hot. I’ll tell you more about it tomorrow, but the short story is: REALLY GOOD. Remind me to tell you his story about the dishwasher. He got my number in the morning and said he’d text and I’m a liiiiittle bit panicking because I haven’t heard from him but I’m sure it’s fine. Gah, did that really all happen last night? I’m not sure I’d believe it if there weren’t witnesses. OMG. SO HOT.
I grinned retroactively at my airheaded tone. I’d seen Lloyd only a couple of times after that magical January night on the rooftop; Alex and Lloyd had had a falling-out shortly after, Edie had told me, one that precluded Alex from directly setting us up. I can’t remember now why I didn’t just take matters into my own hands, since I knew Lloyd personally, since it shouldn’t have been that hard to ask him out for drinks. He didn’t live in Calhoun, so I didn’t bump into him much; maybe he’d been coolly distant (“Oh, we’ve met before?”), and yet I continued crushing, undeterred.
The story of the dishwasher was gone, too, lost to the ages, but I remembered other pieces of that Monday night. Edie and I were hanging out in some strangers’ Calhoun apartment, a weird space with a hammock suspended from the ceiling, so loose that when you sat in it, your body sunk into an L. We were standing around, drinking bad whiskey out of mugs, when Lloyd and another dude walked in. It all felt a little miraculous: that he was there at all, that Alex (Edie’s new official boyfriend and Lloyd’s ex-friend) wasn’t; that Edie, knowing I had a huge crush on the guy, had given him a big wave and then backed away once he jangled over to say hello. I was blushing fire-red, but Lloyd had been friendly, had picked up the conversation. God, I could still remember it now: the mounting excitement as Lloyd didn’t turn away, the delightful realization that every time he took a few steps to refresh his glass or speak to someone else, he came back and rejoined me. That mutual unspoken thrill: This is happening.
I couldn’t recall much about the sex now except for a belated certainty that it was not good; at the time I was so thrilled to be making out, so grateful when someone chose to unwrap my body instead of the body of any of the other women in the room and building and Brooklyn and world. I had a vague memory of him crashing down next to me and falling asleep within seconds of coming, and I lay there smiling into the night, my heart beating fast: He likes me, he likes me, he likes me. Which, of course, made everything that came after all the more upsetting.
* * *
On Sunday, the unlikeliest day for bureaucratic progress, the case files appeared in my inbox, compressed into an attachment like a present ripe for the opening. In a few seconds, I had everything open: the coroner’s report, police notes, incident report, autopsy report—a novel-length pile of information all about my onetime best friend’s death. I checked the total page count: 124 pages, too long to print. So I clicked on whatever came first alphabetically and began reading. It was an autopsy report, dense and clinical:
Autopsy authorized by: Dr. Allan Dennis for New York City
Identified by: Fingerprints and dental comparison
Rigor: Absent
Livor: Purple
Age: 23
Race: White
Sex: Female
Length: 65 inches
Weight: 117 pounds
Eyes: Green
Hair: Red
Body heat: Refrigerated
God, I could practically hear Dr. Dennis bleating off the stats to a lab tech with cool detachment, Edie’s body on a table just like on TV shows. The report described her clothing next: just the polka-dot bra, stained with blood, and the red lacy thong. Such an undignified way to die.
EXTERNAL EXAMINATION: This is the unembalmed body of a white female which weighs approximately 117 pounds. and measures 65 inches in height. The physique is ectomorphic. The head hair is red, wavy, and long, measuring approximately 21 inches in greatest length. The irides are green.
Ew, which? Try who, asshole. I did some searching: “ectomorphic” means thin and delicate; irides are irises. Jargon fogging up such simple truths.
The teeth are natural. The fingernails are painted purple. There is a small transverse pale linear scar in the lower quadrant of the abdomen. Other distinctive markings are absent on external examination.