The Violet Hour: A Novel (21 page)

In the short line inside, she swayed back and forth, looking over the baristas at the menu on the wall. She knew its offerings by heart, but she didn’t know what she wanted. Soon she was alone at the counter opposite the cashier, a blond girl with braids who was waiting for her to speak. She ordered an iced coffee.

“Two fifty-four,” the girl said.

Elizabeth touched her pocket. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t have my wallet.”

“Oh no,” the girl said reflexively. She continued to look at her, waiting.

“I mean I just don’t have it.”

The girl stared stupidly and Elizabeth’s cheeks grew warm. Forgetting her wallet suddenly felt like a colossal error, definitive proof of her genetic inability to function in a normal world. She caught a couple her age escaping out the side door, the girl lividly sucking her frozen drink, the guy, in aviator sunglasses and a plain white tee, casually palming his own beverage like a celebrity trying to be photographed playing football on the beach. It seemed to have been decided: dudes were happy-go-lucky, girls just couldn’t relax. But really, how the hell was she supposed to relax? She’d been so careful with her life, donning all the recommended protective garb, avoiding detonative
personalities, counting each step toward perfection. And still people were ripped away from her, or showed up where they didn’t belong.

Just when she thought she couldn’t stand there a moment longer with her failure, a voice behind her spoke up. “Don’t worry. This one’s on me.”

She turned to see a vaguely familiar face under the brim of a newsboy hat.

“This seems to be a habit of yours,” it said. She stared blankly. Her brain was not thinking fast enough.

“Elizabeth?” He was a boy and his voice was growing unsteady.

“Yes.”

“It’s Toby. I worked the Battery wedding on Saturday?”

“Oh my god!” Her memory lurched into place. “My bag!”

“Yeah,” he said, visibly relieved. His eyes were gray. “You never seem to take it with you.”

“Do you want the coffee or not?” the cashier asked.

“She’ll take it,” Toby answered, hastily sliding some bills across the counter. “Are you okay?” he asked Elizabeth, as though he’d pulled her to her feet from a fall.

“I’m fine,” she said, darting her eyes around the room. She didn’t understand where he’d come from. “Did you pay for my coffee?”

He pressed the ice-filled cup into her hand and led her away from the counter. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m sorry. I’m just a little confused.”

“It’s okay.”

“What are you doing here?” she asked him.

He said something about visiting his mother, held up a paperback book. “I just needed to be somewhere new. Listen—” He tried to catch her eye. “Are you lost? Do you need a ride somewhere?”

“My grandfather died,” she said.

All the energy escaped from his face. “Oh, man. Was he really sick?” He seemed genuinely concerned. Tears surged forward in her ducts.

“He fell. On Sunday.”

“Jesus! Are you sure you don’t need a ride? I have a car.”

She shook her head. She couldn’t bear his pity. “I walked. I have to be getting back.”

“I’ll walk with you.”

She shook her head again, more firmly this time, as if shaking off her vulnerability. “No, really.” She held up a hand. All she wanted was for him to leave. “I’m fine. Thank you for the coffee.”

Still jittery, she left the Starbucks with her cup and stumbled back toward her grandparents’ house. The coffee was oversweetened, and it rattled the roots of her teeth. She sucked half of it through the long green straw, then tossed the rest into a trash bin in disgust.

She ought to have prevented it. This was the thought breaking over her now, dipping and rising up and crashing down on top of her, like a traffic jam after miles of steady motion. She was practically a doctor, for Christ’s sake. First, do no harm—and yet her own grandfather had died not thirty yards from where she lay, shamelessly fucking her famous-looking boyfriend. She might not have done any harm, but she sure as hell hadn’t done any good. Would she ever? Was she even interested anymore in doing good?

Back at the house, she slammed the door behind her.

“There you are!” Estella emerged from the kitchen holding a spoon.

“I need Kyle,” Elizabeth shouted, stomping up the stairs, aware that she was on the verge of throwing a terrific tantrum, but unable to help herself.

“He’s up there!” Estella called after her. “He brought four different kinds of ice cream!”

Elizabeth found Kyle holding a book in the study. She slammed this door too and rushed at him, wrapping her arms around his waist. His book fell open to the floor.

