Good Friends

by Leeanne Moriarty

  She beckoned to him to join her.

  And, Christ knows, he nearly did.

  But he flicked her a timid half-wave and turned and ran home and didn’t look back.

  26

  Caroline lurked downstairs, feeling exposed.

  Hating the glass and the space and the cauterizing light.

  She’d slept until after ten, which was unusual for her.

  She hadn’t heard Michael leave, and she’d lain in bed listening for any sound of him in the house.

  When she’d heard only the slur of the ocean and the gargle of something in the jungle, she’d ventured down.

  Caroline stood in the kitchen, gripping the island. She wasn’t hungry or thirsty.

  She went into the living room.

  There was nothing for her to do there.

  But she didn’t want to be upstairs.

  The pills were upstairs.

  She went upstairs.

  She went into the bedroom telling herself that she was here to change her clothes.

  That’s why she was opening the drawers.

  She lifted out the pill container.

  OxyContin.

  Once she’d thought that only toothless rejects in the flyover states had developed opioid habits.

  Right.

  Caroline was ready to break the seal on the bottle when her phone rang.

  She nearly ignored the call, sure that it was Michael and she didn’t want to talk to him.

  But when she lifted the phone she was it was Liz Keller.

  “Hi, Liz.”

  “Hey, honey. What’re you doing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Want some lunch?”

  “I don’t think I can cope with Central today.”

  “Jesus, no. Not Central. Here. Here at chez Liz.”

  “Okay,” Caroline said before she could think of an excuse. “When?”

  “Just get your ass over here pronto.”

  “Can I bring anything?”

  “Absolutely nada, baby. See ya soon.”

  Caroline put the pills back in the drawer and closed it, the castors making a little snicker.

  27

  Liz wrapped two pieces of filleted sea bass coated with garlic and parsley in parchment paper and laid them on the slats of a bamboo steamer.

  As she set the lid in place, the doorbell rang. She wiped her hands on a kitchen cloth, and went to the door.

  Caroline was there looking a little peaky, the fingers of her left hand fretting at the collar of her white cotton blouse.

  Liz leaned in and put her hands lightly on her neighbor’s upper arms as she did the European-style double cheek kiss thing. The woman tensed.

  Liz stepped back, smiling. “Hi sugar. You look gorgeous.”

  Caroline moved a strand of hair from her face. “Thanks.” She glanced around the living room. “Oh, this is beautiful. I love your style.”

  Liz laughed her throaty laugh. “I dunno that I’d dignify it by calling it a style. I just find pieces and throw them together. Anyway, you have the identical room next door.”

  “Sure, but ours is so impersonal.” Caroline bit her lip. “Sorry, I mean it’s very tastefully done, but...”

  Liz laughed again. “Don’t worry, sweet thing, you’re not offending me. I paid some local so-called decorator to fill the place with totally generic showroom pieces. Feel free to do whatever you want with it.”

  She waved her arm at the antique wicker sofa and said, “Sit. I’ll get us drinks.”

  Liz went to the fridge and took out a pitcher of smoothies, and filled two tall glasses.

  She took one across to Caroline, who sipped and then frowned.

  “This is delicious. But there’s a kick. What’s in here?”

  “Pineapple and coconut.” Liz said. “And just a whisper of vodka.”

  Caroline sipped again and wiped away a little mustache of yellow foam. “So good. But I’d better take it easy.”

  “Why?”

  “I have a physical therapy appointment at five.”

  Liz sat opposite her, folding her bare feet beneath her. “Your leg?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “What happened?” She waved her arm. “You can tell me to shut up.”

  “No, it’s okay,” Caroline said and set her glass down on a coaster on the side table. “A car accident. Last year.”

  When Caroline volunteered nothing more, Liz crossed to the kitchen and checked on the food. The fish was ready.

  “Whyn’t you grab a seat?” she pointed at the table near the window, set with two places.

  “Can I help?” Caroline said.

  “Nope. I’ve got it.”

