East Falls
Jimmy Kelly started making lists of the things he stole. He came out of the Staples on Germantown Avenue with one of the composition books like the kind he’d used at St. Bridget’s and a box of plastic Bics, so when he got back to his apartment he smoked a joint and tried to remember everything he’d boosted. He sat in the old split-open chair that had been there when he moved in, ropes of batting spilled like blue gut around his feet.
He drew spirals to start the cheap pen, then wrote, 8/22, two books, borders chestnut hill, and, 8/24, crackers, p-nut butter, acme. After he’d filled a page he started over, made columns first and went back to June, when he’d walked away from the Youth Study Center on Henry Avenue. He took his time, clicked the pen against his teeth. Listed headphones he’d taken from a stereo store downtown, six DVDs from a bin at a video store way out Ridge Avenue somewhere.
It became his project. He’d fill his coat, stuff things into his pants, then scurry back to the apartment over the Imperial Gardens and add to the list. He never got caught. If things looked too dicey, he’d move on because there was always more to steal. He kept it out of the neighborhood, mostly, and took what was easy rather than what he wanted. He took gum and a Mounds bar from a CVS, a yellow sweater with a golf club over the heart from a thrift store in Germantown. Walmarts and Kmarts were too risky, big chains with too many cameras. Once in the Plymouth Meeting Mall he’d dumped everything in the bathroom and walked out with a guy in a red blazer right behind him. But he never got tagged.
One September night he burned a couple of joints and went downstairs, two bottles of blue nail polish that he’d lifted from a bin at the Rite Aid in his pockets. He dropped down the narrow stairs, his feet bouncing, the muscles in his legs quivering. His friend Jesús had a black Epiphone bass that was called a Nikki Sixx Blackbird, and sometimes Jimmy would put his hands on it while Jesús plucked the wound metal strings. When he was high the feeling in the wires and cords in his legs was like that, a resonant buzzing and snapping that made him smile and put pictures in his head of running through alien landscapes populated by shiny, sexed-up female robots.
In front of the Imperial people came and went with their orders or guys would walk out picking their teeth and patting their bellies, like it wasn’t enough to be full, you had to put on a play about it for your friends. He wanted to ask them why they did it, but half of life seemed like that to Jimmy, like people didn’t want things as much as they liked to dance and sing about how much they wanted them. Jimmy’s theory was that was why people liked movies and videos, because everyone was starring in their own movie all the time. When he’d first escaped from the Youth Study Center up on Henry, he’d spent three days hiding at the movie house at the end of Main Street in Manayunk just going from theater to theater and there was always some scene where a guy is about to take on the bad guys, or just lost his wife, or his best friend, or his dog or something, and the music that’s supposed to make you cry is going and the guy’s just barely holding it together. People loved that moment, Jimmy thought, and they wanted it in real life too.
The real reason to come down from the apartment was because sometimes Grace Lei would step out and take her break, smoke a cigarette and stare out at the traffic. Jimmy liked to watch her, try to catch her eye, try to make her laugh.
“So what’s the difference between sesame chicken and General Tso’s?” he asked her, wishing she’d turn and look at him.
“The seeds.” Grace Lei watched the street. She was tall, and he stood straighter. Her hair hung down to her shoulders. He pictured running his finger along the ends of her hair and wondered if it would be soft, or maybe stiff, like bristles. Nothing would surprise him. He wanted to take the nail polish out and pass it to her, and watched her hands move as she smoked, trying to see if there was color at the tips of her fingers.
“The seeds, huh. That’s it? They should call it General Tso Plus Seeds.”
Jimmy watched through the glass as a Latino kid came out of the back of the restaurant and dropped a plastic bag on the table nearest the door.
Grace turned to Jimmy. “Where do you live? You’re always here.”
“Upstairs.”
A car pulled up, an old Chevy he’d seen before. A kid got out, an Asian kid with a red ball cap on backward and baggy jeans. Gold chains on his wrists and around his neck. He said something to Grace, but she just looked at the street, or at the firemen washing the trucks, or at nothing at all. The kid went into the Imperial and came back out again holding his order up to his face and miming hunger for his friends in the car.
She said to Jimmy, “Yeah, what’s it like up there?”
He turned to Grace, who he thought had never really looked at him before. He kept his body angled away and stole glances at her, as if she was something he was going to put in his pocket. He kicked at a yogurt cup crushed at the curb, its spilled contents a lurid, clotted pink.
“It’s okay. You can see the river, which you can’t really from down here. Sometimes you can.” He was aware that he was high, that he smelled like weed, and took a step farther away along the curb. He didn’t know how she’d feel about that, him being high. She might be cool, but the black-and-white work uniform and the way she held herself made her look somebody who was strict. You never knew about girls.
The kid with the bag got in the car and the guy behind the wheel stomped on the accelerator, almost clipping a van making the turn from Midvale. The Chevy was an old convertible with green metallic paint that glittered, a comet disappearing down Ridge toward Manayunk in a ribbon of green. Jimmy smiled, suddenly conscious of the neighborhood coiled on the hills above them, getting that way you could get under a head full of dope. Everything seemed connected; dark forces were at work moving cars and people around like pieces on a game board.
He turned back to Grace, but she was walking back inside, throwing away a cigarette. Her fingernails looked the same pale color as her fingers, some color that wasn’t yellow and wasn’t brown. There was a thin red stain on the white shirt at her hip. She wore tight black jeans and he let himself picture her stepping into them, her long legs that pale cream shade that he didn’t know what to call. He was suddenly too lonely to head back upstairs and walked around the corner to Buckets for a drink.
He stood at a window at Buckets, trying to see inside, to see who was behind the bar. A few weeks before he had swiped some change from off the counter and thought the girl bartender might have seen him do it, so now he only went in when she wasn’t there. While he was standing there, squinting through the dark glass, he saw Evan walking up toward the front door and stop. Evan waited for a short girl with hair dyed white-blond except for hard black roots and dark eye makeup. She was standing between two parked cars, rooting in her purse. He nodded at Jimmy, who smiled, his tongue out, and raised a hand.
“Hey, man. You getting a drink?”
“Oh, hey.” Evan looked at the bar, then doubtfully at Jimmy. “Ah, yeah. Well, no. Just getting something to eat.” The girl came over and hooked her arm around his. “Well, see you.”
“Man, you ever see Jesús and them?”
“Nah.” The blond girl moved a step toward the door, pulling Evan. “I got a job. At the Rite Aid.”
“Stacking boxes and shit?”
“Ah, I’m the manager. At night. You know.” Evan looked apologetic. “Anyway, Jesús went in the army.”
“No shit. Remember that time we took that grader and ran it in the creek? That was fucking retarded.”
“Yeah. Well.” He nodded his head. “I gotta go.”
Jimmy fished in his pockets and held out a bottle of blue nail polish to the girl. There was a long pause, then the girl fluttered her fingers to show him the rose tips.
“Sorry, not my color.” She turned to the door, her arm still hooked to Evan’s like they were chained together.
Evan lifted his shoulders, as if he wanted to stay and bullshit but he had to go. “Hey,” he said, looking at the bottle in Jimmy’s hand. “We carry that stuff.”
Jimmy got up the next afternoon and went to see his aunt to get more money. He walked up Stanton along the back of St. Bridget’s, feeling the heat coming up through his sneakers. The kids were in school, and he thought it was funny you could tell without seeing any sign of them, like the building gave off a kind of hum when it was full of people. He had dated a girl, Cheryll, who said he had a shaman aura, some kind of power to tell about things, a sense other people didn’t have. She had a tattoo of a tree and an owl and a pyramid with an eye in it. When he got pinched and sent to the Youth Study Center, he had been trying to steal a huge wheel of wire from the cable TV place where her brother worked. Jimmy thought she was in love with him. She was always saying what a dick her brother was, but she still wouldn’t talk to Jimmy after that, would hang up on him when he called from the center, the kids lined up behind him and tapping him on the shoulder so he’d give up the phone. So maybe she was wrong about his aura.
His aunt wasn’t really his aunt, she was his great aunt or his mother’s aunt or something. She lived near the tracks that ran in the gulley in front of Cresson, in a house so narrow he could almost reach out and touch both walls in the front room. He’d go over there once every couple of weeks and listen to her talk and leave with a couple hundred bucks. It paid for his rent, and he sold enough of the stuff he stole to stay in weed and the orange Drake’s cupcakes he liked.
The house was full of little green animals. Ceramic donkeys and horses and birds in a million different styles, but all of them green. There were also pictures cut out of the newspaper and put in crooked frames, including one that his aunt said was Princess Grace at a wedding at St. Bridget’s. Once when he came over his aunt was sitting in the dark watching movies of some kind of procession of kids dressed up in matching outfits, the colors faded into a muddled blue. The girls all had on the same uniform dress and veils, and he said, “Is this Muslims?” before he realized it was little kids at St. Bridget’s getting first Holy Communion. His aunt didn’t seem to hear him, shaking her head and saying something like, “There’s your uncle Pete,” or, “Oh, look at Mary, how young she is,” but he didn’t know any of the faces.
She made him drink blue skim milk and gave him cookies from a tin. He thought if he could get her to give him some extra money sometime, he could invest in a quarter-pound of weed. He told her he wanted to go into business.
“Doing what? You should be in school.”
“I don’t know. Selling things.”
“You’re a dreamer. You get that from your father.” She walked him to the door, stopping to look at the framed clippings. “I used to tell people we were related, me and Grace. Because of the Kelly name. I just wanted it to be true.”
Jimmy looked at a picture of Princess Grace in a green dress, her hair swept back and her body arched, like a bow.
His aunt held out a small wad of cash. “But we’re not the princess kind of Kelly, are we? We’re just the other kind.”
