HILL HOUSE

by Lexi Pandell

Berkeley Hills

I arrive at the hill house and pull out my phone to double-check the address. A droplet of sweat clings to the tip of my nose and I blow it off. It splashes on the screen, just missing the jagged crack across the front.

It's the right place.

Patrick Bloom's house is smaller than I'd expected, only two stories high. But when I peer through a gap in the massive wooden fence, I can tell that it's nice—one of those Berkeley homes with old bones, scaled all over in brown shingles. This whole street is stacked with unassuming multimillion-dollar houses.

I lock my bike to a No Parking sign and try to catch my breath. When I moved back to Berkeley from New York, everyone told me I should get a bike. Unfortunately for me, I'd forgotten why I never biked when I was growing up here. Worse than the shitty drivers are the hills, like the one up to this house. I had to get off my bike after nearly keeling over backward.

October has brought its unseasonal, and unfortunately named, Indian-summer heat. While my friends back east are bundling up for autumn, I'm wearing a tank top featuring the leering Cal mascot, Oski, and my dark hair is twirled in a bun, and I'm still pouring sweat. The wet strap of my duffel bag bites into my shoulder.

I unlatch the gate and walk through a garden to get to the front door. Tomatoes on tangles of vines, plumes of herbs, beans racing along trellises like string lights, fireworks of green leaves belonging to carrots, kale, lettuce, beets. There's even a raised bed with corn—who the fuck grows corn at home?

Patrick Bloom, I guess.

I knock, willing my stomach to untie itself from its knot. After a moment, Patrick Bloom, the world's most renowned health writer, opens the door and looks out, not in an unfriendly way, just a little blank, until he sees my shirt and bag and realizes that I am the grad student there to house-sit.

"Mariana?"

I nod and he lets me in. It's the kind of house designed to feel like a home. I'd seen it featured in a magazine before. In addition to Patrick Bloom's writing, his wife designed book covers, a few of them famous. Their home has long been the subject of public interest.

Patrick Bloom shows me how to work the oven, where to find the bathroom, how to access the deck with a view of San Francisco. His famous mop of curly white hair is even bigger in person; a thin spot burrowed at the back of his head makes it look a little like a halo.

Patrick Bloom stands for something that intrigues me. Cleanliness. Health. Wholesomeness. The idea that your life can be better if you eat quinoa and listen to your body and walk more. Not that his work isn't based on science, just that the resulting advice is so simple and smart that you hate yourself for not thinking of it first. I devoured all of his books while I was living in New York, bartending and filing the odd music review for an alt-weekly. I applied to journalism school at Cal, where Patrick Bloom is a professor, with the assumption that I wouldn't get in. When I showed up for the new student tour, the admissions officer flashed a crocodile smile and told me that she thought my essay was excellent. I don't remember what I wrote, though I do know that I mentioned Patrick Bloom.

Patrick Bloom's assistant is a second-year student named Eloise. She's blond and so skinny that the bones of her knees show through her jeans. She snacks on baby carrots and hummus while she uses the school computers to plow through research for Patrick Bloom's upcoming book. She must use the printers ten times as much as any other student. She delivers his reading material in hard copy. Hulking scientific studies, long articles, entire e-books.

There are only a handful of teaching assistants in our program. Most of them, well, teach. But Eloise is entirely dedicated to Patrick Bloom. The university covers her tuition. That's how much he's worth to them.

Eloise was handpicked by the TA before her and someday she, too, will pass the torch. It's competitive—rumor has it that a recommendation from Patrick Bloom will snag you a job at any top magazine. Eloise was the one who suggested my house-sitting for Patrick Bloom when she was called away for her grandfather's funeral in Connecticut.

"Is that something you do a lot?" I asked. "House-sitting?"

"Yeah, but it's not weird. And his house is amazing. So it's, like, fun."

Patrick Bloom leads me upstairs. Photos of him and his wife posing with various celebrities, feminine touches in a throw pillow here or a watercolor painting there. We walk past his children's rooms. Nautical theme for the boy, with model ships lining his windowsill. The girl's is painted ballet-shoe pink.

It looks like a family of four still lives here, but his children are off at college and his wife died three years ago. I know this because he wrote an award-winning memoir about cooking for her as she was dying. She designed the book cover as her last major piece. I thought it was kind of ugly and maudlin, if I'm being honest, but the writing was some of his best.

We pass a room with a big wooden door. His study. The door is locked. He doesn't have to tell me that it's off-limits.

I think he's going to show me to a guest room, but instead he leads me to the master bedroom.

