The Fading Page 21

  Took him a while to decipher the meaning of her words. She was talking about his other blanket. The very thing that, like a get-rich-quick scheme, had ruined them.

  ‘Uhn-uh,’ he murmured in protest. Didn’t she know by now? He didn’t want the shroud to come back, not really. He wanted only her. His girl. A normal life and her love. ‘Don’t leave.’ He used every ounce of his facial muscles to will his eyes open. ‘Stay with me.’

  The blanket slid away and the cool air drifted over him. The mattress flexed again as she rose. He thought she was leaving him until she leaned over, talking quietly into his ear.

  I can help you get it back, she said. You can have those things, those things you want so much. You can have anything you want. You can have me. I want to feel you again, to have you when you’re in the void. I want to feel you inside me, Noel. Touching me. Filling me up until I can’t stand it. All of that and our lives back.

  The cool air and his body sliding against the sheets were like skin, waking his nerves before his mind could catch up. His cock slipped against the sheets and his heart thudded through the fog of alcohol and now, at last, he was awake. He rolled over, sure that she was within arm’s reach, but his fingers found only air, a pillow, the empty side of the bed where she had slept.

  He sat up, nearly trembling with desire and hope. ‘Julie …’

  But she wasn’t in the room. The bedroom door was open. The hall light was on. He sighed. She must have gone into the living room or kitchen.

  He slid from the bed, taking a few seconds to gain his balance, and smelled the body smell of his own person. His t-shirt was half soaked through with sweat, even though the guest house was almost as cool as the air outside. They never bothered to turn the heat on, he’d stopped paying the bill during the warmer months, and he hadn’t noticed until now how chilly it was in the middle of the night.

  Below the shirt he wore only a pair of loose boxer shorts, the right leg of which was constraining an erection of the sort he hadn’t known since that night in the desert, the first time he had laid down with her and she had given him everything, her hands, her body, her eyes, her love. His hands moving up her back. The way the twin heart-shaped curves of her ass had moved as she turned and looked back, eyes never leaving his, and showed him how to find the way in from behind, hip flesh and the backs of her thighs pale in the moonlight, cold all over except for her center where there was only heat, the uncannily wet depth fitting around him at once tighter and more easily than he had ever imagined. Julie locked against him, both of them coming in clenched waves while the desert cold bristled at his back …

  Jesus Christ, stop, stop. What was he doing here, now, zoning out on sex beside the bed in the middle of the night? His hand had helped itself down into his underwear and he was clutching himself almost painfully. Where was she? She’d come in for him just a minute ago, what was she doing in the kitchen at this hour? He readjusted everything under his waistband and kicked around the floor until he found his jeans, pulled them on, buttoned his fly haphazardly and went to down the hall.

  ‘Julie?’

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘Babe? Where’d you go, Jules?’

  The kitchen and living room were one main area, separated only by a small length of coffee tile countertop and pass-through cupboards. Julie was not in either space. The living room was dark but the kitchen light was on. Had he left it on? He remembered turning on the light above the stove, depressing the metal peg next to the plastic switch for the ventilation fan. But the ceiling light was on now, and he was pretty sure he hadn’t turned it on. Had he?

  No, he’d read her note, then taken his tequila out onto the patio. Between then and his short trek back to the bedroom, he’d stopped only to urinate and drink a glass of water before slumping down and rolling the blanket over half his body.

  Of course he might have forgotten turning the light on, drunk as he had been (and still was, to be honest, but now less dizzily and more dumbfounded).

  Another fun fact: the sliding glass door to the patio was open. Had he left it this way? He had no memory of closing it. Maybe she had gone outside.

  He hurried through the kitchen, bashing his elbow on the countertop’s raised molding at the turn. Whatever was the opposite of the funny bone, that’s what he’d hit, sending a deep bolt of pain down to his hand. The pain became a rage. He wanted to find a hammer and smash the ever-loving shit out of the countertops, the windows, the doors, destroy the guest house in a six-hour act of manual labor. Instead he cursed, rubbed the sore area for a moment, stepped out onto the patio.

