She was quiet.
“Do you like me?” she said.
Peter shrugged. He didn’t not like her. Per se.
“Are you sure it’s not—” She moved her hands over her bump.
“No,” he said. “That’s kind of hot.”
“Pervert!” she said, beaming.
“Look,” he said. “If the dynamite’s on the tracks, you think twice about stepping on that train.”
“Smooth talker!”
They were both quiet.
“You’re really saying no?” she said.
* * *
Roman stood in his room regarding the coupling link mounted on the wall. While it looked like worthless junk, this was the first item produced by Jacob Godfrey for the Pennsylvania Railroad and its value was beyond measure: an empire had been built on it. Roman picked it up and held it in front of his heart and pulled with both hands as hard as he could, but to no avail even a century after its production: it was Godfrey steel. He put it back on its mount and went to his dresser, where there was a glass of vodka and ice and a small mound of cocaine on a pewter tray. He took out his mint container, where he stored a blade for a box cutter and segments of straw, and divided the cocaine into several lines and snorted them. He took a heavy sip of vodka. He looked at himself in the mirror.
“Godfrey steel,” he said.
He held the blade of the box cutter to the corner of his eye and made a quick vertical slash down his cheek. He closed his eyes and felt the pleasing warmth as blood issued onto his face. He opened his eyes and put a finger to the cut and traced it under both eyes and over his lips in a parody of his mother applying makeup. He batted his eyes for the mirror and puckered his lips.
“Shut up and kiss me,” he said.
The doorbell rang. Startled, Roman hurried to the bathroom and washed his face and applied a Band-Aid to the cut. He grabbed his drink and went to the foyer. The caller was a petite black woman wearing a dark trench coat and holding a badge.
“Are you Roman Godfrey?” she said.
“Yeah,” he said.
“You’re bleeding,” she said.
“Close shave,” he said.
“Let me see,” she said.
“It’s fine,” he said.
“Hold still,” she said.
She lifted the bandage, gauging immediately that the cut was superficial and self-inflicted. Further that the boy was high and recently had had his heart broken and that this made him defenseless and dangerous, so conveniently incautious for her purposes. She told him to keep it clean, but he’d live. She introduced herself but it was obviously not news to him.
“You know who I am,” she said.
“You’re the dogcatcher,” he said.
“Might I ask how you know that?”
“Small pond,” he said.
“Is your mother home right now?” she said.
“No.”
“Do you expect her?”
He shrugged.
“Is your sister in?” she said.
“My sister doesn’t go out.”
“Do you think I might talk to her?”
“She doesn’t talk.”
“That’s fine, I’d just like to say hello. If that’s okay.”
“Why do you want to meet Shelley?”
“Maybe I should come back when your mother is around.”
This bluff trumped the boy’s suspicion: he could not in good conscience make a choice that responsible.
Roman led her upstairs and she stopped short in the second-floor hallway.
“Is this your door?” she said.
“Yeah.”
“What’s this?” She pointed to the cross and serpent.
“It’s from a video game. Why do you ask?”
“Just thought it looked familiar.”
They continued to the attic. The door was closed and string music played softly from within. He knocked and said, “Shelley, we have a visitor who’d like to meet you.”
Chasseur noted the softening of his manner. He held some things sacred. There was a pause and then a loud scraping noise followed by several slow creaking steps. The knob turned and the door nosed open and Roman pushed it and entered. Chasseur followed. The music was coming from a computer; on the monitor was the dense text of an academic article on biomimetics. Roman stood off to the side, his sibling awkwardly before her.
Dr. Chasseur was legendary for keeping certain physiological responses in check—her fame within her unit in the Corps dramatically increased one poker night when she won the pot with a royal straight flush with no hint of a tell, and a first husband who would never hear a woman say “I love you” again without flinching. But it took the full exercise of her talents not to gasp out loud seeing the elephant in the room, hands like gloves with hands inside them nervously fussing the folds of her dress, that brute face and eyes so bright and clear and sad.
“This is Dr. Chasseur,” said Roman. “She’s here to take a bite out of the vargulf.”
She turned from the girl to the boy. “Excuse me?”
And she saw now his positioning was not accidental: he had strategically placed himself to cover an easel, but the outline was unmistakable. Ouroboros.
She looked back to Shelley with a smile and said, “I don’t mean to be rude, dear, but I think I need to have a word with your brother.”
A sound like a thousand lightly tapping fingers filled the attic: the rain had begun.
Roman and Chasseur went down to the living room and sat and she made her eyes into scalpels and cut him into very small pieces.
“Yes?” he said with badly feigned innocence.
She continued to look at him and he drank, uncomfortable.
“Roman, I’m going to ask you a few questions,” she said. “But before I do, there’s something I want you to do for me. I want you to think about what kind of person you want to be. I’m here because people are getting hurt, and the more honest you are with me the more it will help me do something about it. I want you to take a second and think about that, okay?”
Roman looked down at the glass in his hands. He set it on the coffee table and nodded.
