The Guest, page 13
Alex had not taken the credit card, had not taken the money clip, and who would notice the fifties were gone, or the measly silver barrette, amongst all that abundance? The universe had protected Alex. Or the boy had, somehow. There was no reason to feel anxious—the fear had been transmuted, the way it often was, into excitement, the memory always dissolving until it was only the idea of fear, and when had the idea of fear ever been a convincing deterrent?
* * *
—
The water was bracing, chlorinated: no saltwater pool here. Alex dunked her head and came up dripping. She wiped her nose, wiped her mouth. The boy held on to the side and kicked his feet in a frenzy.
“Watch me,” he said. “Are you watching me?”
Another beer, ordered from the bartender, arrived in a plastic cup. Alex leaned on her elbows on the rim of the pool. By the deep end, a pair of fratty bros scanned the crowd with lizard eyes.
The sun came out from behind the clouds. It was not a bad day, here in the water, the funny weight of the boy clinging to her neck as she propelled him from one side of the pool to the other.
“I’m the baby,” Calvin said. “You’re the mom. You’re taking me away.”
“A trip. Sounds nice,” she said. “Where are we going?”
“You know. I don’t know. You’re the mom.”
“Should we go underwater?”
The boy looked equally afraid and excited.
“If you hold on tight, I can swim you under, okay? And then we’ll come right back up.”
He held his breath, a hand plugging his nose. The drag of his body weight was nice, the boy’s hair waving in the water, bubbles trailing from his lips. Fun, she thought, they were having fun, but his arms tightened around her. She swam up to the surface. The boy swallowed a gulp of air.
“Were you scared?” she said. “I had you, you were okay.”
He smiled but he was blinking too rapidly.
“Okay,” Alex announced. “Time for a break.” She lifted the boy up onto the side of the pool. “There,” she said, and squeezed a wet knee. “You sit up here and you can see everything. You’re the lookout.”
He took to this task eagerly, then quickly got bored—what danger was there to look out for? Soon, the boy was back in the pool, forgetting to be afraid. Too busy splashing around to notice when his nanny stopped by to check on him. Alex did, though, waving at the woman, trying to answer the question in the woman’s face with a reassuring smile. All was well, was the gist Alex was trying to convey, and the woman relaxed and continued back toward the beach, pulled along by her other charges.
* * *
—
Alex twisted water from her hair. Drained the plastic cup, legs stirring idly in the pool as she tracked the boy’s happy paddling. Her phone was charging out of sight. Her bag was safe, nothing to worry about in this exact moment. When her phone started working, she would text Jack, the boy from the beach. That made the most sense. But waiting until it got later was better, especially if she was angling for a place to sleep. Burn as many hours as possible here.
Another beer, she thought, why not, the day sponsored by the kindness of 223, the Spencer family subsidizing this pleasant buzz, the tribal wholesomeness of this place its own comfort.
The boy grabbed at a pool noodle that floated past.
“That’s mine,” another little boy called out, and splashed toward them in water wings and goggles, the girl in the navy one-piece trailing behind. His mother, Alex had assumed, but then Alex saw her face—she was Alex’s age, but her expression was sober and pinched.
“You can share,” the girl said.
Alex nudged Calvin. “Give him back his noodle.”
Calvin only narrowed his eyes.
The other boy splashed angrily. “It’s mine.”
Alex gentled the toy from Calvin back to the other boy.
“Sorry,” Alex said.
“It’s fine,” the girl said, “he’s supposed to share. Luca, be nice.”
The boys regarded each other warily.
“They’re friends from school,” the girl said. “Luca,” she said, nodding at the other boy. “My brother.”
“Hi, Luca,” Alex said. Luca was inscrutable behind his goggles.
“Luca has to wear wings ’cause he’s still little,” Calvin said. “But I could go in the deep end,” he said, “I touched the bottom.”
“Maybe you can share your noodle with Calvin?” the girl said.
This suggestion appeared to displease Luca.
“Sorry,” the girl said. “I’m Margaret.”
“Caroline,” Alex said. Reflexively. Simon’s daughter’s name—she was surprised she remembered it, surprised she had bothered to lie.
“Where’s Rose?” Margaret said.
Not the boy’s mother—the nanny, Alex decided quickly, the name sounding like an American replacement for a foreign one.
“Oh, on the beach,” Alex said, smiling. “I’m just visiting.”
“Cool,” Margaret said. “I know the Spencers. I used to babysit Calvin, actually. Didn’t I?”
“Sugar eats your bones,” Calvin said, cheerily.
* * *
—
The boys played together in the shallow end. Margaret sat on the pool’s edge and tapped at her phone. Alex considered asking to borrow it—Alex could check her voicemails, check her email—but the girl was wound so tight.
Margaret had tucked her hair behind her ears and it made her look poky and exposed. Alex had to restrain herself from reaching out to untuck her hair. “I like your swimsuit,” Alex said.
“Thanks,” Margaret said, and squirmed. She glanced at Alex’s beer.
“You want one?” Alex said.
