by Mindy Mejia
“Is this my only present?”
He lifted a finger and brushed it along my jaw. “I don’t know yet.”
I stepped closer, angling my head up. “How can I help you decide?”
He didn’t disappoint. Slowly, so slowly, he leaned in and kissed me. It was unlike any kiss I’d had, made up more of air and promises than actual flesh. I felt myself getting weak, getting wet. I reached for his shirt buttons, but he stopped me.
“No.”
“No?” I said it like I’d never heard of the word before.
He laughed and wound my scarf around my neck. “We’re going out.”
It was effing cold, so we took the skyway, walking from skyscraper to skyscraper in the second-story labyrinth of shops and corporate offices. Most of the stores were closed for the weekend so we just window-shopped and wandered into the few that were open. Peter led us on a meandering route over Nicollet Mall and then we hit the streets to walk through the more crowded theater district. I recognized one of the old lightbulb marquees where I’d gone to see The Nutcracker when I was ten.
“You mean last year?” he teased.
“I don’t know, old man. Why don’t you carve it into a stone tablet so I can understand how young I am?”
“I left my chisel at home.” He casually slid my glove into his and we kept walking like we did this every day, and no one we passed even glanced in our direction.
We went on—playing, baiting each other, both of us acting drunk even though we were completely sober—until we came to a restaurant with blue lights that rose three stories high.
“Hungry?” he asked, opening a door made out of bright mosaic tiles.
Since it was early afternoon, there weren’t a lot of people eating and we got seated right away. It turned out to be a tapas restaurant, one of Peter’s favorites, and he told me to order anything I wanted. Soon our table was filled with tiny plates of exotic food and I tried everything. Although a few things tasted weird, most of it was delicious. My favorite was a beef tongue wrapped in cabbage with this amazing dipping sauce. When I offered some to Peter, he declined.
“I’m a vegetarian.”
“What?” I was thrown. I scanned the table, like I could find some evidence of him eating meat, and realized all the dishes on his side were cheeses, vegetables, and breads. It was such a mundane thing, but somehow it shook my confidence, took us another step apart.
“What else don’t I know about you?”
He smiled and thought for a second before answering.
“I hate tofu.” His lip even curled as he said it. “It’s probably a vegan sin, but the stuff always reminds me of Soylent Green.”
“I’ve never eaten tofu.”
“Lucky.”
I laughed. “Why’d you become a vegetarian?”
“My mom was. She basically raised me as one.”
“I love my mom’s chicken and biscuits.”
“I love my mom’s roasted portobellos.”
“Mushrooms are gross,” I declared. “Who decided it was okay to eat fungus?”
“Fungi.”
“Thanks, fun guy. I also kind of hate speech correction.”
Peter closed his eyes and shook his head in apology. “Believe me, I do, too. It’s out of my mouth before I even know it.”
“I do that so much. I’ll be halfway through a conversation before I realize I don’t actually believe anything I’m saying.”
I was glowing, caught up in our game of reveal, but Peter fell silent just as the waiter came to check on us. When we were alone again he leaned in and took my hand, eyes intent on me, and in that moment there wasn’t anywhere else in the world besides this table with the two of us wrapped taut in its circle of light.
“Tell me something true,” he said.
“I just did. Chicken and biscuits. Mushrooms.” My teasing smile faltered.
“That’s different. Those are tidbits. They’re facts—meaningless, weightless. Facts are everywhere. Tell me something visceral, something that’s as part of you as your breath or teeth, that you don’t even know how to lie about. Tell me something that can hold you here with me.”
For a moment I stared at the plates on the table and then the memory was there, like it had been hovering right at the edges of my mind, waiting to be told. I smoothed my fingers over his and wondered where to start, then I wondered what he would think of me when I was done. Taking a deep breath, I chose my words carefully.
“When I was a kid, I used to tag along after my brother, Greg, and the Beason twins from the next farm over. They were older jockish boys I could hardly keep up with on my bike and they weren’t very nice. If I had anyone else to play with, I probably wouldn’t have followed them around. When you live in the country, though, you play with whoever lives nearby.
“Sometimes we chased barn cats or went swimming in the lake. Sometimes they had me steal stuff from the drugstore, because no one ever stopped me except to say How’s your mom doing? Other times they just made me go home.
“One day they biked down to the quarry and I followed as usual. An old wire fence circled the place, but it was broken in a few spots and no one had worked there for years. It was easy to get in. We left our bikes on top and climbed down the rock face. It looked like a giant staircase cut into the ground, like we were going to another world. I was excited and started exploring as soon as we reached the bottom. The boys set up tin cans and tried to knock them down with stones. I wasn’t paying attention and walked in front of them as they were throwing. The rock hit me here.”
I brushed a finger over the scar line just beneath my right eyebrow. The skin always felt too smooth there, glossy and slightly indented.
“I fell down and the blood gushed everywhere. It got into my eye and I couldn’t see. The boys were all yelling at each other and at me. I don’t think we were supposed to be playing in the quarry. When I accused them of hurting me on purpose, one of them—I don’t know which one—got really close to my ear and told me that if I ratted them out, I would pay for it. They’d never let me play with them again and if I tried to tag along, they’d throw more rocks at me.
