She hated herself for saying it, but it was true. If her father caught him in here, if Van did something crazy like that…he’d drown them both in the pool. He’d smash something over Van’s head, the way he’d done on New Year’s Eve. He’d drag them by their hair and promise to do unspeakable things to her mother and oh, she didn’t know what was worse.
That he might do those things, or that Van might actually see them.
Though the latter seemed at least a million times more bearable, when he quite suddenly put his hands on her face. Kissed her in a dozen weird places, like her temples and her forehead and right into her hair.
“I know,” he said. “I know.”
Just like that. Her heart soared, then sank as she heard footsteps on the stairs.
“Van—”
“Stay there. Just stay there, baby, and pretend to be asleep.”
He kissed her again, but this time he did it on the lips. Soft and reassuring—God, everything about him so reassuring, even if she had absolutely no idea what he was going to do.
He was going to have to be fast about it, whatever he decided on. The heavy thud-thud of her father’s footsteps—like something out of a goddamn ghost story—were already at the top of the stairs, and Van had barely begun to snatch up his clothes. By the time that terrible sound reached her door, he was as conspicuous as he’d ever been—so naked still, in the middle of her neat little room.
And it seemed worse, too, that he had all his things in his arms. He looked like a thief who’d come in to somehow steal things that didn’t actually belong to her. He looked big and bristly and like the Gollum she’d first thought of, only in reverse.
She didn’t want to hide from him now. She wanted him to do the hiding—so much so that her heart nearly stopped when he melted his way back into the closet behind him, just as the door to her bedroom swung open.
It looked like a magic trick, she thought. Like he’d faded to black without even really trying, though somehow it still didn’t seem like enough. Her father knew when she breathed wrong. He’d guess this no problem at all, and then what?
She lay as still as she could on the bed, eyes so closed they almost trembled with the effort, and prayed there would be no and then what.
“Eve?”
She came close to shuddering at the sound of his voice. Kept it in by the skin of her teeth, kept her eyes tightly closed and her breathing so steady and regular. She’d done it before, after all. She’d pretended to be asleep for all sorts of reasons, though she had to admit—none of them had felt quite as life and death as this.
Usually it was about a book she’d been sneakily reading, or maybe just plain old unwillingness to talk with the man who’d slapped her an hour before. But here, now, everything about him suddenly seemed life-threatening.
The smell of his cologne creeping through her body. The sound of his breathing, like some slumberous, too-heavy animal. And then finally his voice again, piercing through the darkness.
“Eve?” he said, but he wasn’t really asking. He knew, he knew. He’d guessed immediately, and now came the part she hated the most.
The pretending game, wherein he acted as if he didn’t know what she’d done wrong, but secretly did. And then he simply waited like the real Gollum haunting her, for her to slip up.
It didn’t surprise her when something cool and wet slid sideways over her face. The tension was just too much, and it got steadily worse the longer he remained at the end of her bed, saying her name over and over again.
She thought of Van adding the i and the e to the end of Eve, and that helped. But it wouldn’t be of any use to her at all, if her father actually killed Van. He could do it, she knew. Van was big, but her father was bigger, and though Van looked fierce, he wasn’t at all.
His face never got so red with anger she thought he might burst. He never screamed or yanked on her, or tried to suffocate her with a dishcloth, because she’d forgotten to wring it out again.
But she knew that in this world, those sorts of people—the ones who did terrible things like that, without even thinking about it—always won. They did, they did, and for a moment the unfairness of this idea struck her so hard she couldn’t breathe. Another tear slipped out—one her father would undoubtedly notice—while every fiber of her being willed him to just go.
Though it came as a thunderous shock when he actually did. On the third non-response to her name he simply turned and walked out of her room, then shut the door behind himself, as calmly as you please.
Leaving her in some sort of strange tension vacuum.
She couldn’t breathe out for the longest time. Every muscle remained on edge, just waiting for the surprise finish—though none came. He hadn’t guessed. He didn’t know. It was okay for her to start shaking with relief now, despite the very real problem that still presented itself.
Namely—how the fuck was she supposed to get Van out of here? What was she even meant to say, to something like this? Oh hey, sorry my life’s so fucked up you have to hide in a closet, as though I’m twelve years old. Do you think you could possibly jump out of my bedroom window now?
Her heart carried on thumping wildly when she finally crossed the carpet to the closet, though she suspected it wasn’t fear anymore. It was embarrassment, just horrible, soul-crushing embarrassment. They’d done all of those things and fallen asleep together like normal people, and now he’d had to hide in a closet, naked.
Though of course he wasn’t naked when she finally opened the door. And even better, he didn’t look as though he found this situation the least bit humiliating. He looked pissed with many capital Ps, and like maybe he wanted to go downstairs and do what he’d said he wanted to.
