July 15

IF THE FIRST MAN who looks at your boobs in four years turns out to be a cop, take a drink. If it turns out he already knows what you look like naked, take another drink.
Make that drink a double.
Some guy sits at table eight in the Wood and Gold Room, just some your-aged guy. He’s beefy with stooped shoulders. His shirt fits okay, a little tight across his gut, a white poly-cotton balloon that bumps over his belt a little. His hair, he’s balding at the temples, and his recessions trail back into long triangles of scalp above each eye. Each triangle is sunburned bright red, making long pointed devil’s horns that poke up from the top of his face. He’s got a little spiral notebook open on the table, and he’s writing in it while he watches Misty. He’s wearing a striped tie and a navy blue sport coat.

Misty takes him a glass of water, her hand shaking so hard you can hear the ice rattle. Just so you know, her headache is going on its third day. Her headache, it’s the feeling of maggots rooting into the big soft pile of her brain. Worms boring. Beetles tunneling.
The guy at table eight says, “You don’t get a lot of men in here, do you?”
His aftershave has the smell of cloves. He’s the man from the ferry, the guy with the dog who thought Misty was dead. The cop. Detective Clark Stilton. The hate crimes guy.
Misty shrugs and gives him a menu. Misty rolls her eyes at the room around them, the gold paint and wood paneling, and says, “Where’s your dog?” Misty says, “Can I get you anything to drink?”
And he says, “I need to see your husband.” He says, “You’re Mrs. Wilmot, aren’t you?”
The name on her name tag, pinned to her pink plastic uniform—Misty Marie Wilmot.
Her headache, it’s the feeling of a hammer tap, tap, tapping a long nail into the back of your head, a conceptual art piece, tapping harder and harder in one spot until you forget everything else in the world.
Detective Stilton sets his pen down on his notebook and offers his hand to shake, and he smiles. He says, “The truth is, I am the county’s task force on hate crimes.”
Misty shakes his hand and says, “Would you like some coffee?”
And he says, “Please.”
Her headache is a beach ball, pumped full of too much air. More air is being forced in, but it’s not air. It’s blood.
Just for the record, Misty’s already told the detective that Peter’s in the hospital.
You’re in a hospital.
On the ferry the other evening, she told Detective Stilton how you were crazy, and you left your family in debt. How you dropped out of every school and stuck jewelry through your body. You sat in the car parked in your garage with the engine running. Your graffiti, all your ranting and sealing up people’s laundry rooms and kitchens, it was all just another symptom of your craziness. The vandalism. It’s unfortunate, Misty told the detective, but she’s been screwed on this as bad as anybody.
This is around three o’clock, the lull between lunch and dinner.
Misty says, “Yeah. Sure, go see my husband.” Misty says, “Did you want coffee?”
The detective, he looks at his pad while he writes and asks, “Did you know if your husband was part of any neo-Nazi organization? Any radical hate groups?”
And Misty says, “Was he?” Misty says, “The roast beef is good here.”
Just for the record, it’s kinda cute. Both of them holding pads, their pens ready to write. It’s a duel. A shoot-out.
If he’s seen Peter’s writing, this guy knows what Peter thought of her naked. Her dead fish breasts. Her legs crawling with veins. Her hands smelling like rubber gloves. Misty Wilmot, queen of the maids. What you thought of your wife.
Detective Stilton writes, saying, “So you and your husband weren’t very close?”
And Misty says, “Yeah, well, I thought we were.” She says, “But go figure.”
He writes, saying, “Are you aware if Peter’s a member of the Ku Klux Klan?”
And Misty says, “The chicken and dumplings is pretty good.”
He writes, saying, “Are you aware if such a hate group exists on Waytansea Island?”
Her headache tap, tap, taps the nail into the back of her head.
Somebody at table five waves, and Misty says, “Could I get you some coffee?”
And Detective Stilton says, “Are you okay? You don’t look so hot right now.”
Just this morning over breakfast, Grace Wilmot said she feels terrible about the spoiled chicken salad—so terrible that she made Misty an appointment to see Dr. Touchet tomorrow. A nice gesture, but another fucking bill to pay.
