She giggles again. “Sure. I throw a mean stone.” I don’t even know what this means
I walk past her, headed toward the ’frige to grab some bottled water. She catches me by the arm and tugs me close to her. I’m still as one of her hands twists around my nape and pulls my face down close to hers. I’m ready to kiss her. Ready to fuck her. Instead she pulls me even closer and I feel her lips press gently on my forehead.
It’s fucking weird, the way it makes me feel. Just…warm in my chest, like someone poured hot water into me.
She looks into my eyes. I must be frowning because she frowns a little, too, then smiles and ruffles my hair. “Don’t be so uptight. I just wanted to kiss you. No strings.” She pushes me gently away and holds up three fingers. “I swear.”
“I know.” I give her a small smile and grab the water from the refrigerator, and by the time I’ve turned around the weirdness of the moment has passed. She grabs an apple out of the paper sack, and I grab the other one, and we leave the sack in the kitchen and head out the front door. I have a memory of walking out of the house with Riker when we were children, armed with bed linen and kitchen utensils. I guess my brain is dredging up strange shit because of Suri’s presence in my house. I usually don’t let women stay, or even fuck them in my cottage. That’s what my room in the main house is— was for.
As we walk toward the pond, she asks, “What are you thinking?”
I shrug. “About the new building.”
It’s out there in front of us, and the construction crew is already moving this morning. Their big machines beep and buzz as they resurrect the building.
“What about it?” she asks.
“I used to have a room there. Like, my personal room.”
“That’s cool.”
“I mean for sex.”
“Okay—still cool, for you, I guess.” She gives me an unreadable look.
“I was just wondering if I’m going to rebuild it.”
“Are you?”
“I don’t know.”
We walk a little more, and it’s fucking weird, because I kind of want her to tell me not to. Instead she says, “Did you ever imagine this place would be so successful?”
We sit on some stones by the pond and I tell her about my first few years as a brothel owner, how I started with the Strip location but wanted something more exclusive, something less stereotypical and more high-end. I tell her about how I met each of the girls—and guys. I tell her about the first escorts who worked for me, about the brothel manager who embezzled almost a million dollars from me when I was still green and didn’t know to keep a sharp eye on my managers. I even tell her about how my cheesy, framed “first dollar” burned. And she listens. I can tell she listens, and she doesn’t judge me even though she’s not a fan of sex-for-pay.
About that time Juniper walks by, wearing a black sports bra and hot pink leopard printed tights. She’s holding hand weights with little snoopy pictures on the sides. We both laugh.
“Hello,” she calls.
“Hello.” I smile and Suri waves.
“Whatever works,” I say as Juniper passes.
“You know…” Suri sits her apple core on a stone beside her, “when Lizzy said people here were like family, and I scoffed at her. But it seems to be true.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Are we converting you?”
“Maybe,” she says coyly—but she can’t keep the grin off her face. She trails her bare foot over the water’s edge and looks around. “Who designed your maze?”
“I did actually.”
“Really.” I nod. “I’m impressed.”
I stand up and offer her a hand, which she takes after sliding her sandal back on. I pull her up. “Want to go?”
“Maze walking?” She smiles a little. “I got lost there the other night.”
I’m still holding onto her hand. I tuck it closer to me. “If we get lost this time, it’ll be because we want to.”
We start off over the plush grass, toward the maze, and after a few steps I can tell something is wrong. Our earlier banter and easy conversation is gone. Suri is quiet; her face looks tight, and her hand in mine is still and almost stiff.
I can’t think straight knowing something’s bothering her, so I give in. “What’s wrong?” I ask.
She glances up at me from underneath her long eyelashes. “I was just thinking of before the fire. I was planning on going back to California the next morning.”
“Oh yeah?”
She nods. “One of the reasons was you.”
My chest aches. I guess because she takes me off guard. “It was?”
She nods.
I’ve still got her hand. Impulsively, I squeeze it. She squeezes back, proving—as if I needed proof—she’s the kindest, most perfect woman alive. Regret spills through me, dark and messy. “I was an asshole, right? When was it? At the hospital in El Paso?” Everything from around that time is hazy—probably due more to the mania than the ECT that followed—but I definitely remember pressing her against the wall of a hallway. I don’t know what I said, but I remember discharging my anger.
I feel ashamed, now.
She doesn’t look at me as we step into the maze. Now that we’re surrounded by walls of ruthlessly manicured bushes all around us, I fantasize about lying her down face-first on the little pale pebbles, lifting up her skirt and having her here, under the afternoon sky, but the fantasy loses a considerable amount of appeal when I see the tension tugging at her mouth.
I decide in a heartbeat that I want to give her something. Not the truth—that would cost me too much—but something close to it. I want to get as close as I can to honesty with her. I’m not sure why, but I want to.
I squeeze her hand once more and take the plunge: “You know…you’re the only one who knows about my…problem. Besides Rachelle,” I say. “And she only knows because they called her. From the…facility.”
She looks up at me, wide-eyed, and I push my chicken-shit self forward. “I’ve been this way since college,” I say slowly. And I’m not sure how to follow-up that particular confession without lying big time or telling her what really happened. But I open my mouth and find that words roll out. They’re quiet words—hard words. Maybe it’s her soft, cool fingers, stroking the back of my hand that makes them easier to say.
“We had a memorial ceremony for my parents on a Sunday. It was spring break Sunday. They died the first Sunday of Spring Break, and this was the last—the day before school started back. My little sister Riker was only twelve. My dad’s parents had her. They’re the ones who ended up rearing her.” I feel a lumpy knot in my throat, because Riker had wanted to live with me—but I couldn’t. “I couldn’t take her because…” I shake my head and look ahead, at the bush-framed path that turns left in a few more steps.
“I couldn’t take her because I was…unfit,” I confess. From this point on, I fix my eyes on the path ahead.
“It happened for the first time when I was flying back to school. From Santa Monica to New Orleans. I just…fucking snapped. My parents weren’t perfect, but they had always been there.” Mom had bouts of mania and also depression, but it was mostly managed, and she and dad had always seemed like they loved each other, and us. “And then one day, I get a call at the frat house—fucking kitchen phone; we had been playing whiffle ball—and some fucking stranger tells me they’re gone. Their plane went down in the Ecuadorian Andes. My mom was flying. She crashed into a mountain.”
I tug in a deep breath and shock myself by hoarsely adding, “She was bipolar.”
21
MARCHANT
Shit.
I look down at Beauty, and she’s nodding gently. She doesn’t look shocked or disgusted, so that’s good. If anything, her face is softer.