"This is where you'll stay."

I drop my duffel. The walls are painted brown and there are wide windows with no blinds. It's like the mouth of a cave.

"A little unconventional, I know," he says. "The design of the room is based on scientific research on the optimal sleeping environment. I'm writing about it in my next book."

He doesn't seem to think it's odd that I just smile and nod at everything he says. I'm a terrible journalism student—I don't ask nearly enough questions.

Downstairs, he drums the refrigerator with his fingers and tells me to eat anything I like, he doesn't mind. He shows me back out to the garden and tells me to harvest.

"Whatever you don't pick will go bad." He considers a zucchini, small but plump. He yanks it from the vine. "It will rot. Especially in this heat . . ."

A car pulls up out front and honks lightly. Patrick Bloom dashes inside for his luggage. He can't possibly be leaving already, I barely know anything about his home. But, indeed, he is. He shakes my hand and thanks me. His skin is still sticky from the zucchini.

"If anything comes up, my number is on the fridge," he tells me.

And then he is gone.

I go inside. The zucchini remains on the table where he left it. I pick it up and sniff. It smells green. I hate zucchini. I put it down and retrace my steps from the tour, exploring for a second time at my own pace. I realize I'm holding my breath. No one is here monitoring me. I don't know why I'm afraid.

I go to the bathroom and see a flash of highlighter-bright urine in the bowl. Jesus. I flush the toilet before sitting down. A rack of magazines flank the toilet. Food, lifestyle, travel. Do all rich people keep their magazines in the bathroom? Has he ever run out of toilet paper and had to rip off a page to use on his ass?

It's nearly dinnertime and the sun streaming through the windows turns orange. I only brought two things to eat—a jar of peanut butter and a box of granola bars. I had planned to bike to the grocery store. I'm grateful I can eat his food. Fuck dealing with that hill again. Plus, how many people can say they've eaten something from Patrick Bloom's garden?

I text a photo of it to my brother Jack. We are not related by blood, but we grew up together and I'm an only child, so he's the closest thing to a sibling I have.

Got any tips about picking this stuff? I write.

I know zilch about gardening, but Jack does, in a way.

When Jack was fifteen and I was eleven, my mom found pressed pills in his backpack. He told me they weren't for him, just something he was selling. I don't know what explanation he gave my mom, but it wasn't good enough. She went ballistic. The next day, we woke up and Jack was gone.

Two weeks later, a farm worker visiting family in Oakland saw the poster with Jack's face and called us with a tip. We drove an hour and a half to Gilroy, where we found Jack kneeling in a strawberry field. He had grown tan enough that, with his bandanna and hoodie, he fit in with the dozens of scrawny Mexican guys out there. The biggest difference was that, while they wore steel-toed work boots, he had on his scuffed-up Doc Martens.

The car ride back to Berkeley started out quiet. Even from the backseat, I could see that his hands were dirty and blistered.

"You stink," my mom said finally. It was true. A cloud of stench, sweet and earthy.

"If you're not going to let me make money my way," Jack said, "I'll make it another way."

"I don't give a fuck about what you do on the street, you're not my kid. But don't bring that shit into my home. I find anything else and you're out."

After that, Jack took odd jobs doing yard work for frat houses and rich professors near campus, though I'm fairly certain he kept dealing on the side.

Now in Patrick Bloom's garden with the late-day sun beating on my bare shoulders, I stare at my phone. I know Jack isn't going to respond to my text, but I wait for a few minutes anyway.

I guess I'll have to do it myself.

I pull a cucumber off the vine, pluck some late-season tomatoes, and rip a head of lettuce from the ground.

In the kitchen, I find some knives. Japanese. Very sharp. I cut open the cucumber to discover that it's disgusting. Pulpy and warm. The lettuce is okay, though I find dead winged insects lining the crotch of the leaves. I wash it five times. I slice into the tomatoes but miscalculate and catch the end of my finger. It spurts. Shit. I wrap it in a paper towel and then wipe the little droplets of blood from the cutting board.

It's not until I'm eating the salad that I taste the metallic tang of the blood I missed. The cutting board I used is made of a porous wood and, by the time I rinse it after dinner, it's stained.

It seems atmospheric to read Patrick Bloom's books at his house during my first night there, and he has copies on the bookshelf with uncracked spines. I take a couple to the living room and flip to my favorite sections. A preface about foraging for mushrooms in the wilds of Humboldt County. A chapter about our genetic similarities to flies. A passage that compares Gatorade with the sugar water left out for hummingbirds.

