I didn’t wake up until late afternoon. I sat at the window overlooking the street. A dog who lived by the roadside gnawed on some garbage, and the neighbor girl sat on her stoop talking with her girlfriends, occasionally calling to her kid inside watching TV. I opened a beer. I felt peaceful, dampened by alcohol and drugs, and less alone after the night with Audrey.
I slept again and woke early the next morning, energy surging through me. I went for a long run, sweating as soon as I stepped outside. A night rain had washed the city and it gleamed in May’s sun and sharp shadows. The mornings were a few degrees cooler, but the dew hadn’t burned off yet, leaving the air dense and wet. Mallards with their iridescent necks dotted the pond. I couldn’t see any of the little dark ducks, the ones I liked. I guessed they were still tucked in their nests. I kept going.
I did five miles, barely noticing—I never felt like stopping. I crossed Main near the roundabout and had to sprint to avoid a car. At the other side I fell into a rhythm, a phrase repeating in my head. Danielle is dead Danielle is dead Danielle is dead. I couldn’t understand the transformation from beautiful Danielle to that bloody mess in the motel room. Somebody did that to her, and now he was out driving around, eating sandwiches or whatever. She must have met someone there at the motel. A john. Or maybe Anthony or one of those porn guys, models or whatever they called themselves. She’d walked into that room, thinking she was safe. Maybe it was random—wrong place, wrong time.
Danielle and I used to play mermaids in the pool, a game she’d made up as a kid, long before I knew her. You had to swim with your legs together as though you had a tail, and try to be sexy. Not much of a game, really, just something silly to do if we were bored. She used to surprise me like that. One minute working out a plan to score drugs, or talking shit about some poor kid at school, and a minute later she’d say, “Let’s play mermaids!” Excited and sincere as an eight-year-old girl.
Light poured through the leaves over the shady path surrounding Rice University, yellowing and weakening the green. I passed a few people on the trail. Usually I smiled at the other joggers, acknowledging the folly of running in ninety-degree weather. Now I couldn’t meet their eyes. I picked up speed until I didn’t have the breath to cry. I got off the path and turned into the street, where people would be safely in their air-conditioned cars and houses. I ran, pure speed and rhythm: Danielle-is-dead-Danielle-is-dead.
I fantasized about a sip of water, and I wanted it so bad it blocked out all my other thoughts. I headed home, in a state of consuming thirst, aware of an ache in my left heel. At home I didn’t drink at first because I feared when the thirst disappeared that I would, too. I lay on the floor to let my body cool down, listening to my heartbeat.
I drank some water and tidied each room, scrubbed and dried the kitchen floor. I sorted my dirty laundry by color and pulled out the clothes that needed to be hand-washed. I cleaned the sink and filled it with Woolite and water, let the pieces soak. I relaxed seeing my clean apartment draped in drying lingerie, sweaters, and skirts. I showered and dressed, put on makeup—I had a way of doing it where I didn’t have to see my whole face—one eye, then the other, cheekbones, lips. I looked like my mother and I couldn’t deal with that today.
I had this impulse to be around the people who knew Danielle. They were the only ones who could understand what this was like. I called Audrey but she didn’t pick up, so I looked up the address of Houston Mediasource, where Brandon worked. Its offices were in a big old house on a cul-de-sac under the downtown spur of 59. I realized I’d passed by it a million times and never realized what it was. I drove there and parked in the lot, a yard that had been asphalted over. Dandelions and grasses struggled through its many cracks. Dirt blossomed over the white stucco, and dusky blue paint peeled from the window frames. I stepped into a tiny room containing a large desk and shelves with a mess of coiled wires. The place showed its dust and age. A girl sat behind the desk, untangling some cables. I told her I was there to see Brandon Young.
She led me into the living room, which had been carved into offices. The tiny space had kept the original ceiling, high above us. It was like standing in an elevator or a deep well. We walked through a hallway, a kitchen, a breezeway that had been added to join the house to a double-wide trailer. I knocked on the open door. Brandon glanced up from his computer screen.
“Hi,” I said. “We met—”
“Charlotte. I remember.” His eyes were red.
“Could we talk?” I asked. “If you’re not busy?”
He shrugged and gestured to a chair in front of his desk. The furniture looked like it had come from a surplus store. Light from the windows emphasized the plasticky walls, the clutter everywhere. A broken staple glinted in the industrial carpet. Brandon slumped behind his desk, a pen in one hand.
“This place isn’t quite what I expected,” I said.
