My gaze darts to the door. I can’t help thinking of Lucas. He knows enough of my secrets that he is a risk. No one listens to the ravings of the drunk or mad, but Lucas listened to me more than I realized he had.
Now I need to fix it.
I need to get Michael out of here and handle Lucas.
7
Michael
After we drink, after Tess dances, after we return to my rented flat and fuck, I watch her dress by the light that slips through the drapes. The windows here are as tall as doors, with exterior shutters that span the height of them. The shutters, drapes, and windows are all flung open now. It seems peculiar to me, but Tess likes them open. Even when she’s naked, she prefers that the shutters and curtains are open.
My agent would have fits if she knew.
My family would threaten me.
It’s my livelihood though, my reputation, my money. My grandmother could go to her lawyers and deny me my trust fund, but I think she’s also the only one who would be amused by my indiscretions. She knows more than my mother realizes, and she takes pleasure in my inappropriate choices. I think she may have been far less modest in her youth than my family pretends.
“I can’t stay.” Tess announces it abruptly, as if I couldn’t figure that out. She’s dressed almost as soon as she stands.
Unlike most women who seem to believe that a cuddle is more important than the sex itself, Tess has no patience for affectionate touches.
It’s one of the things I appreciate about her, but it sets me off kilter all the same. There aren’t many times in my life where I’ve felt like the one with no power, but watching her refuse to look at me prickles the vestiges of childhood’s tattered baggage. It’s not the sort of thing that even my overpriced therapist would’ve bothered with when I used to drag myself across Manhattan to her office. I wouldn’t say I have abandonment issues, but I’m human. No one likes feeling discarded, and I’m simply not used to it.
“Do you have a pet to feed?”
She pauses, pulling her hair over her shoulder and braiding it silently. There’s an expression she gets, as if she’s trying to figure out a puzzle. Whatever is wrong with Tess—and there is far more broken than even she might realize—there is an awareness that she must mimic a functional person. That’s what it is though: mimicry.
“I like animals.” She smiles. There’s something helpless about her when she’s like this. It’s the side of her that the bartender sees, the part that makes people warn me to be kind to her. I must resist getting too drawn in by it.
“Me too,” I lie. I couldn’t care less about animals, unless they’re seasoned and on my plate. “But neither of us have any, so there’s no reason you couldn’t stay here.”
Tess laughs like so many women at too many parties in my life. It’s disingenuous enough to set my teeth on edge. For all of the vulnerability in her, Tess also has a condescension that is familiar—and in that moment I know one of her secrets.
“You came from money.” I realize it’s true even before I see the worry that flashes on her face when I say it. Tess doesn’t admit I’ve gleaned a detail she’d rather I hadn’t. Nothing more than a tightening around her eyes and lips tells me that she’s upset by my epiphany. Instead, Tess saunters toward me with a sway in her hips that I will describe as rolling in the book.
The real Tess isn’t the character I need. She’s too brittle, too close to fractures. The fictional version will need to have softer edges to sell the sparrow image I have of her character. The real Tess has the sort of talons that call to mind something more dangerous. Right now, they are glinting.
She leans in and trails those talons over my stomach in a way that shouldn’t frighten me, but does.
“Goodbye, Michael.”
I’ve noticed that it’s always a vaguely hopeful phrase when she says it, as if she’s trying to make every exit a permanent one.
“Goodnight.”
She presses her lips tighter together, straining the smile she’s offered, but she flutters her fingers at me.
Definitely from money.
The door falls shut with a click.
I wait.
Three. Two. One.
The press of her palm on the door as she makes sure it’s closed is the last of her presence. In this, and in so much more, Tess is a creature of habits. I collect them to piece together the story she thinks I won’t get out of her silences and evasions. She’s comfortable with being seen even while mid-sex-act, but she also has a pathological need to check security of doors. She needs to inspect the corners of rooms, light the spaces where unwanted surprises could lurk. She may not speak it, but at some point, she’s felt unsafe in her home.
Tess looks for faces in the shadows. Not in restaurants. Not in the street. The places where most women I’ve known would seek out threats are not where Tess expects danger to wait. She keeps a light on in the bathroom. Earlier I turned it off to watch her reaction. It’s back on now. It took all of six minutes before she had to find an excuse to do so.
I stare at the light and wonder at the possibilities for a plot.
Sometimes I don’t think any secrets she reveals will be as complicated as the scenarios I imagine when my fictional Tess blends into the details of the real Tess. Was there an attacker? Is she running from a rapist that targeted college girls in her small liberal arts school? Did she walk into the darkened room and find him there? I laugh at the camp of that idea. It’s been done too often, too many ways.
I grab my trousers and get dressed. The second drawer of the bureau holds the notebook where I’ve been jotting down my notes and passages. It’s a strange truth that sometimes writers just know when we’re holding something special in our hands. It doesn’t mean we’ll be able to pull it off, but it does mean that we know there’s gold in the dirt where we’re burrowing our fingers.
Tess is gold.
I don’t skim the parts already written in my notebook. Not tonight. I want to capture the unvarnished truths from the cracks in Tess’ defenses. I want to contain her in the clean, white pages so later I can dress her up like those paper dolls my sister had when we were children. As time passes, I’ll add the costumes, the cut-out dresses of a woman who will carry my name back up to the top.
The scratch of nib on paper is a comforting sound in the quiet of my temporary home. I can hear the voices of tourists in the streets of the French Quarter, the too sharp laugh of drunk women. They look in through the still-open windows, but it bothers me as it didn’t when Tess was astride me. Writing is more intimate than fucking. It might not be my soul I’m trying to ascribe to paper, but it is still the bones and breath of a real person contained by the ink in these pages.
I close the notebook before I get up to close the drapes and shove the book back into the drawer. It nestles between carefully folded undershirts. The city is too hot for so many layers of clothing, at least for me. I see Southern gentleman—or those playing at being old South aristocracy—with their pressed shirts over undershirts, with vests and ties and hats. Some wear a suit coat too. A few add the eccentricities of cane or antique jewelry. They add a strange false elegance to the city, much like the dripping vines and ornate ironwork. The surface of the place, the pieces caught in old photographs and tourist brochures, zero in on the timeless grace of the Crescent City.