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Authors: Alison Gaylin

Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #General, #Contemporary, #Sagas

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BOOK: Hide Your Eyes
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‘I’ll wait.’
I collected a few unused scraps of modeling clay and rolled them into a ball.
‘Need help?’ Yale asked.
‘No.’
‘So . . . why don’t I tell you who I’m in love with.’
I tightened the lids on the jars of water-soluble paint and lined them up on their long, plastic tray as he launched into a monologuebuto a mon about his significant-other-of-one-night-so-far. The guy was a waiter named Peter Steele, but beyond that information, it was just a bunch of words to me, irrelevant as the brand names on the sides of the jars.
‘. . . took him home from an after-hours bar, Sam. I haven’t taken anyone home from an after-hours bar since they arrested Jeffrey Dahmer . . .’
I placed the paint tray on top of the VCR, wheeled the entertainment system into the closet.
‘But, God, he was flawless . . .’
I shoved the ball of modeling clay into its container, closed the lid, stuck it on a closet shelf.
‘. . . Drop-dead, soul-swallowing gorgeous as a fucking Venetian opera. Don’t look at me like that. You would’ve done the exact same thing.’
I closed the closet door. Bolted the three locks.
Click, click, click
.
‘Cat got your tongue?’
I looked at him. ‘You have no idea what a poor choice of words that is,’ I said, and showed him the T.S. Eliot book.
Yale squinted at the word. ‘Who wrote that?’
I shrugged my shoulders.
‘Okay . . . Let’s retrace your steps. Exactly where have you and the book been lately?’
After reading ‘Growltiger’s Last Stand’ at story hour on Valentine’s Day, I’d marked the page and stuck it into my shoulder bag. I often did this with
Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats
as it was so frequently in demand and - replaceable though it was - a potentially catastrophic disappointment for my class if stolen.
Since I hadn’t removed it from the bag until today’s story hour, the book had been everywhere I’d been: the University Diner, where I’d had lunch; the box office; the abandoned construction site; the Happy Face deli, where I’d bought the food that had sustained me through the weekend; Great White and, finally, back to Sunny Side again.
I told him about all of it - except the abandoned construction site.
After I was through, Yale strode up to my desk and leaned against it like a TV attorney interrogating a witness. ‘What about Miss Jean Brodie?’
‘Veronica? Not her style. Too subtle.’
‘That principal of yours is a little odd.’
‘Terry would never go into a woman’s purse, and he’d never deface a book, even with a pencil. Besides, I think he’s sort of scared of me.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I screamed at a cop.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Terry didn’t write
hide
in my book.’
Yale paced a full circle around my desk, then reversed direction.
‘Yale, you’re bringing back my hangover. Why don’t you just forget—’
‘I’ve got it.’
‘Oh, really.’
He rested both elbows on the edge of my desk and smiled. ‘The message wasn’t directed at you.’
‘Then who was it directed at, Nancy Drew?’
‘Your bag, of course.’ Yale explained: Since no one in the box office disliked me enough to write
hide
in my book, and since I wasn’t in the deli long enough for someone to remove it from my bag, write in it and put it back without my knowledge, the culprit was obviously ‘some nasty queen at Great White.’ And not just any nasty queen. A nasty queen with
a passionate aesthetic sensibility
.
‘That’s just so obviously it,’ he said.
‘Someone is writing threatening notes to my
bag
?’
‘You take that piece of hippie hell into Great White and
someone
is going to tell you to hide it. Probably thought he was doing you a favor.’
‘But—’
‘You were bombed, right?’
‘Well, yeah I guess.’
‘Bombed enough to turn your back on the bag for a few minutes?’
‘Maybe.’
‘And was there anything else in aforementioned bag, besides aforementioned dog-eared page of aforementioned book that someone with a need to express himself regarding aforementioned desecration of natural fiber could’ve written on?’
‘I don’t think so.’
He smacked his hand against the desk. ‘I rest my case.’
I looked at Yale, tried to smile. I hadn’t told him about the man at the river. And, as I remembered the head with its pencily shadow of hair, turning to reveal those impossible eyes - eyes that could refract light and burn holes through flesh, eyes without pupils - another thought came to me:
Maybe I’m the one who wrote the word
. ‘We should go,’ I said.
