Her body felt heavy. It’ll be soon. The angels were making her hang on. It couldn’t take that long to bleed to death. And she was really bleeding. On television it only seemed to take a few minutes, which meant in reality it probably took an hour. She had been here for at least an hour. Valerie glanced over at the clock.
3:59.
The number didn’t make sense to her. She didn’t recognize it. 3:59. Almost four. Afternoon. She had to put it together. She had to focus in order to think it through. Bed. Nightgown. Morning. Carpool. Pool. 7:11.
She had been lying here all day, still alive. Maybe it took all day. If that were the case, she was more than halfway through. Almost four. She had another five hours. She could surely die by then.
Meredith’s flimsy screen door was the only barrier preventing the outside world from entering her house. Josie didn’t think it was very safe to leave the front door wide open, but Meredith had a thing for fresh air. Josie once asked her what she would do if some crazy person walked in. “I could handle him,” Meredith said.
Josie was uncomfortable with casually sauntering in, so she stood on the porch with her face as close as possible to the wire mesh without touching it. She could see Meredith in the back, talking on the phone. Meredith spotted her and waved her inside.
Meredith was walking around her kitchen with her extra-long phone cord winding through her elbow and a beer in one hand. Meredith liked to drink. She offered Josie a beer, but Josie shook her head. Meredith’s kitchen was newly redone with the stove embedded in a sleek island countertop surrounded by Danish designer barstools. The barstools were made from the same blonde wood as her customized cabinets. The renovation was part of her divorce settlement. “You should get a divorce too,” Meredith told Josie. “It’s fantastic!”
Josie had a difficult time controlling her excitement, which was slowly disintegrating into anxiety, but she waited patiently for Meredith to finish her phone conversation and didn’t attempt to interrupt. She knew Meredith was talking to another one of her European friends because her usual American “I know” was punctuated by a German “Schiesse!” Meredith pulled out a barstool for Josie. Josie stared at the modern Scandinavian chair. She knew all would be lost if she allowed herself to sit down.
“Mom,” came a voice, along with a screen door slam. It was Meredith’s son from her first marriage. The kitchen settlement was from the second divorce.
He walked into the kitchen, a basketball balanced on one hip. Meredith didn’t miss a beat of her phone conversation. Her son raised his arms and acted like he was going to bash her head with the basketball, then pulled back with a laugh and said, “Psych!”
Meredith tried to wave him away. He took Meredith’s beer, drank the rest of it down, and handed it back to her empty. Meredith made a face as he walked out of the room, dribbling the ball against the tiled floor. Josie didn’t think it was such a great idea letting underage kids drink alcohol. She brought it up once and Meredith said something like, better here where I can keep an eye on him. Also, Meredith said, he could drink legally in less than a year when he turned eighteen, and when they were in France last summer he drank all the time and it was fine.
Meredith finally hung up the phone with an overacted, exasperated sigh. She opened the refrigerator and pulled out a replacement beer.
“Where were we?” she asked, as if she and Josie had been in the middle of a deep, important talk.
“Do you still have the key to Valerie’s?” Josie asked, trying to keep the tone casual.
“I think so. Why? You’re worried because she missed tennis?”
“No, it’s just . . . well, it’s that and her phone’s been busy all afternoon and Gretchen says Kirin wasn’t in school today.”
“Maybe the phone’s off the hook and she took Kirin to the doctor.”
“Right,” Josie said, trying not to let Meredith spoil her fun. Meredith took a glamorous swig of her beer and shrugged her shoulders as if to say, okay? Problem solved.
“Right,” Josie repeated. If she repeated it enough, perhaps she would believe it. “I just rang her bell, and she’s still not there.”
“I hope it’s nothing serious.” Meredith had already bought her own story and moved on.
“The dog came to the door both times. I don’t think she’s been out all day.”
“Did you try the back door?”
“No.”
“Try the back door. She’s probably sitting there in the backyard and didn’t hear you. That’s where she is whenever I can’t find her.”
Josie said, “Okay,” and turned toward the front door.