The next afternoon he wrote, 9/06, silver bullet lighter, AM/ PM market, in the composition book, and went downstairs, his pockets full. He had glass bottles of makeup, lipsticks in two shades. He came through the door in time to see the Latino kid handing the bag to the guy from the Chevy and saying something, his head close to the guy’s ear.
Something was going on. Jimmy watched the Chevy drive off and the kid in the doorway watching them go and then turning to look at Jimmy. The kid was big, with a shaved head and tattoos on his neck. His eyes were dark, with heavy lids that made him look sleepy, and when he looked into Jimmy’s face it was like there was a tunnel in the air between them so that Jimmy couldn’t turn away. But it meant something, the kid hitting him with an attitude.
Grace Lei came out then and said something to the kid so that he sneered at her, showing her the back of his hand. Jimmy couldn’t dope out the gesture, but he got that it was something disrespectful, and when the kid turned to go inside Grace gave his back the finger. There was shouting from inside and then she came all the way out and got a cigarette from a pack in her purse.
Jimmy stumbled a little getting across the sidewalk to offer her the lighter. She lit her cigarette and held the lighter out, but he waved her off.
“Keep it.”
She stuck it in her pocket without looking at it and turned back to the street.
He said, “That guy giving you a hard time?”
“Ah, never mind about him. That’s Luis. He thinks he’s a big deal because he’s friends with Tiger.” She pointed to the street.
“Tiger?”
“That Chinese boy who comes here every day.” She looked over her shoulder, lowered her voice. “He’s in a gang. They sell drugs. They’re idiots.”
Jimmy wanted to do something to the kid, but he couldn’t think of anything. He lifted his palms and looked at them, the fingers of his left hand smeared with ink from the pen. He noticed for the first time a stripe of maroon in Grace’s black hair. Was it new, or had he just never noticed?
“I like your hair.”
She shook her head and threw away her cigarette. “It’s just hair.”
“If you could go anywhere, where would you go?” He figured he had about a second before she went inside.
“Go? I can’t go anywhere.”
“I see you watching the cars. Do you wish you could get away somewhere?”
She looked at him again, and her eyes were tired. “I’m not going anywhere.”
The next two days he didn’t leave to steal anything. He sat around the apartment smoking weed and waiting on the end of the day so he could go downstairs and watch. At about six the first night he went down the stairs quietly with his notebook and crossed the street. He sat with his back to a tree in the tiny park next to the fire station across the street and watched the front of the restaurant. The tree was one of those with the leaves that he thought looked tropical, like a fern or something, and it was as if he was on an island, only the island was between Ridge Avenue and Kelly Drive and instead of circling sharks there were cars running up and down the river.
He had on three cheap watches he’d stolen, two of them with the same time. When the big kid, Luis, walked out of the back with the bag and put it on the table, he wrote down the time from each of the three watches and then waited. He could see Grace inside, but she was at the counter and didn’t come out. After six minutes by the top watch (a girl’s watch with a lavender band and fake gemstones around the face), the Chevy pulled up and the Asian kid with the cap and the chains got out and grabbed the bag. He said something to Grace that made her face go tight and then walked out again and the car pulled away.
Jimmy wrote down the time again and then got up and walked the long way around the block.
No money. That was how Jimmy knew there was something going on. Luis came out and dropped the plastic bag, and not on the counter where all the other bags went, but on a table near the door. It looked like any other bag, full of food, but it wasn’t. The Asian kid came in and took it, and didn’t pay anybody. Didn’t talk to anyone except Luis, and sometimes Grace, who wouldn’t talk back, but kept her eyes down.
The next afternoon Porter came over to buy more of the stuff Jimmy had piled up around the apartment. Jimmy liked Porter because he was older, a grown-up, and still out of control, and because he had red hair that stood up on his head. Most of the adults he ran across seemed like someone had let the air out of them or something, or like they were all nearsighted and not being able to see anything made them cautious and slow. Porter charged in and threw shit around the room, did lines of coke he never thought to offer anyone else, would spend fifteen minutes beating Jimmy’s price down only to hand him more money than he’d promised. Jimmy asked Porter’s opinion about the Imperial Garden.
“Oh, that’s a fucked life, kid. They bring a hundred people at a time sealed in containers, then they owe so much money they gotta work shit jobs for years to pay off.”
“Containers?” Jimmy picturing Grace Lei in a giant shrink-wrapped plastic package, like the headphones from Best Buy he could never get open and had to saw at with a steak knife.
Most of the stuff piled up in the apartment was worthless crap. Porter never got tired of pointing this out to Jimmy, but he also went through everything meticulously; holding up and identifying each baseball, coffee mug, book, candlestick, decorative plate, and teapot Jimmy had stacked up around the apartment, and then guessing what it was worth.
“What the fuck is this?” he’d say, holding up a collectible action figure from a comic book store. “A doll?”
“It’s Wolverine. From the comic book. It’s worth like a hundred and fifty bucks.”
“To little kids. Or retards, maybe. I’ll give you ten. This?”
“It’s a fork. I think.”
“You got no eye, kid. Honest to Christ. A fork. Did you at least get the spoon?”
“Fuck you.”
“You need to start boosting jewelry.”
“That shit’s all locked up.”
“You need to put together a crew. When I was your age, I stole with five, six other guys. A girl with a cute ass. She bats her eyes, the clerk opens the case.”
“I don’t want to get put away again.”
“At your age? What’d you get, like three months? In kiddy jail. That’s nothing. That’s the cost of doing business.”
“It sucks. It’s boring. The big kids fuck with you and steal your shit. I couldn’t wait to get out of there.”
“How old are you? Jesus Christ, you’re in the prime of life. You should be boosting everything you can get your hands on. Steal every fucking thing and run like a jackrabbit.”
“Why don’t you?”
Porter’s eyes got big. “I’d go to real jail, kid, and that’s no fucking joke. Not like Henry Avenue.”
“You think I want to go? Back to jail?”
Porter looked around, his eyes going back and forth. “Kid, I got to tell you. Living like this? In this rathole? It’s not that different than prison.”
The night he stole the bag from the Imperial he didn’t smoke, but sipped at a bottle of peach brandy that had been in the apartment when he moved in. He stood in the window a long time, looking down at the cars and the river and working himself up to it. The brandy tasted weird, and he wondered if that was how peaches tasted. He ate a cupcake he’d gotten at Major Wing Lee’s, the little store on the corner. He leaned on the window frame and looked up and down Ridge. The road was busy, and it was getting a little dark, which he liked.
He pictured how it would go, flitting through the shadows, the bag sliding across the table to him like a magic trick. Him and Grace Lei together, dumping out the money onto his mattress, maybe five or ten thousand bucks, and him seeing her smile for the first time, maybe the first time since she came to America. He cupped his hands in front of himself, mentally calculating how much might fit in the bag.
Coming out onto the street he could hear a rising scream, the siren from one of the trucks starting up across the street, and he pressed himself flat against the door like a bug caught in the light. He moved sideways, looking left and right, his back flat against the storefront of the hair place next to the restaurant. He had his watches on and looked at his wrist. Three minutes more, give or take. He stood at the edge of the window and looked in.
Grace was standing at the counter, her back to the street. He looked east up the street for the Chevy but there was a line of cars stretching away toward Philly and he couldn’t tell if it was coming. At the same moment that he saw the bright grillwork of the old Chevy, Luis came out of the back, swinging the bag. The Chevy approached, a few cars back from the light at Midvale. Jimmy’s eyes went back and forth, back and forth, while the car inched along and Luis took his fucking time getting to the front table.
Jimmy crabwalked along the front of the Gardens, his head on a swivel. Luis seemed to be looking out the front door, and Jimmy was ready to drop to his shaking knees if Luis swung his head around. The Chevy was there, three cars back from the intersection, and Luis was still standing at the door. Jimmy could see the Asian kid in the front seat, his cap bright red. Jimmy was breathing hard and mumbling under his breath, Come on, come on. There was a gap open in front of the Chevy and Luis still hadn’t dropped the goddamn bag.
The light changed, going yellow and then red, and the Chevy stopped hard. Luis opened his hand and dropped the bag, turning to the counter. Jimmy took two steps, three and stuck his head in the door. Luis was close, his back turned. There was a line of sweat baked through his massive white T-shirt and he smelled like starch and fried food. Jimmy put his hand out and touched the bag, his hand formed into a hard L shape that scooped it off the table. Luis said, “Hey,” and Jimmy looked up to see who he was talking to and it was Grace, who cocked her head as Jimmy stepped backward out the door, the bag up at his chest, and they looked at each other and she saw Jimmy plain with the bag, and her eyebrows went up but he was gone.
He walked past the bar next door and Major Wing Lee’s at the corner looking straight ahead. The Chevy must have gone by but he didn’t see it. He felt naked and cold walking down the street, the plastic bag feeling like it was melting his hands, something inside folded up the size of maybe a sandwich. The money, or the dope. He wanted to look, but he just made the turn up Midvale and then took a clumsy skip step that became an uneven lope and then he was jogging past Buckets and the little storefronts until he hit Frederick, cut left, and ran hard.
He made his way uphill to Stanton, out of breath after thirty yards. Where the road turned to the left, he jumped the low wall and tumbled down the incline to the tracks, ran half a block to the base of a high-tension tower. He dropped down onto the gravel by the tracks, spit up some peach brandy, and sat wheezing, his heart going, wiping at the sweat leeching out of his hair. He wanted to look in the bag, but instead he stuck it in his jacket and forced himself up again.
