I exhale.
It is, without a doubt, the loudest sound that has ever been made in the whole history of the world.
My eyelids flutter closed.
A moment later, Tony pops his head out into the hallway. He looks down.
“Marissa, what are you doing on the floor?”
I run, right? Now is when I run. That’s what Isaiah said—“Next time maybe crawl somewhere with an escape route. Better yet, run.” I pull myself to my feet. If I can just take him by surprise, I think I’d be able to—
“Where have you been?”
“I’m sorry?”
“We have work to do.”
“What?”
He squints at me. “Work. You do know what that is, right? It occurs to me that I’ve yet to see you actually doing it.”
My mouth falls open. “Well, I’ve been—I’ve just—”
“There is nothing,” he says silkily, “less interesting to me than excuses. Now come on.”
He turns and disappears back into the projection room, and for some reason my legs decide to follow him.
“Tony—have you been here this whole time?”
He heads to the table and leans over his laptop. “I got back from New York a few hours ago. Why?”
Another person, a better, braver person—Grace or Suzy, or Anjali—would take this opportunity to come up with a speech. A clever set of lines designed to lull Tony into a false sense of security before, somehow, drawing him out and apprehending him, capturing a taped confession along the way. They would appeal to each of his weaknesses—to his ego, to his pride, to his arrogance—luring him into a trap not even Tony could escape from.
Narrative comeuppance comes for us all.
But the only time I’ve ever been able to pull off a speech is alone, in bed, long after the fact, when I’m going through the endless list of all the things I wish I’d said.
So in the moment, I just say:
“Yeah, I do not know what to do in this situation.”
Tony gaze flickers. “I know this has been a hard few days—”
I spin and launch myself through the door, but Tony’s too fast. His hand clamps down around my upper arm, and he yanks me back toward him. I spin, and the momentum carries me all the way across the room. I slam into the opposite wall, face-first. I crumple to the ground.
My hand goes to my nose; it comes away bloody.
I look up at Tony. His eyes are wide, nostrils flaring. He takes a step toward me—
I scramble back against the wall. “Please don’t.”
He shoves a hand through his hair and sucks in a breath.
I hold up a hand. “You know what? Let’s talk about this logically.”
His lips part. “Logically?”
“Yes—logically. Because the cops already know you killed Liza, so killing me won’t actually change anything.”
He considers this. “It’ll shut you up.”
I stare up at him. Blood drips down my lower lip and onto my chin. I swipe it away with the back of my hand.
He pulls off his spectacles and rubs the lenses with the hem of his shirt. “How did they figure it out, do you know?”
“To be honest it was mostly speculation until just now. Motive’s still a little murky.”
He replaces his glasses and cocks his head to the side. “But I bet you have a few ideas, don’t you?”
I swallow. “Do you—want to hear them?”
He huffs out a laugh. “Sure, Marissa, go ahead. Pitch me.”
“Well—I figure it could have gone one of two ways. Way one, you killed her because you decided your movie wasn’t going to get you the justice you were seeking—maybe because you knew Gavin was going to quit, maybe because you knew Liza wasn’t up to it, maybe because you finally realized you wrote a terrible script—so you decided to try to frame Billy for Liza’s murder. Send him to jail that way.”
“Or?”
I’m shaking so hard I can hear the bones rattling in my skull.
“Or—as part of your twisted little director games, you had been putting Liza in increasingly dangerous situations. The night she died, when I saw you with her in the spa—I didn’t know it was you then, of course—you were trying to teach her to access her emotions or whatever. If that was the case, there was probably some upsetting sex element at play, which means I really don’t want to know the details. But whatever happened, things went sideways, and when she died, you panicked. You figured you’d make lemons into lemonade, try to pin the murder on Billy.”
His expression gives nothing away. “Which story do you believe?”
I wipe my nose again; I clear my throat. “I’m leaning toward the latter? But, you know, I’d really like to think you’re only capable of killing a girl by accident.”
“Jesus Christ, you’re like nails on a chalkboard, aren’t you?”
I laugh, the blood gurgling in the back of my throat. “Point of pride, really.”
The curl of his lip is like the flick of a whip. “If I’d realized who you were at the interview, I never would have hired you. A strange, sad little girl who brings no pleasure to anyone or anything, who no one with any sense can stand to be around.”
“That’s not quite true.”
He reaches down and grabs me by my ponytail, pulling me to my feet. He stretches a hand across my collarbone and shoves me against the wall.
“How about we make a deal?” he suggests, his voice barely more than a shadow of a ghost of a whisper. “I’ll let you go—if you can name one person who doesn’t laugh at you behind your back.”
“Me, for one.”
Tony turns toward the sound just in time for Isaiah’s fist to plow into his face.
He crumples to the ground.
Isaiah’s eyes meet mine. We stand there for a long time, just looking at each other. Then his hand rubs the back of his neck. “I know you’re probably the kind of woman who wants to save herself, but I saw you on the CCTV, and—”
“That,” I gasp out, “was the nicest thing anyone’s ever said about me.”