‘First, tell me about thee a me abo cop you screamed at.’
I sighed. ‘He was here for community outreach, but he didn’t have on a uniform and he showed up early. I saw his gun and—’
‘Oh, Sam.’
‘He was nice about it. Let’s get out of here. I’ve had enough of these fucking primary colors.’
Yale clasped my shoulder and gave me a look that was much too concerned for my liking. I half expected him to put a hand on my forehead and check my temperature. ‘You need to relax.’
Relax, princess
. ‘You drink too much coffee.’
Stop moving
.
‘I happen to enjoy coffee!’
‘Sorry. Just trying to help.’
‘I . . . know you are.’
Yale searched my eyes with his own. It wasn’t the first time I noticed how sweet and pure a blue they were - like a baby’s blanket, a few cottony white flecks sprinkled around the pupils. Yale was three years older than me and smoked and drank and stayed up all night on a regular basis, but he still had the eyes of a child - bright and uncorrupted, no lines in the delicate skin around them. He said, ‘There’s something else bothering you, isn’t there?’ and I heard myself reply, ‘If I told you that I think I might be going crazy, would you take me seriously?’
‘Sam.’
‘Um . . . Okay then . . .’ My mouth was dry, and I was beginning to sweat. I felt like an actor at an audition, only my monologue was unmemorized, unrehearsed. I returned my eyes to Yale’s, let them rest there a while, and realized how lucky his scene partners were. They probably never had stage fright. ‘I know this is going to sound weird,’ I began, ‘but have you ever heard of Dead Man’s Fingers?’
 
When I was through with the story, Yale stared at me, his expression unreadable.
Please don’t accuse me of being on drugs
, I started to say. He cleared his throat. ‘So?’
‘So . . . what?’
‘So . . . what do you think was in the ice chest?’
‘You mean you don’t think I hallucinated it?’
‘Of course not.’
‘But . . . the eyes . . .’
‘Sam, I moved to New York eight years ago. Since then, I’ve seen a woman with no nose knitting a scarf on the nine train, a man - actually the head, arms and chest of a man - propelling himself down Fifth Avenue on a hand-made gurney, a guy with three balls, Shell Clarion . . . I’ll buy you saw a man with mirror eyes.’
‘But he disappeared - more than once.’
‘Did you see him fade into thin air?’
‘No, but . . .’
‘Maybe you were just so afraid, you thought you heard him following you, even though he wasn’t. Did you ever consider that?’
Actually, I hadn’t considered that.
‘You’re too damn superstitious is the problem here,’ said Yale. ‘I mean, Dead Man’s Fingers. Puh-lease.’ I felt a palpable relief, starting at the base of my neck and spreading throughout the rest of my body like clear, warm water - until another thought cut off the flow.
‘So, if the couple were real,’ I said, ‘what if something horrible was in the ice chest? I mean, it wasn’t big enough to hold a dead body. But what about . . . body parts?’
‘I highly doubt it. A young couple? Dressed up like that? In broad daylight? On Valentine’s Day? They could’ve been getting rid of any number of things - trash, battery acid, old clothes, maybe evidence of an affair, maybe even the ice chest itself. It could’ve had fish or cheese in it for too long. You can’t get rotten cheese smell out of anything, ever.’
‘Old clothes?’
‘Well, why not? Besides, don’t you think a man with eyes like that would try to hide them if he were disposing of body parts in broad daylight? I mean, sunglasses are not hard to come by.’
‘What about the note in my book?’
‘A design queen with too much time on his hands, and nothing to write on but a children’s book. You really should hide that purse, though. It’s a point well taken, if you ask me . . .’
‘Oh, wait a minute. There is something else he could have written on.’ I fished around in my bag. ‘So. A guy with three balls.’
‘I was hoping you wouldn’t catch that.’
‘I’m assuming it’s not Peter Steele.’
‘No, wiseass,’ he said. ‘It was someone I met years ago, at the Spike.’
‘I don’t recall you ever mentioning a gentleman friend with three testicles.’
‘Oh, hmmm . . . I suppose it just didn’t come up. “Hello, Sam, and how was your evening? Watched a documentary on PBS? That’s nice. I fucked a guy with an extra marble in his pouch.” ’
‘I would’ve told you.’
