twenty-five years can discover the Internet, the cell phone, this thing the iPod, can twenty-five years discover the secret of a girl murdered, abandoned, by the side of the road?”
He likes his introduction. He finds it provocative.
On the way out to Rose Heights, the furthest thing from his mind was any sort of emotional impact probable here. Danek was not an emotional person. And PS: He didn’t believe in Christ either. That was a fantasy. A fairy tale. Something cooked up to tame the masses. Poor-people solace. That all existed so the have-nots wouldn’t cut the throats of the haves. What a trick.
Yes, he went to Hope College and yes it was a Reformed Church school. But Danek was too smart for all that. Fine, believe in your fairy-tale magic. I’ll take my degree, GRE, my valedictorian address, my effusive letters of recommendation, my 4.0 average, and shuffle off to graduate school someplace with an actual fucking name. Cornell. Johns Hopkins. Maybe Princeton.
What will happen to all you people? Will you stay here? The thought alone filled him with dread. He shuddered to think, would not let himself think, about the myriad curses that would have to befall him to land him forever . . . here.
Maybe he would come back for Katy and put her in his big mansion back East. They would decorate the Christmas tree together and she would make eggnog and he’d drink and fuck the daylights out of her and she would never, ever think of Brad or Lars or anyone else from this piss-hole pot because he would own her. It would be a Tudor house. A wreath on the door. A dog. Maybe a Lab. Chocolate.
These were the thoughts circling, dizzy, through Danek’s brain as they pulled up to 2226 Rose Avenue, the home of Lt. Colonel Charles Krause and his kindly wife, Dotsy.
It wasn’t long before she realized she could stop a room by walking into it. Dorothy Elizabeth Burke. Dotsy. No, she probably shouldn’t have come to New York, being a kid from the sticks and all—Odessa, Texas, to be exact.
She was a painter, for God’s sake. She was a painter and this was the last of the ’40s and New York City was the place to be. A whir of excitement. Christ, she couldn’t let it pass her by.
And with that kind of talent, it was only a matter of time, she had her finger on the pulse. Her teacher, Mr. Kaufman, told her he’d seen nothing like her paintings. They spoke of landscapes of the mind. Dreamscapes, he called them. And often, he pointed her out in class. “Let’s look at Dorothy’s interpretation.” No, it wasn’t work. It was interpretation. That’s how far ahead of them she already was. Her classmates would mutter under their breaths, but it was true, wasn’t it? Anyway, it seemed to come easy to her, a fearless kind of talent, almost chance.
At first, walking into a bar, restaurant, club, it had been frightening for Dorothy, all the attention. The venal undressing. The outright staring, goddammit. But, met with a shy cowering, however real, somehow made it worse. No, she couldn’t let herself cower. She learned, instead, take a step in, stop, give ’em a second, then eyes to the ground and sideways to the bar. Make bashful coy.
By the time she would reach the bar, there would already be at least three of them, swarming, scowling, vying, chest to her, hearts to her, plotting to get in there.
She was not pretty, nor sweet, nor cute. She was, quite simply, a drop-dead, stop-traffic gorgeous, ink-haired, green-eyed beauty with alabaster skin and bone structure Veronica Lake would envy. And those lips, almost obscene. Sweetheart lips. Kill-you lips. That girl knew how to pout.
She, in fact, knew all the tricks. She was a quick study. Sure, she was just some hick from Odessa, Texas, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t open a magazine and copy a picture, a hairstyle, a sigh. That didn’t mean she couldn’t look at Rita Hayworth in a too-tight sweater and say, yes, I see, I see how you do that. And, all of these things, her calmed-down but sometimes disarming small-town-girl accent, her rarely used but sometimes essential provincial ways, in combination with her kill-yourself good looks, made her, instantly, agonizingly, unforgettable, and, ultimately, irreplaceable.
The painting just made it worse. That she was talented . . . a final blow.
And so it would’ve been, would’ve gone, until she’d end up celebrated in the Met or cherished on Park Avenue or possibly both . … . until she met Edward.
Edward.
For years after, the name alone could make her gulp and grab the nearest cocktail.
It was funny how she met him. How he saw her across the bar. Make no mistake, she liked to drink. Dotsy was out, every night, a drink in one hand, a cigarette in the other, from the day she got to New York to the day she left. She burned it down. Dotsy was not going to let life get away without her. She wasn’t going to miss the party. She was the party.
Seeing her across the bar, surrounded by admirers, he could only smile, that first time. A knowing sort of smile. I’ll get you. Don’t you worry. I’ll get you, my pretty.
And then, weeks later, at a party downtown, there she was again. This time in red. Well, why not, it was Christmas season, why not wear red? And wasn’t she radiant. A red felt dress. A crimson ribbon bow. Was the dress the present or was she? A wink of a dress, a siren number.
It was that night they would consider their first night. Not that it amounted to much. No sleeping, or even leaving, together. But it was that night they both knew. It was obvious.
This was trouble.
How horribly and blissfully and careeningly they fell in love. Catapulting themselves to a world far, far above and away from the everyday dross. They might as well have been part of the sky-line. The moon. The stratosphere. That Wedgwood locket he’d given to her, a simple bauble, a dumb surprise, more precious than a ship of gold.
It was, then, like the paintings, a dreamscape, those eight months. She knew it to the date, never forgot it. December 20 to August 13. The bliss-time of her life. Years later she would look back at that whirling, staggering time. The nights of laughter, running through thunderstorms half-drunk, him on her, next to her, in her, in the alley, laughing, crazy, they were crazy, mad with lust or love or what was it, a longing when the other wasn’t there worse than a junkie. She pined for him, a bottomless thirst.
A weekend up at Cape Cod. Seared in her memory. July 3, 1949. The happiest day of her life. Floating around in the water, she on top of him, only three feet of water and floating on his back, pretending to be . . . what? Laughing and splashing—the whole thing—ridiculous! Back then, in her white-and-blue polka-dot bikini, the most stunning girl on the beach, in Cape Cod, on the Eastern shore for God’s sake. And he’s proud, just fucking proud to be with her.
Edward.
Tall and too thin and from a good family. Edward from Boston who’d seen it all. Edward who was mad about his stop-traffic girl from Odessa. His half-yokel, half—movie star he couldn’t stop thinking about, fucking too much, aching for. Oh Lord, let me just spend the rest of my days fucking this girl I love more than I love myself. Which is not much, now that I think about it.
He blindsided her.
When he broke it off. He took his hand and reached into her chest and pulled out everything a girl from Odessa, Texas, can hold.
Why did he do it? How could he have done it? Was it his family? Was it him? Was it someone else? Was it simply
