Bill wagged his finger, a devilish grin creeping up his face.
A knock on the door came at just the right time.
“Entrez,” Bill said, as Alicia entered.
“Billy,” she said, with an emergence of tears, “I need you for a sec.”
“You okay, Licia?” he asked, his tone of voice shifting from threatening to genuine concern.
“Just come here,” she said, and turned to Kyle. “Please excuse us for a minute.”
Bill didn’t acknowledge Kyle as he followed her out of the office and shut the door.
Kyle could feel his heart beating rapidly. He didn’t know what to make of Bill’s answers except for the fact that the guy knew more than he was letting on. Alicia had been adamant that Mia wasn’t a student of William’s, but that had obviously been a lie. He wondered how much the twins knew about what happened and if either was complicit in her disappearance. Even kooky Karen Evans spoke about their weird bond and how something was clearly off about them.
He sat on the dusty couch to get his head straight, the hit of pot plus the three pints of beer already taking hold. Here he’d set out to stay sober and couldn’t even follow through for one full day. He laid his head back on a pillow and stared at the small office. On the wall hung an M. C. Escher poster of two hands drawing one another, each necessary to create the other. He looked closer, as an overwhelming sense of déjà vu crowded the room. He’d come across this artwork before. He realized he’d seen it in this very spot.
He lay back down on the couch and traveled back over ten years to a moment at the Royal Wee when he’d drunk too much and had to be carried to this same couch, its smell of stale corn chips and spilled drinks overpowering. The bartender had put him there and asked whom to call. Kyle must’ve murmured Professor Lansing’s name because an hour later, William was shaking his shoulder.
“Come,” William said. “I’m taking you home.”
In the car, Kyle was talking about the Escher poster. He described the two hands drawing one another in the dream he had. He wondered which hand had been drawn first if both were necessary to create each other.
“There’s blood on your knuckles,” William said. “I can take you to the infirmary.”
Kyle shook his head. “I punched a wall. I was angry.”
“You and your girlfriend had a fight?” William asked.
The night was dark with barely a sliver of moon. Kyle stared out at the endless blackened expanse.
“Mia doesn’t love me,” Kyle said.
William took out a handkerchief and handed it to Kyle. “You’re bleeding all over your clothes.” Kyle mopped up the blood pouring from his knuckles.
“Give me that, I’ll dispose of it,” William said, taking the bloody handkerchief.
“You’re bleeding too,” he said to William, and pointed at his collar painted with a splash of red.
“It’s nothing. Nicked myself while shaving.” William folded the reddened collar so it was tucked in.
“Your elbow patch is torn too.” Kyle stuck his finger through a hole in William’s elbow.
William wrenched off his blazer and threw it in the backseat. He pulled the car over to the shoulder and stopped. He took Kyle by the shoulders and turned him so the two were facing.
“You called me tonight to pick you up from the bar. I took you home to your dorm. I was with you into the night because you were puking.”
“I haven’t puked,” Kyle said, looking around to make sure that was true.
“You will. And I stayed with you. That’s what you’ll say if anyone asks.”
“Who will ask?”
“I’m trying to help you, Kyle,” William said, raising his voice. “You were underage drinking in a bar. You caused a disturbance. You already have the police on your radar. Do what I say.”
Kyle quickly rolled down the side window, stuck his head out, and vomited on the road. “Shit,” he said, wiping his mouth.
“Good, Kyle. Let it all out. Very good.”
Kyle could barely remember being taken back to his dorm room. His roommate went home every weekend so no one else was there. He was tucked into his bed, and William left a bottle of water on the side table.
“I have to go now,” William said. “I have something to take care of.”
“Mmmmm,” Kyle replied, his head heavy on the pillow and the room spinning. The two drawing hands floated in and out of his thoughts, furiously stenciling in a race to see which would finish first.