Yale rolled his eyes. ‘He was a student at Hunter. Adorable. Not as handsome as Peter, though. Of course no one’s as handsome as Peter. Michelangelo’s David is not as handsome as Peter. I can’t wait for you to meet him, I’m taking you to his restaurant for lunch, and I swear nt> and I you are just going to die when you see him, and not just because he’s the most beautiful man you will ever see in your life. There’s something else about him - something about his voice . . . and the way he uses his eyes. You know what I mean?’
Yale waited for a response, but I didn’t have one to offer. I was too busy staring at a different set of eyes - Sydney’s eyes on the valentine headshot. Someone had drawn X’s over them, pressing down hard with a pencil.
¢>
5
Magic Mirrors
Since it was reasonably close to Sunny Side, we decided to walk to Ruby Redd’s Brewing Company, the touristy West Village restaurant where Peter Steele worked. Yale wanted us both to have at least an hour to stare at the Most Beautiful Man You Will Ever See in Your Life before we were due in at the Space, so we were running a little late on his clock. My friend moved fast to begin with, and since the eleven inches he had on me was almost all leg, I was jogging to keep up.
I hadn’t shown Yale the defaced valentine. I figured he’d probably make up more excuses about crazy bar queens and I wasn’t ready to hear them, wasn’t ready to talk about it at all.
‘So what exactly
does
Peter look like?’
Yale responded with dependable creativity. And as he described the waiter’s ‘lethal’ abs, ‘ergonomic’ bone structure and lips ‘that would be considered a delicacy in most countries,’ I did my best to picture him. But, hard as I tried, my mind replaced each of Yale’s images with these: mirrored eyes staring at the back of my head, a man’s hand clutching a pencil.
 
It was a good thing I was no longer hungover, because the interior of Ruby Redd’s Brewing Company was nearly more overpowering than my classroom.
‘There’s so much red,’ I said, staring at all of it. Red-and-white checkered tablecloths, tiny bunches of red carnations at the center of every table in red glass vases, brass ceiling lamps with red Tiffany-style shades, red vinyl booths facing red wooden chairs. ‘I mean, okay, Ruby Redd’s. We get the point. It’s like
The Shining
in here.’
The waiters wore red-and-white checkered bow ties that matched the tablecloths and red butchers’ aprons that matched nearly everything else. All of them looked cute enough to be on a TV commercial, though none was exactly ready for the
Galleria dell’Accademia
.
I watched my friend’s face as he scanned the room for Peter Steele, but his expression remained neutral, his baby-blue eyes darkened. ‘Do you think he was lying about working here?’ he asked.
‘Who would lie about being a waiter at Ruby Redd’s Brewing Company?’
Yale and I sat on two crimson counter stools, and a young waiter with spiky burgundy hair and a red name tag that said ‘Tredwell’ approached us.
‘Hi, Tredwell,’ Yale said as he accepted two long, rectangular menus encased in cherry velveteen. ‘Did you color your hair to match the restaurant or vice versa?’
‘Huh?’
‘Never mind. We’re looking for Peter Steele?’
‘You guys are friends of Peter’s?’ Tredwell said.
Yale exhaled audibly. ‘He does work here.’
‘Yeah. His shift doesn’t start ’til later, though.’
We decided to stay anyway. I hadn’t eaten a thing since before I’d puked, and I realized I was starving. I ordered my typical posthangover meal: a cheddar omelet with a side of bacon, buttered rye toast and black coffee.
Yale gave me a disdainful look and pointedly asked for grilled vegetables and green tea.
‘Oh, I never shared my other lovely news,’ I said, after the waiter walked away. ‘You remember Nate, don’t you?’ I whipped the
Post
out of my bag and placed the entertainment section in front of Yale as Tredwell returned with our steaming red mugs.
Yale stared at the article. ‘You have
got
to be kidding.’
‘Stupid, huh?’
Yale jerked his tea bag up and down, up and down. ‘Well . . . it’s not as if he’s on Broadway.’
‘No. He’s making more money than that.’
‘How’d you two kids like some cream with your coffee and tea?’ asked Tredwell.
‘He cheated on you with a man and a woman!’
Yale was inadvertently using his stage voice, and I could feel customers turning to stare at us, or, rather, at me.
