“Hardly,” I said. I sipped the gold-flake vodka. It no longer tasted like liquor or cinnamon, just pure liquid warmth. I promised myself I was going to slow down. The fact that Kenny had been involved with Mallory Evans but claimed only to know her from around seemed pretty fucking incriminating to me.
I needed to talk to him and I needed to remember it.
*
When Kenny finally returned, Marisa and I were sitting close together on the leather sofa with the Tinder guy—Todd—and the high-heeled snob from the Next Level office, Beckett. “Aw, you guys look like the best friends ever,” Kenny said.
We were not the best of friends, but we were deep into a new bottle of the gold-flake vodka, so that didn’t matter much. It was somewhere after ten. Kenny had taken his time in getting back to the house.
“Does anyone want to go down to the pool?” he said.
“Oh my God yes,” Beckett shrieked. “I have been so bored waiting to go to the pool.” She stood up and took off her jeans, revealing a string bikini underneath. She was as unbearable as I would have guessed the other day, though she certainly did come prepared.
“I gotta go home, man,” Todd said. He appeared on the verge of falling asleep or passing out.
I looked at Marisa, who shrugged and said, “I have my swimsuit in my bag.”
“Am I the only one who’s going to miss out?” I said.
“Trust me,” Kenny said, “it is not a problem if you want to swim anyway.”
The pool overlooked a dense, dark thicket of woods in the back of the house. One wall was a glass garage-style door that opened onto a wooden two-story deck, great for entertaining during the summer months, Kenny told me. In the November darkness, the room was illuminated only by the ashy glow of a skylight, pale and grey.
Beckett and Marisa jumped in the water right away while Kenny gave me a tour-guide spiel. “It’s heated to eighty-five degrees. The floor is made from genuine Italian marble tiles.”
I wished that he had returned two or three drinks ago, because now I felt like the evening was getting away from me. I eyed the vodka bottle he was drinking from, wondering how long it would take for him to get drunk enough to tell me everything. “You should have been a real-estate agent,” I said mildly.
“That would be sick,” he said. “But, you know, event promotion is a good living, it really is.”
I pressed my palms against the fogged-up window. It was cold and wet. Then I peered through the swatch of clean glass my hand had made. “What’s that little hut thing on the deck?”
“Sauna.”
I laughed. “Seriously, your house has a sauna?”
“Whatever, it’s the fucking bomb. I’d show you, but we can’t use it in the winter.”
“Some host.”
“Sorry.”
“I can’t see anything past the deck,” I said. “This is like the end of the earth.”
“Basically. Just trees,” Kenny said. “Deer. They’re going to put apartments back there though.”
I straightened up. With the subdivisions and their big, empty yards, I hadn’t realized the Brayfield property backed up to Clover Point. “Isn’t that where they found the body yesterday?”
“Yeah. Kinda fucked up.”
He gave no indication that he knew any more about that, including the identity of the victim. That seemed to be common knowledge at this point, though, since even Marisa knew. I watched him. His eyes, grey and shallow, were like the rocks I’d moved away from the grave yesterday afternoon. He was curiously still, one of those people who didn’t twitch or fidget.
Two bodies, basically in Kenny’s backyard. Now this really felt like something. I said, “They found your old girlfriend back there too, didn’t they?”
Kenny said nothing for a few seconds. But the alcohol had loosened him up too much for him to remember he was trying to keep secrets from me. “Like a million years ago.”
“Dude, right behind your house. That’s kinda fucked up.”
Kenny shook his head so slowly he may not have realized he was doing it. “It’s like she was mocking me,” he slurred.
The problem was, the alcohol had also loosened me up too much as well. I wasn’t used to drinking flavored vodka and it had snuck up on me. “What do you know?” I said clumsily.
He stood up. “So what do you say, want to swim?”
“What do you know?”
“I know I’m going to start wondering why you came if you don’t get in the pool.”
That seemed like an unreliable test of motivation. “I told you, I don’t have a swimsuit.”
“And I told you, it doesn’t matter.” He pulled off his hoodie and dropped it onto the tiles, one cuff trailing into the water. He was on the skinny side but still well built. He dropped his pants next and stood there in boxer briefs, leveling a gaze at me that felt like a challenge. It hung in the air between us, an unresolved chord.
I shook my head. I was working, I had to remind myself, and things had gotten out of hand enough already. “I’m going to take off,” I said. I needed a cup of tea and a minute to think about my next move. I steadied myself against the window. I needed a minute, period. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Marisa getting out of the pool.
Then suddenly she was beside me, dressed again and holding on to my arm, her long hair dripping on my jacket. Time had gotten slippery.
Kenny took a long swallow from the bottle, his eyes cold on me. “You don’t know what you’re missing,” he said.
“Oh, I do,” I said, or thought I said. Or thought I knew.
TWENTY-ONE
I woke up hard, like a fall from a significant height had jolted me into alertness. The room was small and bright and unfamiliar and my skull had been replaced with razor blades in an experimental test procedure I didn’t remember signing up for. I sat up on one elbow and swallowed, waiting for my vision to level out.
I was in a living room, I saw now, on a futon with a grey microsuede mattress. Still clothed. My leather jacket dangled from one arm, twisted beneath my torso. Outside, it was raining. I cleared my throat. Then I heard a door opening down the hall, followed by quiet footsteps.
“Hi,” Marisa said. She was wearing a Next Level Promotions T-shirt and plaid flannel pants.
“Um,” I said. I rolled onto my back and covered my eyes with my hand. “What time is it?” I said, hoarse.
“Seven. Do you want some coffee?”
The thought of coffee made my stomach hurt. “Could I have a glass of water?”
“Sure, yeah,” Marisa said. She got up and went to the sink. A few seconds later, she handed me a glass of water and sat down on the edge of the futon next to me.
I drank some of the water and set the glass on the floor. What, exactly, had happened last night? There was a gaping black void in my memory of the evening. I remembered deciding I wasn’t going to drink too much since I was working, but that hadn’t exactly worked out. I remembered the vodka, the pool. Then, nothing. I felt like an idiot.
“This is the world’s most uncomfortable futon,” she said. “I should know—I normally sleep on it every night. My kids have the bedroom.”
“Your kids,” I said, lowering my voice. “Shit, sorry, I can get out of here—”
“No, it’s okay, they’re with their father this week, I told you all of this last night.”