“Go around back,” Meredith said, indicating the kitchen door. Josie had already retraced one step and now stood half-turned with one foot awkwardly on tiptoe. She hung there for a moment, on the rubber edges of her tennis shoes, between the two entranceways of Meredith’s house, before reluctantly doing as she was told.
Josie swung out around the fence that divided the backyards and entered Valerie’s property from the alley. Valerie wasn’t in the backyard and there wasn’t any evidence, such as an ashtray or a half-drunk can of Tab, to indicate she’d recently been there. It looked as though no one had been in the yard for a long time, and to Josie, who tried not to believe in such things, it felt haunted.
She walked up the wooden steps to the deck, pulled the screen door open, and tried the back door. Locked. She gave it a couple jiggles just to make sure. She heard the dog patter through the kitchen and put her paws up on the other side of the Venetian blinds that covered the kitchen door. Josie couldn’t see inside and she was slightly spooked by the undulating blinds, though she was certain it was the dog.
Josie stepped back and released the screen door. The braking mechanism kept it from slamming shut by releasing a bit of air. It flew halfway closed and then, as if in slow motion, exhaled until it obediently clicked into place.
Josie tried to peek inside, but all the curtains and blinds were tightly drawn. Valerie used to open them during the day until she found out the family across the street worked for the FBI. Or the CIA. Josie couldn’t remember which. Valerie had made such a big deal about it. Josie thought her reaction rather odd since they lived in DC, everyone worked for the government, and they could easily get classified information from Meredith, although Meredith’s information usually had to do with which junior senator from the Sunbelt was sleeping with his aide and which one was secretly gay. Not exactly state secrets, but not the type of thing people wanted getting around. Meredith had told Josie a high-level person in the vice president’s office had his mistress evicted and sent back to Delaware or Kentucky or wherever because she started blabbing.
The only window without curtains was high up over the sink and Josie was too short to see inside. She dragged over a large potted plant, shoved it against the side of the house, and carefully stepped onto the terra-cotta rim, digging her toes into the dirt. The pom-poms on her heels lifted toward the sun as she peered into the kitchen.
The dog was still at the back door, but when Josie put her hand on the sill, Pudding twitched her head and looked at the window. She padded over to the sink, but didn’t know how to get to Josie from six feet below. That’s when Josie noticed the floor. The dog had walked over and left dark paw prints across the linoleum.
Josie felt her eyebrows squeeze together and stick there. A prickling sensation crept down her legs. Her eyes darted around the rest of the kitchen, but unlike the jittery queasiness unfurling in her body, it seemed strangely serene. A model kitchen. Clean and undirtied, except for the dog stamping a new pattern onto the floor.
Josie looked back at the dog. Pudding opened her mouth to catch an invisible scrap of food.
Something in Josie wanted to run back to Meredith’s. She tried to talk some sense into herself. Meredith would think she was making a big deal about nothing. Gretchen always said that too. “You’re such a worrywart, Mom.” Josie didn’t know what to do in this situation. It was the same feelin
g she had at her husband’s office Christmas party when she saw him put his hand on the bare, spaghetti-strapped shoulder of a young secretary. She didn’t know how to interpret it. That night she had gone home and written down a list of all the possible things it could have been. He could have been helping her put on a sweater, or politely brushing off a piece of fuzz, or a fly, she could’ve been falling backward from too much wine and he had steadied her, or it could’ve been consoling, she could’ve been telling him about problems at home. It was Valerie who sat with Josie as she read the list. But Valerie wasn’t listening. She had spaced out and when Josie playfully said, “Earth to Val,” it took a few seconds before Valerie rematerialized, and when she did, she didn’t have any advice.
“Valerie?”
Pudding turned around and looked up at her.
“Val?”
No response.
Josie tried to lift the little window. She dug her toes deeper into the soil and awkwardly transferred a little more strength into her arms. The window refused to budge. Why am I doing this? she thought. Meredith has a key.
