—
I should have gone to a real restaurant, but it’s hard to resist a Tenley’s.
The waitress brings me my dinner, a jalapeño burger and a Fluffernutter frappe. “I hope you enjoy this, honey. You get to be my age, this stuff sticks to your bones.”
“Thank you,” I say.
“You Got It All” by The Jets comes on, the way it always does in Tenley’s. It doesn’t change in here. It doesn’t age the way we do. The music is always the same, the burger has the same sauce, the peppers have the crunch they did all those years ago.
“Can I get you anything else?” the waitress wants to know.
I take my phone out and pull out a painting of Jon. “Actually,” I say. “This is so random, but can you tell me if this guy has been in here? He would be a little older now.”
She puts on her readers and squints, holds the phone away, then up close. “He’s a looker,” she says. “An old beau?”
I shrug, which is a weird thing to do for such a yes or no question. An old beau. Technically, no. She slides into the booth. Jon and I used to think this was spontaneous, that the waitresses were really caring, friendly. I remember his mom laughing at us one day, When you go through job training there, that’s on page one of the rules. They’re not being friendly. That’s just part of the shtick. Jon and I decided that his mother was wrong, that the waitresses may be obligated to do this, but that they chose to work there because they wanted to be nice to people. My mother thinks the whole chain reeks of sexism and heart disease.
The waitress studies the picture. Her name tag reads PAULA. “You know,” she says. “Before this I was a paralegal.”
“Oh.”
“Thirty-one years,” she says. “A firm not far from here. Bigwigs. Heavy-duty stuff.”
“That’s amazing.”
“Do you know why I quit?”
I shake my head. “No.”
She reaches across the table for my hand. “Because I wanted to be happy,” she says. “I wanted my days to smell like cheeseburgers and Marshmallow Fluff. I wanted to hear music and wear something comfortable and worry about nothing.”
I gulp. “That’s really cool. To make that kind of leap.”
She takes off her readers. “Honey,” she says. “This is the thing about men. If they’re right, then they come looking for you.”
She pats my hand twice and slides out of the booth. I look around the restaurant. There are waitresses in all the booths, saying comforting things to people like me, gushing over kids, doling out advice to moms. I don’t want his mother to be right. I don’t want Tenley’s to be emotionally fraudulent. When “Make It Real” comes on, I look at the door, and I expect Jon to show up. Instead, a group of guys tumble in, four of them, loud and self-conscious, amped up, full-grown man-boys high on sugar. They’re completely lost in each other, in black T-shirts and hats that say I am Providence. And then I see more people like these guys, a man on his own, blissing out with a stack of books, all of them by the same author, Lovecraft. Toward the back of the room, a couple sharing a stack of pancakes, they wear matching shirts that say LOVECRAFT.
And then it hits me. Lovecraft.
That’s what Jon was trying to get me to read when he came home, when he was so different, and now I’m searching through our old chats, all the Hippo Campus, and yes, all the Lovecraft.
Did you read it yet, Chloe? He meant The Dunwich Horror.
Usually I changed the subject. I didn’t want to be in a horror book club with him. I did try to read it but I could never get into it. My feelings were hurt, and then I would feel like a stereotypical girl for having hurt feelings. The book wasn’t my style. It was horrible and scary and dense and it wasn’t a love poem. There was no parable of us in there and I was always embarrassed that I wanted there to be something like that, a me and a him, some context for what we were. My face is red, the memory is too sharp, the combination of him talking to me about Lovecraft and refusing to see me in person, how it needled me, broke me. It was sexless. It was like these boys at this booth ordering onion rings. The furthest thing from their mind is girls.
Jon would send me passages of The Dunwich Horror and ask me what I thought. It was like I was being tested, like he was trying to tell me something about us, that we were different, that I was supposed to read the right thing into the story and then, then, maybe he would see me. I wanted him to just come out and say what it was he wanted from me. But he never did.
Lovecraft was his thing. And if it’s still his thing, then that would make these people his people. My heart races and the waitress comes back with my check. “Excuse me,” I say. “Why are there all these Lovecraft fans here?”
