The Guest, page 9
A girl Alex had met that first year in the city—back when Alex actually had a job, actually worked at a restaurant—told Alex that whenever she was scared, she just made herself believe that it was just a movie, whatever was happening to her. And who cared about a movie? It was all fun, wasn’t it?
The girl had stopped coming around the usual places, the parties, seemingly disappeared, though people said she had just gone back to her hometown. She had been so tall, had worn those funny round sunglasses that made her look old-fashioned, her forearms dim with dark silky hair. She told a story about when some guy she was dating had gotten pissed at her, and how she sat there at some fancy dinner while the guy yelled at her, just taking it, just letting him rip into her, and how finally she picked up her full glass of wine and dumped it on the floor of the restaurant.
Now Alex couldn’t remember the girl’s name.
Alex blinked up at the sky, mostly obscured by trees, though the clouds had blown off. She made herself close her eyes. She realized she was still straining to hear a sound, waiting for some disturbance. But everything was quiet, even the ocean too far to register.
5
Judging by the sun, it was close to noon.
Alex had been up early: a tremendous noise had startled her awake, panic flooding her system. Alex’s hand went up frantically to cover her face, the other one reaching out to protect—who?
It took another second to understand the noise was just a deer, the sudden animal apparition crashing through the trees. The deer didn’t seem to notice Alex at all, didn’t care about a girl sitting alone on the ground.
Now Alex was walking along the shoulder of the highway, just until she saw a street she knew, though she could feel a few drivers craning to look at her, the whole thing too exposing, too unusual. No one else was walking anywhere—not on the highway, anyway. Only the occasional bicyclist passed her: men sheathed in toy-colored spandex who pedaled recumbent cycles with grim focus.
Alex kept walking, the temperature pleasant enough, at least for now, and then she heard it. Someone calling her name.
“Alex?”
The voice was coming from somewhere behind her. Her pulse was racing—Dom? Simon? She forced herself not to turn around, to keep moving forward.
“Alex, hey!”
A white car slowed in the lane alongside where she was walking, then pulled onto the shoulder ahead of her, its hazard lights blinking.
And now a man was getting out of the car, waving at Alex. She didn’t recognize the car, but as he got closer, she recognized the man—she’d forgotten his name but she knew his face. George’s house manager. George was one of Simon’s collector friends. She and Simon had gone to dinner at George’s house the first week they’d been out here, an endless dinner where seemingly no one had fun, up until the very last minute, when everyone fell over themselves exclaiming how much fun the evening had been, so fun that they had to do it again very soon.
“I was driving the other way,” the man was saying to Alex, “and I thought that was you, so I turned around. Is everything okay?”
He was young, in his thirties, and handsome in a boring, professional way, dressed in his button-down and khakis.
“Nicholas,” the man said, touching his chest. “I work for George.”
“Oh, sure,” Alex said, “sure.” She waved her hand in the air. “I just”—she paused, considering the scene. “I bicycled to the beach and then—” Alex laughed a little. “I guess someone took my bike.” She hiked her bag higher on her shoulder. “And my phone’s dead.”
“Oh, man,” Nicholas said, “really?” He pushed his hands through his hair, his distress genuine. “No way.”
She gave a shrug.
Nicholas was so kind. It was his job, she guessed. When she and Simon had gone to George’s for dinner, Nicholas had been the one who asked her if she had any dietary restrictions. When Alex went looking for the bathroom, Nicholas led her straight there. And Nicholas was the person who stood, stoically, as George and Simon discussed the difficulty of finding a chef, segueing seamlessly into the recent rape accusation against a basketball player that didn’t quite add up, and what had the girl thought would happen, George said, asking a man into her dressing room? Alex had eyed Nicholas: he didn’t react. Like Alex, he had made himself into vapor, the better to allow things to pass through him.
After dinner, Nicholas had brought a plate of warm cookies to the table.
“I shouldn’t eat these,” George said, finishing his third cookie.
It had been one of the rare nights when Simon had decided to drink, to really drink. Without Alex realizing it, Simon had gotten almost blackout: at the end of the night, Nicholas had driven them both home in Simon’s car, Simon’s eyes heavy as he slumped against her in the backseat. She hadn’t considered what Nicholas had done after he had dropped them off and parked the car in the driveway, hadn’t wondered how Nicholas had gotten home.
“Where’s Simon?” Nicholas asked.
“Back in the city for a few days,” she said. “Just for meetings. So I’m at the house alone.”
Her voice sounded airy enough, sounded casual, and Nicholas didn’t seem to think any of this was so strange.
“Let me give you a ride home,” Nicholas said. “Or you want to drive around and look for your bike? Maybe someone ditched it.”
“Maybe.” Alex shaded her eyes with her hand. Beside them, traffic was whizzing past—fancy car, fancy car, fancy car, landscape truck. Fancy car.
“You know,” she said, “I think I just got a little too much sun. I just feel a little dizzy.”
“Why don’t you come by the house for a minute? I just have to drop some stuff off. We can charge your phone, feed you.”
She glanced at the highway, glanced at her bag.
“Where’s George?”
