Love Is Red

by Sophie Jaff

  “Don’t you dare thank me,” he says. He is serious for once. It’s strange. “If you need anything, just call. I’m a light sleeper.” He leaves the door open, letting in a wedge of hall light. Again I’m grateful, but this time I don’t thank him. I wait in the dark till I hear him go to bed.

  I lie in the darkness, staring up at the ceiling, the one beam of light stretched across the bed. My thoughts move in barbed-wire circles, and each point is pain.

  He was in the apartment.

  They found Andrea tied up and gagged in her own bed.

  This time he made a call.

  He called the police.

  A call from our apartment.

  Lucas is safe with friends.

  We’ve tried to reach her family.

  Andrea’s answer to any awkward questions was always tight, bright, hard: “It’s just us.” Never failed to shut people up.

  My friends had thought I was crazy: “Why would you willingly live with a kid who’s not your own?” “What are you going to do about guys?” “How will you bring them home?” “How will you drink?” “Why would you do that?” “What were you thinking? It’s going to ruin your life!”

  But moving in with Andrea and Lucas didn’t ruin my life. Having a kid around made me grow up. I couldn’t have wild parties till three a.m. or smoke massive amounts of pot, but then again I never had wild parties till three a.m. and pot just made me hungry and exhausted.

  I’d liked Andrea almost immediately. She was smart, tough, and funny. She didn’t mince words and you knew where you stood with her. She paid our rent on time, was neat but not obsessively so, and respected my boundaries. But the real truth was that I had fallen in love with Lucas. The moment he looked at me with his large soulful eyes and said, “Yes, I can has a cookie,” I was a goner.

  He isn’t obnoxious or whiny. He doesn’t run around the house screaming or crying or throwing temper tantrums. He is a shy, sweet kid. His favorite thing was, still is, to draw—give him some paper and crayons and he will be happy for hours. Andrea is a good mom; she makes it look easy and I know it isn’t.

  Andrea, I think now as I lie in a strange bed, and my mind is flooded.

  “Hey, mister,” she would say to Lucas, “come over here and pick this up!” Andrea the straight shooter, telling it like it was, but not meanly, never mean. Andrea, who worked hard, Andrea with her back straight and determined. Andrea, who wasn’t going to give up. I remember a Sunday night soon after I moved in. I had been watching TV and feeling increasingly melancholy. Andrea had put Lucas to bed and had come through, ostensibly tidying up, but eventually she drifted to the couch and then sat down. Some incredibly bad romantic comedy was playing and I began misting up when the “I loved you the whole time, only I never realized it until you were gone” speech began. I glanced over to make sure Andrea hadn’t seen me, and there she was, tears streaming down her cheeks. We both became hysterical and threw cushions at each other, laughing and weeping, and laughing again. Then Andrea had gotten us some ice cream and we had talked until one a.m.

  The memory is bright and warm and it had held us together, that and so many other memories, the conversations over glasses of wine and cups of coffee and mugs of tea and bowls of almonds and during picnics and while walking, and most of all it’s Lucas I now think of. Lucas’s face when he looked up at Andrea, his squealing laughter when she tickled him, his shy delight when she praised his drawings. Lucas, Andrea’s heart of hearts. Lucas, who is somewhere in the city now without her, without his fierce loving mother who fought all fires, her strength and her pride lying somewhere in the morgue.

  I reach over and take the two white pills, and lie back. It doesn’t matter. I won’t be able to sleep. I will never sleep again. Here in the dark I’ll admit it. I want Sael. I want his warm broad back, the length of him pressed against me. I want him holding me through this terrible night. He came to me when he had bad dreams. I sent him away. I told him we were over and I meant it.

  Once again my mind goes back to Andrea. I lie in a strange bed in a strange apartment, waiting for the darkness to overcome me, waiting for the few hours when I will not have to think about Andrea . . .

