Page 35 of The Vacancy In Room 10

“Yeah, okay,” Barry says, holding his plate of beans and skulking away to sit with a few people I don’t recall the names of. I feel like I’m back in a middle school cafeteria for a moment. He laughs too loud at someone’s joke and peers over his shoulder at us a few times.

“How are you settling in?” Rosa asks.

“Oh, uh...fine. Thanks.”

“For fuck’s sake, Gordy. Just eat it!” Jackie screams, shocking me, my hand flying to my heart, and then I realize she’s talking to her six-year-old who’s crying because the top of his bun fell off his hamburger. “Five second rule. Take a pill.” She wipes the bun off on her leg and puts it back on Gordy’s plate.

He seems satisfied with this and sits on the ground with a Peppa Pig towel draped over his shoulders and eats.

“We sure miss Henry around here,” Crystal says. “I hope it’s okay to say that.” Then she stands suddenly and yells, “Uh-uh!” with a waggle of her index finger, and her girls stop running around the pool’s edge and slow it down to a speed walk as they giggle and elbow one another.

“Of course,” I say. “I was actually hoping to... I guess, ask a couple questions about him—his life here,” I say.

The women all exchange a look that I can’t interpret.

“Sure,” Jackie says, kicking her feet up onto Barry’s cooler and sipping her wine cooler. Of course, nobody here knows about foul play, they think it was suicide. And unless it was with one of them, I have to assume they don’t know about the affair, so maybe if I lead with his state of mind they’ll open up a bit, assuming I am trying to understand his depression or mental state...which I suppose I’m also trying to do.

“Did he have a lot of friends here? Was he close to anyone?” I say, already gathering that he was the life of the party around here somehow.

“Oh, Christ,” Crystal says. “Everyone loved him, especially the ladies. I’m pretty sure everyone here had the hots for him.”

“Crystal!” Rosa says with a look that tells her to have some respect.

“She asked!” Crystal says. “I mean, we need a fantasy life, and Bobby is... I don’t know. He has a pair of tits tattooed on his neck, kinda hard to get excited about that.” All the girls laugh. “And Barry...sheesh.”

“He reads palms and collects swords,” Rosa adds. “If you like goth, comic books, and Dungeons & Dragons, he might be your guy.”

“And Callum,” Jackie says. “He’s hot.”

“Hot,” Crystal repeats.

“But he’s grieving and just...off-limits,” Jackie says. “Wait,” she continues. “That sounds bad. Not that Henry was fair game. He was your... Of course, I just mean...he was fun to have a crush on. Innocent, for realz! But there aren’t many non-losers around here, and he was so nice to everyone. So it’s hard to say who he was close to. We all sort of doted on him.”

“No,” I say. “It’s fine. It’s kind of nice actually.” And it is nice. Weird but nice that he found a sort of home here, in a strange way.

“He painted caricatures of the kids by the pool sometimes,” Rosa says as she squirts a generous mound of mustard on a chicken wing.

I don’t really know how to ask these people what I want to know. If he acted strange. Did he get involved with this Eddie guy—with drugs or something? Did the woman he loved meet him here and maybe they noticed a stranger in and out of his door? Did he have enemies?

“So you didn’t notice him hanging around a lot with anyone in particular—acting, I don’t know, different in any way?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t stalk him or anything,” Crystal says. “But nothing stands out. Why?”

“God, Crystal. She wants to know if he was depressed! Read the room,” Jackie barks. “He didn’t have trouble with no one.” She lights a cigarette, and her face becomes dark and somber.

“We were all surprised to hear about...what happened. I guess he was down and all. Depressed, whatever, but...nobody thought, like, suicidal,” Rosa says. She pours a Coke into a plastic cup and hands it to her son, who tugs at her dress.

“So he painted most of you, I guess.”

“Oh, yeah!” Crystal grins. “Remember when you sat for him, Jackie?” Rosa and Crystal start to shake with laughter.

“Fuck you, Crystal,” Jackie says, tossing her hand of cards at the back of Crystal’s head as she’s bent over laughing into her knees.

“What?” I ask.

“She was so mad ’cause he painted all her fat rolls.” Crystal is flush with tears rolling down her face. “She asked him to Photoshop them out! Photoshop!”

Rosa and Crystal are now in hysterics, and Jackie has her arms folded and her lips pursed.

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