Our Little Secret
Roz Nay
For Clint
and all the lies he doesn’t tell
chapter
* * *
1
I’ve been in the police station all morning while they ask me questions about Saskia. Every hour the cops come to me, one after another, with a new pad of paper and a full cup of coffee. They must pass off the same brain at the door when they leave, hand it over like an Olympic baton, because not one of them strays from the script. Do you know the woman well? Can you speculate on where she’s gone? Are you upset? Angry? How do you feel about Mr. Parker? Would you consider your relationship with him to be particularly . . . close? Always a pause before the adjective.
That’s the thing: they sound like they’re asking about Saskia, but all roads lead to Mr. Parker and me. The police want to know if I’m in love with him, and they ask it like it’s the simplest explanation rather than the most complicated. My definition of love is nothing like theirs, though. Language can’t link us anymore: somewhere along the way, the important words got emptied and dulled, bandied around until they lost all electricity. Honestly, I don’t think they know what they’re asking.
Mr. Parker. It’s funny to hear his name that way; to me he’s HP and he always will be. For the hours I’ve sat in this room with cold-faced interviewers who don’t know me, it’s him I miss the most. I’ve done nothing wrong and until I know what’s happened, I’m saying nothing. Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye, I’d tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but it’s like they’re trying to solve a puzzle by fixating on one piece, as if it might change shape for them if they prod at it for long enough with their chimpy thumbs. They sit with their heads down, anticipating my answers and writing them in before the words are even mine. I wonder if it matters what I tell them.
The walls in this room merge with the floors in a sheen of polish: you can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. It’s as if no living creature ever spent time in here. The sole sign of humanity is on the wall to my left: one small line of graffiti written in fervent black capitals. THE URGE TO DESTROY IS CREATIVE. I’ve looked at it all morning, and it makes me worry about who sat here before me and what they were up to.
The only furniture in the room is a chrome table with four chairs, all the legs stubbed with rubber to avoid scarring the floor. Above the door a clock with a beige face judders its long hand through the seconds. In the top-left corner is a video camera. The red light winks at me. There’s one window up high to my right, but the glass doesn’t open. The long, thin pane glints like a reptile tank in a pet store. The police station parking lot must be out there. I often hear car doors banging.
There are other interview rooms on this corridor—I’m sure of it, because the air sucks in like a gasp every time the police officers open a door. Who’s being questioned in those rooms? I can’t be the only one they’ve brought in.
At noon they send in a fresh recruit. This one is dressed in a suit with a name badge clipped on his right pocket.
“Hello, Angela.” J. Novak studies the clipboard on his lap.
He writes the time in twenty-four-hour digits and fills out his name on the dotted line. J for James? John? Jekyll? He’s shaved his sideburns so that his hair cuts a strange line over the tops of his ears.
“How are you feeling this morning?” He clears his throat, and his Adam’s apple bobs. “I’m Detective Novak. I’ve been asked to take the lead because I specialize in homicide cases.” He exhales, an apology for his talents. “Here, I brought you water and food.” He holds out a generic bottle of water and two granola bars. When I don’t respond, he places them gently on the table. “Look, we really need you to talk to us, to help us find Saskia. If you could just fill in the blanks, we can close your file.” Detective Novak’s pen drums against the clipboard in a measured pulse. The top is chewed into a dented peak.
“I have a question.” My voice bounces around the vinyl walls. Novak’s dark eyebrows shoot up. He puts his pen down.
“Fire away,” he says, like we’re just hanging out over lattes.
“Do you really want to know what happened?” My voice is a tiny husk. It’s the only question anyone should ever need to ask.
Novak smiles, a tight line on his lips, and pulls the sleeves of his jacket lower to cover his shirt cuffs. He puts both palms flat on each side of his paper, the pen horizontal at the top like a spoon at a place setting. He is waiting to be fed.
chapter
* * *
2
My mother always taught me not to ask questions you don’t want answers to. Mind your manners, Angela. You’re so nosy, so grabby. You’re so needy; have I taught you nothing about being a lady? Twenty years I lived with my parents and we never really talked about anything. We were just moles fumbling along in the same dark tunnel.
These days when all three of us meet, we blink at each other in the bright surprise of my adulthood and flounder for a point of reference. But if I think about it now, maybe my mother was right. In among all her competitive disapproval lay a gristly knuckle of truth: don’t ask what you don’t want to know.
Detective Novak, I don’t trust your curiosity.
I prod my forefinger on the chrome of the table, leaving a smeared fingerprint. “I’ll tell you all I can, on two conditions.”
He waits.
“I know Saskia. I know what she’s like. Is it really true she’s been missing since last night?”
He nods.
“I want to know why you think it’s a homicide case. She might have just wandered off. Maybe she flew back to wherever she came from.”
He pauses, frowning. “At this point we’re considering all possibilities.”
“Good, because you shouldn’t rule anything out. You don’t know what people are capable of.”
That one he writes down. I wait for him to finish, the full stop at the end of his line carefully pressed. He lifts his head. “What’s your other condition?”
“My what?”
“You said there were two conditions.”
“Oh, I don’t want to talk about Saskia the whole time.”
Novak’s teeth are flat at the front, four of them in a row. “She’s kind of the main event.”
A black thread dangles from the hem of my shirt. I coil it around and around my forefinger until the skin at the tip shrieks purple. “I’m sorry to break it to you, Detective, but the story I have for you isn’t really about her. There’s a skill to finding where a tale truly begins, and trust me, there was action long before there was Saskia.” I yank the thread free, roll it into a tiny ball and launch it to the floor.
“Start wherever you like, Angela. I’m a captive audience.”
We study each other.