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— How can I expect such a stupid girl to understand what I’ve endured? You tell me how alone you are, how much you hunger for life, yet every day you talk to people, you fill your belly, you taste life.
— Everything’s relative.
— You could have more life with me than you can possibly imagine.
— Don’t go there! You tricked me. You made me feel things.
— Oh! Now you’re going to pretend you feel nothing for me? That I put those feelings into your head? All I did was unlock a door you never realized existed. I’ve seen how you look at me.
She melted up from the chokecherry, a paring of a woman seeming no thicker than onionskin, drifting toward me on the breeze — she touched her gauzy breasts, caressed almost imperceptible hips and thighs. A firefly danced behind her forehead, hovered for an instant in one eye.
— I see you looking now, she said.
Frightened, I backed away from her until my shoulders touched the wall of the shack.
— I’ve been patient with you, she said. I could be patient forever and it wouldn’t do any good.
— The Djadadjii, I said. Do they feel hotter than normal people?
Her face emptied.
— I met this guy, I said. He’s new in town. Super good-looking, but a retard. He can barely talk and his skin feels like an oven door. Sound familiar?
I’d meant to warn her about Joh
— First thing out of his mouth was he liked the way I smelled, I said. Think he smelled you on me?
— Lou. Elle. You have to help me!
— What can I do? Bring you five people? I doubt there’s time.
Fear sharpened her indistinct features. She looked this way and that, agitated, searching for an out.
— Maybe I could do with four, she said. Four might be sufficient.
I realized then what a danger she was to me, and I bolted for the fallen oak, vaulted over it, landing among the hyacinths at the edge of the water.
— Louie!
— Four? You been drilling it into me ever since we met how you needed five.
— You don’t understand!
— Of course I don’t. I’m such a stupid girl. I must be really fucking stupid to trust you. Maybe it’s only three people you need. Two plus me.
We were slightly more than an arm’s length apart, but it might have been in different countries.
— Don’t leave, Sandrine said. Without you I’ll die.
I slogged a few paces through the water, the leathery hyacinth roots snagging my ankles.
— I can explain!
I kept going.
— I’ll show you things, she said. Incredible things. I’ll tell you my secrets. I should have been open from the start, but I thought I’d lose you. I’ll never keep anything from you again.
I clambered onto shore.
— You’re taking my heart!
I slipped on something slick and sat down hard.
— Whore! she screamed. You filthy, disgusting whore! Go ahead! All you are is flabby tits and stinking blood! Touching you makes me sick! You hear? I feel like puking when I’m near you! Do you know what you smell like?
She told me. In detail. I could hear her screaming corrosive insults long after I entered the brush, and perhaps I heard them even after I had gone beyond the range of her voice.
I tracked down Joh
We reached Sandrine’s, and he climbed eagerly over the toppled oak. I waited in the river, mud oozing between my toes. The moon was so bright the blue sky was almost a day color. I felt it shining inside me, generating hatred, a cooler emotion directed at her, at all things. Hyacinths with foot-high purplish blooms bobbled against my knees. Joh
Joh
— The Djadadjii are cool to the touch, she said. But you knew he wasn’t Djadadj, didn’t you? At the least you suspected.
I had nothing to say.
— Not this month, she said. But next month, the month after. soon we’ll be together.
She lowered her head and drank again, just a sip, and then said, I’m not angry with you. You needed a push, so I pushed you. If he had turned out be Djadadj, well. life is risk. It was only a tiny risk, though.
She closed her eyes and arched her neck, sated and languorous. On her hip a speckle of mud like a beauty mark. She stroked Joh
— He’s beautiful, though. Beautiful enough to be Djadadj.
She rested her cheek against his, her lips parted, baring the tips of her crimson fangs — a scene from one of my mind movies brought to life.
— Go home now, she said. Come again tomorrow night. or wait a month. It’s no matter. Go home and think about what you must do.
When I turned from the tableau of the shack and the two figures lying in the grass and mud, it was as if I’d never seen the river and the sky before — they were so vast and unfamiliar, they almost flattened me.
— Good night, Elle, said Sandrine.
My father’s a battered gray suitcase. He left me with no photographs, no scars, no good-byes, no promises, no postcards, no phone calls on my birthday, no memories whatsoever; but he did leave me that suitcase. To my mind he might as well be a battered old thing whose last name is Samsonite. I lay the suitcase open on the bed and begin stuffing everything I own into it. As I cross back and forth between the closet and the bed, I catch glimpses of myself in the mirror. I see Louie, small-time and ordinary, a bright, slutty girl, still hopeful, soul somewhat in hock to a regulation Sunday school dream, with a nice enough face and body to make it happen. And I see Elle, spooky and hot to trot, with her hungry mouth and Xed-out eyes and reckless ways. She strikes me as a fraud, though I can’t say why. I avoid staring at the reflection, not wanting to see which one will become dominant, disliking both equally.
I latch the suitcase and picture myself working with Everett in the parts store — it seems I already know how that story ends, and it’s the same with every other story I imagine. I realize there are better stories out there, ones with happier endings, but I have no idea how to go about achieving those fantasies of wealth and fame. Chandler Mason could tell me, probably, but look where she wound up.