  Liz tossed the salad of mango, pomegranate and quinoa in a glass bowl and took it to the table. She returned to the kitchen and removed the parcels from the steamer and unwrapped two of them and placed them on plates.

  She set one down in front of Caroline and took a seat opposite her.

  “Can I give you some salad?”

  “Please.”

  Liz used the tongs and set a little mound of salad on Caroline’s plate beside the fish.

  “Thank you. So lovely,” Caroline said.

  She waited until Liz had her knife and fork in her hand before she sliced a morsel of fish and took it to her mouth. She closed her eyes. “Oh God, this is so good.”

  “Really easy peasy.”

  “No, no.” Caroline tasted the salad. “Your flavors are exquisite.” She swallowed and dabbed her lips with her napkin. “I’m a terrible cook.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true,” Liz said around a mouthful of food.

  “It is. Michael does most of the cooking.”

  “Is that right? You’re a lucky girl.”

  Caroline said nothing, forking in another dainty mouthful.

  “I saw Michael this morning,” Liz said, throwing back half of her drink. “On the beach.”

  “Was he out for his run?”

  “Uh huh. That guy’s quite the sprinter.”

  “Yeah. He was something of a track star at college.”

  “That where you met?”

  Caroline shook her head. “No. We met later.”

  She went quiet again. Liz stretched across with the pitcher and filled her glass.

  Caroline said, “I saw you go out on your boat last night. I mean, I’m assuming it was you?”

  “Yeah, it was me. I do that sometimes. Just sail in the dark. It’s so peaceful.”

  “Aren’t you afraid?”

  “No, Jürgen taught me well. Taught me not be a fucking cowboy like him.” She waved a hand. “Sorry.”

  Caroline shrugged this off. “You said it happened in Switzerland? The accident?”

  “Yeah. Lake Zürich.”

  “Was there another boat involved?”

  Liz shook her head. “No, no.” She drank her glass dry. “But there was another woman.” She pushed her empty glass away. “I should shut up.”

  Caroline was staring at her, sipping her drink, shaking her head again.

  “If it was just a fling I wouldn’t even mention it,” Liz said. “A tumble with an office girl or one of those meaningless things. God knows, there were enough of those.” She wagged a hand. “But this was more serious.”

  Caroline was staring. Liz filled both their glasses. She drank and Caroline mirrored her.

  “In the weeks before he died Jürgen was carrying something with him. Something veiled. The kind of secrecy that a man assumes when he needs to hide a thing that has taken on a weight. An importance.”

  Caroline watched Liz over her glass.

  Liz lifted one freckled shoulder. “Jürgen needed something that I could no longer offer. Not exactly a new scenario, is it?”

  “No. But you must’ve been very hurt.”

  “Oh, I was.” She drank. “And the fact that she was with him when it happened... That the fucking idiot was showing off for her.” She closed her eyes a moment, doing a fine impression of pain
and grief. “She was the trophy wife of a politician who had friends in high places. The police called him and his minions went and retrieved her body and took it to their house. The story they fed the media was that she died doing laps in their pool. An aneurism.” She shrugged. “I suppose they did me a favor, too. I didn’t have to deal with the scandal. But a cop I know told me the truth.”

  Caroline stared and shook her head.

  Liz almost wanted to laugh. It was all bullshit. Inspired bullshit. But bullshit nonetheless. Jürgen had been alone. Drunk. Speeding on the lake as if to escape the creditors baying at his heels.

  He’d run into the wake of the Rapperswil ferry and the overpowered boat had flipped and tumbled and broken into matchsticks.

  Liz got up and went to the window and stared out at the ocean. She could see Caroline reflected in the glass as she finished her drink.

  When Liz returned to the table and lifted the pitcher to fill Caroline’s glass she tried to cover it with her hand.

  “Oh, come on,” Liz said.

  Caroline moved her hand and Liz filled the glass with yellow liquid.

  Liz sat and said, “God, I’m sorry. I’ve overshared.”

  “No, no,” Caroline said, “not at all.”

