The Scamp (34 page)

Neat? she says. Splash?

I take it with a splash of cool flat water.

Around us, on the walls, black-and-white nudes of women with old-fashioned bodies that no one has anymore, round heavy breasts, little potbellies, soft thighs, hair. There are no personal pictures. Everything has a low black sheen to it, everything is clean, put away, dusted, neat.

Even the fridge is empty of personality. On my mother's fridge, so many pictures of Summer, with
sweet potatoes on her face, or curled like a fist and sleeping, slick and naked in the tub. Summer with me, Summer with Eli. Summer with suds in her hair and on her chin, a grim prediction no one saw coming.

What do you do here? I ask Tennessee. She pours herself a glass of vodka, neat. I hear Dakota upstairs, the
chang
of the mesh floor underneath her feet, the running of water in the bath.

We work, Tennessee says.

I mean, I say. You're so young. I think about what Couper said. Haylee is only fifteen. This place is so nice, I say.

It's not my place, she says. It's Parker's, she says.

Parker?

Parker Dealey, Tennessee says. My sister.

Parker. Shawn. Gray. Carson. These were her pretend names, androgynous and sharp. I think of her in the blazer, with nothing underneath, her small breasts loose against the fabric. Slim-legged pants and heels. A cigarette. Her hair combed back under a hat. The way she'd careen me into the bedroom, by the wrist, holding on to my knee when I hit the bed, the back of my neck.

This apartment is a long way from her house in South Lake, where I'd see Khaki come in and kick her dirty flip-flops against the wall and leave a scuff. And even farther from the vacant trailer where we found the postcards. There's no trace of me. Not a souvenir or a memento. I left the postcards inside the Scamp. But I
think about bringing them in, stringing them up above the bar, where recessed lights shine directly on the rounded nudes framed on the walls.

Is it just you two? I ask.

Tennessee nods. We tried to let Virginia in, she says. But Ginny had to go.

The clock is loud here, in between sips. When the water stops running upstairs, the apartment settles to just that low hum, coming up from the basement.

We're all just dead girls, Tennessee says, finishing her drink. Waiting to rise, she says.

I feel the warmth of the bourbon on the top of my head, where, usually, it's shame and guilt creeping out of my skull. On a good night, a happy night, at a bar with a stranger, with a band, the bourbon hits my cheeks, my chest, it warms me with a healthy, sexy glow. Right now, it's coming out of the crown of my head like a halo.

I hear her tapping up the stairs before she comes in, all in white, her hair shining like white gold, short like a boy's and angled in the front to her chin. Tennessee skips out from behind the bar, across the room to her, and I watch Khaki—Parker—take Tennessee's baby face and kiss her lips, hold her temples.

I brought you something, Tennessee chimes to Khaki. She sweeps her arm around to where I stand by the bar. Rebecca, she says.

twenty-eight

KHAKI

They thought I didn't remember you being born, you, in the hospital with the mother we shared, but I did. It might be the first thing I remember. You changed the shape of her underneath me when I tried to sit with her. When her belly was big with you I couldn't climb into her lap anymore. When her breasts were swollen and sore from the milk she'd never give you, I couldn't lay my head there.

She would shoo me away. Khaki, go play. I'm tired.

She went into the hospital in the middle of the night, and dropped me and Nudie with Aunt Carleen and Uncle Ray. You don't remember Ray, but I do. He was tall, and handsome. Blond like Doe, like you and me, but prettier than his brothers. He had a mustache
he would tickle my face with. He rode a motorcycle and had a deep sparkly purple Chevelle he would show at the fair in Bloomsburg.

When you came home, you came home with them. My mother came home empty. You had a new mother. A tiny shell of a mother who couldn't have you herself.

They thought I didn't remember all that. But I did.

I hated you like I hated my own skin.

All that time, you asked me for things. Khaki, show me how to shave my legs. How to light a cigarette. How to down a fifth of whiskey and not throw up. Where to put a tampon. How to kiss a boy. How to fuck and like it, or at least pretend to.

You didn't want it to hurt. You didn't want the boys to make fun of you.

