Promise of Safekeeping : A Novel (9781101553954) (30 page)

Eula nodded, her face resolute.

Lauren squeezed her arm gently; then—because she thought Eula could understand her, could know more than anyone else what it felt like to have messed up—she hugged her.

For a long moment, Eula hugged her back. “I’ll think about it,” she said.

  *  *  *  

Will’s attic—what was left of it—was so crammed with stuff and junk and things that to make his way through it was to do a kind of spelunking. He’d had to wedge open the door with his body to get inside, because the swing of it was blocked, and now he climbed carefully through the dark and dusty space with a flashlight. At midday, the attic was as dark as something out of a nightmare—ragged-edged shadows, dolls with missing hair and eyes, stacks of books like brick chimneys, clothes and shoes he hadn’t been able to throw away. All of the unique things that he’d collected over the years had, at some point, stopped being unique at all and become instead one large mass. He made his way as best he could to the far end of the attic, half thinking that he should be wearing a hard hat, half thinking that he could get stuck here if the great walls of clutter ever tumbled. He could picture the headline:
MAN TRAPPED IN OWN ATTIC FOR DAYS.

As far as he knew, Lauren had no idea of his problem, despite her ability to see things that others could not. He’d been nervous to bring her to his house last week, when she’d hurt her hand. He’d worried that she might have discovered him. His ex-girlfriends—if he could call them that—became restless when he wouldn’t show them the upper floors of his home. They had asked him, playfully, where he was keeping the bodies. They hinted about crazy wives locked in the attic. They told him:
I want the Grand Tour
.

But not Lauren. She’d seemed content to stay with him on the first floor only. When he was feeling paranoid, he thought the reason that she hadn’t asked to look around was because she
knew
. And then he thought of how liberating it would be if she did find out by accident. He fantasized for a moment about the way she would look at him and the relief he would feel. He supposed the line between paranoia and fantasy could be thin, deceptively thin.

With the flashlight beam going before him, he moved through the bulk of the attic, picking his way over half-remembered finds. He righted a toy boat with a moth-eaten sail, leaning it against a crate. Despite the damage, he guessed it would be worth a lot some day. The monkey with the cymbals; that too, someone would love to collect. The longer he could hold on to these things, the more money they would be worth. And the more they ate him alive.

Finally, he climbed to the farthest end of the attic away from the stairs. Under the pointed roof, a single square window let in a trickle of choked light, so that the space felt like some perverse monastic’s refuge. He cleared a spot to sit down on the dusty floor. He could trace his years in this house, almost six years now, on a timeline of junk. The newest accumulations were in one of the second-floor bedrooms. But here in the back corner of the attic,
this
was where it all began. He’d put a box here, a plastic container there. At the time he’d thought:
Just until I clean out the barn.

It seemed almost funny now.

He sat feeling small and swallowed up by the piles of things: a beat-up Monopoly board, a box of fishing lures, a basket, a single geode bookend, a lamp, a couple of two-by-fours. These things that kept him grounded also weighed him down. He thought perhaps if he had a
reason
to dig himself out, to find the superhuman courage that it would take to begin dismantling his compulsion to hoard, he might be able to get free. Maybe if he had a chance at a normal life, he could drum up the focus and drive to not only tread water, but to swim.

Lauren might have been that temptation. That lure. He might have used the possibility of a future with her as a target; if he could change, maybe they would have a chance. But since she was going back to her life in Albany whether he fixed himself or not, there was no goal line to run toward. Not now, anyway.

He picked up a bag of marbles; they caught the light of his
flashlight and glowed in swirls of blue, red, and green. He sometimes felt like he was a prisoner with mortar and trowel, building, brick by brick, his own jail. He tested the weight of the bag in his hand. Then tested himself. Could he do it? Could he throw this thing away? This, and all the others?

The desire was there, but the will was missing.

He sat among his things, listening for what they had to tell him, waiting for them to speak.

