Question: Have you ever been in love?
Answer: No.
He returned again and again to one photo. She was sitting in a slat-backed wooden chair at a small desk in someone's bedroom, her hair pleasantly ruffled as if it had been wet and then slept on. She wore masculine black reading glasses and she was looking up in surprise, her eyes wide and her mouth hanging open, as if the photographer had crept up and caught her in a private act.
HOLLY
If every love needs a home, then theirs was each other. And if every couple needs a home to shelter their love, Holly's mother's house was their sanctuary. Holly's father lived on the other side of town, and he was busy rebuilding his life, building a new brood. Holly was allowed to choose where she lived, and her mother played cool to keep her daughter in her camp. Soon our boy was spending all his time with Holly - including nights, weekends and even the taboo school nights - and together they lived as a new family.
His mother was tired after work and relieved to have him on someone else's watch. Better for her son to be at Holly's than running with boys who didn't have girlfriends and spent their time wrecking cars, stealing CDs and burning cats. He always told his mother the truth - I'm going to Holly's - and then forgot to call home to say he was staying. Nobody seemed to mind.
In her mother's home snuggled up against the foothills of the Rocky Mountains there was a finished basement made up like an apartment for a real adult (kitchenette, living room, full bath, spare room and Holly's cocoon-like bedroom). They lived like a real couple and forgot about school until the alarm went off and they had to commute, sore and feeding each other fruit and listening to The Smiths on the way to class.
The sex had evolved things, but the basement house below the real house was the thing that made it real.
They took baths, cooked five course meals, watched movies and became like newlyweds. They dressed alike in shirts and jeans purchased with Holly's mother's credit card. They ate magic mushrooms, smoked good pot, sipped wine. They ate grilled shark, large salads and entertained cleansing fruit diets together. They had small parties with close, chosen friends from school, but they never lasted, the friendships. There wasn't room for anyone else. People grew bored of them, spiteful of their closeness, and drifted away.
Holly always had fresh money in her account. But when they got bored they shoplifted clothing, bedding, lunch, seafood dinners. They walked out on hundred-dollar meals and no one cared enough to stop them. They grew daring in their dalliances, monstrous in their self-absorption, reckless in their search for new thrills.
His grades went down as far as they could go. Hers dropped too, though not enough to alarm her parents. Holly was better at school and talked of college and how they might go to the same one. He did not dwell on the future. Now was all that mattered; it was all he could see. Things were perfect, and he knew she felt the same way. College, no college. He would drive a truck or major in physics or both if that was required to keep them together.
That their separation was already imminent was his denial. That she could thwart it without planning was Holly's.
Sometimes they saw Holly's mom's face on the realtor signs. Holly's mother had the combinations to key boxes to the best homes on the market. They went with her mother to a Sunday afternoon showing and hid in the bathroom. They noticed how the other couples were not much older than they were. They decided it would be more fun to have the whole house to themselves. In her mother's home office they found the filing cabinet and the real estate listings and the combinations.
They took the list of combinations and went to the house that Friday after school. They parked down the street and walked around to make sure no one was inside. They entered before the sun went down. They did not leave until early Sunday morning.
The house was well stocked with fruit, fresh pasta and pre-made sauces, gourmet meats and cheeses and wine. Friday night was a fit of giggles and exploring the house, crashing early in front of the TV. Saturday they slept late, watched movies, made up stories about the owners. The sex was on hold as if they were saving for this night. In the evening, he cooked while Holly turned on the stereo and set the table.
It started gradually, over dinner.
'More wine?' he asked, pouring for her.
'Thank you, darling,' she said with all the proper weight.
'How's your pasta?'
'It's great.' She picked up her fork for the first time.
'Really? Because you're not eating any.'
She set her fork down. He saw that her hands were shaking.It made him nervous that she was nervous.
'We don't have to stay,' he said. 'We could pretend it never happened, go to a movie.'
'What? No, Connie.' She was the only one who ever called him that, before or since. 'If someone comes home we can always say my mom sent us to house-sit.'
'You think they'll believe that?' He had been listening for a garage door clunking to life or the rattle of keys and lock.
Holly smiled. 'So we went to the wrong house. What are they going to do? Arrest us?'
'Maybe. Maybe worse.'
'They're sixty-five.'
'How do you know?'
'I checked them out. He's a retired doctor. She's a teacher, kindergarten. Half-days. The kids are out of college and out of state.'
'You're like a detective now.'
She shrugged and sipped more wine.
'What is it, then? My cooking?'
'I'm sorry. I'm just . . . kinda freaking out,' she said. 'About what's going to happen next year.'
He suddenly saw the whole thing collapsing. Tonight was too much, they'd gone as far as they could go. She had decided to call the whole thing off before she went away to college, before it got too close and too bad.
'Are you having doubts about me, about us?'
'Connie! No. Don't look at me that way.' She ran around and wedged herself between the table and his lap. 'We're perfect,' she said, kissing his neck. 'I just want this to be special. So we never forget.'
'Of course it's special. It's always special.'
'But tonight is different. I want it to be just us.'
'Who else is there?'
'No one, silly. But later, I don't want . . . you don't have to, you know, use anything between us.'
He thought about that. Since the beginning he had used condoms. They were smart enough to know that, as often as they 'got beastly' (her term), 97 per cent effective was 3 per cent very likely.
'Really?' he said, not really understanding.
She put her mouth around his ear. 'I want to feel everything. I want you to feel everything.' She pulled her mouth off and smacked him loudly on the cheek. 'It's the natural way to fly, sweetie.'
'Want me to clear the table? It's a nice table.'
'It's not big enough.' She was already walking away. 'Finish your dinner and don't come back here for at least twenty minutes.'
'Where's here again?' he said.
'The big room down the hall. Promise to wait?'
'I promise.'
She went down the long hall past the slate foyer and disappeared into the master suite.
He had always been an imaginative son, and now he imagined all manner of sport and pastime awaiting him in this new space. But he could not see that by following his love into this house he had also set in motion its inevitable murder.
16
Untold hours after falling asleep on top of the covers with Luther and Alice curled at his feet, Match Point playing quietly on the bedroom DVD-TV rig, Conrad woke alone to the sound of a baby crying. It was the same choking, newborn ack-ack-ayyyych sound from weeks ago, and he knew it was not the movie he'd left on because now there was only the eerie blue screen with the DVD format logo.