“ ‘It’ll be on purpose then,’ he said.
“They tried to push me back up the rock wall, but I still couldn’t see anything and my head was pounding so bad. I fell a couple times and finally Greg told me to stay there while they went to get help.
“I was lying on the bottom of the quarry for what felt like forever. There was no shade and the sun made me nauseated. I knew my dad was coming and that I had to lie to him, and I was convinced that God would strike me dead. Honor thy father and mother, they said in Sunday school. I pictured God himself walking down those giant stairsteps, pointing a finger at me and never letting me come back up to the regular world.
“When Dad got there I told him I’d climbed down into the quarry on my own, even though the boys told me not to, and I’d fallen. I was crying and shaking, waiting for the judgment I was sure was coming, but Dad just scooped me up in his big arms and carried me the whole way back to his truck and drove me home.
“No one got punished that day. Not even me.”
I rubbed the scar absently as the waiter cleared our plates.
“Greg and the Beason boys were grateful. They even stole me some SweeTARTS—my favorite candy—but I was petrified all week. I was still waiting and I couldn’t bear it. I knew something awful should happen to me for what I’d done.
“At church that Sunday I said the first and only prayer I’ve ever prayed for myself. Dear God, I said. If you’re mad at me, strike me down right now.
“But nothing happened. The organist kept playing. My parents kept singing the hymn. A rush of relief washed over me as I realized I was safe. God didn’t mind at all. I started pretending more, being accepted more, and I prayed the same thing the next week and the week after that. I’ve said it every Sunday since I was eight years old. Dear God, if you’re angry, strike me down. Strike me down here and now.<
br />
“And every week when He doesn’t I leave the church feeling . . . absolved. Like I’m still covered in dirt but the dirt’s clean. I know I’m not good, Peter. I don’t think I can be. And that’s something I don’t know how to lie about. I can’t walk into church and say Bless me, for I have sinned. I know I shouldn’t be blessed. I walk in and say Strike me down. And even though I know God will take me up on it someday, I still can’t change, because as much as I should want to be good and one of the blessed ones”—I lifted his hand and kissed the palm and laid my cheek in it—“I want you more.”
I rubbed my face into his hand to absorb the texture of his skin completely, to memorize it for all the days ahead. His thumb brushed my cheek and he studied my face, like he was memorizing, too.
“What do you think?” I asked, shakily. “Was that true enough for you?”
“I think . . .”—he drew a deep breath and let it out slowly, then brought our hands down to the table and kissed the back of mine—“he’ll have to strike us both down now.”
We went back to the hotel and undressed slowly, savoring the revelation of each other. When our clothes were in piles on the floor he laid me down on the bed and traced me lightly all over. He murmured while he roamed, telling me how beautiful my breasts were and how sweet they tasted. He explored my stomach, my hipbones, the inside of my thighs, and his words created something inside me, a wild animal that bucked and clenched, forging a thousand invisible emotions trapped underneath my skin. When he lined our bodies up and pushed inside me, it became too much to contain and the happiness welled up in my eyes, trickling down my temples.
Out of nowhere I remembered my grandpa’s silent, tear-streaked face in that depressing nursing home room. It was probably the last time anyone should be thinking about their dead grandfather, like some final proof of how unnatural I was, but in that moment I understood, finally, how love could be too much for our bodies to hold.
When Peter saw my tears he stopped moving and got the strangest expression.
“What is it?” I whispered.
“I was going to say your name, but I don’t even know what to call you.”
I pulled his head down to the crook of my neck, hugging my entire being around him. “Call me yours.”
DEL / Wednesday, April 16, 2008
THE PROBLEM with DNA was it took too damn long. It wasn’t like in the movies where they poured something in a test tube, swirled it around, and got the name of the killer. You had to send the samples up to the crime lab in Minneapolis and they put your stuff in line behind everyone else’s stuff and they got to it when they got to it, which could take up to a year depending on the type of evidence. Lab people, working nine-to-five and looking at dead-girl cells all day long. They didn’t care about your dead girl. It didn’t make any difference to them. At least that’s what it seemed like from here in Pine Valley, where we only had one dead girl and she’d torn a wide, ugly hole through this town.
Hattie was all anyone was talking about, the only thing filling their eyes when they passed me on the street. Word got around about Tommy Kinakis’s DNA test, probably from Tommy himself, the big goon, and about Lund being pulled out of school for questioning. Phone calls poured in to dispatch and Nancy told most of them to stuff it, but she felt it was her duty to keep me up-to-date on the gossip as she tucked sandwiches and fresh coffee into the few bare spaces on my desk. Brian Haeffner kept playing politician, trying to set up daily press conferences. Every parent in town wanted to know about security for the high school. Thanks to Portia, the curse story had spread like wildfire and two vans from the cities’ news stations had camped out on Main Street last night. I’d stopped answering my phone unless it was Jake . . . or Bud. He had called around six this morning.
“Del.”
