Orient

by Christopher Bollen

  CHAPTER 18

  When Beth was nine years old, her father decided that her dog needed to be put to sleep. “Sane things can’t live with insane things,” Anthony Shepherd had said to her as she hugged Moonshine, a pit-bull mutt they had adopted from the North Shore Animal League. The shelter’s vet had estimated Moonshine’s age at four, but his hair was so paper-clip gray—the parts of him that still grew hair—that he looked much older. He smelled and walked older too, taking a solid minute to get to his feet when a squirrel dotted the lawn. The only thing Moonshine did quickly was bite. He bit her father when he reached under the table at dinner. He bit mailmen and neighbors and other dogs and any animal that was too slow to escape.

  The only person Moonshine didn’t bite was Beth. She could kiss his black lips, or jump on him when he slept, or pull food from his dish, and he wouldn’t so much as growl. But after two years and twelve substantial bites, her father decided he had to be put down. Beth remembered the dog’s sour breath on her face—some of the last breaths Moonshine ever took—as she swore to her father that she’d never love another animal again. And she remembered her father’s words, even now as she stared out the front window—sane things can’t live with insane things—two days after the fire.

  Across the street, the Aug family was in the process of bringing home a gray pit bull mix from the pound. To announce the arrival of the intimidating pet, they hung a BEWARE OF DOG sign on their fence, where their old PERMANENTLY GONE FISHING sign used to be. Next door to the Augs, a green van marked PRUITT SECURITIES was parked in the Stillpasses’ driveway. Two of Adam’s workers spent the afternoon there, running wires through the ground-floor windows. Beth considered reversing her childhood promise never to own another animal. She was suddenly open to discussing the possibility of getting a vicious dog, or an alarm system, or any other desperate home-security precaution. The problem was, ever since the party, Gavril had retreated into his work and the two of them had barely spoken.

  The house was cold, but Beth didn’t build a fire. Even staring into the fireplace reminded her of the Muldoons. After Beth heard the news, she spent hours pacing through the house, frightened and anxious, fearful of hearing the follow-up report that the fire wasn’t accidental. Jeff Trader had warned Magdalena about the historical board, and now he and two of its key members, Magdalena and Bryan Muldoon, were dead. If someone had killed Jeff, and then murdered Magdalena for what she suspected about Jeff’s death, had that same person burned the Muldoons’ house down?

  Normally she would have looked to Gavril to tell her she was overreacting, but he’d been locked in his studio for four nights straight, working past midnight and sleeping on the cot. Each morning, he entered the kitchen with bags under his eyes, muttering a halfhearted apology: “I didn’t mean to, I just dozed off.” She couldn’t argue. His excuse was valid, repellent to guilt trips: now that he confirmed a show at Veiseler Projects scheduled for the spring, he was under immense pressure to produce new work. But his long exile in the garage felt like he’d pressed pause on their marriage. Beth was left to the silence of the house, a half-empty bed, and a mind still troubled by her failure to convince the police to investigate the first two deaths before anything worse could happen.

  In the wake of the storm, she had canceled her appointment at Planned Parenthood. Now, after the fire, she remained homebound, afraid to venture into the village in case her worst fears were articulated: the fire wasn’t accidental. The two houses across the street were her only clues to the village consensus, and new alarm systems and guard dogs were not positive signs. Her mother hadn’t phoned or visited since the fire, which was unlike her. Gail had hated Pam and Bryan, but she could have applied a theatrical solemnity to the occasion to demonstrate her compassion. It was unlike her to stay away from other people’s disasters.

  Beth finally decided to call her. “Hi, Mom,” she said when Gail picked up.

  “Yes, dear,” her mother whispered. “I’m sorry I haven’t phoned. I’ve been having some work done on the condo. You know, improving it to increase its value.”

  Beth tried to control a wave of panic. “You’re not planning on selling it?” she asked. With Magdalena and the Muldoons gone, it wouldn’t be beyond her mother to plan a spectacular return to Orient. “We just moved in. We’re not ready to leave yet.”

  Her mother sighed. “I’m upgrading the bathroom. For heaven’s sake, honey, be reasonable. How is everything there? Tragic, just tragic, what happened to that family. I hear it wasn’t electrical.”