For some reason he expected sirens, though he knew that was stupid. He ran a few steps, then slowed to a jog, then walked, one hand pressed against his chest like an old man. He kept moving east, sticking to the tracks, watching cars move on the nearby streets, looking for the green Chevy. When he had a gone a few more blocks, he threw himself over a fence into some weeds and lay down, overwhelmed for a minute by the luxuriant smell of leaves and long grass. The sun was going down, and lights snapped on at the familiar-looking highrise he could see over the tops of the trees ahead. After a minute, he realized he was back on the grounds of the Youth Study Center. He bolted up, threw himself over the fence, and ran back west, laughing.
He walked slower and slower the closer he got to Ridge, dropping down the narrow, canted streets, stopping to glance back up the hill behind him and keeping his head down. There were people out on the stoops, kids coming out after dinner to play until they couldn’t see anymore. He remembered that, stubbornly standing in the street in the dark with a hockey mask on, chasing up and down until it got so black they’d lose the puck.
It was full on dark when he stopped at the last driveway on Eveline and made his way behind the stores and restaurants that fronted Ridge. The first two buildings were unoccupied, and he could see through the empty first floors to the street in front of the Imperial. There was an ambulance in the driveway of the firehouse, its strobe lights flashing crazily and turning the street red and blue and white. There were cops in uniform stringing that yellow tape they always show on TV and guys in suits with badges hanging from their pockets. Everyone was pointing, making notes on clipboards, or talking into radios. Stunned by the sight of it, Jimmy forgot for a minute why he was there and wondered what had happened, figuring there must have been an accident.
When one of the cops shined a flashlight into the store, he dropped like he’d been shot and scuttled along the gravel to the end of the building, then ducked into the alley that led to his fire escape and pulled it down, wincing at every metallic groan and breathing through his mouth, his face hot, his hands slick with sweat.
Upstairs, he dropped onto his bed, breathless, and watched the lights from the cop cars and ambulances flash onto his ceiling. He got up slowly, keeping his head down, slid along the floor to the bathroom, and closed the door before turning on the light. He splashed water on his streaked face. He looked in the mirror, angling to see his T-shirt, now gray with dust. Inventoried his scrapes and bruises, the open cut over one knuckle, and his torn jeans. He patted at his face and hands with a dirty towel, shut the light off, and stepped out into the dark room. Strange, plasma-like shapes floated in his eyes and seemed to climb the walls. A moment later he saw someone near the bed. Grace Lei.
She was standing over the bed, motionless. The lights from the street played over her white shirt and pale face and the bag. She looked like the robots in his dope dreams, catching the pulsing light, breasts swelling as she breathed. She peered at him, and then the bag, and then him again.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “The door was open.”
“It’s okay.” He pointed toward the street. “What happened?”
“Luis got stabbed. Tiger stabbed him.”
“Jesus, because…?” He pointed at the bag.
“Maybe. Who knows what it was about? There was so much blood.” She put her hands over her face. “Tiger came in and said something to Luis, and Luis said something back. And then he pushed Tiger, and Tiger just stuck him. It was fast. I never even saw him get the knife out, he just…” She made a motion with her hand, the knife going in and out, in and out. “Boys like Luis? Tiger? They’re so angry all the time, who knows? You can’t talk to them.”
Jimmy walked over to the bed and they looked down at the bag.
“He said something stupid,” Grace continued, “and Tiger just stuck him. So Luis took off running into the street and Tiger went after him, and this pickup came zooming through and just, you know.” She swallowed. “Just wham. I never saw nothing like that. The truck went right over Luis. I got sick. Tiger’s friends just took off. Two firemen from across the street ran him down, Tiger. They held him until the cops came and took him away. They had all these questions, and I didn’t know, so I just came up here.”
“Did you say anything? About, you know, me? And the bag?”
“No, I didn’t even think about it, really. Until I was in the room just now.” She looked at him, or seemed to. It was tough to tell in the dark. “I knew you’d be all right to talk to. That you aren’t like Tiger, or Luis.”
They both stood, not saying anything for a while. The bag was dotted with grit from the gravel bed and smeared with Jimmy’s fingerprints. They could hear the police talking to each other in the street, doors slamming.
Finally, Grace squared her shoulders and reached for the bag. Jimmy smiled and she stopped and stared at him, her body taut, arched like the picture he had seen at his aunt’s house, and he thought, yeah, he was the wrong kind of Kelly, but maybe she was the right kind of Grace.
Her slender fingers closed on the bag and he smiled wider, so she said, “What?”
He said, “What if it’s sesame chicken?”
She smiled back, and for the first time he saw her teeth, white and even. “Then,” she said, “we’ll eat.”
Rittenhouse Square
Beth pinched the skin between her thumb and index finger almost hard enough to draw blood. She took every step to the beat of a mantra-Don’t cry, don’tcry-and every step placed more distance between her and Tinto, a tapas bar where she’d left Kyle, who was the latest man to think she was a great girl (a girl? at thirty-four?) but who wasn’t ready for a relationship. It’s not you, it’s me.
What an actor. Literally. And Beth had to see him again to rehearse their final scene. She’d signed up for an acting class at the suggestion of therapists and friends alike, who urged her to find an artistic outlet for her emotions. And they were right. She had a knack for acting. It was just bad luck she and Kyle were doing a piece from The Glass Menagerie in which, ironically, she’d be pitied for lacking gentlemen callers.
Now she needed to focus on another scene: Walnut Street on a lovely August night, with her in a lovely white dress. It was eleven o’clock. Anyone who saw her might think she was heading out to canoodle with someone at a sidewalk café and not that her evening was a failure. She concentrated on an actable objective: to be in a rush to meet a date. Glancing at her watch for emphasis, she began to believe it. She walked east on Walnut confidently, passing packs of college girls in skimpy dresses and college boys in untucked button-down shirts headed toward the Irish Pub. Some boys followed her with their eyes as she passed. It was working.
She continued alongside shuttered boutiques and the oddly empty dirt lot north of Rittenhouse Square, where neighbors rejected development ideas as tacky or liable to attract an unwanted element. She sailed through the north entrance of the square when, suddenly, she slipped and fell. It was the heel of her right shoe, purchased last month at the Payless on Chestnut Street, now jutting out at a sixty-degree angle from the rest of the sole.
This latest twist plunged Beth into despair. She couldn’t focus on counting to ten or any of the calming self-talk she’d been taught. The lights in the square blurred and came back into focus when she blinked, then blurred again, but somehow she stood up. Carrying her shoes, she continued along a paved path. She nearly jumped when nearby automatic sprinklers surged on, then nearly jumped again when a woman screamed. The woman screamed a second time, but it was followed by laughter.
“It’s too late now,” a man said.
Beth stopped. A young woman stood on the path ahead. She wore a wet dress, once white but now semitransparent, that clung to her body. She leaned to the side and wrung water out of her long hair, looking in the mist-filled air like a modern water nymph.
“Thanks for the warning,” she said sarcastically to the man next to her. “I’m sliding everywhere.” She leaned one hand on his shoulder for support and with the other removed a pair of strappy sandals.
The man, in a light gray suit without a tie, was far less wet and kept joking. “Can you make it home barefoot, my little blossom? My bitter teacup?”
“Be quiet,” she said.
“Want me to take off my shoes so we match?”
“No, darling. I want you to carry me.” She held onto his lapels as if to draw him in for a kiss, and they remained in this pose like intertwining statues against the lush background of haloed park lights. Beth was moving past them, awkward in the shadow of their glamour, when she felt a tap on her shoulder.
“Miss,” the man said. He was close enough for her to see droplets of water on his dark blond waves of hair. “Excuse me-”
His companion giggled, arms crossed over her chest. They looked young, maybe just out of college.
“Yes?” Beth asked, a bit too energetically.
“In your opinion,” the man began, “is it worth it to take a cab just two blocks away? We’re damp and my friend here finds it impossible to wear her shoes without slipping.” The man’s voice was higher than she expected and somehow sweet, with a slight British accent.
“Of course it’s worth it,” Beth answered, waving her shoes in front of her. “I was thinking of hailing a cab myself,” she lied.
“A good answer,” the man said, catching her eyes and holding on to them with his. “We’re at the Belgravia. Any chance you’re headed in that direction?”
“I’m actually on Pine Street-”
“Why don’t you join us,” he offered.
The woman flashed him an indecipherable look, then smiled. She ran her hands through her wet hair and spoke with an accent similar to the man’s. “Company might be fun.”
The man rocked slightly on his heels. “We’ll toast to a fine evening, all’s well ending well or ending drenched or something.”
“Okay,” Beth said. I am open to invitations, she told herself. I am trying new things.
When they rolled up to the Belgravia, they stepped into what seemed to Beth like another universe-one that would make returning to her walk-up studio harder.
“Alex, Chloe,” the doorman waved them into the marblelined corridor strung with bright chandeliers.
“Welcome home!” Alex announced when they reached a door at the end of a hall on the sixth floor. It opened into a stuffy living room, cluttered with suitcases and clothing. A mahogany coffee table was covered with papers. More papers spilled out of accordion folders on a stained Persian rug below it, competing for space with numerous keys, empty glasses, and takeout food containers.
“Cleaning,” Chloe remarked in a stage whisper, “is not our highest priority.” She walked into another room.
“We’ve been traveling,” Alex added. “I want to share something we picked up. Do you like port?”
“I love it.” Beth didn’t know if this was true. I am trying new things.
Alex rummaged through a suitcase in the corner. He was slender but broad-shouldered and she noticed he wore no socks under his loafers. The wall next to him was covered with masks she assumed were African, and the other walls had paintings-abstract, with a gray, white, and red palette, one of them hanging cockeyed as if posted hastily and never fixed.
