Sharp_Objects - Flynn

“I didn’t kill Natalie,” he whispered.

“I know.”

He picked up my hand, wrapped it around his.

“Her fingernails were painted. When they found her. Someone painted her fingernails,” he mumbled.

“Maybe she did.”

“Natalie hated that kind of thing. Barely even allowed a brush through her hair.”

Silence for several minutes. Carole King had given way to Carly Simon. Feminine folksy voices in a bar for slaughterers.

“You’re so beautiful,” John said.

“So are you.”

John fumbled with his keys in the parking lot, handed them to me easily when I told him he was too drunk to drive. Not that I was much better. I steered him blurrily back to Meredith’s house, but he just shook his head when we got close, asked if I’d drive him to the motel outside town lines. Same one I’d stayed at on my way down here, a little refuge where one could prepare for Wind Gap and its weight.

We drove with the windows down, warm night air blowing in, pasting John’s T-shirt to his chest, my long sleeves flapping in the wind. Aside from his thick head of hair, he was so utterly bare. Even his arms sprouted only a light down. He seemed almost naked, in need of cover.

I paid for the room, No. 9, because John had no credit cards, and opened the door for him, sat him on the bed, got him a glass of lukewarm water in a plastic cup. He just looked at his feet and refused to take it.

“John, you need to drink some water.”

He drained the cup in a gulp and let it roll off the side of the bed. Grabbed my hand. I tried to pull away—more instinct than anything—but he squeezed harder.

“I saw this the other day, too,” he said, his finger tracing part of the d in wretched, just tucked under my left shirtsleeve. He reached his other hand up and stroked my face. “Can I look?”

“No.” I tried again to pull away.

“Let me see, Camille.” He held on.

“No, John. No one sees.”

“I do.”

He rolled my sleeve up, squinted his eyes. Trying to understand the lines in my skin. I don’t know why I let him. He had a searching, sweet look on his face. I was weak from the day. And I was so damned tired of hiding. More than a decade devoted to concealment, never an interaction—a friend, a source, the checkout girl at the supermarket—in which I wasn’t distracted anticipating which scar was going to reveal itself. Let John look. Please let him look. I didn’t need to hide from someone courting oblivion as ardently as I was.

He rolled up the other sleeve, and there sat my exposed arms, so naked they made me breathless.

“No one’s seen this?”

I shook my head.

“How long have you done this, Camille?”

“A long time.”

He stared at my arms, pushed the sleeves up farther. Kissed me in the middle of weary.

“This is how I feel,” he said, running his fingers over the scars until I got a chill of goosebumps. “Let me see it all.”

He pulled my shirt over my head as I sat like an obedient child. Eased off my shoes and socks, pulled down my slacks. In my bra and panties, I shivered in the frosty room, the air conditioner blasting a chill over me. John pulled back the covers, motioned for me to climb in, and I did, feeling feverish and frozen at once.

He held up my arms, my legs, turned me on my back. He read me. Said the words out loud, angry and nonsensical both: oven, queasy, castle. He took off his own clothes, as if he sensed an unevenness, threw them in a ball on the floor, and read more. Bun, spiteful, tangle, brush. He unhooked my bra in front with a quick flick of his fingers, peeled it off me. Blossom, dosage, bottle, salt. He was hard. He put his mouth on my nipples, the first time since I began cutting in earnest that I’d allowed a man to do that. Fourteen years.

His hands ran all over me, and I let them: my back, my breasts, my thighs, my shoulders. His tongue in my mouth, down my neck, over my nipples, between my legs, then back to my mouth. Tasting myself on him. The words stayed quiet. I felt exorcised.

I guided him into me and came fast and hard and then again. I could feel his tears on my shoulders while he shuddered inside me. We fell asleep twisted around each other (a leg jutting out here, an arm behind a head there) and a single word hummed once: omen. Good or bad I didn’t know. At the time I chose to think good. Foolish girl.

In the early morning, dawn made the tree branches glow like hundreds of tiny hands outside the bedroom window. I walked naked to the sink to refill our cup of water, both of us hungover and thirsty, and the weak sunlight hit my scars and the words flickered to life again. Remission ended. My upper lip curled involuntarily in repulsion at the sight of my skin, and I wrapped a towel around me before I got back into bed.

John drank a sip of water, cradled my head and poured some into my mouth, then gulped the remainder. His fingers tugged at the towel. I held tight to it, hard as a dishrag on my breasts, and shook my head.

