Page 31 of The Vacancy In Room 10

“Off someone? Like they saw Eddie actually kill a person?”

“Yeah, and she said that it was for a lesser offense than humiliating him in front of everyone at the pool the way I did and to watch my back.”

“But you looked him up. The internet isn’t gonna tell you he’s cartel. So what did you find out that makes you think he’s so dangerous? Just that? Could be a rumor.”

Before he can answer me, I hear a small tap-tap at the office door. His face goes ghostly white, and neither of us move.

“Cass?” a small voice calls. “It’s Sinatra. I’m here for my Happy Meal.”

My hand clasps my heart, and I sit in front of the door and stare across the floor at the back of Eddie’s head. A thread of blood trickles down the back of his pale neck. I imagine little Frank walking in and seeing this, and I feel bile push up into my throat.

“Fuck,” I whisper.

“Who’s Sinatra?” Callum mouths to me, but I just shake my head. He stays ducked down by the couch in the dim light, and we both stay perfectly still.

“Um, Cass? I’ll take a Filet-O-Fish or whatever you think. It’s okay if you forgot,” he says, and now tears stream down my face, and I squeeze my chest with my hand and will myself to stay silent.

“Okay, sorry. Bye,” his little voice says, and then I hear his footsteps down the concrete path until they disappear, and I collapse into my knees. Somehow my crying has morphed into numbness, then white-hot anger.

“He’s dead,” Callum whispers.

“What?”

“Eddie Bacco,” he says.

“Really? Fuck you,” I say and leap up. I don’t care about maybe potential danger, because this is real danger. Maybe he is tied to bad guys who could behead me. That’s a maybe. But I go to prison for sure if I don’t call this in right now.

Then Callum hands me Eddie’s wallet from his pile of things on the coffee table. “I mean, Eddie Bacco died two years ago—murdered. So who the hell is this?”

13

ANNA

I can’t breathe, I can’t think. I just drive the two-lane desert highway until it’s almost dusk, stopping at a dive bar in the next town. I thought about going to my parents’ house, but I just spent the two weeks after Henry died in their guest room in the fetal position, and I can’t bring myself to go back or even talk about this. The only person I want—the only person I need—is Henry. He’s who I would talk to about this, but even if he were here, I couldn’t, because he’s the one who betrayed me.

I sit in a back corner booth inside the Junkyard Tavern. It smells like stale beer and urine. A few drunk guys in cowboy boots are slumped over their drinks along the bar, the jukebox pipes George Strait and competes with the baseball game on the TV; it’s all white noise and loneliness. I order a beer and stare down at the journal on the chipped vinyl tabletop. I open it again with trembling hands.

There are entries almost daily for a while, and then they slow down to a couple of times a week. They go back a year—before he moved his studio to The Sycamores even. I read one of the first entries:

I’m such a monster. How can I feel these things so strongly for someone besides my wife—my incredible wife? I know I should walk away from her and be a better man...especially for Anna. But I’ve never felt love like this before, and I didn’t even know it was possible. That sounds so awful.

He was a poet and a painter and always said that keeping a journal means taking time for yourself and manifesting what you want in life, so it doesn’t really surprise me to find such detail. Although I always assumed he was outlining ideas and goals and travel destinations. He did that sometimes, scribbled about the things we’d see in such-and-such a country when we went on a trip. He’d tell me I should journal—at least just list things I’m grateful for, because it’s scientifically proven to support better health and happiness and all of that.

In all of my wildest dreams, this is never what I expected to find. We deeply trusted one another. We were best friends. I know it was a rocky couple years, and we started to change and grow apart, but I was certain it was a phase.

I read on:

People would never expect the two of us together. They wouldn’t understand. It’s wrong, I know, I know, I know. No matter how many times I’ve painted her, over and over—maybe a hundred times—I can’t get enough. I cover my studio in brushstrokes of her body, and the longing for her is euphoric and painful at the same time, and then the shame rushes in. I have no right to be doing this.

I close the book and order a double Maker’s Mark. I think for a moment I might begin to scream and wail and tear the pages out, but I don’t do that. I find that I’m numb. It’s too much all at once, and the shock of it brings a surge of adrenaline and waves of nausea. And then all variety of complicated questions.

Was I stupid for not knowing? Was my life a lie? Was this good man—and he was good—someone living another life altogether or just going through something? A crisis, a short-lived meltdown that I would have forgiven? Was he trying to claw his way out of the grips of his depression by any means that made him feel good—feel alive—or was he really in love?

A few men with weatherworn faces and muddy work boots shuffle in the front door. The workday is over. An REO Speedwagon song blasts from the jukebox... “And I can’t fight this feeling anymore.” It makes me lurch. I push the whiskey away from me. I suddenly decide I need to stay sharp. I can drown myself in alcohol and pity, which I fully deserve to do, later. But right now, I need to think.

And the question I need to know the answer to is: What’s with the fucking Sycamores? The only explanation he gave for choosing it was that it was a cheap place for a studio—something different for a while. He didn’t need cheap, not really. I mean, not like this. He’d sold a couple pieces recently, and yeah, a teacher’s salary is crap, and I was between jobs, but I had good savings, and he had a good gallery show. His painting “A Long Winter” was a portrait of an elderly homeless man with a deeply pockmarked face and longing eyes. Someone paid twenty-five thousand for it at the show, and afterward, Henry went to find the subject and gave him a few grand.

So did he really just hear the place was cheap? Or maybe he liked the grit the place seems to embody, and then as an added bonus, he happened to have a private studio to see this woman and paint her and sleep with her. Or did he choose this studio because of her? Did Callum even tell him about a vacancy like Henry said, or did he meet the woman that time he went to the pool barbecue Callum invited him to after school, and then he made it happen?

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