“Everyone says that,” he said. “People think it will be a slick studio.” He patted the desk in front of him, in apology or consolation. “What are you doing here?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I wanted—I wanted to talk to somebody who knew her.”
“Yeah. I know what you mean.”
“I can’t believe she’s dead.”
He rubbed one hand over his face. The phone on his desk rang. He stared like he didn’t recognize it. We listened to it ring and then stop ringing. He said, “I need a fucking drink. You can come if you want.”
We caravanned to the Spanish Flower and parked our cars side by side. He took a booth and we ordered frozen margaritas. A black-haired girl wearing a flamenco costume dropped off our basket of chips.
I said, “That fight at the icehouse—that was dramatic.”
“Anthony. Jesus. Not my best moment.”
“It was perfect, actually. He was being a dick.”
“I bruised my hand.” He showed me his knuckles, swollen and healing a greenish-blue. “I had to make him shut the fuck up. He’s got no sense of decorum.”
“Didn’t he work for you?”
“Not after that. Those guys are dispensable.”
We both winced at the word. I thought, That’s two he’ll have to replace. Our drinks came. He fiddled with his straw, threw it on the table, and gulped a third of his glass.
“Do people at your job know you make pornography?” I asked.
“I don’t think so. Even if they did, I think most of them would be okay with it. I’ve been there a long time, and they’re fairly open-minded. They’re artists, or they think they are. And they respect me. They’re very supportive of my other films.”
“What are your films like?” I asked.
“Experimental. Like collages. I’m working on one now that incorporates audio from drivers’ ed instructional videos and images from video games, plus a bunch of macro footage of an ant farm that I shot last year. It’s close to being done.”
“Cool,” I said.
“I’ve had films in a few festivals. And Mediasource is great—I get to use their equipment. Plus I believe in community television. A lot of it’s crap, but it’s an important vehicle of expression for students and young filmmakers.”
“I wish I had something like that,” I said. “Art, or something I cared about.”
“What do you do?” he said.
“I’m a barista,” I said. “Impressive, right?”
“Nothing wrong with that,” he said.
“I guess. I might go back to school, I don’t know. I should try to save up and take some classes.”
“The porn is how I’m paying off my student loans. That’s why I got into it. Not a lot of money in experimental film. Or community television.”
“What’s it like, making porn?”
“It’s easy. Anybody can build a website. And it’s fun. Mostly.”
“Mostly?”
“Well, the people aren’t always the most stable group, emotionally. Or, like, showing up for work. Personalities to deal with, egos, drugs, shit like that.”
“How did Danielle deal with being around drugs? I got the impression she avoided all that.”
“It didn’t bother her. She smoked weed a little. She never did meth, like some of them did. I had to make a rule, no meth on set or you’re fired. It’s tough for them—I understand it, why they want to get high. But when they’re spun they act like a bunch of three-year-olds. Complaining, demanding attention. Danielle had a sense of humor about it. You have to, basically, to stay in it for long.”
“Could any of those guys have hurt Danielle?”
“I’ve thought about it and thought about it. I don’t think so. They’re pussies, when it comes down to it. They never tried to stand up to her. I mean, she was so confident, and sweet. They respected her. I have no idea who could’ve killed her.”
“Even if they were cranked up? Even Anthony?”
“It’s hard to imagine . . . any of it. I keep thinking she’ll walk through the door.”
I looked towards the door. It was easy to imagine her there, her hair shining, a smirk on her face. Brandon picked a cold tortilla chip from the basket and dropped it. It broke in half on top of the other chips and settled in, camouflaged among its brothers and sisters.
“You know,” I said, “I hung out with her one time in the last two years. Two days later, she was dead.”
“Jesus.”
“I keep thinking it’s my fault, somehow. I know that doesn’t make sense.”
“Well, did you kill her?”
“No. Of course not.”
“There you go, then.”
“How long were y’all together?” I asked.
“About four months. But it’s not like she was my girlfriend. We fucked. Everybody fucks everybody.”
“She liked you,” I said.
“Yeah? What’d she say?”
“That you’re a good guy. You’re talented. She told me you’re going to be big, you’re going to make real movies.”
“She said that?”
He leaned forward, eager for this little piece of information. I nodded. Tiny details became so important when nothing else was left.
“It’s crazy,” he said. “One day she was there, and the next day, cops are everywhere, her makeup’s still all over the bathroom like she’s coming home any second, they’re telling me she’s . . .”
He stopped speaking, let his sentence collapse.
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s impossible to get a handle on it.”
“I miss her,” he said. “But that’s not the worst. How she died—it’s horrible.”
