Grace, half on top of her, Grace says, “Misty wants to go downstairs now.” Grace isn't crying.
Her own voice deep with slow-motion effort, Misty says, “How the fuck do you know what I want?”
And Grace says, “It's in your diary.”
The needle pulls out of her arm and Misty feels someone rubbing the skin around the shot. The cold feel of alcohol. Hands come under her arms and pull her until she's sitting upright.
Grace's face, her levator labii superioris muscle, the sneer muscle, pulls her face in tight around her nose, and she says, “It's blood. Oh, and urine, all over her. We can't take her downstairs like this. Not in front of everyone.”
The stink on Misty, it's the smell of the old Buick's front seat. The stink of your piss.
Someone's stripping the shirt off her, wiping her skin with paper towels. From across the room, the doctor's voice says, “This is excellent work. Very impressive.” He's leafing through her stack of finished drawings and paintings.
“Of course they're good,” Grace says. “Just don't get them out of order. They're all numbered.”
Just for the record, no one mentions Tabbi.
They're tucking her arms into a clean shirt. Grace pulls a brush through her hair.
The drawing on the easel, the girl drowned in the ocean, it's fallen onto the floor and blood and piss is soaked through it from underneath. It's ruined. The image gone.
Misty can't make a fist. Her eyes keep falling shut. The wet slip of drool slides out the corner of her mouth, and the stab in her breast fades away.
Grace and the doctor, they heave her onto her feet. Outside in the hallway, more people wait. More arms come around her from both sides, and they're flying her down the stairs in slow motion. They're flying past the sad faces that watch from every landing. Paulette and Raymon and someone else, Peter's blond friend from college. Will Tupper. His earlobe still in two sharp points. The whole Waytansea Island wax museum.
It's all so quiet, except her cast drags, thudding against every step.
A crowd of people fill the lobby's gloomy forest of polished trees and mossy carpet, but they fall back as she's carried toward the dining room. Here's all the old island families, the Burtons and Hylands and Petersens and Perrys. There's not a summer face among them.
Then the doors to the Wood and Gold Room swing open.
On table six, a four-top near the windows, there's something covered with a blanket. The profile of a little face, a little girl's flat chest. And Grace's voice says, “Hurry while she's still conscious. Let her see. Lift the blanket.”
An unveiling. A curtain going up.
And behind Misty, all her neighbors crowd around to watch.
August 7
IN ART SCHOOL, Peter once asked Misty to name a color. Any color.
He told her to shut her eyes and hold still. You could feel him step up, close. The heat of him. You could smell his unraveling sweater, the way his skin had the bitter smell of semisweet baker's chocolate. His own self-portrait. His hands pinched the fabric of her shirt and a cold pin scratched across her skin underneath. He said, “Don't move or I'll stick you by accident.”
And Misty held her breath.
Can you feel this?
Every time they met, Peter would give her another piece of his junk jewelry. Brooches, bracelets, rings, and necklaces.
Her eyes closed, waiting. Misty said, “Gold. The color, gold.”
His fingers working the pin through the fabric, Peter said, “Now tell me three words that describe gold.”
This was an old form of psychoanalysis, he told her. Invented by Carl Jung. It was based on universal archetypes. A kind of insightful party game. Carl Jung. Archetypes. The vast common subconscious of all humanity. Jains and yogis and ascetics, this was the culture Peter grew up with on Waytansea Island.
Her eyes closed, Misty said, “Shiny. Rich. Soft.” Her three words that described gold.
Peter's fingers clicked the brooch's tiny clasp shut, and his voice said, “Good.”
In that previous life, in art school, Peter told her to name an animal. Any animal.
Just for the record, the brooch was a gilded turtle with a big, cracked green gem for a shell. The head and legs moved, but one leg was gone. The metal was so tarnished it had already rubbed black on her shirt.
And Misty pulled it out from her chest, looking at it, loving it for no good reason. She said, “A pigeon.”
Peter stepped away and waved for her to walk along with him. They were walking through the campus, between brick buildings shaggy with ivy, and Peter said, “Now tell me three words that describe a pigeon.”
Walking next to him, Misty tried to put her hand in his, but he clasped his together behind his back.
Walking, Misty said, “Dirty.” Misty said, “Stupid. Ugly.”
Her three words that described a pigeon.
And Peter looked at her, his bottom lip curled in between his teeth, and his corrugator muscle squeezing his eyebrows together.
That previous life, in art school, Peter asked her to name a body of water.
Walking next to him, Misty said, “The St. Lawrence Seaway.”
He turned to look at her. He'd stopped walking. “Name three adjectives describing it,” he said.
And Misty rolled her eyes and said, “Busy, fast, and crowded.”
And Peter's levator labii superioris muscle pulled his top lip into a sneer.
Walking with Peter, he asked her just one last thing. Peter said to imagine you're in a room. All the walls are white, and there are no windows or doors. He said, “In three words, tell me how that room feels to you.”
Misty had never dated anyone this long. For all she knew, this was the kind of veiled way that lovers interview each other. The way Misty
