by Jason Allen
“You’re asking me? How the fuck should I know?” She squeezed his arm hard enough to leave a bruise. “This is all so crazy!”
“We should just get out of here,” he said, prying her fingers off while holding eye contact. “We can figure out what to do after that.”
“Alright,” she said through shallow breaths, “you’re probably right, but first just stay here while I get her into bed. Right after she’s asleep, we can go.” She raised her head over the bushes and immediately slunk back down, whisper-shouting, “What was up with her father chasing me like that? Or that guy with him in the pool!”
Tiffany called her friend’s name again from the porch, sounding strung out now, singing her words. “Angel... Where in the fucking fuck are...you...”
“Shit!” Angelique grabbed him again, squeezing harder with each word. “She’s not going to stop calling my name until she finds me. And if she starts wandering outside she might see him out here and think we attacked him or something.” She squinted toward the porch, still whispering but sounding even more worried. “Tiff didn’t see any of it—the pool, the three of us running...”
“No, she didn’t see anything,” Corey blurted.
Goddamn it, he thought. Now she knows I was watching them. How else would I know Tiffany didn’t see?
“Just don’t move till I’m back, okay? Please, promise me you’ll stay here.” She faced him, her eyes desperately wide.
“I promise.”
Angelique started toward the house, whispering over her shoulder, “Stay there, and stay hidden,” and he did as she told him, crouching behind a holly bush and beneath the wispy purple leaves of a Japanese maple. He hoped she’d missed the point of what he’d just said. But whether she had or not, he’d wait there for her. Come to think of it, he’d risk prison to make sure she was all right—and thinking back on the chase, knocking a man out was one thing, but he wondered now if he might have been willing to kill if that’s what it would have taken to save her.
About ten feet away, Leo Sheffield still lay on his side in the same awkward position—one arm extended above his head, half his face pressed to the grass, his chest perceptibly rising and falling with each sleeping breath. Corey watched him through the crosshatched spaces between layers of spiky leaves. He and Angelique needed to be long gone as soon as possible, otherwise they’d be in a cop shop answering questions all night, maybe in a cell after that. But if Mr. Sheffield didn’t regain consciousness soon, somewhere along the way to wherever the hell they were headed, they would have to call an ambulance.
He crept out onto the lawn and reexamined Mr. Sheffield’s head wound, thinking back to that night when he’d done the same for Gina after she passed out at the kitchen table and fell, smacking her head hard enough to bleed. Good, he thought, Leo had a nasty wound but it wasn’t seeping. And he hadn’t stopped breathing. He’d wake up at some point with a horrible headache, but he wouldn’t die.
Corey stood, exhaled, and then for some reason felt an overwhelming need to take one last look at the dead man in the pool. Thinking back to the chase and Angelique screaming, he ran up the sloped lawn, worried now that a neighbor had heard her, or that someone at the house across the lake had looked through a telescope and seen, believing that at any moment he would hear the sirens. Without a plan in mind, he aimed his cell phone camera and took a series of photos of the dead man’s face, wider shots of his body with his bandaged arms out wide, each of the photos framed with the Sheffield house situated clearly in the background—then he stopped, disturbed by his impulse to document this stranger’s death.
Why am I taking photos?
The thought nagged at him. He still couldn’t believe that any of the crazy shit he’d seen or been a part of over the past hour had really happened. Henry, the man floating a few feet away from where he now stood, had died right over there on the ledge beside the pool, a man who’d been brought to the estate in secret by his mom’s billionaire boss, who’d kissed him and drunk champagne with him and done coke with him, and then Henry had done so much coke he’d basically exploded his own head.
As far as Corey knew, he’d been the only one to see any of the true events, the only one to hear Mr. Sheffield call out to Henry by name. Regardless, Leo definitely wouldn’t want either the true story or Angelique’s version of what she’d witnessed to get out, and now that Corey had seen him so crazed when he’d chased her, there was no telling what he might do to save himself.
