7. It’s 11 am, Doesn’t Anyone Here Go To Work? #3
“What Jude needs is a friend,” William finished.
His voice took on a soft, paternal ruefulness.
He’d renegotiated his posture as Emmanuelle shifted closer, his body angling toward her on the same path of orbit that I’d noticed once before, but his eyes never left mine.
“I wish I could spend more time with Jude, but with the new foundation, and of course all the problems with the industry these days—you know, it’s really all we can do to try to keep the things moving in the pipeline, to get the approvals we need from some very tightfisted studios—”
“Of course.” I felt like I was speaking from inside a coma. “Of course, you must be so busy—”
“He’s quite sensitive, really. Jude.” William shifted his weight, bringing himself a little closer to me.
Conversely, Emmanuelle was now fixated on him, her face frozen with restrained delight.
I knew exactly what she was thinking—that I couldn’t say no now, not to William de Witt himself.
Not when she could see the degree of undivided attention I was getting, which was like being warmed by the sun.
“He doesn’t always open up to everyone. I don’t want to sound like last night was an everyday occurrence—it certainly is not—but he’s been lost in the past. Injured.
Abandoned. And you found him. You saved him. ”
William de Witt punctuated every clause with the cinematic intensity that made him a star. I found myself holding my breath.
“I’m an actress.” I forced it out. “I’m not …
I’m not a doctor, or a nurse—I’m not really equipped to handle emergency situations, and I don’t know anything about—” My gaze flicked to Emmanuelle and back, a stammer of unavoidable hesitation around the ill-timed resurgence of a childhood lesson: Thou shalt not lie. “About epilepsy, or—”
“He needs a friend,” William de Witt told me again. “That’s all. A friend.”
“But shouldn’t Jude choose his own friends?”
William’s eyes went sad. I realized only belatedly that I’d stopped calling William de Witt by his full name. He’d already become William to me.
“Someday, I hope he will,” said William. “Until then, I’m afraid it will have to be an actress.”
“Anya’s very talented,” Emmanuelle cut in, her interjection a kind of unexpected racket, like a careless dropped object ricocheting disruptively from somewhere off set.
At the sound of her voice, William tensed slightly, his fingers curling tighter.
Animosity? Annoyance? The primal part of my brain lurched with validation; with the sense that I was preferable, I was desirable.
In some unknown respect, I had won. “Perfect for the part Marty just sent over.”
“Yes,” said William, his eyes never leaving mine. “Quite perfect.”
I wouldn’t have trusted it if he stepped closer to me—I might have been young, but I wasn’t stupid.
Instead he leaned away, like we’d already come much too close.
Like he’d already been too near the brink of something; like we were being watched, just shy of a tryst, perilously on the edge of confession, some pivotal moment with no retreat.
I felt myself become a character again. A woman being asked to stay.
“Give it a night.” William stepped back from me, his hands apologetic.
“Stay for a while. See what he’s like when things are quiet.
A nurse is on staff, and Dr. Hodel’s on call.
You won’t have to do anything but talk to him.
” William’s phone started to ring, and he glanced at the screen before looking vaguely in my direction.
The look had an air of something, a hasty fumble for distance.
Guilt? Regret? The knowledge he’d done something he shouldn’t—or that one day, he probably would?
“Excuse me, my apologies. Hey, Fred, can you give me a minute?” He stepped toward me, past me, as he took the call.
I realized I was in his way, blocking the stairs, and so I stepped down onto the landing—a rare, uncalculated awkwardness defining my posture, my thoughts.
He smelled clean and woodsy, freshly showered.
My heart leapt in my throat, unprepared.
Before he left, William’s eyes strayed down to mine and away. Like he hadn’t wanted to do it but couldn’t avoid a last glance. I looked up, past him, catching motion from the house above.
Genesis was standing there, a smile reaching her eyes just before William strode past her, too, and then into the house. She’d been watching me—watching the whole conversation.
It seemed like eons had passed before I turned back to Emmanuelle. She gave me a wordless smile.
“You don’t have to move your car,” she said with an air of knowing triumph. “But next time, you really should park on the side of the house.”
