Authors: Alison Gaylin
Brenna stepped inside the apartment, her whole body
shaking, except the right arm—held straight, fingers clutching the pearl handle
of the letter opener. “Trent?”
The apartment was perfectly still. She headed for
the bedroom, opened the door . . . Empty. She glanced at the Bowflex
machine, the neatly made bed (had he ever taken his nap?) the framed ad on the
wall behind it—a girl in a white bikini, caressing a huge flat-screen monitor.
There was a caption (
Limitless Hard Drive
). But what
caught Brenna’s eye was the computer in the photo. It brought Trent’s voice into
her head, his voice of a few hours ago.
Let’s not forget
RJ’s computer in my bedroom.
RJ’s computer was not in Trent’s bedroom.
Brenna rushed into the kitchen area, noticing for
the first time the empty bottle of wine on the counter and how the coffee table
had been pushed off to the side, as if to make room for . . .
what?
A bracelet glittered on the floor beneath the
coffee table. Brenna picked it up. Alternating diamonds and emeralds, a sapphire
at the clasp . . .
It is June 14, and a muggy
day. Brenna’s hair clings to the back of her sweaty neck. She sits at the
white metal table in the courtyard of the new client’s Great Barrington
estate, cicadas buzzing all around them, ringing in her ears. “Can you find
him?” The client’s eyes are clear blue and her hair is silky, despite the
humidity all around them, the air a solid, squishy thing . . . The
woman doesn’t seem to know how to sweat. Brenna looks at the photo of her
husband—a bear of a man in a madras sport shirt. He has a lantern jaw,
bulging eyes, oily skin. Like he was born sweating. Larry Shelby. His wife’s
polar opposite. “I know he’s alive,” the wife tells Brenna. Her name is
Annette, and she looks as though she was drawn with pastels. Brenna’s gaze
drops to the tennis bracelet she’s wearing—alternating diamonds and
emeralds, a sapphire at the clasp.
“I pledge allegiance to the flag . . .”
Brenna turned the bracelet in her hands, caught sight of the engraving on the
underside of the sapphire:
Love Always, Larry
. “Okay
. . .”
Annette Shelby’s bracelet in
Trent’s apartment
.
In Brenna’s mind, she traveled back again to that
first meeting, Annette slipping her business card out of her shirt pocket,
writing her number on the back, sliding it across the metal table.
I can be reached here, any
time . . .
Brenna bumped her palm against the tip of the
letter opener’s blade, bringing herself into the room. Then she pulled her cell
phone out of her pocket and tapped in the remembered number.
Annette answered after one ring. “Brenna?”
“Annette. I know this is going to sound weird, but
are you with Trent?”
“Yes.”
“What? Why? Is he all right?”
“No.”
Her breath caught. “Did you just say—”
“No.”
“Please tell me what’s going on.”
“I would have called you. I was just scared you’d
get mad.”
“At you?”
“At Trent.”
“
Why?
”
“Keep in mind he’s still young.” Her voice was
flat, the words like a mantra. “He’s still young. We all do crazy things when
we’re young.”
“What the hell is going on?”
“I took Trent to the hospital,” Annette said.
“Why?”
“You promise you won’t be mad.”
“
Annette
,
please
.”
“I . . . I went to his apartment because
I wanted to talk. When I got there, he was unconscious.”
“Oh my God.”
“He’ll be okay. I know he’ll be okay. It wouldn’t
be fair if he wasn’t and life is fair. Life has to be—”
“Was he injured?”
“Brenna.” Annette said her name very slowly, as
though she were attempting to soothe her with the sound of it. “Trent
. . . that sweet boy . . . He OD’d.”
I
t was a
good thing that Trent hadn’t replied to the text Annette Shelby had sent him
when he and Brenna were driving home from Hildy Tannenbaum’s house. And it was
better still that he hadn’t responded to any of the twenty subsequent texts
she’d sent, or to the dozen or so messages she’d left on his voice mail after
his disastrous visit to her apartment on fish market night. Because, while
Brenna had always told him not to be rude to people, his rudeness had, in this
case, saved his own life.
