“Jesus,” Susanna said, eyebrows arched. “What have you done? Have you been arms-dealing out of that gallery?”
“Nothing goes out of this garden. I swear. I just want to know.”
“What brought this on?”
“Well, because. I’ve been thinking, a lot. What with . . .” I waved a loose arm at the garden and the house and the universe in general. I wasn’t as wasted as I was pretending to be, but my arms and legs had an interesting will of their own and the lighted windows of the apartment block seemed to have detached themselves from the walls and were merrily jigging about. “Because, look, take Dominic. OK? He probably thought he was a good guy. And most people thought so too—I mean, I did, or at least I took it for granted that probably he was, because people mostly are, right? But what you’re saying there, and the stuff Sean and Dec were saying—it’s like, whoa . . . maybe not so good.” I pretended not to notice the sardonic up-glance from Leon. “And on the other hand, right, there’s Hugo. He’s a good person. I don’t know if he knows he’s a good person, but we do. I mean, there’s no guarantee that, once he’s gone, there won’t be people saying different. But at least we’ll be able to tell the world, if we need to obviously, that he was a good man. Because he is. So”—I had sort of forgotten where I was going with this—“so. You see what I mean.”
“Not really,” Susanna said, topping up glasses and watching me with interest.
“Well”—I found my place again—“right. So I have to wonder, right? I’ve always thought of myself as a decent guy. Yeah? But the shit I’ve done in my life, haven’t we all, but the shit I’ve done, is it bad enough that I don’t count as a good person? Or what?” I blinked back and forth between the two of them. “You haven’t been thinking about this stuff? Seriously?”
“Nope,” Leon said, licking the edge of the Rizla in one deft sweep. “And I’m not planning to, thanks all the same.”
“Well,” I said, after a moment. “I guess I’m seeing this differently. From a, an angle. Because I don’t know if anyone told you guys this, right, but I could have died, back in spring. With that thing, the break-in. I nearly died.”
A small sound from Melissa, a quick breath. I didn’t look at her. “And that really fucks with your head. You know? Because I don’t know, if I had died, I don’t know whether I would have counted as a good person or not. I’m not talking about heaven and hell, I don’t . . . Just, it matters. To me. So I’d really like it if you’d think about it. Just for a few minutes. I’d like it a lot.”
Susanna had turned her head to look at me; the turn shifted half her face into shadow, I couldn’t read her expression at all. “OK,” she said. “I’ll play. If you will.”
“Thanks, Su,” I said, raising my glass to her and managing not to spill any. “I mean it. You’re a, a, a rock star. A trouper. Something.”
“So let’s hear it. What’d you do?”
I said, “You go first.”
“Why?”
“Because. I need to hear other people’s first.”
Susanna lay back with her arms behind her head and looked up at the sky. Curve of her throat, drape of the throw around her body, long lines of her outstretched legs, all whitened and chilled by the moonlight: she looked like a statue washed up on some lonely beach, never to be found. “OK,” she said. “I might have sort of killed someone.”
Leon, in the middle of lighting the joint, choked and doubled over, hacking. “What,” I said.
“Su—” Leon managed to wheeze, urgently.
“Not Dominic,” Susanna said to both of us, amused. “Jesus. Pair of drama queens.”
“What the fuck,” Leon croaked, watery-eyed and fanning himself.
“Breathe.”
“I almost had a heart attack.”
“Have a sip of that.”
“OK,” I said. “So who the hell did you kill? Or maybe sort of kill, or whatever?”
“Well,” Susanna said. She arched her back to brush something out from under it, settled herself more comfortably. “Remember how I told you the consultant who delivered Zach was a total shit?”
I remembered the conversation, all right, even if the details hadn’t stuck. “Yeah.”
“Tip of the iceberg. Basically, he really enjoyed forcing me to do things I didn’t want