“What is your association with Peter Rumancek?”
“We … hang out.”
“Is there anything else you want to tell me about your relationship?”
Roman was quiet.
“Does Peter believe he is a werewolf?”
“No,” said Roman. “People just say that about him.”
“Do you have any idea why they would say those things?”
“They’re afraid of him. You should hear the things they say about us. I guess you have.”
“Do they have a reason to be afraid?”
“No. Peter would never hurt anyone.”
“Why did you go to the first murder site?”
The word hung in the air for a moment like a smoke ring before it dissipates. Murder.
“I followed Peter.”
“What was Peter doing there?”
“Rubbernecking.”
“Did you dig up Lisa Willoughby?”
“No.”
She reached into her coat and produced her badge and set it facedown on the table.
“Did you dig up Lisa Willoughby?”
“I said we didn’t,” said Roman.
She looked at him.
“Yeah,” he said. “We did.”
“Why?”
“It was a ritual or something. Some Gypsy thing. I don’t know.”
“Roman, desecration of the dead does not fall under the rubric of ‘some Gypsy thing.’”
“It wasn’t desecration.”
“What was it?”
“Peter … thought he could help her.”
“She’s dead.”
“Peter marches to his own beat,” said Roman.
“Upstairs you used the word vargulf. Why did you use this word?”
“Because I don’t want you to bother my sister.”
“Why do you think I wou
ld bother her?”
“I don’t want you to think she’s the vargulf.”
“When you use this word, what exactly do you think it means?”
He looked down and fussed at his already smooth lapels.
“It’s a kind of sickness,” he said. “It’s like … hunger with no appetite.”
She was bemused.
“Where did you learn this word?” she said.
“I don’t know where I learned it.”
“Where did you learn this word?” she said.
“Peter,” he said.
“Can you tell me anything about an experiment being conducted at the Godfrey Institute for Biomedical Technologies called Ouroboros?” she said.
“I know that symbol means something. I mean, all symbols mean something, but that one means something—I don’t know, something … happening.”
He picked up his glass and drank and set it down. His fingertips missed it so he picked it up again. The ring of condensation from where it had first been placed joined the ring from where he lifted it and made a ∞.
“I see things sometimes,” he said.
She nodded.
“Do you know what it means?” he said.
She regarded the boy: a narcissistic, insecure, oversensitive, and underparented adolescent heir to a Fortune 500 company with a substance abuse problem and homoerotic tendencies—it would have been more surprising if he didn’t “see things sometimes.”
“I can’t know what it means to you,” she said.
He hunched and ran his thumb up and down the sweat of his glass.
“I can help you,” he said.
“Your cooperation is very helpful.”
“I can do more. The White Tower. Ouroboros—I can find out what it is. My father built that place. My name is Godfrey.”
“A name is only a name,” she said.
He was doubtful of this premise.
“It’s good that you want to help,” she said. “It’s very good of you. But you can’t.”
She observed him try inexpertly to conceal how deeply this cut and had intimacy with this pain. No insult to the heart like being not needed yet.
“Why not?” he said.
She looked at his watery eyes with impatient compassion. She knew what he needed to hear, the first and fundamental tenet on which the rest of her training was founded, though it was unlikely the boy was any more ready to hear it than she herself at enlistment age, when the fight was more important than understanding why you fought. Teenagers. How thankful she was to be needed for something other than maternity.
“God doesn’t want you to be happy, He wants you to be strong,” she said.
Roman’s native response was to send an acid-tipped barb straight in the exposed heart of this display of conviction but his tongue was silenced by the sudden uncertainty whether this was the most shit-for-brains or most important thing he had ever heard.
She reached for her badge. Staying any longer would be redundant: there was nothing to take from here but pain.
“Roman, would you like to introduce our guest?”
They both looked up to find the boy’s mother in the entryway, holding a grocery bag. Chasseur looked out the window and saw the black pickup. It had not been there moments ago but its silhouette in what was by now a shower gave it a quality like some monolith from a primeval age. The mother stood in a white velour track suit and sunglasses and both were dry.
“May I ask your business here?” she said politely.
“There are certain inconsistencies in this investigation,” said Chasseur. “I’m just dotting t’s.”
“Say no more,” said Olivia. “Of course we would be thrilled to offer whatever you would find of assistance. Not a pleasant business at all, anything we can do. May I offer you a tea or perhaps a brandy? Things are getting frightful outside.”
Chasseur could imagine no climatic condition more forbidding than the smile on the lady of Godfrey House inviting her to stay. Chasseur made her excuses and gave Roman a parting look and that look was really a prayer.
Once they were alone Olivia took the glass from Roman and sipped. Her eyes flicked down to the beaded rings on the table, which she wiped with her sleeve.
“You know,” she said, “there is no shortage of coasters in this house.”
He mumbled an apology.
“What happened to your face?” she said.
“It’s just a scrape,” he said.
She smiled sadly.
