Day 93
Day Ninety-Three
It was nearing dusk when Lally pounded on Jesse’s door with a ferocity that startled even her, the door solid in a way she wished she were, standing tall, absorbing each blow, the hard wood even seeming to push back against her clenched fist. The response was immediate, a loud barking that made her jump, but Jesse deserved a bit of a jolt and needed to know that this time she meant business.
She glanced at her phone to make sure her text to Harlan went through; if Jesse was indeed a serial killer she needed someone who knew her last location.
At Jesse’s, it said. Enough pussyfooting around.
If she and Harlan were to have any chance at a future, the search for Norman must end.
After what felt like an interminable pause, Jesse opened the door, looking bedraggled and covered in dirt.
He strained to hold back the dog, which pulled against his grip on its collar; it seemed more excited than dangerous, smiling even, its tongue hanging limp out one side of its mouth.
Jesse’s hair was unkempt and in need of a cut, and his eyes appeared sunken and hollow.
Whatever else he was up to (drugs? Lally feared), it was clear that he had been digging.
His hands looked calloused, and he wore bandages on several fingers.
“What, are you trying to wake the dead?” he accused, peering behind her to see if anyone had registered the commotion; of course, there was no one to hear.
Then he turned around and walked back into the house, leaving the door open for her to follow.
“Hurry, so the dog doesn’t get out.” She hesitated before stepping inside and closing the door behind her, like this was her last chance to come to her senses.
Once inside, Jesse gave the dog some sort of antler or bone and, satisfied the danger had passed, it trotted over to the shag rug to lie down and went about the business of chewing.
Jesse barely made eye contact with Lally. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”
The window blinds were mostly drawn and it was darker inside than out.
The place was not as messy as she worried it might be, given that she’d never known Jesse to be one who thrived when left on his own.
But from her quick scan it appeared he was managing; the house was even more organized and put together than the night they went to the Tiny Pony.
The furniture had been rearranged, and inside had a more homey feel.
It was outside where he’d made quite the mess.
“Having fun in your sandbox?” she asked, turning on a lamp in the entry. Jesse stopped in his tracks.
“The entire desert is a sandbox. And it’s not mine.” He stayed perfectly still like he was considering how she knew to ask that, then said, “I suppose the man that’s been parked outside my house is with you.”
Lally’s heart jumped at the idea of Harlan being with her; she wasn’t sure where they stood after their kiss.
But it just as quickly sank as she realized Jesse had said this was his house and not, as it should be, his and Norman’s.
She clenched her phone tightly, waiting for a reply from Harlan; so far one hadn’t come. “And what if he were? With me, I mean?”
Jesse continued to avoid her gaze. “That come with dental?”
Lally tilted her head, confused.
“I mean, if the pay is good and it comes with benefits, maybe I should apply. Nobody can keep closer tabs on me than me.”
Lally looked at her brother-in-law like she had many of her girlfriends when they were new mothers, wanting to do something for them when they were completely overwhelmed.
There was no baby to watch, no obvious load of laundry to do, but she thought a conversation between them might be more productive if Jesse felt more like himself.
“Go take a shower, Jesse. I’ll stay here with the dog and brew us some hot coffee. It looks like you could use some.”
“I only drink cold brew, of which I’m out,” Jesse replied. “But I think I have Mountain Dew.”
Mountain Dew was about the last thing she wanted to be offered, but in the interest of moving this along she agreed. “Fine. Go take a shower, and I’ll pour us two tall glasses of, god help me, Mountain Dew.”
Jesse laughed and she was grateful for that, grateful for any moment that made her feel like the old Jesse was still somewhere inside the husk of a man that stood before her.
Finally meeting her eye, he placed both hands on her shoulders and said, “Thank you,” in a way that was foreign and uncomfortably sincere.
When he retreated to the bedroom, Lally poked around as best she could without disturbing anything.
Harlan would be proud, she hoped; how many hours had he spent outside the house trying to discern what was going on within, and here she was freely opening and closing kitchen cabinets.
