Page 19 of Play Nice

Austin walks up the driveway toward me, where I rinse paint brushes with the hose. There’s a utility sink in the garage, but I’m avoiding going in there, afraid there will be dead mice stuck to the glue traps.

“Come to borrow a cup of sugar?” I ask him.

He waits to reply until he’s right in front of me.

“Yeah, actually,” he says, kissing me on the lips.

“Don’t be cute,” I tell him. “It’s a turn-off.”

“Can’t make any promises,” he says, following me inside. “How you been?”

“Busy,” I say. “I was hoping you’d come by.”

“Oh yeah?”

“I need someone to hold the ladder.”

He laughs. “You’re putting me to work?”

“The door is behind you,” I say. “Should you choose to use it.”

He won’t. I’m wearing cutoff jean shorts, tube socks, and a white tank top with a pink bra underneath. I’m covered in paint and sweat. My hair is in space buns. I’m a girl-next-door fantasy.

He helps me prime the living room, and as a thank-you I order us Thai food.

“Do you do this for a living?” he asks, gesturing to the house.

“No,” I say.

“Really? You seem like a pro.”

“I’m just good at everything.”

“I’m gathering that,” he says. “What do you do?”

“I’m a stylist,” I say. “And a fashion influencer.”

I expect him to pull a face, like most people do at the word “influencer.” But he doesn’t.

“What about you?” I ask him.

“I’m a nurse,” he says. “I work at a senior facility.”

“Then why did you tell me you were a fuckup?” I’ve hooked up with NHL and NFL and MLB players, with actors and models, with professors and archaeologists, with New York’s leading brain surgeon, but senior care nurse might be the hottest job of all time.

For some reason, I’m now thinking about Mom and Roy.

Wondering if she was attracted to him because of his weird job, or if it was just him, if it wouldn’t have mattered if he was a gym teacher.

I imagine it’s probably the former, because if you believe in demons, what hotter job is there than demon expert?

“I was going to be a doctor,” Austin says, mouth full of spring roll.

“Close enough,” I say. If he wants to tell me what happened, why he’s not a doctor, he will. I’m not going to ask.

He laughs. “Glad you think so.”

“I love old people. They have the best stories. Give great advice. No filter, no ego,” I say. “Very old people and very young people. They’re the most fun.”

“They’re always asking me to get them drugs,” he says. “Drugs and chocolate. And butter.”

“You’re a mule.”

“I don’t do it,” he says. “I’d lose my job.”

“Not ever? Not once?” I ask, getting up and taking his hand, leading him over to the couch.

“Plead the Fifth,” he says, grabbing me by the waist. He kisses me.

We undress slowly until we’re both naked except for my tube socks, which I leave on intentionally. I straddle him on the couch.

“Do you want to?” he asks me, his hands in my hair, his lips on my neck.

“Do you have a condom?”

He tells me he does.

I bite his shoulder. “Presumptuous.”

“What can I say? I’m an optimist.”

I put the condom on him with my mouth—a trick I learned from one of my dancer friends who went on to be a Wall Street CEO’s sugar baby—then I slide on top.

“Fuck,” he says, his breath hitching, fingers pressing into my hips.

It lasts longer than I expect it to. It’s the best sex I’ve had in a long time. Might make it into the Hall of Fame.

When it’s over, we’re both spent. We pass out on the couch.

I wake up in the morning to the sound of the front door closing. I’ve got a blanket draped over me, still naked save for my socks. There’s a page ripped out of my sketchpad. He left me a note on the coffee table.

Had to go to work.

Last night was something…

See you again tonight?

His phone number is scribbled at the bottom.

I yawn and set the paper back on the table. I order some coffee and a breakfast sandwich, scroll on my phone while waiting for them to arrive.

Veronica invites me to brunch with two of her other photogenic friends, Tara and Simone.

It’s hard to know sometimes if people want to see me only to see me.

The purpose of the outing is to document the experience.

We can enjoy the experience while we’re there, but that’s not what matters. It’s veneer.

I tell her I can’t make it, that I’m at the house.

Did you see that guy again? she asks, probably with a twinge of jealousy. I wonder if when she’s mad at her boyfriend she daydreams about me.

Who knew if you wanted good dick you had to come to the suburbs? I reply.

OMG!!

There’s a knock at the door, and I forget about Veronica. I wrap myself in the blanket and go down to answer. The delivery kid turns a lovely shade of magenta, realizing I’m naked underneath.

I drink my coffee and eat my egg sandwich and then prepare to take a shower. I’m so filthy, but I’m just going to get dirty again. Sweat more.

Caffeine-buzzed and highly motivated, I decide to clean up around the house first before I clean up myself.

I put on yesterday’s clothes. I dust. Pick more dead flies off the windowsills. Vacuum.

Finally, I brave the garage.

As soon as I open the door, I smell death.

It’s nauseating.

I stand there, torn between abandoning ship, running to call Dad, or confronting the poor mice in the glue traps.

Which, now that I think about, I only consented to in a moment of weakness.

