He moved to the kitchen and poured a fresh drink, just one, and then handed it to her instead of taking it himself. Her hands were shaking, her face was red. She seemed fixed still on what he’d just said. She took a large sip, warm whiskey, then he took a sip.
“Why don’t you believe me?” she said. “I just don’t get why you did that to him, why you said that. He had nothing to do with any of this, and now he thinks we’re fucking insane.”
“So what?”
“So, you’re the one who’s cared this whole time about keeping up impressions. You’re the one who couldn’t stand the thought of them finding out we’d been arguing the other night in the alley, who practically got on his knees to beg me to join them before going home.”
“I just don’t care anymore. It doesn’t matter. It’s over. None of the last three days was anything, none of it was real. The trip’s over.”
“No. I don’t believe that,” she said. “What is it, really? Why do you keep acting like this?”
“Because there’s something else,” he said, looking hard into her. “I can just tell, okay? There’s something right there that you’re not telling me, but I can’t figure out what it is. I’ve been staring at you for seven fucking years and I can tell when there’s something else there. That every time I ask the question, you’re considering something else. I guess it’s not him. Or it is, and you guys are good together, you’re synced up with the story. But I believe you. I really do. Then again, if it’s him, and you two both lied, that’s fucked up…just know that. But if it’s not him—it’s not him, right?—then I believe you. I believe you unless I don’t, but I believe you, which means it’s something else.”
While he was speaking she’d closed her eyes, and they were still shut. She sipped again, swallowing hard. She wanted to go back to sleep and start over again. She clenched her eyes tighter, in a strain, as though fighting off inertia, some inevitable inconvenient reality that was closing in. Her cheeks glowed bright like electric stovetops and she squeezed her eyes tight enough that tears, real live tears, appeared at the corners.
“Who do you think is lying?” Will said, retreating to the kitchen again. “Do you think it’s Gram? Do you think he’s trying to lure her back? Or do you think the police really are looking for her? What if, after all the lies she told, the one about her roommates is actually true? What if that really was her roommate who got killed? What if the police really are looking for her? What if she really did tell Jack something happened between her and me, just to fuck with us?”
Her eyes shot open, filmed over, wet. “Then what would it be—another true story?”
“It would be a lie. Another lie. But maybe he’s not the one who’s lying, is all I mean. Just something to fuck with him and you and me on her way out of here. One last little dagger before leaving.”
“Why should I believe that explanation?” she said.
“Because it’s exactly the sort of thing she’d do. Not the sort of thing he’d do, but the sort of thing she’d do. Why do I have to accept your explanation, but you’re not willing to accept mine?”
“I guess that’s the fundamental question, huh?” she said. “I guess the answer to that is the answer to everything.”
She sipped from the glass, and swallowed hard, and squeezed her eyes shut again.
“What if the police come looking for us next?” Will said. “Asking questions about Jenna? Or what if she can’t get out on her flight? What if there’s a red notice or whatever at the airport to hold her for questioning? And then what if Jack can’t get out? What if we can’t get out?”
“Who knows what name they’re even looking for…” she said.
“What if there really was a murder and she actually knows something?”
“What if she knows the whole story?”
“She said she slept with the boyfriend before leaving town,” Will said. “That could be yet another lie, or it could be the truth. And, anyway, it would give sufficient motive for fleeing. Insane as that is.”
“In that case, what if she’s the reason the boyfriend killed the girlfriend?” Whitney said. “Or…what if she really is the killer?”
They were standing fifteen feet from one another near the front door still, sort of arranged around the dining-room table. It was as though they sensed themselves fully in the apartment all of a sudden—their staging, their scale—and were seeing the whole scene from a fresh perspective, the implication of the stakes of the conversation, the incredible predicament they’d engineered for themselves.
“Let’s not do this,” Will said. “She didn’t do anything. This is ridiculous.”
“And now she’s missing,” Whitney said. “Gone without a trace. Phone in the Seine on her way to the train. A first-time killer on the lam. Never to be heard of again, except for one final tryst.”
Will shook his head and finished their shared drink. He was so beat. He shook his head and closed his eyes and now he was eyeing the bed in the other room.
“Just fucking tell me the truth,” Whitney said, eyes shut now to the unfamiliar blazing sunlight in the room, speaking in his direction without looking at him.
“I get this sense that you almost want it to have happened,” he said, searching her all over again, looking into the fresh seams in that well-manicured face, searching for a reason, for an answer, but still not finding it. “You want it for some reason. For cover, or
