I rise from the bed, Patrick’s arms falling from me. I walk past the mirror, my reflection a long, willowy apparition crossing the darkness, and retrieve a single lotus. “I’ll need water.”
Patrick lifts himself up on one elbow. “You’re taking that?”
“It’s the same as when you visit the Elysian Society.”
Patrick rises. His elbow brushes me roughly as he moves by, and I’m jarred. In an instant, I have been reduced from his lover to something inconvenient, a mere obstacle.
When he comes back with a glass of wine, I’m sitting on the edge of the bed, covered with the sheets. He hands me the wine. “Be careful,” he says.
His concern feels as tender as a bouquet of roses. As romantic a promise as a diamond ring. Emboldened, I touch his hand.
I slide the lotus between my lips. Maybe it’s the wine that makes the lotus work more quickly than usual, or maybe it’s my lusty, drowsy state, but I recede almost instantly. My last image is of Patrick’s face, his eyes looking down at me, lips parted slightly, waiting. Waiting.
It’s early in the morning when I leave, the predawn sky creamy and pale. When I see my reflection in the entryway’s mirror, I’m rumpled. My already clumsy eye makeup is smudged.
“How much do I owe you?” Patrick asks from behind me. He doesn’t meet my eyes, his voice cool.
I turn from the mirror. He’s counting a sheaf of bills from the depths of his wallet. It’s impossible to think that he’s the same man whose head was between my legs just hours ago, so that I could look down and notice, as if from a great distance, the way the hair was beginning to thin at the top of his scalp. His exposed scalp felt as intimate a revelation as the presence of his mouth against me.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“We already discussed this,” Patrick says.
“You’re right,” I say. He hands me the money. I accept, holding the bills like a wilted corsage. “Thank you.”
Now that this ugly part of the evening is over, tucked away, Patrick relaxes again. He reaches out to slip a strand of my hair behind my ear. Even after everything else we’ve done, the smallness of this gesture brings my heart speeding. “I’ll see you soon,” he says.
It’s as if I’ve been allowed into a secret world and then forced to reemerge, unprepared for the narrowness of my reality. I move through the confines of my apartment, astonished at the apparent connections between one life and the other: the glass of stale water that’s been sitting on the kitchen counter for days; my toothbrush propped inside the medicine cabinet; a brush with golden hairs curled through the tines. These remnants of my presence are the only way I can connect the woman I am now with the woman I was before I walked into Patrick’s house.
One thing still troubles me, an ache I can’t place. It doesn’t come to me until I go into my bedroom and lie down on my colorless bedding. The photo doesn’t fit anymore. The Polaroid of Sylvia, naked, in the too-dark lipstick. Unconsciously, I always filled out the details with the bedroom from the photo. Compared to this, the actuality of their bedroom seems too pale and too ordinary.
Later, I remind myself. Later, later. I can think about it later.
SEVENTEEN
Again, I wake up on the floor. Crumpled against the wall as if I’ve been pushed.
My lungs stretch tight as bruises inside me. I wait to come back to myself fully: my hand resting against the floor, my legs folded at an angle beneath me. My left knee stinging. Cautiously, I rise. I have to cling to the top of the bureau to steady myself. Dizziness blazes through me.
I wonder what Lee would think, what he’d say, if he could see me lying here, still damp and soft and almost bruised from Patrick’s touch, like overripe fruit. The idea brings a dutiful shame. But stronger than that, a triumph. A thrill.
Lee only knows the version of me that exists within the Elysian Society walls. A woman ruled by caution. Controlled and wary, never asking for more than I can safely allow into my life. He hasn’t seen just how quickly caution can turn inside out. Desire turns me reckless, hungry. I have to relearn how to control my lust, how to partition it off like a dangerous beast that could ravage the other areas of my life.
Meeting with Mr. O’Brien, I will my brain to stay calm, ignoring the turbulence that rushes beneath. He’s come to see Margaret nearly as frequently as Patrick has seen Sylvia. Today, I try to imagine how he’d react if he knew what I could offer. If he realized that the access to Margaret he has now is as stingy as what he had during her lifetime.