“Aha!” He turned around, wielding a dark brown bottle. “You’ll like this. It’s supposed to have,” he squinted at the label, “notes of honey. ” He handed her a glass and their eyes met again. Beth couldn’t decide if they were blue, gray, or green.
Chloe reappeared in a red dress and high-heeled black shoes. Her hair was drying to a lighter blond.
“That’s a good dress,” Alex said when Chloe spun in a catwalk turn. Beth saw it was backless and still had a price tag on it.
“A toast to our new friend,” he indicated Beth. “Our friend…”
“Beth,” she said.
“To Beth, a fellow underwater traveler.”
The drink was sweet and went down easily.
“Beth,” Chloe suddenly said. “What’s your shoe size?”
“Seven. Why?”
Chloe left the room and came back carrying a shoe box. “I got these last summer.”
Beth pulled out a pair of white high-heeled Manolo Blahniks and gasped.
“They’re yours,” Chloe said. “No worries.”
“I couldn’t,” Beth objected.
“Obviously I never wear them, so they’re of more use to you.”
Elegantly shod, Beth felt ready to dance but opted to lounge, given the steady refills Alex provided. After the port he dug into the rest of his collection, presenting a Calvados from Normandy, a Scotch from Scotland, and more. Beth envied the jet-setting pair. She loved traveling but hadn’t taken any trips lately. She had little time off from her desk job at a plastic surgeon’s office near the square, and besides, she was saving money. There were debts to pay from years ago, the upshot of ill-advised exotic vacations with boyfriends and splurges on clothing. She knew she hadn’t been herself during these periods of excess, bursts of exuberance followed closely by profound regret or worse, but credit card companies didn’t want excuses. They wanted their money back, with interest.
But she didn’t worry about debt or anything else just then. Hours blurred into each other and the three of them got silly. They played several rounds of “Would you rather…” with Alex supplying the most unappealing choices: Would you rather clean a monkey cage or a chicken cage? Go blind and lose the use of both arms or just lose the use of your legs? Shoplift from a store or steal from a very wealthy friend who’d never miss the item in question?
Finally, he asked a straight question when Chloe left the room. Eyeing Beth and crawling over the Persian rug, he kneeled in front of her, placing both hands on her knees and lowering his voice to a whisper: “Would you rather kiss me now or kiss me later?”
“Now,” she whispered back, not certain whether Alex’s discretion was merely that or part of a deception, and amazed either way by what happened. The kiss was brief, but warmer and more promising than any she’d had in a long time.
It was almost six a.m. when Alex accompanied Beth outside to wait for a cab. Bands of pink light appeared in the sky in the east. Beth shivered.
“Here,” he said, placing his jacket over her shoulders. It felt warm and smelled like Earl Grey tea. She closed her eyes and inhaled. They kissed.
“Let me get your number,” he said, reaching around her waist to get to the phone in the inner pocket of his jacket.
A cab finally appeared.
“Have a nice morning, beautiful,” Alex said. “I’ll be in touch.”
But he wasn’t, not later that week or in September, and Beth felt too awkward to call again after leaving two messages. She slogged through the humid days, working and taking lunch breaks in Rittenhouse Square, often sitting on a bench near the little bronze statue of a goat with her old friend Leah, who reminded her there were plenty of guys out there when Beth whined about Alex.
“And these guys don’t have girlfriends,” Leah added.
“Who knows if she’s really his girlfriend?” Beth replied.
“After all the trouble you’ve had, all you’ve gone through…” Leah continued, as if to say, Enough said.
Meanwhile, Beth started another acting class and dyed her hair jet-black, much to her mother’s dismay.
“That color only works with certain skin tones. Change it, at least for your sister’s wedding.”
But strong choices was the theme of Beth’s class and she ran with it. Sure, she was playing another aging, tragic Tennessee Williams character, but she was shining in the part. Rehearsals kept her spirits up. She even went on a few dates with someone Leah deemed a nice, normal guy-a forty-something divorcé named Todd who worked in computers. He never made her laugh but he was attentive.
When she received a text one October night while watching Law & Order reruns at home, she assumed it was Todd until she read it: Please rescue me. She didn’t recognize the number and it had been a long day. An elderly patient in for the routine removal of a skin lesion had suffered a heart attack and was transferred to the hospital but died a few hours later. This meant paperwork, and the next day the widow would be coming to the office to pick up her husband’s belongings that hadn’t made it onto the ambulance.
Then another text appeared: Thinking of you, Beth. Sorry to disturb.
Beth texted back asking for clarification and her phone rang.
“Hello, beautiful,” Alex said.
She felt awake again.
Half an hour later in Rittenhouse Square, she sat on a bench and waited for him, peering into the damp fall air until he materialized on a lamp-lit path. He smiled. His hair was slightly unkempt, making him appear boyish despite his suit. He carried a briefcase, and when he reached Beth, he dropped it to the ground before dropping to his knees.
“I kept thinking about you,” he said. “I had to travel, unexpectedly, and now I can’t go home, it seems.”
“What do you mean?”
He sighed, resting his hands on her knees. “The arrangements I made for rent fell through while I was abroad. A ridiculous misunderstanding.”
“Isn’t Chloe there?”
“She’s in France,” he said.
“You broke up?”
A smile spread across Alex’s face, emphasizing a slight cleft in his chin. “She’s in France visiting our uncle.”
“Your uncle?”
“With our parents gone, he’s our closest relative.”
“She’s your sister?” Beth asked.
“Yes, we just get on well and share a place sometimes. I thought you knew that.”
“No,” she said, smiling too.
“No?” Alex asked, standing up, helping Beth up, then kissing her. He ran his hands through her hair. “It’s a shame I missed the end of summer with you… So much family business. But the good news is we’re here now.”
“Just in time for the rain,” Beth said, holding out her hand.
“I don’t suppose you have an umbrella?” he asked.
“I know where we can find one.”
It was a quick dash to the blush-colored suites of Drs. Morris, Kent, and Fleischer on 19th Street.
“We’ll borrow one of these,” Beth said, indicating the umbrellas stored behind the reception desk. They were pink, large enough to shelter a picnic table, and said, Beautiful dreams come true, in bold black letters.
Alex eyed them skeptically. “I guess masculine pride will take a hit tonight.” He surveyed the office. “Very pink, but swank. Is this your desk?”
Beth nodded.
“Who forgot his clothes?” Alex asked, pointing to the pile of things on Beth’s chair.
“They belong to a man who died, actually,” Beth said, at which point Alex laughed. “I’m not making it up,” she protested. “The man had a coronary!”
“Not funny at all,” Alex said, with such seriousness he meant it was. Then his face lit up. “I may have no roof over my head, but I’d like to take you for a drink. Have you ever gone to Nineteen?”
Ten minutes later, the gilt-framed mirrors of the Bellevue Hotel elevators sent Beth and Alex’s reflection back to them from multiple angles, all bathed in golden light. When they sat down in a love seat next to the fireplace in Nineteen, Beth already felt tipsy. More alive than she had in years.
They drank until almost two a.m., when Alex made an announcement.
“Surprise.”
He pulled out a platinum American Express card bearing the name Gerald F. Mitchell. Beth’s heart began to race. It was the dead patient’s card.
“How did you get this?”
Alex looked at her. “You’re not worried, are you?”
She knew Leah would walk out. Call the police. But Leah wouldn’t be in this bar with Alex in the middle of the night in the first place, and Beth felt a strange, giddy sense of trust in him. If he’d pulled out a gun and said they were going to ditch the check by shooting their way out, she would have been game. Strong choices, she thought, not sure it applied but feeling too elated to question it. With the fire behind him, Alex seemed to possess a kind of glow, and Beth was enveloped in it.
Alex continued: “I’m sure the widow hasn’t canceled his cards yet. With everything going on, she probably won’t notice extra charges.”
Beth watched him hand over the stolen card, the waiter bring it back, and Alex devise his best Gerald F. Mitchell signature.
“By the way,” Alex said to the waiter, “we’d like a room. Can we book one without going down to the lobby?”
“Of course.”
They spent the next eighteen hours in a suite, sleeping little, moving from the bedroom, with its red drapes, king-size bed, and countless pillows, to an airy off-white living room where light streamed in from the south and west the following afternoon. Beth had called in sick and now gazed out the window.
“We’re in heaven,” she smiled, polishing off what remained of a room service cheese plate.
“We’ll have to die more often,” he said. Then his phone rang. He stared at it and made a face.
“What’s wrong?”
“Chloe. About the apartment debacle, I’d guess.”
“I thought she was in France.”
“Must have just flown in. She can sort out the problem-I just hate to deal with that now.”
His phone stopped, then rang again.
“I should get this. Do you mind? Chloe can get hysterical.”
“Of course,” Beth said. “I’ll try the hot tub.”
When she emerged a half hour later, Alex was beaming.
“I can go home! Not that this hasn’t been a wonderful adventure. Let’s do it again.”
“When?”
“When another patient dies and forgets his wallet,” he winked.
Beth had forgotten they were enjoying this luxury suite on a dead man’s dime and the reminder left her chilled. Alex began gathering papers into his briefcase.
“Do you have a job?” she asked.
“In my family’s business, as a matter of fact. My uncle-the one Chloe just saw overseas-he’s well off and wants me to manage his investments one day. Right now I’m managing other people’s money.”
“Do you have family in England?”
“Some there, some in France. We’re a bit spread over the map.” He motioned for Beth to sit next to him and put his arm around her. “I do legitimate business. I just thought we’d have some fun on Mitchell because even if his widow catches on, she won’t have to pay for it. You can’t object to nipping a bit out of the credit card companies, can you?”
Beth shook her head. “They’re kind of douchebags.”
Alex squeezed her tighter. “You’re not just a pretty face. You’re a potty mouth.”
