The Better Liar

by Tanen Jones

  Mad, funny, beautiful days, and then at night, his corpse, again and again. As if, having encountered happiness, my brain had instantly learned to fear its loss.

  I would have done anything for him. That was how I knew.

  “He keeps calling me,” I said. “Wanting to know how things are going with my sister.”

  “You haven’t told him?” Mary frowned.

  “I didn’t know how. It’s ruined everything. I needed—we needed that money.”

  Mary nodded. “But you’ll get it anyway, won’t you? I mean, eventually.”

  I shook my head. “I needed it right away. Contesting the will, going back and forth with Vegas, it’ll take months. A year, maybe. I can’t—I thought I was going to get it before then. I thought I was going to get it this week.”

  Mary’s mouth had fallen open a little listening to this. “I could help you pawn your ring.”

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  “I’m just saying. I’ve pawned a lot of stuff. It works.”

  I turned the stone toward my palm. “No. Thanks, though.”

  “Maybe we should pray,” Mary said inexplicably, sitting up and crossing her legs.

  “We’re drunk,” I said. “You can’t pray when you’re drunk.”

  She fixed me with a reproving look. “Sure you can. I have a friend who does the whole rosary whenever she thinks she’s going to throw up, and then she never does.”

  “What are you going to pray for?”

  “For whatever we want.” She got up and scrambled over to the other bed, lifting a jagged pink piece of quartz out of her backpack.

  “What’s that?” I asked, pointing at it as she arranged it on the nightstand between us, right in front of the alarm clock.

  “His name is Pop Rock ’cause he’s the biggest one, the daddy. I’ve got littler ones at my apartment, but he’s the best of the bunch. Okay, come down here with me.”

  She pulled one of the decorative pillows off the bed and patted it. I stumbled around the bed and knelt next to her, imitating her solemn pose.

  “All right. Here we go. Are your eyes closed? Leslie, close your eyes. Dear God and spirits, thank you for all the good things that happened to us today. We are truly grateful.” Mary elbowed me. “Name some good things.”

  “Um…” I tried not to laugh. “Quitting jobs. Schnapps. Game shows.”

  “Yeah. Now I usually use this next part to focus on what I want out of life. Like really try to envision it. So for me I’m going to say I see myself not being poor anymore and getting out of Las Vegas and finding somebody who loves me, really loves me, and helps me with my goals.”

  “That’s a good vision,” I said, nudging her gently with my shoulder. “This is nice. I see why you do this.”

  “Okay, now you.”

  I closed my eyes again. It took me too long to come up with something. I could feel Mary fidgeting on the decorative pillow next to me. “I want to know what to do when I wake up tomorrow,” I said finally. “I want to have a plan.”

  “Perfect,” Mary said. “Now don’t you feel better?” She picked up Pop Rock and shuffled over to her backpack to tuck him away again. I lifted myself off the decorative cushion, slipping a little, and re-placed myself on the bed.

  Mary wandered back over to me and sat down, then seemed to change her mind and stood up again. “I have to pee,” she said, and headed placidly toward the bathroom.

  She paused as she crossed in front of the television, brushing pieces of crushed peanut off the sole of her foot. The light from the TV turned her two-dimensional, silhouetted like a child’s portrait. There was something familiar about the curve of her forehead. For a moment she really could have been Robin. A more perfect Robin, a Robin the way she should have looked, in another life.

  The idea filtered through my disordered thoughts, spreading itself across my vision. A solution. A way out.

  7

  Mary

  “Do you still want to watch this?” I said over my shoulder, picking bits of peanut out from between my toes. “We could find something else.”

  “Whatever you want.” Leslie’s eyes looked half-unfocused in the dim light of the bedside lamp. I’d expected sharing a room with her to be sort of chummy, like a sleepover, and for a while it had been, but now the booze was burning off, leaving a sheen of grade-school sweat on her. I was still a stranger, and now we were alone in a hotel room. The intimacy of it was creeping in. I saw her fingers seize and release the coverlet, kneading it like a stress toy.

  I picked up the remote and clicked through a football game and two channels of cartoons. American Graffiti was on the next channel, just at the part with Toad and Candy Clark where they play that song, the “I Only Have Eyes For You” song. “Oh, this is good,” I said, faking cheer, turning toward the bathroom.

  I stumbled backward. Leslie had appeared in front of me. I hadn’t heard her leave the bed. We were practically nose to nose.

  “Mary,” she said, grabbing my arm. A sour smell rose off her, liquor and something stale, like when you’ve slept too long. “Do you want to come to New Mexico with me?”

  Even drunk, I still had my waitress’s reflexes; I reacted to her invading my space by letting my muscles go gluey under her fingers. “What?” I said, laughing, letting the drunkenness carry me along.

  “Nobody knows Robin’s dead yet,” she said. “You could pretend to be her.”

  I stared at her, a leftover smile on my face. American Graffiti went on playing in the background.

  She released my arm. “It’s acting, right?” she said. “You want to be an actress. It’ll be like practice. You’d only have to do it for a few days. She just needs to be there, at the lawyer’s office. That’s all that’s in the will. And then you could have her half of the—”

  “What?” I repeated, interrupting her.

