“I won’t,” Dave says, and then he pats Elson on the shoulder.
Elson pulls out another cigarette from his pack and lights it. Then he looks at his watch, remembering his dinner date with Lorna. On the ride home from the hospital that morning he was released, he had promised her that he would stop drinking, had promised both her and the doctor that he would try his best to take better care of himself, but nothing had prepared him for this. Nothing had prepared him for the utter shock of the conversation he’d had with Chloe earlier that week, a conversation that had sent him boozing, more or less nonstop, for the past few days. He knew of course what he was doing, knew the risks that he was taking, knew that he couldn’t live this way forever. If you keep treating your body like this, the doctor had told him, if you keep drinking, if you keep smoking, but before he could finish Lorna had jumped in and promised the doctor that she would look after him herself, that she’d make sure he stopped. It had been a strangely tender moment, the way she’d squeezed his hand then, the way she’d pulled him toward her and smiled at the doctor. And later, on the ride home, he could tell that she was genuinely scared. At a stoplight, she had turned to him very earnestly and said, Please promise me you’ll treat yourself better, and he had looked at her then and promised. He thought of the way that she’d lost her own father to cancer when she was ten, the way she’d spent most of her teenage years in a state of uncertainty and fear. He knew that this was what was on her mind that day as they drove home from the hospital. But now, as he stares at the unfinished beer before him, his third of the night, he wonders why it was he’d made a promise he knew he couldn’t keep.
Pushing the beer away, he turns back to Dave. “Let me ask you a question,” he says.
“Okay.”
“Have you ever heard of this guy Woody Harrison?”
“Who?”
“I think he’s a movie actor or something.”
“You mean, Woody Harrelson?”
“Yeah, that’s him. You’ve heard of him?”
“Of course,” he says. “Who hasn’t?”
Elson reaches for his beer again and takes a sip. “Well, apparently he’s an art collector too.”
“Huh?”
“According to Lorna.”
Dave nods. It was Dave who had first introduced them, Dave who had befriended Lorna first. Dave who had warned him about getting involved with her. “You know, I wanted to tell you something about that too,” Dave says after a moment.
“Huh?”
“About Lorna,” he says, shifting in his seat, growing uncomfortable. “I was actually debating whether or not to tell you this for a while, you know, because technically I’m friends with both of you …”
“Just tell me.”
“Okay,” he says and sighs. “Well, a few weeks ago—this was the night that Cheryl had that thing at the Menil Gallery, you know, that thing for her students—well, we were coming home, and we decided to stop at Café Luz for dessert, and so we’re sitting there at Café Luz, having dessert, and all of a sudden I look over and notice Lorna sitting on the other side of the café with that guy Hector—you know, that guy she used to date?”
“So?”
“So, I’m just saying I saw them together.”
“Yeah, of course you did. They’re friends still.”
“Yeah, I know.” Dave shrugs, then looks away evasively.
“What?”
“I’m just saying they didn’t look like they were hanging out as friends, you know?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “I’m just telling you what I saw.”
Elson looks at him, tries to shrug it off, but a part of him feels unnerved. Only a week before he had had a conversation with Lorna about Hector, a conversation in which she’d denied any involvement with him whatsoever, in which she’d denied even talking to him. So what did this mean? Was she lying to him now? He tries to push the thought from his head, but a part of it has a hold on him. He can feel a sourness rising in his gut. He thinks of the painting in Lorna’s house, the nude that Hector had painted of her just before he left.
“Look, I’m sure it was nothing,” Dave adds. “I’m sure you’re right.”
“Who knows?” Elson says. “With that girl, it’s hard to know anything.”
“I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
“No, it’s fine,” Elson says. “Really.” Then he looks at his watch. “I should probably be heading out anyway,” he says, looking at Dave. “Mind if I call you a cab or something. I’m kind of running late.”
“I could call Cheryl.”
“No, no,” Elson says. “Best not to bother her.” Then he lays down a twenty on the bar in front of Dave.
“I have money,” Dave says.
“I know you do,” Elson says, pulling out his phone to call the cab. “I know.”
5
OUTSIDE THE WINDOW of Gavin’s first-floor bungalow apartment, Cadence can see the palm trees in the courtyard silhouetted against the late evening sky. The air outside is moist, cool, a light breeze blowing in through the open windows of Gavin’s bedroom. Despite everything that has happened in the past twenty-four hours, Cadence feels calm, almost surprisingly calm, though a part of her can’t stop thinking about Chloe and the two men who had stopped by the house earlier that day to talk to her.
In the corner, Gavin pulls off his T-shirt, then his boxers, and walks down the dark hallway toward the bathroom. A moment later, she hears the shower go on and lies back on the bed and then closes her eyes. She takes in the scent of the room, of Gavin’s bedsheets, of his covers, a very male smell, a little musky, a little ripe. In a way, not that different from the way her son, Richard’s, dorm room used to smell in college. She wonders how it is that men allow themselves to cultivate these smells, these odors, how they remain so oblivious to them. She opens her eyes to the darkened room and rolls over on her side, thinking once again about Chloe and the men.