  “What have you heard?”

  Over the sound of hammering, Gail told her. “The police are investigating. I imagine they’ll have quite a job on their hands. Where do you start on a list of people who didn’t like the Muldoons? You’d be better off making a list of those who did.”

  “Well, you didn’t like them. That’s one name.”

  Beth was met with a minute of hostile silence. “Honey, that’s not funny,” Gail said. “Children were killed. It breaks my heart to think of two kids killed along with those parents. Just chilling, that whole family dying at home, after they were so indignant about everyone else not making any upgrades. Karma is such a nasty thing. Your father always said that, and I agree.” It was difficult to believe that Anthony Shepherd, an insurance salesman, believed in karma—unplanned events were his specialty—but Gail routinely projected any convenient creed on her first husband.

  “I’m surprised you haven’t visited, that’s all,” Beth said.

  “Well, this is new. For once my daughter is asking me to visit. What’s the matter? Do you have news for me? That might bring some cheer to Orient.”

  Beth’s hand went to her stomach. She could tell Gail right now that she was pregnant and those simple words would change every step of her future. All of her decisions could be placed in the hands of others.

  “I haven’t even seen Gavril. He’s locked in his studio working.”

  “You’ve got to let him make money,” Gail said. “I’m telling you this while you’re young. There are only a few opportunities for the money to come in, and when you’re older you’ll be desperate for every dollar you’ve managed to put away. It’s a shame young people don’t realize that. All I have is this condo and the house. You better be taking good care of it. Tell Gavril to be careful about those floors in the garage. They’re terrazzo. Worth their weight—No, no, watch the carpeting. Honey, I’ve got to go. But do me a favor, will you? Clean out some of the closets in the house for me?”

  “Why?”

  “Because there’s no point in having all that junk lying around. It’s a firetrap. Beth, I’ve really got to run. They’re scratching the porcelain. You can’t trust these workers. I think they’re used to talking to women through a divider of Plexiglas.”

  Gavril’s journal lay open on the counter. He had etched a box in black pen across the page, and below it he had written “gloves.” The rest of the page was filled with indecipherable Romanian, spaced like a shopping list. Beth turned the page and saw other notes. “The house is a lie.” “Creative theft.” “Ask lawyer about ownership.” Glued to the pages were newspaper photographs of oil spills, birds and deer twisted like broken umbrellas in black pools of tar.

  She poured a glass of whiskey and decided to carry it out to the studio for Gavril. She needed to touch him, to feel the weight of his arms and to press her forehead against his neck. If she hadn’t been pregnant, if Gavril didn’t have his show, she’d beg him to spend whatever money they had on a vacation: Hawaii like his birthmark, Bucharest to visit his parents, New York City to re-create their first days again, anywhere where the neighbors weren’t securing themselves against a potential murderer. She crossed the lawn and opened the garage door, looking for Gavril’s hunched shape in the studio. They were still a couple. Nothing was lost, not yet.

  Luz stood on the plastic tarp that covered the floor of the garage, gripping her hips, rocking on her red high-tops. She wore tight jeans and a long blue swea
ter, her cornrows loosened into soft brown fuzz. She was staring at the clumps of tar Gavril had shaped into grisly two-foot mounds.

  Beth heard Gavril’s voice echo through the garage. “It just isn’t good. It feels empty. Too conventional. No thrust.”

  “I don’t think so,” Luz replied. “But do what you want. It’s you who has to live with the consequences. Maybe I’m just not getting what you’re after.”

  “You have to give me time on that. I’m not sure yet what I mean. It is not my job to know what it means, is it? I stop when it is the right time to stop.”

  “That’s what I love about us, we don’t have to be accountable,” Luz said. She noticed Beth standing at the door, drew the sleeve of her sweater to her mouth, and straightened her back. “Beth, I was going to come and knock on your door after I finished visiting Gavril.”

  Seeing Luz was like being handed a lavish bouquet of flowers in the hospital: a gift of beauty that seemed like an unwanted intrusion from the outer world. Gavril crawled from around a blackened mound, a white surgical mask hanging around his neck.

