Chapter 23

23

The house is in a quiet neighborhood just outside of downtown, about a half-hour drive from the motel. On the way over, I continuously checked the rearview for Ilie’s obnoxious sports car. For cops. There was a shady-looking van that trailed us for a few miles, but it went straight when we turned into the neighborhood.

We park on the street. We sit in the car, staring at the house, saying nothing. We still haven’t solved the problem of our thirst. If we get out of the car, there’s no telling what will happen. When Naomi tries to break up with Lee, she might end up killing him instead.

I know she needs this goodbye, that she’s after closure. I also don’t doubt that Lee would react poorly if Naomi up and vanished into the night. If she tried to do this over the phone, he’d be suspect. He’d come looking for her. For us. He’d start digging around.

There’s no right move here.

She takes a deep breath. “I can do this.”

“Naomi, it’s too risky to go out there.” I’m struggling with my thirst, to think of anything other than the taste of blood, the euphoria of having it in my mouth, in my throat. And if the thirst is bad for me, it must be bad for her, too.

“I can do this,” she repeats. “Right? I can say goodbye?”

I wish I could reassure her. The truth is, staying with Lee isn’t an option anymore. Even if she got her thirst under control, I’m not sure how that would work. I don’t think we age anymore, something he’d be sure to notice eventually. We’ve been so preoccupied with the immediate logistics, we haven’t had time to confront the long term—the long term being immortality, I guess. But I don’t want to bring any of that up right now. I’m a little jarred by Naomi’s fragility.

“I’ve thought about this before. About leaving him. When I know what I want, I go after it. Easy as pie. It’s when I don’t know—that’s what fucks me up.”

“Don’t you always know?”

“I used to. I feel like the older I get, the less sure I am about anything. It’s annoying. Is it like that for you?”

“I’ve never been sure about anything. Just careful about everything.”

“Mm,” she says. I wonder if she’s procrastinating.

“I could play ‘Kitchen Floor’ if you think it’d help.”

She laughs. “Don’t.”

She takes her phone out of her pocket. She calls him. It rings twice; then he answers.

“Hey, babe. You here?”

“Yeah,” she says, unbuckling her seat belt. “Come outside.”

The front door of the house opens, and Lee steps out. He’s in gray sweatpants, combat boots, and a Sherpa jacket. He lights a cigarette.

He didn’t quit when Naomi quit. Not a fan of lollipops.

I’d asked her at the time, “Does it bother you that he still smokes?”

“Does it bother me that he’s a fucking asshole?” she’d said. “Nah, not really.”

Whenever I spent time with Lee he always went out of his way to be nice to me, but I never got a real sense of who he was. He grew up in Pittsburgh. Started playing guitar in the seventh grade. Went to SUNY Purchase. Moved to Brooklyn after graduating and started his band. Met Naomi at a show, asked her out. They split a pitcher of cheap beer and were living together a week later. He doesn’t care about sports, pretends to care about politics. He can be funny and loud and can hold his liquor. He loves Naomi. That I never doubted. It’s obvious.

I trusted Naomi to pick her own partner, as she did with me. Maybe we both picked wrong. Or maybe there is no picking right, just getting lucky.

Naomi unlocks the car.

“What if you just roll the window down?” I say. “Crack it. We stay in here. Use the glass as a buffer.”

“Sloane. I’m not gonna hurt him,” she says, opening her door and stepping out onto the street. She meets him halfway down the driveway.

“What’s going on?” Lee asks. It’s hard for me to hear them at this distance, their voices muffled. “Is that Sloane? Why are you with Sloane?”

He goes to embrace her, hug her, but she jumps back.

“Can you just…stay over there?” Naomi says, holding a hand up. “Don’t come any closer.”

“Uh, okay? Is this some kind of game?”

“No, Lee. I need to talk to you. I need you to listen to me.”

“It’s fucking freezing out,” Lee says. “Can we go inside? What’s going on? Why are you acting like this? Did somebody die?”

I shift in my seat.

