by Jeff Soloway
An outcrop jutted out over the gorgeous abyss. I dropped my pack, pulled out a water bottle, and stepped out onto it.
Victoria sighed at the delay, but she shrugged off her pack, lifted her arms, and bent her back into a graceful bow. She sat below me, near the edge.
A pair of hikers coming from Dripping Springs saluted us cheerily but respected our silent nods. They snapped a discreet selfie and moved on.
I took out my phone.
“No pictures,” she said. “I look like Medusa.”
“You look perfect.” And she did. Her delicate half-smile was a kind of ironic commentary on the extravagant beauty all around her—the towering cliffs above, the dizzying drop below, the red and orange flames glimpsed through the slot.
She put her hand up to fend off my photo. Perhaps she knew she’d have to delete the images from my phone afterward.
I crouched beside her and laid my hand firmly on her back, to keep her in place on the outcrop. “You’re scaring me.”
She scooted back from the edge and swiveled on her butt to face me. I kneeled on the dirt and ran my hands down her shoulders and sides and over her hips and legs. It was more of a frisk than a caress. She dropped her hands to the ground, as if to point out that she trusted me.
I slipped off her hat and kissed her. My chapped lips felt like scouring pads over her softer, better-tended lips. It was the least erotic of all kisses.
If she wanted to, she could have grabbed my arm and yanked me over the edge. That, at least, wasn’t her plan.
“Can I have some of your water?” I asked. “Mine’s buried in my pack.”
“Sure.”
I opened her pack, sifted through it. No gun there either. Her water eased my throat.
“Jacob,” she said, “would you still love Jewel if she were alive?”
“No. But we’d be friends.”
“I can’t imagine being friends when it was all over. I would have hated her if she dumped me.”
“I didn’t hate you after Screwshi. I hoped you’d change your mind.”
“I would have hated me then, just like I hate Grant. It’s hell hating the person you live with. Every morning you wake up to your worst mistake. Loving him was a disaster. I think I’ve done better this time.” She crouched down next to me. I had to look up into the sun to see her face. I wasn’t sure if she was going to kiss me or shove me off the cliff. I gave her a moment to decide.
“Let’s go back,” I said at last. “To hell with the water meter.”
“Back to the hotel?”
“Right now.” I stood up.
She smiled up at me. I could make out the specks of red dust that had settled on her glasses. “How about back to my room?” she asked.
“Even better.”
“Remember when you once asked me to move in with you? Would you give me another chance? We’ll be back in New York soon.”
“Sure. But we’d have to get a bigger place. I won’t pay a broker’s fee. I guess we could try Jersey.”
“I like your apartment! And when you’re off traveling, I could have it all to myself.”
She was changing her mind. All she had needed was time.
“You’ll have to feed my turtle when I’m gone,” I said.
“That’s easy. I had hamsters when I was kid.”
“And no affairs.”
“Being with you is an affair.”
“No affairs besides me.”
“All right. Same goes for you.”
“I promise. Get up. Let’s go home.”
“But we should see the other amphitheater. And then, according to the map, Silver Bell Spring is just past it, near the Boucher junction. We’re so close.”
“I’ve seen enough for one hike.”
“But we’ve come so far.”
“I was on this trail yesterday. I’m tired, Victoria.”
“We can’t give up now. Please.”
I thought I had convinced her, but she was still determined. On then, on to Silver Bell Spring, where Grant had to be waiting. All along I’d told myself that there was always a chance she could defy disaster. A lie can always be admitted, a promise broken, a plan junked, or even just tweaked, enough to save me. But this talk had been her best chance, and now it was over. It wasn’t my disaster, I reminded myself. I had taken precautions. But besides dying, I couldn’t imagine anything worse.
She stood up and put on her pack.
“I know you were in Tusayan last weekend, when Jewel died.”
She stopped reaching down for her hat. “What?”
“You stayed at the Best Western, but you came to the Grand Chalet. I don’t mind. You had no obligation to tell me where you’d been. But you did lie. Didn’t you?”
Even now I wanted some sort of admission from her. The slope below us dimmed. A tuft of cloud had veiled the sun. She seemed to be waiting for it to pass, as if the returning light might show her the way through this difficulty.
“I’ve got proof,” I added. “Cellphone GPS. There’s no doubt.”
“I always said you were a good writer. I didn’t know you were a good spy.”
“Why did you come here last weekend?”
“Jacob, it’s getting late. Let’s get to the spring.”
“I’m not moving until you answer me.”
She thunked her pack to the ground. I thought for an instant she meant to swing it at me like a wrecking ball and knock me over the edge, but she just sat beside it and looked again out over the side canyon, as if she hoped to the recapture our previous mood. She fingered her hat but left it there on the dirt.
“I was spying too,” she said at last.
“On Grant and Jewel?”
“It doesn’t matter now. Can we go?”
“I want to understand what happened. Wouldn’t you, if I had lied to you? You made me promise never to lie to you. I should have done the same. How did you know Jewel was at the Grand Chalet?”
