JACK HAD JUST gotten back from his run when he saw the note from Sam. She was on a date and wouldn’t be back until later that night. There was a plate for him in the fridge. Sam always felt she had to cook for him, tell him to eat. He’d lost nearly twenty-five pounds over the last four months, almost down to his college weight. He’d told Sam this and tugged at the waist of his new jeans as if it was a good thing. Skin and bones, she said. A Holocaust victim.
His wife, an optimist until the end, would have said that he needed to right his ship, not take people down with him. She also wouldn’t have forgotten to make the house payment the last two months, or blanked on Carla’s birthday. He and Carla had split up three months ago. She’d had enough. He was talking in his sleep again, up at strange hours. It’s awful crowded in there, she’d said, motioning to his head. No room for me. They’d split up twice before, but this time she’d put a down payment on a condo near the park. In Jack’s mind, he saw Sam shaking her head like Carla did. Had it come to this? he wondered.
He’d tried to right the ship. A few weeks before she left, Carla stood in this very kitchen while he made them breakfast, her breasts pushing at the V of her robe. In her hair, a sequined sea horse hair clip he’d gotten for Sam years ago in Islas Mujeres. Carla had found it among some old photos shoved in a bathroom drawer.
“Let’s go to Mexico,” he said. “I’m thinking a couple of nights out of this heat would do us good.”
“Right.” She held out her plate. “I can see you’ve put some real thought into it.”
Spooning eggs onto her plate, he could see the slight crook to her nose where he’d hit her trying to put out the fire in his sleep.
He leaned in, kissed her on the mouth. Sam could hold down the fort, he said.
She seemed to think about this. “She’s dating someone, you know.”
“She doesn’t tell me a thing.”
“I met him. Seems nice. Thoughtful. Maybe a little old for her.”
“Great. Older is good. But not too old.”
“Says the man with the much-younger girlfriend.”
“Twelve years apart? That’s nothing,” he said, setting down the pan. “In a few years it will seem more like fifteen.” He smiled, cupped one of Carla’s breasts with his hand, but she pulled away.
“He seems to really care for her.” She looked hard at him.
“Well, that’s good,” he said, failure creeping in.
“I think it is,” she said. She sat down at the table, started eating.
“No dreamy-eyed kid,” he said.
“No, not this one. And he’s polite. You know, in that fake southern way you like. Chivalrous.”
“Perhaps I shall have to make this gentleman’s acquaintance,” Jack said, raising his eyebrows. “To determine if his intentions are honorable.” He paced out a few steps in the kitchen, turned, aimed the spatula at an imaginary opponent across the room.
Carla grinned. “Jack Dewey’s finally here to defend our honor, ladies. Cue the collective swoon.”
30
I think people are looking in the wrong places. That’s my feeling. Lots of pressure on the police, understand. Three young white girls. They’re going to find someone. They’re going to find someone because that’s the story they’re telling. The story they’re telling those girls’ parents. The public. The one they’re telling themselves. They march some unlucky motherfucker in braces out in front of the cameras, say take a look at that. We in control now. But somebody’s out there telling a bigger story. And this bigger story makes the other one look small. In fact, the smaller story’s already a part of the bigger story and doesn’t know it. Can’t see it. Can’t pick it out of a lineup. Why? Because evil don’t look like anything.
You know why we got all those moon towers? Like the one at Zilker Park they string all the lights on to make into a Christmas tree? They put those up in the 1890s after seven women—five of them black—were raped and murdered. Mutilated. One beheaded. One with an ice pick jammed through the ear. Servant girl annihilator, that writer O. Henry called it. That was before they hauled his ass away to jail for supposedly embezzling money from a bank. Stupid motherfucker got on the wrong side of somebody. I’ll say this: He got murdered black girls in the newspaper. How often does that happen? So, after the murders, the city starts a curfew. A few people arrested, prosecuted, the husband of one of the murdered white women gets acquitted at trial. They don’t have any evidence, no real motive, but they try to tell a story anyway. Folks are still scared. They keep their kids out of the front yard. Don’t go out at night. So they try another story: Why don’t we make night into day? Put up a fake moon?
31