I think about the people I couldn’t save, and I think about the women the Creeper hasn’t yet killed, and I follow Andrew.
36
Tess
Returning to New Orleans after my pit stop in North Carolina has left me high on my own courage. I expected to feel relief, but I didn’t expect how proud I would be. I feel like I freed myself. I can live a life. I could even claim my inheritance.
I texted Michael as I left the airport and we met at my favorite breakfast place: The Ruby Slipper. I came into their location over on Canal the first morning I was in New Orleans, and since then, it’s become part of my stabilizing routine. When I am at my worst, I go to one of their locations to eat.
I’m home, at a beloved restaurant, and all is well. I was able to be Teresa for a good while. I hadn’t been able to be her for more than a hot minute since I left Reid. Neither Teresa nor Tessie handles life after Reid very well. We struggle. We remember, and the remembering isn’t good. Teresa wants to die because of the things we did, and Tessie wants to go home because it’s easier if Reid tells us what to do. Neither of those are okay, though, not if we want to survive.
“You need to file a report, Tess.” Michael brings it up again on our first morning back in the Crescent City. He’s trying to create the lie that he is appalled. It’s what he should feel, and so he’s trying to do that.
I don’t forget: he liked the feeling of overpowering me. Of hunting the lost lambs. I saw it.
“Why would I go to them?” I don’t admit that I already have. That’s between me and my guilt.
“Seriously?” Michael’s voice is horrified. “You know the identity”—he looks around—“of a killer.”
“Who would kill me if he knew where I was. Do you think he wouldn’t come here?”
Even now, Michael cannot understand. He thinks he does, thinks that writing down the stories I share will make the darkness make sense. People don’t understand, though, not unless you peel back their masks. Pain clarifies. Bleeding illuminates. I understood before I ran.
Michael’s hands are too clean to understand. Even the best writer can’t say anything real until he has the right ink. That’s what he wants from me.
“No police, Michael.” I smile at him, and it’s Tessie’s smile curving my lips. “Unless you want me to tell them things your agent wouldn’t like.”
He stares at me until I take his hand in mine. My fingernails cut into the underside of his wrist, not enough to do anything other than twinge as I lead his hand to my thigh. Silently, I direct his grip to the edge of where I am still red and tender. “I am not a lamb, but I know exactly how to sound like one. I can be very convincing when I have to be.”
He gapes at me.
“There is nothing I wouldn’t do to survive. You need to understand that. Do you?”
And I see that he’s still thinking like we are researching, like this is an exercise in storytelling. He nods, but if he understood, he’d be more fearful than he is. He’d look like Lucas did when he realized that I am always a little bit Tessie even though I try very hard to be Tess.
“It’s self-defense. . . Let them know that you escaped.” He lowers his voice. “Tell them who he is.”
The server, a new girl with tattoos that speak stories if you study them long enough, stops by the table. I stare at her. I don’t like new. Not here. Not when I’m trying to be okay again.
One of my regular waiters comes bustling over before the new server reaches her second sentence. He stands beside her, angling so he can push her away from me if he needs to protect her.
“Sorry, Tess.” He gestures at the tattooed girl. “She didn’t know you were particular and—”
“I’m good.” I interrupt.
He nods. I think his name is River or maybe Storm. Hell, it could be Puddle for all I truly know. My memory is filled with gaps, and even those gaps have a few holes.
“No pills even,” I tell River/Puddle.
He beams. “Good on you, cher.”
Michael watches in silence. He’s never seen me without any of my walls in place. I thought that if he did he’d run. I see the truth now. This is what he wants, and if he’s going to play this game with me, it’s what I need to share.
I look at the tattooed girl. “You can be my waitress, but we need a minute. Grab us coffee while we look at the menu. Black.”
She leaves, and River/Puddle follows her. We both know he’s going to give her warnings about me, tell her not to touch me, strongly suggest approaching only when I can see her walking toward me. That’s part of what I like here. They are okay with customers who are particular.
“It wasn’t Reid I hit,” I tell Michael when they’re gone. “Lucas was not the first person. You know that, Michael. You may not be asking me the questions, but you know it.”
The tattooed waitress returns with our coffee. It’s chicory coffee, which means I am in New Orleans. Like music in the street, the river at the edge of the city, this is a sign that I am in my city. I cradle my cup in my hands and sip it.
“Three Little Pigs omelet, right?” the server asks.
“Usually, but I’m trying new things this week. Let’s do the Bananas Foster Pain Perdu.”
Michael orders something, I don’t know what. I’m staring at the top tendril of a tattoo on her neck. It looks like a tentacle, maybe octopus but possibly a squid. I debate asking, but tattoos are personal and I’m not sure what the price of asking for her story would be.
Once she’s gone, Michael leans partway over the table. “Are you saying I saw you . . . that I understand what you did, but that it wasn’t Reid on the floor?”
“Yes.”
He stares at me. “Jesus, Tess.”
I drink my coffee in silence as he lets this new part of the truth settle into his ever-shifting vision of me. He's been pulling threads of stories out of me like he’s a weaver trying to steal all my pieces for his new tapestry. I let him. As much as I want to be a good wife, keep Reid’s secrets so he has no new reason to come after me, I also want the things Michael dangles in front of me like cream for an alley cat who has been living on vinegar.
As I study him, I see the worry, the questions he’s having, the doubts. I straighten my shoulders and meet his gaze. “Stories for action, Michael. You want stories; you can buy them . . . but there will be no police.”
I stand and walk out, knowing he can’t follow me because they haven’t even brought the food. I walk to the door and keep going.
Michael calls out, but if we’re going to play this way, I have to walk out. Even now, I’m not willing to betray Reid by speaking to the police. There are a lot of things I’d be willing to do, things that Michael considers wrong or “debasing,” but I’ve done them.
I walk along Magazine Street, headed toward Canal and back to the ever-open bars of the Quarter. It’s early enough not to be bothered by the tourists. Sometimes, I like them, foolish men acting as if New Orleans is still the city that she was in the 1800s. We have the strange honor of having the nation’s first legal—or pseudo-legal—Red Light District. In a city that was populated by prisoners and adventurers, it’s no surprise that being a whore became big business here. Bourbon Street, a stretch of gaudy blocks of neon and nonsense, is the modern location of that past. No longer Gallatin Street, or Basin Street, but the girls still wiggle their asses and free the tourists from their money. I’ve done a turn or two on Bourbon, both in the legal and less legal ways of it.