“It’s all right. You’re safe.”
Julian pulled his head out from under the covers. The light was wrong, and he couldn’t immediately figure out why. Everything was a mess, pictures down, furniture fallen sideways. The glass had shattered out of the bedroom window, and there was a hole in the bathroom he couldn’t quite make out.
Close by, someone said, “Fuck. What happened?”
“Julian,” Elena said, sitting up. “Look.”
He peered over her shoulder.
And Julian saw a kid, a boy about sixteen, who was lying across the bottom of the bed. But that wasn’t where Elena was pointing. Where the living room wall had been was a perfect, open-air view of the trees beyond. A car had come through it, a heavy, eighties-model sedan, the kind of car a grandmother might drive. The windshield was shattered. The crumpled nose ticked in the quiet.
“Jesus!” he whispered.
Elena bent over the side of the bed and threw up. The scar on her back seemed almost to writhe as she heaved. He touched her shoulder. “It’s okay.”
“Call 911,” she said, collapsing on the bed.
The boy, shell-shocked but appearing to be fine, blinked at them. “What the fuck? How did I get here?”
Grabbing his cell phone from the night table, Julian shook his head. “You are one lucky son of a bitch.”
THIRTY-TWO
From: [email protected]
Subject: re: fire
Elena, thanks for yr interest. The kitchen is wrecked. Probably take a couple of months to rebuild. I have been talking to a television person I met at a show a couple of months ago, and she has offered me a job, so I am not as upset as I might have been. I will let you know more when it is all final, but I will be moving to Los Angeles in the next month or so.
Dmitri
PS Liswood speaks v. highly of you, like a lover speaks of his woman. Sure you’re not fucking him?
THIRTY-THREE
Elena felt overcome by nausea for several long minutes. Each time she tried to move, she was overwhelmed and threw up again, until there was absolutely nothing left in her stomach. Julian slipped into his jeans after he called the police, and he made the boy stay still—“You have no idea what else might be wrong with you”—while he found some clothes for Elena to put on. Shakily, she managed to shimmy into some heavyweight yoga pants and a sweatshirt. Given the amount of glass on the floor, she asked him to find her shoes, too.
“Was anyone with you?” Julian asked the kid.
“No. Just me.” He turned a little green when he looked downstairs. The smell of beer filled the room.
“Thank God.”
Elena had to pee. When Alvin trotted downstairs, she gingerly made her way to the bathroom, her body revving with adrenaline. The bathroom was a mess. As in the bedroom, the window had shattered, but the impact had also knocked loose some of the glass brick around the shower, and the door to the steam shower was shattered as well. She peed and brushed her teeth and looked at her face in the mirror. Behind her in the reflection was Isobel, and it had been so long since she’d seen her that Elena whirled.
She was gone. She looked back to the mirror. Still not there. Elena put her toothbrush back in the holder and realized she probably wouldn’t be sleeping here tonight.
Another home wrecked.
And today was their grand opening! Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Irritably, she stomped back into the bedroom and glared at the boy, who lay on her bed looking sick. “Has it started to sink in yet?” she cried. “That you should be dead right now? You got thrown out of your car and you could have landed on the roof, or in a tree or drowned in the river. And where did you land? On my fucking bed. With me in it! On the day that my restaurant has it’s grand opening, you stupid little bastard!”
Julian touched her shoulder. “Come on, Elena. Let’s go downstairs. The EMTs are here.”
And she saw that they were, indeed, right there. A young man and a hard-looking woman with a stretcher, blinking at her. “Sorry,” she said, suddenly ashamed. “I’m just mad.”
They didn’t say anything, just came upstairs and moved by her and knelt next to the kid on the bed.
“Let’s get some of your things together, Elena,” he said, giving her a small carry-on bag she kept in the closet.
She looked at the dresser, lying on its side, and her underwear scattered out of one drawer and onto the floor,