I step into his arms and burst into tears.
SUZY KOH: Oh my God, are you kidding? That’s what he said? He didn’t come up with anything better before he knocked Tony out?
MARISSA DAHL: Okay, but I actually thought it was really moving because, like, he was addressing my emotional needs and not my—
SUZY KOH: But that was his chance to unleash an amazing one-liner.
MARISSA DAHL: I guess you’ll have to take that up with Isaiah, I don’t really know what to say—
SUZY KOH: “That’s a wrap.”
GRACE PORTILLO: “I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille.”
SUZY KOH: “I think this is the end of a beautiful friendship.”
GRACE PORTILLO: “I’ll see you on the cutting room floor.”
MARISSA DAHL: Oh my God, are we done now? Please can we be done. [pause] I’d really like to be done.
THIRTY-ONE
I wait with the locksmith-slash-paramedic while he packs up his bag, feeling a little sorry I didn’t give him more to do. Tony’s already been taken by helicopter to a hospital in Lewes where they can treat his concussion. I only have a broken nose—and a busted arm, and a bunch of cuts and bruises, not to mention nightmare fuel for at least ten years.
But other than that, I’m unscathed.
Nick’s interviewing Isaiah over by the popcorn machine, twenty feet away. He scrawls in his notebook as Isaiah sketches something in the air with his hands. My gaze catches for a moment on the back of Isaiah’s neck.
The paramedic buries his hands in his pockets and rocks on his heels.
“So how’s the arm?” he asks.
I glance over at him. “You just examined it.”
“I could take another lo
ok at it if you’d like.”
“No, thank you.”
“Okay,” he says, nodding. “Okay.”
Now Nick’s gesticulating with his pen, and Isaiah’s nodding in agreement. Isaiah’s hand goes to fiddle with his wrist—he’s unbuttoning his cuff and rolling up his sleeve. He rolls the other one up, too, before adjusting his stance, planting his hands on his hips.
“So do you often find yourself in situations like this?”
I turn to the paramedic slowly. “Do you mean, like—murder?”
He squeezes shut his eyes and scrubs a hand through his hair. “No, I—”
“Marissa!”
It’s Nick, waving at me.
I head over, my feet dragging just a little. I can’t help but think about how Nick reacted when he arrived on the scene—how he ran right over to Tony and pressed his fingers against his neck before he even thought to look at me. As I approach, I take in the conventionally attractive white-guy features that—red hair aside—are more or less a Rorschach test for how much you hated high school. I wonder if he was doomed from birth to be just a little douchey.
(Why isn’t Isaiah looking at me? Did I embarrass myself that badly?)
“You were a lot nicer to Tony than you were to Billy” is the first thing I say to Nick.
Nick raises his eyebrows and scratches the side of his jaw. “Well—you know.”
“That Tony is rich and famous and also your buddy from back in the day? Yes.”
“Marissa,” Isaiah murmurs.
Nick laughs. “What, so I’m the villain here?”
“No,” I say. “Villains advance the plot. You’re just a second-act complication.”
He gives me a blank look, his lips rounded on the start of a question I fear very much starts with “what” and ends with “the fuck.”
I guess no one ever made him read Robert McKee.
He shakes his head and flips to a fresh page in his notebook. “I need to get a preliminary statement.”
“Can’t that wait until tomorrow?” Isaiah asks.
“It’s just a few questions for now. We’ll get to the good stuff tomorrow.”
I look down at my feet. I hate the very thought of sitting in a dimly lit room and going over the events of the past three days again and again, over and over, until it comes out right—no matter that this is precisely what I’ve done almost every day for the last eleven years. No matter that it’s what I intend to do for the next fifty. It’s not nearly as fun when the story’s your own.
“Caitlyn’s death was an accident,” I blurt out. “She fell on the stairs back by the projection room. Violet carried her body to the beach because she was worried the hotel would be held liable.”
Nick’s eyebrows go up. “Or we could get to the good stuff now, I guess.”
“How do you know that?” Isaiah asks, turning—finally—to face me.
I peer up at him. Is that disgust I see in the set of his chin? Disapproval in the shape of his mouth? Exasperation in the line of his shoulders? What is he thinking? Did I ruin this, too?
He looks down at his shirt. “Is there something on me?”
Even though my nose hurts and my knees hurt and my arms hurt and my brain hurts, I’m suddenly feeling better than I have in years. His eyes—they’re crinkled at the corners.
I didn’t ruin anything.
I turn to Nick, ready now.
“About Violet—”
* * *
—
Something they never talk about in the movies: loose ends. It takes nearly two weeks for the authorities to tie them up, to conduct the necessary interviews and complete the necessary paperwork and drink the necessary coffee, and until that’s done we’re all stuck here at the Shack. In no time at all we’re cranky and crabby and cramped, and the lobby is littered with the investigators’ half-empty blue-and-white Anthora cups, the remaining staff too busy or too indifferent to pick up after them.
