The Last Dead Girl (34 page)

“Right,” Neil said.

“At first I was offended. But then I thought: It's sort of sweet. Because you were too shy to ask me yourself. And maybe it's better you didn't, because I probably would've slapped you in the face. And we would've missed out on this. And why should we miss out?”

“We shouldn't,” Neil said.

“I know. And I like you anyway. I always did. But I'm happy to have the cash too. Because I really need it.” She laid a palm against his ribs. “And it's not like I'm going to start sleeping with random men for money. This can be our thing. A special arrangement.”

“That sounds fine,” Neil said.

Sheila moved her palm over his stomach, snuggled closer. “There's just one problem,” she said. “We can be honest with each other, can't we?”

“Sure.”

“Well, honestly, the more I think about it, a hundred seems low. Would you mind if we went higher? Not this time. But from now on.”

Neil couldn't see her face. He was still focused on the ceiling. But he could feel her body pressed against him. All that perfect flesh.

“How much higher?” he asked.

“What about two hundred?” she said.

He didn't react—at least, he didn't mean to. But she must have seen something.

“Or one fifty,” she added quickly.

He sat up and turned to take in the sight of her. That body. And the face too. A brave face, but it was masking something. Doubt. Vulnerability. Insecurity.

He smiled gently. “One fifty seems fair.”

•   •   •

W
hen he left her apartment, he thought he would find Luke Daw waiting in the parking lot. He didn't. He drove home and Megan asked him where he'd been, and he made up a story about running into an old friend from college. And she believed him. It was easy.

The following Saturday he went to see Sheila again. Too soon for him to need more pot, but he bought some anyway. He started to roll a joint on the shoe box lid and she told him to leave it. She led him to the bedroom and pulled her sweater off over her head. Her bra was purple this time. Her thong too.

They smoked the joint after. Sheila had an old-fashioned claw-foot tub, with a rubber drain plug on a chain. She ran a bath and got in to soak. Neil, half dressed, sat on a straight-back chair by the tub and kept her company. He held the joint for her to keep it dry.

When the water started to cool, she hooked the chain between her toes and pulled the plug. She stood up—a naked goddess rising out of the sea—and he helped her towel off. The tub took a long time to drain.

He left her money on the bathroom sink. One fifty. She put a robe on and walked him out. Kissed him at the door.

That was their routine, week after week, through the spring and into the summer. It was a high point of Neil Pruett's life, but there were signs, even early on, of how it would end. Small things. Sheila started wanting more of his time. She wanted to talk—and not any kind of interesting talk. She wanted to share the mundane details of her life.

And she started to ask him for favors—little ones, here and there. Once as he was leaving she asked if he wouldn't mind carrying her trash down to the dumpster. Other times she wanted him to check the oil in her car, or fix a leaky faucet, or a faulty light switch.

One Saturday he showed up to find her half hysterical. There'd been a mouse in the living room, and she had put down a trap. Now she had a dead mouse with a broken neck—and could he please do something with it? She couldn't bring herself to touch it.

But those were minor drawbacks. Neil found ways to make up for them. A few days after the mouse, he turned up at her apartment in the middle of the week. A Wednesday afternoon. Sheila came to the door wearing a white T-shirt and sweatpants, her hair in a ponytail. He caught a glimpse of a bewildered look; she hadn't expected him. But she slipped easily into her usual manner: gave him a slow kiss, took him by the hand, led him toward the bedroom.

They never got there. He pinned her against a wall, peeled the T-shirt off her—and the plain white bra he found underneath. He tugged the sweatpants down over her hips and pushed her to the floor. She didn't resist. He heard her throaty laugh. “Different rules on Wednesday,” she said.

She ran a bath afterward and he sat with her. They smoked a joint. Steam rose from the water and beaded on the bathroom tile. Sheila rested her arms on the sides of the tub and tipped her head back.

“That was wild,” she said.

Neil said nothing.

“I think you gave me bruises,” she said.