She follows my gaze around the restaurant and she cackles softly. “It’s the big convention,” she says. “The Lovecraft people, we get a lot of them this time of year. And my God, let me tell you, they don’t have eyes for anything but Lovecraft. Which is pretty ironic, if you ask me.”
I give her my credit card. “Where is it?” I ask. “Where is the Lovecraft convention?”
EGGS
The bulb in the duck lamp blew, so there’s barely any light in here. It’s a good omen, the universe’s way of warning me, If you’re gonna do this, Eggie, if you’re gonna go on another wild-goose chase, you best do it in the dark.
I pick up Yvonne Belziki’s file and I can smell her perfume. I got in trouble over her. This is where it all began, I couldn’t accept that this girl was gone, she was the picture of health. Stacey cut in, You mean youth, Eggie. And yes, Yvonne had a look, but it was more the vitality, the sparkle. You could tell, this is a nice person, this is a kind person. It felt like her sparkle, the very thing that should have added something to her life, was the thing that killed her.
I had to find out if something went wrong that day. What if there was a secret boyfriend who let her down? Something we missed. It’s all still here in my boxes, the files, the security camera footage on my zip drive. There she is in her summer clothes, Yvonne Belziki. She doesn’t look put-upon. She looks nervous, but this is because she was going to interview for a job. She walks at a good clip and she looks over her shoulder. It’s grainy, but you know lust when you see it, heat. I pause and zoom in the way I did so many times back then. The guy she’s looking at is offscreen. I nearly got myself fired trying to find this guy. Was he a stranger? A boyfriend? Was he older? Younger?
Because it bumps me to this day. When she drops, the man offscreen, he doesn’t barge into the frame. He doesn’t come running to rescue her. He didn’t stick around to be interviewed.
Maybe you need a break, Eggie. That was Stacey’s response when I told her about my hunch that this guy might have something to do with Yvonne’s “heart attack.” She said to leave it alone. Instead, I started sniffing around, using my badge in the way you just can’t. Stacey came into my office. This time around there was no more maybe in her speech. She sent me home, a little leave, a breather. And when I got back to work, everything was upside down. People knew that I’d been sent home. They giggled, teased me. I was the resident conspiracy theorist whack job.
It’s not the kind of stigma that goes away. I know the way people look at me. But I also know that my gut won’t let up. Nausea that washes over me when I think about Yvonne’s feline smile, Krishna’s fist, pounding. These things feel connected to me and it’s my duty to honor that instinct. Good police work is math. It’s also speculation. Constellations exist because someone saw them, pointed, and someone else said, Yes, I see it too.
I pop a cup of water in the microwave and dig into my boxes. The first one after Yvonne was Maddie’s son, Richie Goleb. He was a hothead chef, dropped out of Johnson and Wales. Maddie was in denial about the drugs, called it recreational self-medication, all chefs have to keep on their toes. Richie died at night, in his yard with a leaf blower in his hand. Last time I heard from
Maddie, she thought he had been poisoned, like they do in Russia.
The next kid to go was Derry Sears. A real prize. He and his wife were regulars in the system, beating the hell out of each other, constantly losing custody of their four kids. He died when he was dragging the wife into the front yard. The two of them lived hard. I remember her jagged teeth, her bloody face. I asked her if there were any witnesses. Hell if I know, she said. I remember the light breaking through the leaves. I remember thinking it’s a miracle that these trees could thrive in this hell. Needles everywhere. Diapers too. These people die and people sigh, Good riddance. The end.
And Rita Bolt? She was only twenty-four. Textbook junkie on her way into Dunkin’ Donuts, she leaves her kid in a hot car. She saved the kid’s life when she died. They got off on that in the papers, but there’s no mystery. Heroin is hard on the heart.
Lo gets home, calls up to me, You okay? It’s the scary thing about marriage. Already she knows. She can smell it when I’m on a trail. Yep!
