Tessa does. It’s the whole world’s misery. Asking why, why it has to be this way.
Brian reels. He holds the angle of her neck. He says, “When you got down on your knees, grabbed the sleeves of my best shirt, and begged me—right after the funeral—to stay with you, and help you, and take care of you, keep you safe . . . there aren’t words in any human language for what was going on in my mind. It was like Mitch was on a loop in my head—‘Don’t tell Tess. Don’t tell her.’ So I said I was leaving but I’d be back. I had to do some stunts, I had to do the one that killed Mitch, but I’d visit.” Brian finally breaks. “And you looked just like this, and I almost told you, I came so close, you can’t even—so when I landed the triple and paid off Mitch’s debt and had enough for your first semester, I decided I’d keep going, go a little longer without seeing you, make enough for your sophomore year. Then I went a little longer and a little longer after that, but you have to understand, it never got easy. It should have, but it didn’t. It got harder and harder. The longer I went, the more sure I got that the next time I saw you, I’d tell you everything. I’d tell you Mitch loved you, and so did I, and we had about a dozen drunk conversations where we fought about who should be with you when you were grown up, and Mitch always won by telling me I could keep it together without having you to keep it together for, but he couldn’t.” Brian’s and Tessa’s commingled sobs fill the pool with ghostly echoes. Brian talks through his and says, “So I stayed away half because I thought of you as his, and half because he used the last breath in his broken body to tell me not to tell you he was weak.” Brian wills himself calm again, brushing Tessa’s hair back from her moist cheeks and staring at her with the focused heat that they’ve both been trying to throw ice water on all evening. “But he was weak,” Brian says. “And so am I. So I’m here. If I’m too late, then that’s okay. That’s what I deserve. But you have to tell me I’m too late.”
Tessa does not excel at playing dumb. “Too late for what?” She sniffs. Pillows her lips together.
Brian spares a hand to plumb his jacket pocket. He produces a glossy sheet of paper folded in quarters. It is doubtful this one contains a knitting pattern. He unfolds it and shows her.
Tessa is no longer playing dumb when she says, “I don’t understand.”
It’s the cover of this month’s Travel magazine. Charles Destin and Tessa posed for the photo together in the center of the maze. Destin is giving her a rose. Tessa’s smiling down at it. Destin looks like a great big phony clowning creep, and Tessa looks bottomlessly sad, because she looks almost happy. She felt accomplished that day, having impressed the reporter, who later rated Manderley at five stars.
“This Destin guy.” Brian says. “I didn’t snoop or anything. I just did some careful Googling, but he’s got a reputation I’m not crazy about.” Brian folds the photo again. He watches his hands fold it. “I trust your judgment, though. You talked about that security guard to spare my feelings, maybe—to not let me know you fell for someone. But I can handle it if you have. You just have to tell me. Or, you don’t even have to tell me. You can tell me to get out of here if you want me to go.”
Tessa has evidently reached a point where so many emotions are occurring at once that selecting a reaction is impossible. It’s easy to identify with such a state. She stands and walks a short distance from Brian. Brian is putting the photo back in his pocket, but he changes his mind. He crumples it and pitches it toward a trash can ten feet away. He misses. The balled--up paper bounces off the can’s rim. Tessa picks it up and drops it in, as though gratified that her standing and walking served a purpose. She looks around the pool like she’ll never see it again, taking in details: the jasmine vining up and through the latticework on the greenhouse’s glass, rolled and stacked towels so white, they throb in their seashell--shaped basket. She pats them. She smells a jasmine blossom.
Tessa turns, crosses her arms, and says, “The photographer who did that cover said a romantic shot would sell the hotel to a wider client base.”
Brian’s brow crinks.
“I’m not with Charles,” Tessa says. “I’m not with anyone. The head of security’s a convenience. He wants more, but I don’t, and I made that clear to him from the beginning.” She gestures at Camera 64. “You can wave at him if you like.”
Brian stands, hastily, wiping his tears on his sleeve while shouting, “Jesus fucking!—Tess, you let me say all that when he can—”
She yells over him, “There’s no audio surveillance anywhere but the lobby—”
The most thorough safety is safety one’s object of protection doesn’t know about.
