Alissa Nutting - Tampa

“Have you seen Jack Patrick?” I asked.

Like an answer, the streetlamp directly above my head timed on. I raised my eyes up toward its bright headlight as a gathering swarm of moths whorled into a loose formation; for several moments I actually stared on in wait, convinced they were going to give me a sign: form an arrow to say which way Jack had gone, or take off en masse and lead me directly to him. When I snapped back to consciousness, other onlookers had appeared: cautious neighbors standing on porches with phones to their ears, shocked spectators pointing at me from the edges of their lawns but not venturing a single toe over the boundary of their grass. Mrs. Pachenko had dropped her grocery bags and was retreating from me slowly; I looked to the ground to see a box of unsalted soda crackers sitting upon the asphalt. Soon an elderly couple approached. The woman was carrying a sea-foam green velour zip-up housecoat in her hands.

“Dear,” she said quietly, extending the garment. “Put this on.” Beneath the direct light of the streetlamp, her floating white hair looked so transparent as to be made of steam.

“Were you attacked?” the old man asked. “Are you bleeding?” It was only then, looking down at the dried handprints Jack had left on my skin, that I thought of Boyd, his head wound hemorrhaging profusely just feet away inside the house. Was there any way not to report his medical need that wouldn’t be judged harshly later when he was discovered? I could feign shock, I decided. I glanced down at the blood and gave it a surprised look, dropped the knife as I stepped into the housecoat, which smelled faintly of talcum powder and cat food. I had the sudden urge to lift the garment up above my knees and run as fast and as far as I could make it barefoot. But the sharp call of sirens nearing our block pressed me to the snap decision that it was better to confess Boyd’s presence and imitate extensive distress.

“There’s a boy in the house who’s hurt,” I said, perhaps too quietly. Two police cars were turning the street corner, approaching us but not seeming to slow down whatsoever. I knew I should produce a look of worry or strain, but habit prevented me from forming any facial expression that might aid in the development of fine lines.

“What?” asked the old man, covering his ears against the siren’s blare. I tried to survey the face of each officer stepping out of the cars—only after being sure that neither one was Ford did my urge to sprint toward Jack’s backyard begin to settle down, though the cold, expanding feeling that soon came in its place was almost as awful. An immediate realization of loss began to spread through me and quicken; as the knife was picked up and two officers branched off to run inside the house without my telling them about Boyd or instructing them on where to go, I realized perhaps the first person to call them had not been a neighbor at all but Jack. A sense of depreciation began to shudder through my ribs like a wind: had Jack gotten his story to the police before I’d told them mine? The knife was bagged, a gloved hand pressed against my back. “We’re going to need you to step inside the vehicle and come with us,” the officer said. He looked familiar—maybe I’d seen him before at one of Ford’s work functions. I kept my head low. If they knew who I was, they weren’t mentioning it yet; the entire ride to the station was silent and I tried to be thankful for these last moments of anonymity, even if they were pretended and more for the officers’ sense of comfort than my own.

Part of me expected Ford to be there at the station—waiting, concerned. Ready to make everything go away, even if it was just for the night, while he heard my side of the story. But I was taken into the station and processed like anyone else, though perhaps with a special sort of prejudice; the officers insisted on taking a variety of photos of my naked body, most at angles where Jack’s bloody handprints were starkly visible, but others not. Under a thin veneer of business, several male officers circulated through the medical-style room where I was told to lie down on an examination table and spread my legs while flash photographs were taken of my genitals. By the time I was dressed in orange prison scrubs and led to an interrogation room, a growing terror had seized me—was it possible that I’d spend the night in jail? It was the first moment that I had a true urge to call my husband—suddenly the opulence of our sheets, the splendor of my walk-in closet with its rows of neatly hung pajama sets, seemed proper cause to forevermore deny my darker urges. But when the detectives entered holding Jack’s personal cell phone, the one whose spread-eagle photograph of me I hadn’t been able to find and delete on its SIM card, I knew I didn’t want Ford anywhere near the situation.

A rough-featured detective with a shaved head and craggish voice led me through the most serious of the allegations. “We know you’re sleeping with these kids,” he began. In between sentences he chewed a wad of gum in the left side of his mouth with a mechanical fury. “That’s a given. That’s not even up for debate. What I need to know from you is what you were doing running around the street naked with a knife while blood was gushing out of Boyd Manning’s skull.”

I was surprised at the ease with which manic tears came forth. I shook my head repeatedly before speaking, as though it was too painful to relive. “When Jack saw us together, he just went crazy.” My hands slid through my hair to grip my scalp. “He attacked Boyd and all I could see was blood everywhere. Then Jack was gone. I knew I had to run for help, to get help for Boyd.” For possibly the first time ever, I didn’t feel the dynamic advantage of beauty in my corner as I spoke—my hair was mussed and I’m sure the crying had swollen my face; the detective was looking at me as though I was some obscene spectacle of nature. I realized he was watching me talk with a curious revulsion, the same way one might watch a cow give birth.

“You weren’t running after Jack?” For several seconds, the detective’s gum chewing went into overdrive, as if to simulate the energy of a speedy chase. “According to Mr. Patrick, you were in pursuit of him with a knife.”

“No,” I proclaimed, inflecting my voice with the outraged shock of the wrongly accused. “That’s not true.” The detective kept looking down at a folder in his hand, then looking back up at me. I wondered if he had printouts of the naked photos they’d taken of me when they brought me in.

“Thing is,” said the detective, “I’ve got roughly fifteen witnesses who saw you standing frozen in the street, looking around like you were trying to find somebody. You weren’t crying out for help. But you did have a knife.”

“I only grabbed it in case Jack came back to attack us again,” I explained. “I did go out to get help but I don’t remember anything after that.” I stared down at his Styrofoam coffee cup, which had a small series of bite marks along its left edge—perhaps, I tried to assure myself, he was just as nervous as I was. “I must’ve been in shock,” I added.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay.” He leaned back for a moment, staring at me with a badly hidden smile upon his face. It seemed like he was trying to run down the time on a secret clock I was unaware of—that if he could keep me talking for just five more minutes, I would instantly confess. “Help me understand this then,” he finally offered. “Why didn’t you use either one of the two cell phones in your purse to call 911? Or the phone in Boyd’s pants?” Instead of looking at me while he waited for an answer, the detective began cracking the joints of his fingers one by one. Clearly he thought he had me.