Bath Haus

by P. J. Vernon

  A good idea. I’ll tell Nathan the mugging has me on edge and changing the locks will make me feel safer. I’ll phone Darryl and cancel the work for now. Alert Kristian to the fact he’s been busted again and cops are closing in. The latter might be a lie, but he doesn’t know that.

  “I’ll call a locksmith.”

  “We also need to prepare for another challenge,” Detective Henning says. “From how you describe him, Kristian’s likely foreign. Perhaps Scandinavian, perhaps not. We need to confront the possibility he’s here illegally. If that’s the case, there may be no records pointing his way. No IDs. Nothing.”

  “If we can’t find him”—the insides of my cheeks stick to my teeth—“how do I protect myself?”

  “We’ll find him. People slip up. It’s only a matter of time before he does too. In that regard, we’ve got something going for us.”

  Doubtful is an understatement. “What could we possibly have going for us? After everything you just said?”

  Detective Henning’s tone sharpens. “He’s bold. Incredibly—recklessly—bold. To enter your home and leave behind evidence with the intention of tipping you off is brazen. Evidence perhaps depicting homicide with no attempt to mask his identity—quite the opposite, actually. From a law enforcement perspective? It borders on insane.” She reaches across the table and takes my hand. It’s meant to instill confidence. That she truly empathizes and is still my ally.

  Detective Henning’s eyes haven’t once left mine, but her stare strengthens. “I know it doesn’t seem like it. You’re scared, and this isn’t going to make you feel better, but trust me. Guys like this get caught. Guys like this get caught sooner rather than later.”

  Trust me, she says. Two words, but I have a fraught history with both.

  Do I trust Detective Henning? I don’t distrust her intentions. But I don’t know if I trust her abilities to help me. My doubt is no libel against her gender.

  She squeezes my hand. “Oliver?”

  It’s fear of a monster.

  18

  NATHAN

  “Nathan?” A voice asks from the street outside Walter Reed. A familiar voice and a subtle cold climbs my back. The prowling sedan had pulled up curbside and rolled down a back window like in a mafia movie. “Can I give you a lift?”

  I’ve been intercepted leaving work. By a Bentley Mulsanne in an oily Windsor blue. Its feline lines almost as predatorial as its passenger. “Mother?”

  “Get in,” she beckons. The sidewalk’s hot with steam from a summer rain. “I’m in no hurry. Let me take you home.”

  My SUV waits in a staff garage one block over, and I almost decline. Then I remember Mother’s loaded request to talk real estate and I’m in her car, wrapped in camel leather, burled walnut, and a thinly veiled agenda. “What are you doing here?”

  “If you’d answer the phone, you’d know.” She removes her vintage shades and—despite an idling AC with the carbon footprint of a 737—tugs her blouse as if to cool down. Her eyes aren’t nearly as flippant as her tone. “Awards gala.”

  “You loathe the New York gala circuit.” I buckle up as the car swings into the street. Her driver stays silent. Kept quiet by the Gilded Age sensibilities Mother carries like an Hermès handbag. “I’m supposed to believe you flew down for one?”

  “Your father and I have been given a very prestigious award. Thought Leadership in Philanthropy. Victor had business anyway, so we’re accepting in person. Tonight.” Mother plucks a tissue and touches up stray mascara in a back-seat mirror. “It’s a tremendous honor—”

  “Again. Something you detest.”

  An uncomfortable quiet settles. I trust Mother will break it the moment she’s ready.

  “I took a call yesterday.” Her clutch snaps shut like something hungry, and here we go. “Detective—”

  “Henning.”

  “Then it’s true?” She jolts, and both bag and jaw drop to her lap. “Jesus, Nathan.”

  “Oliver is fine.”

  “I’m certain Oliver is anything but fine.” She pronounces Oliver like a vaguely French Olivier. She can’t resect him from my life, so she cuts away what bits she can. His name, low-hanging fruit. “Why didn’t you tell me he was mugged? Or assaulted, rather.”

