Black Iris (5 page)

Fuck. They’re brown. His eyes are fucking brown, okay? Stop being a terrible writer, Laney.

“Want to get out of here?” he said.

“Yes.”

God, yes.

———

Downtown was eerily beautiful at night. In the hot spill of cider streetlight, the asphalt glittered as if coated with crushed diamond. We crossed wide, wind-haunted streets that were
almost postapocalyptic: no cars, no people, perfect stillness, and the shop signs—
TRY OUR NEW, TWO FOR ONE
—somehow portentous. “Try our new Prozac milkshake,” I said. “Two lobotomies for the price of one.”

Armin shook his head. “Ghoulish.”

We walked for miles. It was after three but before dawn, that timeless, silky stretch of night that feels as if it’ll run on forever. My feet were numb and my fingertips buzzed with blood. I felt immortal. We found the plaza where a giant steel sculpture crouched, the Picasso, that weird chimera with its long baboon face and arching wings and stick ribs, and I climbed up for a pic. Armin gave me a hand, and when I braced myself on his shoulders I felt the heat of his body through his thin shirt. My fingers curled in the linen.

A breeze wafted off the lake, water-cool. “Where are we?”

“Almost to the beach.”

I hopped down and he caught me, even though I didn’t need it. Our hands joined for a second.

The skyscrapers fell away, stone wings unfolding and exposing the dark blue heart of the lake. There were cars on Lake Shore Drive, but when we crossed it felt like the waking world behind us winked out. The sand had a lunar glow, like moondust. I kicked off my shoes and let my feet sink in. The top layer was still warm, but when I dug deeper I hit a colder reservoir. Where the lake lapped the shore the smell of wet sand and algae was dizzying.

“Come on, Eileen,” Armin sang out.

“Can we even be here?”

“Nothing’s gonna stop us now.”

“What about the cops?”

“I’ll run. I’ll run so far away. With or without you.”

“Stop making bad song jokes.”

“Stop laughing at them.”

His voice was doing something to me. A hot coal lay low in my belly, and every time he spoke it flared. “This will never work,” I said. “You and me.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re an East End boy, and I’m a West End girl.”

I could see that big damn smile in the dimness. He kicked his shoes off, moving toward me. His shirt and eyes were ghostly blurs. I smelled wintergreen on his breath.

“But I’m the king of wishful thinking.”

“Armin, shut up and kiss me.”

He leaned in and I reached for his face. Stubble tickled my skin. His breath warmed my palm and lit a nerve all the way up my inner arm to my spine. It shrieked through me like a firework, ending with a bright pop in my brain. My eyelids fluttered closed, my belly tightening and mouth opening, and the kiss felt so imminent I gave a start when it didn’t happen.

“Don’t you want to?” I whispered.

His hands settled against my face. “That’s not why we’re here.”

The words were a denial, but his hands wouldn’t move and we shared the same hot breath. My heart flung itself fiercely at my ribs, as if it could close the space between us.

“I don’t believe you.”

He brushed my bare arm, teasing out a shiver.

“Come on,” he said.

I followed him to the shoreline. There was a rock-walled harbor to one side, the water slapping gently against fiberglass hulls, a sound like something breaking delicately, prettily. We sat in a hollowed-out dune and leaned on our elbows, hidden from the street. My bare toes spread against the horizon. The sky switched on, heating up to a vibrant indigo.

“This is my ‘away from here,’ ” Armin said. His voice sounded like sand flowing through glass, at once grainy and smooth.

I was going to tell him he was wrong. Away from here isn’t a place, it’s a state, inside you. It’s escape velocity. It’s losing yourself, anywhere. But then I thought, Maybe
I’m
wrong. Maybe this isn’t a
where
at all.

“What about the club?”

“That’s Blythe’s. This is different. This is mine.”

But you brought me here, I thought. “How’d you become a DJ?”

“Questioning my skills?”

“No, just curious.”

“I know somebody.” His eyes danced away. “This world is run by people who know somebody. You scratch my back, I scratch yours.”

I sketched a pattern in the sand, a dark disc eating a light one, the Umbra logo, then smeared it out. “You take my eye, I take yours.”

“Are you always this morbid?”

“Is it at all endearing?”

He laughed.

“So why’d you guys adopt me?” I said.

“I don’t pretend to understand Blythe’s motives. I’ve known her for three years and she’s still an enigma. Either she has some brilliant master plan I haven’t figured out yet, or she’s totally irrational. But I went along because I couldn’t take my eyes off you.”