When Misty shuts her eyes, she’d swear her head is glowing hot inside. Her neck is one cast-iron muscle cramp. Sweat sticks together the folds of her neck skin. Her shoulders are bound, pulled up tight around her ears. She can only turn her head a little in any direction, and her ears feel on fire.
Peter used to talk about Paganini, possibly the best violin player of all time. He was tortured by tuberculosis, syphilis, osteomyelitis in his jaw, diarrhea, hemorrhoids, and kidney stones. Paganini, not Peter. The mercury that doctors gave him for the syphilis poisoned him until his teeth fell out. His skin turned gray-white. He lost his hair. Paganini was a walking corpse, but when he played the violin, he was beyond mortal.
He had Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a congenital disease that left his joints so flexible he could bend his thumb back far enough to touch his wrist. According to Peter, what tortured him made him a genius.
According to you.
Misty brings Detective Stilton an iced tea he didn’t order, and he says, “Is there some reason why you’re wearing sunglasses indoors?”
And jerking her head at the big windows, she says, “It’s the light.” She refills his water and says, “It hurts my eyes today.” Her hand shakes so much she drops her pen. One hand clamped to the edge of the table for support, she stoops to pick it up. She sniffs and says, “Sorry.”
And the detective says, “Do you know an Angel Delaporte?”
And Misty sniffs and says, “Want to order now?”
Stilton’s handwriting, Angel Delaporte should see it. His letters are tall, soaring up, ambitious, idealistic. The writing slants hard to the right, aggressive, stubborn. His heavy pressure against the page shows a strong libido. That’s what Angel would tell you. The tails of his letters, the lowercase y ’s and g ’s, hang straight down. This means determination and strong leadership.
Detective Stilton looks at Misty and says, “Would you describe your neighbors as hostile to outsiders?”
Just for the record, if you have masturbation down to less than three minutes because you share a bathtub with fourteen people, take another drink.
In art theory, you learn that women look for men with prominent brows and large, square chins. This was some study a sociologist did at West Point Academy. It proved that rectangular faces, deep-set eyes, and ears that lie close to their heads, this is what makes men attractive.
This is how Detective Stilton looks, plus a few extra pounds. He’s not smiling now, but the wrinkles that crease his cheeks and his crow’s-feet prove he smiles a lot. He smiles more than he frowns. The scars of happiness. It could be his extra weight, but the corrugator wrinkles between his eyes and the brow-lift wrinkles across his forehead, his worry lines, are almost invisible.
All that, and the bright red horns on his forehead.
These are all little visual cues you respond to. The code of attraction. This is why we love who we love. Whether or not you’re consciously aware of them, this is the reason we do what we do.
This is how we know what we don’t know.
Wrinkles as handwriting analysis. Graphology. Angel would be impressed.
Dear sweet Peter, he grew his black hair so long because his ears stuck out.
Your ears stick out.
Tabbi’s ears are her father’s. Tabbi’s long dark hair is his.
Yours.
Stilton says, “Life’s changing around here and plenty of people won’t like that. If your husband isn’t acting alone, we could see assault. Arson. Murder.”
All Misty has to do is look down, and she starts to fall. If she turns her head, her vision blurs, the whole room smears for a moment.
Misty tears the detective’s check out of her pad and lays it on the table, saying, “Will there be anything else?”
“Just one more question, Mrs. Wilmot,” he says. He sips his glass of iced tea, watching her over the rim. And he says, “I’d like to talk to your in-laws—your husband’s parents—if that’s possible.”
Peter’s mother, Grace Wilmot, is staying here in the hotel, Misty tells him. Peter’s father, Harrow Wilmot, is dead. Since about thirteen or fourteen years ago.
Detective Stilton makes another note. He says, “How did your father-in-law die?”
It was a heart attack, Misty thinks. She’s not sure.
And Stilton says, “It sounds like you don’t know any of your in-laws very well.”
Her headache tap, tap, tapping the back of her skull, Misty says, “Did you say if you wanted some coffee?”