Monstrous Affections (27 page)

“What are we,” she said, “your parents?”

“No.” Mitchell’s parents were another story. “You’re my friends.”

When the elevator got to the very top of the building it opened up
on a wide hallway. There were only two apartments on this floor —
one at either end of the hallway. Stefan and Trudy’s apartment
was on the right. The other one belonged to a guy named Giorgio
Piccininni, but it was basically vacant because Giorgio was in Italy
doing real estate or something. There were voices coming from
Stefan and Trudy’s place and Mitchell thought he heard the sound
of their Media Centre. He recognized the voice on the home theatre
from the news channel and he thought he recognized the voices
talking but it was hard to tell.

“I’ll wait out here,” he said.

Trudy took his arm. “Come on, scaredy-cat,” she said. “We went
to a lot of trouble to make sure this place was safe for you.” Then she
pushed the door open the rest of the way and gave him a little push.
“Inside.”

Mitchell stumbled through the double doors. The main room
was high, with a big sleek chandelier hanging down from a ceiling
that was two entire floors up. At one end was a kitchen that opened
up on a dining room. At the other end was a sitting area, which
faced a television set that was almost as big as the Explorer. Five
people were sitting around it, watching the 24-hour news channel.
Mitchell couldn’t remember who all the people were, although he
had met them all before — three times in person, and many, many
times online in the chat room. Three of them were men and two
were women. He didn’t think either of the women was Mrs. Lesley
Woolfe. The news anchor on television was Gloria Stahl. She was
talking about Delilah Franken and her high school sports record.

“Just make yourselves at home,” said Trudy.

One of the men turned to the door and waved. He was completely
bald and his eyes were jiggly.

“Hey, Mitch,” he said. “Hey, guys. Everything going okay out
there?”

Stefan smiled. “You know as much as we do.” He walked over and
sat down on the arm of the sofa. “More, maybe. What’s she going on
about?”

The woman nearest Stefan rested her hand on his knee and
smiled up at him. “The Police Chief’s had another press conference,”
she said. “He just did the usual: asked that anyone with information
about poor Delilah’s disappearance should call CrimeStoppers.
Didn’t have anything new to say.”

“Well of course he didn’t,” said Trudy. She put
her
hand on
Mitchell’s shoulder. Her thumb touched the back of his neck and he
took a sharp breath.

“Can I go on the computer?” asked Mitchell.

The woman by Stefan shook her head, but she smiled or seemed
to. “Mitchell Owens,” she said, “you
are
a prize.”

Trudy’s hand slid off Mitchell’s shoulder and she took him by the
hand. “Come on,” she said. “I’ll boot it up for you.”

“I know how,” said Mitchell. But he let her lead him to the
sunroom anyway. He stood there for a moment, looking down over
the flickering lights — the patterns of brake lights and headlights and
signs and window lamps. Mitchell looked back when the computer
chimed up to its logon screen.

“You are a prize,” said Trudy, typing the password which was
BLENDER. “Shelly was right about that.”

“Ah,” said Mitchell. “Shelly.” That was her name.

Trudy’s eyes flashed again. “Do you like her?”

“What do you mean?”

“Could she — ” Trudy gestured in the air with her hands and
looked at the ceiling. “You
know
.”

Mitchell blinked. “What do you mean?”

Now Trudy’s eyes widened and she looked down at him with a
tight little slit of a mouth. When she spoke, she whispered like she
was shouting.

“
You
know
what I mean!
”

Mitchell looked over at the computer screen. The wallpaper was
new — a scan of Delilah Franken, the one from the police website. Her
hair was darker than it should be. She was wearing her graduation
gown and she didn’t look comfortable in it. He moused over to the
START menu and fired up Photoshop.

Trudy seemed to calm down. She put her hand on Mitchell’s
shoulder and leaned close to his ear. “What are you up to there,
Mitchy?”

“Make her happy.”

“Oh.” Trudy chuckled. “Well go to it, sport.”