My heart gave a small hiccup.

“You’re not like them, Laney. I saw it the second you arrived. You didn’t belong there.”

“Where do I belong?”

“On a rocky cliff above a tempestuous sea. With the salt breeze whipping through your hair, and a house burning behind you.”

I had to smile. “Maybe you’re not so bad at the whole head-shrinking thing.”

“Maybe we’re more alike than you think.” When he spoke I was aware of the way his lips moved over his teeth, enunciating words so meticulously. Little things like that tell you everything about a person. “It’s almost time.”

“For what?”

“What I wanted to show you.”

We both lay back in the sand, and the drain of the long night and the last dregs of my high hit at the same moment, making me immensely weary. My eyes drifted closed. When I jerked awake it felt like hours had passed. I’m not sure how long I flickered back and forth between states of consciousness before Armin touched my shoulder. I sat up, disoriented. The sky looked like layered sherbet, creamy peach melting into raspberry and blueberry, shading the world in soft, milky tones. The sun was an eye-smarting bead of white light trembling at the horizon. A woman jogged barefoot along the tide line, sand sticking to her shining brown shins. I felt like I’d woken up in another universe.

“Where am I?” I said blearily.

Armin’s voice floated to me like a breath of morning mist. “Away.”

———

I slept on the Metra, asking the guy across the aisle to wake me at Naperville. The town air was drowsy and sweet after the city. I walked home half-asleep on my feet, a zombie in Wonderland, taking off my shoes to tread barefoot on lush store-bought lawns. Armin and Blythe and Umbra seemed like a bizarre, fading dream. I unlocked the front door and headed for the stairs.

Dad was in the kitchen, sitting with his coffee and tablet. Neither of us spoke. He cleared his throat, then looked down.

When I paused at the top landing I could see the bald spot on his head. It seemed so vulnerable, so babyish. It made something sad twist inside me. His gaze remained fixed on the whorls in the wood grain.

I locked my bedroom door. Pulled my dress over my head, tossed my shoes into a corner. Slipped the small silver key from my purse and stepped into my closet.

Upside to having a brother obsessed with architecture: he will help you build a concealed door in the crawl space between your rooms.

I shut the closet, sealing myself in darkness.

I could find the lock by touch. I knew the furry splintered surfaces like my own heart, the taste of sawdust and wool and time. The smothering heat like a human hand over my mouth. I knelt gingerly and felt for the portable light.

Flick.

The space was about the size of a car interior, a rectangle of cinderblocks and plywood.

And every square inch of it was covered with
him
.

His face, printed from Facebook and newspaper articles.
Rising star. The boy with the golden touch. [Scratched out] carries Redhawks to state championship.
His transcript. Schedule from senior year. Bills and bank statements sent to his parents. His daily routines, traced on maps. A massive dossier.

I picked up a pen and crossed
PI/PHI SUMMER MIXER
off the July calendar.

He was going to Colorado for the first half of August—I had a copy of his hotel reservation and hiking itinerary—then no data until classes started in September. I wouldn’t see him till school began.

But that was okay. Like my mother, I was nothing if not patient.

I plugged my phone into my laptop and copied the photos
I’d taken at Umbra. Strange, twisting staircases and labyrinthine hallways. Places to get lost. Places to be among hundreds of people without being seen.

I paused at the pic of Blythe.

She was wrong about looking wretched. She had an unreal beauty. I’d caught her with a curiously wry expression, mouth half-open, brow furrowed. Her canine teeth were longer than the others and it made her slightly impish. Vulpine jaw, the sort of absurd cheekbones only mannequins possessed. Her eyes had a look of lazy cunning and were the blue of ice on a winter creek, shot through with frost, arrestingly pale. I brushed a finger over her cheek.

Something thumped in my bedroom.

I shut everything down and backed out of the crawl space, locking it behind me.

Donnie lay in fetal position on my futon. I hadn’t even noticed him when I came in. He’d kicked my desk when he tossed. I sat beside him.

“Laney?” he murmured.

I nudged him over and wrapped an arm around his waist. I still had only my underwear and bra on, but this is my baby brother, for fuck’s sake. He’s like my kid. The way I love him is the way you’re supposed to love your children. The way Mom never did.

“What happened?” he said.

“Nothing yet. Just surveillance.”

Donnie let out a long sigh. There was no mistaking the relief in it.