He snapped one more photo before hurrying back down the slope and returning to his hiding place in the bushes. Once there, he crouched, chewing his fingernails, waiting. Wishing he could go, but waiting. No idea yet where they should go. Hoping the girl in there who’d hugged him would come back outside soon, hoping she hadn’t changed her mind.
He kept on watching, waiting to run. Waiting. Watching no discernable changes in the windows for so long that at a certain point he wasn’t thinking much of anything, other than the promise he’d made to himself when he jumped from the roof—that he would do whatever it took to keep her safe.
SEVEN
She crossed the lawn, running most of the way. Tiffany had yelled her name twice before reentering the house, and now Angelique crept up the porch steps, calling to her through the screen door with a forceful whisper, “Tiff, I’m out here.”
The door swung open, the springs and hinges creaking more than usual after they’d been overstressed and warped when Mr. Sheffield had come barreling out less than ten minutes ago. Tiffany crossed the threshold looking annoyed, her eyes puffy, pillow lines like pink lightning bolts imprinted along one of her cheeks. She appeared even more disoriented than when she’d passed out, wobbling in the doorway, slurring, “Angel, what’re you doing outside? What time is it? I don’t remember getting into bed.”
Angelique couldn’t allow her to linger on the porch any longer. She needed to guide her friend upstairs and return her to bed before she discovered the unexplainable body on the far corner of the lawn. How could she explain to Tiffany why her lunatic father, who Angelique had once considered a good man, was knocked out and sprawled on the grass, with a blood-covered stone cherub lying nearby? And craziest of all, what about the body still floating in the pool? Had Mr. Sheffield killed him? One thing at a time, she thought. Just get Tiff into bed first. Then get the hell out of the house and back to Corey. Like he said, we’ll get far away and then figure out what’s next.
“It’s late, Tiff,” she said, taking her friend by the arm. They entered the house and she led Tiffany across the wide living room, talking as they walked. “I came down to the lake after I couldn’t sleep. It was so nice out, I thought I might as well sit by the water for a while. Come on, let’s just go back to bed.”
On the way up the stairs, Tiffany yawned and paused against the banister. “Hey, did you hear something outside before I came out?”
“Like what?”
“I think something woke me up, like screams or something.”
“You were dreaming.”
Angelique guided her into her bedroom and kept the light off while she helped her under the covers and pulled the patchwork Amish quilt up to her chin.
“Everything’s fine,” she said, kissing her on the cheek. “Sleep now.”
“Stay the night in here with me, Angel-fish, like when we were still in elementary.”
“No thanks, slutty-pie, you kick in your sleep.”
Tiffany shifted into her cutesy voice. “Don’t you love me, though?”
“I do love you.” A sudden queasiness filled her stomach as she recalled Mr. Sheffield pinning her wrists to the grass. As much as Tiffany played the rebel of the family, she adored her father. She would believe whatever lie he told if it ever came down to Angelique’s word against his. “Sweet dreams, Tiff,” she said softly, and then had to look away. She stared out the window and the moon stared back at her. Nothing to do fo
r now but wait for Tiffany to cease shifting around for a more comfortable position and to pass out.
As she assumed, it didn’t take long, and once she felt reasonably sure that it was safe to leave, Angelique tiptoed out into the hall and down the stairs. She eased the creaky screen door closed behind her and looked out across the moonlit lawn, aware now that during the brief walk through the house she’d begun sweating. Her thoughts began kaleidoscoping—the insane chase and the helplessness she’d felt when she’d been pinned down spliced with flashes of his face during his crazy-eyed breakdown or the attempted assault or whatever the fuck that was. Then the miraculous appearance of a guy she’d flirted with the past two summers and almost kissed last September, who had to have been on the property before the chase in order to save her like that. But why? Why had Corey been there? And her best friend, now passed out in her bed...she loved her psycho dad because she’d never seen his psycho side. Or did Tiff know something more about him than she let on? She hadn’t seen that poor dead man in the pool, that was for sure, and hadn’t seen her dad standing over him, and definitely hadn’t seen his hands on Angelique’s wrists while he yelled in her face, looking like he wanted to kill her. Also, where could she and Corey go now, and how long could they stay away? By her leaving, would the police think she had something to do with any of this? Would she end up a suspect instead of a totally freaked out witness? The questions kept on spiraling, the complications too overwhelming, the need to get away—I need to get away—the thought that finally rang out loudest, supplanting all the rest.
