Chapter 6
Chapter
Six
The phone rings four times before Maddie picks up.
“You’re alive!” she exclaims.
“Barely,” I grumble, adjusting myself in the armchair, my legs still hurting from the panicked sprint this morning.
“Hang on,” Maddie says. There’s a clatter of dishes in the background, a thump of small feet, my niece’s voice raised in operatic injury.
“Rosey, go ask Daddy. Aunt Iris is on the phone and Aunt Iris has been missing for six days. Six. Days. Go bother him.” The thump of small feet gets quieter as they run off.
“So, how are the kids?” I ask lightly.
“Don’t do that. Don’t open with the kids. You only ask about the kids when you’re about to bury something. What is it? Why haven’t you called?”
“I’ve texted,” I protest. “Several times. I’ve sent you pics.”
“Yes, but I know you and you said you would call and you didn’t and now you are, which means something propelled you to talk to me and I need to know what it is.”
“Nothing.”
“Iris. I can hear it in your voice.”
“I’m fine.”
“Iris.”
I close my eyes. My head goes back against the chair. The conversation through the window plays itself behind my eyelids on a loop that won’t turn off.
I would mind if you were afraid of me.
“You see, there’s this guy,” I begin carefully, wondering how on earth I’m going to explain any of this. “A man.”
“A man, not a guy? Is there a difference?”
I chuckle. “If you saw him, you’d say yes. There is a difference.”
A pause. “Oh. I see. You’re calling about a man then…well, fuck, it’s about time, Iris.”
I sigh, running my hand over my face. “No, no. It’s not like that. I don’t really know him. He’s just…”
“A man you’re interested in? A man you’ve already fucked?”
“No!” I exclaim. “I haven’t fucked him.”
“Then you’re just interested in him.”
“Maybe? More like this man is interesting.”
And that’s putting it mildly.
“Hmmm. Well, I guess that’s a start since you rarely find anyone interesting. So, where is this interesting man-not-guy, then?”
“In a castle across the bay, probably,” I reply flippantly, and the second the sentence is out of my mouth, I hear how it sounds.
“…I’m sorry. What? A castle?”
“It’s not as bad as it sounds.”
“I’m not sure what it sounds like. What do you mean a castle? Like…he’s a prince? Or a king? Braveheart?”
I let out a slightly hysterical laugh. I have to admit, it feels good, even if I do sound unhinged.
“Sorry,” Maddie says. “My knowledge of Scotland is thanks to Braveheart and Outlander. Tell me more.”
So I tell her about the naked man on the rocks days ago.
About drawing the shape of him from memory, and finding I couldn’t remember his face.
About the swimmer in the loch on the drive back from the village.
The conversation overheard in the pub. About the man on the road in the fog.
About the knock at the door that same night, his voice through the door, his refusal to give me a last name. The way he said Goodnight, Iris.
I tell her about the thicket this morning. The bones. The thing that wasn’t a footstep behind me. Running in wellies. The police.
But…I leave out one thing.
I leave out that he came to my back window tonight with wet hair gleaming black and the gold light on his jaw, and that I stood inside with my thumb in my mouth and looked at him as long as I could bear to without looking away.
I leave out that I almost said you don’t have to go and how badly I wanted to say it.
“Iris. Holy shit.”
“I know. I know, I’m a hot mess.”
“Iris, when I said living at the cottage could be good for you, I did not mean open the door at night to the local neighborhood nudist who won’t give you a surname and is possibly a murderer.”
“Except that I didn’t open the door,” I point out defensively.
“But you’re going to.”
“I’m not going to.”
I also didn’t mention the letter I found from Effie. Why let her worry about me even more?
“Right.”
“Maddie—”
“You only use this voice when you have decided something already and I know what you’ve decided about the beautiful naked man-not-guy.”
“Alasdair,” I whisper.
“Right. Alasdair. God, what a fucking name, huh?”
“What voice am I using?” I wonder, mildly curious.
“That same one you used when you said you were moving to Scotland, the one that tells me your reckless impulsiveness has burst forth and taken the wheel. Listen. I’m not your mother.
No one is, thank god. I’m not going to tell you what to do, because you don’t take that well.
In fact, your pathological avoidance thing or whatever makes you do the opposite—and frankly the only reason I survive you—is that I have stopped trying.