“Bud.” I was sitting at the kitchen table staring at today’s front-page picture, which was a “still” from the play on Friday night of Hattie wearing her bloodstained dress and her crown, looking haunted and holding one arm out against the darkness. It gave me goosebumps. I imagined Bud was looking at the same thing. Neither of us spoke again for a minute.
“Do you have the DNA results?” His voice sounded rough.
“No. No, it takes a little while. I’m checking other things in the meantime, getting the timeline down.”
“You brought Peter Lund down to the station yesterday.”
It wasn’t a question, but I heard the demand behind the words well enough. Twenty-five years of friendship will do that.
“We’re talking to a lot of people.”
“You think Lund had something to do with it?”
“He was the director of the play, knew all the kids. You’ve heard all this curse bullshit. If any of them had a mind to act it out, I thought Lund might have a bead on which one.” It grated to be lying outright, to be using that stupid curse as a reason for anything.
“So you don’t think it was Tommy?”
“I don’t think anything, Bud. When I start to think things are one way, then it closes off a lot of other ways that might be just as probable. I’m just getting as much information as I can while we wait on this DNA, trying to piece the whole night together and everyone who was in it.”
There was another long silence, a sigh on the other end of the line, and a hitch in Bud’s voice when he spoke again. It sounded like this call was costing him almost more effort than he could bear.
“Del, Jesus. All I can think about is her poor body lying there on that slab yesterday. Me and Mona went to claim her and she looked like a piece of meat, all bloated and—and wrong. My little girl, my little girl was a piece of meat on a slab.”
His next words were racked by sobs. I could hardly make them out.
“And I’m going to gut the son of a bitch that did it. I’m going to make him wish he’d never so much as looked at her.”
“Bud, you listen to me. Bud?”
There was only scraping and heavy breathing in response.
“I’m going to find this guy, Bud. Hattie’s got me for that. She doesn’t need her dad going to prison. Mona needs you, too, you know, and Greg needs you here for him when he gets home. You gotta remember them.”
I didn’t know if he heard me until the breathing evened out. The sun was starting to rise, turning the kitchen a deep, burning orange.
“Are you saying you’re going to arrest me?”
“Bud—”
“My girl is dead. I held her in my hands yesterday, held her sweet, bald head and watched her cry for the first time. I taught her how to drive a tractor on my lap with her little pigtails bouncing in my face. I watched her play a queen—a queen with all the power and wickedness you could imagine. She owned that stage. She lit it up. And I hugged her and told her what a good job she did and let her go. I just let her walk out of that school and die. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit around and pick out her funeral dress while her killer walks around free.”
“That’s exactly what you’re going to do.”
“Damn it, Del. What aren’t you telling me?”
“I’m telling you we’re in the middle of an ongoing investigation and you’ll know who killed Hattie the minute the cuffs are on him.”
There was a pause and then the line went dead. I dropped my forehead on to my hand.
After a minute, I got up and walked to the window, where the sky was lightening up behind the houses. Normally it was the kind of sunrise I liked to watch, all hellfire burning against the clouds, the kind where Bud and I would ignore a pull on the line to just sit in the boat and stare at the horizon. Over two decades we’d been fishing together. Every year he invited me to his house for Easter dinner and this year we’d all sat around their dining room table eating honey-glazed ham. Hattie’d been trying to get me to tell her how fast over the speed limit she could drive without getting pulled over, while Bud and Mona and I all laughed, and now she was never going to speed anywhere again. Bud, who’d told me to slap a ticket on her right then
for “conspiracy to speed,” was threatening vigilantism. And I—if I couldn’t find Hattie’s killer fast and quiet enough—I might end up losing Bud, too.
The badge weighed heavy this morning. I downed the rest of my coffee and left the house with a blazing need to do something, anything, that would push this case forward.
I went to Carl Jacobs’s house. When Jake talked to Carl yesterday, he’d corroborated Lund’s story and most of their answers had matched dead-on. Both said they’d gone to Carl’s house after locking up the school, driving separately, Lund following Carl. They sat in Carl’s basement having a beer—Budweiser, by both accounts—and shot the shit for a while before Lund left. Carl estimated the time at 10:25, because he’d turned on the last of the news afterwards.
What wasn’t so clear was their topic of discussion. Lund said they talked about the play and about work. Carl didn’t remember straight off, according to Jake. Then he claimed they talked sports—how the Twins were looking this season. He didn’t think they’d talked about much else.
It was a quarter to seven when I got to his house, early enough that Carl wouldn’t have left for work yet. He answered the knock like he’d been waiting right on the other side, dressed and shaved for the day.
“Sheriff. Little early, isn’t it?” He glanced past me toward the cruiser.
“Early enough that you can spare a few minutes.” I nodded behind him and he let me in. His boy stood in the hallway, still in his pajamas but wide awake and half afraid, by the looks of him.
“Morning.” I tipped my hat to him, which put most kids at ease, but not this one. He just dropped his eyes to the floor, not moving.
“Maybe Lanie can watch him for a minute while we talk.”
“Lanie!” Carl shouted and his wife appeared, also in pajamas. She didn’t look very awake or pleased.
“What?” She didn’t greet me.