Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway

by Sara Gran

  “What was their deal?” I asked.

  “Jeez,” Delia said. “Well, her dad had this whole other family, who he had no bones about making clear he liked better. And the mom, she was like this religious nut. Went to church all the time, thought Lydia was, you know, this fucking sinner. Which, believe me, she very quickly became.”

  “So, you guys got into trouble?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Delia said. “Look, if I had a kid . . .” She paused and sipped her tea. “I mean, I wouldn’t suggest what we did, how we lived—I wouldn’t recommend that to anyone. But honestly, it was a fucking blast. I don’t regret any of it.”

  “How did you live?” I asked.

  She gave me a look like I was being a little stupid, which I was.

  “You know,” she said, and I did. “Drugs. Guys. Music. I mean, Lydia was gorgeous, she was smart, she was fun. Guys would literally follow her around. That was another good thing about the cult. They were big on the idea that things always change, and you don’t want to get, like, stuck or attached. So I knew it wasn’t going to last, and it didn’t. Your body, just, you know. You can’t keep that up. You don’t have the energy and you’re not getting the attention. Lydia and me, we started young. By the time we were twenty-four, twenty-five, we were feeling it. We were pretty burnt. I got more into my art, she got into her music. We were lucky. A lot of girls didn’t have anything else. They didn’t age so well.”

  “So Lydia was pretty into music?” I asked. Of course, I knew Lydia was into music. I just wanted Delia to keep talking.

  “She was obsessed,” she said. “Most of the girls we knew just slept with musicians, but she was no joke. She knew everything, had this huge record collection, would travel anywhere to see someone she liked. And she was good. Really good. I think she’s so pretty that people sometimes forget she’s actually a hell of a guitar player.”

  “But?” I said. There’s always a but. If there wasn’t we’d all be perfect and no one would ever kill anyone and we wouldn’t need detectives.

  “But what?” Delia said.

  “So it sounds like you both came out pretty okay,” I said.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I think so.” But there was a hesitation in her voice.

  “So you guys still hang out?” I asked.

  “No,” Delia said. “Not for a long time.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “She slept with my husband,” Delia said. “That was, like, ten years ago. He’s not my husband anymore.”

  “And she’s not your friend anymore,” I said.

  “Well, no,” Delia said. “I don’t hate her or anything. But we’re not friends anymore, no.”

  “You sound not very mad,” I said. “Considering.”

  Delia shrugged. “It was complicated. I guess—well, I guess it wasn’t entirely unexpected.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Lydia liked men,” she said. “Well, I don’t know. She liked being liked by men. Let’s put it like that. I mean, that shitty childhood. It kinda catches up to you. It’s kinda like—I mean, I don’t mean this literally, but let’s say there’s some kind of, you know, receptor in your body for receiving love, right? Love and affection and all that good stuff. And Lydia, with all that fucked-up stuff with her parents—it’s like those receptors were just never turned on. Like, she could never, ever get—I don’t think I’m making any sense.”

  Delia stood up and got us each more tea.

  “I don’t know what I mean,” she said as she poured. “I guess I just want to still like her in some way. I mean, we were close, you know? Like teenage girls are close. And you know, I’m kind of an angry person, but I’m not really into hating people. So I don’t know—I guess I made up this whole story about how it wasn’t entirely her fault. ’Cause the thing about Lydia is, she never really believed that anyone loved her. Or even liked her, to be honest. She just could not believe that. Not me, not any boy, no one. I mean, here she was—is—so smart, so beautiful, so talented, so many people in love with her. It was like—you know when you haven’t watered a plant in too long, and then you try to water it and the water rolls right off?”

  I did know, having killed many plants.

  “Like that,” she said. “I think that’s a better metaphor than the receptor thing. That didn’t quite work. Like a plant that got too dry and it couldn’t take any water at all. Not if you fucking drowned it. Anyway. Guys would freak out for her. Girls wanted to be her friend. Still do, I bet. And you know, she could buy it for a little while. She had no problem believing that people wanted to be with her or sleep with her or whatever. But when it came down to it, she was one hundred percent sure that no one could love her, not really,” she said.