“Peter told me. I had asked him to watch out for me. He loves to gossip. But I decided I had to see it for myself. This was different from all the other betrayals. This time I’d sacrificed for him. Remember? I’d given something up. You.”
She took off her glasses and rubbed them on her shirt, making of the red sprinkles on the lens a general rosy smear.
“So you flew out here.”
“I used frequent-flier miles and rented a car in Phoenix. When I got to the lobby, I kept my hat and sunglasses on, so the staff wouldn’t know me. I went up to Grant’s room and said ‘Housekeeping!’ ”
Her voice rose as she put on a Washington Heights Spanish accent, not Sonia’s but not bad. Even in her fury, she’d had the presence to hide her face from the staff, to use the right password to enter Grant’s room, to follow a scheme.
“I stepped aside,” she said, “so he couldn’t see me through the peephole. And when he opened the door, there she was. Not naked or on her knees or anything, just sitting at the desk, banging away at her laptop. She saw me. I swear I almost slammed the door and ran away. But she jumped up and pushed him out of the way so she could get to me. Can you imagine what she wanted to do?”
“Set you straight?”
“Exactly! She started talking. Can you believe it? I think she was explaining why they could never end it and why I’d never be happy with him anyway even if they did. I was too stunned to follow her. I think Grant was too. Finally I came to my senses.”
“What did you do?”
“I pulled the TV off the wall and smashed it over both their heads.”
“Victoria.”
She flashed the quarter smile, just a gesture at a smile, but enough to reassure me that she was back in control of herself and her emotions. She was telling a story in the old manner, to someone she enjoyed charming. She was no longer afraid of me. Everything was lost.
“Not really,” she said. “That time with the Cuisinart, I’d had hours to psych myself up. This time I just whammed the door behind me and slumped away
down the hall. I kept thinking, What a waste of time. The hours spent screaming at him. The weeks of agonizing over whether to leave him. Most of all, the years being married to him. When I got back to my room, I took out my phone and started googling divorce lawyers. But that night he came to the Best Western. He found me at the bar. I’d already had three gimlets. They didn’t have cranberry juice.”
“And he promised never to see her again.”
“How’d you guess?”
“But this time was different. He knew there was only one way you’d trust him after this. He had to get rid of her. He had to kill her.”
“I know what you think. That doesn’t make it true.”
“It’s not just what I think. Victoria, don’t you understand? I know it. I know everything. This was your last chance to tell me the truth. It’s gone.”
“You’re always so sure of yourself.”
“I saw Grant on the video leaving the hotel. I wish that was all I saw. He was looking out to the parking lot. You’re the one who pulled up. You drove him to the trail.”
I fell silent. Now might be the moment, at last, that she would stop telling lies.
“You saw me on the video?” she asked.
“There are cameras all over the back lot.”
My first lie to her.
She picked up a brick-colored chip of a rock and hurled it as far as she could. It flew a short way out and zoomed a long way down, until I lost it in the cliff’s shadow.
“You two must have planned it in advance,” I said. “He must have gotten Jewel to suggest a hike on this trail. You knew if you picked him up in the back, he could leave the hotel without being seen. That way no one would suspect him.”
“It was his idea,” she said.
“But you went along.”
“I was sure he’d change his mind. She always made him change his mind. Okay, I drove him to Hermits Rest. Then I turned around and went back to the Best Western. I thought he’d see her and give up on me. That night he called me to tell me what he’d done. I was alone, just like I told you. In the Best Western, not in New York, but alone. And the next day I went home. I didn’t know what to do. I should have told someone. But he was my husband—I couldn’t just cut him away. I wish he wasn’t my husband, but he was, he is.”
Victoria lifted her face to the sky. I followed her eyes, as I still do in New York when a gaggle of tourists around me are gawking at the Empire State Building. The intermittent breeze had cleared away most of the sky’s cottony detritus. Nothing attached to the smooth blue glaze except one little puff of cloud, a white rag torn away and stuck somehow to the surface, as if to mark the only path.
“And what am I?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m your sucker.”
“No. I came to your apartment. I tried to tell you. Remember? It was too late. Doby was there.”
“You tried to fool me. Doby was scaring you. You needed another suspect besides Grant. That’s why the two of you convinced me to come on this trip. You used Marlene to lead me to that email from Freddie—a fake. You gave me Meat’s address so I could learn all about Freddie’s meter-hunting hikes with Jewel. You and Grant tried to use me to plant a fake story—that Freddie killed her.”
I waited for her denial. She said nothing. All my suspicions were true. I realized that, up until that moment, I’d hoped she’d be able to convince me that I wasn’t a chump after all. Now that hope was gone. But the worst was still coming. I looked down the path for a hiker, a ranger, an out-of-range mountain goat, anything to interrupt this inexorable drive toward understanding.
Her dark eyes, through the smudged lenses, were gentle with sympathy for the first time that day. There wasn’t any kind of condescension in them. I allowed myself to take a little comfort. It had come too late to be dangerous to me.
“You lied to me again and again,” I said.