“No,” she says. A lie. “I…”

She looks down at her feet, struggling for words. Or with her thirst.

“What?” he says. “You’re freaking me out.”

“I’ve done a lot of thinking. For the both of us.”

Oh Christ, is she really going to go full Casablanca ?

“If we stay together, keep going like this, we’ll regret it. We’ve had a good run, Lee. But I’ve been feeling for a while now that—”

“Wait. What are you saying? Are you quitting?”

Her head snaps up. “Quitting?”

“This isn’t a good time, Naomi. We start recording this week. I need you. The band needs you.”

I can feel her anger from here. See it radiating off her, a red glow. “Fucking really? I wasn’t quitting. I was breaking up with you!”

“What?” he says, putting out his cigarette.

“I’m leaving. I’m going away for a while and you’re not going to hear from me, and I don’t want to hear from you.”

“Hold on. Slow down. This is crazy. What are you talking about?”

“And yeah, technically I am quitting. Goodbye, Lee. We’ll always have Paris.”

“You’re not making any sense right now. What are you saying?” He takes a step toward her, and I cringe. He’s too close.

She backs away. “I’m saying what I should have said a long time ago. What you should have said. I love you, but…”

Her voice breaks, and it hits me like a crowbar, the immensity of years spent together, all the memories created coexisting with someone for so long, the mutual witnessing of the world they share.

I think of all the stupid little things. One time Joel and I saw a kid in the Wegmans parking lot attempt to shove a Popsicle up his nose, and he said it smelled “cold good,” and now every once in a while we’ll describe scents to each other as “cold good” and laugh. Maybe we’ll be better off without each other, and maybe so will Naomi and Lee, but what about all of the cold good? The shared experiences we now have to crack in half and live alone with?

“You can have the apartment. The stuff. I don’t care,” she says, walking backward toward the street. “You won’t be able to reach me. That’s by design. That’s how I need it to be.”

“Babe, are you serious? Are you high right now?”

“No, I’m not high, and yes, I’m serious. And I need you to take me seriously for fucking once. Please.” That she has to ask for this makes me furious. Why do women always need to ask, to beg, not to be dismissed? “I mean, this can’t be a total surprise.”

He follows her into the street. “You show up here and tell me you’re leaving and I can have the apartment? I know we fight, and shit gets intense with the band, but this is crazy. It’s crazy.”

“You say that so I can’t argue. No point I make will be valid from here on out. Everything I say will just be crazy. You know what? I should be thanking you. Any doubt I had that this was the right thing is now gone.”

“Where is this coming from?” he asks. “Is this about what happened in Budapest? Because—”

“No! It’s not about Budapest. It’s about you and me. I’m grateful for the time we had, but it’s over now. It’s done,” she says, turning around and reaching for the car door. She looks at me through the window, and she’s crying, but she’s also got that wildness in her eyes. The bloodlust.

She gets the door open, but Lee darts forward, shoving his arm in front of her to stop her, to slam the door. His jacket sleeves are too short, exposing a sliver of wrist.

She bites him.

He screams. He tries to rip his arm away, but her teeth have sunk in too deep.

“Naomi! Stop!” I don’t know if she can hear me—if I’m louder than her thirst.

I don’t know what makes her let him go.

“What the fuck ?” Lee yells, and I see lights flick on around the neighborhood. “What is wrong with you?”

“I’m…I’m sorry,” Naomi says.

I reach over and open the door for her, and she climbs into the car. She hits the locks and looks at me. There’s blood around her mouth. She grabs me by the back of the neck and pulls me in like she’s kissing me, only she’s not. She’s sharing.

Lee bangs on the driver’s-side window.

“Naomi! Naomi, what is going on? Are you leaving me for Sloane ?” he says. “You bit me. You fucking bit me! Jesus. I’m still bleeding.”

At that, Naomi pulls away from me and starts the car.

“I really am sorry,” she tells him.

“Naomi. Naomi, wait! Babe!”

He’s still banging on the window as we drive away. He chases the car, running after us until we turn onto the main road.

