The Winter Girl (10 page)

“You don't believe me?” he said.

I still would have let it go, but the corners of his mouth had risen in an unpleasant, taunting way, so I thought, even considering the circumstances, it would be appropriate to set him straight.

“Belongs to a guy named Dick Swain,” I said. “He hasn't been around for some time.”

Victor waited for a
pssshhh
of oxygen to vent into his larynx and then he got back to this final business.

“I purchased it from Dick Swain in 2011,” he said.

He barely got to the end of the sentence. Anything over four words seemed to put him into agony. But having imparted this information to me, I could tell that he was pleased.

“Does Elise know that?” I said.

“Of course,” he said.

“She would have told me,” I said. I was trying to keep calm, though I felt the back of my neck getting hot, and cold, and hot again. It was like someone had just told me he'd spotted Elise with another man. My wife, with her secrets, kept slipping away from me. I blamed it on this prick in front of me. He was the one who'd taught her to keep secrets as a child, and now they were spreading. I'd make her write a list of all of them later. We'd get to the bottom of it. The last one. How bad could the worst one be?

“She wouldn't have told you,” he said, as if he'd always know more about my wife than I could ever hope to understand. “I made her promise.”

I stared at him and tried to think of how I could surprise him, just enough to let him know I wasn't as predictable as he thought.

“We broke in the other night,” I said.

He turned and faced the ceiling. Looking pleased, he asked me to tell him more.

“There's blood on a mattress in there. Someone got killed. What do you know about that?”

It was my final move. For a moment I thought I'd gained a little ground back, but when he turned to me again, he had a strange look of pleasure on his face, the crease in his forehead completely smoothed out. He continued sliding the bunched knuckles of his left hand down the bedspread until he grasped the remote control. I watched his thumb writhe over the tiny buttons until, just by luck, he was able to turn the television off, throwing us into complete darkness. Complete except for the lights on the timer that was still on.

I couldn't tell if Victor was watching me or the lighted window, but at 11:00, just as I had promised, the house next door fell dark. There wasn't a sound in the bedroom until the oxygen tank released its miserly
pssshhh
again. Victor spoke to me as he began to sink into a morphined sleep.

“Why don't you take your turn with her?”

“With who?” I said.

“Carmelita. She's waiting for you in the basement.”

I asked him what he was talking about and then I remembered the voicemail. Victor's voice telling Carmelita he was worried about her.

“I recommend you do it in front of the mirrors. I moved them in front of the fireplace so I could watch.”

“Who's Carmelita?”

“The winter girl,” he said, drifting off. “Everyone should have a winter girl.”

Of course, I wished it were a joke. But even if the girl Victor was talking about existed, she would be long gone. The idea of some naked, freezing creature scurrying from room to room in the house next door disturbed me for a moment, until I wrote it off as impossible. Or maybe it was a fantasy he'd come up with some night, after drinking too much by himself in his study. Maybe it was some woman from his past he'd tried to call. I could picture him drunkenly dialing Swain's number instead. After Victor's cancer diagnosis, Elise had told me he was hitting the booze and sleeping pills heavily every night, unable to get to sleep.

But I didn't entirely write it off. I stood by the bedroom window after Elise had fallen asleep and watched the lights in the house next door come on, spooking myself when I thought I saw something move in one of the upstairs bedrooms in Swain's house. But it was nothing, just reflections of the bare branches in the gully between the houses, moving with the wind. I don't remember exactly what time it was when I finally pulled the covers back and lay down next to Elise, but I could feel the resentment building again. I hated the fact that Victor thought I could be so easily taken advantage of. And what did he expect me to do with this little bit of news? Lure this phantom creature from her hiding place with a plate of hot food and warm clothes?

And then there was the matter of Curt Page and the text. I shook Elise awake. It's funny how I could immediately tell she was awake. She sucked in a long breath through her nose and then expelled it slowly.

“What?” she said.

“Curt Page says he's on his way.”

“You talked to him?”

“He texted you.”

“When?”

“About thirty minutes ago. I called him back, got his voicemail.”

She turned away from me again, pulled the covers up to her shoulders.

“Don't worry about Curt Page,” she said. “I never respond to him.”

I thought that sounded strange. Was there someone I should worry about?