  “I brought you a drink,” Beth said, brandishing the glass. “What are you two doing?”

  “Luz was just giving me her opinion.”

  “I’m afraid I haven’t been much help.” Luz chewed on her sweater sleeve. “My advice to most artists is not to ask me for advice. But Gavril’s having such a hard time. That’s what we were talking about. He’s threatening to cancel his show.” Gavril glared up at her, as if to hush her. She rubbed her sleeve against her teeth. “Just keep going. You’ve got time to change your mind. It’s a free country.” Luz laughed at her own imitation of Gavril.

  A bag of oysters sat on the cart by the door, tied with a pink ribbon and taped with a piece of stationery. “That’s from Nathan,” Luz said, walking over to the bag and handing it to Beth. “It’s his way of apologizing for his behavior at the party. He really feels awful about the fight, which means he hardly remembers it. Nathan tends to black out, which is great for him but messy for those who still have to deal with the aftermath.”

  Beth unfolded the note. The stationery bore the personalized heading NATHAN CRIMP, printed in a clean blue font beneath the outline of an oyster shell. “To the Catargis, I come in peace. Love, N.”

  Luz plunked the oysters down on the cart. “Gavril can enjoy them. You can’t eat seafood, right?” Luz asked, with a knowing, threatening Luzian smile.

  Beth’s throat tightened. “Why would you say that?”

  “I just thought— Well, I don’t know about those things.” She touched Beth’s arm. “What do you think about that fire? Horrible. Makes you feel lucky . . .”

  “To be alive,” Beth said, grateful for the change in subject.

  “No. Not to be from around here, where someone might want you dead. Didn’t you hear? Word is it was arson. My God, Beth, this is your neighborhood. Don’t you keep up with what’s going on?” Luz shook her head. “Well, I have my own work to do. I just hope my sitters don’t cancel with all that’s going on. You two should come by for dinner this week. And if you don’t mind, save the oyster shells for me. I’ve been thinking of incorporating them into my work. Maybe I’ll tape pornographic pictures to them and hand them out as Christmas gifts.” She spun around, her neck swelling with thin cables.

  “Le revedere,” she sang in Romanian.

  “Sarut,” Beth’s husband said.

  Luz slipped out the door, a hint of lilac perfume lingering behind to mix with the odor of tar. Beth picked up Gavril’s drink and crossed the studio to where he knelt, scraping tar on a black mound that was littered with branches and bones and old photographs. Beth averted her eyes from the photos, afraid to see pictures of them from happier times. When your own hairbrush isn’t safe, how can you protect photo albums? The tar mounds looked, to her, like the worst sculptures Gavril had ever produced, not just ugly but inert. He gazed up at her, his eyelids swollen from lack of sleep.

  “I didn’t think you liked hearing anyone’s opinions on your work?”

  Gavril leaned back on his knees, sighing. “She just came in to give us that present. Besides, maybe it’s good to ask a second opinion.”

  “You’ve never asked for my opinion.”

  He looked up at her, then dropped his scraper on the tarp. “Don’t nag me about this. Luz is artist. She came in by surprise, so I asked her.”

  “I am an artist. Was, anyway.” Beth heard the whine in her voice and recognized a person she didn’t want to be: a woman begging for attention, a wife threatened by the opinions of other women, the kind of woman who turns other women into enemies simply because they’re more confident. Beth was becoming the kind of woman she and Gavril used to make fun of on their walks home from dinner in New York. Could their marriage be saved if she and Gavril bonded over how much they disliked the new Beth?

  “Please, don’t make me feel guilty. I am having a hard time. These pieces just look dead. No life to them. I cannot get them to work. In New York I could, but here . . .” He waved his hands. Beth studied the disasters. It had started with a puddle of tar, a stain in the water, and that stain had evolved into budding lumps, like some primordial soup generating mass before it crawled out to begin a new species. At least Beth guessed that was Gavril’s intention, when really the mounds looked more like the kind of scorched furniture that must be spread across the Muldoons’ lawn. Some of the lumps were decorated with golden marbles, glimmering like bees, and the photos, perhaps collected from a thrift store, were of long-dead people laughing, vacations neither of them had taken, times that looked more sincere because they happened before either of them was born. “I try to build up the death—to make it alive, real, my own Orient landscape—but it doesn’t work. Just dead. And the more it builds, the worse it becomes. What you see may be the end of my career. One bad show, Beth, and I end up an art teacher at a small college on Long Island. One bad show and everything before is worth nothing. People only remember the last thing you’ve made.”

