She says, “I’m going home. Do not follow me. If you follow me, I’ll yell for the police.”
No, you won’t.
I say, “Understood. But you don’t have a phone. How will I find you?”
I’ll follow you, and this time I won’t lose you.
“You’re extremely persistent. I’m not the first person to notice this, right?”
The guy I used to be would be persistently figuring out how to get the hell out of shoving this girl in front of a moving car without ending up with a dead family. He wouldn’t be wondering how best to position himself to kiss her back, and how soon he could get to the base of her neck, to that little hollow she keeps touching with her fingertips.
He wouldn’t be chasing her down the street, uncertain about whether this is moving toward sex or death.
Fuck all.
Meeting her face-to-face in a place I didn’t control was an unlucky accident, but was I supposed to leave that little girl bleeding on the ground? Who would have thought Nicolette Holland would be a steps-up-in-emergencies kind of girl? I wasn’t prepared for her holding that kid’s hand, spilling milk of human kindness all over the ground six inches from me, where I could smell her hair and get turned on while waiting for paramedics.
I was supposed to be repulsed.
Instead, I’m thinking, Don has to be wrong. She couldn’t have done this. She’s too normal to have done this. She’s too cute; I like her too much; I could tell.
I look at her standing in front of me. There’s no one else on the street.
I run my hand across her forehead, pushing the fake-brown bangs out of her eyes. Then I kiss her back. It starts out tame. It doesn’t end that way. I cradle the back of her head in my hands, with only a brief thought of snapping her neck. Her hands are in the small of my back, and her mouth tastes like chocolate. When I come up for air, she reaches up and takes hold of the back of my head and pulls me back in. I kiss her eyelids and her ear, and I swear she shudders, like in a porno, only more believable. Scarlett didn’t shudder.
If there were some way to pick her up and haul her back to the apartment without courting arrest, I could add that to my list of depraved aspirations.
“Fine!” She makes the word fine sound like swearing. “Tomorrow. Are you happy?”
I’m happy, but Don isn’t.
The respite between his phone calls has diminished to the point that I anticipate by sundown, there’ll be one long continuous ring. I’d turn off the sound, but I can’t stop listening for it, a regular reminder of how messed up this is.
I have no plan to answer. For once in my life, I have no plan—not even the old plan to hold off figuring out what to do until I found her. Because I have found her, and the brainstorm that was supposed to strike when she was within grabbing range is nowhere on the weather map.
What happens next?
Don’s phone calls come in all night, pulling me half out of sleep like a recurring nightmare that won’t loosen its grip. It used to be, I was jolted out of sleep by flashes of my father’s body, making out his shape in the dark garage, realizing why he was crumpled in that shape over and over until my mother forced me into therapy to “figure it all out.” No way in hell was I going to let anyone else figure it out. I knew what I did; that was enough.
At four a.m., I wake up with an image of Nicolette lying crumpled up at my feet. I reach over and answer the phone.
Don says, “Don’t you ever hang up on me.”
“Or what?”
Provoking Don is a dangerous hobby, but it’s late; I cut myself some slack.
“You don’t want to find out. Did you get her back? This is taking too long.”
Lying to Don comes so naturally, it doesn’t feel like lying. “There are three hundred twenty million people in the US. How long is it supposed to take to find one of them who doesn’t want to be found?”
“How long does it take to walk from the laundry room to Mom’s bedroom?”
I’m awake, fighting off the kind of unwanted emotion that makes you put your fist through walls if you don’t lock your arms against your sides. It would be easier if what could happen in the four seconds it takes to get from the laundry room to that bedroom didn’t come to me so easily—if a parent with his throat cut wasn’t already in my mental photo album.
“Don’t push it. Mom and I could disappear and leave you behind for Yeager to carve up like that.”
This shuts him up even though we both know she’d never do it. She’d never leave Don. We both know I’ve been so indoctrinated to take care of him that I took the envelope, and at some point I’m going to have to do something.
Don says, “Don’t crap your pants, but you don’t have much longer.”
“Because you’re God, and you’ll end the world if I don’t bow down faster?”
“Because Yeager is God, and you don’t want to piss him off.” This has the ring of absolute truth.
“Shit. How much time do I have?”
I’m not the only one who knows how to use silence for intimidation.