Chapter 21
The look on Roy’s face makes my skin prickle along my hairline.
“What the fuck are you doing in my office? Again?”
“I…” There’s a vein bulging on the side of his head. I want to go to him, put my arms around him, pretend everything is normal but my legs are like two columns of panna cotta. “You’re home early.”
He glances at his watch. “I’m right on time. We’re going out, remember?”
“Oh, right.” The McIntosh dinner. I forgot all about it.
“Answer me, Jodie! What are you doing in here?”
I swallow. “I was cleaning?”
“Do you take me for an imbecile?” he snaps.
“No… I…”
He points at the door. “I locked that door, Jodie. I made sure it was locked, so how the hell did you get in?”
I’m usually a very good liar, but I have to say, I’m struggling to come up with a reasonable excuse.
“It was unlocked,” I say.
His face is like a mask. His eyes are cold and dead.
I’m actually feeling a little scared right now, and I don’t scare easily.
That’s the upside of having a crazy mother who puts you through all sorts of terrifying situations like locking you up with hundreds of hairy spiders.
(I still believe they were real, despite what my sister said.) You kind of get inoculated against terror rather quickly.
Roy’s eyes skate over to the desk, and with two strides, he’s picked up the pen cup and turned it upside down, sending pens clattering all over the desk. He swipes the pens around, looking for his key, then holds the empty cup right in front of my face.
“Did you take it?”
“No!”
He shakes the cup, almost hitting my nose with it. “So how did you get in?”
“I found the key,” I say.
He drops his arm. “You found it.”
“Yes. It was on the floor in the corridor.” I start gathering the pens on the desk. “I thought it might be the key for your office, and it was, and I went to put it back, that’s all. And then you came home.”
“When did you find it?”
“Just now.”
“So you’re telling me that key has been lying on the floor outside all day?”
I shrug as if to say, How am I supposed to know how long it’s been there?
There’s a knock at the door, and when we both turn, Marie’s standing there. “Your suits from Brioni have been delivered, Dr. Davies. I hung them in your closet.”
“Ah. Marie. Come in, please.”
“Certainly, Dr. Davies.” She looks at him with her usual professional readiness. No jobs too big or too small. I am here to serve.
“You cleaned the house today, didn’t you, Marie?”
“Of course, Dr. Davies.”
Hardly, I don’t say.
“Jodie claims she found this key on the floor outside. But you would have seen it if it had been lying on the floor all day, wouldn’t you?”
Slowly, Marie turns to look my way.
I am dead. She’s going to rat me out. I know it. She’s going to say, A key? What key? There was no key. And anyway, why would Mrs. Davies need a key? Why, just the other day, I saw her on her hands and knees rifling through your drawers. She didn’t need a key, then, did she?
My body tenses up. Without breaking eye contact with Marie, I close my fist around a ballpoint pen, something to gouge his eyes out with—or hers—when she says, “I told Mrs. Davies about the key on the floor, that’s right.
And Mrs. Davies kindly said she would put it on the desk for you. Isn’t that right, Mrs. Davies?”
I wait for the punch line. Any minute now she’s going to throw her head back and laugh and say, Just kidding! Of course, there was no key! She’s just a common little thief! But instead she just waits. They both do.
“Well,” I say finally, touching my hair. “I was trying to tell you…”
“Was there anything else, Dr. Davies?” Marie asks.
Roy rubs the back of his neck. “No. Thank you, Marie.”
“You’re welcome, Dr. Davies.”
She turns on her heels.
Roy puts his hand out.
“Can I have it back, please?”
I drop it in his palm. “I was about to put it on your desk, I swear.”
He puts it in his pocket, then checks his watch again.
“You better get ready, or we’ll be late.”
“Of course.” I smile. I’m not worried about the key. I’m not stupid. I thought something like that might happen, so I made a copy.
Phillip and Emily McIntosh greet us at the door. She is covered in gold jewelry, white hair held back by some kind of tiara, and she has the nicest face, smiling and crinkled. She takes my hands in hers and says, “It’s wonderful to finally meet you, Jodie.”
Phillip McIntosh pats sweat off his brow while giving me a leering, up-down look. “What she said,” he says, then winks at me.
“Jodie! Hello!” It’s Eileen, followed by the harpies.
And I don’t know if it’s because of Eileen, or if it’s because Roy is standing there, but the harpies are uncharacteristically friendly, their hands patting at me softly, their heads tilted.