He passed her the nub of the joint. “Maybe I'll give you more.”

He climbed into the tub with her, his feet slipping on the bottom so he had to catch himself. She shifted forward and he got around behind her and let her lay back against him. Water flowed over the rim of the tub and onto the floor. Sometime later she wriggled around and raised herself up and took him inside her.

Later still, she climbed out. Left him there to soak. When she returned she had her robe on; she had a towel for him. He dried off, and as he was dressing she said, “You're a sweet man.”

It gave him pause. He hadn't intended to be sweet.

He left that afternoon without giving her any money. It was the beginning of a new pattern: from then on he saw her twice a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays. On Saturdays he gave her the usual hundred and fifty. On Wednesdays he gave her nothing. He thought she would complain, but she never did.

He didn't think to wonder why. Later on, when he looked back on it, he realized it had been a warning sign—just like the moment when she called him a sweet man. She was giving him clues, and he missed them. If he had paid more attention, he might have recognized that she was starting to think of herself as his mistress.

•   •   •

I
f Neil paid less attention to Sheila Cotton than he should have, it might've been because he had something else on his mind. He didn't know what to make of Luke Daw.

He had hoped that Luke might leave him alone, but he wasn't so fortunate. Luke seemed to take an ongoing interest in his arrangement with Sheila. How much she might have told him wasn't clear, but at the very least Luke knew that Neil visited Sheila on Saturdays. Once in a while Luke would turn up in the parking lot on a Saturday afternoon.

The first time it happened was at the beginning of May. Neil came down to find Luke's Mustang parked near his own car. Luke lowered the window and called him over.

“Kevin! Good to see you.”

Neil approached him, reluctantly. “What do you want?”

“I want to make sure you're happy,” said Luke.

“I'd be happier if you left me alone.”

“Don't be like that, Kev,” Luke said. “I'm your friend. I was right, wasn't I?”

“About what?”

“About what you wanted,” Luke said, looking up at Sheila's third-floor window. “But Jesus, that wasn't hard to work out. I mean, who wouldn't want that? Am I right?”

Neil stood perfectly still. The sun threw his shadow onto the door of the Mustang. Black on black. He didn't speak.

“Don't be rude, Kev,” Luke said. “I like you. I'm trying to help. You let me know if you need anything else.”

He put the Mustang into gear and drove away. Neil watched him go, hoped he might not see him again. But Luke Daw kept coming back, every two or three weeks, always with the same line of patter:
I'm your friend. You let me know what you need.
He never made any threats, never asked Neil for money. Never even called him by his real name. To Luke, Neil was always Kevin or Kev. Or sometimes K.

•   •   •

A
s time passed, the glow started to fade from Sheila Cotton. Neil began to withdraw from her. He still went to see her, but she was less real to him. His mind wandered when she talked. He found reasons to cut his visits short.

Sheila seemed not to notice. She acted as if they could go on forever. She talked to him about her future in a tone that took for granted that he cared about her future. She wanted to find a permanent teaching job. She wondered if she needed to go back to school for a master's degree. She wanted to move to a better apartment, or at least fix up the current one. It was too gloomy. The walls needed a fresh coat of paint.

That's what she was talking about on the first Saturday in July, the day Neil finally broke it off with her. Paint.

“I've thought about going with white,” she said. “White walls, white trim. I got the idea from a magazine. But maybe that's too, you know—”

“White?” he suggested.

“Yeah. So now I think I want color, but I want it faded out. Like in here, I was thinking yellow. But a really pale yellow, so it looks almost—”

“White?”

“Exactly.”

They were in the bathroom. Sheila had the tub to herself. Neil sat in the straight-back chair, keeping her company. They'd burned through a joint and the smoke still lingered in the air.

“What do you think?” she asked.

“White sounds fine,” he said.

“But it won't be white, it'll be yellow.”

“Right. Yellow.”

“What about the kitchen?”

