crosses his arms, leans a hip against the granite counter. His voice is slow, intimate, as though we’re exchanging secrets in a crowded room. The corner of his mouth twitches upward. “This a hobby of yours? Breaking and entering? Stealing men’s boxes?” He raises his eyebrows, loading the question with innuendo.
I swirl my drink and stare into the glass.
“Look, I’m sorry.”
A white gleam slides along the frame of his glasses when he moves his head. His eyes are veiled by a sheet of window light across the lenses.
“So, what did you want to know?”
What can I say that doesn’t seem absurd to the point of madness? I wanted to know what your house looks like, what’s in your fridge and medicine cabinet, where you keep your jack mags and how well-used they appear to be. Whether that accent is Boston or Philly. I want to know what your shampoo smells like, whether you leave your socks on the floor, can keep a houseplant alive, own a cat or a bong or an insulin syringe. I want to see how you rumple the bed. And the sum of all those answered questions, plus a thousand more I haven’t thought of yet:
I want to know whether you’d kill for me.
I set his glass on the counter and head for the door, shuffling sideways to avoid turning my back to him.
He follows, hands in his pockets.
“What’s your name?” he says.
The heel of my sneaker hits the step at the entryway. “I’m sorry.”
“You mentioned that.”
“And I’ll be going now.”
As I reach the door and twist the handle at the small of my back, he closes the gap between us, stretches one long arm over my shoulder to hold the door closed. I stare straight ahead, watching his pulse flicker in the hollow under his jaw.
“Tell me your name,” he says. “I’m guessing you know mine.”
I won’t look him in the eye. My breath has grown shallow and quick, small gusts over my lips.
“Well?”
I don’t know how to answer. None of this is going according to plan. I feel like an actor onstage who’s rehearsed the wrong play. I need to get out the door, get away, think it through before things go too far—
Before I can react, he reaches behind me, slides his hand around my ass and into my pocket and comes up with my wallet. I make a grab but he yanks it away, opens it and takes out my driver’s license.
“Alice Elizabeth Croft,” he reads. “Five-four, one hundred fifteen pounds. Black hair, green eyes.”
He returns my wallet, smiling, looking me over. “Sounds about right.”
“Can I go now?”
He steps back, hands up. “Who’s stopping you?”
I open the door and stumble onto the front porch, pausing at the top step to pull up my hood.
“Hey, do you want a ride?” The amusement in his voice is clear, even through the storm. “It’s 336 Signal Road, right?”
I run down the wooden steps and leave him laughing behind me.
* * *
I unlock my front door, drenched and out of breath from my mile-long sprint through the forest. My sneakers are muddy and bristled with pine needles. I toe them off, strip out of my gloves, T-shirt and jeans and leave them in a dark, sodden heap next to the door.
In my bra and underwear, I head for the bathroom and take out my kit: straight razor, ointment, gauze and a large, flat bandage. My hands are trembling and too slippery to hold the razor. I wipe them on a towel and sit at the edge of the tub, my ankle crossed over my knee, and run my thumb over the tapestry of pink and white scars on the sole of my foot—the hard, half-healed ridges and faded round cigarette burns, the deeper, purplish groove from last year’s infection. I slide the blade across the arch of my foot. Once, twice, three times. There is a short, shocked pause before the invisible cuts fill into fine red threads, then fat strands of yarn, swelling crimson beads, each one adorned with a square, striped catchlight from my bathroom window. One by one the droplets shiver and burst and drip to the tile, swirling into the rain that trickles from the ends of my hair.
I close my eyes as the fire sets in. The razor blade clatters to the floor.
CHAPTER TWO
On Vashon Island, there is a strange tree. Decades ago when the tree was young, a boy parked his Red Ranger bicycle there, straddling the fork and locked in place with a sturdy chain. The bike was never reclaimed so the tree grew around it, engulfed it, until only the wheels and twisted handlebars remained visible, suspended six feet off the ground like some giant prehistoric insect trapped in amber.
I lived near the tree when I was growing up. My grandmother had a small trailer in a lot across the road, and I would sneak away sometimes, silent on the loamy footpath, to my spot on a mossy stump where I would stare up at the bike and wonder how to extricate it. Something about the preternatural fusion of tree and bicycle distressed me. That horrifying, remorseless consumption—the strangled metal, trapped inside the bowels of the tree.
Recently I read that the bicycle was vandalized and the front wheel removed. I imagine the bike’s decapitation, the final indignity. I don’t want to see it.
* * *
“Mocha decaf,” says Midge.
“You’re good,” I say, easing the café door shut. A rich aroma greets me: coffee and cream, and something seductive from the huge ancient oven behind the counter.
“What else?” she says.
“Whatever that is in the oven.”
Midge smiles, wiping her hands on her canvas apron. She has always reminded me of a Sesame Street monster. Small, square, adorably ugly. A huge fierce grin full of crooked teeth, a tuft of wiry black hair. “You can’t have that. It’s a wedding cake.”
“So cruel. Thank God there are muffins.”
I take my breakfast outside and lay out my notes and pages. It’s early morning, drizzly and cool. Across the gravel road, two gray horses appear through the mist, grazing in a ragged field against a backdrop of dark pines. One of them lifts her head and lets go with a high-pitched whinny that rips through the stillness and trails away.
Aside from the Red Ranger tree, Vashon-Maury is like any other island in the Puget Sound, with one utilitarian commercial district featuring a handful of disorganized grocery stores, interspersed with touristy shops bearing hand-painted names like Heron’s Nest and Treasure Island, where you can buy mugs depicting the Seattle skyline or salt and pepper shakers shaped like the island’s famous strawberries (which nobody grows anymore, though the festival lives on). On Thursdays, we have a farmers’ market with lumpy rows of pumpkin and zucchini, and jars of organic jam covered by squares of red-and-white gingham, tied around the lid with hemp twine. At the north end of town, our single-screen theater shows last season’s