  “Do you think Lydia cheated on Paul?” I asked.

  Delia shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. We hadn’t talked in years. But in general, did she cheat? Well, she always did before.”

  Delia lit a cigarette and looked out the window. I followed her eyes. Outside was a woman who might have been a streetwalker or might have just been walking down the street. The woman stopped and queried a passing car. The man in the car and the woman came to terms and she got in. Maybe she was just a woman doing her grocery shopping who ran into a friend.

  Mysteries never end.

  “Paul was a good guy,” Delia said. “He deserved better. Do you think it’s true that, like, someone’s soul can’t rest until you find who murdered them? Until there’s some justice? I read that in a book once. I don’t know if I believe it.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. I knew there was something set off its axis when a person was murdered. I didn’t know if it was a soul or just some pocket of the universe that needed to be set right. I tried to imagine Paul’s soul but all that came to mind was a ghost like a child would imitate for Halloween, a lonely thing under white sheets, holes cut out for eyes.

  Boo, the ghost said. I scared you.

  32

  Brooklyn

  CHERRY TAVERN WAS a few blocks away from Ben’s bar. It was a disjointed spot on Sixth Street; the lights were too bright and there weren’t quite enough tables and the room was a strange shape. A dozen skinheads checked us out as we went to the bar and ordered bottles of beer. Tracy and I got our drinks and soon were joined by a big kid we knew named Al from Queens, who looked scary but everyone knew was just a sweetheart. Unless he drank too much. In which case he did become scary and was not so sweet anymore. But tonight he was sticking to beer. I went to the bathroom and when I came back Tracy was already questioning him.

  “Yeah, I know Cathy,” he said. “I think she’s actually here.”

  “Here?” I said, sitting back down. “But we’re here.” For a second it crossed my mind that I was not, in fact, here. Or maybe I was here, but somehow it was a different here—a different piece of here, or the same here in a different time.

  I closed my eyes and for a quick flash I saw a woman drowning in dark water, like the Anima Sola burning in flames. Instead of helping her I put on a thick pair of glasses and watched her drown.

  I opened my eyes. Al was looking at me like I was an idiot.

  “The men’s room,” he said.

  “If you talk to me like that again,” I said, “I will break this fucking bottle in your face.”

  Tracy laughed.

  “All right,” Al said. “Jesus. Let me buy you a beer.”

  “It’s cool,” I said. “Let’s just not do it again.”

  We finished our drinks and went to the men’s room. Tracy knocked first. A girl’s voice called out, “Fuck off.” We opened the door and went in.

  The men’s room was actually two rooms. First was a kind of bathroom antechamber with a sink and a few chairs. Through another door was the regular bathroom, which men used for its intended purpose. In the antechamber were two girls passing around a little bag of cocaine and a house key to imbibe it with. One of the girls was Cathy. The other was Georgia.

  “Tracy!” Cathy said. “Oh
my God! I was just thinking about you!”

  Cathy kept talking while Georgia took multiple dips of the key into the little bag. Cathy was a big, pretty, cheerful girl. I knew she lived in the Chelsea projects with a large family, seven or eight brothers and sisters. She wore her hair in a fringe around her head.

  Georgia was a tiny, skinny girl. Her face was pretty but mean. She had on a big vintage Persian lamb coat and wore her brown hair swept up on top of her head, and way too much makeup. It was true she was homeless. She was supposed to be in foster care but she kept running away.

  “Hey, Claire,” she said, her voice sarcastic and thick.

  I didn’t say anything and gave her a look.

  What happened between me and Georgia had happened long before, but it wasn’t over. There was a boy, that was true, but friendships never fall apart over boys. We had no expectations for boys; boys were innocent bystanders in the wars of girls.