  “Because.” Her peculiar qualification after “mugged” is off-putting. “This conversation right now?”

  “She asked very pointed questions,” Mother starts. “About you.”

  “That’s protocol,” I say, though the conversation veers in a direction it most certainly should not. “Following up with me is justifiable. I’m his husband. Statistically—”

  “I know the numbers. I cut my teeth in clinical psychology.” And what sharp teeth they are. “Married or not, I know exactly what the woman, Henning, was after.”

  “What are you after, then?”

  “Honestly?” We glide to a soft stop at a traffic light, and Mother pulls her shoulders back. “My son. The very one I assured the detective was with me in New York. At the Millennium Hilton. One UN Plaza and, oddly enough, during the precise time she inquired about.”

  “Fabulous.” I shrug. “You should both be satisfied, then.”

  “I suppose.” She fingers the knot of Tahitian pearls dangling from her neck. Slick and so black I can almost see myself in each one. “If Oliver’s injuries happened when Oliver says.”

  “What are you trying to imply?”

  “Easter weekend. Last time you came down to the coast.” By “the coast,” she means the family getaway nestled in the South Carolina Low Country. We’ve always kept a winter house on Bald Island, just south of Charleston. We also keep the entire island. “Oliver’s behavior there, it bothered me.”

  “Breaking news,” I scoff. “You’re never not concerned by Oliver’s behavior.”

  “He was withdrawn, he barely seemed to sleep. I heard him walking about in the night. Everything he said was vague, excessively private.” She turns to her window, to the regal homes and tony mid-rises breezing by. “Now he’s apparently got bruises, according to the detective.”

  “He’s always withdrawn around you,” I say. “I hardly blame him.”

  “I’m trained to recognize signs.” She skirts my sarcasm. “You favor Victor, you know. Your father’s sharpness. His tenacity.”

  “Mother—”

  “His temper,” she whispers, and my face warms. “Sometimes people disappoint you, frustrate you. People like Oliver? I can only imagine—”

  “Fucking Christ,” I interrupt as the Bentley closes in on the house. “I must be batshit crazy.”

  We brake hard out front, and I unbuckle.

  “Nathan.”

  “Because a more lucid me might think you’re the one asking pointed questions. We’re done talking about Oliver.” I start to unlatch the door when three stories of exquisite Georgian brick come into crisp focus. A singing sparrow takes to the air from tall hedges. “You said you had something to tell me? About the townhome?”

  “I do.” She tightens her lips, recrosses her ankles. It’s evident whatever this is, it won’t be easy. I sink back into hand-stitched leather. “You’ll be thrilled to learn your father and I are ready to sign it over to you.”

  “Sign what over? The house?” My heart flutters. Though I advertise it to exactly no one, I don’t own the property Oliver and I call home. The salary leap from the top 5 percent—a surgeon’s earnings, for example—to Mother and Father’s top 1 percent club is astronomical. The truth is, as surprising as Oliver might find it, I could never afford our house. Nobody deftly baits me quite like Mother. “Go on.”

  “But,” she says, drawing in breath because she always hides her knives in velvet, “I’m not sure you appreciate what that entails.”

  “It was a gift.” What’s your angle? “From a Klein Foundation donor.”

 
“Not per se.” Despite a fresh round of botulinum toxin for a suspiciously timed gala, she somehow peaks an eyebrow. “It was left to Victor—not the foundation—in the late senator Dick Howe’s will. Funny way of doing business back then. Legacy gifts in kind for favors in kind, such as it was.”

  Nothing about Mother suggests she ever stopped trading in favors. Almost exclusively. I may not own the place outright, but I’ve done my homework. Pulled the papers because no Klein Foundation staff questions a directive from anyone with said surname. “Our charity is listed on the deed.”

  “Now it is. What with skyrocketing property values in this little community?” Her sharp eyes travel the ancient oak-lined street. “Transferring it made fiscal sense. The taxes on this one here?” Those same eyes land hard on the house, and she punctuates her point: “Cosmic.”