“You’re so pretty! How are you? It’s so nice to see you.
” Eileen gushes about the luncheon at Meredith’s house, saying that it was the best food she’s ever tasted in her life.
“I didn’t do it alone,” I say. “Dolores and I made a great team.”
“Who?” Meredith asks, frowning.
“Dolores, your housemaid.”
“Oh, right.”
“I don’t even know why you needed me,” I say. “She’s an amazing chef. You’re so lucky.”
She laughs, throwing her head back. “Dolores isn’t a chef!
She’s the housemaid!” She turns to Roy, still smiling, and shoots him a small eye roll, as if to say, I don’t know how you do it, but better you than me.
Then to me, she says, “If I didn’t tell Dolores what to do and what to make, she wouldn’t know what to do with herself. ”
I don’t think a reply is expected, so I don’t offer one.
There are four tables of six in the dining room.
We sit with people I’ve never met. The wine flows freely, and judging by the appetizers, the five-course dinner promises to be delicious.
Roy is already a little tipsy, a little red in the cheeks.
I make conversation with the other guests while Roy gives me sideways glances.
At one point, I escape to the bathroom, and when I come out, Phillip McIntosh is there, one hand against the wall by the door, his bow tie askew.
“What’s a pretty girl like you doing in a place like this?” he says.
I move to go past him, but his arm is in the way.
“Come on, Josie…”
“It’s Jodie.”
“Let’s go back in there. Give an old man a bit of fun, hey?”
“You’ve had too much to drink, Mr. McIntosh. Why don’t you go in the bathroom and splash some water over your face.” Or even better, stick it in the toilet bowl and keep it there.
“Exactly,” he slurs. “Why don’t you come with me and splash water on my face?”
“Okay, thank you. I’m going now.”
But he grabs me and pulls me to him, now he’s all over me, his disgusting mouth pressing against mine, his hands trying to lift my skirt.
“Jodie.”
He doesn’t hear Roy behind us. I push Phillip McIntosh away and slam my hands against his chest.
“Jodie.”
This time we both turn. Roy is standing in silhouette at the end of the corridor, completely still. And in a low voice that is dripping with icicles, he says, “If you’re done here, maybe you’d like to return to our table?”
“Yeah,” Phillip McIntosh says, rolling back on his heels to zip up his fly. “Yeah, go back to the table, Jodie, like I said.” He walks past Roy, patting him on the shoulder as he does.
“What the hell is going on?” Roy’s eyes are like fire.
“You saw it. A man just tried to force himself on me, that’s what’s going on.”
“What are you trying to do?” he hisses. “Embarrass me in front of my friends? Sell yourself to the highest bidder like a cheap whore?”
His face is an inch from mine, his eyes narrow, his mouth is a thin, pale line, and there’s spittle gathering in one corner.
And then, in a low voice, he says, “You’re all the same. Every one of you. Whores.”
And it’s funny, because it occurs to me that I have seen that expression before, that jealous, disbelieving rage.
I am seventeen years old. My sister has a new boyfriend. She doesn’t know that I know, but I know everything. He’s two years older, and he has a scar under his right cheekbone.
I don’t know where she met him, probably at the grocery store where she works part-time at the checkout.
I see them together outside the movie theater, him leaning back against his truck holding her by the waist. He’s skinny as a rake, all tendons and muscles and jittery limbs, always a cigarette between his lips.
When she comes home, I ask her about him, and she smiles, then puts a finger on her lips. Shhh…
I don’t know what she sees in him, except I do: an escape from the hellhole we live in, from our crazy mother, from the daily violence.
My sister wants out of that nightmare and there’s no easy way out short of running away, so she chooses that creep as her means of transport.
This man has a car and a job at the slaughterhouse, and apparently he loves my sister, or so she tells me.
But I smelled it on him, the stench of cruelty.
Turns out he loves so much, he wants all of her, including her soul.
He wants to know where she is at all times, and who is she fucking?
Because she was five minutes late to her job at the grocery store and he’s not stupid.
Anyway, she breaks off the relationship, so he harasses her, he follows her, stalks her, scares her, and even tries to rape her once in the cold room of the slaughterhouse.
He’d gotten her there under the pretense that he just wanted to talk, just wanted to say goodbye for good, wanted to do it properly.
After that, she barely comes out of the house. She’s too afraid he might succeed next time.
He had that face, the same one Roy is wearing right now.
And then I say, “Every one of us? Who are we talking about?”