Doug Allyn - The Best American Mystery Stories 2003

The girl stood there, apparently immune to shame. A delicate ladder of ribs showed through her paper-white skin. Her damp hair was fair and thin, her pubic hair equally thin and light. “Shit,” she said. “Busted.” Then she cocked her head, her face filled with a defiance Marie had seen so often in her own son that it barely registered.

“Cover yourself, for God’s sake,” Marie said.

The girl did, in her own good time, arranging the towel over her shoulders and covering her small breasts. Her walk was infuriatingly casual as she moved through the dooryard, picked up the knapsack, and sauntered up the steps, past Marie, and into the cabin. Marie followed her in. She smelled like the lake.

“Get out before I call the police,” Marie said.

“Your phone doesn’t work,” the girl said peevishly. “And I can’t say much for your toilet, either.”

Of course nothing worked. They’d turned everything off, buttoned the place up after their last visit, John and Ernie at each other’s throats as they hauled the dock up the slope, Ernie too slow on his end, John too fast on his, both of them arguing about whether or not Richard Nixon was a crook and should have resigned in disgrace.

“I said get out. This is my house.”

The girl pawed through the knapsack. She hauled out a pair of panties and slipped them on. Then a pair of frayed jeans, and a mildewy shirt that Marie could smell across the room. As she toweled her hair it became lighter, nearly white. She leveled Marie with a look as blank and stolid as a pillar.

“I said get out,” Marie snapped, jangling her car keys.

“I heard you.”

“Then do it.”

The girl dropped the towel on the floor, reached into the knapsack once more, extracted a comb, combed her flimsy, apparitional hair, and returned the comb. Then she pulled out a switchblade. It opened with a crisp, perfunctory snap.

“Here’s the deal,” she said. “I get to be in charge, and you get to shut up.”

Marie shot out of the cabin and sprinted into the dooryard, where a bolt of pain brought her up short and windless. The girl was too quick in any case, catching Marie by the wrist before she could reclaim her breath. “Don’t try anything,” the girl said, her voice low and cold. “I’m unpredictable.” She glanced around. “You expecting anybody?”

“No,” Marie said, shocked into telling the truth.

“Then it’s just us girls,” she said, smiling a weird, thin smile that impelled Marie to reach behind her, holding the car for support. The girl presented her water-wrinkled palm and Marie forked over the car keys.

“Did you bring food?”

“In the trunk.”

The girl held up the knife. “Stay right there.”

Marie watched, terrified, as the girl opened the trunk and tore into a box of groceries, shoving a tomato into her mouth as she reached for some bread. A bloody trail of tomato juice sluiced down her neck.

Studying the girl — her quick, panicky movements — Marie felt her fear begin to settle into a morbid curiosity. This skinny girl seemed an unlikely killer; her tiny wrists looked breakable, and her stunning whiteness gave her the look of a child ghost. In a matter of seconds, a thin, reluctant vine of maternal compassion twined through Marie and burst into violent bloom.

“When did you eat last?” Marie asked her.

“None of your business,” the girl said, cramming her mouth full of bread.

“How old are you?”

The girl finished chewing, then answered: “Nineteen. What’s it to you?”

“I have a son about your age.”

“Thrilled to know it,” the girl said, handing a grocery sack to Marie. She herself hefted the box and followed Marie into the cabin, her bare feet making little animal sounds on the gravel. Once inside, she ripped into a box of Cheerios.

“Do you want milk with that?” Marie asked her.

All at once the girl welled up, and she nodded, wiping her eyes with the heel of one hand, turning her head hard right, hard left, exposing her small, translucent ears. “This isn’t me,” she sniffled. She lifted the knife, but did not give it over. “It’s not even mine.”

“Whose is it?” Marie said steadily, pouring milk into a bowl.

“My boyfriend’s.” The girl said nothing more for a few minutes, until the cereal was gone, another bowl poured, and that, too, devoured. She wandered over to the couch, a convertible covered with anchors that Ernie had bought to please John, who naturally never said a word about it.

“Where is he, your boyfriend?” Marie asked finally.

“Out getting supplies.” The girl looked up quickly, a snap of the eyes revealing something Marie thought she understood.

“How long’s he been gone?”

The girl waited. “Day and a half.”

Marie nodded. “Maybe his car broke down.”

“That’s what I wondered.” The girl flung a spindly arm in the general direction of the kitchen. “I’m sorry about the mess. My boyfriend’s hardly even paper-trained.”

“Then maybe you should think about getting another boyfriend.”

“I told him, no sleeping on the beds. We didn’t sleep on your beds.”

“Thank you,” Marie said.

“It wasn’t my idea to break in here.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t.”

“He’s kind of hiding out, and I’m kind of with him.”

“I see,” Marie said, scanning the room for weapons: fireplace poker, dictionary, curtain rod. She couldn’t imagine using any of these things on the girl, whose body appeared held together with thread.

“He knocked over a gas station. Two, actually, in Portland.”

“That sounds serious.”

She smiled a little. “He’s a serious guy.”

“You could do better, don’t you think?” Marie asked. “Pretty girl like you.”

The girl’s big eyes narrowed. “How old are you?”

“Thirty-eight.”

“You look younger.”

“Well, I’m not,” Marie said. “My name is Marie, by the way.”

“I’m Tracey.”

“Tell me, Tracey,” Marie said. “Am I your prisoner?”

“Only until he gets back. We’ll clear out after that.”

“Where are you going?”

“Canada. Which is where he should’ve gone about six years ago.”

“A vet?”

Tracey nodded. “War sucks.”

“Well, now, that’s extremely profound.”

“Don’t push your luck, Marie,” Tracey said. “It’s been a really long week.”

They spent the next hours sitting on the porch, Marie thinking furiously in a chair, Tracey on the steps, the knife glinting in her fist. At one point Tracey stepped down into the gravel, dropped her jeans, and squatted over the spent irises, keeping Marie in her sights the whole time. Marie, who had grown up in a different era entirely, found this fiercely embarrassing. A wind came up on the lake; a pair of late loons called across the water. The only comfort Marie could manage was that the boyfriend, whom she did not wish to meet, not at all, clearly had run out for good. Tracey seemed to know this, too, chewing on her lower lip, facing the dooryard as if the hot desire of her stare could make him materialize.

“What’s his name?” Marie asked.

“None of your business. We met in a chemistry class.” She smirked at Marie’s surprise. “Premed.”

“Are you going back to school?”

Tracey threw back her head and cackled, showing two straight rows of excellent teeth. “Yeah, right. He’s out there right now paying our preregistration.”

Marie composed herself, took some silent breaths. “It’s just that I find it hard to believe—”

“People like you always do,” Tracey said. She slid Marie a look. “You’re never willing to believe the worst of someone.”

Marie closed her eyes, wanting Ernie. She imagined him leaving work about now, coming through the mill gates with his lunch bucket and cap, shoulders bowed at the prospect of the empty house. She longed to be waiting there, to sit on the porch with him over a pitcher of lemonade, comparing days, which hadn’t changed much over the years, really, but always held some ordinary pleasures. Today they would have wondered about John, thought about calling him, decided against it.