But you called me, late your time, about a man—and not just any man, but a naked swimmer who lives in a castle, and that means I get one piece of advice. Are you ready?”
“No.” I sigh heavily.
“Tough tits. Here it is: get out of the house. Drive into a town. Go to a pub. Talk to humans whose names you know in full. Do not let yourself get laid by your only neighbor. Especially not this neighbor. Even if he is, and I’m quoting your voice here, unreasonably hot.”
“I never said that.”
“Oh, yes, you did. You said it three different times in three different ways.”
I sigh again and sink back further into the chair.
“He’s very tall,” I whine, miserable. She knows I love them tall.
“Of course he is.”
“His eyes are gorgeous.”
“Ted Bundy had nice eyes too.”
“His hair is—”
“Stop talking. Listen to yourself. You called the police about him this afternoon. The police.”
“I called the police because I thought he was chasing me in the woods. I thought he was the serial killer.”
“Iris! You still don’t know that he isn’t!”
“I know.”
She lets out the loudest, most disgruntled sigh, so loud that I hear Andrew in the other room ask if she’s okay.
Her voice is now a vicious hush. “You called the police about him this afternoon, you think he might have murdered some women, and now you’re waxing poetic to me, cataloging his eyes.”
“I like cataloging things.”
She lets out a long breath on the other end.
I hear my niece shriek, then laugh in the background, and then Andrew is laughing too.
For a moment I feel a sharp pang of homesickness.
I never felt at home at their house, but they were family and they loved me.
Suddenly I feel very, very alone and very far away and I’m wondering if that reckless impulsiveness might have led me to yet another mistake.
“Okay,” she says eventually. “I’m glad you got to talk to me, but I want you to hear me in return.
Three things: one, lock everything every night.
Two, you go to the village or the hotel, and you talk to people who are not him.
Go get yourself fucking laid—I don’t care who by, but it has to be anyone but a serial killer.
Tonight, you do not let him in. Tomorrow, you do not let him in.
I don’t care how many times he knocks at your door or waves his dick around from across the bay.
He stays the fuck outside the cottage until you have a clearer head about whatever is going on out there. ”
It’s almost as if Maddie knows about Effie’s warning. Perhaps Effie herself is speaking through her in one of those weird channeling ways.
“And three?” I prompt warily.
“This is the one I want you to actually hear: I want you to think about why your body wants you to open a door it shouldn’t open.”
I don’t say anything.
“You hear me?”
“I hear you.”
“I’m serious, Iris. This is a very specific kind of stupid for you. This is post-Ryan stupid. This is a body that hasn’t been fucked, let alone touched, stupid. This is the stupid of a woman who has not been wanted properly in a long time and is being offered—”
“He’s not—”
“He is. He is offering something, and whatever it is, your body, your hormones, are reading it as being wanted. And your body is going to put you on its side every time. So I am asking you to let me be on the other side for a minute. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Okay. Good.”
A pause.
“I miss you,” she says, quieter now. “I know I shouldn’t be, but I’m worried for you all alone out there.
I know your brother is too. And I’m going to let you go to bed, because you sound like you’re either about to fall asleep or about to do something stupid, and I’m going to choose to believe the first one. ”
“Don’t worry, I’m going to bed, and I’m not doing anything stupid. I promise.”
She sighs. “Alright. Well, lock those doors again and text me when you wake up, even if I’m asleep. Okay?”
“Goodnight, Maddie.”
I sit in the chair for a long time after she hangs up. The salt at the window is the color of bone in the dim light.
Maddie is correct about one thing.
I am going to open the door.
Not tonight. Not tomorrow.
But eventually, I will. I have made stupid decisions before and this will be no different.
And it will be my downfall.
I sleep like shit, quelle surprise! But at least the tossing and turning lets me sleep in a little longer than normal, my jet lag having finally succumbed to this time zone.
I drink my coffee on the back step in Effie’s old wax jacket and watch birds flitter atop the bay, identifying the unfamiliar calls with my Merlin Bird ID app.
The castle across the water sits where it sat yesterday, broken and silent against the slope.
No light in any window. No man on any rock.
Just red sandstone, and gull-cry, and the long, slow shush of the water.
I have made myself a list of productive things in the notebook by the kettle, because productive things are what I do when I am trying not to think about something specific: Sort out the trunk and learn more about Effie.
Press the foxgloves before they get any sadder.
Beware the thistle (it’s out to get you).