She stepped out of the flowerpot, accidentally tipping it over and spilling black dirt onto the deck. She stood the pot back up and instinctively swept the loose soil together, scooped it up with her hands, and deposited it back into the pot. She started to brush the remaining dirt off the deck with her foot when she wondered what invisible force possessed her to clean. She left the half-swept deck and walked back around into Meredith’s yard.
Meredith was on the phone again, switching effortlessly between English and French and peppering the talk with several accentuated mm’s when Josie reappeared in her kitchen. Meredith frowned at Josie’s formerly pristine white tennis shoes, now covered in dirt and tracking across her Florentine tile.
Josie had to get Meredith off the phone, but she didn’t know how to politely interrupt. Meredith was busying herself throwing dinner together, opening and closing the refrigerator, walking to the limits of her long stretchy phone cord. Josie’s throat was dry and she felt that if she did speak, her voice would sound embarrassingly laryngitic. She walked over to Meredith and tugged on her sleeve. It felt like a childish thing to do, but Josie was scared and she didn’t want her voice to betray her. It was the same reason she didn’t go into her own backyard alone at night. Josie was getting that same tightness in her throat that unveiled itself whenever she was unable to keep her fear in check, when she was forced to admit that she was afraid of the dark, and that she was terrified of being alone.
Meredith, annoyed, silently mouthed, “What?”
Josie licked her lips but nothing came out.
Meredith rolled her eyes and made an excuse to get off the phone in overly annunciated English. Then she said, “What?” aloud.
“I think we should go check. With the key.”
Meredith put a spaghetti pot under the faucet and flipped on the tap.
“Why?” she asked over the running water.
“I looked in the back, and the dog . . . there was some blood, and there were foot prints all over the floor.”
“How do you know it was blood?”
“I just think we should go check.”
Josie didn’t see why Meredith was making this so difficult. Meredith gave another glamorous sigh, picked up her phone, and started dialing. Josie couldn’t believe she was going back to her bilingual conversation without missing a beat.
“Maybe you could just give me the key,” Josie suggested.
“Let me try calling her first.”
It would be Josie’s luck for Meredith to get through and have it all be a big misunderstanding.
“Busy,” Meredith said and hung up. She stayed there for a moment, standing by the phone, her arms folded across her chest. Josie didn’t know why, out of all of their friends, Meredith had this big-sister authority. Josie only wanted the key. She would leave Meredith out of it. This was her thing. A part of her didn’t want Meredith involved.
“I would really like to go and check. Then if it’s nothing, we can all have a beer and laugh about it. You can make fun of me, and laugh about how uptight I am.”
Meredith opened her odds-and-ends drawer and pulled out an old Tupperware container full of keys. She dumped them on the counter and spread them out into a single layer. Valerie’s had the yellow tag with a V scratched into it by a ballpoint pen.
“Okay, let’s go check. You’re giving me a panic attack.”
Meredith was holding the key. They walked out the front door.
Meredith immediately turned around.
“Her car’s still here?!” she said angrily.
“Yes—”
“You didn’t tell me her car was here the whole time!”
“Yes, I did—”
“No, if you had told me that, we wouldn’t have had this whole back-and-forth conversation.”
Josie now couldn’t remember if she had told Meredith about the car or not. She couldn’t remember if she had noticed it herself.
“You know what she told me last week?”
“What?”
“She said she was thinking about killing herself.”
Meredith was stealing Josie’s adventure. It was turning into a Meredith show and somehow Josie’s timidity was going to be blamed if anything went wrong.
“Yeah,” Meredith said, tossing her hair off her shoulders as they crossed the front lawn. “She joked about almost driving her car off a bridge and said something like, ‘It’s good weather today for a suicide.’”
Josie had to shut up now. Once Meredith took over, she had to go along with it.
They stood at Valerie’s front door and Meredith wiggled the key into the lock. Pudding was there to meet them. She put her paws on Meredith’s thighs and left little red flecks on her suntanned skin.
“You see,” Josie said.
