White Oleander - Janet Fitch [195]
He folded back the top of the sheet. The body lay wrapped in another one, a knot like a rose at the chest, the arms folded in, the head covered, there was blood on the sheet, don’t look at that, don’t look, only the face. The bruised eyes, bruised mouth, lips dark as if he’d been drinking ink, the dark stubble, the handsome eyebrows, the eyelashes, his eyes were not closed. She slipped hard to her knees. The Inspector and Pen caught her but not in time. “His eyes . . .” The most diabolical thing she had ever seen. She threw up, on her coat, on her knees, on the floor. A project I’ve been thinking about. Some time to concentrate.
They picked her up and helped her into a chair. She sat with her head between her knees. Pen crouched next to her, holding her, vomit all over. His body. She was shaking, she couldn’t stop. His body, goddamn him! HIS BODY! Inspector Brooks was covering him again, she got up and yanked down the sheet and laid her face against his sweet horrible one, then recoiled. It was hard, cold. A thing. He’d turned himself into a thing. A goddamn thing. “michael, you fuck, you stupid goddamn fuck!” she was screaming into his face, but it didn’t change. He didn’t wake up. He just lay there with his black eyes and the whites showing, and Inspector Brooks covered him up, his hand dark and alive against the sheet.
“Let’s go.” Pen threw her arm around Josie’s shoulder. Brooks held open the elevator, and a brawny man with a beard brought a mop, and then they were going up again. Through the pink hall.
He indicated the bench in the brown lobby. “Please.” And then they were on it, she just sat next to Pen, shaking, her teeth chattering, trying to breathe. “Is there anything you’d like to know, Miss Tyrell?”
How could she make this not be happening? How could she turn this movie off?
“What happens now?” Pen said.
“We’ll be notifying the parents, they’ll make the arrangements, I’m sure they’ll let Miss Tyrell know what they’ve decided.”
Pen snorted. “Oh yeah, sure, they’ll be right on the phone. Don’t be a dick.”
“I’ll call then, when I know anything, all right?” he said, crouching, putting his living hand on Josie’s. She wanted to kick him. She wanted to punch his fucking face in. She hated him for being warm when Michael was hard as wood, wrapped in a sheet. “Anything I find out, I’ll call you, Miss Tyrell, I promise. I’m sure it won’t be long.”
What won’t be long? What was he talking about?
“Where’d you find him?” Pen asked.
“In a motel. Out in Twentynine Palms. Believe me when I say how sorry I am you have to go through this, Miss Tyrell.”
Michael, in a motel in Twentynine Palms, a gun in his hands. Not at Meredith’s, painting in an explosion of new creation. Not over on Sunset, digging through the record bins, or at Launderland, separating the darks and lights. Not at the Chinese market, looking at the fish with their still-bright eyes. Not at the Vista, watching an old movie. Not sketching down at Echo Park. He was in a motel room in Twentynine Palms, putting a bullet in his brain.
“Let’s go home,” Pen said.
He didn’t even drive, how could he have gotten out to Twentynine Palms? None of it made any sense. It didn’t make sense. Where did he get a gun? She didn’t want to go home. Where could home be now, with Michael here in the basement, tied into a white sheet that was seeping blood? There was no home, only that body, the lips like black leather, dark smudge of beard shading his jaw, dark circles around his eyes against the drained yellow wax of his skin. Though somewhere in Twentynine Palms was a motel room splattered in the most precious scarlet. Suddenly, she wanted to go there, to be the one to clean it. Unthinkable that a stranger, some poor woman with a bucket, would look at his blood and think, Christ, that’s never coming out. Having no idea this had been Michael Faraday, no idea just what had died in that stinking hotel room, bleeding to death onto the moldy shag.
She drew her knees up inside her coat and lay on