I could stop. I should stop. I should delete the files. Instead, I type:
POSSIBLE THEORIES FOR EARLY “CORONARY” DEATH
• Could be an illness we don’t understand. A virus that goes undetected. You know the movie with Gwyneth Paltrow that disturbed the wife? Contagion. Could be something like that.
• Could be something in the water.
• Could be a drug cut with something that causes cardiac arrest.
• Could be an over-the-counter that reacts with alcohol.
• Could be laced steroids?
Lo calls. Dinner!
I go down there but I don’t tell Lo what I’m doing. Same way I won’t tell Stacey I have a feeling about anything. Never tell anyone you have a feeling. You can tell them about a hunch or an instinct but you can’t go around talking about your feelings. That was the one question Lo asked when it was time to put Chuckie away. Will his feelings be hurt? Will he know?
Their answer, the phrase they used. We can’t know.
“Hey, Lo-Lo. You ever heard the phrase ‘I am Providence’?”
She smiles. “What are you doing reading Lovecraft?”
I shrug. “Just saw it somewhere.”
Lo, love of my life, Lo who loves Lovecraft, me. This is the part of me that gets in trouble, the part that thinks, That has to mean something.
“Hey,” I say, all normal, like I’m Stacey, like I’m not already mapping it out in my head, making the connections. The Beard’s hat said I am Providence. The Beard loves Lovecraft. He’s real to me now, real as Krish, as Yvonne. I smack my lips. “Are we waiting on Marko or anyone or should we dig in?”
“Dig in,” she says. “It’s just us.”
* * *
—
After dinner, off we go to our bedroom, where she claws at me, a different person. Screwing Lo saves me every time. It gets me out of my head. It erases everything in the world. It’s a power she holds over me, with her thick thighs. She always starts by nuzzling me in the kitchen, my little animal. Then she undresses. Long ago she said she had no patience for me and my untrained fingers with regard to her complicated blouses, her numerous buttons, she likes buttons, won’t wear any shirt unless it’s covered in buttons. Your hands only know what they’re doing when they’re on my body was what she said to me that first day this plan was made. Was anything so wonderful ever said to a man, naked?
I’m down to my boxers, slipping out of my socks. I watch her on the other side of our bed, unbuttoning one shiny pink button and then another, another, imagine how Marko and the other young bucks in her class must go home and get their rocks off just thinking about what they’d do, how they’d tear those shirts of hers off, buttons flying all around. She’s near the end and her breasts are out at me, her ever-softening breasts, sagging is what she calls it, but that’s a woman for you, finding the negative. She sighs at one of the buttons, stubborn. It flashes through my mind, What’s gonna happen when she’s older and arthritic? How soon that is, what a horrible thing your body is, the way it’s doomed from day one, your fate is death no matter what you do. Like Yvonne, that kid.
She whistles, nods at me below the waist. “What’s down?”
I redden. “Nothing,” I say. “Just thinking.”
She folds her arms over her breasts. “Not about me I hope.”
“God no,” I say. “Hey, you know how I asked you about the phrase ‘I am Providence’?”
She flops on the bed, on her side, breasts out again. She pats the bed. “Office hours are Tuesdays and Thursdays, Eggie. Three to five.”
I sit down. “It was on this kid’s hat.”
She unzips her pants, slacks she calls them. “You can sign up for a fifteen-minute block on the whiteboard outside of my office or you can do it online.”
“Lo,” I say.
She stops messing with her slacks. She knows when to give up on me, when to ride me. I’m on thin ice, flaccid, distracted. “What is this really about?”
I can’t lie to her. I stare down at my feet. I wish I kept my socks on.
“Damn it, Eggie, you can’t go obsessing again.”
“I’m not obsessing.”
“Oh you’re not obsessing? You mean to tell me you’re just suddenly jacked up on Lovecraft? That you’d rather sit here and talk about books than get into this bed with me?”
“Lo.”
“I know your face, Eggie.”
“I’m sorry.”