“It’s okay,” I whispered. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

He sighed again, shuddering, and the breaths after that were ragged and I knew he was crying and my arms tightened around him so hard it hurt us both, but I couldn’t stop.

“I wasn’t sure you’d come back,” he said.

“I will always come back to you.” My voice was fierce. I rocked him, waiting for his tears to end, for mine to start. “I’m not her. I won’t leave you. I promise.”

It became a sort of lullaby, me telling him it was okay, that we were both okay and I would never leave and someday, soon, everything would be better.

Someday I would make everything right.

AUGUST, LAST YEAR

B
lythe blew a stream of smoke in my face. “That bloke with the arms is looking at you.”

We stood outside Umbra on a simmering summer night, the concrete still soaked with heat. Her hair was wild and wind-tossed, curling over her bare shoulders, shining like spun gold in the streetlight. I studied her tattoos. Watercolor style, cyan and magenta and canary washing down her skin as if a painter would come back any moment to finish. On one shoulder, a skull leaked rainbow acid. On the other was a lily that was sometimes a flower and sometimes a girl’s lush pink mouth. Images from her poems. Half-melted, dreamlike.

I’d read every one. Some I could recite by heart. “Neon Narcissus.” “Wide Blue Nothing.”

I was becoming sort of an expert on Blythe McKinley.

“He’s looking at you,” I told her. “Don’t lie to make me feel better.”

She smiled, all sun-kissed blondness. Next to her I felt like Wednesday Addams. “I’m constitutionally incapable of lying.”

“Also a lie. Remember the guy at the theater who asked for your number, and you gave him mine?” I counted off my fingers. “And you told that cabbie you were married. And the guy on the L that you’re gay. And yesterday, the dude in the suit—”

“Okay, okay. Let’s not get Kafkaesque with the accusations.”

“We’re the sun and moon, Blythe.”

“What does that mean?”

“I turn invisible when you’re out.”

She laughed and swirled a finger in my hair, resting her hand against my face. Personal boundaries meant nothing to her. “Don’t be fucking ridiculous.”

“I’m never ridiculous.”

“Except when you’re ridiculous.” There was fondness in her expression, and it made me warm. “I don’t blow smoke up people’s arses. If something’s shit, I call it shit.”

“Australia’s national poet, ladies and gentlemen.”

“Oh, fuck off. You really think I’d lie to you?”

“That’s what friends do.”

“I’m not that kind of friend.” Her hand trailed to my jaw, her fingers soft. “You can’t even see it. You have the most perfect little doll’s face.”

A charge prickled over my skin, turning every nerve up to full brightness. I pulled away.

“Seriously,” I muttered. “I don’t want some skeezy dude.”

“I’m trying to get you laid, not bloody married.”

“Not interested.”

“You’re a teenage girl. Your libido could solve the global energy crisis.” She grazed my elbow with a fingernail, and I jumped. “See? Way too tense.”

“I’m fine.”

“Two Xanax deep and still grinding your teeth.”

“So you’re a doctor now, too?”

Her eyes narrowed. “You’re always defensive when you’re hiding something. I’ll figure it out.”

God, wasn’t it obvious?

Arms McStud and his buddies were still watching us. One licked a finger and ran it over his crotch.

Blythe exhaled in their direction. “That’s about as sexy as a dog licking its balls.”

They broke into lupine grins. McStud threw his head back and howled.

“And you want to hook me up with
that
,” I said.

“No.” She ground her cigarette in the ash can. “I want to fuck with the male gaze.”

“Blythe, don’t do something crazy.”

“Are you in?”

“God. Okay. Yes.”

She flung an arm around my shoulders and before I could react, she bit my earlobe, hard. It took all my self-control not to yelp. The guys fell silent. I couldn’t move. Teeth touching tender flesh. Hot breath melting my spine into mercury. Sensory overload. Finally she pulled away and the guys started catcalling again, but this time it was stuff like
So fucking hot
and
Now make out
.

Blythe walked us to the door. Her face was pure smugness.

“You could’ve warned me,” I said, a little breathily.

“It’s no fun that way.”

She didn’t let go till we reached the bar, and when her arm dropped I felt a pang of loss and thought, Careful.

I’d been to Umbra almost every night since July. By now it was home. Tonight Armin deejayed in the underground room, the Oubliette. Each wing had its own theme: the Oubliette was a dungeon full of dry ice and filthy raw electro-house, while the Aerie on the top floor was high and open, percolating with sugary pop. Blythe liked the main room, the Cathedral, best, because that was where you went to be seen.

