Hidden Bodies (40 page)

“I know you,” he says.

And he does. He knows me as Spencer Hewitt, the boy he found in the boathouse next to the Salingers’ after he crashed his car. He knows my Figawi hat. He is going to remember me and
he’s going to remember that cold December night. He might even read the file on Peach Salinger and realize that she disappeared right around the same time as that Hewitt kid was freezing in
that boathouse. I take a step backward. “Thanks for the milk. I owe ya one.” He is unperturbed. “I never forget a face,” he says. “Hold on.” The other cyclists
need milk, too and he motions for me to follow him outside—Indian summer!—and even off-duty, he has the authority of an
officer of the law.
He is the reason that Robin Fincher
never should have made it through police academy and he is biting his lip and taking the lid off his coffee.

“Do you live around here?” he asks.

“No,” I say. “I’m just up from Boston.”

He is as kind as I remember and I wonder if he ever fucked that nurse in the hospital in Fall River who seemed so into him. The other cyclists are trickling out onto the lawn and they are
dullards mostly, white dentists, they want their black cop buddy back. I raise my hand to make my escape and raising my hand sparks Officer Nico’s memory and that’s right, this is
New England
where people watch because they like to watch, where memories are intact, primed because the people here are not bogged down by
aspirations.
The only thing Nico
aspires to do is save the fucking world and he snaps his fingers.

“The Buick,” he says. “You were that kid, poor kid, you totaled that Buick.”

The cyclists are interested now and I am a part of this world in the worst possible way. If I lie, if I say that wasn’t me, Nico will know it. He’s a real cop.

“That’s
you
?” I say, and I put my coffee down and move to shake his hand. “You saved my life.”

Never mind the absurdity of me, a white guy who passed through the whitest place in America in the dead of white winter not remembering the very black officer who found me in a boathouse and
drove me to a hospital. I am fucked. Or maybe not. Nico shakes my hand, solid. “I’m surprised you remember any of it,” he says. “You were banged up.”

“I remember the important parts,” I assure him. “I didn’t recognize you with your gear on. You guys all ride on the reg?”

Now I have included the dentists, provided them with the chance to tell an outsider about their weekly
rides
with their cop friend, their banal adventures, the dings with bad drivers,
the roadkill, the time that Barry rode over that hose and fell and everyone is belly laughing,
oh, Barry.
Officer Nico is relaxed, involved in a few conversations, none about me. I am
okay. I pulled it off. I will stay a while just to prove that I am at ease, and when one guy asks what brings me to their
sunny seaside hamlet
I don’t hesitate.

“Indian summer,” I say, and I call upon the amiable demeanor of Harvey Swallows. I open my arms. “Am I right or am I right?”

I am right and soon, it’s time for the cyclists to move on. Nico waves good-bye; he hopes my stay this time around doesn’t involve a trip to the emergency room. I knock on the table.
He squints. “Son,” he says. “That’s a metal table.”

He laughs and he goes and I find a birch tree. I knock.

I
am still itchy. It could be psychosomatic. But it could be real. I might have picked something up from Dana. God knows what germs were crawling on
me in Vegas, on the plane. I am uncomfortable in my skin in Little Compton. I never should have gone to the Art Café and I never should have come here. I strip the bed. I search for bedbugs
and I don’t find any. I flip the mattress but there is nothing wrong with the mattress. There is something wrong with me. Love lifts us up but it also makes us roam around Little Compton like
we didn’t murder the girl in the news.

I’m hungry. The motel doesn’t offer a continental dinner and I am starving and marooned here, unable to will myself out the door for a Burger King run, too itchy to sleep, too
potentially fucked to attempt to relax. If I can’t get that mug of urine then the police will get that mug of urine. If the police run tests on that mug and connect the dots, I will go to
prison, and I won’t be able to get back to California and marry Love. I stop itching. I didn’t realize that until now.

“I want to marry her,” I say.

And suddenly I know what I’m doing here. I am being that person who runs away from love, the one who self-sabotages. I don’t think I can sleep in this room, in this township, in this
universe, and I drag the sheets into the bathroom, the only sterile vortex in this musty pit. I rankle at the sadness of it all, the granite countertops and the little shitty soaps, the non-organic
shampoos. Love wouldn’t want any of this and all I want is her.