“Hey, hey, are you bleeding? Are you bleeding, old girl? Huh?” Meredith rubbed the dog behind her ears. Pudding slid down Meredith’s legs and stood by the staircase next to an empty pair of Dr. Scholl’s sandals.
“Why don’t you let her out back?” Meredith said.
No way, Josie thought, I’m not getting relegated to dog duty.
The dog anxiously hopped onto the first step of the carpeted staircase.
“Val?” Josie called out.
“Look,” Meredith said pointing to the floor, “is this what you were talking about?”
There were paw prints leading from the stairs around to the back of the house. Josie and Meredith followed the tracks to Valerie’s otherwise sparkling-clean kitchen.
“Here ya go,” Meredith said, opening the back door to coax Pudding out, “go on.”
The dog wasn’t moving.
“Go on, now. Outside.” Meredith held the screen door open for her.
The dog turned to Josie for support.
Meredith let the screen door close. For some reason, the breaking mechanism didn’t catch, and the door unexpectedly banged shut.
“Valerie?” Josie called out again.
“We’re in the damn house. We can go check. We don’t have to yell.” Meredith acted as though Josie were several levels of sophistication beneath her.
Josie walked out of the room. Fuck her, she thought, and she didn’t think that very often.
Pudding scampered ahead of Josie and again hopped onto the first step. Come this way, she seemed to be saying.
“I’m going upstairs,” Josie called out. She raised one foot and the dog moved with her, keeping an eye on her, hopping up one step at a time.
When Josie reached the landing and turned to face the upstairs hallway, the lips of her mouth parted and an invisible vacuum sucked the air out of her lungs. There was a long smear along the wall, like a modern art painting she didn’t quite understand. It was a red, drippy brush stroke and it looked like blood. Josie wasn’t sure what propelled her body the rest of the way up the stairs. Her bare knees lifted as if she were a marionette doll with strings attached to he
r joints. She walked strangely, straight up and down, not using her usual side-side gait. The dog was waiting for her at the top of the stairs. When Josie made it all the way up, she could see that the brush stroke led down the hall to the master bedroom. The dog scurried to the doorway of the room, but she wouldn’t go in. Josie followed her down the hall, along the painted trail, a sleepwalker only half-aware that she was moving through space. At the end, in the doorjamb, was a handprint. An ancient marking. Beware.
Josie looked down at the dog before setting foot in the room. Pudding’s black eyes seemed more watery than usual and cloudy drips leaked onto her butterscotch face. Josie stood there for a moment as if she too were obeying the imaginary force field that prevented the dog from entering the room.
Then she walked in.
Valerie was there. Lying on the bed. On a bed stained with blood. A lot of blood.
Josie’s eyes widened so much that her tightly knit eyebrows finally parted, but her lips refused to separate and she could not speak.
Valerie’s eyelids slowly parted.
Josie felt pee running down the insides of her legs.
Josie opened her mouth and desperately gasped for the air that had abandoned her. She made ugly, guttural sounds, her mouth was uncontrollable for several moments, until she finally formed part of a word.
“Meredi—!”
Josie couldn’t tell if she was pissing or crying. Everything was wet. She leaned forward and placed her hands on the bloody mattress, and that was wet too.
Valerie was alive. She was a talking piece of flesh from a horror movie. The only thing she said to Josie was, “Go away.”
The next thing she knew, Meredith was standing beside her and shoving her out of the way. Josie heard the two of them talking as if they were far, far in the distance, a radio station that was barely coming in.
“Don’t tell anyone,” Valerie was saying, “just go away and pretend you didn’t see anything. It’s better. It’s better this way. I still have some time. It’ll happen. I know it will. I’ve been waiting all day.”
Meredith ran to the bathroom, came back with a towel, and pressed it on Valerie’s arm. Josie felt her knees go weak and she plopped onto the floor the way a toddler sits straight down as if pulled by a retracting cord. She put the back of her hand over her eyes and tried to wipe away the image of a decomposing Valerie. Where am I? she thought. This can’t be real. This isn’t happening. When she opened her eyes she saw a rifle lying in front of her.
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