“Oh, no,” Margaret said. “I’m fine.”
“I’ll get you one. My treat.”
Easy to feel magnanimous, another round on 223.
“Back for more?” The man winked as he filled another plastic cup, but it was like vaudeville, a hollow flirtation that lacked any real feeling. Alex had worked enough restaurant jobs to be familiar with this flavor of exchange.
“Hot out there,” he said. “The clouds should burn off before too long.” How many times had he already said that today? He handed over the cup.
“Two twenty-three,” he said, before she could speak.
“Right.” She went to leave a tip—but it was impossible. Unseemly, maybe, to acknowledge that being served wasn’t just the natural order of things.
Alex walked back to the pool. “Cheers,” she said, handing Margaret the beer.
“Thanks,” Margaret said. They watched the kids splash. “How do you know the Spencers?”
“My parents are friends.”
“Mm,” Margaret said. A faint rash had appeared on the girl’s collarbone, her pale skin flushing. She floated her fingers over the rash, fluttering her fingernails but straining, Alex saw, not to make actual contact.
“Where’s your place?” Margaret said.
“I mostly stay with the Spencers,” Alex said, and pretended to be absorbed in finishing the last of her drink. She made a gesture—she had no idea in what direction.
Both kids were lying on their backs on the sun-warmed tiles, chatting to each other with adult affect. Alex’s sunglasses, or George’s wife’s sunglasses, gave the scene a nice, benevolent cohesion. The frat bros were in the pool, now, fussing so you couldn’t ignore them, one boy flailing on another’s shoulders. Even this didn’t bother her. It was nice: the buzz of guests, the heat. Margaret’s shyness was endearing, in its way, how Margaret blinked as she waited for Alex to steer the conversation. Margaret was saying something about college, the internship she was starting in a week, and Alex nodded along, but thinking about the future meant thinking about the whole days that would have to pass before Simon’s party.
“I’m going to the bathroom,” Alex said. “Can you watch Calvin?”
* * *
—
A quick detour to her bag for a painkiller—like a reward, a cherry on top of the pleasant afternoon. Alex didn’t let herself think about how few pills there were left. On the way back, she ran into the bartender coming out of a side door.
“Hey, 223,” he said, pointing at her. “You need a refill?”
She considered him more closely. He was around forty, his ears sunburned, his eyes crinkling in a friendly way—a lifer, she guessed, a career bartender. What did he do in the off-season?
“Maybe,” Alex said. “But aren’t you on break?”
He checked his watch.
“For eleven more minutes.”
“Very exciting.”
He laughed. “Oh yes.”
Always interesting, this moment of possibility. She smiled at him without looking away—that was often all it took.
“You smoke?” He produced a black vape pen he twiddled between his fingers.
“I’ll have a little,” Alex said.
Alex followed him through a set of double doors. They pushed open into a back alley. Dumpsters, stacks of cardboard neatly tied with twine. The smell of fresh garbage that lingered, uncut by ocean air.
He glanced around. “Let’s actually go to my car. If you don’t mind.”
* * *
—
the car was a small hatchback with old fuzzy upholstery, a tape deck that drooled out a USB adapter. An inside-out wetsuit was folded thickly in the backseat.
“Sorry,” the man said, sweeping the passenger seat clean. He made swift work of a passel of empty water bottles, tossing them in the back.
A prism on the rearview twitched and twisted on a piece of fishing wire.
He passed her the pen. When she inhaled, the end lit up green.
“Thanks.”
“No problem,” he said, taking another hit. He offered it to her again before tucking it away in his shirt pocket.
“You live here?” Alex said.
“Not here. Like, forty minutes west. Thirty minutes without traffic.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I’m not from here either.”
Neither of them would say more about where they came from: that seemed correct.
“So you’re a guest of the Spencers,” he said, filling the silence. “Nice people.”
“I don’t actually know them,” Alex said. She hadn’t planned to say this.
He gave Alex a curious look. “You don’t, huh?”
Was he attractive? Attractive enough. She shifted her weight. She licked her lips. None of this was lost on him. He took her in with a bemused air. Like someone watching a movie they’d already seen.
Alex started to move closer to him, leaning across the bulk of the center console. What was she doing? She hadn’t wanted to kiss him, which she only realized when he tried to kiss her: she buried her face in his neck to avoid this. The finger he had pushed inside her felt good, startling and good, her swimsuit pulled to the side.
“You’re all wet,” he said. She moved against his hand. His mouth didn’t smell bad but it was too near and emanating something, some overwhelming human element. There was a bubbly mole on his left collarbone, his eyes rheumy. Up close, she saw that he was older than she’d thought. Simon’s age.
What if you spent decades like this? Serving these people? Too distressing to consider.
Alex stopped. The moment, whatever it was, was over. Alex pulled his hand away, gently. She readjusted her swimsuit.
She should get back to the boy. And anyway, she knew how this would go. And the man seemed to know, too. So it almost didn’t matter whether it happened or not.
“You okay?” he said.
Alex shrugged. When she crossed her legs, her knees hit the dash and the glove compartment knocked open.