“What’s this?” he whispered into my ear.

“This is the unforgiving light of morning,” I whispered back. “Time to drop the illusion.”

“What illusion?”

“That anything can be okay,” I said, and kissed his cheek.

“Let’s not do that yet,” he said, and wrapped his arms around me. Those thin, hairless arms. A boy’s arms. I told myself these things, but I felt safe and good. Pretty and clean. I put my face to his neck and smelled him: liquor and sharp shaving lotion, the kind that squirts out ice blue. When I opened my eyes again, I saw the red twirling circles of a police siren outside the window.

Bang bang bang. The door rattled as if it could have easily broken down.

“Camille Preaker. Chief Vickery. Open up if you’re in there.”

We grabbed our scattered clothes, John’s eyes as startled as a bird’s. The sounds of belt buckles and shirt rustles that would give us away outside. Frantic, guilty noises. I threw the sheets back on the bed, ran fingers through my hair, and as John placed himself in an awkwardly casual standing position behind me, fingers hooked through his belt loops, I opened the door.

Richard. Well-pressed white shirt, crisply striped tie, a smile that dropped as soon as he saw John. Vickery beside him, rubbing his mustache as if there were a rash beneath it, eyes flitting from me to John before he turned and stared at Richard head on.

Richard said nothing, just glared at me, crossed his arms and inhaled deeply once. I’m sure the room smelled of sex.

“Well, looks like you’re just fine,” he said. Forced a smirk. I knew it was forced because the skin above his collar was as red as an angry cartoon character’s. “How’re you, John? You good?”

“I’m fine, thanks,” John said, and came to stand at my side.

“Miss Preaker, your mother called us a few hours ago when you failed to come home,” mumbled Vickery. “Said you’d been a bit sick, taken a tumble, something like ’at. She was real worried. Real worried. Plus with all this ugliness going on, you can’t be too careful. I suppose she’ll be glad to hear you’re…here.”

The last part asked as a question I had no intention of answering. Richard I owed an explanation. Vickery no.

“I can phone my mother myself, thanks. I appreciate you looking up on me.”

Richard looked at his feet, bit his lip, the only time I’ve ever seen him abashed. My belly turned, oily and fearful. He exhaled once, a long hard gust, put his hand on his hips, stared at me, then at John. Kids caught misbehaving.

“C’mon John, we’ll take you home,” Richard said.

“Camille can take me, but thanks, Detective Willis.”

“You of age, son?” Vickery asked.

“He’s eighteen,” Richard said.

“Well fine then, you two have a real nice day,” Vickery said, hissed a laugh in Richard’s direction, and muttered “already had a nice night,” under his breath.

“I’ll phone you later, Richard,” I said.

He raised a hand, flicked it at me as he turned back to the car.

John and I were mostly silent on the ride to his parents’, where he was going to try to sleep in the basement rec room for a bit. He hummed a snatch of some old ’50s bebop and tapped his fingernails on the door handle.

“How bad do you think that was?” he finally asked.

“For you, maybe not bad. Shows you’re a good American boy with healthy interest in women and casual sex.”

“That wasn’t casual. I don’t feel casual about that at all. Do you?”

“No. That was the wrong word. That was just the opposite,” I said. “But I’m more than a decade older than you, and I’m covering the crime that…it’s a conflict of interest. Better reporters have been fired for such a thing.” I was aware of the morning sunlight on my face, the wrinkles at the edges of my eyes, the age that hung on me. John’s face, despite a night of drinking and very little sleep, was like a petal.

“Last night. You saved me. That saved me. If you hadn’t stayed with me, I would have done something bad. I know it, Camille.”

“You made me feel very safe, too,” I said, and meant it, but the words came out in the disingenuous singsong of my mother.

I dropped John off a block from his parents’ house, his kiss landing on my jaw as I jerked away at the last second. No one can prove anything happened, I thought at that moment.

Drove back to Main Street, parked in front of the police station. One streetlight still glowed. 5:47 a.m. No receptionist on call yet in the lobby, so I rang the nightbell. The room deodorizer near my head hissed a lemon scent right on my shoulder. I hit the bell again, and Richard appeared behind the slit of glass in the heavy door leading to the offices. He stood staring at me a second, and I was waiting for him to turn his back to me again, almost willing him to, but then he opened the door and entered the lobby.

