“That’s where I’m staying too,” I say.
Henry slips one hand in his pocket, thumb out. Looks at me with an indiscernible squint. His hair has been neatly combed back from his face, but a lock the shape of a Nike swoosh keeps slipping free, curtaining one eye in an absurdly dashing way. It is making mecrazy, thinking about how he is out in the world, looking like that, capable of what he is capable of, and he is no longer mine. I might as well say it: I miss fucking Henry.
“Are you leaving right after the service?” he asks.
“Tomorrow.” I twist my finger in my long pendant necklace. Something to do with myself while I remember what it’s like to clench Henry’s cock from the inside. “You?”
“Same,” he says. “Then I’m headed to the lake. Some things to take care of there.”
It is still April, and despite the oppressive, out-of-office-for-the-month quality to the humidity, it’s too early to begin summerizing the cabin. In the Adirondacks it will snow into May. I stare at Henry, wondering what things he needs to take care of, and then I realize I’m staring and I need to stop.
I check the time on my watch, a thirtieth birthday gift to myself. “I was going to grab a coffee before everything starts,” I say. When I look up, I catch Henry scowling at my wrist, and for a moment I allow myself to imagine that he is looking at me as I am looking at him, furious that I am no longer his to control.
“Is it weird if I join you?”
My heart palpitates irregularly. “Yes.”
He gives me a rare, real smile, and we step closer, check both ways to make sure the street is clear before crossing. A small, juvenile part of me feels precious and protected knowing I don’t need to worry, that Henry will signal when it is safe for us to cross. Walking alongside him is a stupidly erotic experience. I have become accustomed to short Hollywood men, and something in my gut ignites, remembering that when Henry gets in my face, takes me down to my studs, he has to bend at the knees.
“How was the rest of last night?” he wants to know.
“I left not long after you. Campbell tried to get me to stay out. Corrine too. She must be hurting right now.” I laugh for Henry’s sake. We could talk for hours about Corrine.Yeah, he once said,she does not like you. It wasn’t to be mean. Henry is curious about interpersonal relationships. He was good at letting me vent, even better at analyzing the smallest of interactions. Some might call that gossip; with Henry it felt like intelligence gathering.
“I can’t wreck myself like that anymore,” he says.
A year ago, I might have agreed. But something about my last birthday has set me off, turned me feral again at the advanced age of thirty-four years old.
“Hey,” I say. “Can I tell you something?”
Henry pauses at the top of the short stone staircase that leads down to the quad, his chin touching his chest and his brow furrowed, ready to hear it.
“That girl, Emma. She told me she found PT.”
Henry raises his eyebrows. “You’re serious.”
I nod.
“But you know the house cleaner did.”
“Yeah. And I said that to her, and she quickly corrected herself and said technically yes, but then she arrived at the house before the police got there and she ran upstairs and found him in the bathroom. She said she left and didn’t tell the police, which just doesn’t seem like something a person would do. She also went into this whole thing about how PT canceled all his classes the day before he died and his hands were covered in Band-Aids—”
“Band-Aids?”
“Yeah. It was like she was trying to imply he had defensive wounds or something, but then why—”
“Would he have Band-Aids?” Henry finishes for me.
I sweep my hand in his direction. “Exactly. Like, what, PT’s killer stopped and took care of his boo-boos before he slunk out into the night?”
“And what is she doing showing up to PT’s house at eight in the morning anyway?” Henry asks, his lip curled with distaste.
“She said he asked her to come over. To discuss her script. She was like, ‘Did he say anything to you about it?’?”
Henry laughs at that, affects the voice of someone reading an email. “?‘Dear Faye, the script I’m presenting you is from the most singular talent I’ve ever come across in all my decades of doing this.’?”
That’s exactly what I thought Emma was hoping to hear. I stare at Henry in amazement. It wasn’t just a rose-colored memory that Henry’s operating system runs complementarily to my own. “Meanwhile all he did was apologize for the fact that it was late. I don’t think he’d even read it yet.”
“I don’t feel old,” Henry says, “but then I spend ten minutes with someone like that and think, thank God I’m not young anymore.”