At least, Brenna hoped it had.
Trent had been in the emergency room of St.
Vincent’s Hospital for over an hour when she got there. From what Annette and
one of the nurses told her, doctors were pumping his stomach and administering
a
charcoal treatment in an attempt to rid his body of the six-to-eight
benzodiazepines he’d apparently consumed with a large glass of wine. That’s all
the nurse could tell them so far. She didn’t know whether he’d regained
consciousness, or if he’d suffered any brain damage. She didn’t know anything,
so she couldn’t say anything. Not anything Brenna needed to hear.
“The doctors are working their hardest,” she said
now—this slender girl with baby fine hair and a child’s face. How could you
believe a face like that? This was the type of face that you shield from the
truth. How could Brenna expect the doctors to give it straight to this girl,
who
looked as though the slightest bit of bad news could scatter her, like a seeded
dandelion?
“Thank you,” Brenna said, hoping she’d just go
away. Go home. It was past her bedtime anyway.
The girl granted Brenna her wish. Well, she went
away anyway, leaving Brenna and Annette to return to their seats—the only two
they’d been able to find together in the crowded waiting room.
“I just wanted to apologize in person, but he
wasn’t opening his door,” Annette said. She’d said it before, but Brenna let
her
say it again. Clearly, she was a nervous talker—someone soothed by the sound
of
her own voice. Why should Brenna take that away?
Brenna said, “How did you know he was even
home?”
“I checked his Twitter feed.”
She looked at Annette. That was new information.
“You can tell where Trent is from his Twitter feed?”
“He uses that Foursquare app, didn’t you know that?
Tells you where he is at all times.”
“Great.”
What the hell is
wrong with you, Trent?
“Anyway, I’m thinking his not answering me is a
little over the top, even if I did hurt him. I’m sure you heard the story
. . .”
Brenna nodded.
“Anyway, I grab his super and we open the door.
There he is, passed out . . .” She cleared her throat. “His pants were
around his ankles.”
Brenna winced.
“He looked so pale and still,” Annette said. “Trent
never looks either of those things. I couldn’t even tell if he was
breathing.”
“Did you hold a mirror to his nose?”
“I didn’t think of that.”
Brenna closed her eyes. She wasn’t a doctor, but
she knew a few things about the brain. She knew that it needed oxygen, and that
if Trent had spent any significant amount of time not breathing, he could have
experienced serious damage, or worse.
No, please
no.
Annette sighed. “I just . . . I never
knew Trent was into that type of thing.”
Brenna looked at her. “What type of thing?”
“You know. Prescription drugs,” she tucked a lock
of glossy hair behind an ear, fiddled with the tennis bracelet Brenna had
returned to her. “I mean, I’ve been to a lot of bars with him, and it seems like
he can’t even stomach a drink that doesn’t have an umbrella in it.”
Brenna said, “Trent wasn’t into drugs.”
She turned to her. “Honey, I know you’ve been his
boss for a long time, but bosses don’t know their employees as well as they
think.”
“He wasn’t.”
“Not to be disrespectful, but you didn’t even know
about his Foursquare account.”
“You have to believe me. I know Trent very well.
The Foursquare account makes sense in terms of his general personality, but a
benzo overdose doesn’t. Trent was high on one thing, Annette. And that thing
was
called Trent.”
“Brenna.”
“Yeah?”
“Please don’t talk about him in the past
tense.”
Brenna swallowed hard, all of it rushing at her
. . . First Errol, then Trent. Trent on his own kitchen floor, full of
drugs, half dressed . . . Brenna didn’t need a diagram drawn for her.
She didn’t need to have seen the lipstick stain on that wineglass or smelled
that headachy perfume or seen that blonde hair flipping to know that it had been
Diandra. Diandra had put those drugs into Trent, just as she’d done to Errol.
Diandra, that bitch who had called herself Clea, who was worming her way into
Brenna’s life, destroying it from the edges on in . . .
Brenna recalled September 30, driving to Tarry
Ridge with Trent on the line, his voice in her plastic earpiece, half drowned
in
club noise, . . .