Mitchell found the JPEG and opened it up. It was a big file and
when he zoomed into 100 per cent all he could see was her mouth, a
bit of her chin and the bottom of her nose. That was good. It looked
like there was a blemish on her chin, maybe some acne because she
was so stressed out about graduating, so he cloned some skin from
her cheek onto it, then he opened up the
Liquify
filter and went to
work on her mouth. Delilah was one of those girls who smiled like
she was sad, with the mouth turned down at the edges. Mitchell
fixed that, edging the pixels at the corners up and up and up. Once
he was satisfied Delilah was happy enough, he applied the changes
and went to work on her hair, which in the picture was a dingy
brown. He magnetic-lassoed it with a one-pixel feather then went
into
Image>Adjustments>Curves
, and he lightened it up and
improved the contrast so it looked like she had blonde streaks which
is how she wore it these days. He liked the idea, but not so much the
effect: the feather made the background glow too much around her
hair, like a halo. But he didn’t know how to fix it either. So Mitchell
left it the way it was and saved it under another file name. He closed
it, then he went into
File>Open recent
and opened it again. He did
it again, four times.

“Wow. She sure is happy.”

Mitchell took a sharp breath.

“Really happy.”

He took his hand away from the mouse.

“Fucking
overjoyed.”
Laughter
followed.
Mitchell
turned
around.

The whole party, all seven of them, were there. Shelly was dangling
a mostly empty wine glass beside her as she pressed against a skinny
grey-haired man, who was leaning against the doorframe beside
Stefan, who was bent forward over the back of an office chair, his
hands on the arm-rests straddling the bare arms of another woman
with short dark hair and light-coloured jeans who was sitting there
legs crossed, one bare foot with manicured toenails brushing the
shoulder of the bald man, who sat on the floor almost cross-legged.
Behind them, a blond-haired fellow wearing a black T-shirt stood on
his toes to look at the computer screen. Trudy was crouched down
beside Mitchell, her hands on the desktop and her chin resting on
her knuckles. She looked up at Mitchell.

“Happy now?” she said. Stefan laughed, Shelly giggled, and that
set everyone else off.

Mitchell looked back at the picture. Delilah smiled back out at
him, and he thought he could see why they were laughing. She was
smiling wide: too wide, as wide as the Joker did in
Batman
. As he
looked at it now, he saw the problem with that. It was unnatural.
Delilah had never smiled that way. Not even in grade school. If she
did, why she’d rip her cheeks right off her cheekbones and then
there’d be nothing but blood and tears. Mitchell guessed it was
pretty funny, seeing Delilah Franken smiling like that.

He let his breath out.

“I’m done on the computer,” he said. “Can I have something to
eat?”

Trudy’s knees made a cracking noise as she got up. “Sure thing.
Let’s go to the kitchen.”

The others spread to make a pathway for Trudy and Mitchell
out of the sunroom. Looking over his shoulder, he saw that they all
gathered around the computer, to get a closer look at the picture he
made. Mitchell felt an unfamiliar sense of pride. They were looking
at his picture — his work. Even if he hadn’t gotten the hair right, that
was something.

Trudy opened the refrigerator and pulled out a tray covered in
Saran wrap. She stood quickly, balancing the tray on the fingertips
of one hand while she cocked her hip and planted the other hand
there. “Canapes?” she said.

“Canapés,” said Mitchell. Trudy had pronounced it like Can
Apes.

“You got it,” said Trudy. She set the tray down on the countertop
and peeled back the plastic. Mitchell took a little roll of prosciutto
and melon and bit into it. It was salty and sweet, watery and oily. A
nice-enough mix that he took two others.

“So how was school?” Trudy leaned against the stove and crossed
one ankle over the other. “You said it was a bad day.”

Mitchell took a breath. He didn’t think they wanted to hear about
anything like that because they weren’t his parents. But maybe
that was just when Stefan was in the room. Mitchell chewed and
swallowed another canapé.

“It was a bad day. They made us go to an assembly. This . . . this
guy from the school board talked to us for about an hour. Some girls
were crying. Even though she’d already graduated. They were crying.
Can you believe that? Right there in the assembly with everybody
looking.”

“What did he talk to you about?”

“After that was History of Europe. I hate History of Europe and it
sucked. And phys-ed. I don’t see why I have to take that when what
I want to do is — ”

Trudy cut in: “You don’t want to talk about that assembly, do
you?”

Mitchell put the third canapé in his mouth and sucked on it,
pulling the cool sweet melon out from the prosciutto sheaf. More
laughter came from the sunroom. Trudy pushed herself off from the
stove and came closer to Mitchell. She leaned over and whispered
into his ear: “So what do you think of Shelly? Think she’s pretty?”

