Bath Haus

by P. J. Vernon

  “Son.” Victor’s affected basso. Straight out of central casting for Master of the Universe, the older, grayer, richer Nathan starts appraising things. “What are you doing with that bottle?”

  Hector takes the opportunity to distance himself from said bottle but asks a very stupid question while doing so: “The fuck are you two?”

  The room sinks into silence for a painful beat. Carefully, I reach into my pocket because time’s running out.

  Kathy narrows her eyes at Hector like a predator. The hunger in them almost looks like giddiness. I grip my phone tight. Once again, Hector unwittingly helps because he can’t keep his mouth shut. He’s volunteered himself as the first receptacle into which this horrible woman will pour her rage.

  Her scowl is firmly tethered to Hector, but it’s to Victor she speaks: “Call the police. Tell them we have a trespasser or three.” She hesitates, grins. “If I’m not mistaken, there may even be a gun.”

  “You’re right, Katherine,” Victor adds cheerily as he dials. “There almost certainly is a firearm on one of them.”

  Shit. Victor’s ordering up homicide by cop like it’s a goddamn Uber.

  Then again, the Wi-Fi modem sits useless behind an ornate planter. Hector might still be helping. Back against the wall, I could slide my way into the kitchen. A butler’s pantry connects it to the dining room. The front door goes nowhere helpful, but I can make it to the stairs if I run. Maybe lock myself in a room. I’m faster than Old Man Victor or Kathy, who—for reasons unknown but fortunate—is wearing heels.

  “Why are you here?” Nathan asks, still clinging to his makeshift weapon.

  “You were a no-show at the deed signing,” Kathy says. “The lawyers went to demand you vacate my property—and found you already had.”

  Deed signing? What is Kathy talking about?

  “Then you had us followed?”

  “Oh please,” she sneers. “The house alarm here was disabled. I saw the notification on my way to barre class.” Like mother, like son, she tosses her own phone faceup on the coffee table. Open to what I assume is a smart home app.

  “So, it’s even worse. You came all the way down here to personally pull the trigger.”

  “To save you from yourself.” Her gaze flits to broken glass, and maybe the woman’s got a point. “To offer a last chance before it’s too late.”

  “Spare me.”

  “I will if you’ll allow it.” Kathy pauses for a cruel head count. “The police can arrest three people or four. Your choice.”

  “Jesus Christ, Mother.”

  “Excuse me, Mr. and Mrs. Klein?” Tom breaks his silence. He must’ve checked Kathy’s math, and irons out his voice. “I’m not actually involved in, like, whatever this is. I work for Senator—”

  “I’m curious, Nathan,” she cuts in. Tom is completely invisible. Unlike the pill bag where her phone landed. “Who brought those party favors? You think Oliver can float you both when a judge revokes your medical license?”

  “You’re insane.”

  “Leave the psychoanalysis to me, son.”

  Nathan’s rattled, Hector’s flummoxed, Tom is again silent on a couch, and the Kleins are busy weaponizing civil services. I could run, but if I do, everyone here has a reason to chase me. The outcome of being caught, however, varies widely among them.

  Running won’t cut it, and now Victor paces the room, growing agitated. Revealing he has no service defangs his threat, so he stays quiet. Kathy, on the other hand, has nothing but time.

  “Booted from one home, so you simply move to another? Bring your playthings along too.” She reads the room and each man in it for filth. “All of them.”

  Nathan’s urge to leave DC, to move as fast as possible, suddenly feels calculated. His reasons are still uncertain, but romantic impulse is evidently not one of them. In my pocket, I turn my phone over. Victor can’t catch a signal, but MeetLockr is my last and only shot.

  Unless the Kleins brought their own gun to plant, no one’s legitimately armed. At least until cops burst in and spray bullets wherever screaming Kathy points. Hector may have something in his luggage, but every Klein stands in his way. My mace is in some evidence locker with the rest of dead Kristian’s shit. Tom can’t help me. Hell, Tom would probably choose Hector over me because that’s just a very Tom thing to do.