  She bent down to put her arms around him, ignoring the tar from his overalls that smeared across her sweatshirt, trying to bring her lips to his. He heaved a sigh and slowly pushed her away. She fought him, digging her fingers into his back, trying to wear him down with affection. She slipped her hand toward his crotch, but he grabbed her wrist. She stopped.

  “Why don’t we take a vacation?” she said. “Why don’t we leave for a week or two? Somewhere romantic. That fire scared me, Gavril. Couldn’t we?” She begged him again. “Just the two of us. Only a week or two. Maybe it will give you some distance to think. You’ll still have the rest of the winter to finish the work.”

  Gavril stood up, stepping over the wet vats of tar heated by small blue flames. Animal bones that Gavril must have bought from the butcher sat in a queasy pile, rib cages and humerus bones, some with their blue meat still attached. She thought she saw a sheep’s skull under a hoof. Bags of oyster shells and animal fur spilled across the tarp. These were the materials her chosen mate preferred. Gavril placed the white mask over his mouth and pointed at it. “Ou houldn’t ee in here, reathing the umes.”

  Beth pulled the mask from his mouth. His lips were tight beneath it.

  “We could buy tickets online and leave tonight,” she said. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful? Just us. To get out of Orient for a while. To forget what’s happening out here.”

  His eyes hollowed.

  “How do we pay for a trip?” he said angrily. “I work. This is what I do for money. And now that I need to work, you want to run off and spend what we don’t have. This is all we have, Beth. I have not asked you to contribute. I know you’ve had a hard time and I know you needed to take a break. But don’t ask me to throw away my career because you’re tired or bored or scared of your own house that I agreed to live in because that is what you wanted. To come here. To give up New York to be with you. You asked for this, remember?” He stared at her with his dirty teeth moving, his brown eyes staring directly into he
rs. “What more do you want from me?”

  She snapped the mask against his mouth and walked toward the door. Gavril didn’t run after her. He must have pulled the mask down because she heard him say “I love you,” clearly. Then he said, “But you need to leave me alone.”

  On her way back to the house, Beth saw a gray sedan parked in the driveway, its metal doors corroded by snow and salt. As she opened the back door, she heard the doorbell ring. She hurried through the house and unlocked the dead bolts on the front door. By the time she got it open, Mike Gilburn was already retreating down the walk.

  He turned in surprise and headed back toward her, scratching his beard. Even though they were about the same age, gray strands had already woven their way through his patchy brown hair. “The last time I came to your door like this I was picking you up,” he said, smiling. “Did I bring roses?”

  “Carnations, I think,” Beth said, although she couldn’t remember any flowers, couldn’t remember one solid detail in the mental photo album of teenage dates that hadn’t resulted in heartbreak or sex. She thought she recalled a horror movie, maybe a few beers over a pinball machine.

  “I wish I could say that’s why I’m here.” His sentence brought him to shuffle his heels. His face reddened. “Not to take you out. I hear you’re married. What I meant was, I wish this was a social call.”

  When she’d called the detective on the day of Magdalena’s funeral, he had made her feel like the local busybody. How old did you have to be before you qualified for that title? At thirty-two, Beth might be the youngest busybody ever.

  “It’s funny,” Mike said, tipping back on his heels. “Just last month I was thinking about giving up my place in Southold and moving back out here to a little Orient fixer-upper. I found one for sale not far from here. Sarakit Herrig was the agent for the house and she told me not to even bother bidding. Too many interested parties willing to go sky-high for a property on the Sound, she said. She told me I ought to hold on to what I have.” Mike seemed proud of his meager paycheck, buoyant in his hybrid sneaker/dress shoes. “That’s quite a business strategy Sarakit’s got going. Cut everyone out but the rich. I wanted to remind her that her husband taught me geography in school.”