“I think you’re pretty.”

Trudy seemed to freeze for an instant. Then she pulled back a bit,
turned to her side and leaned on the island beside Mitchell. “She’s
pretty, all right,” said Trudy. “Stef sure thinks so.”

Mitchell took another couple of canapés but he didn’t eat them
yet.

“She’s a year or two older,” said Trudy. “Than me. And Stef. That
should make a difference.”

Mitchell thought about that. “O-older girls can be pretty,” he
said and Trudy smirked. She put her hand on Mitchell’s shoulder,
and sidled her hip closer to his. “Yeah,” she said, as her hand slid
from the shoulder nearest her to the one farthest. “You
would
think
that.”

Mitchell swallowed. Trudy leaned her head to one side so it rested
on Mitchell’s shoulder. He felt stray hairs tickling his face, like little
electric sparks. Trudy’s hip was touching his own. “Oh, Mitch,” she
said. “You are
so
fucked up.”

“And that’s what she likes about you,” said Stefan.

Trudy lifted her head to look around, but she didn’t move her
hand or shift away. “Mitch and I were just talking about you.”

Stefan came around the island. He was holding a glass of red
wine and smiling maybe. “Me?” He set the wine glass on the counter
beside Mitchell, and looked hard into Trudy’s eyes. “I’m flattered.”

“You’re an asshole,” she said.

“
Why, I oughta
,” he said, making a limp fist that opened like a
flower when he let it drop to his side. Then he laughed. “How you
doing, Mitch?”

“Good.”

“Really? Good.” He reached over and took Trudy’s hand off
Mitchell’s shoulder. “You should save your energy, man.” Trudy
raised her eyebrows at Stefan. “She on her way?” she said and Stefan
nodded. “Just coming off the highway,” he said. “Like, two minutes
ago.”

“I’m going to go to the bathroom,” said Mitchell. Trudy and
Stefan stopped and looked him up and down, then Stefan laughed.
“I can see that,” said Trudy, smirking. “Go on,” said Stefan. “Use the
one upstairs. It’s quieter.”

Mitchell left them in the kitchen. He passed the dining room
table where there were more canapés laid out and he took a cracker
with some brie cheese on it. In the living room, the Media Centre
was off the news. Now the screen was filled with a security camera
picture from the basement garage, looking at the elevator they’d
come up in. The bald man and the woman with paint on her toenails
were sitting on the couch. Her feet were in his lap, and he was giving
one of them a massage while she twisted the other this way and that
at the ankle, like she was stretching it. They watched Mitchell pass
by and climb up the spiral staircase to the second level, and didn’t
take their eyes off him until he went into the main bath.

Mitchell closed the door behind him as the lights flickered on. He
lifted the toilet seat and unzipped his fly. He stood there for awhile
like that, then zipped up and washed his hands. He caught himself
in the mirror, leaning forward, his hands held together under the
thin stream of warm water. His eyes were open wide, his mouth
small and slack and round, like he was always saying “oh.” His dark
hair was too long and fell over his forehead, which was still pimply.
There were the beginnings of a beard growing on the chin, but you
could still see the big pimple underneath the left side of his lower lip.
Mitchell looked at his face and thought: what would I see if I saw me
on the street? At school? He thought about that, and thought again:
a sad boy
. He made a smile, and looked, and thought:
a happy boy
. He
brushed the hair aside from his forehead, and stood up straight, and
kept smiling and he thought about that, but finally thought:

Who knows
?

Mitchell found a hand towel and dried off, then went out. He
heard the sound of another door closing downstairs. He stepped to
the railing and looked down, as the rectangle of hall light narrowed
and vanished on the first-floor tiling. The couple on the couch sat
up, and from the kitchen, Stefan said: “Lesley!” and Trudy said:
“How’d it go?”

“Fucking nightmare.”

Mitch looked down and saw the top of Lesley Woolfe’s head and
her shoulders, as she made her way to the couch. She twisted her
head on her neck so that Mitch could see her throat, wisps of dark
hair mingling with body art that was emerging from the collar of
a simple white blouse. With one arm, she flung an overcoat onto
the chaise lounge by the downstairs powder room. “Fuck,” she said
again, drawing the syllable out this time, “me.”