“For the last time, dear husband, people die. You’re gonna die. I’m gonna die. Young people have heart attacks. It happens. Is it odd that it happens? That you would see it this much? Sure it’s odd. But you know what, Eggie? Everything in life doesn’t have an answer or a meaning. This is true in fiction where someone’s orchestrating things. But it isn’t life.”
“I know that,” I snap. And I do. She’s right. Stacey’s right. When they tell me, it makes so much sense. I can turn around and make the same argument to Romy. But when I get alone…
Lo lifts her head. Her brown eyes. “Are you with me?”
“Always,” I say. “Yes.”
I could have been having sex with her all this time. By now we’d be done, we’d be turning on a movie, maybe A Perfect Murder. We like that one on nights like this, sex nights. But I can’t drop it.
“Lo,” I say, like some college boy with a big idea. “I was just, you know, it was a tough one. And there was this kid with this hat that said ‘I am Providence.’ Just got in my head. That’s all. This isn’t me digging around trying to get to the bottom of any unsolvable problems.” I should stop now. But I don’t. “I swear to you, this isn’t that.”
But he who doth protest too much never wins, and she is on her feet, calling me out on my stinky bullshit, hammering at me for being unable to let go, unable to accept things as they are, looking for answers that don’t exist, because sometimes things just are what they are and you have to accept them. She is yelling at me, yelling at herself. I forget sometimes that he was inside of her, Chuckie, that all those times I was asleep and she was awake with heartburn and rubbery feet, swollen, she had all that time with him, all that alone time. I forget that he came from us, but he came through her. He was never in me. Her pain is something I like to think of as buried, but there it is, you fucking idiot, Eggie. You crude bastard.
Those pathetic words spill out of me. “I’m sorry, Lo.”
“There is no case.” She puts on her no-sex clothes, pajama bottoms and a moth-eaten old Haven Bros. T-shirt. I follow her lead. I get into my no-sex clothes too.
“I know, Lo. You’re absolutely right on every count.”
“So let it go,” she barks.
“I am.”
She gives me a look. “You think I don’t know you’re up there squirreled away watching that video over and over? Rewinding over that ki
d in the hat?”
“Lo.”
“No,” she states, not giving. “We need your income, Eggie. So never mind what’s possible for a minute here. Let us please live in the reality that we are not able to manage our expenses on my teaching.”
“I know that.”
She glares at me. “Good.” She’s pulling at her duvet. “May your penitence be your guide.” She’s searching for her glasses, scooting under the covers, shielded. We’re not gonna have sex or watch A Perfect Murder. She’s turning on a light, opening her book, Seinfeldia. She’s not mad. She’s sad. I messed up and because of me her mind has drifted to Chuckie, to the expenses. She’s softening, which is why she is the love of my life, asking me if I want her pillow because of my back, No thank you honey, you keep it. She turns the pages of her book and she’s not reading, not taking in the words. I can feel her mind, full of me, full of worry, she probably thinks things like, Let your husband have his little obsessions. He doesn’t get to have his son. It’s the least you can do.
She looks at me. “Well now you’ve got me thinking about Lovecraft.”
“Is this a good thing?” I ask.
She chuckles. “This is a wonderful thing.”
She’s in her groove now, lecturing me about Lovecraft, I am Providence. That was Satan’s line when he went to see Saint Anthony. “I am God and I am Providence,” she booms in her teacher voice. She explains the link between the Bible and H. P. Lovecraft, who wrote the words I am Providence in a letter to James F. Morton. “See, listen.” She tucks her hair back. “I teach Lovecraft’s stories, but you can’t delve into his work without reading his letters. He spent most of his life writing letters, so many letters, and he was all these different things, a recluse, a bigot, a man of letters, a creative person, a depressed person, a political person but then also, Eggie, he knew so much about the boundaries and specifics of our government, our law, the man knew so much, he was an adviser about so much, to so many. And he writes these letters and then he writes these stories, these wild stories, almost as if the more he knew of this world, the more driven he was to make other worlds, worlds that must have been born out of some unknowable depth of confusion. His peace with that mystery—turbulent peace, if you can imagine such a thing.”
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