All this time, I’ve been sitting across from my clients as they speak to their lovers, held apart. I used to feel generous, letting them borrow my body. Now that I know what else I could give them, my denial feels close to power.
As the lotus slides down my throat, I think of my own private stash back home. Visualizing that envelope of slim pills is enough to throw me off. As I start to sink backward into the darkness, I can tell that it’s wrong. All wrong.
I’m naked. The night air is humid against my skin. The lake spreads out, dark and glittering; the moon over the water is suspended like a drop waiting to fall.
I rise and float to him, light as a butterfly. When I’m next to him, his hands against me, the heat and energy of his touch nearly press right through the fine layer of my skin. Even though I’m close enough that his breath slips into my mouth, his face stays shadowed.
I should go with him, leave this place. But a tug of dread holds me back.
When I look again, the window consumes half the sky. Patrick lies in bed, his back to me. I recognize the spare constellation of freckles and moles across the span of his shoulder blades, the dulled white-gold of his hair in the moonlight. Hidden from me by his body, on the far side of the bed, there’s a woman. Her hand rests on Patrick’s waist.
The hand stirs. Her body rises into view. Hair tousled. Her features have a plainness that turns her too familiar. As if she’s a minor actor in a play, the same insignificant face reappearing throughout the story. The maid, the nun, the lover, the fool. The woman stares directly into my eyes. She’s me; I realize it with a dulled shock.
At the edge of the lake, I’m trapped, unable to move, not certain whose body I occupy. I watch as I lean over Patrick, my mouth set in a smile. My hand slides down the length of his chest, pausing just above the curled lip of the sheet. Then, so quickly that my head swims, my hand has moved to Patrick’s face. I press my palm down against his nose, his mouth. One quick flinch of life passes over the length of Patrick’s body, a protest. Then he’s gone.
I watch myself press my cheek against his, my face transformed from blankness into a specific and wild beauty. The face of the woman who has everything she’s ever wanted.
Who’s Patrick?”
The electrical crackle of anger wakes me immediately.
“Who is he?” His face is pinched. “I’ve never met anybody by that name.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. Mr. O’Brien is subdued for now, but his stillness is just a layer over a bristling tension. I have to control this before Mr. O’Brien’s anger seeps through the building like smoke. “Am I to understand that Margaret mentioned that name?” I ask.
“Yes,” Mr. O’Brien says, mocking. “You are to understand that. Everything was normal and then it’s suddenly Patrick, Patrick. Patrick.” The name falls from his lips with a wrong-sounding thud. “Who the hell is he?”
I survey my client for a second, running my tongue over the slick backs of my teeth. “Perhaps a friend of Margaret’s,” I say. “This process can be inexact, it can—”
“Margaret and I were always open with each other,” he says. “She never would have kept a secret from me.”
The solution comes to me swiftly, passed to me as if a hand in a crowd slipped something into my palm. “In that case, Mr. O’Brien, I have to apologize. It seems there’s been a mistake.”
“I pay a lot of money to avoid mistakes,” Mr. O’Brien says.
“And I can appreciate that,�
�� I say. “If you’re willing to let this indiscretion slide, I’d be happy to lessen that burden for you.”
He blinks hard. “Meaning?”
“I’d be willing to meet you again, without any extra cost to you.” I can spare one lotus. One lotus is nothing. “We could make up for the time you’ve lost.”
He runs his tongue over his lips. “Here?” Mr. O’Brien asks.
I hesitate. If I schedule another encounter inside these walls, it could draw too much attention. Throughout the years, there have been bodies incapable of emptying themselves enough, or bodies who have emptied themselves too completely. I’ve heard the stories: spitting out the wrong words during encounters, garbled names and misplaced details, meaningless as radio static rising from dead airwaves. None of these bodies have lasted at the Elysian Society.
“We’ll meet privately,” I say. “At a location of your choosing.”
“That’s allowed?” he asks.