Back on the couch at the Royal Wee, Kyle saw that the hands on the poster had been drawn to completion. He questioned how reliable memories were. Sometimes they could be fabricated simply because it made for a better narrative. This office felt so familiar: its mildewed smell, the poster on the wall of the hands. Had the night William had driven him back to his dorm been the night the guy killed Mia? Had he picked Kyle up from the bar only to use him as an alibi? Had he kept a handkerchief with Kyle’s blood on it to frame him if need be? What was William’s plan? It exhausted Kyle to think that he’d lost all sense of what was real and what was fiction anymore.
He lurched to the small window in the back, opened it, and threw up on the side of the building, watching his sickness drip down.
The door opened and Bill entered on a cell phone.
“Just thought I’d let you know what’s going on,” Bill said into the cell, and shoved it in his pocket.
“I’m not feeling so good,” Kyle said, his forehead lined with sweat.
“I think it’s time for you to go,” Bill said with a firm nod. “Show yourself out.”
Kyle got out of the office as fast as he could. By the bar, Alicia was scowling while cleaning a dirty glass with a rag.
“Billy tell you what you wanted to hear?” she asked, her eyes swollen. “Hope today gave you a good profile on my dad.”
“Yeah … sure.” He grabbed the manuscript from off the bar and tucked it under his arm. He had to wonder whether she’d flipped through the pages and told her brother what Kyle was reading. That William’s editor had come here to verify how much of their father’s fiction was actually the truth.
“I’ll tell him you stopped by,” she said. “Oh, give me your business card. I forgot your name. Kevin? Keith? Or was it…?”
“I have to run,” Kyle said, bolting out of the place just as heard his real name whispered from her lips. Or had he imagined that? He didn’t know anymore. He tossed the manuscript into his rental car and took off without even paying attention to which way he was headed.
30
WILLIAM WAITED IN front of Jamie’s apartment building, a walk-up on 110th and Central Park West. In his pants leg rattled a carefully concealed bone saw. He doubted she’d let him in if he buzzed, but he wasn’t in a rush. His phone rang just as he spied an old lady making her way out. He ignored the call and held the door open for her as she passed him by, then he snuck inside. On the mailboxes he located Camden/Popplewell—1B, guessing Jamie’s roommate might be British from the surname.
He knocked on the door and held on to two syringes in his pocket, ready to strike should Jamie open the door. Instead a sleepy woman in a bathrobe answered.
“Yes?” she asked in a shrill British accent. He’d been right about her last name.
“I’m looking for Jamie,” he said, slouching. He gave himself a bit of a tremor for show, angling to appear as pathetic as possible.
“Oh, she’s not here right now—”
“The outside door was open, I’m sorry for bothering you. I’m an investor in her design business. We had plans to meet, but I’m terribly early.”
“I’m not sure when she’ll be back,” the woman said. She had long brown hair that went down to her waist, styled like a child would.
“Oh, you wouldn’t have a glass of water? I’ve been walking all day.”
She took a second to observe him. He clutched one of the syringes, ready for her as well if need be.
“Yes, let me get you one,” she finally said, and
headed inside. He closed the door behind him and locked it, releasing his grip on the syringe.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” he called out. “I thought I’d walk through the park but I got so lost.”
She returned with a glass that had chipped rainbow decals. The water looked like tap from the sink, slightly cloudy.
“No, it’s good you woke me,” she said, rubbing away her eye crust. “Sometimes my afternoon naps become a problem.”
“I’m such an insomniac I’ll take sleep anytime I can get it.” He extended his hand. “I’m William. I really am sorry to bother you.”
“Sybil,” she said, with a bone-crushing grip. William thought that if he had to describe her to someone he’d say she was big boned. She could probably take him in a fight, but not if she was at a disadvantage from a needle in her neck. “What time was your meeting with Jamie?”