  Why am I not at all surprised? “My home is a tax shelter.”

  “It’s not your home,” she corrects. “Of course, it could be. Though I imagine you’d find upkeep a challenge. Without any help.”

  My heart thrums as I brace for her knife. “Help?”

  “You and Oliver are a family now—of sorts.” Her weapon finds its mark. “It only makes sense you and he should take it.”

  “You’re threatening me.” It plunges through my flesh. Deep into something vital, and I choke out: “I cut him loose or you cut me loose?”

  “Please, you’re always so dramatic. If it’s worth keeping Oliver over, your father and I will support your decision.” She plays with her own ring like an eight-carat exclamation point. “Emotionally, that is.”

  “Did you practice this speech on the ride over, or does Joan Crawford just come naturally?”

  “You want to keep playing house with Oliver?” She twists her blade. Needlessly and cruelly. “Buy the dollhouse you’ve made such a mess of.”

  “Wow.” I shut my eyes. She’s stabbed me and I can’t help but laugh. “This is fucking rich.”

  “Victor has his playthings. But Victor puts them back in the toy box when he’s done. He doesn’t live with them.” An unsettling pause. “He certainly doesn’t break them.”

  “You actually think I hurt my husband, don’t you?”

  “Husband?” She sneers. “This foolishness stops now. If and when that detective—or anyone else for that matter—contacts you, you’re to call me first, understand? I’m the psychotherapist. I know what subtleties she’s hunting for. I can help you.”

  “You booked a flight,” I say. “Lurked outside the hospital in a limo like the fucking Godfather or -mother or whatever. Just to—”

  “I love you, Nathan.” She veers from callous to emotional, and the whiplash nearly snaps my neck. “More than you can know. I will do whatever it takes to—”

  “Did you come down to help me or threaten me?”

  She burns in silence for a beat, then: “Both.”

  “An ultimatum, huh?” If I’m gasoline, the cold human calling herself my mother just struck the match. “Tell me, would you be this bold if Oliver was a woman?”

  “Don’t.” Her jawline tenses. Tighter than I’ve ever seen it. “You know goddamn better than that. Don’t go there with me, son.”

  “If Oliver was my wife, your whole take would change.”

  “How dare you!” She nearly pulls her pearls apart, and the driver flinches. “I’m a bigot, am I? Thank god you have no clue what that experience would actually be like. If your father and I were so narrow.”

  “If Oliver was a woman, your Town & Country dreams would all be intact.” My climbing voice keeps pace with my anger. “Bonnets and driving gloves and grandchildren—”

  “How different you’d have turned out,” she cuts me off. “If you’d had, say, Oliver’s parents.”

  “His parents are dead.”

  For a painful stretch, heaving chests and heartbeats are the only sounds.

  “You and I both know where this is headed,” she grits. “The longer you hold on, the more trouble he’ll get himself into. Sometimes the best way to love someone is to leave them.”

  “Bummer you spent your life as a therapist. Sounds like you missed your calling as a songwriter.”

  “I’m not asking you to do this for me. Or you, for that matter.”

  “I’ve heard all I’m going to hear.”

  “Do it for him. Before something worse happens, and it’s too late.”

  “The only thing that’s too late is you. And this little proposition?” I shake my head. “It’s monstrous.”

  “Speaking of monsters.” Her tone abruptly turns again. Suddenly light with a jarring hint of whimsy. It grabs me as I throw open the door.

  “What!?”

  “I had hoped Oliver’s incident might scare him off. Frighten him into leaving because you’re far too weak to do it yourself.”

  “What a shitty thing to say.” I step out onto the sidewalk.

  “Funny, isn’t it? The two of us relying on Oliver to make the right decision.”

  I lean down to shut the door to the car and the conversation. “We’re finished here.”

  “No, Nathan,” she says, nodding to the townhome behind me. “You’re finished there.”