  I hated Georgia. Just looking at her made something burn inside me.

  I thought of Chloe. Of how she seemed to want people to hate her.

  Meanwhile, Tracy was trying to get Cathy to focus.

  “I haven’t seen Chloe in forever,” Cathy was saying, her voice rushed and breathless. “I mean, for a while we were hanging out all the time, you know? Georgia, you remember Chloe, right?”

  With effort Georgia tore her eyes off me and looked at Cathy. She’d had more to drink than her friend; her eyes were bleary and red and she wasn’t nearly as wired. She seemed instead like she might fall asleep.

  “Yeah,” she said, her voice slightly slurred. “I know her. Fucking bitch.”

  “Why fucking bitch?” Tracy asked.

  “’Cause of what she did to Cathy,” Georgia said. “How she treated her. Fucking whore.”

  “So what did happen?” Tracy asked. I could tell her patience was wearing thin.

  “Oh my God,” Cathy said. “I can’t even—I mean, I can barely talk about it. Still. It was like she cut me, you know. Like she cut me right where she knew it would hurt.”

  “She actually cut you,” Tracy prompted. “Or—?”

  “No, not actually,” Cathy said. “What she did was, she fucked this guy I liked. Well, I don’t know if they actually, you know. And I mean, not just liked. He was the one—I mean the only one. Okay. Okay. It was Hank Nielson. You guys know him, right?”

  We both nodded. We knew him.

  “Right,” Cathy said. “I’ve known him since we were, like, twelve. We went to this summer camp together, this camp for bad kids, and I totally fell for him. And we were friends, but I don’t think he knew. Maybe he knew. I don’t think he knew.”

  “But Chloe knew?” Tracy interjected.

  “Oh my God,” Cathy said. “She totally knew. Fuck. I mean, I talked about him all the time. She beyond knew. So this one night we’re all at Blanche’s, and Hank was there. So he sits with us and everything’s fine, and we’re drinking and drinking. And then suddenly, it’s like, Chloe is flirting with him. I mean at first I thought I was imagining it—”

  “You weren’t imagining it,” Georgia cut in. “I was there. Saw the whole thing. Chloe totally threw herself at him. It was totally fucked up.”

  “Totally fucked up!” Cathy said. “We went to the bathroom together and I was like, what the fuck are you doing? And at first she was all like, what are you talking about? All like, I’m not doing anything. But then it got worse and worse. She was all, like, telling him how much she liked his band, and she’d never even seen his band. And all, like, touching him and shit. Like, she kept putting her hand on his shoulder and shit. So then we go to the bathroom again and I’m all, what the fuck? And she’s all, you’re not doing anything with him anyway. You know, like he’s fair game now. I mean, he’s my friend, a really good friend, so I’ve always been, you know, not wanting to fuck that up, but that doesn’t mean—”

  She looked at me and Tracy for validation. We both nodded. This was a clear violation of the rules.

  “So what did you do?” Tracy asked.

  “I went home,” Cathy said. She looked sad, like she was living it all over again. “And the next day there’s like five long messages from Chloe on my answering machine when I get home from school. I’m so sorry, please forgive me, all this shit. And then I hear from, like, a million other people that they went home together that night. And a few days later I heard it from Hank himself. They fooled around. A lot. They totally fooled around and maybe even fucked that night.”

  “Wow,” Tracy said.

  “So, Chloe,” I said. “Chloe said that he was fair game . . .”

  “Right right right,” Cathy said. “She was saying all this crazy shit, like he’s just a guy, why was I getting so upset, I was being stupid. And I looked at her—and it was like . . . like her voice was all different but also her face. Her face was like—like it was disappearing. Like it wasn’t Chloe at all. Or like the other person, the Chloe I knew, that was never Chloe at all. Does that make any sense?”

  Tracy looked at me and we both nodded. It made sense.

  Cathy had nothing else useful to say, although that certainly didn’t stop her from talking. Finally we got ready to leave.