“What's going on, Elise? You're getting weird Christmas calls from your brother. Curt thinks he's on a pilgrimage to you. And your father just told me something even more ridiculous.”

I was going to tell her about the winter girl who Victor had highly recommended having, but Elise cut me off.

“You've been drinking,” she said. “I can hear it in your voice.”

“Of course I've been drinking. Things are getting a little disturbing, to be quite honest.”

Short of slurring, being overly formal was the surest tip-off to Elise that I was too drunk to waste time on.
Quite honest.

“Quite honestly,” she said, still turned away from me, “you're the one who's starting to disturb me the most. I need support more than you do right now. My dad is dying downstairs.”

He was actually watching the military channel, I wanted to tell her, and trying to arouse me with lurid delusions about a strange girl there to service whoever found her. But before I could provide this information, I could hear Elise lightly snoring.

I dreamed of her, the winter girl, that night. Her whitish lips and expressionless oval face, layered in Martha and Richard Swain's scavenged clothes. Her fingers stretched out from the cuff of an old parka, and I stood there, as you would before some timid animal, waiting for her to touch my cheek.

I
n the morning, I found myself standing at the kitchen sink, squinting at the silvery light on Shinnecock Bay. Elise was still asleep upstairs, taking advantage of one of the few perks of having Victor back home. At least she didn't have to slog out to the car to visit him in the hospital.

I was making her a breakfast tray, scraping some butter on a piece of toast and carefully placing a chipped cream pourer on the tray, when I heard Victor's distinctive hacking cough coming from his bedroom.

Forcing myself to take a deep sigh, I walked down the hallway, tray in hand, and checked on him. He was sitting upright in bed, hacking into Kleenex he had balled up in his fist.

“What have you brought me?” he said hoarsely, staring at the tray.

“It's for Elise,” I said, taking another step toward the bed. It was amazing how his face, drier than the knotted bedroom carpet, took on the exact color of the light outside. His eyes weren't exactly glittering with new life, but they were wet enough from the coughing to shine.

“I have a message for her,” he said, taking no interest in the steaming coffee cup on the tray. He preferred to stare at the window.

“Why don't you write it on a piece of paper and I'll take it up to her.”

“I'm not talking about my daughter,” Victor said, the bottom half of his face flinching in annoyance. “The girl. My winter girl.”

“Sure,” I said, indulging him for the moment. “What would you like me to say to her?”

“Tell her the truth,” he said, extending one of his thin fingers to delicately scratch the stubble on the side of his neck. “Tell her I nearly died. Tell her I'm back from the dead.”

“First item on my list of things to do today,” I said, bowing my head sarcastically. “Right after I take a crap and brush my teeth.”

I was about to leave him in his sordid fantasyland when he reached for something underneath his pillow. It was an envelope, filled with some carefully smoothed-out cash, and on it was scrawled
CARMELITA
.

“Five hundred and six dollars,” he said. “I counted it twice. I want you to bring it to her.”

Sure thing,
I thought to myself, a little taken aback that this fantasy project of Victor's actually had a name. That was a nice touch. He'd probably get a real kick out of this if I really fell for it and wandered around Swain's house shouting this name. It didn't matter. The money was mine now anyway.

“You're a big spender,” I said.

“Can't give them too much,” he said, watching me fold the envelope in half and stuff it in the back pocket of my jeans. “Just enough to keep them interested.”

I picked up the tray again and started to leave the room, even though he was calling my name, determined to give me more advice about this phantom he had invented.

“Get some rest, Victor,” I said. “You sound like you really need it.”

F
ive hundred and six bucks,
I thought, spitting out toothpaste. In the bathroom mirror, I could see part of the bed. Elise's body still bunched up under the comforter, snoring softly again. She'd wake herself up, stare blankly around the room, and fall asleep again. I'd left the tray on the small desk, the coffee already gone cold.

I spat again and walked back into the bedroom, my feet bare and cold. I pulled out a dresser drawer and Elise opened her eyes again.

“You brought me breakfast,” she said. “That's sweet of you.”

Fishing two mismatched socks out of the drawer, I sat on the edge of the bed and pulled them on. Then I stepped into my permanently laced sneakers and reached out toward her, grabbing her hand.

I was going to tell her about her father's five hundred and six dollars and this winter girl he wanted me to pay off in Swain's house, but she'd closed her eyes again.