When Leah called her that night, Beth recounted her activities of the last twenty-four hours, minus the stolen credit card, in a torrent of enthusiasm.
“What about Todd?” Leah asked.
“He’s too boring for me.”
That night she should have been exhausted but felt too energized to sleep. She couldn’t stop making plans. She wanted to prove to Alex that she could contribute her share to the relationship. He’d shown her a magical night. The least she could do was take him to dinner. With someone else’s money.
The next day she went to work with a target in mind: Valerie. Her cranky coworker frequently left her purse under her desk. It wasn’t the best spot-if Valerie came back, she’d be caught-but Beth had issued herself a dare and had to go through with it. She found it surprisingly easy to rifle through the bag, fish out a Visa card, and put everything else back in its place so the theft would remain unnoticed.
Contacting Alex proved more difficult. She called and left a message, saying she had a surprise, but didn’t hear back that evening or the next day or night. The waiting stoked her restlessness. She paced inside her apartment for an hour the third night before putting on sweatpants and going for a run. She took her usual route up 18th Street from Pine, around the square, then west on Locust Street until she reached the Schuylkill River path. She ran for miles. It was nine o’clock when she got home and showered, but she felt stir-crazy again, her mind brimming with ideas. Her phone rang around nine forty-five. It was Todd. She didn’t answer. Then it rang again at ten.
“Hello, my long lost,” Alex said, as if he were the one who’d been trying to reach her.
They picked up where they’d left off, meeting in the square and heading to Parc, a French brasserie, where they enjoyed a bottle of champagne and some food.
“Surprise,” Beth announced when the check arrived.
Alex’s eyes went wide with admiration. “Tsk, tsk.” He took the credit card and examined it. “You’re a naughty girl, Valerie.”
He leaned against the high-backed banquette and studied her. “Is this something you enjoy?”
She spent the rest of the month snagging credit cards-often the numbers alone. Alex used some for online transactions, while Beth got her nails manicured, enjoyed massages at Body Restoration, hired a personal trainer, had a makeover at MAC, and bought more dresses and shoes than her closets could hold, even after she discarded old, cheap stuff. She went to Knit Wit, Cole Haan, Anthropologie, and Barneys, and she still had plenty of income to pay down her own credit card debts.
Her new look attracted attention.
“Are you getting in over your head again with debt?” Leah asked. She was sitting across from Alex and Beth at a table at Twenty Manning, where they’d invited her for dinner.
Alex answered, “With me, she has nothing to worry about.”
Beth smiled and cut another piece of steak. Leah stared at them as if studying exotic zoo animals, then took a sip of wine and turned away.
Some time before Thanksgiving, Alex started talking about Christmas plans. He was expected at his uncle’s place outside Paris and might stay as long as three weeks.
“It’s part business,” he said when Beth looked sad. “I have to show him what I’m doing for my clients so he’ll want me to help him some day.”
The thought of three weeks without Alex was unbearable. As it was, she had to attend her sister’s wedding alone right after Thanksgiving because Alex had a meeting in New York. But Beth made it through. Her relatives typically asked her questions with caution, always afraid things might be going badly, but her new appearance emboldened them. She exuded energy. She looked beautiful. She felt electric. And she told everyone she’d be going with her boyfriend to Paris.
Though her mother seemed stunned, her grandmother was thrilled. “It’s wonderful how things have turned around for you.”
Alex was less enthusiastic.
“I want nothing more than to have a romantic vacation with you, but this is a family thing-”
Beth put her finger on his lips. She hadn’t felt this certain about anything in her life. If they loved each other, they could work it out. Especially if they didn’t have to pay for it.
She told Leah about her plans one Saturday at Miel, a quaint patisserie with bumblebee-shaped door handles. Beth bought two hot chocolates and Napoleons in honor of her announcement: “Alex and I are going to Paris!”
Leah reacted as if Beth were talking about the moon.
“How can you object to Paris?” Beth asked. “And how can you be so unsupportive when I finally find a great guy?”
“Is he great?” Leah asked. She studied her plate. “I don’t know how to say this, and I don’t want to provoke a bad reaction. I mean, you’re handling life really well now. But the thing is, I saw Alex with another woman.”
“I don’t think so.” Beth tapped her manicured nails on the wrought-iron table.
“I’m sure of it. He was with a blond woman coming out of the Bellevue.”
“It’s probably his sister.”
Leah shook her head. “They were kissing. On the lips.”
Beth tightened her grip around her empty china cup, stood up from the table, and smashed it on the floor. A girl in an apron rushed out from behind the counter, but Beth dug into her purse and thrust a twenty-dollar bill into her hand.
She turned to Leah, who appeared stricken, and hissed, “You’re so jealous, you can’t stand to see me happy. You’re toxic.”
Beth didn’t mention the ridiculous accusation to Alex. They’d spent the evening in bed in her cramped apartment, and now she straddled him, teasing him, bringing him closer and closer to climax and suddenly stopping. She pushed his hands down with her hands.
“I want to go to Paris.”
“Let’s talk later,” he said, breathless.
“I. Want. To. Go.” With each syllable she pushed his hands down harder.
Alex shook his head no, shutting his eyes tight and scrunching his face, but finally opened them.
“You can be independent?”
She nodded.
“You can see the most romantic city in the world on your own some of the time?”
She nodded.
“You can spend some nights alone if need be?”
She took her hands out of his to slam her fists down on the mattress in protest, but then nodded with a pout.
Alex shook his head as if unable to believe the words coming out of his mouth: “Come to Paris with me.”
Beth shrieked and threw her arms around him again.
“Come to Paris, Beth.” They kissed, and between kisses Alex spoke with some desperation. “Please, just don’t stop what you were doing before.”
Beth smiled. “No?”
“No.”
“No?” She started rocking back and forth on top of him.
“Never,” Alex said. “Never.”
They made a plan not to spend their own money for Paris.
“We’d do best hitting someone who can take a substantial cash advance,” Alex advised.
This involved knowing someone’s PIN, however, and there was only one person whose code either of them knew: Leah. She’d mentioned to Beth once that she used the last four digits of her childhood phone number, which Beth remembered. So Beth gave an Oscar-worthy performance-actable objective: to make up with a friend. Then she took Leah’s card and scored a $5,000 advance.
Alex was impressed. “With friends like you, who needs thieves,” he said one night over dinner, contemplating Beth with what seemed like wistfulness. “You really are amazing. A quick study, I might add. A cut above the rest.”
Alex was handling the tickets, taking some of the cash to New York when he went on business and going through an old friend, a trusted travel agent. He’d get back on the 22nd or 23rd and they’d leave December 24th.
Beth had never been happier. She bought gifts for family and friends, including Leah, who was dealing with the headache of identity theft, and gifts for herself. More dresses, more shoes, even a cute fox-trimmed jacket from Jacques Ferber.
“Wow. Are you moonlighting to buy all these clothes?” Valerie joked on their last day at work before the holiday.
“Trunk sale,” Beth answered without looking up from her computer screen. But then she got scared. Police showed up at Morris, Kent, and Fleischer around noon and Beth had no idea what they were investigating. Valerie’s card? Gerald Mitchell’s? Someone else’s? At one point the cops questioned Beth and Valerie together. A young blue-eyed officer with a mustache leaned toward them with an air of confidentiality.
“Notice anyone around the office who’s been acting different lately? Dressing different?”
Beth’s chest tightened.
“Nothing out of the ordinary,” Valerie said, then looked intently at Beth.
The officer looked at Beth too, waiting for her to speak.
“Nothing unusual,” she confirmed, adding, “I’m famished. Could I go to lunch now?”
The cops left, but the bad news didn’t stop.
“I’m stuck in New York another day,” Alex said when he called. “Possibly two.”
“But we leave in two days!”
“There’s nothing I can do. Family stuff. I’ll explain later. In Paris, mon amour.”
That night Beth stole the show with her performance as Princess Kosmonopolis, in a state of nervous collapse when Chance threatened to leave her for his true love, the younger Heavenly. The acting teacher loved it. Everyone had drinks at Good Dog after and talked about local auditions Beth might consider come spring.
She couldn’t wait to tell Alex, but he wasn’t answering his phone then or the next day. It was December 23 and she walked around the neighborhood aimlessly, past the beautiful red doors of St. Mark’s Church on Locust Street, then up 17th Street past Little Pete’s, the Plaza-Warwick, and Sofitel. She strolled along Chestnut Street and looked at the windows of discount shoe and clothing stores, glad she never went there anymore.
That night she managed just a few hours of sleep, and the next morning saw she’d missed a text from Alex. He was still in New York but had both their tickets. He’d go directly to the Philadelphia International Airport from there and meet her by the counter at six-fifteen for the eight o’clock flight. Thrilled, Beth sprang into action. She started packing but her suitcases looked shabby, so she headed to Robinson Luggage on Broad. It was a cold day under a bright sun, and the streets were crowded with last-minute shoppers. When she finally arrived at the store, she heard a familiar voice and spotted a woman with blond hair.
“I’ll call as soon as I land,” the woman said into her cell phone. “Nothing more depressing than an airport Christmas morning.”
It was Chloe. Beth hadn’t seen her since their first meeting in August because Chloe was always out of town or wanted the apartment to herself. But Chloe was practically her sister-in-law. Shouldn’t they get to know each other?
Beth approached her. “Hi. It’s Beth. Remember, from the night with the sprinklers?”
“Of course,” she smiled warmly. “How are you?”
“Great. I’m going to Paris so I can’t complain, right?”
“Paris? I’m traveling there myself.”
“Really?”
They stood there a moment before Chloe continued: “My flight’s tonight and I have so much to do, I should be on my way.”