  I’m deep in a nest of spiders. Maybe they all turn on one another, but the fact remains: I’m the only one here without eight legs and a venom sac.

  Stunningly unself-aware, Hector says, “You people are all fucked up.”

  Then Victor’s words set my pulse on fire: “Call’s going through now, Katherine.”

  Service! If he’s got it, I might.

  Eyes down in my pocket, I unlock my phone. A full signal. I scroll for MeetLockr. It’s a slow load but no doubt about it, it’s opening.

  “Hang up the phone, man.” Hector starts to panic.

  When he looks like he might leap, Nathan raises his bottle. “Don’t move!”

  Tension swallows the room. Humid like a bathhouse and ripe with Kathy’s rosewater perfume and everyone else’s fear. I find my unsent message from earlier: the question mark I’d hurled at the anonymous account and hit re-send.

  Message sent.

  Sent, but not received.

  I scour the room. Their faces. Nathan stands by the hearth now, his fist on the mantel to keep steady. Expressionless Tom hasn’t budged. Restless Hector rubs his arms like he’s enraged or withdrawing or both. But one of them knows everything. One of them tortures me in Kristian’s stead.

  “I need to get out of here.” Tom.

  “Hello, yes, this is an emergency.” Victor.

  “No one is going anywhere.” Kathy.

  “Take the jetty over. Nags Road.” Victor again.

  “Oliver.” Nathan.

  “I said hang the fuck up!” Hector.

  Unraveling Hector whose eyes search for escape. When they land on me, invisible needles tap-dance on my shoulders. He had as much opportunity to find me on MeetLockr as Tom. When I set a trap for Kristian, Hector could’ve seen it.

  He’s gone to lengths, both great and criminal, to have his demands met. He’s come for me and he’s come for cash, and not necessarily in that order. He stalked me. Threatened me. Called himself Jeff. Impersonated Blaire. Check your phone, Hector. Check your phone and answer the most important question of all. Are you impersonating Kristian?

  “Home invaders. That’s correct.” Victor.

  “You can’t keep me here.” Hector.

  “Watch me.” Nathan.

  “Good, Nathan.” Kathy.

  “I’m sorry for the photos.” Tom.

  My message still reads sent. Not received. Not opened. Not read.

  “Very good. Thank you.” Victor ends the most cordial 911 call of all time, and for the smallest slice of an instant, no one says anything. An uneasy quiet descends.

  Then something buzzes.

  A phone vibrating against sandstone. The rattling reaches my ears with all the ferocity of a screeching freight train.

  My message reads received. Then a second later, read.

  Trembling, I look up from my pocket and out into the room. What I see is that freight train, just before it strikes me. Before it smears pieces of myself across mile after mile after mile of iron track.

  Because Kathy Klein has reached for her phone on the coffee table.

  And read the message I’ve sent her.

  53

  “You.”

  It’s all I can say at first. A tiny scratch of a whisper, but every pair of eyeballs on this island swivels my way. Invisible hands push from behind. Off the wall, and toward my enemy. I take slow steps to the one person who knows everything and yet did nothing to help.

  “Excuse me?” Kathy arches her b
row, but that sharp face is as venomous as ever.

  She did do something, though, didn’t she? Something cruel and pitiless. She impersonated Kristian. The man who tried to kill me. This bitch exploited my fear. Forced the choice of losing my life or losing my partner. Used it against me so flippantly, the therapist in her would have to agree it’s maniacal.

  “Oliver?” Nathan’s voice dwindles to white noise.

  Two hundred meters away, MeetLockr said. Turns out five people, not three, fell within that radius.

  How she knew about the app is beside the point. Folders disguised as calculators, budgeting and smart home apps, GoPros for snuff films, good old-fashioned nanny cams hidden in the Georgetown house before her son and his trashy lover took the keys. The ways she might’ve tracked and surveilled me are as deep and wide as her hate.

  How do we survive?

  That’s the question my mom was forced to answer every day. Pragmatism is leaving your husband drunk in a ditch because the next time he tears into your son might be the last. But Kathy’s ruthlessness? The punishment she exacts for the crime of loving Nathan while poor? She can wrap herself in knots of pearls and rosewater perfume, but she’ll never stop stinking.