“Let’s get another round,” I said. I signaled to the waitress.
“Can I ask you a question?” he said. “Are the cops talking to you?”
“That detective did,” I said. “Ash.”
“They keep coming to my house and the office, and calling me. They think I fucking killed her. They keep asking me, where was I, had we fought, they keep talking about old shit.”
“Like what?”
“This bar fight I got into a long time ago. I was twenty-two. It was dumb. Some fratty assholes were picking on this kid, this friend of mine. I threw a punch and the police showed up. One of the dudes had a knife and they arrested everyone.”
I thought of the other punch, that I had witnessed. He caught my look.
“I have a temper,” he said. “I admit it. But I’ve never hit a woman. I could never hurt Danielle.”
I sipped my drink, keeping my eyes on him.
“Do you believe me?” he said.
“Yeah.”
He smiled at me and I smiled back. His sorrow gave me an odd sense of comfort, and it felt good to be there, drinking.
“You and Audrey been hanging out?” he said.
“Only once, the other night. I met her before, with Danielle.”
“They were best friends. The three of us hung around together a lot. They were great to work with, too. Their videos are popular.”
“I like Audrey,” I said.
“Yeah, Audrey’s okay. I like her, too. I don’t think she’ll stick around, though. I mean the guys were douchey to her, you saw it. Except when Danielle was there. Now . . . it will be different now.”
“Everything is different now,” I said.
“I keep remembering random things. One night I stayed late to finish a project at work, and I didn’t get home until nine o’clock. She’d ordered a pizza for me. She kept it hot in the oven. Shit like that, that’s nice. Most people, you get to know them, no matter how normal or cool they come off at first, underneath they’re needy, or crazy, or delusional. D, she was always smiling, doing her nails, whatever. You could trust her.”
“That’s great to hear. She really was doing okay, wasn’t she?”
“Yeah. She didn’t talk to me much about her past. I had the sense things were bad.”
“It was bad. I mean, she was still Danielle, she could make everything seem fun, and like you were the most amazing person. But with the drugs, she was angry a lot, and she didn’t really care about anybody. She was just kind of checked out all the time, didn’t pay attention to anything. It sucked. I’m so glad she got clean.”
“I just can’t imagine her like that,” Brandon said.
“You’re lucky you got to spend time with her when you did,” I said. “Maybe you saw her at her best. I never had the chance to get to know her again.”
Brandon reached out his hand, the bruised one, and rubbed the sweat from his glass across my knuckles. At his touch, tears came to my eyes. He slid out of the booth and sat next to me. I leaned against him, and he held me. He looked tired, his forehead marked by fine wrinkles, like pencil lines that had been erased. We sipped our margaritas, huddled together, stunned by grief.
“What time is it?” he said.
“Seven,” I said, glancing at my phone.
“Fucking happy hour’s over,” he said. “Let’s go to my place.” He rose and tossed a bill on the table, downed the rest of his drink standing up.
He lived six blocks away, on the other side of Main, in a neighborhood of bungalows across from a park. The dog walkers were out, still dressed for the office, carrying plastic bags of poop. I parked my car behind his on the street. He had the whole place to himself, a two-bedroom, cute, painted blue. The arched front door led into a living room/dining room decorated with a combination of Ikea and thrift-store furniture.
“Sit down,” he said. “Be right back.”
He walked past the large table to the kitchen and returned with his arms full: a bong, a ceramic plate, and two glasses filled with ice and vodka.
He sat beside me and reached under the coffee table for a box. He rummaged through its contents and laid out a pill bottle, a razor blade, a straw, and a tiny bag of white powder.
“What is that?” I said.
“Special K,” he said. “Ever done it?”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
He opened the pill bottle, full of buds, and loaded the bong. He pushed it in front of me. I fished a lighter from my pocket.
“Since Danielle died, I can’t be sober,” he said.
“I know what you mean,” I said.
I tucked my hair behind my ears and leaned over the bong. I had to use my hand to seal the wide opening. Brandon smashed the powder on the plate and formed lines. The high built gently as my body began to sense itself. The room grew cozy. I kicked off my shoes and sat cross-legged on the couch, facing him while he smoked.
“Do you ever get tired of sex?” I asked. “Filming it all day?”
“Are you kidding?” he said. “Never. I think about it all the fucking time.”
I laughed. “What was she like, in bed?”
“Playful. Sweet.”
“Like how?”
“When we fucked, she smiled at me, touched my face. Like there was no one she’d rather be with.”
I nodded. I knew that, how she could make you feel that way.
