Elizabeth's Story

by Jessica Knoll

The first time I slept with Peter was eventful, if only because there was so much build up.

But nothing about that build up was calculated. I don't play those games: Make him wait, make him want it, make him work for it. I couldn't imagine anything worse than stringing someone along so that when we finally do have sex, he's attached to me, a needy, insecure barnacle that requires almost surgical precision to remove.

I am aware that it is a privilege to be this emotionally limp. That if I didn't look the way I look—something I don't even have to work for—and if I didn't already have all the diamonds in the world, I'd be one of those sniveling little soul suckers I'm always so quick to mock.

So I didn't make Peter dance for me, but forces outside of our control conspired to make that happen anyway. The first time we almost had sex, my mother's caretaker called. She was having an episode (code for one of her self-pitying meltdowns that usually involved shredding pictures of my father and trying to jump out her seventeenth floor window), and I needed to come quick. The second time—in the midst of preparations for a romantic home cooked dinner—Peter sliced a half-moon chunk off his index finger with the chef's knife he was using to to cube butternut squash. We spent the night in the emergency room. And the third time, Peter got called into work over a snafu in the Hong Kong office.

By the time we actually got down to it, we both had been made to wait, made to want it, and made to work for it, and we went on a tear. Every time I thought we were done, curled up, my back to his chest, I'd feel him get hard again. He'd press against me, slip himself between my legs, and then finally, inside, where I was raw but waiting. The first two times were athletic and aggressive—a fight for the top, a competition to show off who could force the other into the dirtiest position. But as the traffic dissipated outside, and New York slipped into that glazed purgatory between lucidity and sleep—the only people awake blurry eyed bankers frowning at their computer screens, the grumbling janitor mopping the bathroom floor down the hall, club kids on a cocktail of mood altering candies—our sex became quiet and desperate. Peter's forehead, tacky with sweat, on my shoulder blade, his arm wrapped around me, squeezing my breasts so hard I felt crippled and sore the next day. He pushed himself into me and held himself there, hardly moving, and we would doze off like that, only to wake and start again.

I won't lie. Things were good with Peter for a while. Really good. He seemed so decent and wholesome, but he could surprise you—a lacerating remark here, a punishing silence there. He kept me on my toes. For a time.

_ _

The gunmetal plane of the lake rose up before us, and Campbell spun the wheel right. We were driving in the direction of the house where Biz and I had left Bridget's body—a gruesome image of what she must look like now popping into my head at the realization—but I wasn't necessarily worried. Right went to a lot of places. Though certainly not to the police station, where Campbell had said we were going.

I joked, "Is this a kidnapping?"

Campbell kept his eyes on the road. "Do you want it to be?"

My heart had that feeling, like it was sinking further into my chest, but I knew not to show it. "Yes," I said, breathily, "take me away from all this. From my silly sorority life and cold uncaring parents and trophy wife future." I gave a little sarcastic laugh.

"You're going to be the worst fucking trophy wife," Campbell determined.

"It's not something you have to worry about," I shot back. I looked him over, remembered his handsome home. "Unless you're some secret billionaire with one of those awful altruistic streaks that compels you to give back to the community."

Campbell laughed lowly. "Would that change things for you?"

"No," I said, because it wouldn't. He was really the only thing I was missing, the first time I realized I didn't have everything I ever wanted.

Campbell tilted his head at me and slid his eyes in my direction, in sort of an appreciative but sad way.

And that's when I realized we were pulling into the driveway of The House.

I tried my best to look confused, making a big show out of craning my neck to look out of my window and Campbell's. "Where are we?"

Campbell pushed the gear stick into park and turned off the engine. "My sister and I used to sneak into this place when we were little and play house. It's still one of my favorite places to come and just sit and think about her."

I swallowed, but my mouth had gone dry and it took several tries to choke down my own saliva. Maybe it really was just an ugly coincidence? Maybe he didn't have an inclination that something had happened here, maybe he wasn't toying with me, testing me, seeing how far he could push me until I cracked open and all my moldy secrets came spilling out.

Campbell reached for the handle and leaned into his car door. I didn't know what else to do but follow.

The house reeked. But I tried to reassure myself that the stench could be attributed to any number of dilapidated old house things—rusty plumbing, rat poop, abandoned chicken salad in the fridge—not just a slowly decomposing body in the basement.

To my utter relief, Campbell didn't dally on the first floor, or even acknowledge the door to the basement. He flicked a switch next to the front door and an ancient bulb hiccuped a few times before casting a pallid glow above the second floor banister. Once the light held steady, he started up the stairs.

I followed him into what must have been the master bedroom, with a mattress-less canopy bed hulking in the center, sheets covering what other little furniture remained in the room. Campbell ripped the cover off a chest and opened the bottom drawer, extracting a bottle of something, along with two glasses. There was no switch to flip in this room, and I could only make out shapes and silhouettes by the weak light afforded to us from the open door leading to the hallway.

"Do you have an extra set of clothes in the closet too?" I asked, accepting a glass full of whatever it was Campbell liked to drink. I took a sip. Whiskey. Nice whiskey. The bed frame faced a spectacular bay window, not unlike the one in my bedroom at home, and I melted down onto the ledge, tucking my legs underneath me.

"Actually," Campbell opened up the middle drawer, revealing a pile of clothes. "They're my sister's, though. My mom and I moved after she died, and she wanted to clean house. Get rid of anything that would remind her of what happened," Campbell slammed the drawer shut bitterly. "I promised I would take them to the Salvation Army, and I did, some of it. But the rest, I don't know, it just seemed like it belonged here."

I rolled the base of my glass in my lap. "My brother's bedroom is like stepping into a time capsule. My father preserved every inch of it. He'll never change it."

I didn't even realize Campbell was standing over me until he spoke. "I can respect that. I don't like the idea of people being forgotten about."

I sighed. "Sometimes it's easier though."

Even in the dark, I could see Campbell's body go rigid. "Do you always do what's easiest?"

I gave him a half smile. "Pretty much."

Campbell took my glass out of my hand, and set it on top of a side table, covered in a sheet like a little kid dressed up as a ghost on Halloween. He leaned down, putting his weight on his fists, which boxed me in on either side. "I'm not going to make things easy for you," he said, again, almost apologetically. "So say stop now if you can't handle it."

I didn't move a muscle. "I'll give you the same opportunity," I said.

Campbell dropped his head to his chest, with a small, amused smile. He so often wore that expression around me. Amused. That someone finally dared challenge him. Then he pulled my legs out from underneath me and scooped me up, so that I straddled his waist. He slammed me up against the wall, much harder than he needed to, and all I could think as we ripped our clothes off, as he pushed his way inside of me, the only time he was slow, and gentle, was do it again, do it again. Make me hurt. Make me feel something other than the fear, and the guilt. Make me think about something other than the sickening reality that Bridget was two stories below us, nothing but bones and a tangle of black hair.

Later, as we climbed back into Campbell's curiously beautiful car, I covered my hand with my mouth and gasped. "I left my underwear upstairs! Be right back!" and I threw open the door and hurried back inside. My underwear was safely balled into my pocket, of course. I just had to know what she looked like.

I rushed the basement door and quietly, carefully, pulled it open. It yawned creakily anyway, and then the next noisy intrusion on the empty house was my own voice, gasping, "Oh my God, oh my God." Because the basement was empty. No trace of Bridget—not one lone strand of hair, not even a pinkie bone.