Normally, I read his books and feel excited about the possibility of language and how bizarre the world is. Tonight, it just exhausts me.

It's stuffy in here. It feels like my insides are stewing. I fight to keep my eyes open. The words swim on the page. I need to sleep.

I go upstairs and lie down on Patrick Bloom's bed, but I can't drift off. This room gives me the creeps. It's the kind of room where someone would go to die, dark and primitive.

Every time I roll over, I catch my reflection in the shadeless windows and my heart jumps, certain that I'm seeing a ghost. I almost pass out, but the howl of a distant Amtrak jolts me awake.

It is shockingly, terribly hot. I jump out of bed and rattle the windows, but there's no way to open them. There are no fans, either. I swing the door open, praying for circulation.

I pluck my iPhone off the bedside table. No response from Jack. Not that I've gotten one from him in months, but still. Nighttime is Jack's time. My mom always hounded him about staying up until three, four, five in the morning and then sleeping all day long.

If he'll ever respond, it's now.

My mom met Jack's dad, Dez, when I was four and she was a freshman at Cal. She had recently returned to school after my birth derailed her life; Dez managed a Top Dog. When Dez replaced my spot in my mother's bed, I moved to a cot in the living room. Jack slept on the couch. We weren't supposed to have more than two people in the apartment, but nobody ratted on us. Our neighbors had all kinds of things they weren't supposed to. Pets, drugs, massage businesses, subletters.

Jack was twice my age and a mystery to me even then. He had a sullen, boyish beauty. At night, if I turned over toward the couch and opened my eyes, I'd usually find him awake and staring back. I began to think of Jack as nocturnal; something other than human.

Just before finals week of her junior year, a crushed-lilac bruise appeared around my mother's eye. She made Dez pack his bags while she was off in some lecture hall filling in the bubbles on a Scantron. She ended up getting an A.

After that, I moved back into the bedroom with her. Jack stayed on our couch and Dez sent money every month. What kind of guy dumps his kid with an ex like that? A guy like Dez. He wasn't a junkie or a criminal, just the world's biggest asshole. Still, in turn, my mom cared for Jack. In turn, Jack cared for me.

When a girl pushed me down on the playground, he followed her after school, shoved her against the wall, and said that if she ever touched his little sister again he'd break her arm. He walked between me and the homeless folks we passed on the street; when they hassled us, he covered my ears and cussed them out. He always shared his candy, panicked if I ate it too quickly, watched me chew as if he were afraid I might choke. He stole pretty things for me—origami paper, hot-pink erasers, stickers.

My mother ignored the ways Jack grew stranger and darker. As a teenager, he came home with a lip pierced in the school bathroom with a safety pin and tiny, squiggly shapes pricked into his skin by a friend's shaky hand using a sewing needle dipped in pen ink. But that was the Bush era, a time for Bay Area teens to go to punk shows and rage against The Man. Besides, I may have called Jack my brother, but my mom never called him her son. Her responsibility to him, as she saw it, was to make sure he survived to adulthood, no more and no less.

I hadn't heard anything from Jack for more than a decade when I got a call from my mom in March.

Jack had gotten in touch to tell her he was back in Berkeley. He gave her a phone number, which she read to me.

"I have nothing to say to him," I snapped. But I still remembered the number long after I hung up. Memory works in funny ways.

When the acceptance letter came for journalism school, I said yes, even though I'd never wanted to move back to Berkeley and even though it felt too much like following in my mother's footsteps. This was different. It was grad school. Patrick Bloom was an instructor there. And I had applied before I knew Jack was back.

I hadn't made my decision for him.

But I had called him the first week of classes.

"Jack?" I said after he picked up. When the line went dead, I was certain that it was him.

I've been texting him since, but I haven't heard a thing.

I roll over to face the ceiling. I angle my phone toward my face and it lights up. Spots flood my vision. No wonder I can't sleep when this shit is so bright.

The house I'm watching is cool, you should swing by, I type. And then I add the address. Not that he'd ever come. Not that I'm certain I'd want him to, anyway.

I leave my iPhone faceup, but it does not illuminate with a message that night. I don't fall asleep until sunrise.

* * *

I wake in the afternoon. In the master bath, I examine the deodorant-crusted stains ringing the pits of my shirt. I peel it off, put it in a pile for the laundry. After my shower, I can't find the bath towels, so I wipe Patrick Bloom's skinny hand towel and tiny square of a face towel all over my body. I feel like a cat rubbing itself on things to leave its mark.

