Chapter 49
JOEL
Cleo was nervous around him. She hadn’t wanted Shay to leave, but then neither had Joel.
Shay had introduced him, letting Cleo know he would be of help as the two women embraced, and then they both watched her walk away until she slipped behind one of the island’s unassuming houses.
He tried not to think of the last time he’d seen Shay before she began dating Andrew, the front door of her brick apartment building in Chicago rattling shut.
He told Cleo to follow him to Terry’s dock.
As they walked, she kept staring at his feet.
“What?” he finally asked her, stopping to stare down at his Nikes.
She pointed. “That lace is coming loose.”
He knelt down, shaking his head in annoyance, knotting the graying laces so tight he’d have to cut them off.
“Why did you come here?” he asked as he stood.
Cleo was running her thumbs along the inner straps of her overalls.
They were too large for her, cut for a man.
The crotch fell to the middle of her thighs, the hems flipped up and up until they hung like tires above her ankles.
There was a tic at her left eye, an irregular spasm.
It was like her body had been rewired by an inexperienced hand.
He thought of The Stepford Wives and Philip K.
Dick novels. But she was frailer than that, painfully human.
“I was told to,” she said.
“But why? What were you told to do, other than break windows and set some kitchen fires? I mean, Jesus, how did you find a snake?”
“I didn’t do that.”
“Okay, fine.” He was getting even more frustrated. “But what was the real plan?”
Cleo’s thumbs moved faster, and she looked everywhere but his face: to the shore, to the boats, to a dry strand of kelp that had somehow slithered toward the grass. “What are you doing here?” she asked. “What were you told to do?”
Joel opened his mouth, taken aback. “No one told me to do anything. I’m here to help Shay. And that’s why I’m finding you a boat. I’m helping you too.”
She laughed. “Everyone wants to help. Everyone is so helpful.”
“Just follow me. Please.”
He shouldn’t have expected any answers from her. He reached out to guide her with a light touch, but then thought better of it, showing her the way to Terry’s boat with a wave of his hand. She followed, rubbing her knuckles against her cheeks.
Terry was suspicious, but after a pleading look from Joel, he agreed to take her. It helped that she said nothing during the exchange, once again consumed by Joel’s feet. He felt nearly lightheaded with relief.
Terry disappeared into the cabin to prepare for their departure, leaving Joel and Cleo alone.
For the first time, he took stock of the fact that she had no purse.
Her duffel was missing and her pockets were undoubtedly empty.
This was how Shay must have left that morning in April, and the thought made him soften toward Cleo.
“Are you going to go back? To the building on Riverside?” he asked.
“I’m not as stupid as you think,” she said. Her tone was sharp again. She seemed to waver from disaffection to a jagged anger.
“I never said—”
“It’s what they all say. You do these things because you’re stupid. Dope is for stupid people. Addiction is a stupid person’s disease. So just don’t be stupid. It’s that simple, right? But Shay’s smart, and she was there. For different reasons, but still, she was there too.”
Her hands had found her overall straps again, and he could almost feel the burn on his own thumb beds, the heat from the friction of her movements. Just a few more minutes, he told himself, and she would be gone.
“You knew her well, then?” he asked.
“Well enough,” she said, and then continued—as if to prove herself.
“I thought she was stuck-up at first, that she’d burst into tears and run, but she took every punch.
And she punched back hard. But then, after she moved in, she started to get quieter and quieter.
People would scream at her, but she stopped screaming back at them. That’s how I knew she would leave.”
“I hope you’ll leave too.”
He tried to meet her eyes, to communicate kindness and understanding, but she still wouldn’t look at him.
He removed his wallet from his pocket; he had forty dollars, and she took it from him with no flicker of recognition, like he could have been passing her a tissue.
Only after shoving the money into her overalls did she match his gaze.
She studied him for a moment, her face so static she didn’t even blink.
“You should know he’s still here, on the island,” she said.
“Who?” Joel asked.
“He was worried about drawing too much attention, so he found an abandoned shed to hide out in.”
“Who?” Joel repeated.
“He let you into Riverside. Don’t you remember?”
He saw the broad shoulders of the man who’d led him through the house. The snake tattooed on his hand, coiled and ready to strike. Fear rippled through him.
Terry emerged from the cabin, a different, slightly newer baseball hat pulled over his head.
A fresh wave rocked the boat back and forth, and Terry offered his hand to her, and to Joel’s surprise, she took it, stepping wide onto the deck.
Terry waved goodbye, but Cleo would not look back at him.
She took a seat and stared only at the line of the horizon, to an impossible point in the distance where the ocean met the sky.