  He almost called her name again, but something about leaving the safety of his familiar living space (it wasn’t anything like a real home) and being exposed by the night stopped him short. What if it hadn’t been Julie at all but an intruder? And now you’ve followed them into the yard.

  Except this wasn’t true, because he’d felt her in the bedroom. She had spoken to him, whispering in his ear.

  You can have anything you want. I want to feel you inside me, Noel. Touching me. Filling me up until I can’t stand it. All of that and our lives back.

  The concrete under his bare feet felt frozen. The hair on his arms stood up and was ruffled by the slight breeze coasting across the desert, winding its way through the subdivision and in broken tendrils that seemed to poke and steal away rather than arriving in a single broadsided gust. He was shivering, no longer mentally aroused at all but worried – for her and for himself. Oddly, though, he was still aroused, at least physically. Stupid robot dick. His jeans were buttoned crookedly and the pressure against the front seam bordered on painful.

  ‘Stop it,’ he mumbled to himself.

  This whole thing was a drunken escapade of the imagination, a near wet dream that hadn’t reached its conclusion. What a pathetic shit he’d become. Did he really think Julie had come back for him, hours after she had left him a goodbye note? She was probably pulling into her mother’s driveway right—

  He saw her. Julie was there, walking up the path toward the main house. She wasn’t much more than a shadow of skirt and jacket and her long, blacker than night hair, but it was her. He knew her shape, her walk. He watched her in stunned curiosity for a few seconds as she continued on the path winding through the imported palms, wanting to call out to her or follow, but a kind of regressive shyness made him hesitate. She had, in a way, dumped him. He couldn’t take any further rejection.

  Julie stopped and looked back at him. He caught a glimpse of her white moonlit face as she raised a hand and waved for him to follow. Then she continued toward the slain producer’s house, and Noel obeyed her wishes.

  26

  As Noel’s bare feet moved across the packed dirt and bristly dead grass of the yard stretching up to the main house, he wondered why Julie wanted him to follow her there. What had she discovered? Did she think they could move into the larger abandoned residence? He did not see her reach the back deck or slip inside, but another light was on now, in what was probably the kitchen or a living room.

  He tried to recall the producer’s family name, as if this still mattered. He had known it at one time, after Nora the realtor had informed them of the tragedy. Later, he’d joked about them with Julie, in the way people will joke about something awful next door if only to diffuse the discomfort. Bindle? Baskins, like the ice cream? Something with a B, that also went with a joke about body bags. See any new body bags today, Jules? Do you think the baggies would mind if we had a campfire in the backyard tonight? Bagley. That was it.

  Moments later the sliding door opened and a woman who was not Julie spoke up, her voice bright and clear in the otherwise silent suburb.

  ‘Hi, there? Is that Noel?’

  ‘Oh, hey. Yeah, that’d be me.’ A wall of disappointment stopped him on the first step up to the deck. What the hell? Julie had some friend here? Some new tenant she had gotten cozy with? The woman wasn’t much more than a head and shoulders leaning out the door and the yard l
ight was either not working or there wasn’t one, so he couldn’t make out much except for the outline of her hair and a button-up blouse. He felt let down and like a creep. ‘I was following Julie.’

  ‘I’m Lucy. Lucy Sapperstein. I guess Nora and Julie didn’t warn you.’

  ‘Don’t think so. What about?’

  ‘That I moved in.’

  ‘No. Julie didn’t mention … is she staying here or what’s the deal?’

  ‘She was on her way out but changed her mind. We’ve been up having some much needed girl talk.’ Lucy pushed the sliding door open wider and the dining room light added some detail from behind. ‘I’ve been moving stuff around, trying to get settled and, well, come in, come in. It’s cold out tonight. I’m having tea. Peppermint. Helps me wind down, you know?’

  ‘Okay,’ Noel said, thinking, that’s nice but where the hell is my girlfriend?

  Lucy was already turning away. He crossed the deck and went inside. The house was very warm, was the first thing he noticed. Or maybe he had been cold outside.

  ‘Oh, do you mind?’ Lucy Sapperstein said from the kitchen, gesturing at the door. ‘I’m a total wimp for the cold. My heating bill’s going to be the worst in Las Vegas.’