I said nothing and she held out her hand. I placed my phone into it.
“You really are perfect for the part,” she said, cheerful again.
She was, I realized, some kind of diabolical genius.
I remembered reading about lab rats, how when they got fed even once, they kept on trying, kept on hoping.
They drove themselves mad with hunger, with desire.
All she’d needed to convince me was one look from William, one possibility of him looking at me again, and I’d have done anything she asked. She knew it, and now so did I.
I also thought, briefly and inexplicably: She hates him.
A thought she instantly contorted with a tinkled laugh. “Julian’s upstairs,” she informed me. When she used William instead of Will, the use of his full name felt like a show of respect. Julian instead of Jude felt like a form of distance, detachment.
“Thanks.” How would I explain any of this to Roro?
(A prayer: May all my ends justify my means.)
“Come down for a Bellini in a bit,” Emmanuelle called, and blew me a kiss.
Jude’s room—he was Jude for me now; the moment William had said it, the person who was in my care manifested anew; Jude, who needed a friend—was dark, so that I couldn’t clearly see where I was going.
I could see the bed, and thankfully, this time he was inside it.
His breathing was deep and steady, rhythmic and even with sleep.
He lay on his side with his long hair loose, a ribbon of darkness trailing his shoulder like an ink spill.
I crept closer, avoiding any creaks in the floor.
This part of the house was older, maybe even original.
The flooring, or what I could see of it through the debris of his belongings, was beautiful chestnut wood.
A shade was drawn over the open window. It tapped gently on the ledge, in conversation with the wind.
Beside the bed was a small table, something Jude must have used as a desk.
On top of it were orange bottles, pharmaceutical labels.
Other than the bed and table, no furniture.
Boxes were everywhere, which I hadn’t been able to discern from the monitor last night.
Most of them looked like things that had been intended for the house’s renovation.
Light fixtures, spare parts. Handcrafted Mexican tile, almost all of it shattered.
Some of it dark with something, maybe mud.
There was loose-leaf paper scattered about, piles of it strewn across the floor.
I picked one page up. It was a drawing, crude, anatomical.
A naked woman in a contorted shape, baroque with motion.
Then a careful, detailed drawing of an eye.
Several more drawings, all of women, or possibly the same woman.
They were all taken from above, looking down, or from behind. None of them showed her face.
Something shuddered through me. They looked like security images. Like someone had been following her around.
I shuffled faster through the drawings. They weren’t all the same woman, or at least I didn’t think so, but they were all the same angles.
Some things were detailed—sketches of jewelry, intricate, ornate objects, splendid little antiques.
They were brilliant and gruesome. He was a very good artist, but something about the perspective felt wrong—like seeing a person through a magpie’s eyes.
I set the drawings aside, noticing a new one on the table beside his bed. A mouth. A pencil drawing, a pair of lips with a cupid’s bow, drawn over in something like paint, a garish red. Beneath it, another drawing.
Me. My dress from the Ara gala, the one I’d gone to with Teddy. The notches of my vertebrae, the shape of my bare back.
I inhaled sharply.
Then I realized the room had gone quiet. The sound of steady breathing was gone, replaced by an ominous silence.
I turned my head slowly to look at the bed and found exactly what I’d expected. Jude’s eyes were open.
That marine blue-gray, that coastal tide, looked directly up at me.
I knew those eyes. The same ones from the pub, the ones that came before the violence. The monster, I would later call it. There was Jude, and then there was the monster.
There’s a devil on your back.
I held my breath.
(Could I Survive It?)
(Yes. There were at least a dozen people outside. William de Witt was here somewhere, on his phone. The house wasn’t soundproof. The window was open. If I screamed, someone would hear me. I could break things. It might be ugly, but I would survive.)
I stared back at him. Then, like before, I became aware of something—gripped by it. The heat of him, some primal flood of what must have been fear. The way he was there, unavoidably real, inescapably alive.
My mouth went dry at the nearness of him. “I’m not afraid of you,” I whispered.
His mouth curled up in a smile.
Then he closed his eyes, and the sound of steady breathing returned.