“And his team’s watching sixty--four screens at a time. They’re half--staffed because we’re not open yet, and you and I were facing mostly away from the camera while we were talking. If you’re saying what I think you’re saying, then you need to get in the habit of giving me at least a little goddamn credit.”
Brian’s mouth works. He laughs, helpless. He takes a step toward her.
“Stay right there,” says Tessa, quiet and deadly, pointing at him.
Brian freezes.
“I get it,” she says, her pointer finger accenting “I” and then the pair “get it.” “I do. But it’s still eleven years. It’s eleven”—she points—“goddamn”—she points, and points again—“years.”
“I know,” Brian says. He tries to inject huge, incontrovertible sentiment into these two words, but—
“Do you?” Tessa’s eyes are round and shining. “Because this isn’t fucking automatic. Okay? This isn’t an auto--forgive.”
“Tess?” He takes one step. “I know.”
Tessa looks ready to run, but she’s not sure which direction. “Great, then you’re going to be really specific, right now—what you’re saying, exactly, about what you want and what you feel and all that girly stuff, or I am out. I’m done. I can’t do it again. If all you’re doing is wondering what I’m like in bed—”
“You’re not with anybody?”
“Did you hear anything else I said, Bri? I can repeat it.”
Brian smiles, not all at once. It’s like a sun rising. Outside, the sun has set completely; its final hints of light are gone. The ocean is almost black. Inside Manderley, while the light was fading:
Camera 4
Delores got the fifty--foot ladder out of maintenance storage and cleaned the chandelier in the foyer.
Camera X
The Killer received a text and took the secret elevator to the first floor; he watched Delores from Franklin’s office.
Camera 33
Jules and Justin fixed place settings. They had a tiff about the only dish cart being near Justin. Jules moved closer.
Now:
Camera 12
Delores is riding the main elevator past the eighteenth floor. Her feet shift; she hums. She’s anxious to get back to cleaning the ballroom’s windows. She finds childish delight in using her long--handled squeegee. The ballroom fills her view right as Justin picks up the vase and throws it with all his strength straight at Jules’s head. Delores closes her eyes and plugs her ears and sings “My Country ’Tis of Thee” twice before she looks again, listens again, breathing through her nose to will herself calm.
Camera 5
The Killer is in Franklin’s office. He swivels on the office chair, enjoying the break from his duties as well as the three--thousand--dollar “seating experience” Franklin insisted upon to counteract an acute case of sciatica. He opens desk drawers idly, hoots when he finds the scotch, pours a glass, and toasts the security camera to provoke the Thinker’s envy, but the Thinker’s occupied with his cards. The Killer stands and takes his drink into the secret elevator. Vivica’s eyes are milky and opaque.
Camera 33
Jules drops a salad plate. She yowls, “Cock--sucking slut--fuck retard—” et cetera at Justin, seeming, in that second, to truly believe the broken dish is his fault. Justin takes this for about twenty seconds; then he picks up a Swarovski vase centerpiece, slings his arm back, and throws it with all his strength straight at Jules’s head. She ducks. The vase shatters onto the table behind her. The petals and bits of crystal look like purposeful décor. Jules and Justin stare at each other, their jaws agape.
Brian walks toward Tessa.
Tessa says, “Did I stutter? I said get specific, right now.”
“I am.” He hasn’t stopped walking.
“Brian—”
“Don’t be afraid of me. Don’t think I’m going to hurt you. I’m not. Not ever again.” He reaches her, but he doesn’t reach for her. “I’m going to take care of you.”
Tessa tries to back up. She hits the latticework. The jasmine reports that she is trembling. “Define ‘take care of,’ ” she says. “Define it specifically.”
Define “take care of.” To watch over. To concern oneself with. To worry about, even when the object of one’s care isn’t interested in one’s care. Tessa wants freedom, independence. No woman truly wants independence. She wants the freedom to choose her own master. This is also what men want. The origin of all human conflict is, possibly, disagreement about who ought and ought not to be one’s master. The origin of all human happiness is, maybe, mutual agreement on the subject.
Brian reaches for her—for her waist, a hand on either side. “Take me somewhere I can show you.”
Tessa’s hands, on his either arm. “Show me here.”
He looks smarmily at Camera 64. “Plus,” he says, and winces, “stone floor?”