I dump the sheets in the tub and I wash my hands and I hear a knock at the door. My heart races but the rest of my body freezes and I picture Officer Nico’s face. I panic. There is another
knock. It feels like the end. On the way to the door, I trip. I bump my knee against the bed. My body is protesting. I reach for the handle. Steeling myself, I swing the door open. But the person
standing there isn’t Officer Nico. It’s someone worse.

Love.

LOVE’S
arms are folded across her chest. “You said you left your lights on,” she says. “But it was only five.”

“Love,” I say. “I can explain.”

“I hope so,” she says. “Because you should also know that
Pitch Perfect
is not, and never was, on Netflix.”

She enters my room. “Anyone here?” she asks.

“No,” I say. “I’m alone.”

She looks at the stripped bed. “What’s this all about? Destroying the evidence?”

“No,” I say, and I can’t keep up with her questions. “Love, let me explain.”

She raises her voice. “Yoo-hoo! You can come out now?”

“Love,” I say. “There’s nobody here.”

“You know, we all live in the world, Joe. You think I can’t figure out that you
flew
to Rhode Island and rented a
car
? And I don’t mean this is in the asshole
way, but you know who my father is. His people couldn’t find Forty because Forty knows how to hide. Because we grew up in this and we know how to disable our phones and pay with cash. But you
think I can’t find you? Jesus Christ. Where is she? Hello!”

“Love, please stop.”

“No,” she says. She is wearing a navy raincoat, bell-bottom blue jeans, and a shrunken pink sweater. I want to hug every part of her, even now, while she accuses me of cheating on
her, especially now. She isn’t going anywhere. She isn’t afraid of me even though she knows I was lying, even though I disappeared on her while I said I was looking for her
brother
. She isn’t the police. She is Love, which is why she is crying.

“Why won’t you tell me things?” she says. “I tell you things but you—you shut down, you won’t tell me the real deal. Why don’t you tell me how you saw
Pitch Perfect
? Because no, Joe. You didn’t see it randomly on Netflix. It’s not
on
Netflix and even if it was, a lie just
feels
different. I know you know
that. And I
think
about this shit, you know, in the middle of the night, when you’re asleep, this is the kind of shit I think about. Why won’t you tell me?”

“Love,” I say, and I can’t explain it but I want to tell her. I want her to know.

“You know,” she says. “When you do stuff on your phone, I mean since the very beginning, like the whole time we’ve been together, I know you are
doing
something.
Sometimes I think you have cancer. I actually console myself by thinking
he just has some disease and he’s gonna die and he doesn’t know how to tell me that I’m gonna get my
heart broken.
”

“I don’t have cancer,” I assure her. But then I do; I have the
mugofurine
. It is a tumor spreading, malignant, infiltrating my love, my Love. She’s still wearing
her coat.

“I know you don’t have cancer, Joe. That’s the point. But I have to know what you have. I can’t take it anymore. I have enough problems. I have a brother who disappears
and a father who can’t even pretend he wants him to come back and a mother who wishes he wasn’t here in the first place. I can’t do this.” She is crying. I go to her but she
doesn’t want me. “No,” she says. “You can’t be in this with me if you won’t be in this with me.” She wipes her eyes. “What the fuck are you even
doing
here? Why are you in Rhode Island? Is my brother here? Who
are you
? Because I can’t fucking ask you anymore. I can’t ask you anymore.”

“I’m sorry.”

She’s right. You can’t be in love, not fully, not eternally, if you can’t tell the truth. It builds up on you. She told me about fucking Milo in the Chateau. But how can I tell
her my truth? I killed her brother. It’s like the atomic version of that universal truth: you can talk shit about your mother, but nobody else can, no matter what you say, no matter what she
does. I can’t tell Love what I’ve been up to and to talk to her is to lie to her.

“I should just go. I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

I kneel at her feet. “Please stay.”

“Why?”

“Because I love you.”

She shakes her little head. “Love isn’t enough, Joe. It isn’t nearly enough. I want more.”

“I know you do.”

