He fixes me with a long look, no doubt waiting for me to say that I’d like to place a call to a lawyer in some high-rise in some swanky part of some wicked city. Instead I ask him about Emma.
“Emma?”
“Emma King. The young woman I told you was in danger. Is she okay?”
“I don’t have an update for you at the moment,” Officer Kline says cryptically.
I stare at the pens on the table. They would not let me around the pens if they thought I was the bad guy, I think, and then we begin.
By the time I need my first bathroom break, we are not even halfway through my statement. They bring in lunch, more water. I keeptalking, take another bathroom break. Then I am left alone for a long time with the pens. A plainclothes officer comes into the room, holding a Starbucks cup, and identifies himself as a homicide detective from Albany, and the other officers bow their heads and leave the room as though the pope has arrived. I tell the story again to the pope. Then he leaves, and I’m left alone for some time, and when the door opens again, it’s Officer Talley asking me if I’d like to make any phone calls. My husband, I tell her somberly.
Next to the vending machine with the opioid reversal spray, Officer Talley feeds two quarters into the pay phone’s coin slot, and I punch in my husband’s cell. He does not answer, likely because he does not recognize the number, so I leave a message and tell him it’s me, that I’m going to wait a few minutes and try him back, and he needs to pick up this time because it is an emergency. “I’m not hurt,” I add before I hang up.
When I call him back, he answers on the first ring. I tell him an abbreviated version of the story I’ve been telling all day. When I finish, my husband doesn’t say anything for a long time. Then, “Do you need a lawyer?”
“No,” I say. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Fuck you, Faye.” He hangs up.
Chapter 34
It is dawn again when I am released from police custody. Officer Kline pushes open the door, and I step out onto the landing, feeling wobbly and disoriented, like no time has passed and also like I’m losing my grip on reality, unable to recall even the most recent of events. What did I have for dinner last night? Where did I sleep? Wait. Did I sleep?
It does nothing to ground me that standing on the shoulder of the state road are two figures who do not belong on this plane of reality, and when they see me, they raise their long lenses to their faces like snipers posing to shoot. Officer Talley and her purple fingernails, texting her friends, her family:You’ll never guess who is here. Her friends and family texting their friends and family and so on and so forth until someone at TMZ picked up in the game of telephone.
“Faye,” they call out, trying to sidestep the officer who has been dispatched to keep them from crossing the road. “What happened, Faye? Faye, are you hurt? Faye, does your husband know you’ve been with your ex-boyfriend this week?” They keep saying my name until it has lost all meaning, until I forget the person whose masquerade mask I wore to attend my life all these years.
“Should I get you something to cover your face?” Officer Kline offers. He is still unsure about me, I can tell. He says there will be more questions. Follow-up. I am not allowed to fly back to California just yet. I’ll need to get a hotel. Maybe for the month. They have more questions for me, but for now, I am free to go.
I shake my head. It’s too late. In the parking lot, Henry is about to climb into the back of a Tahoe with vinyl police-department decals. But he notices me and turns, his hands in his pockets.
His hands are in his pockets.
He is not handcuffed and neither am I.
We had about half an hour, Henry and I, alone in the cabin, while one of the officers took the patrol boat back to the parking lot to ask Corrine to turn over the key. Time enough to get our stories straight.
We came here together. We did not know anyone else was here until we heard shouting coming from the direction of the clubhouse. We went to investigate and found Campbell deceased; Corrine had a gun. She forced us into the boat, drove us to the other side of the lake. She marched us into the woods with the intent to kill us, but by the grace of God we ran into those two hikers and I was able to slip them a message. She got spooked, forced us back onto the boat, and locked us in the cabin. We thought she would come back to kill us or maybe that she had left us to starve to death.
At least we’d go together, we thought.
The parking lot spans the length of the armory, a city block long. I walk briskly, the snitches across the street in lockstep with me. Their cameras flash and fire, shutters opening and closing with thestridency of insect wings. They capture me break into a run. They capture Henry turn toward me, the slight bend at his knees. I throw myself at him, and he catches me midair, spins me slowly, like we are taking first looks for our wedding photographer. He puts my feet on the ground. I raise my face to his. I tell him I love him and I won’t ever stop.
“That’s it,” I say to the room of Hollywood executives for whom this tale is for. “That’s the end.”
PART 4
Chapter 35
I reach for my glass of lemon water and sip to a polite round of applause. I’ve pitched rooms where buyers have stared me down in furrowed-brow silence, where the head of drama originals at [redacted] once dozed off. I’ll take a seated ovation any day of the week over that, but it is no guarantee an offer will follow.
“So many twists and turns, Faye.”
“How do you even come up with something like that?”
“I blushed.”
“Speaking of, is your vision for this full-frontal nudity?”