Lauren had meant to wait until dark. She could picture herself showing up at Will’s house, standing under the porch light, the Virginia hills falling into shadow behind her, the cows in the fields having wandered in for the night.

But now that she’d made the decision to leave Richmond, the hours were so thin and stretched that she did not have the luxury of waiting to make a dramatic entrance under the curtain of dark. She reached Will’s house by eight o’clock in the evening, when the sun still was shining bright and golden. Not the time for a romantic liaison at all. But it was what she had.

Her heart was beating hard when Will opened the door. Her skin felt hot.

“Lauren?”

“Hi, Will. Um . . . 
surprise
?” she said, though the word sounded like a question.

A smile tugged the corners of his lips, and Lauren knew he wasn’t shocked to see her. She’d texted him earlier to ask where he was. She supposed she was predictable—of course she would show up after what had happened in his office today. And yet, even if he’d expected her, he didn’t welcome her in.

She pulled herself up straighter. She’d only half prepared herself
for the possibility that he might reject her. She should have thought about it more, to lessen the potential sting.

“I have to tell you something,” she said.

He leaned against the doorjamb and smiled, friendly enough. But he didn’t move aside. “Shoot.”

“I’m leaving.”

“Now?”

“Tomorrow.”

He regarded her long and hard, his arms crossed over his chest. He was wearing a cotton T-shirt and black workout shorts. His feet were bare. “Come in,” he said, less welcoming than resigned.

He turned sideways and she walked past him. The scent of juniper was in his cologne. His chest, turned in the doorway, seemed wide as a gate, and already she was second-guessing. He was cagey and suspicious. She wondered if there was a chance that he didn’t want her after all, that she’d read their interlude in the antiques shop all wrong. Maybe what he’d done to her had been nothing more than a minor and temporary kink. As she made her way into the kitchen, she resisted the urge to flee right back out the door she’d just walked through. She thought:
I shouldn’t be here.

In the kitchen, Will leaned the small of his back against the center island; she stayed a few feet away.

“I thought you weren’t leaving until you talked to Arlen,” he said.

“That was the plan. But I think, at this point, it’s probably safe to say he won’t see me. I mean, it’s been a week. And if I don’t get back to Albany, I’m going to lose an important opportunity,” she said, and she heard in her own voice the inflections of her father and her boss.

“Sure. I understand. You wanna get back to work.”

“I have to,” she said.

“You don’t
have
to do anything.”

“No,” she said. “I do.”

He was quiet. He made no move to come toward her. And while she hadn’t ripped her clothes from her body or thrown herself at his feet, they both knew why she was there. She was certain they’d been on the same page—and yet, Will was making this difficult for her. All this
talking
. She’d always been good about saying what she wanted, but now she found herself in an uncertain and unusual place—one in which speaking her intentions did not mean she would get what she wanted. She was bargaining from a position of weakness—and she was sure her body language said as much.

“I think I should go,” she said. She adjusted her purse a little high on her shoulder, but didn’t move to leave.

Now Will pushed off the counter so he no longer leaned, his hips directly over his feet. “You came all the way out here to tell me that you’re leaving? That’s it?”

“It seems so.”

“You could have called,” he said.

She clenched her teeth. She had the sense he was stringing her along, dragging things out unnecessarily—but she didn’t know why. “I thought I needed to say good-bye in person.”

“That’s all you want?” he asked. “That’s all you came here for? To say good-bye?”

She lifted her head with as much pride as she could summon, but it was all bluster. Her legs were shaky and her head felt light. “No. That’s not all.”

He walked toward her. “Lauren . . . 

She lifted a hand, felt the flatness of his chest, the pumping of his heart. She closed her eyes, awash with need and unexpected gladness to feel his heartbeat so steady and strong. Some ancient cultures believed that emotions, thoughts, decisions . . . all of them
resided not behind the eyes, but behind the breastbone. Today, she could almost understand.