“Silly monkey,” she said.
His phone then rang and he stepped into the next room and answered.
“Marie is hysterical,” said Dr. Godfrey. “But this place has been a zoo all day and I just can’t get away yet. Do you have any idea where Letha might have gone?”
He stood by the hall window looking out at the rain and the trees.
“Yes,” said Roman. “I have an idea.”
* * *
“You smell nice,” said Letha. “You smell sweet like a puppy.”
She was sitting astride him on the couch and his shirt had made its way off but they were otherwise clothed. He ran his fingertips down the back of her arm.
She shivered and smiled and said, “Goose bumps.” She walked her fingers down his chest hair to his navel and lay her hand flat. He was hairy and his belly gently convex like a glass filled just to the point of overflowing.
“Tell me a story about being a Gypsy,” she said.
“Do you people realize I’m half Italian?” said Peter.
“Right, but who cares!” she said.
Peter thought about it.
“One time Nicolae caught a fairy,” he said.
“What do you mean, a fairy?”
He was annoyed. “I mean a fairy, what the heck am I supposed to mean?” He went on. “I was at his house one night in the summer, I must have been eight or nine, and Nic said he wanted to show me something, and he turned out the lights and gave me this jar with a little light inside. I say, Nic, that’s a lightning bug. He says, Look closer. So I held it up and it wasn’t a lightning bug, it was a person, a girl, no taller than a thumbnail, with wings like a dragonfly. And she had this little light.”
“What was she wearing?”
Peter arched an eyebrow.
“I say, Holy shit, Nic, where did you find her? and he says she was just flying around the porch light with the moths. First he tried to catch her with his hands, but she stung him.”
“Fairies sting?”
“Are you kidding? Fairies are meaner than fucking hornets.”
This news pleased her.
“What did you do with her?”
“Kept her. For a while.”
“What did you feed her?”
“Flies.”
She was indignant. “Pretty fairies do not eat flies!”
“Yes they sure do. Get ’em right in the air and tear ’em apart. It’s better than watching a tarantula go after crickets.”
She was thoughtful.
“What happened to her?”
“She died. They don’t last so long in captivity. One day there was just this tiny old woman at the bottom of the jar. Her wings had fallen off. At first I thought she was just taking a nap so I shook it a little. Definitely dead.”
“You didn’t clap your hands?”
He gave her a look.
“Well it’s a fairy!” she said. “They’re magical.”
Peter shrugged, philosophical. “Death is fucking magical,” he said.
Letha was quiet. Then abruptly she pushed herself up so she was straddling him. “I’m sorry, these things are killing me.”
She pulled her shirt over her head and reached behind her, biting her tongue in concentration, and unclasped her bra. Her breasts fell free, the undersides bitten by wire. She made a relieved noise. Peter ran his hands along the swell of her belly.
“Are you serious!” she said.
She moved his hands over her breasts, leaving her own atop his and slowly
kneading. She exhaled with contentment. Peter watched this surprising gift of his hands on these swollen tits with ambivalence.
“You should know I’m not any good being a boyfriend,” he said.
She looked at the ceiling in wonder. “Tell me how such a big hairy retard can smell so good?” she said.
“What I mean to say is that what you’re talking about is a whole deal and everything,” said Peter.
“Fucking?” she said.
For a young man who devoted a predictable amount of mental resources to who and in what manner he would like to fuck, he did not like this business of her using this word. It wasn’t girly and made him ill at ease.
She sat on top of him and enjoyed his discomfort. She could pinpoint the exact moment that she decided Peter would have sex with her today and it had been this morning, when she had attempted and discarded in frustration numerous ensembles and realized it was completely for his benefit and if he was going to cause her all this hassle he had better hold up his end of the bargain.
But as to her virginity. In her view the reason most of the time a girl was a virgin amounted to she wanted to feel special and not like just any old whore. Letha had never considered this her own motivation. She thought it was the height of dumb that anyone could look at this nonchoice as some kind of accomplishment and if a girl wanted to have sex with a bunch of boys or a bunch of sex with one boy and that made her happy, what could be wrong with that? What could be wrong with wanting what makes you happy? So she had told herself that when she met the person she really really wanted to get to know without her clothes, all bets were off; she was just waiting for when it felt right.
Letha did not know if it felt right to have sex with Peter Rumancek; she could in fact find no shortage of reasons why it wouldn’t. But something had happened. An angel with a halo of every color had brought her a miracle and after that happens you don’t get to tell yourself lies anymore, the right has been revoked. And if Letha was honest with herself, there had been plenty of boys she wanted to get to know without her clothes—she wanted to feel their breath on her skin and to hold their penises in her hand and believably pull off lines like, Are you going to try to fuck me—but the thing that was really holding her back was the idea that this nonchoice was some kind of accomplishment, that she was special, not just some whore. And this was not acceptable anymore; lying about her deepest self was not an option in a world that had reached into her and left grace behind.
Hemlock Grove Page 17