“This blonde . . .
she’s kinda got a Jessica Alba thing going on.”
“Jessica Alba isn’t
blonde.”
“I’m talking from the neck
down. And she is massively checking me out . . . Hey baby, how
about I buy you another one of those cosmos—with a chaser of
Trent.”
Brenna winces. “That couldn’t
possibly have worked.”
“What’s your name, gorgeous?
Diandra. That is a name that’s made to be moaned in ecstasy. Know what I’m
saying, sweet thang?”
Brenna hears nothing but
ambient noise, thudding bass. “Let me guess,” she says to Trent. “Diandra’s
throwing up.”
“Wrong, Miss Wiseass. She’s
giving me her digits.”
“You’ve got to be
kidding.”
“What? No, baby, no I wasn’t
calling you wiseass. I was . . . Yeah, I’m on the phone with my
. . . but . . . No, I’m telling you, this is
my
boss
. I swear, I . . . Wait. Oh now don’t be
like that . . . Damn. Completely carpet-bombing my
game.”
Brenna bit her lip hard, and she was back to three
months later, Trent fighting for his life in an emergency room because of her.
Because of Diandra, who had ditched him like a bad accessory when he was just
another loser hitting on her in a club, but who’d gone home with him so readily
once she knew who he was, who’d laid in wait till she could get him alone and
begged her way back in, who’d fed him pills and wine, this sweet dumb guy, and
all for what . . . for RJ Tannenbaum’s computer?
. . . Across the room, a teenage girl sat
holding her baby, both of them staring at Brenna with velvet-black eyes. Just
as
Diandra had stared at her on the
Maid of the Mist
.
She’d gazed directly into Brenna’s eyes, Brenna thinking nothing of it at the
time—a shared moment, that’s all . . . How long had she been
following Brenna? How long had she been reading up on her in Page 6 and tracking
Trent via that ridiculous Foursquare app of his?
Please be okay, Trent. Please
live and be okay and come back to us with all your brain cells, Trent you
idiot. Please . . .
“Are you praying?” Annette said.
And only at that moment did Brenna realize she’d
been mouthing those words, muttering them aloud like a crazy person. No wonder
they were all staring . . .
She’s got a gift for
destruction that runs through her veins . . .
Brenna stood up, took a deep breath. “I’m going to
take a little walk around the room,” she said, as if that were something that
cried out to be announced. She walked by the girl and her baby, nodding as she
passed. They looked confused and sad. Who knew what was running through their
minds? Who knew what was running through anyone’s mind in the waiting room of
an
ER? She pulled out her phone, snuck a text to Maya:
All is okay, but I won’t be
home till late. At the hospital with Trent.
She stared at the letters
on the screen. She could practically hear Maya’s response.
You can’t just tell me you’re at the hospital with Trent, and not expect me
to ask why . . . You say, “I’m in the hospital with Trent,” it
begs an explanation.
What could Brenna say, though? How could she
explain this to her daughter? She typed:
He ate some bad
fish
, and hit send. That would have to do.
All she could think of was Trent’s face of a few
hours ago, still scratched and bruised from the car crash, his chest smeared
with Diandra’s pink lipstick—but his eyes so wide and guileless, the eyes of
a
six-year-old . . .
Is it something bad? I feel
like you’re going to say something bad.
Brenna came across a bank of empty chairs, a
tired-looking love seat, a large wide coffee table heaped with old magazines,
and a few books, including a Bible. She picked it up, remembering the small
print at the bottom of RJ Tannenbaum’s black and white Spielberg picture.
DEUT 31:6
Brenna thumbed through the Bible until she found
Deuteronomy, then looked up the passage, Robin Tannenbaum’s passage.
Be strong and courageous. Do
not be afraid or terrified because of them . . .
“Amen,” Brenna whispered. “Don’t be afraid.”
B
renna
was riding the handlebars of an enormous bicycle. She was trying to get back
into the seat and put her feet on the pedals, to get some control over this
awful hurtling thing, but the bike was too big and it was going too fast and,
for some reason, Brenna knew deep in her heart that if she moved, she would
die.