I bring my laptop to the patio. I'm supposed to take notes on an episode of a podcast for my radio class. My whole body hurts from the lack of sleep and, though the podcast is supposed to be some great feat of audio editing, it can't hold my attention. My head keeps drooping.

When my laptop dies, I realize I forgot to bring a charger. Of course.

Biking all the way home for a stupid charger sounds awful. I could go upstairs to Patrick Bloom's study. He might have a charger there. But I already bled all over his cutting board; I don't need to make things worse by breaking into his study. I'd inevitably fuck something up. Accidentally set off an alarm or knock over some priceless heirloom—I don't know what kind of delicate, precious things someone like Patrick Bloom would have in there.

Forget the computer, I'm only here for two more days. I'll consider it a digital detox.

I want to be having more fun in Patrick Bloom's home than I am. I get the joint I brought and take it outside to smoke on the deck. I hope his neighbors don't complain about the smell. No one cares about pot in Berkeley, but I don't know if the rules are different in the hills. These are the hippies who sold out, not the hippies who became crackheads and now line the streets just a few miles away.

I take a long rip.

I was thirteen when I first smoked. We lived in a two-bedroom apartment by then—my mother and I still shared a room, which we split down the middle with a folding wooden divider. Jack had his own room, barely bigger than a closet. It was so small that when he and I sat on the carpet beside his bed, leaning against the comforter that smelled like Old Spice and boy body, the toes of my checkered Vans touched the door.

"I want you to smoke with me," he said. I snorted like it was a joke, but he looked me square in the eyes. "I don't want you doing it for the first time with some randos."

I watched how the light flickered off his face as he took the first hit. I tried to match his stoicism, the length of his inhale, the way his finger flickered over the carb. My throat screamed, but I didn't dare cough.

When the bowl was cashed, Jack put a mixed CD in his Discman and leaned close to share his headphones. His bloodshot eyes half-closed. He tongued his lip piercing, wheeling that little metal hoop around and around. I wanted to be closer to him. I wanted, I thought with a flash that scared me, to lick the curve of skin just above the chain he wore around his neck.

A song came on and Jack pulled the jewel case from under his bed. The track names were handwritten in Sharpie. The one we were listening to was called "Sister Jack."

"It's you," he said with a stoner's laugh. He patted my knee and the inside of my leg went electric.

I grip the banister of Patrick Bloom's patio until the worn wood starts to splinter. I blow a cloud of smoke and imagine it conjuring Jack. Why do I still think of him as part of my life? He's nothing more than a shadow.

The weed has hit me and I'm starving. I go back to the garden and snap off a head of corn. A grub pokes out from the folds of husk. I pluck it out and stomp it underfoot. Inside, I sauté the corn in a thick pat of butter.

I've smoked enough to tranquilize a horse, but the second my head touches Patrick Bloom's pillow, I find that, once again, I cannot sleep.

If I move around, maybe my exhaustion will catch up with me.

I put on my sneakers and leave the house for a walk through the neighborhood. My heart races faster as I make my way up and down the lurching hills. The dark-windowed houses loom overhead and the quiet is punctuated by bursts of sound. A dog barking as I pass, a motorcycle backfiring somewhere high on the twisted roads. I wonder what I'd look like to someone watching from inside one of these beautiful houses. A hoodlum from the flatlands, no doubt.

I turn onto a road where the sidewalk narrows to a sliver. I hear an engine rumble and then a car careens around a blind curve, flying toward me so quickly that I think I'm going to die. The car jerks to swerve around me, the side-view mirror close enough that I could reach out and touch it. I forget to breathe until the streak of rear lights disappears into the night.

* * *

It's my last day. I need to keep it together.

I try working on a hard-copy editing test in the garden under the slanted shade of the house, but my brain is out to sea. Flies dive-bomb the caverns of my ears. I swat them away and one of them tumbles into the mug of expensive coffee I made in Patrick Bloom's kitchen. I could fish it out but, instead, I watch it struggle at the surface until its last twitch.

I need to go inside, it's too hot. Might as well grab something to eat first.

I think of Eloise as I go to the carrot bed and try gently tugging on one of the tops. The ground looks soft, but the carrot doesn't budge. I reach my hand into the dirt and feel around for something firm. When I do, I grab it. As I pull my hand up, the soil spews worms with translucent skin. I can see the blackness of their guts.

I yank my hand away. It's crawling with bugs. I drop the carrot, leap back, and beat the insects from my arm. Ants are trapped in the beads of my sweat, their little legs flailing. One fat-bodied ant digs its mouth into the not-yet-healed cut on my index finger, its mandible pinching into my raw flesh so firmly that its whole body stands on end. I squash it with my thumb.