When they’d first arrived at the house, they had introduced themselves to her as friends of the Beckwith family, and yet she’d seen through them from the start. They were clearly some type of private detectives or government men, not police types, but the privately hired kind. They were northerners, surely, East Coast men who were way too overdressed for the Houston heat. Cadence had wondered if they’d just flown in that morning but had been too afraid to ask. She had just come back from Peterson’s office and was still feeling a little out of sorts, a little unhinged from her sudden outburst in the elevator, the public display of it all. Meanwhile, Chloe had come right to the door and started talking with them. It was a side of her daughter she had never seen before, a grownup side perhaps, a cautious side. She had spoken to them in a very formal voice, explaining that she knew nothing, had spoken to no one, and had nothing else to say to them, not without a lawyer. The two men had stared at her for a moment, somewhat dumbfounded and clearly discouraged, then turned around and started back toward their car.
Afterward, Cadence had praised her daughter for her confidence and poise, but Chloe had just shrugged and started back inside the house, saying over her shoulder, “Don’t worry, Mom. They’ll be back.”
For the rest of the afternoon, Chloe had lain out by the pool, sunning herself in a purple bikini and listening to her iPod, and Cadence had sat in the kitchen, paging through her marketing textbook, which she realized then she no longer needed to read.
Later, when Chloe came in, they’d had a quiet dinner together, just the two of them, and Chloe had told her about her run-in with an old friend, Simone Walsh. The whole ordeal, the whole elaborate narrative of it, had sounded strange: Chloe showing up out of the blue at Simone’s store, Simone disappearing, then Chloe tracking her down at a small café along the street. Cadence had wondered what it meant, what it all added up to. She could barely remember Simone now, only that when Simone had disappeared from Houston, she had considered it a blessing. As had Elson. They had both disliked her, both distrusted her, and y
et now Chloe was trying to rekindle a friendship with her? It didn’t make sense. None of it did. Not with everything else that was going on in Chloe’s life. Cadence couldn’t help wondering whether this was perhaps a sign of something else, maybe an old impulse to rebel reemerging in her daughter. All week long she had seemed like a ghost in the house, drifting in and out of rooms without talking, barely acknowledging her own name when it was called. Somnambulistic. That was the word she would have used to describe her had anyone asked. And yet, that night at dinner she’d seemed different. More animated perhaps, almost angry, as if Simone’s unwillingness to rekindle a friendship with her had unmoored her. It seemed odd to Cadence, odd that Chloe didn’t want to talk about the real issue at hand, about the impending trial, about the two men who had shown up at the door, but instead wanted to talk about Simone.
“I feel like she’s been brainwashed,” Chloe had said, as they’d cleared the dishes for dinner. “Like someone went inside her head and sucked out all the personality.”
“You haven’t talked to her in years, honey,” Cadence said, trying to be understanding. “People change, you know.”
“Not like this,” she said. “She’s like a zombie, Mom. Seriously.”
“Well, someone might say the same about you since you’ve been home.”
Chloe stared at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just that you haven’t been the easiest person to talk to lately. That’s all.”
“Would you be?”
“No, I’m not saying I would. I’m just saying that you might have caught her on a bad day, you know?”
Chloe opened up a beer then, almost defiantly, and then started toward the staircase at the edge of the kitchen. “I’m trying to tell you something, Mom,” she said, turning around suddenly. “And you’re not listening to me.” Then she’d turned around and started up the stairs.
Cadence had sat there for a long time, staring out at the pool. She hated it when they fought, which was one of the reasons she’d let her be since she’d been home, hadn’t asked her where she went in the evenings, hadn’t asked her why she didn’t want to talk about what had happened back at school. It was a way of giving her daughter space, she supposed, the type of space her own parents had never given her, and yet how long was she supposed to stand here along the sidelines and watch, especially when there were men showing up at her door wanting to talk to her daughter about who knows what, wanting to implicate her in something that wasn’t her fault, wanting to take her away from the life that she and Elson had worked so hard to give her?
She’d left for Gavin’s shortly after their little tiff, and now as she lies here in Gavin’s bed, waiting for him to come out of the bathroom, she has the strangest sensation that something has happened to Chloe, that maybe those men have come back to talk to her again or taken her away, and suddenly she feels the need to call her up and talk to her. Still naked, she leans across the bed and reaches for her bag, then inside it for her cell phone. She dials the house with no luck, then Chloe’s cell. The phone rings twice, then a third time, then Chloe finally picks up.
“Mom, I told you not to call me, okay?” she says. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“About what?”
“Mom.”
“What?” Cadence says, confused. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, honey.”
“Didn’t you get my note?”
“No.”
“Just read the note.”
“What note?”
“I left you a note on the counter.”
“Chloe, you’re scaring me. Where are you?”
Chloe doesn’t answer.
“Is this about Simone?”
“No, Mom. Look, just read the note, okay? I’ll call you as soon as I figure this stuff out. Some things have changed, all right. That’s all I’m going to say.”