“I guess Alex and I might be on your flight.”
Chloe sucked in her breath. She looked at the ceiling, then seemed to cave in to the inevitability of doing something she didn’t want to do.
“That’s unlikely. Alex is already in Paris.”
Beth leaned for support on a glass case filled with wallets and passport holders. “But he’s got my ticket. He texted me to meet him at six-fifteen.”
“Let’s talk,” Chloe said.
They crossed the street and sat in the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel near a fragrant gingerbread house display. Children ran around while weary grown-ups sat surrounded by shopping bags. Beth’s head was spinning.
“Alex is a sweetheart,” Chloe explained. “So sweet he has trouble saying no. He’s charming too, so he’s always got admirers. I’m used to it. It’s been this way ever since we declared our feelings for each other-”
Beth flinched. “How can you contemplate such a thing?”
“How do you mean?” Chloe asked, surprised.
“With your brother?”
“Stepbrother,” Chloe corrected. Now Beth was surprised. “You have to understand,” Chloe said. “Alex gets involved easily with people, but he always comes back to me. Always.”
Beth heard the blood whoosh through her veins, melding with the general din as Chloe kept talking.
“My uncle-our uncle-would like nothing more than to see us marry. It’s odd, but he’s very protective of me since my father died, and he knows I love Alex. This would be good for Alex, of course. He didn’t make it into our parents’ will, and his mother had so little…”
Chloe, her eyes downcast and her hair falling in perfect waves just below her shoulders, looked like an angel delivering the truth. Nausea washed over Beth.
“Thank you,” Beth whispered. “I should have known. It seemed complicated. Even getting the tickets-”
“The money,” Chloe interrupted. “I know how he is, how unfair he is. How much did you give him for tickets?”
Beth tried to recall what each one cost. Eight hundred dollars? Nine hundred? It was Leah’s money, but Chloe clearly pegged Beth as someone Alex had duped. Perhaps he had.
“Let me write you a check,” Chloe said. “My uncle’s generous with me, as is Alex, though I worry about things he does. Whatever the case, it’s terrible for you to be out any money. Do you have five minutes? We’ll run back to the apartment now. No worries.”
Nothing had changed about the Belgravia except the bright wreaths now festooning the front doors.
“Chloe,” the doorman said, then nodded at Beth.
Passing through the marble lobby and under the chandeliers, Beth tried to imagine herself back into the first time she came here, but couldn’t.
They entered the apartment and Chloe began looking for her checks.
“They must be in the bedroom.”
Beth felt pressure build behind her eyes. She imagined telling everyone the trip to Paris had been canceled. She imagined Leah and her mother looking at her, thinking she’d screwed things up or gotten too emotional. Again. She imagined her grandmother telling her she shouldn’t waste time feeling sorry for herself if she wanted to meet another nice young man.
Her head throbbed and her mouth was dry. She noticed an Air France ticket on the coffee table for the flight she was supposed to have taken. The ticket had Chloe’s name on it and a receipt confirmed its purchase by Alex two days prior. How could he? But Beth had trouble blaming Alex. Perhaps he was trapped-all the “family stuff” he mentioned. And here she was, sitting in his apartment, allowing his stepsister to send her away with a check. What would Alex think when he found out she’d accepted a paltry sum-nothing compared with the fortune the two of them could make-instead of opting for a life of love and adventure with him? Her mind reeled. It made no sense to let Alex down. She loved him too much. He loved her.
There, on the table, a silver letter opener with a filigreed handle caught her eye. It wasn’t sharp, but it might do. She stepped on the Oriental runner in the hallway to avoid making noise as she came up behind Chloe, who was searching a drawer beneath the bed. Before Chloe could turn around, Beth plunged the letter opener into her neck. Chloe gasped and collapsed over the drawer.
But something was wrong. The weapon wouldn’t go deeper and Chloe was still alive, trying to move. Beth withdrew the makeshift knife, causing Chloe to scream and blood to gush out of the wound onto her white cashmere sweater. Beth forced the weapon into a new spot in Chloe’s neck. More blood, more gasping, but Chloe still breathed. Her eyes were open and her mouth twisted with pain. Focus, Beth told herself when she started to tremble. Find an actable objective: to kill Chloe in order to live a life of happiness with Alex. She scrambled to the closet and found a plastic bag, then lifted up Chloe’s head by the hair and fastened the bag tightly around her neck, squeezing with her hands to speed things up. Tremors wracked Chloe’s body, her arms and then legs. Then nothing.
Beth stood up, sweating and weak. She didn’t have much time. She found Chloe’s passport first. They both had brown eyes but Beth’s hair was dark. To play a convincing Chloe and make it to the airport by six-fifteen, she’d need to leave the Belgravia, visit a hair salon, and return to pack. She didn’t want to take any chances and decided to leave and come back as Chloe in case the doorman was paying attention. Finding scissors, she slit open the bag around Chloe’s head, then cut off all the blond hair not covered in blood. She tied up her own hair, then used clips to fasten Chloe’s to the edges, hiding the jagged line between the two with a winter hat. It looked amazingly natural. She hustled into Chloe’s coat, grabbed her purse, and ran out.
The afternoon became a series of tasks: she was Chloe, rushing to finish errands; she was Beth, discarding hair in the restroom at Liberty Place and washing flecks of blood off her wrists; she was whichever one’s credit card she used, stopping by Liquid Salon, explaining she was about to go to France to meet her fiancé and wanted to surprise him by going blond. Could a colorist do that in the next two hours?
She was Beth, but with honey-colored hair, anxious to get things from her apartment, then suddenly aware of a police cruiser parked on Pine and 19th, so she was Chloe again, walking past Beth’s apartment, no turning back, and heading home.
“Chloe,” the doorman nodded.
She packed as if she might stay in France a long time and got ready to leave. It was a shame about the body-how odd it looked with hacked-off hair. She turned off the heat and opened the bedroom windows. The corpse might not smell for weeks if it stayed cold.
She was Beth, anticipating a romantic getaway with her boyfriend. She was Chloe, anticipating holidays with family. She was trying new things, making strong choices. She was her own mind, racing a thousand miles a second, already in Paris.
Soon, love, she texted Alex from Beth’s phone.
Soon, love, she texted Alex from Chloe’s phone.
Soon, mon amour, he replied to each.
Narberth
Tom and Jackie Middleton’s swimming pool is the jewel of Narbrook Circle. The cool aqua rectangle is nestled on the western side of the Middletons’ house, which sits atop a hill and presides over the neighborhood. Standing on the porch of that home, one can easily survey the luscious green neighborhood, the houses that border it, and the stream that divides it in two. Narberth, their town, is a self-conscious time capsule of small-town America, always preserving old traditions alongside new ones: the Memorial Day parade, relay races at the playground, fireworks on the Fourth of July. Although the outskirts of Philadelphia begin only a few miles away, Narbrook Circle is the isolated within the isolated, a suboasis of the suburban oasis, a place as calm and beautiful as any place you could hope to be.
Tom, a psychiatrist, sees clients in the finished side of their basement. There is a separate back entrance to a room containing an armchair and a comfortable couch adorned with too many pillows. There’s a side table with a box of tissues, a Venetian screen hiding an exercise bike, and nothing on the walls. One of Tom’s clients is a seventeen-year-old boy by the name of Seth Lever. Seth attends a private Quaker school on City Avenue, where Jackie happens to be the guidance counselor. Seth is tall for his age and good looking, although he doesn’t seem to know it. He dresses the same way he probably has since middle school: old T-shirts, jeans, and sneakers. In recent months Seth has become noticeably withdrawn and begun to fail his classes. While she did her best to help him, Jackie felt that Seth needed more frequent, longer sessions-beyond what she has time for-and that he might benefit from the positive male influence of her husband.
During their first session together, Seth plops down on the couch and says, “First off, you should know that I don’t want to be here, and that I think therapy’s bullshit.”
After that, Seth says very little. He reveals only the most basic of information: his parents are divorced; he is bored by high school and thinks maybe he’ll go to college to study music, if he goes at all. When Tom presses for more information, Seth mentions that he is also in the chess club at school and reads chess strategy books.
“I play a little chess myself,” says Tom.
“Oh yeah?” Seth brightens.
“Sure, not so much now, but I was crazy about it in college. Used to reenact Bobby’s games and whatnot. Fischer, I mean. We could play sometime.”
“No thanks,” says Seth, but Tom can see that he’s tempted.
For Seth’s next session, Tom brings the chess set down to the basement, just in case. He’s read about therapists doing this-playing games with their clients to put them at ease. Seth is fairly nervous and it would be good for him to be able to relate to Tom over something he already understands.
The thing is, Seth isn’t a shy kid. Tom can see that by the way he sits on the couch, leaning back, taking up lots of space. When he does speak he speaks confidently, knowing exactly how much he will reveal before he opens his mouth, unlike many people who negotiate with themselves halfway through a sentence.
At first, Tom doesn’t mention the chess set, and Seth doesn’t bring it up either. Tom begins as he normally would, by asking Seth what his goals are for therapy.
“I haven’t set any goals,” says Seth. “I already told you, it wasn’t exactly my idea to come here.”
“Whose idea was it?” asks Tom.
“My mom’s, I guess.”
“And why do you think she wants you to go to therapy?”
“I don’t know, you’ll have to ask her,” answers Seth.
There is a touch of defiance in his voice, but it’s nothing Tom hasn’t seen before. Tom lets the room stay silent, giving Seth the space to say more, if he wants. Part of being a psychiatrist is learning to endure these awkward moments.
“I see you brought the board down,” Seth says, after a while.
“I thought we might play a little, if you’re up for it.”
“I’m up for it.”
