Pretty Is (22 page)

What he thinks he has over me is the threat of exposure. For too long—and for no good reason—I have allowed this threat to be an effective weapon. I see how to seize the upper hand: I have what he wants, which is information. Memories. Truth. Or reasonable approximations thereof.

I have an idea.

*   *   *

Once again, my dilemma boils down to a straightforward and impossible question: what do I really want, anyway? You’d think that at twenty-nine I’d be better equipped to answer that question than when I was twelve, but it doesn’t seem to have gotten any easier.

I will have to consider my next move very carefully.

I think back to the period during which I wrote the first novel. I had no business doing it; I did not tell my PhD adviser, who would have been outraged. I was supposed to be writing my dissertation—a three-hundred-page scholarly monstrosity—and dissertations require
all
of your attention and stamina and intellectual energy, or so we were encouraged to believe. But my characters seemed to leap from the margins of my dissertation and demand their own space. How could I concentrate on
Pamela
or
The Mysteries of Udolpho
or
Evelina
, on the serial abductions of Pamela et al., when little fleshly versions of Carly and of me danced in the margins? They, too, had been abducted; they, too, had a story.

The novel began as a strategy. I would sit at my battered secondhand desk to work on my dissertation, fortified with coffee and a little (very little) sleep, and I would open another document, a blank page, where I would allow what became the novel—the dissertation demon, I took to calling it—to spill out. After an hour or so the demon would be quieted, and I could return to my real work in peace. It felt almost as though the books were writing each other. The novel—urgent, greedy—took on a life of its own, and I ended up finishing it first. The dissertation was patient, willing to wait for my attention. The novel might have had more to offer me: writing what became
Deep in the Woods
allowed me to live again with Carly May and Zed—and to refashion them, occasionally, as I pleased.

With Sean and his stooped posture, stringy hair, tortured complexion, I have invoked a different kind of demon. How cruel fate was, making him the son of someone as handsome and intelligent as Zed.

What is Sean looking for?
Revenge
. What else could he want? I remember Delia’s reaction to Sean and wonder again if there’s something I should know. Is he more dangerous than I suspect? There are degrees of danger and—I hope—limits to my recklessness.

Still, I am glad that this time
I
am first, not Carly.

This demon will help me write my sequel.

Chloe

I have a couple more jobs before I can leave town. Jobs Zed would despise. Today, I’m arriving on the set of a TV crime drama called
Criminal Exploits.
It’s not one of the big shows everyone’s heard of, although the name is supposed to remind you of them. I’m sure the producers hope people might watch it by accident, thinking it’s something else. It’s a second-tier crime drama that might or might not survive into its third season. I’d say not, if I had to guess—but maybe that’s my cheap desire for vengeance, based on the fact that they’re about to kill me off. My fourth appearance on the show will be my fucking last. A mistake on their part, if you ask me. I have a recurring role as a psychic detective who gets called in on occasion by the supermanly Detective LaRock, the star of the show. For him, psychic ability is like an extreme version of feminine intuition, and every now and then he decides it’s what’s called for. Naturally this leads to lots of hilarious, sexually charged banter, where he spouts sexist crap and I try to make him see the (mildly) feminist light, while looking as sexy as it’s possible for a psychic detective to look.

“Hey, Chloe!” I hear as I approach. “Dressed for your funeral, I see.”

What I’m actually wearing is a short black skirt, a very cute black T-shirt, and black heels. I’d rather die than wear my psychic detective outfit in public, even though it comes with a slight chance of being recognized. (Generally I’m grateful to be recognized as any character I’ve ever played, though more often people are, like,
Wow, you look so familiar; haven’t I seen you in something?
) Anyway, New Age sexpot is hardly my thing. I do, however, honestly think the psychic chick is a great character. “Yeah, I just hope it isn’t your funeral, too,” I say darkly. Tomm Marks, the director, is stocky, about five foot four with crazy red hair, and fully believes he will one day be David fucking Chase.

“Nah,” he says. “I seriously doubt it. We’ll get a lot of mileage out of this episode. Sorry to say it, babe, but you’re worth way more dead than alive.” He raises his cheek for a kiss, which I stoop to deliver. We go way back, Tomm and I. “But then, that’s what it says on your r
é
sum
é
, right?”

