You Let Me In - Camilla Bruce Page 0,43

Pepper-Man attempted exit Tommy’s body for his evening revels, the whole thing simply fell apart. Limbs and intestines tumbled to the floor, eyeballs rolled across the polished oak. His skin was like an empty sack, gaping open and stained with reeking fluids.

It was a disaster.

“Oh no,” I said, wringing my hands. “What do we do now? No one will believe he fell off a ladder into all those pieces.”

Pepper-Man was leaning against the wall, arms crossed over his chest, taking in the mess. “I cannot wear it again, that much is certain.”

“But what do we do? I can’t let anyone see him—it—like this.”

“We could always carry the debris down in the basement. It will soon return to what it was before: twigs and stones and downs.”

“How long will it take, before it turns back?”

He shrugged. “That depends.” Of course it did, it always did with Faerie.

“I think that it would smell, don’t you?” I looked at the torn pieces of flesh. “If we left it in the basement, it would smell before it turned back.”

“Outside, then, in the woods.”

“Someone might find it and mistake it for the real thing.”

“It might return to what it was faster out there. It was borrowed from the woods, after all, maybe the woods would welcome it back.”

“What do I say, then, that my husband left me?”

“That would certainly be the easiest.”

“Well.” I considered it. “He is Tommy Tipp.”

“Tommy Tipp would certainly do that,” and Pepper-Man ought to know, having been Tommy Tipp for the last twelve years.

“Well, then,” I sighed. “I guess I am abandoned.”

“Oh, sweet Cassandra,” Pepper-Man said with a smile. “You know you will always have me.”

And so we transported the sad remains of the fake Tommy Tipp out in the woods on a wheelbarrow. We tried to spread the parts out, not wanting make a morbid pile of it—birdwatchers and strollers were far more likely to notice a heap, we figured. So we draped his intestines in the branches, planted a foot by some roots, hung his head from the top of a rowan and disposed of his eyes on a pile of rocks. We dug down the soft parts like liver and kidneys, nestled them into moss hollows and leaves. The lungs went out in the brook. It had no heart left to discard, the body of twigs, though that did not surprise me—since the force that had made Tommy Tipp walk and talk had been Pepper-Man all along.

“What an unusual scenery.” My lover looked in on the glen where we had left most of it.

“I just hope no one sees.” I was feeling sick. It was dirty work, messy and ugly, even if I knew what the body really was.

“Tomorrow is a new life,” Pepper-Man said, and didn’t know just how right he was about that.

XVIII

In his book, Dr. Martin spent a lot of time and pages dwelling on how the Tommy shell fell to pieces. He felt certain it meant something crucial—although, of course, it didn’t. The body simply fell apart, that was all.

I remember he asked me about it in a pretrial session at the hospital. “Were you angry with Tommy when he couldn’t perform?” He had put down his pen, laying it on top of the empty page of his notebook as if sheathing a resting sword. It was a promise, that pen—we were being frank now. Frank and off the record. Just two friends talking, Dr. Martin and I. The clock on the wall in our room at the hospital ticked loudly, filling the silence with wasted seconds.

“No, of course not. It was only the Tommy-body coming apart. Pepper-Man performed just fine, as himself.”

“You know it’s a very common thing to be upset about, easy to take personally, especially when one’s husband has a history of infidelity.”

“I didn’t, though. I knew that it wasn’t.”

“It’s not so common, perhaps, to get rid of one’s husband when he’s ‘broken.’” His eyes twinkled with humor to take the harsh edge off his words. “Most people just settle for divorce.”

“He was falling apart, what could I do?”

“Marriage counseling, perhaps? Or you could search for a medical solution.”

“He was broken,” I repeated. “There was nothing to be done.”

“You fell out of love with him?”

“Fell out of love with Pepper-Man?” I blinked at him.

“No, Cassie, fell out of love with Tommy Tipp. That would ruin a man for you too, don’t you think? Make him ‘broken’ if only metaphorically, if he didn’t make you feel the same way as before.”

“I didn’t