together. She says no, she doesn’t think so. How did he come to be at Mia’s table? She doesn’t know. I ask again: does she know his name? No. Would anybody know his name? Probably not. He and Mia paid cash; they left a fifty on the table, which she still remembers because, for five or six beers, it was a charitable tip. More than her usual customers leave. She remembers bragging about it later in the night and flashing Ulysses S. Grant’s face for all her co-workers to see.
When I leave the bar, I check up and down Broadway for security cameras outside of restaurants, banks, the yoga studio, anything that will tell me who Mia Dennett was with that Tuesday night she disappeared.
Colin
Before
She won’t eat. Four times I’ve offered her food, dropped a bowl full of it on the floor in the bedroom. As if I’m her damn chef. She lies on the bed on her side, her back to the door. She doesn’t budge when I come in, but I can see her breathing. I know she’s alive. But if she keeps this up much longer she’ll starve herself to death. Now wouldn’t that be ironic.
She emerges from the bedroom like a zombie, her hair— a tangled rat’s nest—hiding her face. She walks to the bathroom, does her thing, walks back. I ignore her; she ignores me. I told her to leave the bedroom door open. I want to make sure she isn’t up to anything in there, but all she does is sleep. Until this afternoon.
I’d been outside, chopping firewood. I worked up a sweat. I was out of breath. I came barreling into the cabin with my mind on one thing: water.
There she stood in the middle of the room, stripped down to a lace bra and panties. She might as well have been dead. Her skin was drained of all color. Her hair was snarled, a bruise the size of a goose egg on her thigh. She had a busted lip and black eye, scratches from her run-in with the trees. Her eyes were bloodshot and swollen. Tears seeped from her eyes, down the albino skin. Her body convulsed, goose bumps everywhere my eyes could see. She walked with a limp, moving closer. She said to me, “Is this what you want?”
I stared. At her hair, falling mindlessly over the ivory shoulders. At her pale neglected skin. At the hollow craters of her collarbone and her perfectly shaped belly button. At her panties, cut high, and her long legs. At her ankle, so swollen it might be sprained. At the tears that dripped to the floor before her bare feet. Beside ruby-red toenails. Beside legs that shook when they walked, so that I thought they might give. At the snot that dripped from her nose, her crying no longer containable as she reached out and placed a shaking hand on my belt and started to unfasten the clasp. “Is this what you want?” she asked again, and for the time being I let her get both hands on my belt. I let her take it off and drop it to the floor. Let her undo the button of my jeans and slide the zipper. I couldn’t say that it wasn’t what I wanted. She reeked, as did I. Her hands were like ice when she touched me. But that wasn’t it. That wouldn’t have stopped me.
I gently pushed her away. “Stop,” I whispered.
“Let me,” she begged. She thought it would help. She thought it would change things.
“Get your clothes on,” I said. I closed my eyes. I couldn’t look at her. She stood before me. “Don’t—”
She forced my hands on her.
“Stop.” She didn’t believe me. “Stop,” I said louder this time, with more potency. And then added, “Just stop it already,” as I pushed her away from me. I told her to get her fucking clothes on.
I hurried out of the cabin, grabbed the ax and began chopping the firewood, vigorously, maniacally. I forgot all about the water.
Eve
Before
It’s the middle of the night and, as has been the case for a week now, I can’t sleep. Memories of Mia visit me all hours of the day and night, an image of one-year-old Mia in an olive-colored bubble outfit, her chubby thighs bulging out while she tried, unsuccessfully, to walk; hot-pink toenails on precious three-year-old feet; the sound of her wail when her ears were pierced, but later, watching for hours as she admired the opal gems in the bathroom mirror.