I carried the stench of my own father between my legs. On the playground, at school. In the nurse's office, in gym class, at the beach. Sometimes it hurt to ride my bike.

Nothing would ever hurt you.

Except me.

And you'd never suspect it, because you asked for it.

You can theorize the shit out of what I've done. Out of every pretty little doe-eyed beaten-down mommy who took her last breath in my arms. Who felt the gasp of sex and the grip of death in the same blackout moment.

I can tell you it came from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

I can tell you it made me feel alive and dead inside. On fire. And quenched.

It did nothing to make me feel whole.

Go ahead, Couper Gale. Write a whole fucking book about it.

twenty-nine

RAYELLE

Rebecca, she repeats back to me. Tennessee brings her a tall square bottle of vodka, and Khaki pours herself a drink.

She looks unreal to me. Like I know her with my innermost heart but wouldn't recognize her on the street. Because she's in heels, we're almost the same height. Her hair, lighter than ever, bright silvery platinum and sleek. Her clothes, a white backless vest and white pants. Shoes, white heels with a thin ankle strap. She's thinner than I've ever seen her, but taut with muscle and strong. The glass in her hands looks small. Her hands, with her arms so thin, even bigger. She could palm a basketball. Or strangle you one-handed.

Who gave you that name? she asks.

I did, I say, but she talks over me.

Couper Gale? she says.

My mouth goes dry and hot. She takes a cigarette out of a case that opens like a book and lights it. They're black, and strong smelling.

I don't know what you mean, I say.

Please, she says. I know when I'm being followed.

She motions for Tennessee to pour me another drink. She holds the book of cigarettes out for me to take one. My mind races back to Summersville, to Wrightsville, back home.

All you've ever had are names from men, she says.

That's not true, I say.

You are your father's junior, she says.

I watch Tennessee fade into the living room, listening, surprised.

Go get Dakota, Khaki says to her.

I didn't know, Tennessee says, her voice even higher, broken.

You don't know a goddamn thing, Khaki says to her.

When Dakota comes down, she's dressed in jeans and a black tank top, and her damp hair smells like vanilla and honey. Khaki rubs her arm, and walks her to the door. She hands her an envelope, then holds her face. Different from the way she held Tennessee's. She has to stretch up to reach Dakota. I see Dakota's eye nearly close, as she leans in. Her cheeks, like copper. Her lips, with their comma scar.

Sit down, Khaki says to me after Dakota goes down the back stairs. Let me look at you.

When I thought of myself in the future, I saw myself with her. I didn't know anything else. The two of us, always together. And then she was gone.

And then we sit, face to face on her leather couch. She pulls my hair around from the back and rakes her fingers through its tangles, smoothing it as she touches it. Her voice sounds flat to me, like a newscaster with no trace of origin. I remember that Tennessee said we sounded alike.

When did you start wearing glasses? she asks.

Yesterday
, I think. After the baby, I say.

Tennessee tries to slip out, up the stairs, the way a kid who has pitted her parents against each other watches a fight ignite and then disappears.

Sit down, Khaki tells her, but I watch her stand still, her fingers bunched together. Why are you here? she asks me.

I wanted to see you— I say and stop.

Go ahead, she says. Say my real name in front of her. She doesn't know it. It doesn't mean anything to her.

I just wanted to see you, I say.

To see what?

I don't know, I say. Then, You haven't missed me? You haven't thought about me at all? All this time? I say.

I wouldn't say that, she says. How did you find me?

I shrug. Maybe I'm a cop now, I say, sarcastic. I keep waiting for her to bite, to break a little of the ceramic mask that covers her face.

She laughs. Her teeth, more perfect and white than I remember.

Oh Rayelle, she says. I know you're not a cop. I watch one bright yellow fish wave through an electric-blue aquarium behind her. Its body big and flat. I know what happened to you, she says.

How? I say.

I looked it up, she says, louder. I read the paper.

How could you know what happened to me, I say, and not reach out to me?

She stands up then, her face still and cold.

The same way you did, she says.

I watch Tennessee inch along the back wall, toward the door. I notice that there are large vases by the wall, four of them, bronze with black and red veins. When she bumps one, it gungs.