  Liz looked at her for a moment before she spoke. “I’ve never told anyone else what I’ve just told you.”

  Caroline blinked. “Really?”

  “Yeah. I guess it’s because we’ve only just met. It was easier.”

  “Well, I’m glad you told me.”

  “Are you?”

  “Yes.”

  Liz lifted her glass. “To perfect strangers.”

  Caroline raised her glass in salute and then she drank.

  “Okay, Missy,” Liz said. “Your turn to spill.”

  “I don’t have anything, well, spillworthy...”

  “Tell me about your leg. Tell me about the accident.”

  “It’s a kind of a downer.”

  “That’s okay. Tell me.”

  Caroline shrugged. “Well, it was winter. We have a place in the Berkshires. There was a plan for us to go up for the weekend. At the last minute something came up, a thing I couldn’t cancel, so I told Michael to go alone. He left and it got dark and I suddenly really wanted to be out in the country with him. So I made a couple of calls and postponed a few things and I got in the car and drove.”

  “Did you tell him that you were coming?”

  Caroline shook her head. “No. I thought I’d surprise him.” She drank. “Anyway, about a half hour from the cabin I got caught in a God-awful blizzard. I tried to call him then but I had no signal. I drove on. And then...” She stopped and Liz saw the raw pain in her eyes.

  Bingo.

  She reached across and took her hand. “You can stop...”

  Caroline said, “No, it’s okay. I lost control of the car and it rolled and hit a tree. I was lucky. Lucky I wasn’t dead and lucky that a highway patrolman found me in time.” She shrugged. “My femur was shattered. I was put into a kind of Frankenstein contraption. There was pain. A lot of pain. But I’m fine now. My leg is healed.”

  “Wow,” Liz said.

  “Yeah.”

  Liz stared at her, shaking her head.

  “What?” Caroline said.

  Liz tapped her glass. “Okay sugar, now why don’t you tell me what really happened.”

  28

  Charlie lay on his back and stared at the stained, flaking ceiling. He’d moved the mattress again, and was able to observe the water welling from the bulging ceiling board, dangling a moment, and then dripping onto the tiles across the room.

  Tok.

  Tok.

  Tok.

  Landing every few seconds with the relentlessness of a metronome.

  The standing fan groaned and juddered from side to side, uselessly churning the air that was thick enough to taste.

  Charlie nostrils were filled with the ripeness of his own body and the stench of pla kem, sun-dried salted fish frying next door in the bargirls’ room. He could hear their high-pitched screeches and the maudlin wail of luk thung, country music from the northeast.

  Reaching for his pack of Dunhills, he shook out the last cigarette. He lit it and lay smoking. The cigarette masked the stink, but the relief would be short-lived.

  Charlie hadn’t moved since returning home near dawn after burying Murray Muldoon at sea. The Lizard was still out there, and Charlie, though he was untroubled by any qualms at killing the hulking Aussie, felt that luck was running against him.

  He’d googled to see if there was any mention of the missing Australian, or if any unidentified bodies had floated ashore on one of the island’s endless beaches.

  Nothing.

  Some relief, but still he wasn’t inclined to move.

  But he’d have to venture out to get supplies. His bottled water was finished. The tap water was a cocktail of chlorine and E. coli and the locals had twenty liter bottles of purified H20 delivered to their homes by men in battered trucks.

  Two weeks ago Charlie had made a drunken pass at his waterman—a shirtless savage with the washboard abdomen of Bruce Lee in his prime—and had been blacklisted.

  Only the raucous intervention of the bargirls had saved him from a beating.

  So now Charlie had to buy a huge plastic bottle at a sidewalk store every few days and haul it home on his Vespa.

  His phone rang. No guess who was calling.

  “Aloha?” he said.

  “She’s doing therapy at the hospital at five.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I had her over for lunch.”

  “So cozy.”

  “You need to go and keep an eye on her.”

  “I thought I was banned from making contact?”

  Liz sighed. “Don’t be so fucking tiresome.”

  “Am I allowed to talk to her?”