When she opened her eyes again, Will was looking down at her with desire so fierce it was both thrilling and frightening. “I’m leaving tomorrow,” she said.

“Yes.” He took her hand from his chest, kissed the back of it so firmly it felt less like a kiss than a pact. “You want to stay the night.”

“Yes.”

“Then you just . . . go?”

“Do you see any other way?”

His eyes were focused hard on her, a smokier gray green than before. She held her breath, saw that he was weighing his options. She trembled to be kept waiting. She hated that he made her wait.

The moment he decided, his eyes darkened. His breath filled up his lungs. “One thing at a time,” he said. And he kissed her.

The evening was long and drawn out, as summer evenings in Richmond could be long and drawn out, so that when the sunset finally came it was like the colors of the sky were being sucked down the horizon like water down a drain. Heat lightning flashed silently in the distance, though no one noticed, and all of Richmond turned lazy under the summer sky. Even the birds seemed to fly more slowly, less like darts than smears.

In Carytown, the owner of a sub shop watched the evening fall, longing for his wife’s curry and thinking of why the fellow who’d just ordered a sandwich from him was so familiar. He and Arlen, whose name he did not know, shot the breeze like they’d been talking their whole lives. And when Arlen said,
So long
, the man thought he seemed nice enough and asked him to flip the sign on the door to
CLOSED
.

His belly full, Arlen made his way down the street, where the buildings were blunt silhouettes. He counted blessings: shoes, food, health, sky. He made his way to the church for a meeting, where bright lights glowed behind stained glass, and a group of ex-cons and former junkies had gathered with metal folding chairs. He was going to tell everyone about losing his job, but he would keep his near run-in with Eula to himself. He cleared his throat and sat down.

Towns away, Eula had no notion of who was thinking about her or who was not. She was on her couch, watching a movie. A bowl of cool popcorn was just out of arm’s reach. Her feet were on Mitch’s lap, and he was rubbing them, and she was not thinking about the movie on the screen at all, but instead was thinking,
I should ask Mitch what to do about Arlen.
But she knew that would be wrong.

Day merged into night, light flowing into darkness with fluid grace. Maisie got a text message from Lauren. She picked up her phone from the coffee table.
I won’t be home tonight
, the text read. And Maisie thought,
Good for you.

Mostly, Richmond was quiet. The last of the sunlight slipped away with no more fanfare than a lullaby. Traffic on side streets waned and the moon showed through the haze of dusk. Students laughed in doorways or walked to bars, mothers coaxed their babies to sleep, and, one by one, the people of the city gave themselves over to the shadows, expecting that tomorrow they could finish what they hadn’t finished today.

In the darkness of Will’s bedroom, Lauren learned things she did not know. She learned that Will had a taste for expensive sheets, sheets that tangled around her ankles like the ocean’s foam. She learned the scars of his arms, the heat and power of his body’s
secret places. She learned the play of shadows along his back as he reached away from her toward the drawer in his nightstand. She learned of his generosity, and also of his greed. And somewhere around midnight, she learned that he would not let her discreetly put on her clothes and head home, that he would make love to her a dozen more times, if it meant she was too worn-out to leave before dawn.

At times, the night was a rush of minutes, a loosened dam, gusty and strong. But it was also the soft fall of moonlight, the glaze of silver on bare skin, an oasis where Lauren could drink her fill, fearlessly, though the night was wild. She learned that Will was exactly what she thought he’d be, that her head fit perfectly in the crook of his shoulder, that the way he looked her in the eye as his hips rocked against hers was an intimacy—startling in its demand and naked insistence—she’d never known before. And what she learned about herself was that she had not learned enough about him to satisfy her, not at all.

Sometime in the night Will woke. Lauren lay beside him, her hair falling onto his pillow in soft knots. He pulled her closer, and in her sleep she moaned slightly, reached for him. He kissed her head, thought:
Whatever tomorrow brings will have been worth it.
Then, because he loved the night so much and did not want it to end, he lay down closer to her and slept again.