I bare my teeth at him, half-joking, half-serious, tired of that particular quip.

“Jesus, you look like a vampire.” He pulls back in mock fear. “Speaking of which, why the hell haven’t you done vampires? Seems like you’d be a natural.”

“I was in a vampire movie once,” I say. “Like seven years ago, before they were all the rage. Who knew? I did get to die twice: a human death and a vampire death.”

“Stake through the heart?”

“Followed by decapitation. They were taking no chances.”

“Nice,” he says appreciatively. “Still, we have an excellent death to add to your repertoire today.”

“Bring it. Soon I’ll have much bigger fish to fry.”

“So I hear,” he says, eying me speculatively, “so I hear.” And suddenly he’s moving away, shouting instructions to the crew. And I head off to change into my hipster-hippie-seductress clothes. A real triumph for wardrobe, that look.

*   *   *

Later, when I’m snooping around the apparently abandoned house on the outskirts of town where my psychic powers have led me, I’m wearing thigh-high suede boots and a flowery, fringy dress that manages to be both shapeless and totally revealing as I peer under the about-to-collapse front porch and through a little crack in the foundation that gives me a peephole into the cellar, where I have reason to believe the missing little girl is being held. Just as I glimpse a makeshift bed and a telltale pair of Mary Janes (and push aside a sudden vision of the little room where my twin bed and Lois’s stood side by side), I hear the snap of a twig behind me. Before I can extricate my heels from the soft ground and run away, someone wraps a burly tattooed arm around my neck and presses a knife to my throat. “Well, if it ain’t Glinda the good witch,” drawls a cruel voice, obviously the voice of someone capable of doing really terrible things to little girls and probably sexy psychics, too. “I had a feeling you might be stopping by.”

I wrench my head around to confront him. I’m afraid, but also defiant. The murderer is played with excessive gusto by an old character actor who’s been kind of a pain in the ass to work with because he thinks he’s above this show. Maybe he’s bitter. All I know is he’s pressing the dull blade of the prop knife into my tender, defenseless neck a little harder than he really needs to. “You won’t get away with it, you know,” I protest. “You should let me help you.” Meanwhile, with one hand I’m trying to sneak my little revolver from my boot. With one swift motion of his wrist, he slashes the blade across my throat, practically from ear to ear. It’s his trademark. It happens very quickly—it’s meant to catch the viewer off guard; you’re supposed to be expecting me to get a few more sentences in, for him to get trapped in conversation and maybe reveal something, for him to throw me in the cellar with the girl and take care of me later. But no, he means business, he doesn’t waste time. You can’t appeal to his better nature because he doesn’t have one.

That’s not it for me, though. For the rest of the show I play dead as he drags the psychic’s body around. He lines his trunk with plastic and then stuffs me in it; he drives to Detective LaRock’s house and arranges me artistically in the yard. Later I hang out in the morgue, freezing my ass off, lying naked on the table while I am discussed. Aside from my neck, which keeps needing touch-ups from makeup (they’re worried that it looks more like a jelly doughnut than a slit throat, so they keep tweaking it), I think I look pretty good.

I’m a good corpse. I’m a pro, if nothing else. Everyone knows it.

That’s what Tomm tells me later. He and Detective LaRock and I go out for a celebratory drink after we wrap. “You’re a pro, Chloe. There’ll always be work for a girl like you.”

We’re sharing a platter of oysters and a very nice bottle of wine. “God, who ever said there wouldn’t?” I ask, annoyed. It’s as if he’s got Glinda the good witch’s death confused with the death of my career. I slurp another oyster from its jagged shell. It’s brilliantly cold and briny, and it helps convince me that I really am invincible. “You realize I have a movie coming up, right? Just because your stupid writers couldn’t think of anything more creative to do with me than kill me doesn’t mean I’m screwed, for fuck’s sake. No offense, but—”

“Of course not,” says LaRock, whose name is actually Murphy. “Touchy! Although I was kind of thinking they might bring you on as a regular. Oh well. You’ll make a good cop, won’t she, Tomm? Like Charlize Theron in—what the hell—
Monster
, was it? They’ll make you all ugly and shit, and then you’ll win an Oscar.” He douses an oyster with hot sauce, tips it back. I see his attention shift back to himself. That’s how it is with Murphy. “That’ll never happen to me, unfortunately. I’m too pretty to play ugly. Joke!” he adds quickly, checking to make sure we didn’t take him seriously. Tonight I’m okay with changing the subject to him. It makes it easier to shake off the weird sense that Murphy and Tomm both feel a kind of pity for me.

