Forged in Grace (16 page)

“
I woke up and felt like something was wrong,” I say to her stony face. “I came in here to make sure you were okay.”

“
If you’re looking for something to take away your pain, you won’t find it in any of those.”

I set the bottle down quickly. It falls to its side, but I
’m suddenly afraid to set it upright, to manhandle her things any further. “I’m sorry, this was not cool of me.”

Marly
’s exhale is so big I look up to make sure she isn’t about to keel over in a faint. She stands silent for a moment, eyes moving from my face to the bracelet, then sweeping a quick survey of her room as though wondering what else I’ve unearthed. She finally sits down next to me. “I can’t sleep. Usually I just read.”

“
But tonight?”

She inhales a big, steadying kind of breath, as though she has a confession.
“Drew’s.”

“
He’s good to you,” I say.

“
He shouldn’t be.” She begins to gnaw at her thumb cuticle. “He should go find someone who wants what he’s selling.”

“
I thought you cared about him.” I turn the bracelet over in my fingers. It has a satisfying weight, and my fingers find the old charms as if by memory—the soft curve of the sleeping cat, the hard edge of the open book, the four poky legs of the colt. She looks at it suddenly, then at me, with the open-mouth of alarm.

“
Grace, I’ve been meaning to give that back to you. I polished it and everything. I know I should have given it to your mom after…when I still had the chance to do it in person. I thought of mailing it, but—”

“
That would have meant contact with me.” No matter how hard I try to be fair, the accusation seeps up like dark mud through my voice.

She sinks into as much of a slouch as her belly will allow and suddenly this seems like the perfect opportunity to ask her about the fire, about what she remembers, those precious lost moments between spark and near-death. How she came by the bracelet. If I cried or said nothing at all, a human torch.

She must sense it too, as she turns toward me with wide-open eyes, inviting me in. The questions form in my mind, attempt to shape my mouth to speak them, but the fear is wider than I thought, and they can’t make it out.

“
So, you don’t love Drew?” I ask instead. Her mouth twitches, her shoulders slip an inch downward, I can’t tell with disappointment or relief.

“
I don’t know. I think that I should love him, if that makes sense. Or like, underneath all the damage, is a part that’s whole enough to love him.”

I sit pondering this idea of being whole enough to love. Such an idea would never have occurred to me—I love or don
’t love, or so I imagine, having not really had the chance.

“
I never meant to steal it.” She motions toward the bracelet.

“
I never meant to break into your room.”

She leans into me. I
’m tired, undefended, and I see this as our shoulders connect: Marly’s long legs pumping, fast, furious, a race toward or against something. A sudden memory muscles through me: when Marly taught me how to make ourselves pass out when we were twelve. Head between knees; take big, deep, gulping breaths of air, whip your head up fast and hold your breath. We killed hours once (not to mention brain cells)…four hours vanished in the netherspace of fainting dreams.

“
Ah Grace. I think you’re the best thing to have happened to me in a long time,” she says now.

And though I have a hard time seeing myself as the best thing in anyone
’s life, I take it. But I don’t fall back to sleep at all that night. And in the very early hours of the morning, I hold her phone in my hand to call Adam—who has never steered me wrong, with his gentle frowns and his steady hands. Adam, who always seems to be touching the air around me because he can’t touch my skin. Adam, whom I abandoned. It’s early enough that I can still catch him at home. I dial and sit calmly through its ringing, but when he answers, “Dr. Lieb,” the systems of my body go wild—sweating and prickling, like a snail under siege by salt. I want to say, “It’s me, Adam, I miss you.” Instead, I desperately scan the phone for the off button, which I cannot find.

“
Hello? Hello?” he says. “If this is a telemarketer…” and then, to my utter surprise. “Grace?”

My finger finds the red icon, presses it down. What was I thinking?

Chapter Fifteen

Marly takes her sweet time getting ready to go to Gus
’s cocktail party, to which I’m urged to “bring friends”—a point I stress so Marly can drop the whole “getting in your pants” line of reasoning. I’ve chosen to wear the same eggplant dress I wore to the casino my first night here, minus the boots and the sweater, opting for simple black sandals—I have pretty, slender feet after all, the toes painted a nearly matching purple at Marly’s hand.

The floor of Marly
’s room is a heap of dresses—which she tosses off with theatrical groans—before she flounces out in a kicky black dress with spaghetti straps and a high waist, entirely hiding any signs of pregnancy. Hair glossy and wild around her shoulders, just enough make-up on to look like those “natural” models in magazines—the effect is show stopping.

