“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, I do. You know what I mean. Those animals, the ones that only pretend to be dead. You might be one of those.”
“I might just get tired of this and go the hell home,” she sighs, because he knows that she won’t, so she can say whatever she wants.
“Anyway,” he says, “it’s work, if you want it. It’s just a party. Sounds like an easy gig to me.”
“I have that thing on Tuesday morning though, and I don’t want to be up all night.”
“Another shoot with Kellerman?” asks Peter and frowns at her, taking his eyes off the board, tapping at his chin with the bishop’s mitre. “Is there something wrong with that?”
“You hear things, that’s all. Well, I hear things. I don’t think you ever hear anything at all.”
“I need the work, Pete. The last time I sold a piece, I think Lincoln was still President. I’ll never make as much money painting as I do posing for other people’s art.”
“Poor Hannah,” Peter says. He sets the bishop back down beside his king and lights a cigarette. She almost asks him for one, but he thinks she quit three months ago, and it’s nice having at least that one thing to lord over him; sometimes it’s even useful. “At least you have a fallback,” he mutters and exhales; the smoke lingers above the board like fog on a battlefield.
“Do you even know who these people are?” she asks and looks impatiently at the clock above his kitchen sink.
“Not firsthand, no. But then they’re not exactly my sort. Entirely too, well … ” and Peter pauses, searching for a word that never comes, so he continues without it. “But the Frenchman who owns the place on St. Mark’s, Mr. Ordinaire—excuse me, Monsieur Ordinaire—I heard he used to be some sort of anthropologist. I think he might have written a book once.”
“Maybe Kellerman would reschedule for the afternoon,” Hannah says, talking half to herself.
“You’ve actually never tasted it?” he asks, picking up the bishop again and waving it ominously towards her side of the board.
“No,” she replies, too busy now wondering if the photographer will rearrange his Tuesday schedule on her behalf to be annoyed at Peter’s cat and mouse with her rook.
“Dreadful stuff,” he says and makes a face like a kid tasting Brussels sprouts or Pepto-Bismol for the first time. “Might as well have a big glass of black jelly beans and cheap vodka, if you ask me. La Fée Verte my fat ass.”
“Your ass isn’t fat, you skinny old queen,” Hannah scowls playfully, reaching quickly across the table and snatching the bishop from Peter’s hand. He doesn’t resist. This isn’t the first time she’s grown too tired of waiting for him to move to wait any longer. She removes her white rook off the board and sets the black bishop in its place.
“That’s suicide, dear,” Peter says, shaking his head and frowning. “You’re aware of that, yes?”
“You know those animals that bore their prey into submission?”
“No, I don’t believe I’ve ever heard of them before.”
“Then maybe you should get out more often.”
“Maybe I should,” he replies, setting the captured rook down with all the other prisoners he’s taken. “So, are you going to do the party? It’s a quick grand, you ask me.”
“That’s easy for you say. You’re not the one who’ll be getting naked for a bunch of drunken strangers.”
“A fact for which we should all be forevermore and eternally grateful.”
“You have his number?” she asks, giving in, because that’s almost a whole month’s rent in one night and, after her last gallery show, beggars can’t be choosers.
“There’s a smart girl,” Peter says and takes another drag off his cigarette. “The number’s on my desk somewhere. Remind me again before you leave. Your move.”
3
“How old were you when that happened, when your sister died?” the psychologist asks, Dr. Edith Valloton and her smartly cut hair so black it always makes Hannah think of fresh tar, or old tar gone deadly soft again beneath a summer sun to lay a trap for unwary, crawling things. Someone she sees when the nightmares get bad, which is whenever the painting isn’t going well or the modeling jobs aren’t coming in or both. Someone she can tell her secrets to who has to keep them secret, someone who listens as long as she pays by the hour, a place to turn when faith runs out and priests are just another bad memory to be confessed.
“Almost twelve,” Hannah tells her and watches while Edith Valloton scribbles a note on her yellow legal pad.
“Do you remember if you’d begun menstruating yet?”
“Yeah. My periods started right after my eleventh birthday.”
“And these dreams, and the stones. This is something you’ve never told anyone?”
“I tried to tell my mother once.”
“She didn’t believe you?”
Hannah coughs into her hand and tries not to smile, that bitter, wry smile to give away things she didn’t come here to show.
“She didn’t even hear me,” she says.
“Did you try more than once to tell her about the fairies?”
“I don’t think so. Mom was always pretty good at letting us know whenever she didn’t want to hear what was being said. You learned not to waste your breath.”
“Your sister’s death, you’ve said before that it’s something she was never able to come to terms with.”
“She never tried. Whenever my father tried, or I tried, she treated us like traitors. Like we were the ones who put Judith in her grave. Or like we were the ones keeping her there.”
“If she couldn’t face it, Hannah, then I’m sure it did seem that way to her.”
“So, no,” Hannah says, annoyed that she’s actually paying someone to sympathize with her mother. “No. I guess never really told anyone about it.”
“But you think you want to tell me now?” the psychologist asks and sips her bottled water, never taking her eyes off Hannah.
“You said to talk about all the nightmares, all the things I think are nightmares. It’s the only one that I’m not sure about.”
“Not sure if it’s a nightmare, or not sure if it’s even a dream?”
“Well, I always thought I was awake. For years, it never once occurred to me I might have only been dreaming.”
Edith Valloton watches her silently for a moment, her cat-calm, cat-smirk face, unreadable, too well trained to let whatever’s behind those dark eyes slip and show. Too detached to be smug, too concerned to be indifferent. Sometimes, Hannah thinks she might be a dyke, but maybe that’s only because the friend who recommended her is a lesbian.
“Do you still have the stones?” the psychologist asks, finally, and Hannah shrugs out of habit.
“Somewhere, probably. I never throw anything away. They might be up at Dad’s place, for all I know. A bunch of my shit’s still up there, stuff from when I was a kid.”
“But you haven’t tried to find them?”
“I’m not sure I want to.”