  She’s no better than Mom. None of the Kleins are.

  “I’m about sick of this shit,” says Hector.

  “Same, Jeff.” Tom coughs. “Or Hector or, what is your name even?”

  As chances of leaving this island unscathed shrink, I grow bolder. Even if I could stop the catharsis, I wouldn’t. I’ve run too long, panicked too long, hurt way too goddamn long—and now the truth comes out.

  Even if the only ears to hear it all belong to spiders.

  “Kristian.” I clench my teeth so hard they might shatter. “You knew him. Or, at least, knew of him.”

  “Nathan.” Kathy’s tone is as smooth as cold glass. “What the hell is he—”

  “Or Olav, I guess. But maybe that’s not news to you either. Tell me, did the opportunity for blackmail fall into your lap? Or have you known from the start?” My hands ball into fists. Tight and bloodless. “When he tried to strangle me to death.”

  “Strangle?” Nathan’s voice deepens. “Is this about your mugging?”

  “Either way”—I shake my head—“you get what you want, huh, Kathy?”

  “What exactly is it that I want?”

  I laugh. Uncontrolled, it flies from my lips. The irony of answering that question on behalf of Kathy Klein is delicious. I point my chin at Nathan. “I can think of something.”

  “Who is Kristian,” Nathan demands, “and Olav?”

  I recall Detective Henning’s revelation this afternoon. “Funny thing, Mother.”

  “I can assure you,” Victor interjects, “there’s nothing funny about any of this.”

  “Before he moved to Washington?” I disregard both him and Nathan as easily as Kathy ignored Tom. “He lived in your neck of the woods. What were the chances—I asked myself over and over and over—a homicidal maker of snuff films pulls up the next stool in a bathhouse?”

  “How many of those pills did you take, Oliver?” Kathy tightens her jaw.

  “The coincidences, the timing, the whole thing felt, I don’t know, engineered. It smacked of design. Maybe you met him in New York. Maybe you sent him down here to choke me.”

  “I knew you were still a junkie,” she spits.

  “Is that what you meant, Mother?” Nathan asks. “What you said in the car? About scaring Oliver into making the right decision?”

  “Nathan, stop being silly.”

  He goes on, “ ‘I hoped it would scare him.’ Those were your words before you kicked us out and followed us down here. Did you pay to have my husband mugged!?”

  “He’s not your husband! For the last time, that man is not a Klein! And I have no idea what you’re—”

  “Stop being silly, Kathy,” I mock. Nothing to hide now, and I shove my phone in her face. Where the whole rotten thing’s spelled out and probably backed up on some cloud in Silicon Valley. “MeetLockr. You just opened my message.”

  “Meet who?”

  “Show Nathan your phone, Mommy!” I point to the sleek device. Held tight in her grip, its casing tap-tap-tapped with the manicured nail of her index finger. She hesitates and—green eyes tight because she knows it’s game over—glances down.

  I follow her gaze to the screen in her right hand, and something’s not right.

  Something’s not right, and something else stabs in my chest.

  “For Christ’s sake,” Kathy snaps.

  That lime-green logo is plain as day, and the stabbing comes harder, faster.

  “You really are high as a kite, aren’t you?”

  Plunging in and out and in and out, I might vomit out my own heart.

  “This isn’t my phone.”

  Kathy Klein’s black iPhone wasn’t the only one tossed on the coffee table tonight. Like Mother, like son, and tears gather.

  “It’s Nathan’s.”

  54

  NATHAN

  When do you call time of death on a marriage?

  A hard question for others perhaps, but lucky me, mine’s been timestamped.

  9:24 p.m.

  The moment Oliver’s MeetLockr message was opened.

  Even from across the room, his white eyes shriek in silence. That look is as old as time. The instant Brutus’s blade slips into Caesar’s spleen—but just before a hundred more sink into his back. As poisonous as a kiss on the cheek from Judas Iscariot. Betrayal always looks at its betrayer that way. I would know; it’s how I’ve looked at him for so long.