  ‘Got it.’ Noel closed the sliding door. He glanced at the living room and saw piles of moving boxes, some unopened, others overflowing with sweaters, dresses, the neck and head of a lamp shaped like a sunflower. But no sign of Julie.

  ‘I don’t think this stove works too well.’ Lucy was staring down at a yellow kettle over the heating coil, holding a hand over the lid to check for steam. ‘Be just another minute.’

  ‘No problem.’

  Noel took a spot in the corner of the kitchen, giving her space. It was a large kitchen with huge squares of clay tile, a center island with a butcher-block top, high-end appliances. Lucy looked like the average business woman as Noel understood the role. Cream silk blouse tucked into a navy skirt, white stockings, her thick brown hair pinned up in a sensible but not unattractive cinnamon roll at the back, but loose and sagging, as if the entire works were about to unspool. Wholesome, fit, a little bouncy, making him think of an aerobics instructor or someone otherwise prone to vigorous movement. He guessed she was somewhere between thirty-five and forty-five. Instead of heels or loafers she had on a pair of scruffy pink running shoes, unlaced, the silver tongues standing upright.

  ‘You must be a night owl like me,’ she said, moving to an open cupboard where she had some recently unloaded basic foodstuffs: a box of saltines, jar of peanut butter, a new bottle of generic ketchup. She went back to another box, hovered over it indecisively, and sighed.

  ‘Tonight, anyway. Do you work late?’

  ‘I can’t stand all these boxes lying around. I’m probably obsessive compulsive or something. I have to unpack right now, you know?’

  ‘I guess the sooner it feels like home, the better,’ Noel said. ‘I didn’t know the house had been sold.’

  ‘I wish I could afford it. Just renting, so don’t worry. I’m not allowed to raise your rent.’ Lucy smiled, staring at him intently.

  Noel nodded. ‘So, did Julie come back or did I miss her on the way out or …?’

  ‘Oh, she’s probably still upstairs,’ Lucy said, as if this explained everything. ‘She was really tired.’

  ‘I barely missed her then.’

  Lucy lowered her voice and gave him a conspiratorial look. ‘She’s still upset. I told her it was probably a bad idea to leave at night. She should get a good night’s sleep and wait till morning. Clearer head, safer driving, all that, you know?’

  This was something of a relief, but not much. He wanted to see her, talk to her, not stand here with this stranger playing mother hen in the middle of the night. How much did this Lucy know about them? What had Julie told her? How much of it was about what a lousy boyfriend he had been?

  ‘That makes sense,’ Noel said. ‘I don’t want to bother her. I know things have been hard lately. If she needs a little space, I can respect that.’

  Lucy gave him an aw, aren’t you cute look. ‘Yeah, I think she needs a little time.’

  Noel did not like the sound of this, so added, ‘It’s kind of funny this happened tonight. Coming home from work I couldn’t stop thinking we have to leave now, tonight. I mean, I know she reached her wits end before me, but I think we both want the same things.’

  ‘You do?’ Lucy said.

  ‘Definitely. We’ve stayed too long as it is. I don’t care about this place.’

  ‘Really?’

  Who did this woman think she was, challenging him? ‘Yes, really, Lucy.’

  The kettle was not yet steaming. Noel did not want the stupid tea to begin with, and he really didn’t want to wait for it to reach a boil.

  Lucy puckered her lips and he saw that her lipstick, a barely noticeable pink, was smeared at one corner of her top lip, like a scythe.

  ‘Well, that’s good,’ Lucy finally answered. ‘But I’m not sure Julie knows that.’

  Noel nodded some more, his anger rising. ‘When did you two meet, anyway? Julie never mentioned you but it sounds like you’ve become real friends.’

  Lucy checked the kettle again. ‘Not long ago.’

  ‘I’m surprised I didn’t see you.’

  ‘Julie and I met when you were at work. Sorry about that, by the way. But maybe it’s for the best.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  Lucy studied the boxes. ‘Your job. At Caesars. I guess it didn’t work out, but then it wasn’t exactly fulfilling, right?’