  19

  OLIVER

  On the scale of dumb shit I’ve done, leaving my card behind the counter at Haus is almost transcendent. I ordered replacements for everything in my junked wallet—including said card—and yet, here I am. Nathan was right to question why I’d even go running with it in the first place. Can’t even clean up mistakes without making things worse. And making his life needlessly harder.

  “This is good,” I say. The patrol car driving me back from the station brakes hard. A few blocks from an address that’s now cauterized in my memory: Haus.

  “You sure?” the cop at the wheel asks. “Not much around here, kid.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure. Thanks.”

  My credit card statement was of zero value to Detective Henning, but to me, it’s something far more dangerous: a loose end.

  “All right, then,” he says, popping the locks. “Take care of yourself.”

  Kristian might’ve stolen my card just as easily as my license. It may be canceled, but he’s nothing if not creative. I can’t begin to predict the ways it could still be used against me.

  I slam the passenger door too hard. Daylight dulls the edge, but it can’t stifle my anxiety much. The brief rain’s vanished, leaving a scalding wetness behind. Anxiety, not panic. I can do this so long as anxiety’s all I must contend with. Panic will unravel me, garble my words, make me useless.

  I have to get my card back.

  As the police car peels off, I squeeze my pocket pepper spray and find landmarks. A bent street sign, a graffitied dumpster screaming dick city! in red spray paint. Trees—intentionally obscuring—thick with stringy creepers. No cameras. Nobody out and about. Broken glass under my sneakers.

  The front lot, however, is full. My heart rate spikes and my skull buzzes from the inside out. In a visceral way, it’s all the same as last time. Standing here, working up the nerve to go inside. Only then it was anticipatory, transgressive excitement. Now? Unadulterated fear. Self-preservation.

  Keep moving, Oliver. Lingering will cause me to turn tail.

  The cinder-block building looms with a grimness that’s almost spectral. Bone gray and the same paint covers that windowless door.

  I need to know if my card’s gone before Kristian slips it under Nathan’s office door—accompanied by a love note or god knows what else. At the very least, I’ll force the coward, the Cheshire Cat, to look me in the eyes when he lies. To see my throat. To know who he’s hurting and who he protects.

  When I step inside—when the solvent reek of lavender pulls bile from my gut—I find the Cheshire Cat right where I left him last.

  My hands, m
y legs, my fucking spine—everything trembles. From behind plexiglass, he doesn’t even look up. “You a member?” he asks, distractedly thumbing through papers.

  “I am.”

  “I’ll need to see your—” His eyes meet mine. His sentence, unfinished.

  The silence between us is oddly intimate. A connection that teeters on the brink of adversarial. Walks the line between conflict and camaraderie. The two of us have a past. We’ve experienced something together we’d rather not have.

  I’ve bitten into my tongue without knowing it and taste metal.

  “You know who I am,” I start.

  “I don’t.” A tiny quiver takes his bottom lip. “You say you’re a member?” Another pause. “I need your ID.”

  Anger blooms, spreads as a tingling numbness down my back. I can’t stop it. “You know who the fuck I am!”

  His shoulders jump. He swivels back a foot or so in his chair, eyes shooting to a desk phone.

  “You know exactly who the fuck I am,” I scream. “Huh, liar?”

  “I don’t, I don’t know,” he stammers. Phone off the hook, thick fingers perched to dial.

  Tears well. Flecks of spit spray the glass. “Why would you lie to the police? Someone tried to kill me, strangled me.” I thrust my arm at door number two. “Right through there!”

  “I’m sorry,” the Cat stutters. Eyes glossy, crowded face a hot scarlet. “I’m very, very sorry.”

  A thought strikes and I tear my phone from my pocket. Scrolling with wet thumbs isn’t easy, but it’s the first picture in the roll. Ocean-deep, mocking eyes. I press my phone to the glass.

  “Him! He tried to kill me!” My voice catches. “This man, do you know him? Is he here a lot?”

  My last question spawns a far darker one: Is he here now?

  The Cat’s narrow eyes fix on my screengrab. “Never seen that man,” he whispers, one hand still hovering over the shrieking phone.