Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway

by Sara Gran

  “What’s a long—longue—” I tried to ask.

  “Longueur,” Eric said again, with a slight French accent. “It’s like the long boring part in a story no one wants to read.”

  He looked at me.

  “Didn’t you and Paul used to . . .”

  I nodded. “Yeah. A long time ago.”

  “You know, if you and him had stayed together, none of this—” He stopped himself and looked at me, shamefaced.

  “Oh, God, I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to say that. I’m so sorry.”

  “No,” I said. “No, of course. No worries. Can I use your bathroom?”

  He pointed the way. In the bathroom was a framed poster of Bela Lugosi as Dracula. I turned on the faucet and then took a bag of cocaine from my purse and used my house key to do one bump, and then another. I looked in Eric’s medicine cabinet and hit gold: a nearly full script of thirty Percocets. Eric Von Springer, née Horowitz, thank God for your oral surgery. Thank the angels for your bad teeth and diseased gums. I couldn’t remember how many milligrams were good, so I started with one pill and then on second thought took another, and then stuck the rest of the bottle in my purse.

  I felt my head buzz and I lay down on the cool white tile floor. It smelled like pine. I wondered how anyone’s bathroom floor could be so clean. Maybe they cleaned it. My mind raced.

  Eric wouldn’t kill anyone over a woman. He liked Lydia, but he liked a lot of us. I couldn’t imagine that any single one was irreplaceable to him.

  Eric knocked on the door. “Claire? Um, sorry. Are you okay in there?”

  I thought about how much cocaine it would take to overdose. I thought about the last time I ate, which may have been the day before sometime. The white tile was cold and the whiteness made me want more drugs. I wondered if I could get some without sitting up, and I thought yes, probably. I reached for my purse and with a little shifting of my shoulders, it worked.

  “Claire? Claire, are you in there?”

  I sniffed one bump more and after it rushed through my sinuses my heart fluttered in my chest, skipping a beat or two. It felt good. It felt exciting. Like it could change me. Improve me.

  If I’d stayed with Paul, maybe he would have died anyway. Maybe I would have killed him. But slowly, and a little bit at a time, and we’d both still be around to watch me do it.

  Eventually Eric broke into the bathroom and kicked me out and then I spent the rest of that day and most of the night driving around the city. With each day that passed something ugly was growing in me. I watched it grow. I fed it cocaine. I loved it and held on to it, kept it alive. Something had died, but maybe what had replaced it would be better. Maybe this was how people lived, normal people who weren’t me.

  Samsa¯ra was one name for the wheel of life and death, the stupidity we wander through, lost, until we find enlightenment and get to join with the divine. All the shit that hurts so much. The big things like death and loss and pain and also just the everyday grind of eating and sleeping and wanting and wanting and wanting—that was samsa¯ra. You were supposed to want to get out of it. You were supposed to look for the exit, the golden ticket that could take you to the chocolate factory. Escape from New York. This way to the egress.

  I took a corner too sharp. I pulled over to take a break and do another bump. After I felt it hit my sinuses, icy and shaking, I remembered that I’d already done too much, and decided not to do anymore. I felt my membranes burn and a little trickle of hot blood drip from my nose.

  Some people took the bodhisattva vow. The vow that, even if enlightened, they would continue to incarnate wherever they were needed the most—earth, hell, purgatory, wherever. Constance had taken the vow. People acted like bodhisattvas were all so fucking selfless, but I figured half of them just liked it better here. Heaven for climate, hell for company.

  I remembered I’d forgotten to eat again.

  I figured half the bodhisattvas liked it better here and the other half were scared to leave, so they pretended to care about the rest of us. They didn’t give a shit. They were just scared to go. Just as scared as everyone else of giving up their worst self. The self they knew the best.

  Which I figured was pretty much what had happened with Lydia and Paul.

  44

  THE PERSON I IMAGINED as Lucy—the person I’d seen in the video—was probably very close to who Lucy used to be. I imagined a woman who smiled often. A woman who would dance by herself to a song no one else loved.

  That was before Paul died.

  Now, even the way she sat on a high stool behind a cash register was angry—one leg swinging over the other, shoulders pulling in to surround her heart. She was behind the counter in her friend’s vintage clothing store, surrounded by piles of beaded sweaters and spangly purses.

  I drank a kombucha that I hoped would settle my stomach. After a few hours of tossing and turning the night before, I’d gotten up and made myself eat some toast for breakfast. Then I did some more coke and threw up.

  “Lydia was completely fucking cheating on him,” she said, leg kicking the counter in front of her. “Some guy she shared a rehearsal space with. Or maybe their bands rehearsed in the same place. Something like that.”

  The room spun a little, and for a very fast second I wondered if we were on a boat. The room settled and it passed.

  “So Paul knew?” I asked.

  “Paul totally knew,” she said. “And that guy was not the first.”

  “Who was the first?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But it had been going on for a while.”

  “What was it like,” I asked. “I mean. Their relationship. Was there something particular, some one problem, or—”

  “You know what it was?” Lucy said, pointing at nothing, angry. “They would rather be miserable. I swear to God. You know, it was, honestly, it was kind of fucking sickening after a while. Breaking up, getting back together. Treating each other like that.”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  Lucy gave me a mistrustful look and I wondered if she might be a little crazy. I knew I was not entirely lucid myself.