“What do you mean some things have changed? Since when? Since dinner?”
“Yes.”
“What’s changed?”
“I’m going to hang up now, Mom.”
“Chloe.”
“Just trust me, okay. I’ll call you.” And with that the phone goes silent. Cadence immediately pushes redial, her mind racing, but the call goes directly to Chloe’s voice mail. She tries again, but again no luck. When she looks up, she sees Gavin, standing at the edge of the hallway, his hair combed back in neat rows, a cotton towel around his waist.
“Is everything okay?” he asks.
“No,” she says. “I don’t think so.”
He comes over to the bed and sits beside her, places his hand upon her knee. If he weren’t so gracious, so understanding, she probably would have left him by now, probably would have left him long before any of this stuff got serious, but something about his gentleness had disarmed her, had pulled her in. It was something she needed right now, something she hadn’t had in a very long time.
“Tell me what I can do,” he says, rubbing her back.
She looks at him, but doesn’t answer. “I need to go home,” she says.
“Right now?”
“Yes, right now.”
He looks at her. “Do you want me to come with you?”
“No,” she says, shaking her head and then getting up to turn on the light. “I think I should do this alone.”
There was a time when she was too self-conscious to show her body in front of Gavin, to expose herself in the bright yellow light of his room, but now she no longer cares. What she cares about right now is finding her daughter and what she feels right now is only guilt, guilt for not being there, guilt for not being home when she should have been, guilt for standing here in this small, dusty bungalow apartment, completely exposed, in front of a man she barely knows.
“I’m coming with you,” Gavin says, walking over to the ottoman and grabbing his jeans.
“Please don’t,” she says, dressing quickly, throwing on her blouse and then shoving her bra into her purse. “I’ll call you as soon as I know what’s going on, okay?”
Gavin stands there, still shirtless, zipping up his jeans. “I could follow you,” he says.
But Cadence shakes her head and starts down the hall toward the door. She thinks she says something to him, thinks she says good-bye, but isn’t sure. The only thing she remembers at that moment, as she races down the stairs to the parking lot, is her daughter’s voice, the words that she said to her earlier that day: I’m trying to tell you something, Mom. And you’re not listening to me.
6
AS HE LEANS BACK on the bed and closes his eyes, Richard can feel himself drifting, first upward toward the ceiling, then out into the nighttime sky. He cannot remember how many hits he has taken tonight, only that he has reached a perfect level of peacefulness, a complete sense of detachment, and in truth he would stay this way forever were it not for the persistent tapping on his leg. He reaches down with his hand to brush it off, but feels nothing.
When he opens his eyes, he sees a young blond-haired girl, no older than twenty, staring at him, and by the way she’s looking at him he can tell that she’s just asked him something.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “What did you say?”
“Pass it.”
“Huh?”
“The pipe,” she says. “Pass it.”
He looks down at the pipe in his hand and then passes it to her slowly. She rolls her eyes and then takes a hit herself.
They are sitting on a large white bed in a large white room with three or four other people, all men, two of them completely naked. The music from the other room—some type of rhythmic techno beat—is bleeding into the bedroom, and Richard suddenly realizes that he has lost track of time, that he can no longer remember how long it’s been since he arrived here or how late it is now. He looks back at the girl, who is staring at him again. Her eyes are dilated and enormous, a deep, empty blue.
“You aren’t also, are you?” she says after a moment, smiling at him.
“Huh?”
“You know, gay. Like every guy at this party practically is gay.”
Feeling self-conscious, Richard smiles. “I don’t know,” he says. “I’m not really anything right now.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know,” he says, then looking to change the subject, adds, “So, how are you friends with these guys anyway?”
“With who?”
“Well, like with Beto, for example.”
“I’m not,” she says. “I just come to his parties, you know. I don’t think I’ve ever even spoken to him.”
Richard nods and feels a tap on his shoulder, the boy to his right passing him the pipe. He takes another hit, then passes it to the girl.
“Where is he anyway?”
“Who?”
“Beto.”
She looks at him, and as she exhales a smile spreads across her face. Then she starts to cough. “Rome,” she says finally.
“Rome?”
“Yeah, like on a business trip or something. I think he left this morning.”
“So who’s looking after the house?”
“The house?”
“Yeah.”
She passes the pipe to one of the boys, then starts to laugh again. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah.”
“Honey,” she says, grinning widely. “This house never closes.”
She leans forward then and touches his arm and he lets her. He watches her move toward him, watches her eyes until they close, and then closes his own and lets her kiss him. Her lips are soft, full, and the kiss is not unpleasant, just like all the kisses he’d shared with girls back in high school hadn’t been unpleasant. Just different, unusual. And suddenly he has the sensation that he is real and that everything around him is fake, and then that he is fake and everything around him is real. When he opens his eyes, she is staring at him, blank faced.
“You are gay, aren’t you?” she says.
“Huh?”
“Nothing,” she says and laughs. Then she extends her hand to him, almost formally. “I’m Angel,” she says.
“Richard.”
In Between Days Page 7