‘Could you possibly keep it down?’
‘Nathan Gundersen bisexually cheated on you and he gets to make more money than the emcee in
Cabaret
? What the fuck kind of karma is that?’
‘Tell me about it.’
‘Well,’ he said. ‘There is more to life than just making money as some flash-in-the-pan, so-called “hunk” on an inconsequential daytime soap opera.’
‘You guys know Nate Gundersen?’ Tredwell said.
Yale ignored him. ‘The minute that ass drops - and let me tell you it
will
drop - not a soul in the universe will return his calls. Male, female, canine, bovine . . . No one. Because beneath that . . . that gaudy exterior, he has no substance. No . . . intelligence.’
‘He graduated from Standford summa cum laude.’
‘Oh, for shit’s sake!’
Tredwell was still standing over us, a tiny red pitcher balanced on his palm.
‘We would not like any cream!’ said Yale.
I said, ‘You sound angrier than me.’
‘I know. It’s just . . . God. I hate Nate for what he did to you. He doesn’t deserve anything.’
‘We’re in agreement there.’
‘And, not to sound selfish, but it isn’t fair to me either.’
I looked at him.
‘Hey, I work hard, and I strive to be a good person, and I’ve never cheated on anyone, let alone
bisexually
cheated on them, and that prick can do any play that he wants while I’m lucky to get a chorus part at a dinner theater on Long Island. He’s clearly stolen
my
hard-earned good fortune.’
I couldn’t help but smile a little.
‘And . . . and then you tell me he’s summa cum laude? I mean, he has money and fame and fans and . . . and that ass, and now I can’t even take comfort in his possible stupidity? What am I supposed to do about that?’
My smile grew broader. Yale had a talent for making himself the injured party in any given situation - particularly the ones that were actually damaging to me. It was oddly soothing, the way he asked me to help him with my problems. ‘You have a very nice ass,’ I said.
Yale gave my hand a squeeze. ‘Get this away from me.’ He folded up the
Post
and stuffed it back in my bag.
Meanwhile, the waiter was lingering like bad breath.
I said, ‘I swear to God we don’t need anything else.’
Tredwell put down the cursed pitcher of cream, knocking over a saltshaker in the process. I pinched up some salt, tossed it over my left shoulder and glared at him.
Tredwell stared unblinkingly over our heads, and then slowly, his lips parted. ‘Whoa,’ he said softly, and proceeded to knock over my coffee.
 
Tredwell brought new meaning to the words
economy of movement
. With hot coffee streaming over the edge of the counter and onto the decidedly nonwaterproof shoulder bag that sat in my lap, he waited several seconds before slowly reaching behind him, grabbing a stack of paper napkins and placing them in front of me without so much as offering to help. As Yale used some of the napkins to dam off the coffee, I tried to sop up my purse. ‘We could use a few more napkins here, budd Cinsaley,’ Yale said, but Tredwell just stood there like a lamp.
A deep, inflectionless voice behind us said, ‘Turn around, Bright Eyes.’
Yale gasped. ‘Peter . . . don’t you look . . . striking today.’
‘Can I have some seltzer water?’ I said, but Tredwell remained paralyzed. I didn’t care how good-looking Peter Steele was, this little creep wasn’t getting a tip.
I looped the shoulder strap over the counter stool so the bag was facing out at the room behind me. ‘I guess I’ll just have to
air this out
then.’
Peter’s voice was saying, ‘Well, come on. What do you think?’
‘They’re definitely interesting,’ Yale said.
‘They’re one of a kind. At least that’s what the guy at the contact lens place told me. I can’t decide whether they’re hot or scary.’
‘I’d say they’re a little of both.’
‘Know what they’re called? Magic Mirrors.’
I spun around on the counter stool and looked at his face. ‘Shit.’
‘Who’s she?’
I cleared my throat. ‘I’m Yale’s friend Samantha.’
‘Golly,’ he said. ‘Taking the gals to meet me already.’
‘Sam’s my best friend.’
‘Not to be rude, but what an ugly bag. Not you - your purse.’
‘I told you, Sam.’
‘Magic Mirrors,’ I said.
‘Cute name, huh?’
‘Cute.’