“I don’t know what else to say,” she says. “But I can’t stand the way you make me feel so good, like, better than I ever felt, and then you tear it all away, like
deep down, you don’t want me to be happy.”

“Of course I want you to be happy.”

“Then tell me who you are. Tell me why you said you watched
Pitch Perfect
on Netflix.”

“Love,” I say, and if we were married, if I had let her go with me to Vegas and we had eloped, she would not be able to testify against me in a court of law. But we are not married
and the justice system does not acknowledge relationships like ours. I want to marry this girl. I want to stay with this girl. I want our ashes mixed, our crumbling bodies buried side by side. I
want her to know how badly I want that. I don’t want to live without her. I don’t want to let go of her. If she leaves me, what then?

“So that’s all you have to say. That’s fine. Fine.” She sounds cold and she is inching away from me. “Joe,” she says. “It’s over.”

I look up at her. This is like
Homeland
when he’s going to cut a wire and the bomb might explode. I might kill us, everything we have. But maybe I can live with that because
without her, I will die. I know it. I accept that she might hit me, call me names, run to the cops. This could be the end. But this could also be the beginning.

When you get baptized, you fall back into the water, your entire body. Some people hold their noses. Some people don’t. But there is no way around it; you have to get wet if you want to be
in God’s hands.

I take Love’s hands. I choose love. I accept risk. I breathe. I speak. “The first time I saw
Pitch Perfect
was when I broke into a girl’s apartment.”

WHEN
I am done, when I have told her everything—everything but Forty, of course—she just sits there. The minutes tick by and her face
gives me nothing, the way Matt Damon’s face never looks all that fucked up when he’s being Jason Bourne.

I think about what I’ve done, about how it all must seem to her. I did not do that thing where you leave out the grotesque details to make yourself seem like some kind of unstained,
impervious hero. I told her how I stole Beck’s phone and strangled Peach on the beach. I told her about the blood of
The Da Vinci Code
in Beck’s mouth when she slipped away,
how I buried her upstate. I told her about the mug of piss.

I gave her as much as I had, but it’s like the difference between a movie and a book: A book lets you choose how much of the blood you want to see. A book gives you the permission to see
the story as you want, as your mind directs. You interpret. Your Alexander Portnoy doesn’t look like mine because we all have our own unique view. When you finish a movie you leave the
theater with your friend and talk about the movie right away. When you finish a book you think. Love grew up on movies and I have just read her a book. I give her the time to digest.

I am preparing for the worst, for Love’s face to change, for her to run out of here screaming. In a funny way, all the women in my life helped me brace for this moment. My mother. Beck.
Amy. Women leave me, and Love will leave me. She has to. She believes in love and decorates her home with it, carries it on her passport, in her heart. She is going to walk out of this room and
feel like she’s done it again, chosen the wrong man, blown those other two out of the saltwater infinity pool we’ll never go in again.

I’ve never opened up like this, never said it all out loud before, and I hold my knees to my chest and tell myself that what happens next is out of my control. I can’t make Love love
me. But I did the right thing. I told her what she wanted to know. I stopped lying.

The wait is eternal, and her eyes are fixed on a stain on the floor. I think of all the people who stayed in this room before and wonder if any of them have been like me.

And then, finally, she looks up.

“Okay,” she says. “I’m gonna tell you about Roosevelt.”

Roosevelt was a puppy they had when they were babies. Forty named him. She didn’t know why then, doesn’t know why now. “He’s weird that way,” she says, as if
he’s still alive. “I mean, what six-year-old calls a puppy Roosevelt? And also, it’s not like he was precocious and into politics or whatever. He just liked the word
Roosevelt.”

“It’s a good name,” I say.

She ignores me. “Anyway,” she says. “Roosevelt disappeared. And we looked everywhere and put up signs and all that. But then Forty woke me up in the middle of the night and he
took me outside and showed me that Roosevelt wasn’t missing. He was dead.”

“Oh dear.”

She looks at me. She holds my hands. Now she is the one who’s not blinking, staring at me directly. “He tied Roosevelt to the wall,” she says. “He was mad at him because
he kept wanting to sleep in my room instead of Forty’s. So he punished him. He starved him and muzzled him.”