As it turns out, Tom and Seth are pretty evenly matched. Tom lets the game run out the clock, and when he says, “Time’s up,” Seth doesn’t conceal his disappointment.
That night, before going to sleep, Jackie asks Tom about Seth.
Tom thinks for a moment. “He’s doing all right, I guess. He’s a funny kid.”
“You know, he’s not popular. As far as I can tell, he doesn’t belong to any groups at all. There aren’t many students like that at Friends’ Central. If they’re not popular, they’re into drama or something,” says Jackie.
“He’s into chess,” says Tom.
“Oh really? I didn’t know that.”
“We played today. He’s good. Really good.”
“Hey, you know what you should do?” says Jackie.
“What?” he asks unenthusiastically.
“Switch sides. Turn the board around. Then you’ll have to think like him and he’ll have to think like you.” Pleased with herself, Jackie kisses Tom and turns off the light.
The next time Seth comes in, Tom has the board set up between them on an old card table. The pieces are ready and waiting. They play five moves and then Tom turns the board around. Seth looks at him skeptically but doesn’t ask for an explanation, and Tom doesn’t offer one.
Viewing the board from Seth’s perspective, Tom sees a complex web of attacks and defenses he only half understood from the other side. Seth’s strategy is impressive, and as the board turns back and forth neither gains nor loses much ground.
It isn’t until the third session of this game that Seth begins to open up on his own. Over the next several weeks, he tells Tom, in pieces at first, of an older woman he works for named Marianne. Several months ago, he saw a job posted on the Whole Foods community board for a gardener/general yard worker for a house in the neighborhood, and when he went to ask about it, Marianne hired him on the spot.
Seth even describes the house-a big, gray Victorian with azaleas out front. “She had me paint the columns on the porch pink and green,” he tells Tom.
Immediately, Tom knows the house. There aren’t many Victorian-style houses around, and he can picture that porch. At first he can’t place it, but then he remembers; it’s just around the corner on Windsor Avenue.
It doesn’t take long for Tom to realize that Seth and Marianne are having an affair. Seth is smart and deliberately drops little hints. Initially, it’s just the general way he talks about her, saying things like, “Marianne likes me to come over straight from school,” or Marianne wants this and says that, etc. The more Seth lays it out for him, the more dubious Tom becomes. It’s possible, isn’t it, that Seth’s leading him on, just to stay entertained? Of course, if Seth really is having this affair, the worst thing Tom could do is not believe him, so he puts his doubts aside, confident that the truth will out itself.
From what Tom can gather, the affair is surprisingly sexually mature, and other than the considerable age difference, there is no outward manipulation. But when Seth answers Tom’s questions, he’s using someone else’s words. This is what worries Tom the most-Seth has no perspective. He doesn’t know which way is up and which is down.
Tom thinks very carefully about how to proceed. He considers it to the point of agony, but doesn’t discuss it with Jackie, sure that she’ll overreact. Ultimately he decides that since Seth is almost eighteen, he should keep the information confidential. The circus that it could create would be far more damaging to Seth than if they managed it together, through therapy.
So, in their next appointment, Tom decides to address the topic more frankly, and ask questions that encourage Seth to speak freely about the relationship. What do you talk about? Not very much. What do you do? Have sex, mostly. Are there any other girls who you are interested in? No, not exactly.
Eventually Tom asks, “Do you love her?”
“No,” Seth laughs, as if to say, Come on, we’re all adults here, which of course they aren’t.
The following weekend, Tom finds himself driving by the gray Victorian. The car in front of him has one of those bumper stickers that Tom hates: I drive under 25 m.p.h. in Narberth, PA, a pledge the driver observes with due diligence. As Tom creeps along well under the speed limit, he gets a good look at the house. He can see that Seth and Marianne haven’t only been fucking; Seth’s been working too. The yard looks immaculate.
The next day, passing by, he sees her. She is leaning against her doorframe, staring into nothing as if she is remembering something. Tom takes off his sunglasses to get a better look. He can’t believe it, but it’s her: Amelia Watson. She’s lost some weight and she’s dressing differently, maybe even dyed her hair too, but it is most definitely, unmistakably her, Amelia goddamn Watson. From the dark of the hallway, Seth emerges. She leans forward like she is going to kiss him goodbye, right there in the open. But before she gets too close, she catches herself and touches his shoulder instead. Tom slumps in the seat as Seth walks away, and Amelia retreats into the house.
At home, Tom unlocks his filing cabinet and thumbs through the manila folders until he finds it. Watson, Amelia. The first page of the file is the form that he requires all patients to fill out: a brief medical history and a confidentiality agreement. At the top of the page, in her tight handwriting, it reads, Watson, Amelia Marianne. Shaking, Tom closes the file.
It’d gone on for several months, and Jackie never knew. They’d kept up their weekly appointments for appearance, and they’d even done it on the couch in this very office. Once they started fucking it became impossible to talk, and the fifty-minute sessions were painfully slow. He’d ended it eventually, and Amelia had agreed it was best for her to move in with her sister in Rhinebeck, New York, where things are quieter and there are more open spaces. Tom even gave her the name of a therapist up there, a woman who’d come highly recommended.
That night, Tom takes Jackie out to dinner. Almost every Saturday they go into the city to try the latest restaurant written up in the Main Line Times, and tonight cannot be any different. They eat overpriced Mexican tapas, and on the way home, when Tom is careening down Schuylkill Expressway, Jackie reaches over and gently squeezes his crotch. Tom is stiff and guilty but he tells himself nothing’s wrong. It is a warm summer night and Jackie turns off the air-conditioning and opens the windows.
At home, Jackie suggests they to go for a night swim, something she likes to do when her belly is full and her mood is high. They change into their bathing suits, wrap themselves in towels, and go out onto the deck. Jackie walks down the steps to the poolside, and Tom crosses the deck to switch on the underwater light. As soon as he flips it on, Jackie screams. In their neighborhood, which some say was designed to be an outdoor amphitheater, whispers carry like they do in the valleys of mountains. Hers is not a scream that Narbrook Circle has heard before, and to be sure, all of Narbrook Circle hears her scream.
Tom is at the railing. He sees what she sees, a body of a man-a boy-floating facedown in the pool. He doesn’t have to look any closer to know that it’s Seth Lever.
The police arrive, Jackie is crying, and the whole neighborhood is out, trying to get a look. Tom wishes, more than anything, that he were wearing something besides a bathing suit. The yard is roped off, there are police swarming the property, red lights shining on the pine trees. Everyone whispers that it’s suicide. By the time they get Seth out of the pool, it’s after midnight. They ask Tom to put on some clothes and drive down to the station, which he does. They don’t make him bring Jackie with him. He tells them everything he can, but he doesn’t mention Amelia Marianne.
When Tom gets home, Jackie is waiting up for him. She’s upset and wants to talk. Tom sits down next to her in the bed, and holds her while she cries into his armpit.
“How could this have happened?” she asks.
“Seth was a very disturbed person,” says Tom.
“I know, I know. But it’s just… Was he? Really? And in our pool? Why in our pool?” she moans.
Tom pulls his arm away and swings his legs off his side of the bed.
Jackie kneels behind him and rubs his back. “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry. It’s not your fault.”
Tom recoils. “I know it’s not my fault!” he snaps, and goes to brush his teeth.
Several days pass and Tom is deteriorating. He can’t sleep and on the rare occasions when he does drift off, Amelia is there, whispering something to him that he can’t decipher, coming to him in dreams and nightmares both.
And so, when he can no longer bear it, he knocks on the door of the Victorian. She is wearing a tight skirt, a silk blouse, and high heels-all of them black. Her straw-blond hair is tied up in the style of an earlier decade, and her eye makeup is heavy and dark. Dangling from her ears are two large turquoise-and-silver earrings. The weight of the jewelry stretches her pierced ears, making the holes look like tiny twin urethras.
“Tom?” she asks, without smiling. She is only vaguely surprised, as if she’d known he would come, but hadn’t expected him before noon.
“Hello, Amelia.”
“Come in,” she says, almost as an order, and pushes back the door.
She leads him into the parlor. There’s a Persian rug, a baroque sofa with matching armchairs, a sculpture of Buddha, Flemish-looking paintings, and African pottery. The coffee table appears to be covered in Turkish tiles.
“I see you’ve been doing some traveling,” Tom observes.
“Here and there.” Amelia gestures to one of the chairs. Tom sits, and she perches nervously on the center cushion of the sofa across from him. Couch and armchair, just like the old days.
Tom tries to find his practiced voice of authority-empathetic, but stern. “Amelia,” he begins.
She winces at the sound of her own name. “Marianne, please. I’m going by my middle name these days. I never did like Amelia, it sounds like the name of a rock.”
“All right, then. Marianne,” Tom continues, as if he’s talking to a child who insists on being treated like a grown-up. “I am not going to pretend that I’m not here for a reason.”
“I assumed as much,” she says. She takes out a cigarette.
“You smoke?” asks Tom accusingly.
As an answer, she lights her cigarette. “Look,” she says, “I knew Seth was seeing a therapist, but I didn’t know it was you, okay? I had to read it in the paper.”
It occurs to Tom that now that she’s gotten this out of the way, she expects him to console her with his professional opinion, You couldn’t have saved him, none of us could have, and all the rest. To her, he is still her doctor.
So he asks questions. He makes her comfortable and earns her trust as he would with any patient. This doesn’t take long. It seems that the minute he walked in the door her trust for him was renewed, on principle alone. He indicates that Seth told him about the nature of their relationship and invites her to talk about it. She is immediately forthcoming. So forthcoming, in fact, that Tom is taken aback. She tells him how it began, about the first time they had sex, about many times after that. She goes into great detail. She tells him how Seth was a virgin and how she made him into the lover she wanted.