I want to spit on the guy, he’d said, without even using something like your father or Mr. Bennett. Just the guy, as though the man did not deserve a title.
The thought made her heart pound harder. It made her feel sharp and sick, all at the same time, and then he just put a hand around the back of her neck and drew her close. Held her tight, for nowhere near long enough.
Kissed her, kissed her.
“I have to go now,” he said, with those good gentle hands still on her face and his mouth so near to hers. It sounded like something she almost wanted to hear, when he did it like that.
“How?” she asked, but most of her suspected the answer. He actually and really was going to go out the goddamn window, and oh she didn’t like that idea at all. Two stories up and nothing but the concrete surrounding the pool below. “You’ll break your neck if you—”
“I’m six foot five, Evie. I can practically touch your window from the ground—I’ll be fine.” He hesitated then. Closed his eyes briefly, as though building up to something. “But I want you to know something first, before I do this fucked-up thing.” Another pause, this time longer. More painful. “I think this is crazy.”
There it was, in plain English. He thought this was too much, too weird, and now he wanted nothing more than to cut her off. End it right here, in her suddenly too-dark bedroom.
She’d never be able to remember his face, if her last glimpse of it was in shadows. She couldn’t even remember it now, as her brain fumbled toward some words she could say, some note of protest she could give. Eve could not attend normal life this evening because her father is an asshole. Please excuse her, and be assured she’ll return to it the second she gets the chance.
Only as it turned out, she didn’t need a note at all. A second before he left by way of the window, he said it to her straight.
“We’re never doing this again. The next time I leave, you’re coming with me.”
* * * * *
She told herself the same thing, a hundred times a day. He didn’t really mean it. And then when her brain informed her that he actually probably had, she tried to tell her brain that he’d intended something else altogether.
There were a million things someone might mean by you’re coming with me, after all. Even though she found
it very difficult to work out what those things were. Maybe he had tickets to Disneyland and hoped she’d come for a vacation with him?
One on which they’d argue and return early and then threaten to kill each other.
God, she just couldn’t come to grips with it. With him. He offered too much, and took too little. He made promises that thrilled her past the point of bearable, until just the thought of something like that actually happening made her dig her nails into the palms of her hands.
Doing so stopped the thought dead. It blanked her mind, and that was what she needed most of all—a blank mind. No thoughts about Van. No crazy notions about running away with him, because if she thought about it too long she knew she’d want to do it, and what then? What then?
She couldn’t very well tell him that her mother needed to come with them, in case of unfortunate accidents that weren’t really accidents at all.
Though as it turned out, she didn’t really need to. She didn’t have to tell him what had kept her here all these years, because on returning home on Monday evening, she found her reason for staying had gone.
Barely a whisper left. Barely a trace. Just empty hangers in her mother’s side of the closet, and the jewelry box stood open on the dresser. She’d taken everything she needed while her daughter went to college and her husband went to work, and left behind all the things that didn’t matter.
And when Evie finally managed to drag herself downstairs—only to find her father in the kitchen by the counter—she had to wonder. Had her father ever made a deal with her mother, like the one he’d made with her? If you leave, I’ll kill our daughter, she thought, idly.
And then not so idly.
“Sit down, Eve,” her father said, but really he didn’t have to. She knew what his gray, grave expression meant. The game of pretending he hadn’t known what she’d been doing was over. He’d uncovered something, and now she had to step forward to see what it was. Had she left a book somewhere—one that she shouldn’t have been reading? A tissue left too long in her bathroom wastepaper basket?
The undesirable items ranged from the smallest, simplest thing to near unspeakable transgressions, but she had to be honest. She hadn’t really understood what unspeakable was, until right this moment.
The worst thing possible had happened, and her mother had just left her to it.
“Sit down, Eve,” he said again, while that familiar heat spread over her palms. Soon they’d be wet with perspiration, but of course whenever she tried to wipe them on her skirt he’d catch it, and punish her harder.
Good girls did not do things like that. Good girls did not have thoughts about stabbing their fathers. And above all else, good girls did not invite boys with wallets into their homes.
“Are you defying me, Eve?” her father asked, and it was only then that she realized she had absolutely no intention of sitting down. She’d done it a thousand times before and never blinked, never thought there was an option…
But something had changed now.
She could feel it rising inside herself. Could feel it opening its mouth and hear it saying words—If your father kills you now, you’ll never see Van again. You’ll never hold him, never kiss him, never fall asleep on him. You’ll never get that normal life, Evie.
So do what you have to do. There’s nothing here to hold you back anymore. Nothing to stop you—just go. Go on. You’re free. Go.
Though she was more surprised than anyone, when her body actually obeyed. It didn’t even stop to collect itself, or check with her mind that this was definitely the way to go. It just reached forward whip quick, snatched Van’s wallet—that terrible, terrible evidence of her crime—from the counter and then went for the sliding doors, all in one big, juddering rush.