  “It would be weird if you didn’t. Just be cool.”

  “Gotcha.” He was intuiting something, his antennae wagging. “What’s happened?”

  “Nothing. She just seemed a little... spaced. Fragile. So go easy, okay?”

  “Kid gloves, darling. Kid gloves.” He sucked his teeth. “Listen...”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m skint.”

  “In English please.”

  “Broke, bust, tapped out.”

  “Just be patient.”

  “Easy for you to say, darling. My circumstances are dire.”

  “Just keep your eye on the prize.”

  “Oh dear God, that is so fucking American.”

  She was gone. He dug his wristwatch from under a pile of dirty clothes beside the mattress. He had less than an hour to transform himself into charming Charlie and get his debonair ass down to the hospital.

  29

  As she removed her clothes and slipped on the smock, Caroline was still buzzing from Liz Keller’s killer vodka smoothies.

  She lifted herself onto the massage table and lay on her back, eyes shut.

  The door clicked and she opened her eyes to see the nameless masseur from the other day.

  “Sawadee kap,” he said.

  “Sawadee kah.”

  He came to the table and gently moved her leg. He brought with him the scent of antiseptic hand cleanser and the slightest whiff of garlic.

  As she closed her eyes again she was back at the lunch table with Liz Keller, the aroma of the spiced fish suddenly pungent and slightly nauseating.

  Liz was staring at her. Daring her to speak.

  To give her liar’s hands something to do, Caroline pushed away her unfinished meal.

  She knew she should make an excuse and leave, social niceties be damned.

  After all, what did she owe this woman?

  But somehow she couldn’t.

  The urge to unburden herself was almost overwhelming.

  She had a few friends back home in Boston. Women like herself who shared with each other only the most sanitized and superficial d
etails of their lives. Any oversharing, in the manner of Liz Keller, would’ve resulted in an unspoken but complete excommunication.

  These friends visited her in the hospital after the accident, and offered her tasteful gifts and kind words. She sensed their approval of her bravery, of her stoic acceptance of her suffering.

  It was an article of faith among them that women were strong. Stronger than men, with their unruly egos and their intemperate desires.

  So she had kept her feelings to herself and developed a world class opioid habit. Sure, the drug had eased the physical pain. But it was the other pain—the loss, the grief and the corrosive anger—that had needed the most easing.

  With a stealth that shocked her, the opioids had taken hold. She denied her addiction, of course. Until she could deny it no longer. She had to acknowledge what would happen to her if she didn’t dry out, and shake and vomit and purge her body.

  She found a suitable place. A place for a better class of addict.

  Her leg was out of its contraption and she told her friends that she was going to a spa.

  They approved. What she told them conjured a haven of pale food, starched cotton sheets and exercise that made you sweat in a way that wasn’t unseemly.

  Michael knew the truth, of course. But Michael’s opinion meant nothing.

  And anyway he’d lost the right to judge her.

  After a month she returned gaunt and wan. So light and clean she felt she would blow away in a breeze.

  Michael was cautious. Tentative. Treating her as an invalid.

  After a few weeks of tip-toeing around her he’d summoned the courage to spring the Thailand notion, conjuring images of balmy weather and transcendental beauty. To her surprise she’d heard herself acquiescing.

  And now, as Caroline sat in a house of glass looking into Liz Keller’s calculating eyes, she felt as if something deep inside her had broken free and was plummeting into endless space.

  She gripped the table as an anchor.

  “Talk to me, baby,” the woman who looked like her funhouse reflection of herself said. “Talk to me.”

  Caroline spoke.

  “Michael did go up to the cabin in the Berkshires,” she said.

  “Okay.”

  “And I stayed behind.” She freed one hand from its grip on the table and toyed with her collar. “I was four months pregnant.” Liz winced, and crow’s feet radiated out from her eyes. “I’d been feeling a little queasy. Nothing serious. I insisted that Michael go, that he have a break. And then a few hours after he left I regretted staying. So, I got in the car and drove. Decided I’d surprise him.”