“In half an hour or so,” he said, already sitting down in the living room area. Despite the small space, Jamie had obviously given the room her touch: prewar intricate crown moldings, antique ottomans, Manet posters in expensive frames. A room that could exist in any era. A fireplace was used as storage for books. He picked up In Search of Lost Time. The copy was worn and clearly read many times over. He turned to an underlined passage: Love is a striking example of how little reality means to us. He snapped the book shut, as if it had ripped open his mind and fumbled around inside.
“Is the Proust yours or Jamie’s?” he asked, placing the book back in the fireplace.
“Oh, that’s Jamie’s. Her boyfriend’s some big editor and she’s always reading a book. Tryin’ to impress him and all.”
“Don’t really like him, do you?”
She was taken aback but smiled.
“Is it so obvious? He’s all right, real good-looking and all. The few times he’s stayed over at our place he just came off like he thinks he’s better than me.”
She went to the refrigerator and pulled out a half-empty bottle of Chardonnay.
“Offer you a glass?” Sybil asked, shaking the remaining contents. “We can kill it.”
“Kill it,” he said, chuckling softly as the sound spread through the tiny apartment, folding into the nooks and crannies. “Yes, let’s kill it.”
* * *
WILLIAM LET SYBIL finish her glass of white before he injected her with the syringe. He had sat down next to her as she complained about her boyfriend, Erik, who didn’t have a job while he was trying to get his food truck business off the ground. The problem being that she’d helped invest in it with the little savings she had two years ago and nothing had been accomplished yet.
“He’s an arse,” Sybil said. “Cheated on me with this skank who waits tables at the diner up the block. Like, how fucked-up is it that I used to eat breakfast there all the time?”
“I abhor cheating,” he said. “My wife … well, she had an affair.”
“That’s so sad,” Sybil said, swaying. He assumed she’d started on the bottle of Chardonnay that morning.
“She fell in love with someone else,” he said, but he was speaking about himself. “It ended as things often do, but she and I stayed together. I knew all about it the whole time, our kids too.”
“Your children found out?” she asked, gulping the wine.
“Children know a lot more than you give them credit for. They sense things.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“I’m sorry too,” he said, inserting the syringe into her thigh. One eye lightly twitched, but other than that she gave no indication that she’d been stabbed. The syringe was small. Injected the right way, it would feel like nothing more than a mosquito bite.
“This wine…” she said, with a yawn that never ended.
“Rest your head.” He fluffed up a pillow and lay her down.
“Maybe for just for a minute.”
Her eyes shut and she was still, paralyzed for the next six hours. He undid her bathrobe and pulled the neck of her shirt down until he could place his palm over her heart. It pumped with a steady beat, music to his ears. He took out a black Sharpie from his pocket and drew a perfect black heart over her real one, filling it in, making it resemble a tattoo. This had been the second black heart he’d drawn today, the owner of the first one knocked out in the trunk of his car. He had punched a hole to let in air.
It was a big trunk so there’d be room for two.
* * *
THE AFTERNOON WAS ending. Since it was mid-October, it began to get dark early. William sat watch over Sybil, poised for Jamie to return. He thought about the quote she had underlined in Proust’s In Search of Lost Time.
Love is a striking example of how little reality means to us.
If he stood before God or the devil or whomever he might meet at the end of this life and was asked who his true love had been, he couldn’t say Laura. He would say Mia without hesitation, and that was why everything from here on out had to go off without a hitch. She deserved this legacy. And he deserved to be able to give it to her …
His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the front door opening and someone stepping inside. He picked up the syringe and attacked.
* * *
BRETT SWENSON HAD escaped from the office for his final cigarette of the workday. He’d told Darcy not to bother him, but sure enough, his cell was ringing with the name ASSISTANT. Darcy was his eighth assistant since he’d started at Burke & Burke. He never let himself grow attached because no one ever aspired to be an admin forever.
“I’ll be back in two seconds,” he snapped into the phone.
“You said to tell you if any packages came,” she said, stringing the words together in one garbled spew.
“I meant if I was in the office.”