  “You know,” she said, “couples who just drag each other down like that. Down and down and down.”

  That was a pretty good description of talking to Lucy. She was a black hole, pulling everything and everyone in with her as she collapsed.

  “Supposedly they had this big love,” she said. “Gigantic. Like the song. Supposedly they were this perfect fucking couple. Well, nothing is so perfect. Not like that.”

  “No,” I said. “It’s not. Did Paul—I mean, other than you, I mean—”

  “You mean did he sleep with other girls?” bitter, angry Lucy finished for me. “I have no idea. Not while we were seeing each other. He broke it off just a few weeks before he died. Wanted to try to work things out with her. That worked out great.”

  I looked around the room. Maybe I saw a mouse run behind a rack of dresses and maybe I didn’t.

  “I hate this job,” she said all of a sudden. “My song is on all these fucking charts and somehow I still have a day job. I never thought I’d be doing this again. My old label sold half as many records and I made twice as much money. Biggest mistake of my life.”

  “Is there something you would hate less?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “I just want to be done with this shit.” Her eyes were bright, not in a good way, and I wondered again if she was a little crazy. “This whole never-quite-making-a-living shit. This whole touring nine months of the year and then coming back to this shit two months later. It used to be worth it. Now everyone keeps telling us to put our shit out ourselves and sell it on the Internet. I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to do any of it.”

  She hugged herself.

  “When you’re young it all seems, you know, so cool. Touring and dressing up and makeup and sleeping with whoever you want. And now I’m thirty-four and, you know, I’m broke, and someone I really, really car
ed about is dead, and I fucking hate my band, and someone I cared about, someone I thought I had a future with—”

  She stopped talking and blinked, as if she’d just realized that she’d been saying those words out loud. She shook her head and shrugged, ending a conversation with herself.

  I asked her if she wanted to grab a drink. I didn’t like her but Paul had cared about her.

  She shook her head.

  “I gotta watch the store. Besides,” she said. “I’ve been drinking too much already. As you won’t be surprised to hear.” She laughed.

  “Any friend of Paul’s,” I said. “You know. If you ever want to talk or anything. Or just get a drink or whatever.”

  She looked at me. “Who are you?” she said. “Are you, like, some kind of a fucking shrink or something?”

  “No,” I said. The room spun a little again. Maybe I saw a squirrel run across the room and maybe I didn’t. “I just—”

  “I don’t give a shit if you were friends with Paul,” she said, getting louder. “You weren’t such good friends, anyway. He never mentioned you. He never said ‘My friend Claire this’ or ‘My friend Claire that.’ Why are you even here?”

  “Because,” I said. “I need to know who killed Paul.”

  “Who cares?” Lucy said, almost yelling now. “Jesus. You think that matters? It was a robbery. Who cares?”

  “I do,” I said.

  “What’s the fucking difference?” the woman yelled. I knew I knew her name, but I couldn’t bring it to mind. “Who fucking cares?” I didn’t remember what she was yelling about anymore. Everything was starting to go red and then black around the edges. “He’s not coming back. Nothing’s bringing him back. Who cares who shot him? You think you’re some kind of fucking detective? Like the countess did it in the drawing room with the poker? I got news for you, lady: No one cares, it doesn’t fucking matter, and in the end he’ll be just as dead.”

  I left just before I fainted. The fresh, foggy air revived me. I took a few deep breaths. I was okay. I stumbled to a hamburger stand around the corner and got a hamburger and ate half and felt better.

  If it was Lydia who was dead, I would have pegged Lucy in a heartbeat. But she’d seen Paul as her salvation. I couldn’t see her shooting him. And if she had, she’d spill something at the scene or leave her wallet or shoot herself. She was that kind of messy girl.

  I checked my phone. There was an email from the lama. Have u heard from Andray? I hadn’t.

  And there was an email from Sheila, the other woman Paul had dated.

  I remembered the book. A Little Book on the Human Shadow, by Robert Bly.

  Silette wrote: “The detective who pretends not to see the truth is committing something much worse than a mortal sin, which can only ruin her own soul—she is committing all of us to lifetimes of pain. The truth is not just something we bring to light to amuse ourselves; the truth is the axis mundi, the dead center of the earth. When it is out of place nothing is right; everyone is in the wrong place; no light can penetrate. Happiness evades us and we spread pain and misery wherever we go. The detective above all others has an obligation to recognize the truth and stand by it; the detective above all, the detective above all.”

  45

  Brooklyn

  THE NEXT DAY for no particular reason we took the train to the end of the line to Coney Island. The train was elevated and outdoors, and you could see Coney Island miles before you reached it, see the new Cyclone and the old cyclone and the long-closed parachute drop. Under a sheet of snow they looked mysterious and lonely, like the statues at Easter Island or the pyramids in Egypt.

