(he’d been virtually unconscious at the wheel) but the location of the accident—outside Vegas, heading west, into the desert. “He would have told me, he would have told me,” she was saying sorrowfully in response to some question or other of Courtney’s, only why, I thought bleakly, sitting on the floor with my hands over my eyes, did she think it was in my father’s nature to tell the truth about anything?
Boris had his arm over my shoulder. “She doesn’t know, does she?”
I knew he was talking about Mr. Silver. “Should I—”
“Where was he going?” Xandra was asking Courtney and Janet, almost aggressively, as if she suspected them of withholding information. “What was he doing all the way over there?” It was strange to see her still in her work uniform, as she usually changed out of it the second she walked in the door.
“He didn’t go meet that guy like he was supposed to,” whispered Boris.
“I know.” Possibly he had intended to go to the sit-down with Mr. Silver. But—as my mother and I had so often, so fatally, known him to do—he had probably stopped in a bar somewhere for a quick belt or two, to steady his nerves as he always said. At that point—who knew what might have been going through his mind? nothing helpful to point out to Xandra under the circumstances, but he’d certainly been known to skip town on his obligations before.
I didn’t cry. Though cold waves of disbelief and panic kept hitting me, it all seemed highly unreal and I kept glancing around for him, struck again and again by the absence of his voice among the others, that easy, well-reasoned, aspirin-commercial voice (four out of five doctors…) that made itself known above all others in a room. Xandra went in and out of being fairly matter-of-fact—wiping her eyes, getting plates for pizza, pouring everybody glasses of the red wine that had appeared from somewhere—and then collapsing in tears again. Popchik alone was happy; it was rare we had so much company in the house and he ran from person to person, undiscouraged by repeated rebuffs. At some bleary point, deep in the evening—Xandra weeping in Courtney’s arms for the twentieth time, oh my God, he’s gone, I can’t believe it—Boris pulled me aside and said: “Potter, I have to go.”
“No, don’t, please.”
“Kotku’s going to be freaked out. Am supposed to be at her mom’s now! She hasn’t seen me for like forty-eight hours.”
“Look, tell her to come over if she wants—tell her what’s happened. It’s going to completely suck if you have to leave right now.”
Xandra had grown sufficiently distracted with guests and grief that Boris was able to go upstairs to make the call in her bedroom—a room usually kept locked, that Boris and I never saw. In about ten minutes he came skimming rapidly down the steps.
“Kotku said to stay,” he said, ducking in to sit beside me. “She told me to say she’s sorry.”
“Wow,” I said, coming close to tears, scrubbing my hand over my face so he wouldn’t see how startled and touched I was.
“Well, I mean, she knows how it is. Her dad died too.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yes, a few years ago. In a motor accident, as well. They weren’t that close—”
“Who died?” said Janet, swaying over us, a frizzy, silk-bloused presence redolent of weed and beauty products. “Somebody else died?”
“No,” I said curtly. I didn’t like Janet—she was the ditz who’d volunteered to take care of Popper and then left him locked up alone with his food dispenser.
“Not you, him,” she said, stepping backwards and focusing her foggy attention on Boris. “Somebody died? That you were close to?”
“Several people, yeah.”
She blinked. “Where are you from?”
“Why?”
“Your voice is so funny. Like British or something—well no. Like a mix of British and Transylvania.”
Boris hooted. “Transylvania?” he said, showing her his fangs. “Do you want me to bite you?”
“Oh, funny boys,” she said vaguely, before bopping Boris on the top of the head with the bottom of her wine glass and wandering off to say goodbye to Stewart and Lisa, who were just leaving.
Xandra, it seemed, had taken a pill. (“Maybe more than one,” said Boris, in my ear.) She appeared on the verge of passing out. Boris—it was shitty of me, but I just wasn’t willing to do it—took her cigarette away from her and stubbed it out, then helped Courtney get her up the stairs and into her room, where she lay face down on the bedspread with