Page 41 of In a Far-Off Land
We pulled up to an old church, older than anything in Odessa. It was simple, plastered in gray stucco with a tile roof and built right up to the street. Three bells hung in a circular window on one side, and over them a steeple.
Oscar didn’t turn off the auto, but he did flick the switch that turned off his headlamps.
“What now?” It was the first thing I’d said to him.
“Now we wait.”
Oscar rolled down his window. Twilight draped the church in shadows, soft and full of the smells of lilacs and the dry tang of dust. Flowering rhododendrons with thick, waxy leaves bloomed on either side of an arched doorway. Oscar fished a pack of cigarettes from under the seat. He scraped a match against his boot, and the flame illuminated his face for a moment, all angles and dark hollows. He really did look like the bad guy in a cowboy film.
I breathed in the sharp scent—harsh, nothing like the fancy brand Max bought—but I wouldn’t have turned down a smoke if he’d offered. He didn’t offer.
He kept his gaze in the distance, where the insects had begun their night song in the ravine. He took a puff and blew out the white smoke in a thin stream. “Tell me about Friday night.”
I swallowed back the sick feeling in my throat. What did he want me to say? That I’d killed Roy or that I hadn’t? I wish I knew. He waited. This man—scary as he was—had got me out of a jam. At least I think that’s what he did. I guess he deserved an answer, but I didn’t have a good one. “I don’t know. Honest.”
“I heard you arguing—you and Max out in the courtyard—before...”
Before I went upstairs with Roy Lester. So he probably knew what I had gone upstairs to do. I was glad for the darkness, the shadows that hid my face as well as they did his.
He tapped ash out the window. “What happened after?”
After? My face felt like it was glowing in the dark.
He turned to me then, the red tip of his cigarette casting faint color on his face. “Tell me what you remember. All of it.”
I swallowed down the lump in my throat. I guess he deservedthe truth, at least what I knew of it. “After Max... left, I went back to Roy. We danced... and then... we went upstairs.” My stomach churned with the familiar feeling of shame.
“Señor Lester, did he take a drink—from the maid?”
A drink? He’d had plenty, I was about to say. Then I remembered. “Yes. Something she brought him,” I thought hard. “A special nightcap, he called it.” The memory was fuzzy. The pretty maid. A green cocktail. Roy, raising his glass to me.Gin, absinthe, and a touch of bitters. This will put hair on your chest!He’d winked at me, his face pink and sweaty. Then a bitter taste on my tongue. “Wait. He didn’t drink it.”
“What?” Oscar straightened up. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, I think...” He’d pushed the glass into my hand.To the next It Girl!he’d announced, his brows raised in challenge. I hadn’t wanted it, but I was stuck. It was time to sink or swim, like they said, and I kept swimming.Down the hatch,I’d said and tossed it back. My eyes watered at the remembered burn. What had he said then?Louella was right, you’re a good sport.My throat clogged. At the time, I hadn’t felt like I had a choice, about any of it. The drink, and what happened after. I had, though. I’d always had a choice.
“I drank it.”
Oscar straightened up. “Then what?”
I’d almost forgotten. But there, in the dark, details I hadn’t recalled—hadn’t let myself think on—came to me. Roy pulling me up a staircase. Stumbling, my shoes catching on the hem of my dress, the seam ripping—the dress that had cost me my last dime, ruined. The stairway had spun and... had Roy picked me up? Yes, I remembered that, but then nothing. I didn’t say any of that, but Oscar must have figured enough on his own.
The tip of Oscar’s cigarette glowed bright, then dimmed. “What about when you woke up?”
“What do you mean?”
“When you woke up in the morning. Did you... had you...” He turned toward the window and the thin glow of the moon caught his face.
My flush turned into a burn as I caught his meaning. I wished I could sink through the floorboards of the car. This was the bitter end. “I don’t know.” What kind of girl doesn’t know if she’s been made love to or not? I guess the kind of girl I had turned into.
“He was just dead? When you woke up? That’s all you know?”
The blood. The knife. Roy’s lifeless eyes. “I—I just had to get away.”
He turned sideways and leaned in. I suddenly realized how close he was, and how big. Our shoulders touched and his face was inches from mine. “Is there anything you are not telling me, Minerva Sinclaire?”
My heart was hammering in my ears. Where was Max? He should have been here by now. Had he been arrested? Or maybe he’d really given up on me. I was alone with a stranger and nobody would hear me if I called out. “I swear, that’s all I know.”
Oscar looked at me like he knew I was lying. He was right. There was plenty I wasn’t telling him. About how I’d sunk so low. About Max and me. But none of it had anything to do with Roy Lester. And it wasn’t his beeswax, anyhow. But I didn’t have the nerve to say that, not with him so big and close.