“He’s coming back out on Saturday,” Nicholas said. “I’m getting everything in order, you know. Fill the refrigerators, pump up the bike tires.”
He smiled at her, Nicholas, his job to take care of things.
* * *
—
It was good to be in a car, to move at that speed. The windows were down. Alex could see an extra white shirt hanging from the hook in the backseat, a case of water. A freshly strung tennis racket. Nicholas was listening to an oldies station, cheery Motown.
“Can I have one of these waters?”
“Of course,” he said. “Take two.”
The bottle was warm from being in the car—she drank the whole thing.
“Hot out there?” he said.
“Oh,” she said, “not too bad yet.”
“Good thing I found you. You want to call Simon from my phone?”
“That’s okay,” Alex said. “Maybe in a little bit.”
“Sure, sure.”
It was Nicholas’s job, of course, to be this agreeable. It was even part of his job to look like one of them and not like an employee, to dress like someone’s nice son-in-law who just happened to anticipate your every need and tend to it discreetly. Maybe the lack of uniform made people more comfortable with the idea of another person being so deeply embedded in their life, as if Nicholas hung around just because he liked it, just because he enjoyed their company.
When she and Simon had gone for dinner, it had been dark, and now, in the day, she saw George’s house was much bigger than Simon’s, the property larger by many orders of magnitude. There was a pond she hadn’t noticed before, obviously man-made, with a wooden dock and lily pads rimming the edge. The lawn was seamless, the green flat and unchanging.
“Let me just unload the groceries,” Nicholas said, parking on the cobblestone apron of a smaller garage.
“Can I help carry anything?”
“Absolutely not,” Nicholas said, his arms filled with bags. If any of it was a strain, he didn’t let on.
She followed him to the front hall, dropping her bag by the door, then on through the living room. Art on every wall, vibrating with dense color. A Persian cat stalked past, pausing for a haughty moment before leaping onto a glass coffee table. The couch was an undulating wave of upholstery, oranges and yellows, some sixties Italian thing that looked vaguely like a sea of breasts. The distance between the furniture in the room was unnaturally large. Through the windows, everything outside was varying shades of green.
“I’ll just go to the restroom,” Alex said, shouldering her purse.
“Down the hall,” Nicholas said, “you remember where?”
* * *
—
In the bathroom, Alex splashed her face with water, rinsed out her mouth. A cluster of pimples had formed along her hairline: she resisted the urge to fuck with them. Her eyebrows looked too faint, her cheeks just slightly sunburnt, lips peeling and dry. She tried to fix everything as quickly as possible—filling in her brows, patting concealer under her eyes, around her nostrils. She wet toilet paper with hand soap and rubbed under each arm. Not so bad, and even her hair looked better after she braided it, her scalp faintly gritty with sand. She swept a scatter of sand off the sink and onto the floor. She blotted off her lipstick with more toilet paper, then flushed away the whole mess. An inspection of her fingernails. She scratched them against the bar of hand soap, then ran them under water as hot as she could stand.
There. Immaculate.
* * *
—
Alex hadn’t been inside the kitchen before: unlike the rest of the house, it looked like it hadn’t been updated. It still had the plain wooden cabinets from the fifties, painted light yellow. Floral wallpaper with tiny pink rosebuds marching tightly on a diagonal. At a desk, there was a landline and a monitor setup, screens showing a grid of black-and-white security footage. A small plastic buzzer with a button—a garage door opener, Alex thought, but then she read the label. Panic.
Nicholas opened the refrigerator and started pulling out six-packs of Pellegrino from white grocery bags, then bottle after plastic bottle of orange juice and grapefruit juice. He lined up everything on the shelves at right angles.
“This’ll take just a minute,” he said. “Can I get you a drink or make you a snack?”
She took a stool by the counter. “I mean, I’d love a little something, if it’s not a problem?”
“Of course not.” He closed the refrigerator and folded the empty bags into precise thirds. “The chef won’t be out until Friday, late, but what do you feel like?”
“I don’t want to put you to any trouble.”
“Please,” Nicholas said, “it’s my pleasure. I actually like cooking, it relaxes me. And I hardly ever get to do it.”
Amazing how he almost made you believe everything he said—she could learn from him.
He opened the refrigerator again, peered inside. “I can pan-fry a piece of salmon with some vegetables?” He looked at her. “You like fish, right? Or a quick salad?”
“I mean, that all sounds great. Whatever’s easiest.”
“Go, sit outside, I’ll bring it to you.”
“No, god no,” Alex said. “Can’t I help?”
“I’ve got it. Enjoy the sunshine.”
“Seriously,” she said, “I’d rather sit in here with you.”
“As you wish.”
Nicholas pulled out a pan and unwrapped a piece of bright pink fish from butcher paper. He appeared graceful, relaxed, though probably he wished she would leave him alone to work. It was likely easier for everyone when the lines were drawn more clearly, but surely other people had performed this way for Nicholas, tried to demonstrate how unlike the others they were, how comfortable they were fraternizing with employees. She had experienced her own version of it: the men who asked her endless questions about herself, faces composed in self-conscious empathy. Waiting with badly suppressed titillation for her to offer up some buried trauma. Men who insisted on her coming first, as if this was proof of their fundamental goodness. It wasn’t bad, it was just annoying. Because actually it required more energy from her, required more fake emotion scrounged up to match theirs.