A cliff loomed before her, dropping off to the end
of the world. She wanted to scream, but her mouth wouldn’t open, and the bicycle
was reaching the hill, bumping on the rocky concrete. It kept going faster.
“Hold on tight,” a voice behind her said. A kind
voice.
Clea?
Brenna felt strong slender arms on either side of
her. She saw feet in the pedals, sandaled and bronzed. She saw delicate hands
pulling on the breaks, the bike slowing down, stopping . . .
Clea.
She turned to the blonde hair, the long blonde hair
so much like Maya’s, Clea back in her life, saving her after all these years
. . .
I don’t care that you never called or
wrote. I forgive you. I love you
. “I’m so glad you’re here,” Brenna
said.
A gust of wind blew the hair back, and Brenna saw
not Clea’s face but Diandra’s. The face of Diandra, pulling into a smile, the
mouth opening, revealing rows and rows of shark’s teeth . . .
“No!” Brenna gasped.
“Ma’am?”
Brenna’s eyelids flew open. It took several moments
for it to sink in that she was still in the waiting room at St. Vincent’s.
“Ma’am?” It was the young nurse—the one with the
too-innocent face.
Brenna ran a hand over her eyes. “I fell asleep,”
she said, as if the girl couldn’t even figure out that obvious fact.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m sorry to wake you, but your
friend, Annette?”
“Yeah?”
“She wanted me to let you know that she had to go
home. She said to call if you hear anything.”
“And you woke me up for that?” Brenna said.
“I’m sorry,” the nurse said.
“No, I’m sorry. That was rude.”
“No,” the nurse said, “I’m sorry.”
“I’m too tired for this,” Brenna said. She started
to close her eyes again.
The nurse put a hand up. “I’m sorry,” she said,
“because I put the cart before the horse. Or I buried the lead. Or whatever.”
She yawned. “I didn’t wake you up to tell you about your friend. I woke you up
to tell you that Mr. LaSalle is going to be all right.”
Brenna sat up fast. “What? Wait—he
is
?”
“Yes,” the nurse said. “He’s still pretty tired.
We’re going to let him rest for the night, give him fluids. He’s very
dehydrated. But he’s fine. No brain damage.”
“Are you sure?”
“Well . . . He did ask me if he was
really in the hospital, or if this was a naughty nurse dream.”
Brenna jumped to her feet and threw her arms around
the nurse.
“So that’s normal for him, huh?”
“Yes.” Brenna laughed. “Yes it is.” Once she pulled
away, she peered at the nurse’s name tag. “Thank you, Bernadette.”
“Your first name is Brenna, right?”
“Yes.”
“Mr. LaSalle asked to see you.”
“He did? Can I? I mean, is he able to
. . .”
Bernadette nodded. “But just for a couple of
minutes, okay? Then we’re going to move him into a regular room for the rest
of
the night.”
Brenna followed her through a set of swinging
doors, past a nurses’ station and down a long hallway to a series of beds
separated by curtains. They passed an elderly man attached to oxygen tanks, a
little girl screaming as doctors drew fluid out of her knee . . . next
came a couple of empty beds, and then, finally, Trent.
“Hey, B. Spec,” he said.
Brenna didn’t even bother to comment on the
nickname, she just rushed up to him and hugged him, gently, so as not to disturb
the IVs. She could hear the little girl screaming three beds over.
“They could do something about the atmosphere in
here, huh?” Trent said.
His voice sounded very weak. Brenna pulled away and
took him in—the gaunt cheeks, the hair lying flat on his forehead, the pallor
of
his skin—as though the spray tan had been vacuumed right off him. He looked like
a different person. A frail, sad, scholarly young thing. With a stupid lip print
tattoo on his pec. She could see it through the hospital gown.
“I look like crap, huh?”
“What happened, Trent?”
“I . . . I can’t even say her name.”
“Diandra.”
He cringed. “I have this like . . .
Pavlovian response to the name,” he croaked. “But instead of drooling, it makes
me want to blow chunks.”