“Oh—”
He hung up on her and lit a cigarette. The street was busy, people knocking into him, but he blocked them all out and focused on the beauty of a drag. He made love to that cigarette, his perfect two-minute meditation every three hours or so. He figured it was worth it to shave off a couple of years from the end of his life, having no desire to wither away in an old age home. Make it quick and easy, he confirmed with his higher power, the only time he’d ever prayed.
Upstairs, Darcy waited with a package in hand, manuscript-size.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her head hanging low. “I just thought you’d want it because of who it’s from.”
He swiped it from her and saw the name on the return label: PROF. WILLIAM LANSING.
He dropped the package like it was full of snakes and stepped backward as if it might explode.
“What’s inside?” he asked.
“I didn’t look,” Darcy said. The phone on her desk rang and she went to get it.
Brett was going to ask her to open it, but then changed his mind because he didn’t like her thinking he was afraid. If she were always a little fearful of him, she’d work even harder.
He grabbed the package and went into his office. He shook it and felt the edges, realizing it was only paper. Unless a little anthrax had been tossed inside too.
“Ah hell.” He tore it open and jammed his hand in.
Sssssnnnnaaaappppp.
He yanked away his throbbing hand that had been caught by a mousetrap. Blood dribbled down his arm as he released his swollen digits. He must’ve been screaming because Darcy came running inside.
“Fuck, get me some bandages,” he yelled, shooing her out of the room. The manuscript had fallen to the floor. He picked it up and read the Post-it note, carefully written in calligraphy blood.
Surprise, dear editor!
There’s still more Devil’s Hopyard to come.
Just because you don’t want to read any more
Does not mean that the story has ended.
Sincerely,
Your Author, W
31
KYLE DROVE TO Bentley College, just to clear his head. He had planned to question William’s wife, Laura, next, but he needed to gather his thoughts first. Firs
t of all, he was clearly being framed for either the disappearance or murder of Mia Evans. William had been planning this for sometime now, and Kyle’s recent success only accelerated the inevitable. Second, somehow the twins were involved. How much was uncertain since each told a very different story about William’s relationship with Mia. And third, he’d have to make sure William wasn’t home before he paid Laura a visit, although part of him wanted to come face-to-face with his enemy. William was baiting him and he was ready to bite. Maybe that was what brought him back to Bentley—the possibility he might run into his nemesis and surprise him with an attack.
He drove by the castle-like gray stone dorms, picturesque with a fine coating of snow. He pondered briefly on his four years there, the beginning so different from the end. Devil’s Hopyard sat in the passenger seat, almost finished. So he parked and found a bench on the quad. He sat there with the manuscript in his lap, wondering if it had the answers to what might happen next. He turned to where he’d left off.
DEVIL’S HOPYARD—CHAPTER 31
When I woke up the next morning, I expected to see the same young man in the mirror I’d been seeing for some time: the one who’d left his girlfriend chained up in a shack while he went crazy in a nuthouse. But the mirror had been lying. Standing naked before me was the man I’d always been. Middle-aged with streaks of gray cut through his brown hair, the tiniest paunch visible despite daily runs and sparring with a boxing bag in the basement. A smile that could never fully develop no matter how hard he tried because from a very young age he knew the terrible things he was capable of: the strange desires, the fixation on hearts. He clutched his own that beat nervously, for he had aged twenty-five years overnight and turned back into the man he was most afraid of—the professor and no longer the student.
What else had he imagined? Could the girl in the shack still be alive?
Though he hated returning to his former self, the thought of Mia’s beating heart enlivened him. He ran all the way to Devil’s Hopyard, panting and sopping with sweat upon reaching the shack. His foot caught a rock and he fell to the ground, skinning his knee, the blood staining the rock that had taken him down. He went to unleash his anger on it, but then saw its shape, a perfectly etched heart in stone. He picked it up in awe and placed his lips on its grainy surface. He gave the rock a kiss and carried it to the shack.
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