“Once you start it’s hard to stop. I almost didn’t start. I’m sorry, Jacob. I did try to warn you. It was too late.”
She was insisting on this fact. Could it possibly be the truth? I doubted it, but her lies no longer galled me as long as they seemed to wound her too. Still, I couldn’t let them stand uncorrected.
“It wasn’t Grant who convinced me to come,” I said. “It was you. And that was just the start. You kept on persuading and lying. You did everything for Grant.”
“Not everything. Not last night.”
“Does he know about that?”
“I didn’t tell him. I think he guessed. He doesn’t like you, but he admits you’re a good writer. That means he thinks you’re not a dope. A few weeks ago—before Screwshi, when we were talking things over—he said if I had to fall in love with someone else, he’s glad it’s you.”
“He must have known you didn’t fall for someone else. You were always in love with him.”
“I couldn’t help myself when I met him. You should have seen me. I was so lost, so innocent, such a loser, I hated myself. I would have let anyone do anything to me. He made me feel…charming. And he was so patient. I can’t forget that. It’s true. I always did love him. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t love you too. You can love two people at the same time.”
“I can’t. Grant must have taught you how.”
“I never believed it was possible until I met you. The problem is, loving two people ruins you for everything else—working, thinking, sleeping. I had to choose.”
“And you chose him.”
“Because we were married, and he promised to be faithful.”
“He lied. But you must have known he would.”
“Oh, no. It’s a surprise every time. The last was the worst. I know I should have hated him for cheating, not her. The problem was that when I found them together at the Grand Chalet, she didn’t just slink away like any normal home wrecker. She was in my face, explaining. My whole body was ripped open, and every word she spoke was a chunk of salt. I’ve never hated anyone so much. And then afterward, at the Best Western, he was the one begging me to forgive. She was gone and he still loved me. He said he’d do anything I wanted. And at that moment he knew what I wanted. My secret wish. Who ever gets a wish granted? I let him do it. I lost my mind. But can’t you understand why?”
“Yes! You hated her. I get it. But how could you hate me too? And how could you fool me so easily? It’s not just last night—sex makes everybody a fool, not just me. But all those conversations before. I’ve been with actors and frauds. You’re not like them. You loved me. I’ll never believe you didn’t. But somehow you screwed yourself all the way around. You made yourself hate me the same way you hated Jewel. All to save Grant. That—that jackass. Why?”
I realized I was now standing. She was tilting her body away from me, as if expecting my boot at any moment. I stepped back. It was an unnecessary precaution. I would never hurt her. I wasn’t Grant. I wasn’t her.
“Hate you? Jacob, how could you—”
“Don’t you think I know? You went to him last night. You told him you’d bring me here. Just don’t lie to me again. It’s a waste of time. He has a gun, doesn’t he? He’s at the spring. He’s waiting for me.”
She stood up. “My God, Jacob.”
“Your plan won’t work. I told Doby this morning. She went to the spring to find him.”
Her hands spasmed. For an instant, I thought she was reaching for me, and I stepped back, careful not to get too close to the edge. I was not going to die, not yet; now all I wanted was to complete my revenge.
But Victoria overcame her panic. Her hands tumbled to her sides, her fingers quivering, like spiderweb strands in the faintest of breezes.
“What did you tell Doby?” she asked.
“Everything.”
“What—what kind of everything?”
“I told her about the video. This hike today. The location of the spring, according to the map. I told her I thought Grant would be there, armed, ready to kill me. She must have arrested him by now. I
asked her to wait before she brought him up so I could talk to you. I wasn’t sure how much you knew. I wasn’t sure if you were a murderer too. I wasn’t sure if you would go through with it. Now I know. I gave you so many chances to turn around.”
She laughed, and I remembered her laugh on our dates, when it was both a spontaneous outburst and a signal of appreciation and intimacy. As bitter as this laugh was, it also had a tinge of something gracious. “If I had taken you up just once, I would have been saved.”
“Not saved. I still would have told Doby everything. But I could have forgiven you.”
“I don’t believe it. You loved Jewel too much to forgive. Why wouldn’t you? She was better than me in every way.”
“Better than me too. But I loved you more.”
She bent her head. The sun glaring off her disheveled black hair made a harsh halo around her head. Some angel. Why had I fallen in love with her?
The answer was simple: I had gone insane. She was just another person, her life as temporary and as misguided as anyone else’s, as mine, but I had tricked myself into seeing the transcendent in her. Or love had tricked me. But my joy had been no less real for being founded on a delusion. That the joy had ended so quickly and been betrayed so thoroughly was irrelevant. Everything is temporary. Eternity is the lie. Even the age-old Grand Canyon is aging.
But I still believed that human time was sufficient for human ends. There was enough time left in my life to overcome any misery, even this one. Here in the Canyon, I was making friends with time as others make friends with death.
“Grant could have saved me too,” said Victoria. “When I called him this morning to wake him up, I wondered if he was going to answer. He could have hopped in his car and zoomed off to Nogales. Or he could have been in his room but changed his mind. Decided to face the consequences. But he didn’t. He followed the plan.”