Tennessee! Khaki shouts at her, and Tennessee's brown shoulders hunch, rounded.

Khaki steps out of her shoes and stands barefoot, small, compact, but a powerhouse of strength in the middle of the room.

You all are like the stupid leading the stupid, she says.

Me? I say.

Tennessee leans on the ledge of the back window, the glass behind her bare, framing the dark.

Do you know why I killed everyone else? she asks Tennessee, who doesn't answer. Because I loved them, she says. Do you know why I'll kill you? she says.

No, Tennessee says.

Because you seem to think you know something, Khaki says. But you're wrong. About everything.

Tennessee folds her arms over her chest.

You know why you're here? Khaki says to me. She turns in the middle of the room. Her arms and back bare. In her hand, a small gun she must have had concealed in the waistband of her pants. It fits in her palm like it was made to nest there, barely visible.

I wanted to find you, I say.

You are live bait, she says to me.

I swallow hard, with nothing in my mouth. Not a drop of spit. My throat contracts and aches.

You can thank Prince Fucking Charming for that move, she says. He put you out here like a kitten in a pit-bull ring, she says.

What do you mean, I say, why you killed everyone else?

Please, she says to me. Do your homework, Rayelle.

I start to say their names. Alyssa. Caitlin. Jessa.

She holds her hand up. Those names mean nothing to me, she says. And there are more than you'll ever know.

Haylee, I say, and watch Tennessee's head snap up.

Tennessee whispers, Florida.

Khaki stretches her arm taut, the nose of the gun at Tennessee's forehead.

I didn't hurt her, Khaki says.

Why should I believe that? Tennessee says.

Because I said it, Khaki says. Because— her voice breaks.

You're nothing but a liar, Tennessee says.

At least that's something.

The sound of the small gun is so sudden I don't hear it until after I've tasted it. There's a metal tang in my mouth and a spray on the window. Tennessee's face, empty, gone, her body limp on the floor. The room, deafened to me. It smells like fireworks, like the snakes we set off in the driveway. My mouth, dry, metal, smoky. Like after a bomb.

One early morning, driving with Chuck, my mother asleep on the backseat of the Malibu, we hit a deer. A doe. Her big body fell in the middle of the road with her neck bent, her eyes open and blank. The thud on the car louder than if another car had hit us. She crumpled the hood. Left a crack in the windshield.

We got out and stood. From far away, deer are so beautiful, all gold and fawn with big white ears and giant dark eyes, so like a girl. Up close, they're crawling with fleas and ticks, and their fur is rough. There's nothing like the horror of all that blood, moving faster than you think it should, from the peak in the middle of the road where the yellow lines come together, and pouring off toward the shoulder, wide at the source, underneath the doe's head, and then narrow as it runs downhill. I'd never seen that much blood, or could have imagined it
moving so fast and covering so much, pouring out of one body at that speed until you were just empty, just standing there, waiting for another car to pass, to catch someone's attention, to flag down someone who could CB the cops to come move the body out of the way.

I see Khaki's mouth moving, but can't hear her. Tennessee lies on the floor, slumped to the side like an unstuffed doll. What's on the window, more solid than liquid. And on the floor, a moving sheet of blood.

Khaki kicks over the vases along the wall. They spill a clear liquid across the floor, soaking into the throw rug, mixing in with the blood.

She waves at me with the nose of the gun, toward the back door. And lights a cigarette.

Outside, behind the building, the platform for the old train station. A wide cement sidewalk, potted flowers. Below, the tracks that aren't used anymore. Beyond, a field leading out to the river, the hills.

Inside, fire rushes and explodes. The building lit from within, and roaring with the rush of a chemical fire.

She kept the vases filled with kerosene
, I think.
Just in case.

She steps out of her pants, her feet still bare. She unbuttons the vest, and stands on the platform naked. Her shoulders angular and strong. Her breasts small. Her belly tight. She tosses the clothes inside the back door, the fire already rushing down the stairway.

Why? I mouth at her. My ears ringing. My mouth, still burning metal.