The carrot I picked is short and fat. It looks too pale. I've lost my appetite for it anyhow. I shove it back in the ground, even though I'm sure I've killed it.

I go inside and shower in water so hot that I leave more sweaty than clean.

I'm walking upstairs when I see the study. I think of finding a charger. Using my laptop would help pass the time. I could get work done. Or just bum around on Facebook.

The study is locked, though that doesn't necessarily mean I can't get in.

I shouldn't go in.

I want to, though. I really, really want to. It is, in fact, the only thing that I want to do. My laptop is part of it but, to be honest, I mostly want to know what it's like in there.

Isn't that a perk of house-sitting? Peeking into someone's life?

I run my hands over the smooth wood and examine the lock. Easy. I pull a bobby pin from my hair and wedge it into the keyhole. A trick Jack showed me when we were kids. I wriggle it around until I feel a click, a give, and the lock comes undone.

Sun streams through the windows, illuminating two tall file cabinets. A towering desktop computer sits alongside a bundle of extra laptop chargers. I set my computer on the desk and plug it in.

It'll take awhile to reboot. I figure it's okay to look around in the meantime.

Stacks of books border his desk, which is littered with pens. I come upon a pile of papers. Printouts from Eloise. There's a sticky note on top. Hope this helps, it reads. It's meant for Patrick Bloom but it feels like it's for me—if there's a chance I'll become this guy's assistant next year, I should see what I'd actually have to do.

It looks like original writing, not articles or studies. Printed in Times New Roman, twelve-point font with a smattering of grammatical errors.

Something like an essay.

It's . . . an assignment? A class assignment?

It's a chapter.

That can't be right. Patrick Bloom would never have a grad student write something for him. I must be mistaken. I open a file cabinet. There are entire drawers dedicated to different books. First, Man Eat Food. A bunch of papers have headers that say, Winnie Ford. I pull out my phone and look her up on LinkedIn. Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, class of 2002. Currently a senior editor for the lifestyle magazine that did the shoot of Patrick Bloom's home.

I look through Microgreen.

Gardening in Eden.

Truth, Lies, and Celery.

WalkFit.

All of them have traces of the assistants who ghostwrote them. Cover pages with their names. Hand-scrawled marginalia. Last-minute swipes of Wite-Out.

I brace myself and then look through the one for Mother, Wife, Mine, Gone. It takes me an hour of searching through every paper in that pile, but I find it. My favorite line rendered in a student's handwriting: She took her last breath, jagged and true. She was there. And then she was gone.

He even had them write the book about his dead wife.

I manage to put the papers back in the files, the files in the cabinet, and I lock the door from the inside on my way out.

I need to go to sleep. Now. That is the only way I'll get through my last evening in this house. I head downstairs to hunt for something that will seriously fuck me up. I haul myself onto the kitchen counter and search through the highest shelf to find what I'm looking for. A bottle of gin. I take it down, fill a cup, and top off the bottle with tap water.

I plunk a handful of ice cubes into my glass and drink it like it's medicine. I'm out of weed, but this guy has to have something fun. I rifle through the bathroom. Ibuprofen, acid reflux meds, a box of Tums. Aha, there it is. A prescription bottle with the label torn off. The pills inside are white and round. They look like Ativan, though I'm not totally sure. Fuck it, let's find out. I down two with a gulp of gin.

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.

Jack curls a finger around the hair that falls between my shoulder blades. It's the touch of someone playing at lover; I have to force myself not to flinch.

I wait for Patrick Bloom to finish talking before I rush to collect my things. When I go to wash my dishes, Patrick Bloom tells me not to bother. The housekeeper will be by later today.

He hands me two crisp hundred-dollar bills and thanks me. I sling my duffel bag over my shoulder, unlock my bike, walk Jack to the car he parked down the street. We do not say anything. He just gives me a half hug, gets in his car, and then he's gone.

It's much easier to bike home now that I'm heading downhill.

* * *

Months pass and I keep expecting something to happen. For Patrick Bloom to tell me that he found something in the dirt, worms coiled among bones. For the cops to bang down my door. For my life to be destroyed. But nothing does. Jack disappears again. For good, I think. I try calling, but his line has been disconnected. Eloise must have heard about my supposed boyfriend showing up at Patrick Bloom's house, because she picks another student to be her successor and every time she sees me on campus, she glares. I finish my first year of grad school. I return to New York City over the summer for an internship. I don't come back.