Chapter 27 Lily #2
“Yeah,” I said. “I know what you mean.” I felt it, too, a pressure bearing down on my shoulders.
Every day that I wasn’t doing something to build up my life was a day I felt hammered a little closer to the ground—smaller, more invisible, easier to step over and ignore.
I had never heard Emily sound so upset. I thought of the day she left her student loan balance up by mistake, how that debt must be hanging over her head all the time.
Emily, trapped here, when she deserved so much better, so much more—it wasn’t just me who thought a part of myself would die if I didn’t get out.
“Want me to do a lap and see if I can find Luis?” I asked, chastened.
“Please. And here.” She pressed the scissors into my hands. “Make sure the orchids in the ladies’ lounge look okay.”
I started my walk to the back of the spa. “No brown edges!” she called after me.
Luis wasn’t in the back hallway or in any of the empty treatment rooms. I called the men’s locker room attendant, who said he hadn’t seen Luis for three or four hours, when he’d brought in the fresh towels from the laundry delivery service.
I started on the orchids. It seemed like such a waste, with everything else going on.
Clara, the missing women, those paintings without a painter.
Those ridiculous, tiny scissors, doing a job that would never make any difference in the world.
I slid my phone from my pocket and texted Clara: You okay?
Working until 8. Meet at 8:30? I wondered if she had found Peaches, if she had had a chance to ask her about the purse.
After I handled all the orchids, Emily had me restock the boutique.
She kept fiddling with her necklace, putting the end of the cross between her front teeth.
I was stacking jars of olive oil scrubs when I heard the big front door heave open. Emily greeted someone in her honeyed, saved-for-guests voice, and it made me smile, how quickly she could go from sardonic and arch to eager-seeming, sweet. “Checking in, sir?”
“I’m here to see someone, actually.” The jar I was holding slipped from my hand onto the floor.
The packaging split and there was scrub all over the tile, bright yellow oil and gritty white paste.
I couldn’t move to clean it up. I must be imagining it, I told myself. This stranger with Matthew’s voice.
“A guest at the spa?”
“Ah, no. A”—a hint of a chuckle—“colleague of yours.” That laugh. That’s when I knew it wasn’t only in my head. This new information screamed through my brain. “Lily Louten.”
How had he known where to find me? And why was he here at all?
“Just a moment. Let me see if she’s available.” Emily’s voice was cool and formal, which was how she sounded when she was mad. She stepped around the partition.
“A visitor for you?” she whispered. I knew that Matthew would be able to see our outlines through the frosted glass. A shadow performance. “Is that who you were waiting for all morning?”
“No!” I’d been keeping an eye out for Clara. She’d texted back to ask if she could meet me on my break. “I have no idea what’s going on. I don’t know how he even found me.” My surprise must have been convincing. Her voice softened a little, and she dropped her hands from her hips.
“Well, what do you want to do? I can tell him you’re busy.”
“No, I’ll talk to him.”
Emily gave me another look then, like I had disappointed her, but I wanted to deal with this head-on. I stepped around her and made my way toward the desk.
I knew what his expression would be before I saw him: The look of mocking appraisal as he studied the lobby. Taking an orchid petal between his finger and thumb to see if it was real, the condescension in his surprise.
“Hey, Lil,” he said. He always shortened my name. My father hated when people did that. He said he hadn’t raised a daughter who was going to be small.
“What are you doing here, Matthew?” I forced myself to look him in the eye.
“You didn’t answer my messages.”
“I did, though. I told you to fuck off.”
“That’s not an answer. I want us to have a conversation. A real one.”
“Oh, where are the cameras? The microphones? Who’s documenting this now?”
“Don’t worry about that. I told you. It’s over.”
Behind me, Emily cleared her throat. “Lily, can I remind you about our policy when it comes to dealing with personal matters at work?” Matthew eyed Emily, and I knew he was suppressing a smile. That arrogance, smugness so thick you could feel it, like humidity.
“You need to leave, Matthew.”
“Not until you talk to me.”
“Fine. But I’m working now.”
“Doesn’t look like it.”
Emily, again. “Lily, you need to finish restocking the boutique before the end of your shift. We need to completely remerchandise Face today, Body by the end of the day tomorrow.”
“Stricter than Philip Louis.” Matthew smiled, a smile that contracted a little when I didn’t respond in kind. I knew it was an illusion or a concession. Matthew letting me feel as though I had a little bit of power.