  ‘How did you know I lost my job?’

  Lucy faced him. She blinked a few times. ‘Julie told me, of course. How else would I know?’

  Heartburn reached up into Noel’s throat. He swallowed what felt like an entire lime marinated in tequila. ‘Hate to tell you this, Lucy, but that’s not really possible.’

  Lucy tilted her head.

  ‘I got fired today. Haven’t seen Julie since, so I haven’t had time to break the news.’

  ‘Wow, that’s weird, huh?’ Lucy said. ‘How do you think she found out? I assumed you’d told her.’

  ‘I didn’t. But I think I can manage that on my own, now.’

  Lucy glanced at the stairway, which is exactly what he had been thinking of, though his eyes hadn’t gone there yet.

  He turned from the kitchen and headed into the living room. ‘Upstairs you said. Which room is she in?’

  Lucy came around the other side, blocking his path. She put her hands up in a surrender gesture. ‘Hold on, Noel.’

  He stopped and glared at her.

  ‘I’m not sure it’s a good idea for you to go up there right now.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Don’t be mad at me. I’m only abiding by her wishes. She said she didn’t want to see you yet.’

  Noel shifted from foot to foot. ‘Then why did she come wake me up?’

  ‘She woke you up?’

  ‘Yes, Lucy, she did.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Tonight, a few minutes ago. Right before she came back here?’

  Lucy looked puzzled for a moment, then nodded. ‘Right, but that’s when she said she changed her mind. She didn’t want you to follow her.’

  ‘She waved at me.’ His voice was rising and if this continued for more than another minute he would soon be shouting. ‘She wanted me to follow her, obviously. Come on, this is getting ridiculous.’

  Lucy tried to smile, to placate him, but he saw anger behind the mask. She said, ‘I don’t know what happened out there, but when she got in here, I asked if she was okay. She said no, she didn’t want to do this tonight. Please tell him I’m sleeping and don’t want to deal with it.’

  ‘She said that? Those were her exact words?’

  ‘Exact? I don’t know about exact, but she wasn’t ambivalent, Noel. She needs to rest. Wouldn’t it better if the two of you got a good night’s sleep and had this out in the morning?’

  Noel laughed
in frustration. ‘It might. But I just want to see her for a minute to make sure she’s all right. If she’s sleeping and doesn’t want to talk, I’ll leave.’

  Lucy’s eyes narrowed. He was happy to see he was pissing her off. If this woman did not get out of his way in thirty seconds, he was going to shove her aside and dash up the stairs screaming Julie’s name.

  ‘Good, then we understand each other,’ he said, and set off toward the stairs.

  ‘Wait.’ Lucy walked in front of him again and stopped, pushing her hair back, even though it was already in a bun. ‘I understand your concern, but I can’t let you go up there full of anger like this, in the middle of the night. I can’t have a scene between you two that might wake them up. I just can’t, so I’d ask you to respect that.’

  ‘Them? Who’s them?’

  Lucy reared her head back as if he had insulted her. ‘My family.’

  ‘What family?’

  ‘My husband and the kids. I might be a night owl, but they’re sleeping. They need their sleep, Noel. Julie does, too.’

  This news – the idea that he was standing in some family’s house, not some single woman’s – threw him off track. For the first time since setting foot inside, he felt like a trespasser, the asshole boyfriend sensible people rush to protect a nice young woman from.

  ‘I had the impression you were single.’

  ‘Single?’

  ‘Living here alone.’ He looked at the moving boxes. ‘You said “I”, when you were talking about moving in. Looking at the place. Earlier.’

  Lucy seemed to lose her train of thought, then abruptly turned and walked back into the kitchen to check the kettle. ‘Goddamn it, this stove never works.’

  Noel wanted to head for the stairs but the idea of her husband and kids sleeping up there gave him pause. Why would Julie want to stay with these people? How had she gotten comfortable with them so soon?

  Lucy came back into the living room. She looked at the boxes with a mixture of longing and regret. ‘I don’t suppose you want to help me? Unpack my boxes?’