“It was nice,” he said, “but she was always removed from it. She never let go, never got naked. That’s not what I like the best. I like sex to be . . . desperate. To fuck . . .”
“Like it matters,” I said. “Like you have to.”
“Yeah. She never had that. I mean, we were friends, we weren’t in love. What sucks is we had a fight.”
“What, you and Danielle?”
“Yeah, the night she died. If I had known that was it, I would never—I should have stayed out of her business.”
“What did you fight about?
“The inheritance. It was after she met with her mother. Her mom wanted to buy the land—”
“What land?”
“You know, her inheritance.”
“I figured it was money. Or antiques maybe. Sally never said anything to me about it.”
“No, there was an acreage. Danielle got one parcel of it and her mom got the rest. Her mom offered her three hundred grand. And Danielle wouldn’t sell.”
“Wow. I had no idea.”
My body flashed hot and cold, leaving goose bumps on my arms. How could Sally not have told me? It made no sense. Brandon was still talking and I tried to concentrate.
“I thought Danielle was nuts,” he said. “I mean, three hundred thousand dollars, can you imagine? She said I didn’t get it. Her mom was the most selfish person in the world, she could never trust her.”
“What else did she say?”
“That her mom used money to get whatever she wanted. Danielle refused to be bought. But with that much money she could buy a house, go to school, whatever. She could have financed my business, we could have expanded, made some serious cash. She wouldn’t listen to me. She was mad. I told her what I thought—I didn’t know it was that big a deal. We never argued before, not once. She yelled at me for half an hour, then she packed a bag of clothes and left. I figured she’d call and apologize.”
“Then she went to the motel?”
“Yeah. I guess. She must have. I never saw her again.”
I could see why the cops kept questioning him. But they should be talking to Sally, not him.
“You look pale,” he said. “Smoke some more.”
He reloaded the bong and lit it for me. I inhaled the smoke and held it.
“She was so upset,” Brandon said. “I wish I’d stayed out of it.”
He took a ragged breath and wept quietly, trembling, baring the depth of his heartache, his exhaustion. At my touch he clung to me, and for a second I hated Danielle for dying and hurting everyone, making everyone sad.
“Charlotte,” he said. “Thanks for being here with me.”
“Of course,” I said. “It makes me feel better, too.”
He straightened, but left his knee touching mine. The connection between us grew like the slow filling of a pitcher, a simple promise I knew would be kept. I quit thinking about Sally and Danielle and thought about his leg against mine, and how he needed me. We hit the bong again, though I was already high. He busied himself with the white powder on the plate and snorted half.
“Try this,” he said. “It’s not a lot. It won’t send you into a hole, it just takes you away a little.”
The white grains stood out on the red plate, like a flag of some fucked-up country. He stroked my hair while I snorted the K. He touched the straps of my tank top, the hem of my skirt. There was a cavalier quality about it that thrilled me. His fingers moved from the fabric to my skin, and I felt such gratitude and warmth. I would do what he wanted, I didn’t care what.
“You’re beautiful,” he said.
Not like her, I thought. Nonetheless I liked his words and his hands on me. I made a decision then to let her in, to let her live inside me. I’d let in the dead, her and my mom; they could have me. I’d empty myself to make room. As soon as I had the thought it started happening. My self evaporated. In our kiss he bit me hard, and my body twitched, and they were right there, all the people I’d never see again. He tightened his grip on my thigh and leaned over me. My legs parted as he kissed my cheek, my neck, my lips. I smelled an odd, chemical odor about him. I held him to me. He sucked the air out of my lungs and I was glad; I didn’t need it anymore. I needed room.
“God, I miss her,” he mumbled.
He was doing it, too: channeling the dead. I understood and the understanding flew between us every place we touched.
Simultaneously I felt curious, analytical and without agency. I waited to see what would happen. Maybe it was the drugs, making me separate from my body, or the presence of Danielle inside me, in both of us, or maybe it was his cock, thick and hard and curved at the tip, the way he gained confidence, shed his grief as he entered me, turned me over and fucked me from behind, yanking my hair, holding me with his arm around my neck, pumping steadily, filling me and pulling out and filling me again. I came three times from fucking, and my body disappeared. I could see it on the end of his cock, a separate thing, pulsing like a severed lizard’s tail—disposable, controlled by a distant electricity. I think for a while I stopped breathing. Pieces of him ended up under my nails.
I can’t remember when it stopped or even if he came. At some point I was in the car, driving, having to learn again how to control my limbs to steer and brake and accelerate. I attached no emotion to any of these processes. Everything still seemed inconsequential and also fine.