Jenna was burrito-wrapped in a towel. Her hair was wet and wavier than he’d seen it, and it fell over her shoulders and down her back.
“Help yourself,” she said, squaring up to him, her feet wider than her shoulders, hanging there like a provocation.
“What?” Will said.
“Help yourself to the coffee,” she said, smiling. “Did you pour yourself any yet?”
“No, not yet,” he said, swallowing. “But thank you.”
He stood up and grabbed two porcelain mugs, and she poured expertly, thoughtlessly, like a diner waitress.
“Any gross cream?”
“No thanks,” he said.
He was still wearing his shoes and so towered over her. They were sharing the tightest quarters of a small hotel room. The “kitchen.” Will thought of the many rooms of his and Whitney’s studio.
He sipped his coffee and it was hot and terrible.
“Don’t forget to call your dad or whatever,” he said.
“I’m sure it’s just about my flight,” she said, moving back into the bathroom. “He’s been helping to get me on a flight. Earliest available is tomorrow morning. I’ll call him in a little bit.”
“Just like that, the skies clear up and everyone’s outta here, huh?”
He wondered if she could hear him from the bathroom. She’d vanished from sight again, but the shampoo cloud enveloping her had found its way into every corner of the room. She reemerged, sipping her coffee and smiling at him, the electric blues peering over the rim of her mug, pools in the smooth, liquid face, a creamy pink without makeup.
He felt the full length of his cock straining against his jeans. She sipped again and didn’t drop her eyes.
He turned back to the edge of the bed and sat, crossing his legs, concealing himself.
“Are you sure you don’t want to just call your dad now to get it over with?”
She smiled again and sipped.
“I wonder how much longer it’s gonna be for us,” he said. “Clearing Zone 6—Jesus.”
“I haven’t told you yet the real reason I’m so eager to get out of here, have I?” she said, walking back to the coffeepot for a warm-up. “You know my roommates in Paris—I mentioned them? Something insane happened, and I still don’t totally know what the truth is. But she’s dead and I think he killed her.”
Will felt at once like he wasn’t living his real life. His mind went somewhere fantastical, as it had during the concert. He was drunk or high and his body hurt and he couldn’t tell for sure if he had maybe fallen asleep already. All he could say as his heart beat faster was: “What?”
“Yeah, I’d moved out and everything, and then I saw it on the news while I was waiting at the train station, and it just freaked me the fuck out. I just don’t want any part of that, you know? I don’t want to be caught up with the police up there. It’s this whole thing now that’s unraveling. I keep reading about it online, and they think he killed her.”
“Your roommates? Literally your roommates.”
“Wild, right?”
“You seem not as freaked out by this as I would be.”
She shrugged. “I mean, I’ve known for several days now. I just don’t want to have to go back there and be questioned, you know? The French police. The German police, too, probably. They were both from Cologne. They’d met there and come to—”
“Wait, I saw something on the news about this! Yesterday afternoon, I totally forgot. This guy was a suspect for the murder of his girlfriend? In Paris. Those were your roommates?”
“You saw it on TV? So you saw what a big deal it is, then, right? You get why I need to get the fuck out of here.”
“But…but maybe you can help the police, right? Maybe you can help them with—”
“I just want to leave. I need to leave. I’ve been here too long. I can’t get caught up in a thing where I’m here for another month while they try to figure this thing out, and interview me about what I know, and then I become a suspect, and blah blah blah. I didn’t even know them that well. It was their place for the year, and I rented a room for the spring term when I got out of university housing, and that was it.”
“But you’re not worried about, I don’t know, seeming like you’re uncooperative or whatever? When they do look for you, and you’re back in L.A. or New York not talking to them? I mean, I bet they’re looking for you right now, don’t you think?”
“Well, maybe that’s why I got rid of my cell phone, then.”
She widened her eyes, as though testing to see if he was following the plot.
“It just might be helpful if you, you know—” he said.
“Well, maybe I don’t want to be around for when they figure things out. Maybe I was the one who killed her, and that’s why I wanted to get out of Dodge.”
The look on his face wasn’t something he was in control of anymore, which is why he was surprised to hear her laugh at the sight of it. He felt his features come into focus—the slack mouth, the wrinkled forehead, the eyes with their chill behind them.
“Relax! Will! Jesus! You must really fucking think the world of me,” she said, laughing. “I didn’t kill her—my God! But…I did fuck her boyfriend the night before I left. So I’m feeling, you know, I’m feeling a modicum of guilt…”
He eliminated the look of shock on his face, deliberately trying to draw it down to neutral. The drapes were closed. It was so dark out anyway with the rain and the ashcloud.
She started laughing again. “I’m kid-ding! It was a joke. C’mon! All of this is a joke. You’re such a stiff. There wasn’t a fucking murder.