“Where the hell have you been?” he asked. “I go get you ice cream and then I come back and you’re gone.”

“Just shut up!” she cried. She pushed at him with all her strength. It wasn’t enough to knock him over, but she caught him off guard, and he stumbled backward. He stared at her, blankly questioning, waiting for her cue.

“Don’t give me that right now,” she said.

“Oh, baby. I’m sorry. Come here. You’re beautiful.” He pulled her to his chest.

“Ugh. I’m sick of that, too!”

“But you are,” he insisted. “You
are
.” He wrapped his arms around her body and squeezed her so tightly she suddenly felt she couldn’t breathe. He was strangling her with his big stupid kindness. She felt her head might pop off its stem. She imagined it rolling in the corner, eyes bugging, gathering dust from the floor in its ear. He inhaled, trying to guide her to serenity, but when his chest rose hard into her face, she knew she couldn’t bear him any longer. She opened her mouth and bit down through his shirt.

“
Fuck!
” he shouted, flinging her back. “What the hell was that?”

Her elbow knocked against a bookshelf, which only wound her up further. She came at him again, gripping into his arms with her nails this time, sucking at his neck through her teeth.
Beautiful,
he’d said. Please. It didn’t matter how she looked. Those were surface cells, nothing more. She had to make him see beneath them, the pile of damage she’d constructed all by herself inside.

“Get off me!” he said, shaking her away. She saw his face twist with rage, saw his hand swing down across her face.

It was like falling off a roof, and knowing you would break your neck. She pitched backward toward the folded-up couch, and when she landed on its sticky leather, she curled her knees up and made herself small, her chest heaving airlessly, her head thundering with sobs. The delicious, flayed sound of her pain poured out of her body and into the room. She felt sublime, better than she’d felt in a long time. It was like catching a glimpse of herself, not in a water fountain where everything was out of focus, but in a perfect mirror, in the
middle of some chaotic, dressy affair, and having thought, up until that moment, that she had been a girl, when it fact she was not a girl, she was a woman with painted lips and a shifting recess between her clavicles. It was sublime but also terrifying; it meant that everything would change.

T
OBY
S
TEINBERG DROVE
the neighborhoods of south Bethesda, trying to calm himself down.

When she’d walked through that door, panting and fragrant, he’d nearly lost his head. This was the kind of sign he yearned for. Returning a pretty girl’s wallet was one thing. But seeing the pretty girl again, lost, in another city and state, and finding she’d misplaced her wallet
again
—well, these coincidences did not occur without reason.

She was not just pretty: she was intoxicating. Red hair, white skin, mobile blue-green eyes. A profile smoother than marble. So radiant, he imagined most people couldn’t even see her. She was a secret perfect prize, real to him alone. His chest flashed electric at the privilege.
Elizabeth. Mirabelle.
No doubt she couldn’t even fathom her own beauty; she just hummed and moved around inside it, never knowing how intensely it governed her life.

Toby made figure eights throughout Maryland and the District, weaving around neighborhoods and parking lots, waving to children playing in sprinklers and parents fanning themselves on porch chairs. Everyone’s clothes sagged, soggy with the heat. Toby Steinberg did not care that his thighs pooled with sweat against the Subaru’s neoprene seat. He knew the secret to happiness.

W
HEN
E
LIZABETH FINALLY
looked up from the couch, she saw Kyle sitting against the desk on the opposite wall, a hollow look in his eye. He’d picked up the book he’d been holding when she came in and was gripping it now in both hands.

“Before you get any ideas, I’m going to remind you that you started it,” he said. He articulated each word, as though he’d been rehearsing the line for days. “You bit me really hard.” He lifted his shirt to reveal a dotted, mouth-shaped welt just above his soft left nipple. It was already the deep purple-brown of rotten fruit, and the cratered marks of her teeth were still visible. He prodded the welt delicately with his fingertips, as though fearing he might smear the evidence.

“But,” he continued, lowering his shirt, “I should never have hit you.”

She wiped a stream of moisture from her chin. “I hate you,” she said.

“We’ve gotten rough before, right?” He seemed to be pleading with her. “It’s
hot
when we get rough. Even when you bite.”

She closed her eyes and remembered.

“But this was different,” he said finally.

“It was.”