“Meet me over there.” I pointed to the Swim Club. “Eight o’clock.” He looked behind us.
“Oh God, I don’t have to wear a Hawaiian shirt, do I? Or drink anything out of a coconut? I’ve been trying to stifle all of my ‘last resort’ jokes since I’ve been here, but that kind of thing makes it really tough.”
“I’ll see you then,” I said. I thought the Swim Club was cheesy, too, but Matthew mocking it made me angry, suddenly protective.
I turned my back and walked away. I couldn’t stand to smell him, to see his teeth, his arms, his neck, his hair.
Already I felt my body betraying me, the way I ached for him.
I wanted to touch his skin, to kiss all of his fingers.
I wanted to slap him as hard as I could.
I went back to the boutique, picked up a palette of eye shadows.
Autumn Auburn. Gold Leaf. Hot Cocoa. I started to stack them on a stand, to put away the summer shades that would soon go on clearance: Sandy Beach, Horizon, Caribbean Blue.
I wondered if the people who named these colors ever actually experienced seasons, the feelings that they evoked.
The melancholy of fall, the stifling claustrophobia of a humid summer, the despair of a long, dark winter.
“So. What’s the deal there?” Emily stood over me. “Here,” she said, handing me one of the metal shopping baskets to put the old products in. “This might help.”
“You heard everything. We’re having a drink. I didn’t know he’d show up.”
“So why see him at all? The guy who screwed some other woman while you were together?”
“I don’t know.”
Skeptical quirk of the eyebrow. She didn’t believe me. “Well, don’t do anything stupid.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, come on, Lily. Did we not, like five minutes ago, have a conversation about being obliterated, in part, by men? About what happens when women let themselves fade into the background? Lie down for him and you’ll get stepped over for the rest of your life.”
“I’m not getting back together with him! It’s just a drink.”
“Well sometimes for you a drink means six. And who knows what you’ll do after that.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“I’m just saying, he doesn’t deserve you.
And yeah, that’s a cliché thing women say to one another, but it’s true most of the time.
I know he’s this hotshot artist, but he’s a shitty person.
And don’t say I don’t know him. I know enough about him from three minutes in his company to know what’s up.
And you’re my friend. You deserve better. ”
I wasn’t sure what made me so annoyed. Probably that I knew she was right.
Despite myself, I also felt a thrill at Emily calling me her friend.
“Let’s not talk about what I deserve, please.
We all deserve better than what we get, okay?
You, me, everyone. It’s really just a drink, and nothing more.
I’m not reading anything into it. It’s not like I agreed to marry the guy and cook his dinner every night of my life. ”
“Suit yourself,” she said. I hated the chill in her voice.
I banged the wire basket onto the ground and turned my back, focused again on the display. Emily huffed around the corner. We went through the next few hours that way, separated by the glass partition: her at the desk, me in the boutique.
“Looks good,” she said.
“Thanks.” I hated that we weren’t speaking, but I didn’t know how to explain. We were silent until my lunch break, the only sounds the clacking of the new compacts and Emily’s occasional sigh.
I was on my way to the caf when Clara intercepted me in the hall.
“Hey, what’s up? Did you get my text?”
She looked terrible—violet circles under her eyes.
“This can’t wait until the end of your stupid shift, Lily.
I told you that this is important. I shouldn’t even be here.
You shouldn’t even be here. It’s dangerous.
I need your help. I mean it. I don’t want him to see me.
” I hadn’t forgotten about her text, exactly, but since Matthew came in I’d been distracted, my mind running on a single track.
What would I say to him? How could I possibly try to save face?
Plus, the library trip, and then all this buzz about the spa visit, Emily’s voice breaking when she talked about ending up like her mom.
“Well, I’m here now. What’s dangerous? Who don’t you want to see you? Have you found Peaches?”
“She’s … I think she’s with the others. They’re all together, Lily. Five of them.”
“Together where?”
“I don’t know, but they’re … they’re dead.”
My breath caught. “Hold on, step back a second. How do you know that?”
“It’s Luis. That guy you work with. He did it. He hurt them, Lily. I knew there was something wrong with him, but I didn’t do anything about it, and now look.”
“That’s insane,” I said automatically. But a thought jolted me—did this have something to do with why Luis was MIA? “Clara. Jesus. Okay, tell me from the beginning.”