“It can be.” My body is tense with the waiting, prepared for a sudden knock at the door, Jane’s presence swooping down like a triumphant bird of prey.
“Fine,” Mr. O’Brien says, at last. “That sounds like a fine solution to me.”
I listen for footsteps in the corridor beyond Room 12. But Mr. O’Brien isn’t done yet: “And in case you’re interested, when you said Patrick’s name, you sounded terrified.” He narrows his eyes at me. “You sounded furious.”
In the entrance to the waiting room, I pause. Bodies cluster at the far end, faces craned forward, washed in the unflattering glow of the TV screen. Several people have arms knotted around chests or hands clamped over mouths, poses that strike me as theatrical.
I approach, scanning the faces for one I recognize. Lee meets my eyes and breaks from the group. “Edie,” he says. “Don’t worry. I’m sure it’s nothing, really.”
“What’s happening?”
Lee touches my arm. “It’s nothing,” he repeats.
The TV screen is still hidden from me by someone’s broad back. I imagine what they’re looking at. Patrick and my body sitting in Room 12. His hand reaching for me, my body unmoving, accepting whatever happens next.
I shift into the center of the group so that I can see the dusty TV set. A reporter speaks into the camera, eyes darting across unseen cue cards. The trim cadence of her voice refuses to fall into intelligible words. She stands in direct sunlight, posing in front of a building that’s starkly familiar. The white brick walls, the trimmed hedges rising in the background.
“It’s not a live broadcast.” Lee hovers behind my shoulder. “It’s just a segment.”
The murmur of the reporter’s voice stops. She smiles into the camera too long and then vanishes. The group of bodies breaks apart immediately. A body leans behind the TV set to adjust something. A second later, a pristine forest at dawn replaces the news channel.
“I don’t understand,” I say.
“A body from the Elysian Society worked with someone,” Lee says. “Some woman trying to get information about the Hopeful Doe case. Apparently, she just went to the authorities.”
Betrayals like this are what Mrs. Renard has guarded against for years, and the fact that it’s finally happened is more of a surprise than it should be. The blow that lands as the muscles relax. I glance at the cluster of bodies, now talking in low voices. It could have been any of them. Beneath their cultivated emptiness, there must be dozens of seething secrets.
“Her name is Candace Fowler,” Lee adds.
My mind freezes for a second, trying to figure out why the name is so familiar. She comes to me: the woman in Room 12, the one whose daughter found the body. I stifle my surprise, keeping my expression flat. I didn’t expect Mrs. Fowler to try again; she seemed like the type to make a self-righteous show of tenacity and then give up with secret relief.
“Which body worked with her?” I ask. “Did they mention any names?” Names wouldn’t even do any good, I realize, with a misplaced desire to laugh. I don’t know the birth name of anyone who works here.
Lee’s face grows careful, as distancing as if he’s holding me back by the shoulders. “We don’t know,” he says. “They haven’t said. It could be anyone.”
I search his features, hearing an unexpected coolness in his voice. “You don’t think I could have done it, Lee?” I ask.
“Like I said, nobody knows.” He hesitates. “But I did hear that you were the first body that Fowler approached.”
I take a deep breath. “I see.”
“The only body she approached, that we know of.”
“But that’s just it,” I say. “I sent Fowler away. I told Jane. I’d forgotten about her completely until now.” My words are unconvincing. I should have remembered: a single secret contaminates everything around it, turning honest moments into things to be guarded. “You have to believe me,” I say.
Lee’s resolve hovers and then loosens. “I do.”
“I’d never endanger the Elysian Society,” I say. Then I add, “Lee, it’s me,” as if this means anything anymore, as if it’s even true.
EIGHTEEN
Laura Holmes. That’s Hopeful Doe’s true name. The only detail Mrs. Fowler could glean from the encounter, the only information Hopeful Doe provided. It makes me strangely sad that this was all she could say about herself. A detail that a lost child, trying to find her way back home, would offer in desperation. This is my name. This is who I am. Help me.