I didn’t want the mice in the house, but I never wanted them dead either.

I wanted them to move out into a tree stump, where they could dress in aprons and serve each other tea in cute mouse-sized cups.

Racked with guilt about my role in their untimely end, I step deeper into the garage, letting the door shut behind me. I hold my nose, my breath. I flick on the light, a horrible fluorescent that makes it look even more like a crime scene.

I anticipate having to search for the traps, thinking they must have been strategically placed in dark corners, behind a snow shovel, whatever.

They have been strategically placed. They’re right in front of me, in a line snaking across the middle of the garage floor.

And they’re covered in mouse parts.

Not whole mice. Just parts.

A tail. A claw. A head. A half.

There’s no other half. No rest of the body.

Can a mouse survive in pieces?

Are these parts of the same mouse? Or different mice that all suffered the same brutal demise?

It’s disgusting. Baffling.

A massacre.

Dead mice in front of me. A dead mouse on the page of a book, in a scene that I dismissed as an Amityville-style embellishment. But now…

I step forward on tiptoes, my hands over my mouth and nose to protect me from the death smell.

There’s no blood. Wouldn’t they leak?

The tail, the claw, the other small and unidentifiable pieces…it’s possible the mice chewed themselves free. But the head? The half?

—

When I call Dad, he tells me to calm down and that he’ll come over after work.

I take an hour-long shower. I paint. I online-shop. I distract myself. I do not go back in the garage. I do not reread that scene in Demon of Edgewood Drive .

We’d find dead mice and chipmunks and squirrels and the occasional baby bunny near the stoop sometimes, courtesy of the neighborhood’s stray cats. That’s what Mom saw. Nothing that came from the throat of a man of God in some freak supernatural episode.

And what’s in the garage now—that’s not supernatural either. Just proof of a long-standing infestation. Just weird and gross.

Rationally, in my right, bright, shiny mind, I know this to be true. I know it.

I know it.

I hear Dad’s car pull up around five thirty.

“You were supposed to be checking every day,” he says as soon as he comes through the door.

“Good to see you, too, Daddy.”

“Hi,” he says, hugging me and kissing the top of my head. He hands me a grocery bag.

“What’s this?”

“Food,” he says. He takes off his suit jacket and hangs it on the banister. “All right.”

He goes downstairs to the garage, and I take the groceries up to the kitchen.

He bought me kombucha, bananas, bread, peanut butter, jelly, granola bars, frozen burritos, and White Claw. He must think I’m still a college student.

I hear the garage door open, which I hope means he’s disposing of the massacre.

The door closes a few minutes later, and then he’s up the stairs, hands on his hips.

“They got spooked,” he says. “Happens.”

“What does that even mean?” I ask, opening a White Claw. “How does a mouse decapitate itself?”

“Trying to wriggle out of the glue,” he says. “I can get the exterminator back here. Have you seen any others in the house?”

“No, thank God,” I say, crossing myself. Father, Son, Holy, Spirit.

Dad hates it. I’ve only seen him lose it a handful of times in my life, and one of those times was when he found out about Father Bernard and Mom taking us to mass.

“Okay,” he says. “I’ll give him a call tomorrow and see what he says.”

“Thank you. I appreciate it. Sincerely.”

He nods. “Let me see what you’ve done so far.”

I take him down the hall and show him all my expert priming. Then back into the living room.

“It was difficult in those corners. See?” I say, pointing.

“You had some help.”

His tone turns me around. He stands near the coffee table, holding up Austin’s note.

“Did you want me up on the ladder all by myself?” I ask. Somehow, I failed to notice until just now that the condom wrapper is still on the couch, peeking out of the cushions.

“Is this a boyfriend?” he asks, likely already knowing it isn’t, because of the phone number at the bottom of the note. If we were dating, I’d have his number.

It’s a point of contention for us that I don’t have long-term relationships.

Dad wants me to settle down, like Leda. Not because he’s aiming to pawn me off—he loves that I need him, rejoices in my need, wouldn’t know what to do without it.

It’s that he wants me to be “normal.” To provide him with nice, innocuous photos that he can send to his friends and coworkers of me with a husband, the two of us smiling, looking like we’re in a toothpaste commercial that would air on the Fox News Channel.

He doesn’t care about Daphne getting married, which is telling.

“Is it your business?” I ask, tilting my head to the side, batting my lashes.

“Clio,” he says scoldingly.

“How about we just forget it?” I say, taking the note from him and putting it back on the coffee table, letter-side down. “How about you look at what a good job I did in the corners?”

“I should get home to Amy. She’s got dinner going.”

He makes toward the stairs, clearly upset at being reminded that I am an adult woman with a sex life. He can’t get away from me fast enough. His excuse is total nonsense; no one on earth would ever be in a rush for Amy’s cooking.

“All right. Bye, Dad.”

“Bye, Cli,” he says, opening the front door. “I’ll let you know what the exterminator says.”

“Okay. Thank you! Love you!”

He doesn’t say it back.