hardly breathing. Three days after my last day of high school. Afterward my mother and father came to the hospital, and my father said, ‘You couldn’t even do that right.’”
“Cocksucker.”
“Yup. Pretty much.”
“Why’d you want to kill yourself? I hope you had a good reason.”
“Because I’d been having sex with my daddy’s best friend. Since I was thirteen. This forty-year-old guy with a daughter of his own. People found out. His daughter found out. She was my friend. She said I ruined her life. She said I was a whore.” Georgia rolled her glass this way and that in her left hand, watching the glimmer of light move around and around the rim. “Pretty hard to argue with her. He’d give me things, and I’d always take them. Like, he gave me a brand-new sweater once with fifty dollars in the pocket. He said the money was so I could buy shoes to go with it. I let him fuck me for shoe money.”
“Hell. That wasn’t any good reason to kill yourself,” Jude told her. “It was a good reason to kill him.”
She laughed.
“What was his name?”
“George Ruger. He’s a used-car salesman now, in my old hometown. Head of the county Republican steering committee.”
“Next time I get down Georgia way, I’ll stop in and kill the son of a bitch.”
She laughed again.
“Or at least thoroughly stomp his ass into the Georgia clay,” Jude said, and played the opening bars of “Dirty Deeds.”
She lifted his glass of wine off the amp, raised it in a toast to him, and had a sip.
“Do you know what the best thing about you is?” she asked.
“No idea.”
“Nothing grosses you out. I mean, I just told you all that, and you don’t think I’m…I don’t know. Ruined. Hopelessly fucked up.”
“Maybe I do and I just don’t care.”
“You care,” she said. She put a hand on his ankle. “And nothing shocks you.”
He let that pass, did not say he could’ve guessed the suicide attempt, the emotionally cold father, the family friend who molested her, almost from the first moment Jude saw her, wearing a dog collar, her hair hacked into uneven spikes and her mouth painted in white lipstick.
She said, “So what happened to you? Your turn.”
He twitched his ankle out of her grasp.
“I’m not into feel-bad competitions.”
He glanced at the window. Nothing remained of the light except for a faint, reddish bronze flush behind the leafless trees. Jude considered his own semitransparent reflection in the glass, his face long, seamed, gaunt, with a flowing black beard that came almost to his chest. A haggard, grim-visaged ghost.
Georgia said, “Tell me about this woman who sent you the ghost.”
“Jessica Price. She didn’t just send him to me either. Remember, she tricked me into paying for him.”
“Right. On eBay or something?”
“No. A different site, a third-rate clone. And it only looked like a regular Internet auction. She was orchestrating things from behind the scenes to make sure I’d win.” Jude saw the question forming in Georgia’s eyes and answered it before she could speak. “Why she went to all that trouble I can’t tell you. I get the feeling, though, that she couldn’t just mail him to me. I had to agree to take possession of him. I’m sure there’s some profound moral message in that.”
“Yeah,” Georgia said. “Stick with eBay. Accept no substitutes.” She tasted some wine, licked her lips, then went on. “And this is all because her sister killed herself? Why does she think that’s your fault? Is it because of something you wrote in one of your songs? Is this like when that kid killed himself after listening to Ozzy Osbourne? Have you written anything that says suicide is okay or something?”
“No. Neither did Ozzy.”
“Then I don’t see why she’s so pissed off at you. Did you know each other in some way? Did you know the girl who killed herself? Did she write you crazy fan letters or something?”
He said, “She lived with me for a while. Like you.”
“Like me? Oh.”
“Got news for you, Georgia. I wasn’t a virgin when I met you.” His voice sounded wooden and strange to him.
“How long did she live here?”
“I don’t know. Eight, nine months. Long enough to overstay her welcome.”
She thought about that. “I’ve been living with you for about nine months.”
“So?”
“So have I overstayed mine? Is nine months the limit? Then it’s time for some fresh pussy? What, was she a natural blonde, and you decided it was time for a brunette?”
He took his hands off his guitar. “She was a natural psycho, so I threw her ass out. I guess she didn’t take it well.”
“What do you mean, she was a psycho?”
“I mean manic-depressive. When she was manic, she was a hell of a lay. When she was depressive, it was a little too much work.”
“She had mental problems, and you just chucked her out?”
“I didn’t sign on to hold her hand the rest of her life. I didn’t sign on to hold yours either. I’ll tell you something else, Georgia. If you think our story ends ‘and they lived happily ever after,’ then you’ve got the wrong fuckin’ fairy tale.” As he spoke, he became aware that he’d found his chance to hurt her and get rid of her. He had, he understood now, been steering the conversation toward this very moment. The idea recurred that if he could sting her badly enough to make her leave—even if it was just for a while, a night, a few hours—it might be the last good thing he ever did for her.
“What was her name? The girl who killed herself?”
He started to say “Anna,” then said “Florida” instead.
Georgia stood quickly, so quickly she tottered, looked as if she might fall over. He could’ve reached out to steady her but didn’t. Better to let her hurt. Her face whitened, and she took an unsteady half step back. She stared at him, bewildered and wounded—and then her eyes sharpened, as if she were suddenly bringing his face into focus.
“No,” she breathed softly. “You’re not going to drive me away like that. You say any shitty thing you want. I’m sticking, Jude.”
She carefully set the glass she was holding on the edge of his desk. She started away from him, then paused at the door. She turned her head but didn’t quite seem able to look into his face.
“I’m going to get some sleep. You come on to bed, too.” Telling him, not asking.
Jude opened his mouth to reply and found he had nothing to say. When she left the room, he gently leaned his guitar against the wall and stood up. His pulse was jacked, and his legs were unsteady, the physical manifestations of an emotion it took him some time to place—he was that unused to the sensation of relief.
17
Georgia was gone. That was the first thing he knew. She was gone, and it was still night. He exhaled, and his breath made a cloud of white smoke in the room. He shoved off the one thin sheet and got out of bed, then hugged himself through a brief shivering fit.
The idea that she was up and wandering the house alarmed him. His head was still muddy with sleep, and it had to be close to freezing in the room. It would’ve been reasonable to think Georgia had gone to figure out what was wrong with the heat, but Jude knew that wasn’t it. She’d been sleeping badly as well, tossing and muttering. She might have come awake and gone to watch TV—but he didn’t believe that either.
He almost shouted her name, then thought better of it. He quailed at the idea that she might not reply, that his voice might be met with a ringing silence. No. No yelling. No rushing around. He felt if he went slamming out of
