16. El NiÑo,Boys Will Be Boys #2
“What was that?”
“Fuck, he’s awake again. Didn’t Hodel give him something?”
“I told you, didn’t I? You can’t trust Hodel—”
There was a rustle of movement, and it occurred to me that I should leave, in case they came down to where I was and caught me eavesdropping.
But even after I heard them dispersing, I couldn’t bring myself to move.
It was like something had imploded somewhere inside me.
A truth I tried not to see had unexpectedly gone off.
There was a numb, horrible rushing in my ears. I wasn’t thinking about anything, couldn’t hear my thoughts over the sound of pounding in my chest. I swayed in the direction of the guesthouse, half in a dream, just as a hand slid warningly over my mouth.
I inhaled sharply, cognizant enough to try to yank myself free, but he held me in place with one long arm pinned around my shoulders.
“It’s really not safe for you to wander around the villa,” Jude said in my ear. “Nobody sleeps well in this house.”
He made a motion with his hand as if to caution me to silence before removing it.
I nodded, heart thudding with annoyance, and eventually he pulled it away.
I turned to face him and found him looking expectedly ragged, his T-shirt streaked with mud, his fingers caked with something I hesitated to give a name to, lest I make it true.
He gestured over his shoulder for me to follow him, and nearly every instinct I had told me to stay where I was.
I ignored them and followed him back to the cabana where William had deposited me earlier, where Jude now nudged me inside before moving to close the door behind me.
I had a feeling he was going to lock it—whether for the duration of the night or forever was unclear.
Could I Survive It? The windows were glass; the table was heavy enough to break it but reasonably light enough to throw.
But that assumed that what awaited me out there was safer than anything that might happen to me in here.
“Wait.” I swallowed hard, then caught Jude by the wrist. “Come inside?”
“Anya.” His eyes looked even stranger, more otherworldly in the dark.
I stopped seeing the mud and the blood and saw only the hands that hadn’t killed me when they had the chance, the ones that had taken mine twice now toward safety.
I saw both the pity and the thrill. “You are really fucking stupid.”
He looked tired. I held myself back from running the pads of my fingers along the shadowed crescents below his eyes.
“Please?”
He sighed, then stepped inside after me, removing his boots. They were a different pair, I observed. They looked stiff and new, and his feet—he wasn’t wearing socks—were bright and raw in multiple places.
“What happened to your other shoes?” I asked.
“Lost ’em.” He looked around my room with a sense of purposeful disregard, like he was trying not to see the bed, and then he headed for the thing I’d thought was a closet—it was a small, en suite powder room, which became evident as he turned on the tap.
Jude glanced halfway over his shoulder at me, then turned back to the sink.
“If you’re not going to do what I tell you and stop coming back here, you’re going to have to behave like an employee.
The maids come in, they leave, they don’t ask questions.
Same with the landscapers, the gardeners, the contractors. You’re too curious.”
I walked closer to the bathroom, pausing in the doorframe. It was as beautifully styled as the rest of the space, but hardly big enough to hold both of us; just a toilet and a sink.
“Did you know what they were talking about?”
“Yes.” He was scrubbing furiously at his fingernails and cuticles.
“Who were the other voices? Aside from your dad’s, I mean.”
“This.” He caught my eye in the mirror. “This is being curious.”
“What were you doing?”
He looked away.
“Jude,” I said.
“Anya, I’m too tired for all these questions.” I could see the steam rising from the water in the sink. He seemed to be scalding himself trying to get his hands clean.
I stepped in closer, pausing his hands below the water. It was so hot I nearly recoiled in pain, but it seemed important not to. I turned the water off and reached for the hand towel from the rack, taking his hand gingerly in mine to scrub below his fingernails.
“Why did you come down here?” I asked in a murmur.
“What did I say about stupid questions?”
I could feel him watching me. I looked up, briefly, then returned to the effort of cleaning his hands.
“There are cameras,” he said after a moment, shifting so that he could gesture inside the bedroom of the guesthouse.
“There,” he said, pointing to one corner with his chin.
“And there.” The opposite corner, trained on the door.
“They’re for me, not you,” he added when I visibly stiffened. “But still, they exist.”
“So,” I said, registering his instructions with new clarity. “Stop asking questions.”
“Yep.” His voice was characterless. Dull.
“Are there cameras in the greenhouse?” I asked neutrally.
“Yes.”
My heart thudded faster. “Who watches the footage?”
He arched a brow.
“Right. No questions.” I cleared my throat.
“Just do your job,” he said. “They don’t care what you see. What you do. You can’t talk, legally, and even if you did, no one would believe you.” He was watching me polish his thumbnail in the same spot, buffing it over and over. “So the good news is you really don’t matter.”
“Because I don’t have the right blood?”
I caught the motion of Jude going rigid.
“Yeah,” he said.
He withdrew his hands from mine, scrubbing at something I couldn’t see.
Then he turned to leave, and my eyes followed him to the door.
I’d like to say Jude had a tell, but really, he was a bundle of tells, which was what made everything all the more confusing.
He reacted to absolutely everything, which made it as hard to predict his next move as if he hadn’t reacted at all.
Jude was an extremely nervous person—afraid of me, afraid of himself, seemingly afraid of his own shadow, like even that couldn’t be trusted.
Who knew what it might have seen. He was also fatigued in a way I associated with chronic insomniacs or major depressive episodes.
He seemed to be numb to the whole thing.
It had left him with anxiety, sure, but not fear anymore, he was too far past that.
You couldn’t be afraid of an outcome that never left, or so I thought.
“I don’t want to be alone in here,” I said. He was already leaving, so I directed the thought to empty space, staring blankly across the expanse of the room.
“Too bad,” he replied without pausing. “I told you to stay away from this house.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t mean it.”
I looked at him then.
He shook his head. Rolled his eyes.
Crossed toward me again in two long strides.
“Fucking Christ, Anya.” He kissed me in one hard impact, like throwing a jab at my front teeth. I thought about my face and its mechanisms, my hollow shell. Then he released me and walked to the door.
I chased him, behind by half a step.
He shut the door in my face.
“Asshole,” I muttered.
I looked at the camera, then went back to the bathroom, where he’d left the towel in the sink. There were streaks of brown tiger-striping the white terry, though in the places I’d slid it underneath his nails were separate patterns, discernable shapes.
Tiny crescent moons of dried blood.
I left early the next morning, exhausted, ready to walk the entirety of Beachwood Canyon if I had to, but fortunately a detour had been created through the hills. I told myself a detour designed by the city was reason enough for the devil to get lost in pursuit.