Tessa explodes into laughter, and so does he. She takes his hand and pulls it toward the door. Brian looks back at her boots. He smiles, boyishly. It is an encouraging sign that Tessa feels she will not need her boots where they are going. They are going over the dunes. Their mouths don’t move; they’re not talking. They’ve had enough talking. They are entering Manderley, crossing the foyer. Tessa is pressing the “Up” button on the elevator, and then they are waiting.
Camera 33
Delores is sitting at the table where the vase landed. She’s alone in near-perfect quiet, her eyes roaming shattered dishes and pebbles of expensive glass like they’re terribly familiar. She begins to pick up the pieces, but then she laughs a cruel, disturbingly sexy laugh and puts her earbuds in. She takes a pack of Marlboros and a lighter from her apron pocket. She lights up, puffs, and looks out the north-facing windows. No doubt finding streaks. As she stubs her cigarette into a cracked water glass, she begins humming along to “Enter Sandman.” En route to her squeegee, she steps on a shard of the salad plate Jules dropped—it’s the size of a small pie slice. She puts it in her apron pocket, with her gun.
Camera 34
The Killer arrives on the nineteenth floor via the secret elevator. He’s in the walk-in refrigerator, behind the juice concentrate. He hits the controller button; the shelves slide. He moves to exit the walk-in refrigerator. Stops. He surveys the shelves’ contents. Opens drawers, poking choice cuts of meat with his knife, not finding what he’s looking for. He exits the walk-in refrigerator and enters the kitchen, passing shining steel surfaces. The pantry door is ajar. He sticks his head in and emerges with a box of Cheez-Its. He opens the box, cuts the inner bag with his knife, and feeds the savory orange squares under the chin of his mask. Eventually he ambles to the ballroom door and looks in, at Delores.
Camera 12
Jules and Justin are in the main elevator. They said nothing to Delores; she passed them with a wide berth. Jules and Justin say nothing to each other. Jules reaches for her Xanax automatically, stops herself, and scratches her nose. Then she holds her nose, cupping it, glad it’s still there. She’s aware that the prettiest crystal is the most breakable, that its destruction is the most complete, that splinters of it could have torn her skin like a razor on a ripe plum. Justin blinks every five seconds, as if he’s focusing on blinking at a set interval of time, as if focusing on how many seconds have passed were a marvelous alternative to thinking about how he could have disfigured his wife not two minutes ago.
Camera 4
Brian and Tessa are still holding hands. Their hands are twining. Their hands are fairly writhing. His thumb digs at her palm. Her palm shakes. Tessa’s other hand touches her own lips. She touches her own right breast, above the nipple, and flutters her blouse. I look at the security counter. At the override system: a sixteen-inch screen with no keypad or other obvious access. The screen is dark now, lifeless. But if one were to input the correct authorization codes, everything in Manderley, including the elevator, would suddenly be under the complete control of one man and his dexterous finger. There’s a pencil. It’s ten inches from my face, on the counter. I could almost scream; I almost do. I would, except—
The Thinker has tired of solitaire. He is standing at the wall that faces east. The walls on the twentieth floor are all glass, but tinted glass, and the eastward view includes the hedge maze, crescent--shaped driveway, a road, desert, mountains, river, and sky. Now, in the dark, these things are dim outlines. The Thinker stands with his hands behind his back. He is not tall, but neither is he short. Not fat, not thin, not muscular, but not skinny. He is average, whereas his accomplice is very large. He is the brains, whereas his accomplice is the brawn.
It is rare for a man to have both. It is not necessarily vain for a man to consider himself rare, if it is the truth.
Jules and Justin disembark on the eighteenth floor. He unlocks Room 1801, the regular penthouse. They enter, the door shuts behind them, and Jules sucks in a breath to say something.
“Don’t,” Justin says. “Let’s—don’t.”
Jules trails him to the spacious living room, where Justin plucks the remote from a cherrywood end table and points it at the television. Jules steals it from him.
“We have to. We need to talk about it,” she says, sounding meek.
Justin walks to the stairs. Under the stairs is a bookshelf, and behind the bookshelf is the hollow maw of the secret elevator. Jules catches Justin’s arm. He shakes her off, but he stays there, one hand on the railing. “Not tonight.”
“When?” says Jules.
“Tomorrow.”