Barcelona Days

by Daniel Riley

  “Will…” Whitney said.

  “Okay. Shoot,” Jack said.

  Will squinted and shot: “Did you two fuck last night?”

  Will leaned in toward Jack the instant he said it, running his eyes across his mouth and forehead and cheeks, his pure lineless face. Will examined his jaw, his throat—he waited for tics. What he registered instead, though, was wounded-ness and pure contempt. Jack did hate him. Now Will knew for sure. “Of course not,” Jack said. “No. Jesus.”

  Whitney received a look from Jack with all the pity it possessed, pity for her having to deal with Will and his accusations for even a moment longer.

  Will watched them watch each other, and then he shook his head, as though he were disappointed in both.

  “That’s not what she said,” Will said.

  Jack’s head snapped back to Will. “What?”

  “What the fuck are you doing?!” Whitney said, practically lurching for him.

  “She told me already,” Will said. “She confessed. Just please confirm it so that we can end this. It’s not a big deal. We have this game we’re—”

  “What the actual fuck—?!” Whitney was moving toward Will now. She had a half-full water glass in her hand and looked prepared to hurl it at his head.

  Will put his hands up, innocent, as though everyone was taking things too seriously all of a sudden, as though he hadn’t meant to elicit such a grand overreaction. “All right. All right. I believe you. I believe you both, I was just trying to, I needed to—”

  “What is wrong with you two?” Jack said, mouth gaping. “This is about that experiment of yours? Is that what you’re talking about? Jesus Christ. Leave me the fuck out of it, okay? I don’t want any part of it.”

  Will turned on Whitney now, smiling, satisfied as a prosecutor by the new revelation. Whitney’s eyes bore right back into Will’s. So what, they said. She’d told Jack what they’d done.

  No one was paying attention to Jack anymore. But he hadn’t noticed, and so he kept going: “Or is directing all this shit at me just a way to make you feel better about what happened with you and Jenna last night? She—”

  Whitney flipped back to Jack: “What do you know?”

  “He doesn’t know anything because there’s nothing to know,” Will said.

  A window opened through which Jack might submit the next evidence. He looked ready to say something, to stab them both, but then he swallowed his tongue. He shook his head, seething, and reached for the door handle instead, ready to march out, but still not all the way ready yet.

  “You two are fucked up.” Jack was cracking, his eyes were wide. He whipped to Whitney one last time—with an apology in his face, it seemed, as well as an offer to get her out of there.

  She was stone still. “Thank you for everything,” she said coolly. “Thank you for bringing me my stuff, okay?”

  Jack looked stunned, hot in the cheeks, the initial accusation still branded onto his forehead. “Whatever,” he said. “If you’re into this, you two deserve each other. I hope it ends up great!” He was out the door and down a couple stairs, but he couldn’t stop himself; it just kept coming, the exasperation flowing like a gusher that might take days to cap. “Best of luck with it! Get home safe!”

  Jack pounded the stairs. Whitney didn’t say anything as he descended and neither did Will.

  Will shut the door with a gentle click. He was shaking his head and rubbing his temples, but Whitney could see in his jaw that he wasn’t wound tight. She was the one who was shaking, shaking there silently. Will rubbed his eyes, but she was wider awake now than she’d been in days. They were both still drunk from the morning, and the night before, and the night before that.

  “I don’t even…I don’t have a clue who you are right now,” Whitney said.

  “He was lying,” Will said. “He obviously just made something up about Jenna because he was offended. Or maybe she made it up and said something—who knows? I don’t know what to believe about anything right now.”

  “You don’t know what to believe? You?”

  “Nothing happened with her,” he said. “He was fighting back. He was throwing sand in my eyes because I’d offended him. I’d accused him of lying and doing the most dishonorable thing there is. I don’t blame him. If nothing really happened between you two, I get why he was offended.”

  He was so plain about it. He yawned. Their limited stores of energy were reducing back to zero.

  “You’re telling me that was completely baseless.”

  “I don’t know how many times I can say it. I had my chances last month. I took two. I played by the rules that you established. I did what you told me to do. I told you about it. And that was it for me. It was hard enough. It never felt right for me to play around like that. I didn’t feel comfortable. I mostly didn’t enjoy it. I don’t want that. I never asked for it. I wouldn’t bring that around again for anything, and I would never hurt you.”

  He moved to the kitchen and poured a fresh drink, just one, and then handed it to her instead of taking it himself. Her hands were shaking, her face was red. She seemed fixed still on what he’d just said. She took a large sip, warm whiskey, then he took a sip.

  “Why don’t you believe me?” she said. “I just don’t get why you did that to him, why you said that. He had nothing to do with any of this, and now he thinks we’re fucking insane.”

  “So what?”

  “So, you’re the one who’s cared this whole time about keeping up impressions. You’re the one who couldn’t stand the thought of them finding out we’d been arguing the other night in the alley, who practically got on his knees to beg me to join them before going home.”

  “I just don’t care anymore. It doesn’t matter. It’s over. None of the last three days was anything, none of it was real. The trip’s over.”