T
HE NEXT THING
Cassandra knew, someone was standing in front of the screen door, large and penitent, a suitcase at his feet. It was dark, the sun had set, leaving rosy-fingered streaks across the tops of the backyard trees. She blinked until her eyes adjusted, but even before then she knew it was Kyle. Zippers dangled everywhere: on the suitcase, on the wrinkled pockets of his cargo shorts, on the hem of his lightweight jacket.

“Aren’t you hot?” Cassandra said. “Why are you wearing that?”

“I’m going home,” he said, carefully. “I couldn’t fit it in my suitcase—don’t tell Lizzie.”

“What do you mean, don’t tell her?”

He repeated his line in the same maddening tone. “That I’m going home.”

“I heard you the first time. Kyle, she’ll know.”

“I mean don’t tell her you saw me leave. She’ll want to know why
you didn’t stop me, which you wouldn’t have been able to do anyway. This way’s better for everyone.”

“Kyle.” She felt the need to say his name again. “Her grandfather just died.”

A wrinkle of pain registered on his face. “I realize this makes me look bad. But trust me, she doesn’t want me here. I don’t know if she ever did. Anyway, she’s got her dad now, and you. I think it’s for the best if I just leave her alone for a while.”

“Why are you telling me this? Did you stop here on purpose?”

He shrugged. “I was going to sneak out the back but then I saw you sleeping here. I guess I wanted to make sure you were okay. And I guess I didn’t think I could leave without telling
some
one. That just seemed like it would’ve been cruel.”

So Kyle was still a cut above Abe, and barely half his age. It figured. “Yes,” Cassandra said. “It would’ve been.”

He frowned. “Do you need water or anything?”

She really must’ve looked ghastly. “I probably do, but don’t worry about it. I’ll find some after you’re gone.”

“I left her a note, if that helps.”

“I’ll see that she gets it.”

“No, she’ll find it. Remember, you didn’t see me.”

“Right. So get out of here, then, before she hears us talking.” She closed her eyes, and when she reopened them, he’d disappeared.

Immediately, she felt burdened. She leapt up and flicked on the outdoor light, illuminating a yard empty of anything save the sauna, still half-built, still expecting someone to return to give it walls.

T
HE LOBBY OF
Abe’s hotel was virtually empty when he arrived. Just some sectional lounge furniture, a statue of a samurai, and an ultrayoung desk clerk holding a fresh paperback edition of
Persuasion
. She had large eyes and appeared to be reading the introduction. Abe felt vaguely salacious asking her for a room.

“I have you down for two nights, Dr. Green,” she said, looking
into her hidden computer monitor. “How would you like to pay?” Her voice was like a cricket’s.

He handed her his credit card. “I should warn you, I may need more than two nights.”

“Plans up in the air?”

“You could say that.”

She struck more keys than seemed necessary. “Fortunately, we do have vacancies. But you should try to let us know at your earliest convenience if you plan to extend your stay.”

“Will do. Is that for school?”

“Excuse me?”

“
Persuasion
. Are you reading it for school?”

“Well, it’s summer. And I’m twenty-seven.” She placed her hand on the book, over the pallid Regency face on the cover. “But I did read it in school. Now I’m reading it again.”

“Liked it that much?”

He knew his questions seemed strange, but he didn’t care. He needed to talk to someone. The clerk looked mildly puzzled, but for the sake of her job, perhaps, she humored him.

“I always said it was one of my favorites,” she said. “But then the other day, someone asked me what happens in the book and I couldn’t remember. I kept getting it confused with all the other Jane Austen books. I couldn’t even remember the man’s name. I thought it was something with an R or a J.”

“And was it?”

“Nope. Captain Wentworth.” She flashed him the back cover, where, presumably, it said something about the characters. “Ever read it?”

“Strangely enough, I have. They didn’t make boys read much Austen in my day. Now I talk to these medical interns and every one of them, male, female, has read Austen, and every one of them has a blog. It was a good story, though.” He bit the side of his tongue, aware that he was sounding older and more conservative than he felt.

“I guess times change,” she said, smiling. She didn’t look remotely
offended. He wondered what kind of boyfriend she went home to at night. An aggressive law student, or perhaps a restaurant manager with frosted tips. Either way, he was pretty sure the guy didn’t read Austen, even in these enlightened times.