“Sex on the Beach, please,” she told the bartender. My favorite.

He eyed me dubiously while he fixed her drink. I clasped her hand, passing her an oxy. We both tucked our hair back and
tongued the pills from our palms in perfect sync. The simplest way to not get caught doing a bad thing is to do it in front of everyone. Because most people are good—or scared, which is the same thing, functionally—and good people associate badness with guilt. Skulking, hiding. Lurking in the dark. They assume you feel their shame, that you’ll try to hide your sins. They try to catch you in the shadows. No one looks for badness in the light.

The bartender nudged a glass across the counter.

“Cheers,” Blythe said, tipping her head back. Her mouth was a ruby kiss through the sunset colors of the drink. When she gave me the glass I turned it till the imprint of her lip balm faced me.

She watched me drink. Her gaze touched my throat like fingertips.

Afterward we wandered through the club. Blythe was restless, never stopping to dance or banter with the guys who hit on her. We crossed the Cathedral twice before heading downstairs. The oxy had started to kick in, blurring the edges off everything. No more hard surfaces. My feet didn’t hit the steps but touched down in soft white cloud, and that cool numbness twined around my legs, inscribing my veins with frost.

Blythe stopped suddenly in the middle of the stairway. People forked around us.

“When are you going to let me read your book?” she said.

This conversation again.

“I told you, it’s not that good.”

She came back up the steps, looming. “And I told you, that shit needs to breathe. If you keep it locked inside, it’ll rot. It’ll become so insular and personal it won’t mean anything to anyone but you.”

“It’s already too personal.”

“All the more reason to let it out.”

“It’s stupid teenage diary bullshit, Blythe.”

“Keats died at twenty-five. Shelley was twenty-nine. Byron, thirty-six. Their stupid teenage diary bullshit is now considered high art.”

“I’m not Lord fucking Byron.”

“You’re a terrible judge of your own work, like every writer who’s worth a shit.”

I looked up at the ceiling. “You’re going to ruin it. Just let it go.”

“Ruin what?”

“The mystery. Before you know someone, you build them up in your head.”

She winced. She actually looked hurt. “You think I don’t know you. That I’ve got some fantasy in my head. Laney Keating, tortured artist, undiscovered genius.”

“That’s not what I—”

“How do you think I see you, then?”

Perfect little doll’s face.
“I think we all have illusions about each other.”

“Christ, this pompous crap sounds like Armin.”

It was true. And I could feel everything careening in the wrong direction, so I blurted, “Fine. You can read it. But only if you swear not to show him.”

The sparkle instantly returned to her eyes. She smiled, and I could imagine the proverbial bird feathers between her teeth.

“I knew I’d wear you down. Deal.”

“You manipulative bitch,” I said.

“A bitch is a woman who gets what she wants.”

“Then you are the biggest bitch ever. And you
swear
you won’t show him.”

She laughed.

“I’m serious, Blythe.”

“I’m sure you are.”

I grabbed her shoulder. Her inked skin was soft. “Donnie’s
the only one who’s read it. I don’t want anyone else to see. Only you.”

She peered into my face. Too close. Her eyes were so pale and clear the light went straight through, flashing off the silvery backs like a mirror. The sudden intensity unnerved me.

“When will you really trust me?” Her breath was sweet, orange spiked with vodka. “Is there a secret test?”

Not for you, I thought. Never for you.

I opened my mouth and someone staggered into me, spinning me half around.

Some club guy. I didn’t recognize him, but I sensed Blythe tensing.

“Watch your fucking step, mate.”

He shot me a smile. It was Arms McStud, beer bottle in one hand.

“Sorry there. I was distracted by your friend.” His real focus was on Blythe. “You ladies like a drink?”

“We’re good,” I said.

He kept smiling, as if I’d said something cute. “How about a dance?”

“We’re good,” I repeated, firmer.

The guy looked at me, his smile snapping flat like a jackknife. “Ugly Friend can wait until the tens are done talking.”

It struck somewhere in my solar plexus. Welcome back to high school, Laney.

Blythe stared at him icily. “You’ve got five seconds to get the fuck out of my face.”

The smile returned. He looked at her, then me, disbelieving.

“Four,” Blythe said.

“Hey.” The guy elbowed me aside, towering over us. “Let’s try this again. I’m—”

“Tired of counting,” Blythe said, and shoved a palm into his thick chest.