She couldn’t keep up. She didn’t want to keep up. For once nothing felt clumsy or awkward—she almost flew across the kitchen, and quite possibly would have made it, if it hadn’t been for her hair. Her long, long hair, which her father got his fist around before she’d reached the glass.
She could hardly believe the noise that came out of her when he did it. It sounded like something unearthly, something that wasn’t her at all, and the harder he yanked on that length of hair, the louder she made herself.
It forced another realization—she’d never screamed before. All these years, all the pain, and she’d never so much as made a peep.
But by God she was screaming now. He could go on demanding she stop all he liked. He could pull and pull on her hair—like a leash, she thought, deliriously, like a chain around her neck, yanking hard—for as long as he felt like it, she wouldn’t stop this noise.
And she wouldn’t stop trying to escape either. All she had to do was keep right on running, as though he hadn’t grabbed her at all. Then just as the pain reached some unbearable point, just as she felt sure she couldn’t stand it a second longer, she yanked harder.
Agony seared through her scalp, as something tore. White-hot agony, electric agony, agony so bad she could hardly see the handle on the door. She scrabbled for it desperately, knowing her father wouldn’t be shocked for long. He wouldn’t just stand there, with a fistful of her hair, and let her get away.
Or at least she thought so until she burst out into the cool night air, the back of her head on fire, everything urging her to go go go. The need to turn and look winning out over it, for just one second.
Though she regretted it when she did. He didn’t look like a person anymore, her father. He looked like a statue behind the glass she fumbled closed, frozen forever in this one familiar tableau. Face almost blistering with anger. Fist raised, with his prize still in it.
This is how I will always remember him, she thought.
And then she climbed onto her bike and rode away.
* * * * *
The address on his license said 374 Benny Heights, but that didn’t mean anything to her. It might as well have said the heart of the Sahara Desert for all the chances she had of finding it.
Though the situation was made just a little bit worse by the eight miles she’d had to pedal to get into the city, the dark, and the incredible rainstorm that God then decided to dump on her head. For a long, long moment she stood in a parking lot that could have been the middle of ButtFuck, New Jersey for all she knew, and seriously thought about sleeping under a car.
The spaces beneath were dry, after all. And the likelihood of someone actually running over her seemed slim, if not impossible. In the morning things would seem brighter, and clearer, and maybe she could actually ask someone who wasn’t the terrifying doorman of Satan’s Lair.
Though of course, there was another possibility. The hundred bucks in Van’s wallet. Would he miss it? He hadn’t missed it for the last three days. And she’d seen a sign a ways back for a motel that cost half that amount, so it wasn’t as though she’d have to spend it all.
To get some heat, and light, and a bath. God, how she longed for a bath. Any adrenaline in her had left long ago, leaving most of her limbs feeling like limp dishrags. Her face still stung from the rain. Her clothes were soaked through and getting colder by the second. If she could just rest for a second, and really think about where she was…
There’s an alley down the side of his building, and a Chinese restaurant next to it. And then across the way there’s another one, the one he went to—Szechuan Dragon.
The one I can see the blinking neon sign for, just past this parking lot.
She almost broke into a run before her body reminded her of the state it was in. And then once she’d gotten herself together and started diligently pushing her bike along at some sort of excruciating pace, her mind kicked in. The mind that really needed a bath and some warmth, but also kind of wanted to inform her of a slight issue.
He’s probably not going to appreciate you turning up on his doorstep. He said that thing, but how do you know he really meant it? Men say all sorts of stuff after they’ve had sex, even though you don’t know what any of them actually are.
The address on the license was incorrect. He’d lived here once but had since moved somewhere else, and now here she was, stuck outside some stranger’s building.
It made her want to scream, the way she’d done before. It made her curse herself for being a fool. And then worst of all it made her go around the building into that alley where the chickens had been, and stare up at the fire escape.
Realistically, she knew the idea was mad. Even madder than actually coming all the way here in the dead of night, like some loony, lovesick idiot, desperate for someone to save her. But then, if she could just check. Just have a little look, and see if she could tell for sure whether or not Van actually lived here…
After which came a big blank spot, in her head. Who knew what happened then? Maybe he’d see her through his window, think she was some maniac come to rob him, and give her a shotgun blast to the face.
Of course, she didn’t actually know if Van had a shotgun, but the whole scenario played out very clearly in her head, when she snagged the ladder and actually managed to climb all the way up to the first floor.
And then the next. And the next.
By the time she’d gotten to the rickety metal landing on the third floor, her bike looked very small, down below. And the air seemed thinner too, as though she’d actually climbed Kilimanjaro, instead of the fire escape outside Van’s building. Everything she clung to felt slick, everything she focused on looked old and warped and rusted, and oh God she was almost definitely going to die in this alley.
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