“I don’t want to see her,” she whispered, feeling meek and small, but the idea of talking now to one of Joe’s sisters cut her down. She wasn’t ready. “If she asks, tell her I called in sick. Tell her I’m not coming in tonight.”
Dima nodded. He didn’t ask why, and Luna squeezed his arm. Once they had slept together, in the first months after he’d started working here last year, and it had not been horrible, it had not been great, but they shared that knowledge of each other, and now Luna was glad for it.
Renee called loudly, “Excuse me? Bartender?”
Luna met Dima’s eyes. “Go, go,” she said, and he turned back to the bar. Luna retreated farther within the curtain. She didn’t want to go into the kitchen, where Rodrigo would undoubtedly tell her to get to work. Until Renee left, Luna was trapped here, and she sank to the floor, pulled up her knees, and closed her eyes.
* * *
The bartender appeared again. “Yes, ma’am? What can I get you?” He balled up the bits of napkin Renee had shredded. The sight of them embarrassed her, a sign of her unstable mind. She had called Detective Henry again to ask questions she was sure he had not yet considered. But the detective had answered with a maddening calm.
No reason to suspect . . .
No evidence of . . .
No motive for . . .
All valuables still . . .
Let me assure you . . .
And then: “I’ve seen this sort of thing before. You’re looking for someone to blame. I get it. I understand what you’re going through. It’s a hard truth. Sometimes bad things happen to those we love, and it’s no one’s fault.”
No one’s fault. It seemed impossible to Renee that an event as momentous as this one, a happening so profound, could occur without a push. And a push needs a pusher. Someone, something, somehow. A finger on the trigger. A bad heart. A mutating virus. Years of neglect. But an ice cube? An ice cube melted, evaporated, disappeared. An ice cube was not enough.
Throughout the conversation with the detective, Renee had felt dulled and misunderstood, her every utterance cut short by one of his breezy responses. Now she wished she could do the whole thing over again. Her interior belief in the suspicious intent of Luna Hernandez wobbled only the slightest bit with the detective’s certainty. An orchestra of scenarios played out in Renee’s head: Luna quietly opening Joe’s front door to allow another man (men?) inside; Luna tiptoeing behind and bashing Joe with a . . . what? a brick? Luna and her accomplices ransacking Joe’s apartment, carting away as-yet-unidentified items of immense value. Or maybe: Luna whispering into Joe’s ear about life insurance and designated beneficiary (where was the policy? Renee knew they would find it eventually). She entertained these scenes obsessively, painfully, like picking at a scab. Her fingers were bloody, but she could not stop.
As Renee picked up her phone to call Detective Henry again, the bartender placed another clean white napkin on the bar. “Another G&T?” He looked directly at Renee and then quickly flicked his gaze away; his cheeks flared pink as he shifted from one leg to the other.
“Luna’s here,” Renee said, and it was not a question. “And she doesn’t want to see me.” Her conversation with Detective Henry had left her primed, ready for rage, and here it was, unmitigated by her sisters, unfiltered by the sadness that inhabited Joe’s apartment. She didn’t intend to give Luna the ring; no, she intended to hurl it into her face, slap her across the cheek, yell and kick. She wanted to punish Luna, to hurt her.
“Don’t lie to me,” Renee said to the bartender. “She’s here, isn’t she?”
The bartender wouldn’t meet her eyes. He only shrugged in a vague, dismissive way and began again to cut the limes.
Renee inhaled and then yelled, “I know you’re here!” She pushed her stool away from the bar and stood, enjoying the power in her voice and the way the bartender cringed as he set down the knife and stared at her. “Luna Hernandez, I know you can hear me!” Inhale, exhale, inhale. “I know you’re back there, so let me tell you this.” Inhale. “Even if the police say you’re innocent, I know that you’re guilty.” Inhale. “Guilty of leaving Joe to die.” Inhale, exhale, cough, swallow. Her hands were shaking. Inhale. “You are the one to blame here.” Inhale, exhale, lump rising, swallow it down, swallow. “And I hope you think about that every day for the rest of your life. I hope—”
Renee stopped. A group of people had appeared beside the bar, standing in front of a long, plush curtain that Renee hadn’t noticed before, so seamlessly did it blend into the shadowed spaces at the edge of the room. A dark old man wearing a long white apron and loose, black-and-white-checked trousers approached her, his rubber shoes squeaking over the polished floor.
“Ma’am, we need you to leave the restaurant,” the man said. “We’ll call the police if you don’t go right now.” He did not look at her with anger. Renee sensed a certain sympathy, but his voice was firm. “You’re causing a scene,” he told her.
Yes, Renee was. She was causing a scene. There was no one here to see it, except these few kitchen workers, but she was indeed making a spectacle of herself. Renee gazed at the group: a young woman, pretty and heavily made up, a man who looked barely out of his teens with a thin, wispy mustache, a muscular man with his head shaved clean. All gazed at her with apprehension and resistance and an unmistakable hostility. They were defending Luna, she realized. They were protecting her.
The old man’s eyes were mild, his voice restrained, and yet Renee almost hit him. She almost kicked him. She pondered for one long moment the relief that delivering these blows would bring her. Perhaps he would hit her in return with his small fists—he was shorter than she was and older, frailer. Or maybe the bartender—the strength of those arms, the unyielding force of his mammoth knuckles. Wasn’t that what she really wanted? To be obliterated?
“Please,” said the man again. “Please leave.”
Renee became aware of the dim sound of a woman weeping. Or was it her own? Had she started to cry again, as she had so many times these past six days, without realizing it? The sound reminded Renee of herself, the alternating restraint and release, the familiar low moans. Who was crying?
“I . . . I . . .” Renee said, and shame came down like a sack thrown over her head. Shame and guilt, loyal partners until the end. What had Luna done to Joe that Renee hadn’t done herself on that balcony two years before?
“Renee.” Renee turned and saw Fiona and Caroline standing in the doorway. She remained motionless, unsure which way to turn—toward the old man, the bartender, or back the way she had come, toward her sisters. Turning around felt like a retreat, like an acceptance of the worst possible outcome. We did all that we could. Her own voice droned in her head with the words she’d been taught to say after a patient’s death. I am sorry to inform you . . . So sorry . . .
Renee felt strong, capable hands on her shoulders. Here were her sisters.
“I’m sorry I took the—” Renee began, but they both shook their heads.
Renee always thought of her sisters as they’d been during the Pause: so little, so in need of care. Caroline with her nightmares, Fiona walling herself away in her own fantasy world with her books and notepads, her lists of funny words. All that time Renee had worried that she was failing them, that some irreparable damage was being wrought. But her sisters had become women, and their strength was all around her. Renee could lean against them, and now, at last, she did.