Neil stared at his reflection in the mirror over the sink. “You mean what color?”

“Yes.”

“I thought you were going to use yellow all over.”

“I can't paint every room the same.”

“I don't know what to tell you.”

“I'm thinking green for the kitchen.”

“
Green
green or green that looks like white?”

“That's what we have to decide.”

Neil-in-the-mirror made an unhappy face. “It's really your decision, isn't it?”

“It won't kill you to help,” Sheila said. “You spend time here too.”

“All right. Green seems fine.”

She sat up in the tub. He heard the
swush
of the water.

“Maybe we could order pizza,” she said. “You could stay, and we could look at samples.”

“What for?”

“To pick the colors.”

“We already picked yellow and green.”

“There's different shades. I've got swatches from the paint store.”

Neil-in-the-mirror ran his tongue over his front teeth. “I can't stay.”

“You could if you wanted.”

“Then I don't want to.”

She let out a huff of air. “You're impossible. I don't think I'm that demanding.”

“I haven't said you were.”

“Delivery pizza. Is that too big a commitment? Do you realize you've never taken me out to dinner?”

Neil-in-the-mirror made the unhappy face again. The skin scrunched up at the corners of his eyes.

“Sheila, I'm married. I can't take you to dinner.”

“Why not?”

“Someone might see us.”

“We could meet somewhere, out of town.”

“I'm not going to sneak around on my wife.”

She laughed. A high-pitched laugh, not at all throaty.

“Neil, what do you think you've been doing?”

“You know what I mean.”

“I know. You mean you can't take chances. Not for me. I'm not important enough.”

“I don't know what you want.”

“I'm not important,” she said. “Not as important as your wife. And that's pitiful. Because I've never had the impression that you care very much about her.”

“Of course I do.”

“You never talk about her.”

Neil turned away from the mirror. Directed the unhappy face at Sheila Cotton.

“Why would I talk to you about my wife?”

Sheila leaned forward in the water and hunched her shoulders. “Now you're just being mean,” she said. “I don't know why I put up with you. Serves me right for dating a married man.”

Neil stared at her back. Her skin wasn't as flawless as he remembered. He saw small blue veins just under the surface. He noticed a mole.

“We're not dating,” he said.

“Again—mean. You know, you'll have to choose eventually. Me or her. I've been waiting for you to come here one day and tell me that you're choosing me. That you're ready to treat me the way I deserve. How long do you expect me to wait?”

“I'm not leaving my wife.”

“No. Why should you? You get to have it both ways. Maybe I should go see Megan. That's her name, right? Maybe I should tell her where you've been spending your time the last few months. That would stir things up, wouldn't it? That's what you need.”

Tension gripped Neil's shoulders. He tipped his head from side to side, trying to relieve it.

“You don't want to do that,” he said.

“I don't. But maybe it's the only way to make you see what's in front of your eyes. To make you appreciate me.”

She reached for the chain to pull the plug, to let the water begin its slow drain. In a few seconds she would rise up. Neil visualized it. She would sweep her wet hair back. The water would flow down her body in a rush. The bottom of the tub would be slippery. She could lose her footing, crack her head open on the hard, rounded rim of the tub. He would see her blood turn the water pink. Her head would sink beneath the surface.

It would be perfect. He'd be done with her and she would never talk to Megan.

He thought about it. If he thought hard enough, maybe it would happen.

Sheila stood up in the water. Brought her hands up to her head. As Neil watched, she leaned back slightly, squeezing the water from her hair. Her feet shifted; she started to lose her balance. She threw her arms out. Managed to steady herself.

So very close.

Neil rose from the straight-back chair and gave her a shove. She let out a startled cry and jerked backward. Bounced off the wall behind her. Her feet slid in the direction of the drain; the rest of her went the other way. She fell hard but her left arm and shoulder absorbed most of the impact. She groaned and pushed herself up out of the water, and he snatched a handful of her wet hair and slammed the side of her head against the rim of the tub.