She found nothing incriminating, other than evidence of dietary confusion.
Ketchup and mustard packets abandoned in a drawer looking like shriveled little pillows, alongside Chinese take-out menus stained with soy sauce; in the fridge there was indeed a two-liter of Mountain Dew, already a third of it gone, but also healthy dinners from an online meal service.
When she heard the sound of the shower, she moved deeper into the house; the dog eyed her suspiciously but remained blessedly quiet.
Jesse’s phone was on the coffee table. There might have been a time when she had known something as intimate as his password, but that time had long passed.
Still, she picked it up, and there were no unanswered texts on the home screen.
There were eyeglasses on the table, readers that she thought might be Norman’s, although she struggled to remember either one of them sporting a pair.
Several books were strewn on the couch, one with a dried baby carrot as a page marker.
Nonfiction. A book about time travel or different space-time dimensions, and one about government and infrastructure in the 1950s.
She whipped open the coat closet, wondering if she might find her brother crouched in there, and surprised herself by feeling relieved when he wasn’t.
She then looked for a basement door, but many houses in Southern California—including this one, apparently—were built on a concrete slab.
Out the back sliders was what Harlan had promised—an enormous hole.
Mounds of dirt rose from all sides, making the excavation appear like a magic kingdom on the floor of a valley, protected from all who might advance on it by impassable hills.
It was the work of a madman, and yet strangely also a poet.
There was a beauty to the madness, even Lally reluctantly recognized it, the way some could see groundbreaking mathematics on a chalkboard when others just saw chaotic scribbles.
The mounds were human anthills, magnificent in size compared to what created them and something to be studied.
But Lally tore herself from the glass wall.
There would be time to be mesmerized later.
Afraid Jesse’s shower would be short, she backed away.
Mail piled up on the console by the front door; some of Norman’s was opened, much of his was not.
Nothing from Norman and nothing personal that she could see, but that was not unusual—no one sent letters anymore.
One open envelope was from the Beverly Hills Reproductive Center and she scrambled to pick it up.
It was an invoice marked paid; the embryos would be stored safely for another year and she hugged the paper to her chest. She was surprised to see mail for them both from the AARP.
Norman’s was even offering a soft cooler if he renewed his membership, the kind of thing you would take to the Hollywood Bowl.
She couldn’t imagine either of them receiving these offers as anything but an insult.
“I’ve been thinking a lot lately of all the ways we are alien to each other, even the people we think we know best.”
Lally spun around to see Jesse clad in a towel, his hair dripping wet. He pointed to the envelope from the AARP.
“I didn’t know he was a member, either.”
Lally, at a loss for words, set Norman’s mail back down on the console. “You’re not wearing your wedding ring,” she observed. In truth, he wasn’t wearing much of anything.
Jesse held his ring finger in his hand to disguise it. “It must have slipped off,” he said sheepishly. “I’ll go put on some clothes.”
It was only when he turned around and shuffled away, the pads of his feet dragging across the floor, that Lally realized how muscled he looked.
Digging obviously agreed with him. Perhaps the ring had innocently slipped off.
But he was right. This Jesse was alien to her.
Ripped and browned from the sun, spooky even, but not in any way she could put a finger on.
Haunted might be a better word. She returned to the kitchen and poured them both Mountain Dew, surprised to find ice in the freezer.
From the clerestory windows she could see the top of the distant mountains, and the blades of a few windmills that stood eerily still.
She took a sip from her glass with great trepidation; the color was just awful.
She was right to approach this potion with caution, it was like drinking antifreeze.
It was all she could do not to dump hers in the sink, but she didn’t want to be rude.
Her eyes were drawn to a ceramic banana.
It had a handmade quality and she couldn’t imagine Norman allowing it in the house and she held it up for Jesse when he returned, gripping the banana with both hands like it was Aladdin’s lamp.
He pushed his wet hair away from his eyes, cementing it against his head until it stayed parted to the side.
“That’s a banorah,” he said, as if it were an everyday word, and looked annoyed when she didn’t get it. “Banana menorah.”