I put on sweatpants, take off my bra, lie down in Patrick Bloom’s bed, and wait for this shit to kick in. I don’t even care that my sweat is soaking into his beautiful, expensive comforter.
My body starts to feel heavy, yet floaty. This is good. I release a big sigh. My phone is resting on the bed next to me. I pick it up. My fingers tingle as I dial Jack. It goes to a generic voice mail. I call once more, twice, three times.
I laugh. Jack is not going to pick up. He’s never going to pick up.
I remember being sixteen. Lying on my bed, my presence cloaked by the wooden divider in the room, reading a book for class. I knew from the heavy footsteps that Jack had come home. When he came in and slid my mom’s drawers open, I peered around the screen to see what he was doing.
Jack was adept at plowing through my mom’s things. I knew that she hid cash in her sock drawer because I’d gone looking once and pocketed twenty bucks. But Jack wasn’t looking for something, he was looking to hide something. Something wrapped in a deconstructed brown grocery bag, bound in tape, and tucked under his arm.
“What are you doing?” I asked. Jack jumped. I’d never startled him before.
“Mari, if you don’t tell anyone, we can pretend you didn’t see anything.”
I didn’t need to know what was in that package to know that my mom would kick him out if she found it. The idea of that happening was more than I could bear.
I couldn’t tell Jack no. Yet he saw my hesitation and knew his secret wasn’t safe. His face warped with disgust. He stormed out, shoved the package into his backpack, and left. He didn’t come home until the next day.
Jack gave me the silent treatment after that and lived with us for only a few more weeks before disappearing again. That time we didn’t find him, not in a strawberry field, not anywhere.
Once in a while, I’d plug his name into Google, but it was like he had never existed at all.
Why did he give my mom his number if he didn’t plan on picking up his stupid phone?
Fucker.
I keep calling.
Finally, the ringtone starts ending sooner. He’s actively silencing my calls. He’s seeing them come through. Jack is out there.
Or maybe his phone is just blocking me.
My vision gets fuzzy.
I blink, slowly. My eyes close. Sleep cradles me.
Is someone knocking on the front door? I prop myself up. My drool has soaked Patrick Bloom’s pillow. I look at my phone. It’s three a.m.; I’ve been unconscious for nine hours. The drugs are wearing thin, but I’m still stoned.
I hear two more loud pounds and the chime of the doorbell.
I stumble downstairs and see the silhouette of a man in the front window. Tall, lanky. I know exactly who it is.
I open the door. Jack is wearing a black T-shirt and has a short, tidy beard. He looks older than his thirty-two years. Time and sun have etched lines into his skin. I want to run to him, but he’s practically a stranger. I remember that I’m not wearing a bra and cross my arms over my chest.
“Mari, I need your help,” he says. Panic thrums behind his eyes. He turns to walk to the street and I follow him, a little sister’s instinct. My head is drowning in Ativan and my tongue feels like it’s filled with wet sand.
“How’d you find me?” I manage to slur.
“You texted me the address.”
“Oh.” Right. Of course.
“No one can track it,” he says. “You have my burner number.”
Why does my brother have a burner phone? And why is that the number I have for him?
He takes me to his car, opens the door, and gestures for me to look in the backseat. There’s a thick plastic bag. It’s misshapen, but I suspect from its size and heft what it is. Shock rushes through my system, but I’m not as terrified as I know I should be. Thank god I’m on drugs.
“Who was it?”
“It’s not part of the job to know that.” He emphasizes the word job as if this is like any other job he’s had. Like pulling beer cans out of bushes on Frat Row or clearing out an anthropology professor’s drainpipe or picking strawberries in Gilroy or dealing drugs.
“Where did you...?” I don’t have to finish the sentence. Chop up the body.
“It doesn’t matter.”
I wish I hadn’t seen it. That he’d dumped the body in the bay or kept driving past Patrick Bloom’s house to Tilden and found somewhere to leave it among the rotting eucalyptus trees. But the fact is that I’m standing there looking at it and now I cannot unsee it. I reach in and touch the bag. I feel a jumble of body parts. The knob of an elbow. Stiff flesh, like an unripe tomato.
“The owner’s coming back tomorrow,” I say.
“He won’t know.”
It is late, so late that all the lights in all of the houses on the street are off. No one sees us as we pull the bag from the car and carry it to the side plot where nothing grows but weeds. After that, it is Jack’s work to bury the body, not mine. He hands me a shopping bag containing khaki shorts, sneakers, boxers, and a short-sleeved plaid button-up. I wince when I feel where the bloodstained patches of fabric have gone cold, but I try not to think about it. I nod off as I wash the man’s clothes in the laundry machine. When I’m done, I go into the basement and stuff them in the bottom of a box labeled, Goodwill.
For the rest of the night my consciousness ebbs and flows. Eventually I am in bed, though I do not know how I got upstairs. The last thing I remember is Jack whispering that he hadn’t planned this. His voice shimmers like the lights of the city twinkling in the distance. He tells me that, sometimes, the impulsive plan is the best plan, the hardest one to track. And when I sent him the image of the garden, and when I said that I was alone house-sitting, and when I kept calling and calling, well, it seemed a little like fate.
I should be worried, but I’m not. We are far away, Jack and I. Above the world in our cave. Everything below us is a blanket of stars. And when I sleep, I dream of falling headlong into Jack’s wide-open eyes.
I wake to the sound of the front door opening.
I think I imagined all of this. Then I feel a weight in the bed next to me. Bile lurches at the back of my throat.
Jack stretches his arms overhead, yawning. His white teeth glisten. At some point he shaved, and now I can see the little scar where his lip piercing used to be. He’s not wearing a shirt. His body is a tight braid of muscle and there’s a tattoo etched onto his chest that I’ve never seen — an eagle, screaming, its talons outstretched, like it’s about to snatch up his nipple. It’s not something I would have ever pictured on Jack’s skin, but then again, I don’t really know Jack anymore, do I?
When his eyes find mine, I give him a look to ask, Is it done? and he nods. I slide out of bed and go downstairs.
In the kitchen, Patrick Bloom straightens up from where he was crouched over the zucchini that remained on the table, wilting.
“Sorry, I overslept,” I say.
Patrick Bloom’s eyes land on something behind me. Jack has followed me. Patrick Bloom gives Jack a smirk, like he is pleased for him. He assumes that we fucked.
“I’m Phil,” Jack says, reaching out for a shake. Dread sinks in, heavy as a stone. I don’t know if he’s lying to save himself or to create a convincing story, but if the body is discovered, I will be the only identifiable person.
Patrick Bloom is the kind of guy who takes a hand that’s offered to him. He tells us he has to hop in the shower. He has a conference in downtown Berkeley that afternoon.