I swear I was going to tell her.

The weather changed fast in Shinnecock Hills. You could be blinking at the cold bright sun one moment and then watching ash-colored clouds thicken over the inlet. The light that had glittered across the bay just an hour before had been replaced by a dense fog that drifted westward from the ocean. The sky and bay had melted into the same grayness and only the branches of the nearest trees could be seen.

I opened the door that led to Victor's deck, navigated myself around a few insistent scabs of ice and then down the back stairs. I climbed over the fence and found the deer path. The red berries suspended in the underbrush even had a grayish tint. I thought I could smell the fog as I moved through it. It had the faint odor of wet cement. It crept down the black path like dry ice, and as I made my way around the empty pool I had that sense of myself walking into a scene again, as if the empty house and everything in it had been constructed just for me.

Almost two weeks had passed since the sliding glass door had been kicked in, and it still had not been repaired, though the shattered bits of glass were harder to see in the flat light. Gusts of rain, snow, dew, had claimed some of the furniture in the living room. The back of the yellow sofa was streaked with water. A lampshade was ruined, a finger of moisture beginning to split its only seam. A seagull or crow had briefly made a tour of the place, leaving a whitish pile of birdshit near the ficus tree. The only difference between this visit and the previous ones was that I was carrying an envelope filled with cash.

I cringed as I did just what Victor wanted me to do.

“Carmelita!” I shouted.

I wandered into the downstairs bedroom, pulled open one of the folding closets, stared up at some blankets on a shelf, and called her name again, just for the hell of it.

Nothing. Just the daylight in the house fading for a moment as the fog continued to roll in. I got down on my knees, looked under the bed, imagining her cowering there.

“Hey, Carmelita,” I said, walking back into the living room. Above me, the useless chandelier and all its gaudy crystal pendants. The cream-colored carpet running all the way up the staircase. The array of abandoned liqueurs on the teak cabinet.
Crème de menthe,
I thought to myself, trying to unscrew its crusty cap.
Who even drinks this stuff anymore?

“Hey, Carmelita,” I said again, finally twisting open the bottle and taking a sickening, minty sip. “I've got your money. Five hundred and six bucks. Victor says he counted it twice.”

There's nothing more depressing than talking to yourself while drinking crème de menthe. So I picked up an ancient-looking bottle of Cointreau, wrestled its gluey cork out, and took a longer sip. In the distance, I could see the fog doubling down, erasing the long-necked black birds that roosted on the dock, one by one.

“Who are you?” a voice said from the top of the staircase. I swung around and took a few steps back.

She was a frightened-looking Hispanic girl, with black hair that fell to her shoulders. She was wearing jeans and a faded red sweatshirt. I'll tell you right away, she wasn't a knockout. You might pass her on the street without a second look, but here, in an empty house, it was another story. Everything took on more weight, even the way she tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear and then nervously folded and unfolded her arms. At least she had the advantage of talking to me from above, one knee tucked between the brass railings.

“My name is Scott,” I said, holding up the envelope as if it were evidence of my good intentions. I was just a courier, after all. “Victor's my father-in-law.”

This information did nothing to ease the tension. She seemed to be summing me up, pursing her lips and gripping the railing now with one hand. You notice little things at first when you're just getting to know someone. The pink polish on her fingernails had chipped off, and there were three dark scabs on her wrist. She wasn't anything like the winter girl I had seen in my dreams. First of all, she seemed to be wearing her own clothes, right down to the Day-Glo orange Nikes she tapped against the railing.

“Were you here the whole time?” I shouted up at her. “When I was walking around with my wife? When those guys broke in?”

Walking around
is a mild way of putting it, I chided myself. There was sex, then the discovery of the blood on the sheets, then Elise throwing up all over the bedroom.

“I was hiding in the basement,” Carmelita said softly, sweeping her hair behind her ear again and then turning toward the staircase. “There's a narrow space behind the boiler. It would be murder if the heat worked, but the metal is ice cold now.”

She took a few steps downward and then paused, gripping the railing again to get a closer look at me. And, of course, I got a better look at her: no makeup, brown eyes, a slight build. I stared back at her face, just to let her know I wasn't another version of Victor, some scumbag who thought he could pay her to do anything he wanted.