  “No. I don’t believe that,” she said. “What is it, really? Why do you keep acting like this?”

  “Because there’s something else,” he said, looking hard into her. “I can just tell, okay? There’s something right there that you’re not telling me, but I can’t figure out what it is. I’ve been staring at you for seven fucking years and I can tell when there’s something else there. That every time I ask the question, you’re considering something else. I guess it’s not him. Or it is, and you guys are good together, you’re synced up with the story. But I believe you. I really do. Then again, if it’s him, and you two both lied, that’s fucked up…just know that. But if it’s not him—it’s not him, right?—then I believe you. I believe you unless I don’t, but I believe you, which means it’s something else.”

  While he was speaking she’d closed her eyes, and they were still shut. She sipped again, swallowing hard. She wanted to go back to sleep and start over again. She clenched her eyes tighter, in a strain, as though fighting off inertia, some inevitable inconvenient reality that was closing in. Her cheeks glowed bright like electric stovetops and she squeezed her eyes tight enough that tears, real live tears, appeared at the corners.

  “Who do you think is lying?” Will said, retreating to the kitchen again. “Do you think it’s Gram? Do you think he’s trying to lure her back? Or do you think the police really are looking for her? What if, after all the lies she told, the one about her roommates is actually true? What if that really was her roommate who got killed? What if the police really are looking for her? What if she really did tell Jack something happened between her and me, just to fuck with us?”

  Her eyes shot open, filmed over, wet. “Then what would it be—another true story?”

  “It would be a lie. Another lie. But maybe he’s not the one who’s lying, is all I mean. Just something to fuck with him and you and me on her way out of here. One last little dagger before leaving.”

  “Why should I believe that explanation?” she said.

  “Because it’s exactly the sort of thing she’d do. Not the sort of thing he’d do, but the sort of thing she’d do. Why do I have to accept your explan
ation, but you’re not willing to accept mine?”

  “I guess that’s the fundamental question, huh?” she said. “I guess the answer to that is the answer to everything.”

  She sipped from the glass, and swallowed hard, and squeezed her eyes shut again.

  “What if the police come looking for us next?” Will said. “Asking questions about Jenna? Or what if she can’t get out on her flight? What if there’s a red notice or whatever at the airport to hold her for questioning? And then what if Jack can’t get out? What if we can’t get out?”

  “Who knows what name they’re even looking for…” she said.

  “What if there really was a murder and she actually knows something?”

  “What if she knows the whole story?”

  “She said she slept with the boyfriend before leaving town,” Will said. “That could be yet another lie, or it could be the truth. And, anyway, it would give sufficient motive for fleeing. Insane as that is.”

  “In that case, what if she’s the reason the boyfriend killed the girlfriend?” Whitney said. “Or…what if she really is the killer?”

  They were standing fifteen feet from one another near the front door still, sort of arranged around the dining-room table. It was as though they sensed themselves fully in the apartment all of a sudden—their staging, their scale—and were seeing the whole scene from a fresh perspective, the implication of the stakes of the conversation, the incredible predicament they’d engineered for themselves.

  “Let’s not do this,” Will said. “She didn’t do anything. This is ridiculous.”

  “And now she’s missing,” Whitney said. “Gone without a trace. Phone in the Seine on her way to the train. A first-time killer on the lam. Never to be heard of again, except for one final tryst.”

  Will shook his head and finished their shared drink. He was so beat. He shook his head and closed his eyes and now he was eyeing the bed in the other room.

  “Just fucking tell me the truth,” Whitney said, eyes shut now to the unfamiliar blazing sunlight in the room, speaking in his direction without looking at him.

  “I get this sense that you almost want it to have happened,” he said, searching her all over again, looking into the fresh seams in that well-manicured face, searching for a reason, for an answer, but still not finding it. “You want it for some reason. For cover, or something. It’s all related to what I was saying before, to the fact that there’s something there that you’re not saying. What do you want it so bad for, Whit?”

  “No cover. No hiding. No nothing. It would make sense if it had happened, is all I mean. And Jack wouldn’t make it up himself. I just want to know why he said that.”

  “I would never.”

  “Please.” Her eyes were shut again, but they were especially tense now, so tight they looked painful, and the tears were back at the corners.

  “You want it to have happened. Why? I’m getting the feeling there might be a good reason.”

  “Please just say it,” she said, eyes still shut, mouth now falling at the corners. “Say what really happened. I need you to. I need it.”

  “But why?”

  “Because I need it.” A tear slipped down her cheek.

  “What happens if I give it to you?” he said. “If I say something happened, even if it didn’t. Do you get to tell me the truth, then? Do you get to tell me what it is you’re holding back?”

  “No,” she said, her eyes shut like steel gates, her mouth a full frown. She needed to go back to sleep. She found the edge of the couch with her hand and sat. “I just need to know.”

  “Open your eyes,” he said. “I want to look at you.”

  He moved to the couch and sat across from her. There were single streaks out of each eye. She held them pressed tight.

  “Whitney, open your eyes,” he said again.

  She shook her head no.

  “Why are you crying?”

  She shook her head no again.

  “Open your eyes and look at me.”