  I’m going up the stairs in my stepfather’s house. There are gales of laughter coming from the living room. Now I have the smoked oysters on a plate—I got some at least. Cherry called me a little girl in front of everyone. She’s a bitch, and then Andrea comes toward me wearing a long black dress. She has curved cuts on her arms; there are four in the shape of leaves, with snowflakes in each center. She’s wearing small smoky-blue glasses. I can’t see her eyes, but she is smiling.

  “Katherine,” she says. She speaks softly. I don’t know why her teeth are stained red. I look at her red teeth. “Mr. Nakamaru wanted me to tell you three things. They are very important. The first is that . . .” But as she begins to tell me her voice dissolves into a hissing sound, like radio static.

  “I can’t hear you,” I try to tell Andrea. “I can’t hear you. Tell me again.”

  She opens her mouth but the static is louder this time and she’s moving her lips but I can’t hear any words, the static fills my head, white pain will break my eardrums, it’s filling my head, Andrea’s lips are moving and moving.

  “I can’t hear you!” I scream. “I can’t hear you, I can’t—”

  “Katherine?” It’s David; he’s come through and now he turns on the bedside lamp.

  I am freezing. I am covered in sweat. Where am I? I am in David’s bed. Why? Because Andrea is dead. Andrea is dead.

  “You were calling out,” he said.

  I’m fine, I try to answer, but all that comes out is a watery noise.

  “Hey,” he says, “hey.” He sits down on the bed and he draws me in and against his shoulder and then finally, finally the hot stone in my chest liquefies and the tears come. I sob and sob and sob against his clean warm shirt and he holds me. He doesn’t tell me it will be all right; he doesn’t try to comfort me; he just holds me as I weep and weep and weep until my eyes are hot pinpricks, until I am a mess of weeping, an ugly mottled thing of grief. I don’t want him to stop holding me. Let the world consist of this, please, his arms around me. I look up and he’s looking down at me and then, just for a moment in the silence, we both reach across the endless distance and I close my eyes, I feel the warmth of him, his breath and just for a moment his lips, and then he breathes my name. “Katherine.”

  I can feel the wetness against his cheeks. I peer up at him through my swollen eyes. “You’re crying too?”

  “Yes,” he says. He doesn’t make a joke or excuses.

  “David?”

  “Yes?”

  “I slept with Sael.”

  I have said it. This confession falls from me without effort or weight. My heart is gone; it has spilled out through all the crying. I want nothing in me now. I will not hold anything back or from him. Nothing matters and I want nothing. I am empty. There is nothing now.

  I wait for the pressure of his arms to lessen, for him to leave me. Maybe I want his fury, his rage, to feel something other than this grief, this hatred of myself.

  “I know.”

  I turn to him, surprised despite everything. “You knew?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “Well, I’ve known Sael for a long time now. I know what he’s like, what his patterns are. I had hoped at one stage that it was over. You seemed more yourself, but then tonight, when I saw your face as you were looking at him, I knew.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  He looks at me, half smiles, rueful. “Why didn’t you?”

  Apparently I am not yet empty, not yet poured out. More tears leak out of my eyes, my ever-weeping eyes.

  “I’m sorry.” I mean it with every fiber of my being.

  “I know. It’s okay.” He does not rage or show disgust. He is very gentle with me and this makes it worse. There is no retribution. Only “It’s okay.”

  B
ut it isn’t okay. Nothing is okay. Nothing can ever be okay again. And he holds me. I cry; his arms are wet under my face. After an eternity I am all cried out. There are no tears left. I’m as flat as the sheet I lie on.

  “David?”

  “Yes?”

  “Please.” It’s all I say.

  Please what?

  Please don’t hate me. Please forgive me. Please don’t be angry. Please don’t leave me tonight. I want to say all those things but I only get to the “please.” I don’t have any more words, just “please.”

  He looks at me and very slowly he turns out the light.

  And in the dark he’s there. His arms are around me, and for a while I don’t have to think about friends, about murder, about death or little boys who must live without their mothers; for just in this moment and place in the dark, for just a little while, I don’t have to think about Andrea Bowers, the eleventh victim of the Sickle Man.