He lost his balance, tripping on a step and sitting down hard. His beer tipped into his lap and foamed over his jeans. His face went red as raw meat.

He stared balefully up at us both. Settled on Blythe.

“You slut.”

I knew it was coming, and still I flinched. She didn’t.

McStud pulled himself up with one arm, giving us a good view of roid bulge laced with veins. His T-shirt looked painted on, tight as skin. “You’re going to regret that, slut.”

My jaw clenched. “Stop talking.”

He ignored me. He was locked in some eye duel with Blythe, both of them wearing the same grim, avid expression, alpha versus alpha. A crazed energy crackled between them, almost sexual. With plunging dismay I realized I could envision her fucking this guy. This stone-dumb sexist piece of shit.

“I know you,” McStud said. “You’re the Aussie whore they pass around. Any dick here you haven’t sucked yet?”

“Just yours.”

He laughed. Music throbbed below us, a deep dull ache.

“Let me buy you a drink,” he said incongruously, switching the charm back on. Typical pickup tactic: neg the girl, then woo her.

Blythe smiled her heartbreaker smile. “You’re not great at reading the situation, mate. Here’s a little hint: fuck off.”

The charm dissolved. He glanced at me again, seemed to see me for the first time. I mentally cringed in anticipation of what came next. When a girl doesn’t fall to pieces over some pheromone-drenched caveman, she’s one of two things. She’s either ugly like me, or—

“Not worth it,” he said. “Couple of dykes.”

All I saw was the blood. I didn’t even see Blythe hit him. Just a brilliant bouquet of liquid red petals bursting in his face.

People surged around us, yelling, grabbing, stopping the
fight, and in the chaos I got pushed to the back of the crowd. Someone had Blythe by the elbows, holding her while she writhed like a wildcat. They lifted McStud to his feet as he spouted off about suing the club and the drunk slut for all they were worth. Blythe didn’t flinch. In her eyes I caught a maniacal glint of delight.

“You stupid cunt,” she crowed at him. “You can’t slut-shame me if I love being a slut.”

Two minutes later, bouncers dumped us all on the street.

———

By the time McStud ducked into a cab with one last Cro-Magnon glower, all the fight had drained from Blythe. We sat on a curb in a pool of warm whiskey streetlight, heads hanging, hair tumbling over our knees. Blythe flipped her cigarette box end over end. Nervous habit.

“Armin’s going to kill me,” she said.

I held out my hand for a cig.

We lit up, sent smoke spiraling into the light. A police siren wailed far away, keening and lonely, melancholy.

“Why’d you hit that guy?” I said.

“Because he’s a fucking useless prick.”

I raised an eyebrow. She raised one back.

“And it improved his face.”

We started giggling.

“It’s not funny,” I said. “They’ll ban us for life. They’ll deport you.”

“So stop laughing, you lunatic.”

“I can’t if you won’t.”

This made her laugh harder. She tried to take a drag and smeared blood on her lip.

“You’re bleeding,” I said, alarmed.

“It’s mostly his.” She scrubbed her hand over her mouth,
spreading that rusty redness, then smiled, more of a leer. “Am I still pretty, Laney?”

God, yes. “You look feral.”

Blythe threw her head back, roared hoarsely at the sky. Sweat glazed her neck, freckled with stray glitter from the club, like stardust.

“Why’d you hit him, really?”

She scraped her cigarette on the pavement, painting a trail of sparks. “Because he deserved it. Because of how he treated you.”

“Not because of that slut stuff?”

“A girl who likes sex is a slut. A guy who likes sex is a stud.” Blythe crushed her cig messily, a confetti of ash and ember spraying up over her hand. “Double standard crap. I’m doing my part to spread feminist enlightenment.”

“One broken nose at a time.”

We laughed. But I thought, You hit him when he called us something else.

I flicked a pebble into a sewer grate.

“Don’t let them scare you off,” she said.

“Who?”

“Blokes like that. They think they’re entitled to my attention because God gave them a dick and the world owes them beautiful women to put it in. They feel threatened by you.”

My heart quickened. “Why?”

“Because they don’t understand us.” She squinted into the streetlight. “You and I may as well be speaking our own language. You’re the only one I can really talk to about anything. About everything.”

The blood on her mouth looked like smudged lipstick. On me it would’ve been deranged, but on her it was weirdly beautiful. Even sitting still she was a hurricane. Always going two hundred miles an hour, so gorgeous in that haphazard,
unwound way, the kind that pulled you in and then shredded you up.