  “Fifty thousand dollars,” Leslie breathed. “That’s Robin’s inheritance. She’s dead. She can’t use it. It’s yours. You can have it all. Cash. That could give you a good start in LA, right?” She tilted her head. “And your ex…He’d never find you again.”

  I giggled, shrieky. “You’re so drunk,” I said. “You need to go lie down.”

  Leslie followed me as I retreated toward the bathroom. Her skin reddened as she spoke. Strands of hair were stuck to her cheek. “You look like her, Mary. At least, you look enough like her, and nobody in Albuquerque has seen her since she left ten years ago. All you have to do is show up and sign the papers with me. I’ve got her old passport if anyone asks for ID.”

  I didn’t want to antagonize her, so I said something like “Hmm” or maybe “Okay,” and I stroked her lank hair a little bit, the way you stroke a nervous dog.

  Leslie grabbed my stroking hand. “Mary, Robin was using a fake name to avoid her creditors. Rachel Vreeland. She died under that name. The only person who has my contact information is the landlord, and he doesn’t have my real name.”

  “He doesn’t have your real name?” I was getting drawn in.

  “I told him it was Leslie Vreeland when I was looking for her.” Her gray eyes protruded slightly above puffy lower lids. “He let me in to see her. I was going to call him tomorrow, but if I don’t call him…if she just stays Rachel Vreeland to him and to everybody else…it’s like Robin Voigt is still alive. Legally.”

  “Until they, like, investigate, and send you to jail.” I scrunched my toes against the carpet.

  “No one’s going to investigate. It was an overdose. She was an addict. And anyway, if they did, you’d be long gone with the money by then. All they’d find in Albuquerque is me. And I don’t know your last name.”

  I opened my mouth and she put her hand over it. “Don’t tell me your last name,” she said, as if I were the idiotic one.

  “Ih dosen mar becah I’m nagana do ih,�
� I said into her fleshy palm.

  “What?”

  I pulled her hand off my face and wiped my mouth. “It doesn’t matter, because I’m not going to pretend to be your sister.” An absurd smile crept over my face again at the idea.

  “You need the money,” Leslie said, following me. “And—and I need the money. I can’t wait for them to contest the will. I lost my job. We’re going to lose the house. Dave can’t accept it, he won’t—he thinks he can fix it all himself, but…” She flexed her fingers, as if they’d lost feeling. “Fifty thousand dollars would fix everything for me,” she whispered. “Wouldn’t it fix everything for you?”

  Sam’s song licked at my ear: Going to the chapel and we’re…gonna get married…His ruddy hands grasped at my waist.

  “It’s just a few days,” Leslie said. “A week, maybe.”

  I stared at her, the smile falling off my lips.

  “Please, Mary,” she said. “Just think about it.”

  She left this long quivering silence between us. It was uncomfortable on purpose; it was uncomfortable so I’d say something, so I’d say Yes! and fling myself into her arms.

  Instead I just enunciated, “I have to pee,” went over to the bed, grabbed my duffel bag, pushed past her into the bathroom, and shut the door in her face.

  8

  Mary

  I did have to pee, anyway, but then once I was done I didn’t want to go back out there. The door closing had given me instant relief. There was something funny about Leslie’s body language, a nearly infectious panic. I wished she would go back to normal. It had felt like we were friends, sort of, until the last few minutes.

  It would have been nice if she’d just wanted to be my friend.

  I turned on the shower so Leslie would think I was doing something in the bathroom, but instead of showering I squatted on the nasty tiled floor in front of the full-length mirror and took the veladora from my duffel. I counted the money, quickly at first, then again slowly to be sure I’d gotten it right. My life savings was in here—I never left it at home because my roommate was a kleptomaniac. Five hundred forty-five dollars. I sat there in front of the mirror, holding the money.

  I’m gonna come visit you, Sam had said to me. You work most Saturdays?

  The glass slowly fogged as I stared at myself. At first under the fluorescent lights I only saw my reflection in familiar bits and pieces, the hairpin lines beside my mouth that never went away anymore, the slightly asymmetrical eyebrows. Eventually my features blurred, and blurred again.

  I could have been anyone in there, underneath the condensation. Just a smudge with hair.

  I stayed in the bathroom until I was almost sober again, looking at myself.

  When I came out finally, the room felt like it was freezing. Leslie was lying sideways on one of the beds, watching the credits roll over American Graffiti and jiggling her feet, first one, then the other, so the bed creaked in an annoying little rhythm. I came closer and startled her into a sitting position, her back against the pin-striped wallpaper. “Hi,” she said, too loudly. “How are you feeling?”

  “I’m okay.” I sat down on the other bed and pointed myself toward the television. The credits finished rolling. Next up on TNT: Transformers.

  Leslie kept glancing at me and opening her mouth like she was going to say something, then shutting it again.

  “What?” I said, after the fourth time.

  “Nothing,” she said. “Are you okay?”

  “I said I was fine.” I picked at my nails. There was peanut gunk under one of them.

  “Mary—” she started.

  I thumped my head back on the pillows. “Oh my God,” I told her, “I just want to watch Transformers. Okay?”