“
For someone who doesn’t want to go, you’ve put in quite a lot of effort.” I assess the ensemble with a smile.

The ever perky left eyebrow assumes a haughty peak.
“What do they call it?” she says, almost sneering. “Taking one for the team?”

I shake my head at her.
“You’d think I asked you to get blood drawn.”

She doesn
’t laugh, as I expected, but nods. “Kind of feels like that.”

It will do me no good to linger on whatever is making her so unhappy, so I hope that the atmosphere of a party will shake loose some of her mood. At any rate, I
’ve called in back-up, and it’s then that he knocks on the door.

Marly seems to leap off the ground like a startled cat.

“It’s just Drew.” I peer through the slot and confirm this to be true.

“
Shit, Grace.” She puts a hand to her heart as though to still its pound. “You
know
I’m gun-shy about people just showing up. You should have told me you buzzed him in.”

I
’m not feeling apologetic. “Marly, you’re the one who gave him the elevator passcode. I thought if Drew was with us, you’d feel more comfortable.”

She frowns, but gestures at me to open the door, and takes a deep breath as I let Drew in.

Drew smells like bay rum and hair gel. The tips of his blonde hair glisten. He’s wearing a short-sleeved blue shirt over crisp khakis. He gives me a quick squeeze and a kiss on my unblemished cheek, then whistles at Marly. She contorts her face into a teenaged expression of comedy that says, “who me?”

After they hug their hellos, one corner of her lip curls up and she looks appraisingly at me.
“What, no wig?”

“
A guy with a face full of tattoos is hardly going to be bothered by my baldness,” I say, hearing the defensive edge.

“
That’s not what I mean…” Marly starts.

Drew holds up his hands as though we are two boxers who ignored the bell.
“Let’s just go and have a good time, eh?”

“
Whatever,” Marly mumbles, and I bite back the urge to get the last word.

Gus does not, it turns out, live in town by a long shot.

“You didn’t tell me this was going to be way out in the fucking desert,” Marly’s tone is petulant, her mood, expressed in annoyed sighs and snarky comments about anything Drew and I casually talk about, permeates so powerfully it’s all I can do not to leap out of Drew’s moving car. Fortunately, after nearly forty-five minutes of driving, we’re there—but I’m not prepared for what I see.

Gus
’s house is like something out of Mad Max—a rounded dome of a dwelling that looks scavenged from the remains of other houses—no unifying paint color, just variegated patches of brown, and yet is, at the same time, strangely beautiful, almost seems a part of the land. A small group of people are mingling in a triangle that’s cordoned off by ropes and tiki torches—as of yet unlit, though they give me a little shiver to see them.

I catch a flash of color like a hummingbird zipping by as Gus strides toward us.
“Welcome to the earthship!” he says, arms stretched wide.

At my side, Marly sucks in air like she
’s shocked. “You didn’t tell me this was a Heaven’s Gate cult,” she says loudly enough for Gus to hear. He clutches his stomach and laughs, hard, and I restrain myself from elbowing Marly in the side, if only so as not to poke her belly. Drew shoots me an “I’ll take care of her” look for which I’m grateful.

Gus surveys his little domain.
“Earthships are the name for these fully sustainable dwellings. 100% recycled materials, powered by the elements—sun, wind, rain.”

“
Oh, and do you drink your own pee, too?”

If he
’s put off by Marly, he doesn’t show it. “Nah, we save the piss for the garden.” He winks, and holds a hand out to me. “Come have a drink, Grace. Sara got called in to work—she’s a psychiatrist—she may make it back before the night is through.”

I can feel Marly making an
“I told you so” face to my back, but refuse to look, and am impressed with my foresight to bring Drew, so I can walk away from Marly and not worry that she’s alone.

Gus
’s fingers are light on my arm, but firm and directive, and my serpent is at once curious, sniffing out an image:
Gus and a skinny dishwater-blonde woman passed out in a crumple, needles cast to the sides of their arms.
I inhale sharp, and clear my mind, erect the mental wall that will help me not to see what I don’t want to see.

Instead of taking me toward the circle of people talking, he draws me into the interior of his house, which is shockingly cool and a little bit dim—cavelike, if caves were comfortable. His furniture is surprisingly soft and there are lots of feminine touches around the odd little building—garlands of dried flowers strung at the tops of walls, soft but rich jeweled colored curtains and textiles framed on the walls, and a shelf of jagged crystals as big as my head that catch the light. Signs of the girlfriend, I presume.