  “Screw you, cunt,” Georgia muttered as we were walking out, her voice slurred and drunk. “Just screw you.”

  I went over to her and bent down next to her chair so we were on the same level. She flinched a little.

  I reached up and took a piece of her hair in my hand. Everyone had grown quiet around us, reactions dulled and intoxicated.

  “Don’t fucking touch me,” Georgia slurred, tensing. “Don’t you fucking—”

  I pulled hard on her hair. She stumbled toward me with an open hand but she was fast and easy to evade, and in a quick second we were rolling around on the filthy floor, hands in each other’s hair and my nails on her face, until Tracy and Cathy jumped in and pulled us apart.

  33

  San Francisco

  THE NEXT DAY I called Josh, Paul’s friend who I’d spent the night with after the funeral.

  “Claire,” he said. “I’ve been meaning to call you.”

  “Why?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I thought we could get a drink or something.”

  I wanted to say why again but I didn’t.

  “Sure,” I said. “Can I ask you something? Something about Paul?”

  “Yeah, of course,” he said, but his voice held back.

  “I’m not asking this out of judgment. But I need to know. It’s like a doctor. Total confidence. You just have to tell the truth, okay?”

  “Are you really like a doctor?” he asked.

  “Absolutely,” I said. “It’s practically the same thing.”

  I was nothing like a doctor.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Okay. I mean, it depends on the question, I guess.”

  “I think you just answered it,” I said.

  “Fuck,” he said.

  “Who was she?” I asked.

  “Man,” he said. “Claire. Come on. It was nothing. It was so nothing. It was like, once or twice. Paul loved Lydia. You know that.”

  I sat on top of my kitchen counter and emptied out what was left of my cocaine and cut it with a business card from Jon’s store in Marin. I started to roll up a five for a straw but felt cheap and instead found one of the crisp new hundreds I’d tried to bribe Bix with.

  “Claire? Are you there?”

  I sniffed a line through a rolled hundred.

  “Once or twice with one person?” I said. “Or with one or two different women?”

  He didn’t answer. That meant both.

  “The whole time?” I said.

  “Oh, God no,” he said. “No, not until the last year or so. And I don’t think any of it was serious, at all. Just, you know.”

  “Just what?”

  He sighed. “You know. Him and Lydia were fighting a lot.”

  I didn’t know that.

  “Did they fight abo
ut anything in particular?” I asked. “Or just fight?”

  “I don’t know. I think it started over real things and then it was just fighting.”

  “Do you know who any of the girls were?”

  “Dude, you can’t go and, like, interrogate her. I’ve known her forever. She is an old, old friend.”

  “I promise,” I said. “No interrogations. The three of us grab a cup of coffee. She doesn’t even have to tell me her name.”

  “Would you tell Lydia?” he asked.

  “Of course not,” I said.

  I figured she probably already knew.

  That night I felt restless. I drove to the Tenderloin and bought some more coke from a girl I knew named Rhonda. She was high and not doing so well when I found her, teetering on her high heels in the rain.

  “It’s gettin’ tough for girls like us,” Rhonda said. We stood in the rain. Our transaction was completed but you can’t leave these things until you’re dismissed. That just isn’t how buying drugs works. “No one knows how to feel anything anymore. No one knows anymore. Ain’t no one care. People have, like, experiences. Everything just another experience. They do things, but they don’t feel it. It just all goes right through them. Like they a ghost. Like we all ghosts.”

  “They sure are,” I said. “We sure are.”

  “You ain’t one of those girls,” Rhonda said. “Those feel-nothing people. You feel every little thing right down your bones. You feel everything, just like me.”

  “I’m working on that,” I said, cool rain on my face. “I don’t want—”

  “Uh-uh,” Rhonda said. “You ain’t gonna change. Girls like us don’t change. We just keep going till they get every last drop out of us. Then they pretend they miss us when we gone.”