They let most of the crew head home that first weekend, but I’m not so lucky. I’m too involved, too central, the lead actor who gets stuck doing a press junket while the supporting cast gets to throw back Jäger bombs at the hotel bar.
But routines are my business, and soon enough I fall into a tolerable one: I spend my days talking to cops from Delaware and lawyers from California, and I spend my nights in my room, staring at the ceiling, the cat curled up on my chest. I wish I could say that I’m in shock, that I’m reeling from everything that’s happened, but the truth is, I’m always like this when I have to be out in the world for too many days at a time. I have to take to my bed afterward, like a Regency matron with a case of the nerves.
I suppose it doesn’t help that in the past two weeks I discovered a dead body, tracked down a murderer, and made not one but two phone calls to strangers.
Each night Suzy and Grace join me as soon as dinner service is over, bringing plates piled high with peanut butter sandwiches—and now orange slices, too, because apparently Suzy’s mother is beginning to worry about scurvy. They never ask if they’re welcome and I’d never suggest they aren’t, because why bother with formalities when we all know they’d just wear me down in the end.
I give the girls permission to respond however they like to the press inquiries I’ve been receiving since the news of Liza’s death broke, and they spend hours huddling over my laptop, cackling over memes I’m already too old to understand.
Gavin, meanwhile, has adopted the habit of swinging by after last call. He likes to stretch out on the couch, his fingers laced behind his head, feet dangling over the arm, needlepoint pillows jammed under his shoulders. He doesn’t say much, he just flips on the TV and cycles through the channels, grumbling under his breath about reality television, having apparently forgotten what IMDb will always remember: that he was a guest judge for three episodes of Britain’s Got Talent.
He didn’t ask if he could be here, either, but then I wouldn’t expect him to.
I don’t see Isaiah much. He’s busy with other things. Official things. But he always checks in before he goes to sleep, poking his head through the connecting door and looking directly at me.
“Still awake?” he asks.
“Still awake,” we answer.
None of us can sleep, of course.
Which isn’t to say I’m not trying. But when I close my eyes, the best I can manage is to drift into something sleep-like, a place where hazy, ghoulish images lunge into view like wild beasts, but I still have the presence of mind to be able to hope—idly, distantly—that I’m just thinking of Buñuel or Dulac or Deren. I would not like to be able to come up with such things on my own.
When I’m awake I keep turning over the facts of the murder in my mind, as if we’re still in the middle and haven’t yet come to the end—even though we very clearly have—and before long I’m indulging in outlandish, maladaptive daydreams, that there’s something else coming, some new development, some last-second twist, a revelation that the four of us aren’t even really here, maybe, that we’re all dreaming, or dead, killed by Tony in a darker, bloodier timeline where things went even more horribly wrong, and this is our purgatory. Or that Liza was really Caitlyn’s daughter, or Tony is actually my father, or Suzy and Grace are spirits or secret twins or figments of my imagination. That Caitlyn’s alive and well and living on Long Island. That I was the real killer all along.
Evil plans, long cons, elaborate conspiracies, they’re all the same: narrative wish fulfillment. Because if God’s playing a long game, there’s no such thing as a what-if, right?
Like:
What if I’d called Annemieke earlier.
What if I hadn’t gone back to the projection room that night.
What if I’d looked through that curtain and seen Tony with Liza.
What if I’d taken Beverly Glen instead of Coldwater.
What if I’d read a goddamned script.
This would all be so much easier if I only had a criminal mastermind to blame.
When I finally fall asleep for real, it’s to the delicious image of Josh begging for forgiveness, tearfully confessing he was behind it all from the start.
* * *
—
On the third night, there’s a knock on the door. Grace and Suzy look up; the cat leaps off my chest and scurries under the bed.
“Marissa? Are you there? It’s Anjali.”
None of us move.
None, that is, except Gavin, who lifts the remote, levels it at the television, and turns up the volume.
“I have Kyle here,” Anjali calls out after a moment.
I shoot a quick look at Gavin. Who?
Prick, he mouths back.
But Anjali keeps knocking, so Grace drags herself to her feet with an operatic sigh and a magnificent scowl. She flips the security latch, twists the deadbolt, and removes the desk chair one of us must have wedged beneath the knob.
Anjali stops short when she sees who’s in the room with me. Standing behind her is the executive who hired me.
That’s his name. Kyle.
“We were hoping to talk to you alone,” Anjali says, her voice high and uncertain.
I twist my hands in my sheets and pull myself upright. “My answer is no,” I say.
“It won’t take long,” Kyle says. “Just a day or two of your time.”
Gavin perks up for the first time all night. “Dearest,” he drawls, “what is he talking about?”
“They’re reworking the film,” I say. “Turning it into a documentary. I’m assuming they want to put me on camera.”
He falls back against the pillows. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
Kyle adjusts his glasses, clears his throat. “We just found out they’re not pressing charges against Violet, and we’ve finally reached an agreement with the DA to get access to Tony while they’re preparing for trial. So everyone else is officially on board—everyone except you.”
Pretty as a Picture Page 29