  The Maiden of Morwyn Castle | PART SIX

  HE WEDDING DAY DAWNED ON A bright and shining midsummer morning, and the lady wore a silver mantle laden with pearls sewn with silver thread and wildflowers woven into her golden hair. Upon seeing her, Lord de Villias fell to his knees and said, “My Lady, you outshine the very sun. No damsel in the land can compare with thee.” His Lordship was himself decked in the finest array of silken hose and damasks and velvets, and on his heavy ermine-trimmed cloak he wore a brilliant silver and jeweled coiled brooch that glittered and gleamed both in the sunshine and then in the candlelight. There was great celebration, feasting and music made with pipe and with whistle, and golden goblets were raised and raised again and white cake served upon silver plates, and all alike drank deep and well of the ale and wine, which flowed without end.

  16

  It takes ten days for them to return the items they took from the apartment. They were looking for evidence: prints, DNA. I guess they didn’t find anything because they’re finally giving me back Andrea’s stuff in a Ziploc bag.

  I am staying at my friend Leigh’s place. I’m passed around carefully, like a ticking bomb. I could have remained at David’s but I thought that I had trespassed enough. Leigh is away for two weeks with her husband, so this works out. I don’t have to make conversation, act like a human being.

  I sit on their bed and let the contents of the Ziploc bag fall out. Here on the duvet covers are Andrea’s bracelet, Andrea’s ring, Andrea’s phone. Her bracelet is gold, a charm bracelet, although I guess if we’re talking about being charmed it’s defunct. Her ring is thin and silver. She always wore it on the middle finger of her left hand. I never asked her about it. Now I’ll never know. And finally, the thing that defines all of us, the thing we can’t live without, her phone. She had a work phone but this was her personal phone. It has a small crack on the screen but she wouldn’t get a new one.

  “It still works!” she had protested. “It has character. It will be around forever.”

  At any rate it outlasted her. I turn it over and see the stickers on the back. It’s been decorated by Lucas. There’s a small yellow smiley face and a purple monster, also smiling. No wonder she didn’t want to throw it away. It does have character and—since they charged it, presumably to search her messages and address book—a full battery life.

  There are many messages that she’ll never hear. I don’t want to listen to those. There’s a chance I’ll hear my own voice, which always sounds higher than I think it’s going to be. I don’t want to hear myself talking to a dead woman, don’t want to hear myself asking my murdered friend if she’ll pick up some household cleaner, or wondering if I should cook dinner for all of us tonight.

  But I do want to hear her voice again. I want to hear her laugh.

  Andrea had the best laugh I’ve ever heard. One of those laughs that make the tellers believe that the tales they are telling are hilarious, even if they aren’t. I crave her laugh as other people crave drugs or drink.

  I see the voice memos app. She was always using it—a habit from law school, perhaps. I’ll settle for this; at least this way I’ll get to hear her voice, if not her laugh.

  There are only five voice memos. The first two are brief, legal stuff, something about some documents, check the McKlean deposition, call Alicia at Vonex Corporation.

  The third voice memo turns out to be a shopping list. “Milk,” she says, “cottage cheese, dishwashing liquid, apples, toilet paper.” There’s a pause, then, “Sex toys, whips, chains,” but I can hear the smile in her voice. The fourth is another legal note, and then there’s the fifth. This one is longer than the others; it’s one minute and four seconds rather than the usual thirty seconds. I press play, and Andrea says:

  “Katherine?”

  I scream and drop the phone on the bed.

  The voice is muffled on the recording, but it continues:

  “Okay, missy, you wanted me to prove—”

  I reach out and press pause. I stare at the phone, at the crack on the front screen. I feel the stickers beneath my fingers. Eternity passes. I take a deep breath in. I let it out. The silence is deafening. Her phone lies on the duvet, waiting, waiting.

  C’mon, you chickenshit, I think to myself, c’mon. I summon up all my will. I hit play.

  “Katherine? Okay, missy, you wanted me to prove that you talk in your sleep. Here it is.”

  Her voice is low; she sounds amused.