“Fuck,” he said peaceably. He reached over to shut it, hard. “This car’s falling apart.”
“It’s a nice car.”
He laughed. “It’s not. It’s most definitely not.” He tilted his head. “Wait. Are you feeling sorry for me?”
“No. Why would I feel sorry for you?”
“Your face right now.” He smiled. It wasn’t exactly a kind smile. “I like my life, you know.”
“I didn’t say you didn’t like your life.” But probably she had thought it, some fleeting expression of pity.
“I guess your friends are waiting for you,” he said. He was nice enough to offer her an excuse.
She must have made a face.
“They’re not your friends?” he said.
“I don’t,” she said, “know any of these people.”
He seemed to think this was funny, laughing as he coughed.
“Yeah,” he said. “I don’t fucking know any of these people either.”
* * *
—
Margaret and her brother were right where Alex had left them, but the boy was nowhere in sight.
Alex’s first thought was doom, the boy at the bottom of the pool. Her chest seized up. A frantic scan of the water, the crisis already fated. Of course it would end badly, of course there would be a punishment.
But only a few seconds passed before Alex caught sight of the boy, her eyes locking on Calvin. The relief made her feel almost insane. There he was, the boy was fine.
Calvin was being shuffled along by his nanny. He squirmed in the nanny’s grasp, trying to wrench away, but the nanny corralled her charge steadily forward.
It had worked out fine, hadn’t it? Nothing bad had happened to the boy. He had been repossessed by his proper caregiver, returned to his proper place, and what had Alex done that was so wrong? Fed him ice cream, dove to the bottom of the pool with his arms tight around her neck, the afternoon a small hiccup in the days of seamless pleasure that awaited him.
* * *
—
Alex gathered her phone and charger from the still-empty dining room. Her heartbeat was a little erratic, as if the worst had actually happened. The bartender was rolling down a metal grate over the grill’s window. From this angle, in the harsh sunlight, she didn’t find him handsome at all.
She wanted to leave. But where, exactly, would she go?
Through the window, she saw Margaret walking past, her outline swimmy through the weather-eaten glass.
7
As soon as they pulled into the driveway of Margaret’s house, a woman, dressed in a very clean T-shirt, khakis, and white Keds, hurried out to meet them. She tried to take Alex’s bag from her hands.
“Oh,” Alex said, “I’m good, thank you.”
“Karen,” Margaret said, with a touch of irritation. “We’re fine.”
Karen was, Alex assumed, the helper, or the house manager, or whatever they called her as long as it wasn’t maid.
“Luca’s with Mrs. E?” Karen said, and Margaret nodded, was saying something about not feeling well, leaving early.
“Your sister’s in the movie room,” Karen said.
They followed the woman to the side entrance of the low clapboard house, black shutters framing each window and a pool dropped neatly into the grass.
“We have the same donor,” Margaret said, breezily, “so she’s my actual sister. They’re twins, her and Luca.”
The little girl was watching Finding Nemo in a wood-paneled room, all the shades drawn. She was in a swimsuit with her hands folded solemnly on her chest.
“Say hi to your sister,” Karen said, lingering in the doorway.
The girl didn’t respond. In front of her, on a tray, was a bowl of macaroni and cheese and a plate of avocado slices, quickly browning.
For a moment, Margaret and Karen stood there, eyes on the screen. Alex was watching the girl on the couch—she was picking her nose in a daze. The girl withdrew her finger, scrutinizing her findings, then, after a quick glance at Karen, wiped it along the back of the couch, out of sight.
* * *
—
Margaret’s bedroom was carpeted in lilac, the curtains lilac, too, matching the upholstered bed frame. The bedside lamps were two sizes too big, but that looked to be the prevailing taste in lamps in this house: giant lamps, on every flat surface, alongside notepads and boxes of golf pencils, tissues in rattan tissue-box covers.
“This is your room?” Alex said.
She tried to picture Margaret as a young person. Though probably Margaret was one of those kids who had never seemed young. There was a die-cut shape of a butterfly on the wall and a few books on a shelf: a series of reproductions of first editions, still in plastic.
Alex turned over a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird.
“It’s like a subscription,” Margaret said. “A Christmas gift.”
Alex sat on the bed, her phone charging on the nightstand, and Margaret sat at the desk, the desk’s surface covered by makeup organized in Lucite cases. A tentative knock on the door frame: Karen stuck her head in, the sister huddled by her legs.
“Girls? Do you want to come with?” Karen said. “We’re going to the tennis club.”
A silver cross necklace was visible around Karen’s throat.
“Nah.” Margaret barely acknowledged Karen.
“It’s the tournament,” Karen said. Her hands rested on the little girl’s shoulders. Sunscreen outlined the girl’s nostrils. The girl had the same downcast features as Margaret, as Luca—the mention of tennis made her scowl.
“We’re gonna win, hm?” Karen squeezed the girl’s shoulders.
“Have you seen my blue shirt?” Margaret said, finally looking up. “With the buttons?”