She looked toward the lake but couldn’t see. Her chest tightened. She tipped to the side, light-headed, way off-balance. The landscape returned to her like a funhouse mirror and then began flattening, two-dimensional, pixelating, everything solid turning to dust and swirling over the surface of a depthless movie screen, the lawn, the lake, the porch rail, the willow trees all squeezing together. She bent over and wheezed, whispering to herself, “This feeling will pass. I’m okay... I’m okay.”
With each new breath her lungs sucked more oxygen. Her vision adjusted, blurred again, cleared a bit more. Slowly, the vertigo relented. The outlines of the low-hanging tangle of branches from the willow at the far corner of the lawn sharpened against the bright surface of the lake, and she could see Mr. Sheffield still splayed out as he’d been when she left. She inhaled deeply and exhaled the dizziness and sickness until gravity reattached the soles of her bare feet to the porch boards. Her balance returned, and she stepped onto the grass. She began jogging down the slope, initially feeling completely alone in the world, then picked up her pace as she was suddenly overtaken by the sense that dozens of unseen neighbors across the lake were watching her through high-powered binoculars.
Slowing only slightly as she passed Mr. Sheffield, she reached the bushes and whispered to Corey, “She’s asleep. Let’s go.”
He motioned for her to follow him, and together they hurried over to the bulkhead, where he hopped down first and extended his arms to help her down. “Careful where you step,” he said, just as her feet sank an inch or two into the layer of muck along the dark water’s edge. It smelled of algae and some sort of marine decay. She hadn’t remembered to put on shoes, and for some reason that thought, the reality of not being properly prepared, triggered her to look back over the bulkhead wall at Mr. Sheffield.
“Wait,” she said, “what if he’s dying?”
“I’ve been thinking about that while you were inside,” Corey said. “We should call an ambulance once we’re off the property. Not from one of our cell phones, though. A pay phone if we can find one. Come on.”
“Wait, but—don’t you think—” She stopped short and they both squatted down, their eyes even with the lawn.
Mr. Sheffield coughed. Then he groaned. A second later he groaned again while sliding his right arm up and reaching to touch the back of his head. He lay there for a while, then pushed himself up to sit and stared at the blood on his fingers. The insect noises rose in volume and became a blanket rising and falling all around while Mr. Sheffield struggled to prop himself on a knee, facing the house. Angelique looked at Corey and saw her own panic reflected in his unblinking stare. Gripping his arm, she turned again to watch Mr. Sheffield, who’d attempted to stand but lost his balance and had to place both hands on the ground. He made an awkward movement and managed to get to his feet, swaying a bit before taking the first step away from the lake.
Corey whispered directly into Angelique’s ear, so softly he barely made any sound. “He’s okay. Let’s go. We have to go. Now.”
EIGHT
Leo kicked to the surface, choking, desperate to cough water from his lungs. But then the dry hacking burned his throat, and though he still couldn’t see, he felt the cut grass under his palms, the soil against his fingertips. Dressed in nothing but damp boxer shorts, he’d just come back to life, balled up in a fetal position on his lawn in the middle of the night.
He hadn’t been drowning. No, he hadn’t been submerged at all. But he’d seen Henry floating facedown in the pool with his bandaged arms outstretched. He’d tried to save him, but he’d failed. And so he’d simply held Henry in his arms, gazing down at his wide pupils, his eyelids pulled all the way back, as though he’d been entranced by the night sky.
A breath of wind came sweeping in from the lake, tussling Leo’s thinning hair, feathering his bare midsection. Hazy light airbrushed his limbs the blue-gray skin tone of an alien. Grass blades stuck to his tongue and lips, which he spat and plucked away, and as he pushed himself up to sit, a high-pitched frequency entered his skull, swelling with each movement.