Alex drained the glass of water Nicholas poured for her, the welcome shock of ice making her realize how thirsty she still was.
The dinner with George had been unpleasant, here in his dining room with black marble floors and black lacquered chairs. He’d been trying out a new chef. George’s voice—warbling, reedy—was unsettling, plus how quickly he got bored, obviously bored. It made everyone anxious, conscious of needing to herd his attention.
His wife was extremely thin, a model who had decided, later, to become a painter. Based on the dinner conversation, being a painter seemed mostly to consist of thinking about real estate, the wife on a constant search for a more picturesque studio. She wore a maroon sweater with lime green cuffs over a stiff white button-down, red lipstick, and kept her purse on the chair next to her, its teeth zipped in a sharp smile. While everyone else had been served a bowl of sorbet, the wife had, without comment, been served a bowl of blueberries: she ate them one at a time. All through dinner, she had barely spoken to Alex, her frail, nervous energy aimed at her husband. George hadn’t spoken much to Alex, either. Alex was a sort of inert piece of social furniture—only her presence was required, the general size and shape of a young woman. Anything beyond the fact of her sitting in her chair and nodding along was a distraction. Occasionally, Simon put his hand on the back of Alex’s neck, or patted her shoulder.
Over the course of the dinner, Alex lulled herself into a trance state, the boredom almost like a drug, something you could lean into, gorge yourself on. Simon told her that George’s wife demanded that George never be alone with another woman. As if any woman would throw themselves at George’s tiny frame, overcome by passion. But better to believe your life was valuable, under attack, than the alternative.
* * *
—
“Are you sure you’re not hungry?” Alex said. “This is so fucking good.”
“I already had lunch,” Nicholas said.
Who knew if it was true? Maybe Nicholas was meant to appear free of needs, any human hungers.
She would have felt more inhibited, usually, eating in front of him like this, but she was too hungry to care. And the salmon was good, the salad, too, soggy with oil and lemon juice. Whenever she drank from her water glass, he refilled it from a carafe, almost without her noticing. Her phone was charging on the counter where Nicholas had plugged it into the outlet.
“So,” Alex said, “how did you meet George?”
Nicholas had been an actor, he told her, or had tried to be one. He’d been in a few things, even had a fairly good run on a soap opera, which was actually not a bad job. Really. You learned a lot. They taught you how to be professional. Show up on time, keep yourself in shape. Learn your lines. None of it, the success, had stuck in the way he’d imagined. He met George at a party where Nicholas was working for a caterer; George had hired him away. Nicholas said he had a daughter on the West Coast.
“Or West, anyway. Reno. Not really the coast.”
“Really?” Alex held the linen napkin to her mouth as she finished chewing. “You don’t seem old enough to have a kid.”
“She’s five. Bella.”
“Can I see a picture?”
Nicholas pressed his phone and flashed the home screen at Alex: she saw a photo of a blond girl with a butterfly painted on her cheek. The girl looked frazzled and anxious, her smile pinched. Who took care of the girl, what was her life like?
“She’s beautiful,” Alex said.
“Thanks,” Nicholas said, glancing at the screen before pocketing the phone. “Yeah, it’s hard not seeing her all the time, but this is a really great job. And I get back to visit when I can.”
“And you sleep here, in the house?” It was certainly big enough.
“When we’re here and not in the city, yes. There’s a staff apartment,” he said. “It’s on the other side of the garage.”
“It must be pretty weird. This job.”
Nicholas shrugged. “Oh sure, I mean, every job is a little weird.”
There it was, the famous discretion.
“Yeah, but this is pretty nuts, right?” She raised her eyebrows at the kitchen, the lawn outside, a green so deep it appeared to echo.
“It’s certainly not how I grew up,” he said.
“Me either.”
There was a pause—neither of them elaborated. She scraped the last of the food from the plate, used a finger to wipe up the remaining oil before bringing it to her mouth.
“So good,” Alex said. “Thank you.” She stood to take the plate to the sink.
“I’ve got that,” Nicholas said, smoothly, as though carrying her dishes would give him the greatest pleasure, and only after he insisted twice more did she hand the plate over.
“How’s your phone doing?” he said. “Let me know when you want a ride back, I’m happy to run you over. I can call a car, too, if you’d rather.”
She tried to turn on her phone. It was no longer producing even a sputter. The screen was black and inert, a void of pure indifference. Her pulse spiked, though she kept her expression cheery.
“Sorry, I think my phone is just totally dead,” Alex said. “I don’t know what happened.”
“I can take a look at it.”
“I mean, sure, if you wanna try. Go for it.”
Nicholas used a different charger, then tried a different outlet. He disappeared for a while. While he was gone, Alex petted the cat, its fur the same ginger color as George’s hair. The cat looked mildly irritated by her attention.
Nicholas came back, waving the phone apologetically. “I thought it might work if I plugged it into a computer.”
