Chuck Hogan - Devils in Exile

She rolled her eyes. “What do you want? Me to say ‘please’?”

Maven nodded. “Yeah.”

“Fine. Please.”

Something in her eyes showed him that her “please” was real. She needed him, not just as a driver. He checked with Royce, who gave his permission with a hand wave.

Maven stood and caught the car keys she tossed him.

Maven pulled out of the alley at the wheel of Royce’s latest ride, a Mercedes-Benz Black Series two-seater. “Why couldn’t your boyfriend drive you?”

“I wanted you.”

“Why is that?”

Her head was turned toward the window, the radio playing so low that only the bass notes were audible. “I have to go back to Gridley, that’s why.”

“Gridley? What in God’s name for?”

“Just drive. Please.”

Another please. He waited for her to say something more, but she just sat there. “Fine,” said Maven, plucking Royce’s sunglasses from the visor, pushing the car into gear, and rolling out toward Storrow Drive.

She was quiet most of the way. Little pieces of the town had changed since his youth, but not so that it mattered. She directed him to a street he had never been down before, a 1980s-era development. It had an Indian name then, one he couldn’t recall now. The sign that had announced it was gone.

“Pull over on the street.”

He set the parking brake outside a house of dark brown wood, set back behind trees, its roof coated with green needles. A curtain flickered in a downstairs window.

“Christ, there they go,” said Danielle, picking up her clutch off the floor. “Freaking out about who’s parked outside their house. So fucking frightened in their small world, God.”

Maven made out silhouettes behind the sheer curtain. People looking out without realizing they themselves could be seen. “Is this your parents’ house?”

Danielle pulled out a small vial and poured a bump of cocaine onto the webbing of her left hand.

Maven said, “Hey — what the fuck do you think you’re—”

“Oh, fucking relax please .”

She upped it, trying to improve her mood. Maven’s dropped halfway between sickened and pissed off. “Where are you getting this shit?”

“What do you care? You don’t want any.”

“I care because I’m in the car with you, driving you around...”

“Oh, grow up. Jesus.”

“You have a problem.”

“No, what I have here is a solution.” She did another bump, delicately, in a practiced way.

“Jesus, Danny.”

She stuffed the vial inside the front left pocket of her jeans. “Just — shut up and come inside with me and be my friend, okay? For fifteen minutes. Okay?”

Maven got out of the Mercedes and followed her down the long driveway to the door. The shadows behind the window didn’t answer the bell until the second ring.

Danielle Vetti’s father was tall but without much bearing, a thin, gray mustache topping his mouth, a long, brown cardigan sloping off his shoulders over corduroy pants and slipper shoes. Danielle’s mother appeared behind him, wearing a heavier sweater, looking stern and concerned. They both had napkins tucked into their collars. The smell of broiled poultry and stewed vegetables passed through the screen.

“You remembered,” said Mr. Vetti.

Danielle nodded. “So can I come in?” Challenging him, as though the answer might be no.

She pulled open the screen door, and Maven followed her inside. She made no introductions, so he mumbled, “Hello,” and the Vettis nodded back with suspicion.

Danielle rounded the corner to a formal dining room. The long table was set for three, a chair at either end, and a special high-backed wheelchair in the middle. Maven remembered the Vetti family at that restaurant so long ago, the day he discovered — as though it were a scandal — that the hottest senior girl in high school had a handicapped sister.

Danielle leaned around the chair, whispering to its occupant, rubbing her sister’s forearm. Maven could not see around the chair back. He was acutely aware of the parents standing near him, ready to leap to intervene.

“I’ve already served the meal,” announced Mrs. Vetti.

Danielle stiffened, then finished what she was saying to her sister, and turned. “Call us down when it’s time for cake.”

She walked to the stairs, leaving Maven to step past her parents and follow her. He passed two school portraits of Danielle’s sister — heavily filtered, her face the center of a cloud, her eyes focused on something way beyond the camera — but none of Danielle.

Upstairs, Danielle entered a room with a stripped-down bed and a bare bureau and sealed boxes. She looked around, then stepped to the window and looked out onto the back slope of a lower section of roof, and the yard below.

“This is the window I used to sneak out of.”

She slid open the closet door, revealing plastic storage tubs, garbage bags full of old clothes, and more boxes. From the top shelf she pulled down an oversize book with a hard, black cardboard cover. She set it on the bed, opened it, and returned to the closet.

A modeling portfolio. Maven was struck by the way she set it out for him, with no explanation, no indication that it might be important to her that he see it.

Full-color headshots and swimsuit shots. Various advertisements, some torn right out of magazines, others bordered with product and model info. A few studio shots featuring different, outdated hairdos, of the kind you might have seen hanging on a wall at Supercuts in the late 1990s. Danielle smiling; Danielle pouting; Danielle tossing back her head in laughter. A jeans ad featuring her twirling a lasso and wearing dusty chaps. A Ralph Lauren — style shot of her playing croquet with a shirtless, unmuscled boy. And an underwear ad, a moody, soft-core Calvin Klein knockoff of Danielle sitting on a closed toilet seat in a scooped bra and lace panties, staring out at him from a decade ago, calling to him to come back in time.

He looked up. She had the vial out of her pocket again. She didn’t want to answer any questions from him, didn’t want to explain herself. Intimacy on her terms alone.

“You know the first time I did coke? Out in the woods during sixth-period study hall, junior year. One of the funnest days in my life. You know who gave it to me? Alex. Your sister.”

“What makes you think I want to know this?”

She dumped another lump onto her fist and hit up again. “One of the funnest days ever.”

Her mother’s voice called up from downstairs. “Danielle?”

Downstairs Danielle refused a chair, crouching instead at her sister’s side. Her name was Doreen. Her mouth sagged under red-rimmed eyes, her tremulous arms pale and swollen. Her fingernails were long, responsible for the scratches on her neck and face. Her hair was the same shade as Danielle’s, but short, home-cut.

A cake sat before her. One layer, frosted purple. Two candles in the center.

Mrs. Vetti sang “Happy Birthday,” and Mr. Vetti quietly joined in. Danielle just stared at the cake, not opening her mouth, not even faking it.

When they finished the song, Danielle blew out the twin candles for her sister.

Mrs. Vetti lifted two wrapped boxes to the table, and Doreen’s eyes found them immediately. Her downturned lips straightened into something like excitement, her tongue moving within her mouth.

“Here, Dory,” said Danielle, digging into her jeans pocket. For an insane moment, Maven thought she was going to pull out the vial of coke. She drew out a soft blue velvet jewelry pouch. “Open mine first.”

Danielle opened it for her, lifting out a stunning bracelet of platinum hearts spaced with purple amethyst gemstones. She held it out for her to see, then fixed the clasp around her younger sister’s trembling wrist.