  At Stillwell Avenue the train shuddered and shook to a halt and we got off. Our first stop was the bar built into the cavernous mouth of the train station. It was dark and filthy. At the bar two old white men, the last of a dying breed, drank whiskey and beer. They didn’t laugh. They didn’t talk. Tracy and I each got a shot of tequila.

  After shots we walked across the street to Nathan’s. It was empty except for a group of girls from the projects and a few boys loitering around them, standing at one of the aluminum tables. Tracy and I kept our eyes straight ahead.

  “White bitch.”

  “Go back to Manhattan.”

  We got hot dogs and fries to go and ate them on the frigid boardwalk, looking out at the gray and dirty ocean, shivering.

  “Is this real?” Tracy said. She frowned. “Would you tell me?” she said. “Would you tell me if it wasn’t?”

  I nodded. “I would,” I said. “I promise.”

  But after that we went to the big bar on the boardwalk and got more tequila shots and beer, and I went to the bathroom and I looked in the mirror and looked and looked but I didn’t see a thing I recognized. Who was that girl? Was she real?

  If she was real, why didn’t she have anything to say? Why didn’t she do something?

  I hated her. I took out my lipstick and crossed out her face in the mirror, scribbling over it until she was covered in red, until she didn’t exist anymore. Someone banged on the door.

  “Fuck off,” I yelled.

  On the train back a man looked at Tracy. Men looked at Tracy all the time. Men looked at all of us all the time. We were trying to talk about the case but he was distracting her. He was young, in his twenties, handsome, and wore a suit and tie. Lord only knew what he was doing in Brooklyn.

  “So if Chloe is with CC—” she began, but broke off. She bent the Cynthia Silverton digest she was holding back and forth in her hand.

  “Jesus,” she said. “What is that guy’s problem?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “So. We know CC likes—”

  But Tracy wasn’t listening to me. She was staring at the man. The train was quiet, other than the squeak and roar of the metal wheels against the track. A few people were reading. A few people were staring at nothing. At the end of the car two boys were writing on the rear window. BDC—Brooklyn Danger Crew. I didn’t recognize them but I recognized their tags.

  Tracy looked at the man. At first he smiled at her. She didn’t smile. Then he looked straight ahead. Tracy still looked at him. Then he started to squirm a little.

  Suddenly Tracy spoke.

  “What the fuck are you looking at?”

  The man tried to ignore her.

  “What!” she screamed. “These?” She grabbed her breasts.

  The man turned red and looked down, around, straight ahead, anywhere except at Tracy.

  “What do you want?” she screamed. “Is this what you want?”

  As we pulled into the next station she threw her book at the man. He swerved and ducked but the book caught him anyway, just above the eye. He picked it up and threw it back at her. It hit me painlessly on top of my head. A small smudge of blood rose where a sharp corner had hit him. The man looked hurt and confused, like a wild animal who’d been shot by an automatic weapon he couldn’t see or understand.

  The doors opened and the man ran off the train.

  Tracy’s face was red and damp. Her lungs heaved up and down. I thought she was going to cry. Instead she turned to me and said, “I should have killed him.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Really.”

  “He should be dead.”

  “Absolutely,” I agreed. “He should be dead now. He’s lucky it was you instead of someone else.”

  She nodded. “He was lucky,” she said. “Because he should have died.”

  That night we decided to go to Hell. We were supposed to meet Kelly at my house at eight, but she showed up at nine with a bruise across her left cheek and a foul mood. Kelly’s father had left when her mother, Lorraine, got pregnant and according to Lorraine this was Kelly’s fault, and she never let her forget it. Now she was convinced Kelly would make the same mistake and ruin her own life as Kelly had ruined Lorraine’s. They had always fought. But Kelly’s new boyfriend set off something deep and ugly in Lorraine. Lorraine was thin but strong. I imagined she’d cornered Kelly somewhere in their dingy lit
tle two-bedroom railroad apartment. Kelly couldn’t win a fight with her mother but she was nimble and young and could escape easily. Which was probably exactly why Lorraine hated her.

  She would stay with me until things cooled down with Lorraine, which they would in a few days. Lenore, who didn’t seem to have a maternal bone in her body for me, was strangely gentle with Kelly. Lenore’s own father had hit her, and for all her faults she never laid a hand on me. Eventually Lorraine would track Kelly down and deliver an apology, backhanded like her slaps: You know I’m sorry, but ... I shouldn’t have hit you so hard, but...

  My room was almost as big as Tracy’s apartment, if twenty degrees colder, so we got ready to go out there. Tracy took little nips from a pint of vodka as we got dressed. I didn’t know what had happened in the two hours since I’d seen her, but she’d gotten into a bad mood. Or maybe a sad one: she wasn’t bitchy, like her usual bad moods, so much as quiet. I kept catching her staring off into space, like she was somewhere else. When we were doing makeup Kelly went to the bathroom and got cornered by Lenore—“Baby, your momma did that to you? Jesus, what happened?”

  Tracy stared at herself in the mirror. I was pretty sure she wasn’t seeing anything, though.

  “Hey,” I said.

  She pulled herself back in from wherever she’d been. For a split second it seemed like she’d actually left her body. Like she was really gone. I shivered.

  “What’s up?” I said. “You okay?”