They find her body where the city starts to bleed residential into where Selina lives. Not her neighbourhood, but blocks away, enough to make her itch. She was just outside, in a scotch revenant funk, too slow to look around, too slow to think.
Too slow, and the wet grass blades nipped at her heels, lapping them with dew.
Even in black and white she can see the fingertip imprints on the woman's neck were blood red when the photo was taken. Maybe they still are.
No suspects, and no one saw anything.
She doesn't want to leave her house. She picks up the phone and rotates through intuitive numbers. Tells Garrett that she's sick, caught a cold in the wet night air. That's okay, Tawny will come in. Thank you.
Tawny, another receptionist, is gunning for the top spot and will probably take it through days like these. Tawny is a pretty young thing and Selina is just a pretty young thing. Tawny has more heft in her chest, too, and her hair falls on her face better, sets off the curves of her lips. All Selena's hair does is hide her eyes under tangled bangs, and her eyes are nothing to telegram home about either.
Well, who cares? She has a plump neck, too, and it probably looks good under streetlight.
It's been a good long time since she's done this but she pours herself breakfast. Swishes it around on her easy chair. The fire from last night is glowing embers now. She watches it, thinks.
When she and Gail were looking for a home, she didn't say much, didn't want much. She was smart about it, found the thing she really cared about, and let everything else go. These are tough times for what girls want, but you can get one thing if you stick to it, make it clear. Men aren't monsters, just confused. They can work that one thing into the romance and social context and the pressures of everyone else's expectations. They give you that thing because you care about it, though their everything else is worth taking a knife to some nights.
Her thing was a working fireplace in the living room, chimney to code and good draft flow. Gail went for more conventional trappings otherwise, but she stuck to that fireplace like glue and that was okay. In the end he didn't really care about anything. Nothing was a problem to him. It was why she fell for him and why falling out was so easy.
The split was mutual and fuss-free. None of them felt like a clustered mess of drama, the kind that took so many of their friends. Divorce didn't have to control you. They worked together on the paperwork, got it through fast and tight, and she got to stay in the house, because in the end Gail decided he enjoyed hotel rooms and business trips and pretty young things all alone at cocktail bars. Pointless to stick it to you on the digs, he said. They shook hands and went their separate ways and she really did hope he was happy. He was nice and neat about everything, considering.
Lost in reverie, she thinks it would be funny if he called, like he does sometimes. The phone rings, staccato bells thrumming sharp in her ears and mixing with the drink that's fizzing around her brain. She picks it up, and it's Gail, which isn't surprising to her.
He's heard about the killings and wants to know if she's okay.
"I'm fine," she says, "fortressed. You got a doll beside you right now? She okay?"
"She's okay," he says. "Wish she had more in her hips. Look, be careful out there. Pay attention to everyone. Look real close, it's a free country. No one stops you from keeping your eyes open, and even on other people." His voice is tinned and mechanical over the phone, but she can still pick up the slow, steady bones of his voice, the tone that never wavers even if his words get dreamy.
"You too," she says. "Don't lose yourself." She hangs up the phone, the crescent of it latching over the side of the top, so she has to push it into place with a slow, steady movement, her hand swimming through her liquid breakfast haze.
She sits there and thinks and soon her murk becomes a stew, a dark thick sludge with old meat bubbling to the top.
She stays in her armchair all day, with shades closed and the lights down low. When she's hungry she eats canned preserves. Beef, asparagus, and peach slices, alternating. When enough time has swum away from her she goes to the window, moving by the last traces of fire, enough only to see the outlines of her limbs in the dark of the room.
Darkness falls again.
Through the back living room glass she sees the yard stretched around her house, fenced in at the back, but that's where her trees are. Trees that died in the summertime and now the yard is covered with leaves. The green is thin strips cutting through burnt orange, pale yellow and crisp red. In the darkness the yellows shine faint through overlapping darker shades.
She knows Tawny is either at her trendy apartment, or being entertained elsewhere, safe and sound unless she has bad taste in men.
She wants to catch a flick. She wants to go downtown, at night, by herself, and see a movie. It thrills her. She'll just look close at everyone, like Gail said. Right now Gail is looking real close, at the mole on a new doll's cheek, or the catch of her lip. So why shouldn't she look, squint really hard, and see if she can see imperfections in the film? The grainy films, the low down ones, the ones she really likes.
She rotary calls the taxicab and while she waits she finishes her scotch, feels it buzz down her throat. When she hears wheels spin on pavement outside she walks to the front hall, stands to the side by the street window. She draws back the shades. There's no light in the drawing area so the taxi headlights blind her and she feels like a deer on a country roads. The curse of moonshine paths turning to parkways.
The taxicab honks, breaking the night silence like a hammer through glass. She imagines people on her street jolted out of what they're doing. Drinking alone, like her, maybe making love, or on the telephone, or making love on the telephone. It's too much for her and she mouths a soundless apology to her drawing room. Her jacket is on the hallway stand where she hung it after she got home from work. The crook of the hook under the fold is like a hunchback's spine.
She pulls it off, wraps it around her frame, and thinks about how strange it is that everyone just wants to be boxed bones.
Then she pushes her door open. Its hinges cry as it squeaks over floorwood. The taxicab is pulled into her driveway and the headlights spill over her and into the home. She sees her bones, but just fragments, the rest in shadow. She turns to get away from the light for a second and sees her shadow in the foyer. It's split from her body into perfect halves.
She turns back and touches down on welcome mat fiber and she sees a shadow in the corner of her periphery, slivered by headlight and, down the street where he is, streetlight.
She stumbles forward. Tries to see through the glare of everything and all she knows is there's still shape there. She moves towards the twin white lights.
They shut off. The driver saw he was blinding her. Now she can see him too, an unshaven man with a cap pulled over his head, not low but not high. And she also sees the cab clear, a solid set of block shapes with pitch black wheels over the driveway tarmac. Like it's floating on space. And she can see the door, the break lines in the chassis clear, the handle glistening from earlier rain.
In the corner of her eyes, the shadow is still there, blocky with low shoulders.
She makes it to the passenger side over tripping feet. She pulls and her hand slicks off the wetness. The driver looks sympathetic as she tries again. She slides in, shutting the door hard enough to raise his brow. The leather of the seat cools her jacket fabric against her back.
"Where to," the driver says, his eyes now everywhere but her.
Anywhere, she almost says. Then she remembers why she came out. Her eyes narrow. She's seeing a picture and she's gonna enjoy it.
So she gives him the address. His eyes scan around as he works out where it is and how to get there. Then they pull out of the driveway. As they do she has a clear view of the streetlight and she hopes when she looks all she sees is more autumn leaves swirling on the wind. Instead the stranger still stands heavy, the shadow of his hat covering his face like a black mask, the streetlight breaking over his body and fissuring into the cracks of the sidewalk pavement. She knows when the cab pulls from the cul-de-sac to the side street of the neighbourhood edge that he's still there, he's still standing there, and the only way he won't be is if he stays with her.