Naomi’s crying so hard that I suggest she pull over.

“Let me drive,” I say.

“I can drive,” she says, cracking the windows. “I’m driving. I can drive.”

“I know. But why don’t you let me get us back to the motel?”

Her phone rings. It’s Lee.

“Can you silence it?” she asks, putting the driver’s-side window all the way down, allowing the bitter night to spill in.

I do what she asks. He texts two seconds later.

“He’s messaging you.”

“What’s he saying?”

“Um…” He sends message after message. Telling her she’s fucking crazy. She’s a psycho. That he might have to go to the hospital. That if she doesn’t come back right now, she shouldn’t bother coming back at all. Then his tone shifts. He says Please come back. please. just come back.

“Fuck it.” She takes her right hand off the steering wheel and shoves her palm at me. I give her the phone, and she casually tosses it out the window.

My mouth falls open.

She puts her window up and puts mine down.

“Your turn,” she says, digging into her pocket and pulling out my engagement and wedding rings. “Give me your hand.”

“Are you serious?”

“As a heart attack.”

“I…um…”

She sighs, drops the rings into the center console, among my collection of loose change—oxidized pennies, worn nickels and dimes.

“I mean, you can hang on to them if you want,” she says. “I just figured maybe you’d want to throw them out the window in a symbolic gesture of newfound freedom. Leaving the past behind. Letting go.”

“Right.”

“You could also flush them down the toilet. Pawn them.” She’s not crying anymore. She bounces back pretty quickly.

“I have options, is what you’re saying.”

“Exactly.”

I pick up the rings. Examine them, rub them between my fingers. I’ve never really cared about jewelry; I have no sentimental attachment to the rings themselves. But if I toss them, what do I have left of Joel? Of that life?

The AirPods?

“I’m not ready yet,” I say, slipping them into my pocket and fumbling for the button to put my window up.

She frowns. “I wasn’t ready either. But I was never gonna be ready.”

“Are you okay?”

She laughs. “Fuck no. Are you?”

I press the button down. The window whirs. I dig one of the rings out of my pocket and toss it out the window. A symbolic gesture, not of freedom or release, but of solidarity.

“Nope,” I say.

I look out at the side-view mirror as if I might be able to see where my ring landed, its resting place until someone else happens upon it, or it sinks so deep into the earth that it’s lost forever.

I don’t see the ring, but I do see the shady van. It’s behind us.

“There’s that van again.”

“What van?”

“It was behind us earlier. I think it’s following us.”

Her eyes flick up to the rearview. “I don’t think it’s the same van.”

“It’s definitely the same van.” It’s black, and there’s a distinctive dent in the side.

We pull up to an intersection. Red light. The van breaks about a car length away from us, so we can’t see who’s driving.

“Might be a guy,” Naomi says, squinting. “What do you think? Slam on the gas?”

“Easy, Steve McQueen. Just take a right.”

“Who would be trailing us? That’s not Ilie’s car. Do cops drive unmarked vans? Also, I didn’t see anything in the news.”

“You checked the news?”

“Yeah, I checked,” she says. “Nothing at the Waterfront, which tracks. I was thinking about it, and do you really think they’d let it get out that one of their employees was attacked while getting high in the woods? His story would be too ridiculous. And they have to protect their reputation. Imagine the pearl clutching.”

“The light’s green.”

She puts her signal on and makes a quick turn.

“What about…” I can’t finish the sentence.

“Nothing about a missing man in the Finger Lakes.”

“I wish that made me feel better,” I say as I look out the back window for the van. It goes straight.

“See? Not being followed,” she says.

“I wish that made me feel better,” I repeat.

“We should stop at an ATM. Get cash out.”

“If we’re not suspected of being criminals, should we maybe stop acting like criminals?” I ask. “Won’t it look suspicious if we withdraw a bunch of cash?”

“Not a bunch,” she says, pulling up to a Chase. “Enough for gas. I mean, what else do we need?”

Nothing money can buy.