With every detail she gives, Tom swallows his jealousy like a sword, one after another. He doesn’t know quite how to respond; it was her reckless honesty that had attracted him to her in the first place-her titillating descriptions of her sexual encounters, and her eventual shameless acknowledgment of the tension between them. It’s okay, she had said. I want it too.
Completely disarmed, Tom falls back on an old therapist standby. “Did you have reason to believe that Seth wanted to hurt himself?”
“No,” she answers unequivocally. “I’m still in shock. I know he was depressed and was seeing someone, but we talked about it and it seemed within the range of reason for a seventeen-year-old boy.”
“So you were comfortable with Seth being seventeen?”
“Yes, of course. I never asked him to be anything he wasn’t,” she says.
Tom is quiet, watching her. The old therapy trick, only she says nothing further. Unlike his patients, she is not bound to him for a full fifty minutes.
At this point, Amelia stands. She looks at Tom and waits for him to stand as well. “Look, Tom-”
“It’s okay,” he cuts her off. Whatever it is, he doesn’t want to hear it.
“You are just the picture of professionalism. That’s all,” says Amelia.
Tom doesn’t take this as a compliment. “I should go.”
Amelia nods, and sees him to the door.
“I am sorry for your loss,” Tom offers awkwardly.
“And I for yours,” says Amelia.
Tom asks if he can come back sometime, to continue the conversation.
Amelia hesitates. “As a friend maybe. I don’t need a therapist. Anymore.” She smiles gamely. He’s seen this look before. Tom wants to say something, but can’t. She closes the door.
Tom stands on her porch and surveys the neighborhood. Children are coming to and from the playground, running ahead of their mothers and babysitters who call out for them to wait when they near a corner.
Reluctantly, he starts down the steps. A young man is mowing the lawn next door. He stops and waves to Tom, but Tom pretends not to see.
Rather than walking by the playground, Tom turns right and takes a shortcut down what the kids of Narbrook Circle call the “secret path” but what is really a short, wood-chipped foot trail between yards that isn’t a secret at all.
From across the stream, Tom can see a black town car parked in front of his house. He hesitates, and contemplates turning around. But where would he go?
Tom crosses the little cement footbridge and starts up the hill to his house. As he draws near, he sees Jackie standing on the front porch. She has the same terrified look on her face she’s worn since she found Seth. All she wants to do is close the pool; drain it, cover it, and forget it all ever happened. The detective on the case won’t let her; he says that for now, it’s still a crime scene. For as long as she looks out the windows of their house and sees the clear blue water collecting leaves and pine needles, as long as the caution tape stays strung around the fence line, she will continue to turn that terrified look on Tom. What pains him most about the look isn’t that she’s afraid he’s capable of doing something awful, she’s afraid he’s incapable of doing something good.
“Hello, sweetheart,” he says when she’s within earshot.
“Did you enjoy your walk?” she asks, softening a little.
“Yes, although I probably should’ve driven out to Wissahickon and gotten some real exercise.”
“Well, anyway,” says Jackie, “it’s good you didn’t. Detective Hendricks is here to see you. He’s waiting inside.”
Jackie sets them up in the living room, each with a cup of coffee.
“Dr. Middleton,” begins the detective. He pauses, presumably waiting for Tom to say, No, call me Tom, but Tom keeps quiet. The detective continues, “I apologize if I am repeating myself, but were you prescribing Seth any medication?”
“No,” answers Tom, “you have his file.”
“Yes, it’s true, we do have his file. It’s been very helpful, thank you. But what I’m wondering, Dr. Middleton,” the detective leans forward on the floral couch cushions, “is if there is any information that didn’t make it into Seth’s file.”
Tom repeats the spiel he gave at the station. “I don’t take notes while I talk to patients. It unnerves them. After they leave, I write down all the important aspects of our conversation. It is not a transcript. They’re meeting minutes, more like. We even recorded our moves when we played chess, sometimes. You can have those too, if you want.”
“No, that won’t be necessary,” says the detective. “See, the autopsy results have come back, and there was a large amount of Xanax in his system. Did Seth suffer from anxiety?”
“Sure, but not enough for me to give him anything for it, in my professional opinion.”
“Any idea where he might have gotten it?”
“My first guess would be from his mother. I’d be willing to bet she’s had a prescription at some point. Having a depressed son causes a lot of anxiety. If not from her, a friend’s parent, maybe.”
“Thank you, Dr. Middleton,” says the detective.
“Of course,” says Tom, “if there is anything else I can do…” He stands up.
“Actually, there is one other thing,” says Detective Hendricks. He waits for Tom to sit back down. “Now, this is sensitive information, and I’d appreciate it if you kept it confidential.”
Tom agrees.
“You see, in the autopsy, there was no water found in Seth’s lungs.”
“Excuse me?”
“Yes. There’s a thing called ‘dry drowning’ when a victim doesn’t inhale any water and eventually dies of cardiac arrest. One sees this in a very small percent of drowning victims. But normally, even if someone wants to die, there is panic before it actually happens, and they open their mouth and, well, you know the rest. So in the case of a suicide, if someone were to ‘dry drown,’ so to speak, they would have to be, excuse me for saying this, very determined.” Detective Hendricks looks Tom in the eyes, but only to prove a point. He doesn’t invite Tom to respond. “Now, in your notes, there is almost nothing about Seth being suicidal, am I right?”
“That is correct, detective,” Tom answers. “I didn’t perceive it to be a concern. However, Seth was extremely intelligent. And if he was truly determined to end his own life, then he would have deliberately kept that from me.”
“I suppose so,” says Detective Hendricks. This time, the detective stands up first.
Tom puts out his hand, and the man holds on for too long.
As soon as the detective’s car is out of sight, Tom goes down to the unfinished side of the basement. He reaches his hand behind a shelf and pulls out several sheets of white paper. He kept his notes on “Marianne” separate from all else he and Seth talked about. The moral ambiguity of his decision to keep it confidential, and the unique nature of the affair-well, that’s what he’d done anyway. It’s no crime to keep something on a separate sheet of paper.
The night that Seth died, before the police arrived, he’d gone downstairs and removed those pages. He did it almost without thinking-it was a reflex of self-preservation-and now, here they were, stuffed behind a dirty tool shelf.
Tom stands there, reads through every word, and then burns them in the utility sink with a kitchen match.
The answer he gave Detective Hendricks is technically sound. If Seth had taken a lot of Xanax it might have helped him to stay calm through the experience, more so if he’d also been drinking. He might have even passed out and fallen in. Tom should’ve said that.
It’s a decent theory, but he doesn’t want it to be true. As soon as he admits that to himself, the dam breaks, his instincts rush in, and suddenly he is swimming in them. He must see Amelia.
Tom leaves the house out the back door, the one reserved for his patients, and walks directly to Amelia’s house. He resists the urge to run so as not to attract attention.
When Amelia answers the door she is crying. She has changed into a sleeveless red dress that grazes the tops of her knees, paired with the same turquoise earrings, as if she had planned to go out.
Tom touches her face, sensitively, to see if she’ll accept his comfort. She doesn’t pull away.
He steps inside, draws her to him, and they are kissing. He’s surprised by how much he wants her; his desire has its own inertia, like a feverish fit or a drunken tirade. Amelia wants it too, he can tell, but in her own way.
“Don’t stop,” she says.
He holds her tighter. She doesn’t want him to be anything he isn’t, he reminds himself.
After, Tom is getting dressed. There is no postcoital relief. Neither wants to hold the other. Tom goes into the bathroom to wash up and checks her medicine cabinet. Xanax.
In that bazaar of a living room, Amelia is lying on the couch in her bra and panties, smoking a cigarette. Tom looks down at her.
“Did you do it?” asks Tom.
“Do what?” she says.
“Kill him. Fuck him then kill him.”
“No I didn’t kill him. What the hell’s wrong with you?” Amelia stands up and starts collecting her clothes. She touches one ear, feels her earring, and then touches the other and finds a bare lobe.
“Wrong with me?” Tom yells, “Nothing’s wrong with me! How am I supposed to know what you’re capable of?”
“Listen to me,” Amelia says in a tone that indicates that actually, she is capable of a lot. “Seth killed himself. He went to you for help and you didn’t help him. Why the hell else do you think he ended up in your pool, of all places? He wanted you to know you failed him.” Amelia sits down on the sofa, looking at her dress crumpled in her lap. “You know,” she turns to look at Tom, “people always say that this sort of thing isn’t anyone’s fault. But you and I both know the truth. It’s always someone’s fault. Every single time.” At this, Amelia straightens. “Get out of my house.”
Tom is standing over her. He looks at her face, expecting to find either vengeance or guilt, but she is expressionless. He has never known her to lie.
He turns to leave, and in the foyer by the door he sees Amelia’s other turquoise earring lodged in the carpet. He picks it up, slips it in his pocket, and slams the door behind him.
The following day, Detective Hendricks tells the Middletons they’re going to drain the pool. Detective Hendricks comes to supervise a crew of crime scene investigators dressed in navy-blue jumpsuits and latex gloves. It takes half a day for the water to drain, siphoned out onto the street and running down the hill into the gutter. Tom and Jackie watch from the deck as the men sweep the cement and unclog the filter. The last remnants of summer combed together with the early signs of fall give the yard the look of an unvisited cemetery, the diving board marking the head of its only grave. Tom squeezes Jackie’s hand, knowing that after today he will have to deny almost everything, and knowing, too, that she will believe him. Satisfied, Tom watches a young man, not much older than Seth, reach his hand into the drain at the bottom of the pool and pull out a piece of jewelry that catches the light, ever so slightly, through its scummy exterior.