He reached up and pressed lightly against the wound on the back of his head. His blood pressure worried him more than the streaks of pain. It seemed his heart had swollen, and was now strobing three times too fast. He needed to calm his pulse. One more beat-per-minute and he’d surely go into cardiac arrest. He sat straighter, groping for one of his personal trainer’s mantras, flashing back to their most recent yoga session. Balance and harmony, life—it all resided within the breath, pranayama, the slow in-breath, the slow out-breath. Breathe, Leo. Remember to breathe.
The blood on his hand had come from touching his head. He stared at his wet fingers for a moment, confused as to how he’d been knocked unconscious, the opaque liquid looking more like ink than blood.
Groaning and muttering to himself, he propped himself on a knee and swiveled to face the lakeside porch and unlit windows of his summerhouse. With his fingertips he examined the back of his head again, still clueless as to how he’d been so seriously injured, hazy as to how he’d even ended up here on the lawn. He strained to sit up but gravity pulled him toward the earth, and so he lay down with his face pressed to the grass, thinking of Henry, his shock of black hair, his smile, the flecks of amber in his corneas that Leo had once told him in certain lighting looked like embers.
He recalled lingering in the house while Henry had been outside at the pool, how he’d collected the bottle of Glenlivet and bulled his way around the kitchen, fixing them a plate of finger foods while making a terrible mess between swigs of Scotch straight from the bottle. At some point during that time, Henry had had an accident. It couldn’t have been more than ten minutes or so. That’s all it had taken. Leo hadn’t heard him call out, hadn’t seen him slip and smack his head on the granite coping by the swimming pool stairs. He could only guess that this had been the story of how Henry died.
He pushed his body upright from the lawn, his right hand returning to the throbbing head wound, his short breaths escaping like spurts from a shriveling balloon. He kept his hand on his head as he forced his legs to steady, and stood there for a minute, the earth swaying like the ocean beneath a rowboat. His boxers clung to his thighs, still damp from when he’d been in the pool. Images from earlier in the night flashed behind his closed eyelids. He’d been chasing his daughter’s friend before he lost consciousness. That
’s how he’d ended up here, so far across the lawn.
He took his first baby step up the slope toward the pool. With one arm hugged to his ribs and the other slack at his side, step by slow step he closed in on the waking nightmare: Henry’s soaked bandages and his body floating there far beyond the two gurgling jets in the shallow end, the darkness of the water without the pool light ever having been switched on making it impossible to tell the extent of the bleeding before Henry had died. He’s really dead, Leo thought. Dead...
His head throbbing, he waded into the lukewarm water and dragged Henry back to the shallow end, cradling him in his arms. Staring down at his eyes, he saw that the embers in his corneas had been extinguished, less life to them now than the surface of a mirror. Henry’s spark replaced by a pale glaze. I did this to him, Leo thought. I did this.
NINE
“Look at him,” Corey whispered. “He’s walking. He’ll be fine. Please, can we just leave?”
She let go of his arm. “Maybe he just seems like he’s all right, but he’s not. We should watch him for a while to make sure.”
Corey turned and looked across the lake at the mansion with its picture windows radiating light. “We should already be gone,” he said, realizing he sounded more worried than he had up till then. “I just bashed my mom’s boss over the head. Hanging out here is crazy.”
“I’m staying,” she said. “I have to.” She pushed her hair back behind her ears and crouched in the muck with her forearms on her knees. “Wait with me, please? I promise I’ll go with you once we know he’s not going to end up dying overnight.”
Corey closed his eyes and brought his hands to his face, then silently answered with a nod. She rose to stand and he stood up beside her, and together they watched Mr. Sheffield stagger away from them, until finally he reached the pool stairs, his legs and then part of his torso steadily disappearing as he stepped into the water, less and less of him visible until he was nothing more than a tiny disembodied head in the distance.