Laura Holmes vanished from her life at the end of last year. She lived in a town eighteen hours away. Her rent checks stopped, she missed too many work shifts as a drugstore cashier, her scattering of acquaintances stopped hearing from her. Laura’s disappearance was less one recorded moment of absence and more a gradual fading. Further details about Holmes’s death are still under investigation at this time.
I spot several discrepancies in the saintly Hopeful Doe narrative. Laura Holmes was nineteen, hovering on the brink of womanhood. She was aloof, maintaining only shallow relationships. Trying to reconcile wistful Hopeful Doe with the blunt reality of Laura Holmes is like laying two transparencies on top of each other. For every feature that lines up neatly, there’s an unruly edge extending out, a curve that doesn’t match. The result is looking at two people at once, neither of them quite themselves anymore, but neither one completely the other.
Viv asks me to hold the baby, thrusting him into my arms without waiting for a response. The baby is a bundle of contradictions: heavy and damp, yet astonishingly light. He’s muscular, kicking at me with froggy legs, but also disjointed and loose inside his chubbiness.
In the baby’s face, there’s a trace of Henry’s broad nose and Viv’s tidy, crimped chin. Impulsively, I visualize a child with my austere blond hair, Patrick’s greenish eyes and haphazard freckles. Embarrassed by the image, I nearly let the baby slip. He braces his feet against my thighs, drools a fine sheen along his chin.
“Come back over here, Benny-bean.” Viv stretches her hands out for the baby.
I hesitate. My hands tighten around the baby; I can feel the quick pump of his breath through his belly. An unfamiliar impulse shifts through me. I’m not sure if it’s violence or tenderness. I don’t want to relinquish the baby.
The moment stretches on, seeming to grow thicker and deeper than the actual time passing. Viv’s expression shifts from polite expectation to impatience, then confusion.
don’t try to take him
he doesn’t belong to you
My muscles loosen and the moment becomes normal again. I smile broadly, stretch Ben across to his mother. She skillfully removes the baby from my hands.
“You have kids, Lucy?” Viv’s carefully sunny, hoping to blaze away the oddness.
“Me? Oh, no. No,” I say. “Not yet.”
Viv settles the baby on her lap. Ben pats at her arm: quick little touches, as if his mother’s skin might hurt him. She reaches down and kisses the baby’s head, and I look away.
“You want kids one day, though?” she
asks, lifting her face.
“As soon as I get my life in order.” I match her brightness.
“No point putting it off too long,” Viv says. “So many people think they can wait for the perfect time. You have to make the leap. I’ve known women who waited and then they ran into trouble.” Viv sucks in her breath, widens her eyes. “God, I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” I say. “You can speak freely.”
We sit in their living room across from a lineup of the Damsons’ wedding-day portraits, photos of infant Ben. I’m working harder than usual to slip into my role as drab Lucy. Now that I’ve been with Patrick, that knowledge lies sparkling and hot under everything.
“Sylvia was like that, you know,” Viv says. “She wanted kids, but they kept putting it off. Then it was hard for them to get pregnant. I know it upset her.”
This new knowledge slides into place in my understanding of the Braddocks, pulling open more spaces than it closes, skewing everything out of line. Patrick hasn’t even mentioned children.
Viv tucks her arm tighter around Ben. “I hate thinking that she never got her baby.” The words are humid with the threat of tears. “I couldn’t stop obsessing about it. Then I thought, but what if she did have a baby, and now the baby didn’t have a mother? I can’t figure out which is worse. Would I rather die without knowing Ben, or would I want him to be alone without me?”
I’m suddenly furious at Viv. At how effortlessly she glides from Sylvia to her own life, as if Sylvia is just a mirror for Viv to stare into. Measuring her own sadness against the immeasurability of Sylvia.
“It’s natural to dwell on these questions after a loss,” I try. But my anger grows, sparking like a match dropped in a trail of gasoline. I find myself staring at the baby’s head. His bones are clearly outlined beneath the fuzz of his hair; the light catches the slightest indent at the top of his skull. Again, that wild mix of greed and rage and loss grows inside me.
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