PROLOGUE
BY THE SECOND WEEK IN June, there are two dead women laid out like tallies in the stretch of marsh just behind the Sunset Motel. They are so close to each other that their fingers nearly touch. The women can see everything with perfect clarity now, the man’s entire design available to them as though they had thought of it themselves: by the end of eight weeks’ time there will be five more women. He plans to use the city’s symbols against it. Seven women, seven warnings. Not so lucky after all.
The motel sits on the western border of Atlantic City, where stretches of salt marsh buffer the space between land and ocean. Casinos line the shores on the eastern edge of town, along the boardwalk, and to the north, where pleasure boats slip in and out of the marina or dock long enough for a bottle of wine, a bit of sun, a swim. At night the skyline is gapped, like a child’s smile: half of the casinos have shut down and their lights are turned out. The empty buildings hulk against the shoreline, mammoth and spectral as shipwrecked cruise liners.
In death, the women are still dressed to walk the streets. To attract clients with a slice of leg, cleavage. To mime desire with a cant of the hips, a toss of their hair. Dressed to be undressed. Their jewelry glints in the sun: gold hoop earrings and the delicate chains of ankle bracelets. Charms in the shape of four-leaf clovers, a pair of cherries, a cat’s head. A stack of cheap metal bangles, the gilt coming off in tiny flakes. There is longing in the way their hands seem to reach toward one another, the aching almost of it. Bruises bloom on the skin of their arms, delicate blues and greens that could have been painted with watercolor. Except for their necks, which are marked with purple rings. The water seething in and out with the tide means they won’t be preserved for long. Already dense, iridescent clumps of greenhead flies tickle along their limbs, their cheeks, their scalps; the flies’ thick, segmented wings like stained glass.
Each day brings a new hope that someone will find them. Planes fly banners over the beach, advertising Corona. The pilots loop back over the marsh but never look down. Other days an employee from the motel rattles a bag of recycling to the dumpster. Some nights a couple stops in the motel’s parking lot to fuck in the back seat of a rusted-out Ford Explorer. The car rocks on its frame for a little while, and after it goes still the man ambles out to light a joint. Sometimes the woman squats on the edge of the marsh to piss behind the cover of the reeds. The women call to her, the shush of the wind through the grass like a whisper. Look, they try to say. Look. Look. Please see.
Cars and buses thrum past on the Black Horse Pike, trucks delivering cuts of filet mignon and rib eye to the casino steak houses, or vans of fresh laundry for the hotels: sheets and pillowcases that have been boiled clean, napkins and tablecloths stiff with starch. At one point or another the women in the marsh have wished for that kind of a cleansing, a way to scald their secrets away, their pasts swirled down the drain.
The man has turned their heads so they both look in the same direction: east, toward the lights of Atlantic City. They have been placed there to watch, to warn. Their eyes are open. They wait.
CLARA
IT WAS THE HOTTEST DAY of the summer so far when the missing girl’s uncle came to see me. I sat in one of our metal folding chairs, shifting every now and then to unpeel the flesh of my thighs from the seat. Des said we didn’t have the money to run the window unit in the shop, so I always felt feverish and sticky. Sweat sluiced down my spine and my hair was heavy and damp on the back of my neck. I had just bought a fan the week before, one of the old metal kinds with a steel cage over the blades, from the pawnshop on Pacific Avenue. I’d made Zeg, the owner of the shop, test it so I could be sure it still worked. He grunted like he was put out, but together we pushed an old TV away from an outlet, plugged the fan in, and watched it rattle to life. I touched my fingers to the cage, their metallic, rusty smell practically in my mouth, like dirty nickels. There was still enough space to slip something small between the bars toward the blades—the end of a pencil, a fingertip—and it beckoned, a dare.
“Christ, don’t do that!” Zeg said. “You know how sharp that metal is? That thing will slice your finger off.”
“Okay, okay, don’t get your panties in a bunch,” I said. But I knew what I was up to. I did stupid things in front of him because it felt a little good to hear him scold me. A little bit like love. The fan didn’t do much for the heat, but every now and then the breeze shifted and a cool wind blew in off the ocean. Sometimes it was enough to make the sweat on my back go cold, and a shiver would work its way through my body. But relief, when it came, was brief.
It was the third week in June, and already I had the sense that that summer was going to be different from any other summer I had known. The weather had been warm for weeks, and still the tourists hadn’t come. The boardwalk should have been crowded, crackling with carnival energy: people wearing heaps of purple and gold Mardi Gras beads from the Showboat, drinking hard lemonades from colorful plastic cups, groups of bachelorette parties, drunk girls screeching and teetering in their heels, their Mylar sashes glinting in the sun. But two more casinos had closed over the winter. The trams that rumbled by never had more than a passenger or two on board, and the rolling chair men pushed their empty wicker carriages up and down the boardwalk, the wheels thumping over the uneven planks. By noon each day the chocolate fudge samples on the trays in front of Fralinger’s Candy Shop had melted into one sticky, indistinct mass. Atlantic City felt like it was waiting for something to happen or for something to be revealed, waiting for an answer or sign. Like in my books, Mercury in retrograde, blood on the moon. I hadn’t had a single client all day when I saw the man standing outside the window, squinting through the chipped gold lettering on the hazy glass.
The man backed away and approached the chalkboard sign in front of the door. Palm Reading Special $5. He shook his head, shoved his hands into his pockets, took a few steps, and turned around again so that he stood behind the beaded curtain. I could hear his breath, the slight whistle of it through his front teeth. I didn’t say anything. Des would have told me to greet him. Would have told me to hike my skirt up a little bit, to show some skin. Entice them, Ava. Times are tough. We’ve got to use everything we’ve got. But Des was waitressing at the club, so I slouched deeper into my chair. Something about him made me want to watch, to wait.
He reached, parted the curtain, and for a moment his hand seemed disembodied, nothing but grasping fingers and raised veins, blue and meandering across the back of his palm. Then the beads clattered and the rest of his body joined his hand inside the shop. He was a short, older man in khakis and boat shoes. Lips pressed into a grimace, forehead glistening with sweat. He cleared his throat once, then again, more loudly, as though he were trying to convince himself of something.
“Hello,” I said. “How can I help you?”
“I’m uh … well. I’m here for a reading?”
“Why don’t you have a seat?” I smiled. “What brings you here today?”
“Well. I’ve never done this before. That probably goes without saying. I, uh, no offense.” He reached into his pocket for a handkerchief, staunched a bead at his temple.
“That’s okay. Most people who come here haven’t done this before.”