  My marriage was over the moment I hired an escort to scare him from straying.

  My marriage was over the moment Kristian broke his leash. Fucked with my home and my dog and almost killed the man I love.

  My marriage was over when I lured that monster to a Motel 6 in Takoma Park. When I served him a whiskey-sedative sour and shot him full of fentanyl.

  You’re not married, Mother likes to say.

  But we were going to be.

  Now, at 9:24 p.m., my marriage is over before it ever started.

  55

  OLIVER

  Our eyes meet, and a moment passes between us that cannot be measured in time. Only in increments of lies and betrayal and destruction.

  Me, trapped and trembling in a spiderweb of unimaginable scope. Him, stolid by the fireplace. Somewhere between gutted and glowering. The intoxication drains from his face, and he stiffens his spine.

  “Oliver,” he says.

  An inflection point. Nothing will ever be the same. The instant when the intricate costume you’ve woven for yourself unspools and suddenly, you’re naked. Only the truth remains. Except you’ve told so many lies and been so duplicitous in so many directions that even as the reckoning burns through, the truth isn’t what’s left behind, is it?

  Because for someone like you, there is no such thing.

  “We need to talk.” Nathan’s voice is operating-room cool. Even-keeled and controlled. “Let’s go somewhere.”

  “You’ll do no such thing,” Kathy says, but Nathan’s eyes track mine as he crosses the living room. His hands ball into fists, and I wonder how they’ll feel crashing into my face, how many pummels it would take to kill me.

  “Babe,” he says. “Let’s just talk.”

  My mouth opens, but nothing comes out. Words are sloppy, slippery things I can’t seem to string together. Panic turns my bones to rubber.

  As Nathan approaches, the tiny hairs on my arms rise as though electrified. A buildup of static charge before lightning strikes. I slowly slip from one flip-flop, then the other.

  At last, Hector leaps over the coffee table, and Nathan’s gaze breaks.

  “Don’t move!” Victor shouts as Hector shoves p
ast him.

  “Out of my way, asshole!” No more broken bottle and he bolts for the front door. Someone screams. Maybe Kathy or Tom or both.

  He throws the door open with a bang and sprints into the darkness.

  Now, Oliver! I spring for the stairs.

  Nathan lunges. His fingers brush the back of my shirt as I round the corner into the foyer. Stumbling, I grab the railing and catapult my weight up the steps.

  I scramble. Behind me, his steps are heavy and fast.

  “Nathan!” Kathy cries as I dash by the landing archway.

  In the upstairs hall, doorways whirl by. I don’t know this house. Not well enough. Ahead, another set of stairs looms, and instinct decides. Phone in hand, I take them two, three at a time. Again, hoisting myself up by an iron railing.

  A single door lies ahead. I fling it open and spin to catch a blur of Nathan closing in. The knob is keylock, but the key has been left in place. I slam the door, twist the key until it clicks.

  The door shudders as Nathan catches his weight on it. The brass knob jiggles and whines. On the other side, sounds of panting, heaving. The light beneath the door breaks in two places where he stands. The knob shakes again. He’s trying to get in.

  “Oliver!”

  Movement ceases, and we share a silence. All the lies, all the deceit vanish, and we both know it. Only the truth between us. The hostile truth laid naked and bare.

  Thoughts register, arrange themselves logically. Nathan knows about Kristian. Nathan must know he tried to kill me, followed me, terrorized me. Nathan must know and still, Nathan messaged me as Kristian.

  Tell him! Tell him! Tell him!

  “Open the door.” Nathan tries to mold his tone into something reasonable.

  If Nathan knows Kristian, he also knows about Haus. After Google gave me the address, I cleared the history, the cookies, the caches, but it’s abundantly clear he knows everything.

  The door creaks. Nathan must be pressing his ear against it. I step backward, glance left and right, behind. The room is small. Four walls. Three with windows. One with a glass door to the widow’s walk. The ocean, the marshes, the driveway, and the jetty. Darkened and distant, they all spin.