  This time she did as she was told. Her eyes were their light-hoarding silver coins at their centers, but they were wet all over and ringed in red. They found Will’s face and he smiled sweetly at her, generous Will, conscientious Will, the man she’d loved for seven years.

  “I fucked Jenna,” he said.

  She inhaled like she’d been stabbed in the lung.

  “No you didn’t,” she said. She did it again, the sharp inhale. And then again. And again. Like a hiccup.

  “I did. Last night. It was quick and it wasn’t anything.” He was as calm as when he’d been denying Jack’s accusation.

  “Don’t lie to me,” she said. Inhale. Inhale. “I just need to know the actual truth.”

  “There was nothing I could do,” he said. “She dropped her towel and disappeared into the bathroom, and it was just this body, and I had one more, and I knew it would hurt, but I was drunk, and I wasn’t thinking straight, and I knew that as hard as it would be, you and I could get over it.”

  “Don’t.” She’d slammed her eyes shut again. She had her hands over her ears like a child with a siren. She’d sealed herself off from the light and the sound. “I don’t want to hear any more.”

  “The truth is she was like any girl that age. All talk, all body, hardly knew what she was doing. Once it finally happened, it was quick. It was nothing.”

  Whitney was pulling at the ends of her hair, doing it mindlessly. “You’re a liar,” she said. “But if you’re not, I fucking hate you forever. If you’re not lying, I’ll never forgive you, and this is over now. I’ll never ever ever forgive you. Her of all people—”

  “I’m not lying. And I’m glad to hear you say all that. I want you to feel it. I want you to know what I did. And I want you to think about it until you want to kill me. Just think about it, think about what I did, think about me with that girl you hate so much, think about how much it makes you hate me, think about it until you can’t take it anymore—and then tell me whatever it is that you did.”

  She was heaving now, in heavy convulsions. She was upright, but her body had folded into a strange shape he’d never seen before. Her head was between her knees. He was looking at the top of her head between her legs. She shook her head no.

  “No?” he said.

  “I can’t,” she said, shaking her head no and no and no. Her mouth was full of snot. He could barely distinguish the two words. Her head was still shaking no.

  “You can’t what?” he said.

  “I can’t tell you,” she said, eyes cinched, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I can’t ever tell you. I can’t I can’t I can’t…”

  He moved closer to her on the couch and grabbed her hands and she let him take them. She had no fight. He squeezed her hands, kneaded them.

  “Whitney,” he said. “What is it?”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head, rocking her whole body side to side.

  He let her rock there, folded unnaturally still, eyes closed, shaking, sputtering, failing to breathe. He held her until she turned up back into his face and opened her slimy wet eyes. She was breathing again, but there was terror in her face.

  “Please…” he said.

  She’d been pestled into mush. There was nothing whole left of her. There was nothing formidable. She breathed unevenly, her breath skipped like a seizure, she stared possessed into a vague zone several feet behind his head. And without refocusing her eyes, without turning back from the middle-distance nothingness, the words came out, thin as the first indication of a pinhole leak in a hose.

  “There was,” she said, severing the statement with a breath, “a third.”

  He didn’t say anything. His cheeks filled with blood. He’d known. He’d known the whole time there was something else. She’d had her chance and lied about it for days.

  “Okay,” he said, frozen, speaking as little as possible so as not to spook her out of confessing.

  “There was a third,” she said.

  “You
just said that,” he said.

  “There was a third person,” she said.

  “You told me on Saturday that there were two, just like me.”

  “I told you on Saturday that there were two guys…”

  “Okay.”

  “But I also had sex with a woman.”

  “Okay…”

  “A woman in L.A.”

  “Okay…that’s okay…I don’t totally…I just wish you would’ve…why didn’t you say something?”

  “I know it was okay, within the rules, within everything, it wasn’t stipulated. But, Will…fuck. Will. Will. Will…” She was spinning out again. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “What do you mean you don’t know what to do?”

  “I’ve been seriously messed up.”

  “You were allowed three. Those were the rules. We didn’t specify that it had to be—I just don’t get why you’ve been hiding th—”

  “I don’t mean…you’re not understanding. Because I’m not really saying…It was, I don’t know what to do. My whole…my head. I don’t know. I haven’t been able to…and I don’t know.…I’ve been fucked up by…I’m fucked up, I’m fucked up…”

  Her eyes were shut again and her body rocked with the record skips.

  “You’re saying…you liked it.” He stared at her.

  “It’s not liking it. It’s that…something happened. To me. And I’m just so fucking confused.”

  “What are you trying to say? Just say it to me. It’s just me. You’ve already said most of it…”

  “It’s why I’ve been so…this whole time, this whole trip.…All the shit that’s been making me feel so out of control. I haven’t been able to think straight. I’ve barely been able to sleep. I haven’t been myself at all.”

  “But not just because you had sex with a woman. You’re saying something else.”

  “I don’t know what I’m saying.”

  “Are you saying that you enjoyed it more than you expected?”

  “I don’t know what I’m saying.”

  “Are you saying that you think you might want to have sex with women again?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know.”