  “Date: Saturday the ninth. Time: 12:15 a.m. Location: outside your bedroom: Why? Because a certain someone said that she never talked in her sleep and then a certain other person had to go to the bathroom and realized it was an opportune moment.” She snorts, pauses, then, “Okay, back to the business at hand. Listen closely.”

  In the darkness of Leigh’s bedroom, I close my eyes and listen.

  There’s a voice, a female voice. It’s very faint. I can barely hear it. It must be coming from behind my closed door and now through this machine back to me. I hold the phone, press it tightly against my ear. Then I hear it.

  “Thanks, I’m just waiting for my date.”

  Pause.

  “Well, okay then . . . not too strong.”

  Another pause, I think it’s over, and then, shockingly, giggles. It’s a light flirtatious sound.

  “ . . . I bet you say that to all the girls.”

  A long silence, then it’s Andrea again. She is trying to keep her voice down, but it’s hard to whisper triumphantly. “You owe me a drink. Case closed!”

  There’s another pause and I think she’s turned it off when she says, more to herself than to me, “Jesus, I really need to get laid.”

  And finally, the sound I’ve been craving: a brief, rueful, honest laugh.

  Click.

  The recording is over.

  I lie in the dark. It’s a warm night but I am cold. I press play and listen again to the whole thing. Then I try to fast-forward it, but my thumb slips and I go too far.

  “ . . . because other people have to go to the bathroom . . .”

  I rewind and there it is:

  “ . . . Date: Saturday the ninth. Time: 12:15 a.m. Location . . .”

  I pause it. Saturday the ninth around midnight. Saturday the ninth . . . I snap upright. I throw back the covers.

  I run but barely make it to the toilet.

  Finally I press my cheek against the cool floor. Saturday the ninth. Time: 12:15 a.m. My head throbs and throbs; bile burns my throat. I want to lie here forever. I don’t want to get up. Saturday the ninth at 12:15 a.m. Maybe I will never get up. How can I ever go home?

  On Saturday the ninth at 12:15 a.m., I wasn’t in my bedroom. I was at Liz’s bachelorette party. I think about that poor male stripper she hired and all of us, drunk and raucous. The guy barely made it out of there in one piece. Liz laughed so hard I thought she was going to wet herself.

  Whatever voice Andrea heard in my bedroom, whatever voice she recorded, whatever voice that was speaking . . .

  It wasn’t mine.

  17

 
The Sotriakis Funeral Home is a pale gray brick square with a low, flat roof. Apparently the circle of life stops here. Maybe circles are too confusing. With flat lines and angles you know there’s an ending; you know what you’re getting.

  You get out of the taxi and walk through the small but serviceable parking lot. The funeral home offers the only private parking lot in the area and Greg Sotriakis is proud of this. He’s also proud that it’s been in the family for three generations. Both of these important facts are on his website, which his nephew made. Still, it’s not enough, not bringing in traffic, and his business is, as most people would say, “dying.” (Greg Sotriakis wouldn’t say this, though, because he hates puns, the death ones especially.) It’s impossible to fight against these corporations. That’s why he was so excited to get the call. A victim from the Sickle Man—of course God knows it’s terrible, especially because everyone thought the whole business was behind them, but still. Andrea Bowers, the Sickle Man’s newest victim, and a mother too.

  Greg is planning on a crowd, has told Janet, his long-suffering wife, to put in extra seats in the blue room. He could understand not having an open casket but had to swallow his disappointment. Well, yes. Although Maria had done her best after the forensic department. Now he’s preparing for the deceased’s friends, the curious, the onlookers, and a few reporters. Just needs some decent shots of the place, a reporter standing outside with his home in the background, maybe even an interview.

  It’s a Tragic Day, they’ll say, here at the Sotriakis Funeral Home . . . with him looking respectful, somber, shaking his head. A terrible loss. And then there will be a flawless service so that people can say it was a beautiful tribute to her memory, and think about their own aging parents, think how, yes, this is a day that counts. So he’s standing in the doorway, gazing at the half-filled parking lot and wondering why there aren’t more people, more trucks, more reporters.