“Where do you want to begin, Camille?” He sat on one of the overstuffed chairs and put his head in his hands, his tie drooping between his legs.

“It wasn’t like it looked, Richard,” I said. “I know it sounds cliché but it’s true.” Deny deny deny.

“Camille, just forty-eight hours after you and I had sex, I find you in a motel room with the chief subject in my child-murder investigation. Even if it’s not what it looks like, it’s bad.”

“He did not do it, Richard. I absolutely know he didn’t do it.”

“Really? Is that what ya’ll discussed when he had his dick in you?”

Good, anger, I thought. This I can handle. Better than head-in-the-hands despair.

“Nothing like that happened, Richard. I found him at Heelah’s drunk, dead drunk, and I really thought he might harm himself. I took him to the motel because I wanted to stay with him and hear him out. I need him for my story. And you know what I learned? Your investigation has ruined this boy, Richard. And what’s worse, I don’t even think you really believe he did it.”

Only the last sentence was entirely true, and I didn’t realize it until the words came out of me. Richard was a smart guy, a great cop, extremely ambitious, on his first major case with an entire outraged community bellowing for an arrest, and he didn’t have a break yet. If he had more on John than a wish, he’d have arrested him days ago.

“Camille, despite what you think, you don’t know everything about this investigation.”

“Richard, believe me, I’ve never thought that I did. I’ve never felt anything but the most useless outsider. You’ve managed to fuck me and still remain airtight. No leaks with you.”

“Ah, so you’re still pissed about that? I thought you were a big girl.”

Silence. A hiss of lemon. I could vaguely hear the big silver watch on Richard’s wrist ticking.

“Let me show you what a good sport I can be,” I said. I was back on autopilot, just like the old days: desperate to submit to him, make him feel better, make him like me again. For a few minutes last night, I’d felt so comforted, and Richard’s appearing outside that motel door had smashed what was left of the lingering calm. I wanted it back.

I lowered myself to my knees, and began unzipping his pants. For a second he put his hand on the back of my head. Then instead he grabbed me roughly by the shoulder.

“Camille, Christ, what are you doing?” He realized how hard his grip was and loosened it, pulled me to my feet.

“I just want to make things okay with us.” I played with a button on his shirt and refused to meet his eyes.

“That won’t do it, Camille,” he said. He kissed me almost chastely on the lips. “You need to know that before we go any further. You just need to know that, period.”

Then he asked me to leave.

I chased sleep for a few darting hours in the back of my car. The equivalent of reading a sign between the cars of a passing train. Woke up sticky and peevish. Bought a toothbrush kit at the FaStop, along with the strongest-smelling lotion and hairspray I could find. I brushed my teeth in a gas-station sink, then rubbed the lotion into my armpits and between my legs, sprayed my hair stiff. The resulting smell was sweat and sex under a billowing cloud of strawberry and aloe.

I couldn’t face my mother at the house and crazily thought I’d do work instead. (As if I were still going to write that story. As if it weren’t all about to go to hell.) With Geri Shilt’s mention of Katie Lacey fresh in my mind, I decided to go back to her. She was a mother’s aide at the grade school, for both Natalie and Ann’s classes. My own mother had been a mother’s aide, a coveted, elite position in the school that only women who didn’t work could do: swoop into classrooms twice a week and help organize arts, crafts, music, and, for girls on Thursdays, sewing. At least in my day it’d been sewing. By now it was probably something more gender neutral and modern. Computer usage or beginners’ microwaving.

Katie, like my mother, lived at the top of a big hill. The house’s slender staircase cut into the grass and was bordered with sunflowers. A catalpa tree sat slim and elegant as a finger on the hilltop, the female match to the burly shade oak on its right. It was barely ten, but Katie, slim and brown, was already sunning herself on the widow’s walk, a box fan breezing her. Sun without the heat. Now if she could only figure out a tan without the cancer. Or at least the wrinkles. She saw me coming up the stairs, an irritating flicker against the deep green of her lawn, and shaded her eyes to make me out from forty feet above.

“Who is that?” she called out. Her hair, a natural wheaty blonde in high school, was now a brassy platinum that sprung out of a ponytail atop her head.

“Hi, Katie. It’s Camille.”

“Ca-meeel! Oh my God, I’m coming down.”

It was a more generous greeting than I’d expected from Katie, who I hadn’t heard from again after the night of Angie’s Pity Party. Her grudges always came and went like breezes.