Tomm has to meet someone else, so he leaves after a bit, but Murphy talks me into another bottle of wine and gets sentimental. “I’ll miss the witty banter,” he says wistfully. He leans forward and touches my knee. His eyes are a pale, clear blue, like a swimming pool in the morning, reflecting nothing at all. I’m pretty sure that on some level he’s playing Detective LaRock, although he does manage to use my actual name. “Seriously, Chloe. How come you and I never—”

I gently remove his hand from my knee and pat his very nicely sculpted cheek. “Because I’m almost thirty,” I say, mock-sadly. “The same age as you. If we’d met when I was eighteen, who knows?”

“Chloe Savage at eighteen,” he says. “Hmmm. No, let’s make you seventeen. Oh, man!” Murphy is regularly seen in the company of a never-ending succession of girls who are very young and very pretty. This doesn’t make him unusual, in this world, although from my perspective it does make him a little boring.

“You’re sweet when you’re drunk,” I tell him. “Sweet like a maraschino cherry, though: a little fake, my darling. I’m sure you were seducing sixth graders when you were eighteen.”

And then I make a point of showing that I’m ready to go, because I realize suddenly that I have been alone for long enough that Murphy (
à
la Detective LaRock) actually seems strangely appealing, and even if I’m old, by his standards, I’m pretty sure I could make him love me for a few hours a night … But no. Bad idea. We get the check. Murphy pays, thank God. Out into the summer night. Still hot. The air is thick, as thick as air can be. I kiss him chastely and go home, a little tipsy but not very, congratulating myself on a well-managed evening.

Lois

I make a deal with Sean—or rather, I pretend to make a deal with him. He is under the impression that we made a deal, that he has me scared, that I am scrambling for a compromise.

What I’ve realized is that I don’t have to compromise. I have promised to tell him what he wants to know in return for silence and good behavior—but what good is a promise like that? Surely I am justified, at this point, in taking reasonable precautions to protect myself. To protect myself is to protect my story. My stories, really—and the boundaries between them.

In other words, I have decided to lie. To invent. Oddly enough, I find myself looking forward to it. I invented one version of the story when I wrote the book, obviously. I welcome the chance to craft another. I think I know how to tell the tale in a way that will satisfy him.

I haven’t yet told Sean that I know who he is, but I am almost certain he realizes that I’ve put the pieces together. Surely he wanted me to guess. But I sense that we have tacitly agreed not to speak of it—not yet, at least. He has been more subdued, less antagonistic. Not deferential, quite, but something almost approaching it. It’s a pleasant change.

*   *   *

I meet Sean at the bowling alley. I peeked in a few days ago to make sure it was suitable, and in fact the setting is ideal. Adjacent to the lanes is a slightly grungy bar and restaurant; respectable enough for kids’ birthday parties in the afternoon but sufficiently seedy to drown your sorrows without fear of judgment. The patrons aren’t all bowlers; the place clearly has regulars, people who not only don’t mind but maybe even perversely appreciate the faded carpet, the long sticky bar, the stridently unpretentious selection of beer. They mustn’t mind the constant drone of balls, the intermittent smack of contact, falling pins. Maybe it drowns out something they don’t want to hear, or don’t want to think. They look like people who might have a thing or two to forget.

Which is perfect. I arrive early in the evening, postchildren but well before things are likely to get really depressing. I get there first, by design; I order a Coke and select a table in a corner. I angle my chair so that I have a clear view of the room, but with my chair poised to swing toward the corner when Sean has taken his seat. I’m wearing jeans, a black sweater; my sharp dark bob falls loosely around my face. At a glance I don’t think most people would even recognize me. But it’s a chance I’d prefer not to take; with my back to the room, my secret rendezvous with a male student is less likely to be observed.