  I flung an arm into the narrow canyon between the bed and the wall and groped for my backpack, which had my cigarettes in it.

  “You can’t smoke in here,” Leslie said meekly from the other side of the room as I pulled out a Spirit.

  “Well, maybe I’ll just head out, then,” I snapped.

  “No—you don’t have to—”

  I glanced at her. Leslie closed her mouth and crawled over to wrestle with the window, pulling the blinds to one side, but it wouldn’t open. She groped her way over to the door and yanked it open. The noise of car horns and descending airplanes rushed in.

  “I feel sick,” Leslie said suddenly, as I lit up. She tried to sit down on the bed and almost missed, scooching her torso up until the rest of her made it onto the mattress.

  “You’re just drunk. You’ll be fine.”

  She shut her eyes. “I don’t think so.”

  I looked at her lying on the bed. Half of her tow-colored hair had fallen over her face, and her makeup in the lamplight highlighted the ruts and creases on her skin where it had begun to age. She was a mess. Part of me wanted her to pass out.

  If she did, would I leave?

  Across the room, the door hung open.

  “Leslie,” I said, reaching across the empty space between our beds and poking her in the shoulder. “Leslie?”

  She sighed. “It’s almost four in the morning,” she said, opening her eyes. “We should go to sleep.”

  I nodded, lifting my cigarette.

  “Do you want me to turn off the television?”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “I like it on.” I went over to the gaping door, taking a few last pulls, then tossed the cigarette onto the walkway outside and shut it. In the freezing room I pulled off my leggings, letting them puddle on the floor, and yanked up the covers. Leslie got into bed and reached for the light. Then she rolled over in the other bed, still fully clothed, her back a lump in the dark.

  I listened to the noise of the television for a long while, my brain feeling too sharp, buzzing.

  At last, unable to sleep, I said, “What was she like?”

  Leslie’s body under the covers was still, and I thought maybe she hadn’t heard me. Then she said, “She was…you know, she was the baby of the family.” She rolled onto her back, eyes closed, speaking to the ceiling. “She liked attention. She had my dad wrapped around her finger. She ran away when she was a teenager, but she used to call him up for years after that. Tell him lies about her life, how she was getting a business degree, ask him for money, then spend it on drugs. She was pretty and charming and everybody who knew her thought she was going to grow up and do something big. She would get these—I don’t know if they were crushes, these things about other people that she admired, and then she would try to be just like them, then forget about it the next week. She would take my things and deny she’d done it. She could be really sweet sometimes, though. Really thoughtful. Mostly not toward me, though.”

  “Do you miss her?” I asked. When she didn’t answer right away, I added, “I’ve never known anyone who died before. I can’t imagine it being, like, my sister. Is it weird for you that she’s dead?”

  Her chest rose and fell in the dim light. “I haven’t talked to her in ten years,” she said. “It doesn’t feel like much has changed.”

  9

  Robin

  It was April. Plastic luminarias and string lights persisted here and there despite the Easter crosses in the yards below, from which Jesus lolled woodenly. That night it snowed, shockingly late in the year for Albuquerque. Leslie and I dragged blankets over to the window and watched it come down. From beneath the snow, the lights in the neighbors’ bushes gave off an unearthly pink-and-green glow.

  In the morning the television said school had been canceled for the day. My father had left for work already; my mother was asleep, stretched facedown across the bed in the silk nightie I coveted and stole to dress up in whenever she left it on the floor. Leslie and I carted our snow boots out of the closet and wandered outside. It was forty-eight degrees already and climbing; the sun gave the snow a permanent glare. We tramped a
ll the way across the packed-down sidewalks to the arroyo by Indian School Road. There were barely any cars out, and no other people. It felt like we were the only ones alive, which was how I liked it.

  The runoff from the Sandia Mountains was enough to fill the arroyos in any ordinary April. With the snow melting, the water reached nearly to the concrete rim of the gully. A Styrofoam Wendy’s cup bobbed on the current, its straw flopping out like a tongue.

  We clung to the railing, watching the cup go by, boots slipping on the rungs. Leslie had to yell over the sound of the water. She told me a kid my age had died here, right here. He’d fallen in and been sucked underneath the current before he could call for help. His body surfaced all the way in Los Lunas. That was twenty years ago now. They said that every twenty years the water took a six-year-old just like him. A sacrifice.

  Leslie waited until I was looking wide-eyed at the water before she poked me in the ribs. I shrieked and fell backward off the railing, pinwheeling my arms as I went, and landed in the snow with my arms spread like Jesus Christ. She dissolved into giggles.

  I don’t want to die, I told her when I stopped crying.

  You won’t, she said. I’m sorry.

  I savored it. What she meant was I love you. She never said it to me, so I always said it twice for her.

  I love you. I love you, Leslie.

  She held my mittened hand on the way home.

  10

  Mary

  I woke up just as the sun began to press in at the edges of the blinds, casting long hot stripes across Leslie’s face. She was completely passed out, mouth open, arm hanging off the mattress. I lay there across from her, staring at her face. Prickles of sweat rose on my skin underneath the covers, like ants crawling up my stomach.