Yale said, ‘I hate to break it to you, Peter, but I don’t think those contacts are one of a—Sam! You
kicked
me!’
‘Sorry. It was an accident.’
‘I need something,’ Peter said. He reached out and took Yale’s hand in his, then slowly brought it up to his mouth. Watching my face, he ran his full lips along the length of its underside, from the base of the palm to the tip of the middle finger. ‘That’s better,’ he said.
Yale opened his mouth and closed it again, his cheeks coloring.
‘I have to go to the bathroom.’ I grabbed the damp shoulder bag and headed for th C heidte rear of the restaurant on stiff, uncooperative legs.
All the while, I felt Peter’s mirrored eyes staring at the back of my head.
 
‘Okay,’ I said to my reflection. ‘Okay, okay, okay.’
I wasn’t sure how long I’d been in this giant corpuscle of a bathroom, with its red toilet, sink and light bulbs; nor how long I’d been repeating the word, but it was starting to sound foreign. ‘Okayokayokay . . .’
I looked deep into my own pupils, maroon under the tarty lights, and thought about Peter’s eyes, how they didn’t have pupils. I thought about how, when he’d turned toward me, all I could see in them were tiny, distorted segments of my own face. When he’d mouthed Yale’s hand, I’d seen doubles of my top lip.
They were the same eyes as the Hudson River man’s, and Peter had said his contacts were one of a kind. ‘Okayokay . . .’
Peter had close-cropped, dark hair, a broad, smooth forehead, black eyebrows. ‘Okay.’
What an ugly bag
, he’d said, bits of orange and brown embroidery in his eyes. The bag had been everywhere with me - the construction site, the box office, Great White. Was he letting me know he’d seen it before? Was he letting me know that he’d seen it - and me - before he tracked down and seduced my best friend? Was he letting me know that he could go anywhere, be anywhere at any time, that there was nowhere for me to go, nowhere for me to
hide
?
Yale would think I was insane if he were to hear me muttering into the mirror of the world’s reddest bathroom, considering the possibility that his gorgeous new boyfriend was a murderer and stalker who had spent Valentine’s Day dumping a picnic cooler full of body parts into the Hudson.
He would think I was insane, and I wouldn’t blame him. Peter was probably not the same man I’d seen at the river. And even if he was . . .
body parts
? More likely there was something harmless in the ice chest. Something along the lines of trash, battery acid, old clothes . . .
Why couldn’t I shake off this suspicion? Why was I afraid to leave the bathroom? Why couldn’t I imagine myself saying, ‘Hey, Peter. Didn’t I see you and a woman down by the piers?’ if there wasn’t anything
wrong
with Peter and a woman being down by the piers?
I splashed cold water in my face. ‘Okay,’ I said again. The muscles at the base of my skull clenched up, my headache was starting to return. I had to eat something. Somebody knocked on the door. I clutched the edge of the sink and took a deep, trembling breath. Finally, I unlocked the door and headed back to the counter.
‘That’s the men’s room, you know,’ a male voice called after me.
 
‘Are you all right?’ Yale asked when I returned.
‘Yeah, why?’
‘We thought you fell in,’ said Peter.
‘I was . . . in the men’s room.’
‘Well, that explains it.’ Peter winked a mirrored eye at me. I could see part of my cheek in it, a wisp of my hair.
Peter had taken my seat at the counter, and Yale stared at him as if he were watching
Les Mis
for the first time. ‘Sam, Peter. Peter, Sam . . .’
‘You look familiar,’ said Peter. ‘Have we met before?’
I watched Tredwell put my lunch in front of the empty seat on the other side of Peter and said, ‘I don’t think so.’ My eyes darted back to his. Now they were filled with the faint black and gray pattern on my V-necked sweater.
Yale was right. His face was beautiful. It looked as if someone had spent long, loving hours sculpting every smooth inch of it, and his skin was glowingly tan despite the time of year. He had the ripe, bloated mouth of a
Cosmopolitan
model. I imagined it covered by a black scarf.
‘You’re staring at me,’ Peter said - not unkindly, more like he was used to it. ‘Do I have something in my teeth?’ In his eyes, I could see where the pale skin of my neck met my black T-shirt collar.
BOOK: Hide Your Eyes
10.06Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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