“I want to show you something,” he says, and he’s drawing me deeper still into the house. For the first time I feel a pang of doubt about his intentions. But he isn’t touching me, and there are too many people outside. Moving through his burrow to the other side, we emerge in a wide-open part of the house that fills with sunlight. There’s a little pool with tiny green plants floating in it, and a tube connecting it to a skylit ceiling—though the “windows” are not made of glass, but opaque plastic.

On the walls around the circular room are more black and white photographs so bold each one feels like a punch to my solar plexus. It takes me a minute to figure out what I
’m seeing: the camera has homed in so close to each framed face that at first it isn’t obvious what each image is: the inside of a nostril—tiny black hairs like spores or anemones, blackheads blown up to the size of fists, skin shiny with oil; a planet of a mole sprouting two doughty hairs, like little sentinels; the slimy connective tissue between a top lip and gums.

“
My proudest work,” he says softly.

“
It’s amazing.” My voice is full of awed breath. “So ugly, so beautiful.”

He nods, steps a little closer to me, our shoulders touching. The water makes a gentle trickling sound and I have the oddest urge to strip myself down and step into it.

“Yes,” he says. We are still shoulder to shoulder, and I’m aware that my heart has picked up its pace, that I like the feeling of his masculine body and the solid waves of energy it gives off as he stands against me. I recall with a little flush the way I touched myself thinking of his face—well his and Adam’s, but still—and then I try to clutch the thought back, as though he will be able to sense it, too. Not to mention that I feel strangely, well I can’t call it unfaithful, to Adam, as he’s never expressed possession of me. At the same time I’m caught in my body’s loop of desire, his body telegraphing that it is agreeable to mine, I so badly want Marly to be wrong about him. No matter what I feel around him, he has a girlfriend. And I rather like the idea of being an art project. Of being made important through the lens.

“
Let me show you the source of these.” He takes my shoulders and turns me around so that I’m facing the rounded edge of the wall behind us. He stands behind me, so close I can feel the heat of him, but just far enough that it doesn’t really qualify as touching.

The photograph is of a woman
’s face so gorgeous, so much more gorgeous than anyone should be allowed to be, that all my desire drains away into that pond behind us. She looks a lot like Marly—strong shoulders and slender neck, thick hair that could be blonde or red, it’s hard to tell in the black and white. Beautiful Roman nose and full lips, high cheekbones.

“
Sara,” he says her name as a reverent whisper. The only way that I can reconcile the gorgeous woman in the photo with the distorted satellite photos on the other side of the room is by the mole that sits proudly to the side of her nose.

“
Oh my,” I say, and this feels like my cue to leave, to return to the heat of outside.

We stand there, pressed hip to hip, for one minute longer when the image of him lying in a heap next to an abandoned hypodermic resurrects itself then, as though my psyche is trying to do me a favor; heroin addicts don
’t make great partners, it says.

I step back, smile, and then let myself out to the cactus garden where Marly is at the center of the small group of people, laughing, with what looks like a coke in her hand. She watches me emerge from the house, eyes hooded so full of judgment I have a fierce and shocking urge to slap the drink right out of her hand.

Nothing happened!
I want to shout. It’s coming back to me, the way it was when we were girls, when she was my only friend because to try and have other friends was a constant betrayal to her. But it does look fishy, us emerging from his house alone together. I make my way to the circle, like nothing has changed at all. Drew keeps close to Marly, always in physical contact, if only a finger on her elbow, a hand on her low back. Marly seems to be giving in to it, leaning against him, and even, once, resting her head on his shoulder. I’m surprised at the feeling this produces inside me: relief.

Some hour later or so, I
’ve allowed myself to get a little drunk on Gus’s “eco-cocktails”—made with organic vodka and herbs, ginger and fennel, basil and mint, juice sweetening them. He’s spinning a remarkable story about chasing down a mountain lion to photograph it, risking death when he almost leapt over a cliff, when a woman making her way toward us stops me cold.

All my life Marly has been the benchmark of beauty I studied and coveted. A natural beauty without trying—whether she was just out of bed with unwashed hair or put together like tonight. But this woman makes even Marly
’s head snap up, and for the first time since I’ve known her, it hits me: I am not the only one who envies other women. I presume the woman is Gus’s girlfriend Sara, because she kisses his cheek, gives in to quick embraces and then disappears into the house not to be seen again.

Gus
’s friends are all artists—painters and sculptors, who have multiplied into a crowd. Before long, a tiny, beady man with a Freudian goatee and spectacles asks, “So what is it you do, Grace? Gus says you’ve got a secret.”

The alcohol erodes my self-consciousness.
“I heal people.” I throw up my arms. “And it’s all her fault.” I point at Marly, who is shoving some food item wrapped in another food item in her mouth.