Velvet Ruin

The first thing I notice about her is the smell of chlorine and cigarettes. She's sitting on the edge of the diving board, legs dangling over the deep end, and she's smoking. At a public pool. At two in the afternoon. The lifeguard, a kid with sunburned shoulders and a whistle he hasn't blown once all summer, is pretending not to see her. That tells me something. Either she's someone's wife, someone important, or someone who's been here so long the rules have bent around her.

I'm here because my sister asked me to check on the house while she's in Lisbon. Two weeks of empty rooms and a pool I have no business using. But the gate was open and the water looked cold and I've never been good at respecting other people's boundaries.

She doesn't look up when I walk past. I'm wearing a t-shirt and yesterday's shorts, carrying a towel that smells like the back of my car. The pool is shaped like a kidney bean, tiled in that pale blue that turns your skin green in photographs. There's a floatie shaped like a flamingo drifting near the ladder, and a pair of sunglasses on the concrete that someone forgot.

"You're not supposed to smoke here," I say.

She takes a drag. Exhales. The smoke curls up into the June heat and disappears. "You're not supposed to be here at all."

Fair point. I sit down on the concrete a few feet away from the diving board, close enough to feel the heat radiating off her skin. She's wearing a black one-piece that's seen better days, the elastic gone soft at the edges. Her hair is wet and pushed back from her face. No makeup. A thin gold chain around her ankle.

"I'm house-sitting," I say. "For my sister. She's in Portugal."

"Portugal." She says it like she's tasting the word. "I've never been."

"Me neither."

She stubs out the cigarette on the diving board and flicks the butt into the water. It floats there, a tiny white scar on the blue surface. Neither of us moves to fish it out.

"You want a drink?" she asks.

It's not a question that makes sense. We're at a pool. There's no bar. But she's already standing up, and I watch the water run off her legs, the way her thighs press together when she walks. She's older than me. Not by much. Maybe ten years. The kind of older that means she knows things I'm still guessing at.

I follow her through a gate I didn't notice before, tucked behind the pump house. It leads to a patio with a table and four chairs, an umbrella that's faded from red to pink, and a cooler that's been sitting in the sun so long the plastic has gone soft. She opens it and pulls out two bottles of beer. No label. Homebrew, maybe. Or something her husband makes in the garage.

"Thanks," I say.

We sit across from each other. The umbrella casts a shadow that doesn't quite reach me, so the sun lands on my shoulders and starts to burn. I don't move. She drinks her beer and watches me over the rim of the bottle.

"What's your name?" she asks.

"Daniel."

"Daniel." She rolls it around. "I'm Claire."

The name doesn't fit her. Claire is a girl who plays tennis and has a laugh like a bell. This woman has a bruise on her forearm the shape of a thumbprint and a way of looking at you that makes you feel like you're already naked.

"You're staring," she says.

"You're worth staring at."

She laughs. It's not a nice laugh. It's the kind that says she's heard that line before and it didn't work then either. But she doesn't look away. She sets the bottle down and leans back in her chair, and the movement pulls the fabric of her swimsuit tight across her chest. I try not to look. I look anyway.

"Your sister," she says. "What's her name?"

"Margot."

"Margot." She nods like she knows something. "She's been gone two weeks?"

"Three."

"And you've been here the whole time?"

"Mostly."

"Alone?"

I don't answer. She smiles. It's the first real smile I've seen from her, and it changes her face. Makes her look younger. Softer. Then it's gone, and she's back to the woman with the cigarette and the bruise and the eyes that don't miss anything.

"There's a party tonight," she says. "At the house on the hill. The one with the gate that doesn't open."

I know the house. Everyone knows the house. It's been empty for years, or so I thought.

"You should come," she says.

"I wasn't invited."

"You just were."

She stands up and walks back toward the pool. I watch her go. The way her hips move. The way the sun catches the water on her skin. At the edge of the patio she stops and looks back at me.

"Bring the beer," she says.

I do.

The party is already loud when I get there. Bass thumping through the walls, cars parked three deep on the lawn. The gate is open. Of course it is. Everything's open if you know the right person.

I walk in through the front door because no one stops me. The living room is full of people I don't recognize, dancing or drinking or standing in corners talking too close to each other's faces. The furniture's been pushed against the walls. There's a keg in the kitchen and a line for the bathroom that stretches down the hall.

I find Claire on the back patio, sitting on a stone bench with a glass of wine. She's changed into a dress the color of dried blood. It's short. It's tight. She's barefoot.

"You came," she says.

"You invited me."

"I didn't think you would."

She pats the bench beside her. I sit. The stone is cold through my shorts. The music from inside is muffled out here, just a pulse, a heartbeat. The yard stretches back into darkness, trees I can't name, a shed with its door hanging open.

"Who lives here?" I ask.

"Nobody. Everybody. It depends on the night."

She hands me her glass. I drink. The wine is warm and too sweet, but I finish it anyway. She watches my throat move when I swallow.

"You're young," she says.

"I'm twenty-six."

"That's young."

"You're not."

She laughs. That same laugh. But this time there's something underneath it. Something that sounds almost like regret.

"No," she says. "I'm not."

She takes the empty glass from my hand and sets it on the ground. Then she turns to face me, and her knee touches mine, and neither of us pulls away. The air smells like cut grass and citronella and the wine on her breath. Somewhere inside, a woman screams with laughter. A door slams.

"I'm going to tell you something," Claire says. "And I want you to listen."

I nod.

"I'm married. My husband is inside. He's the one who owns this house."

She pauses. Lets it land.

"And I want you to fuck me anyway."

The words hang there between us. I should get up. I should walk away. I should do a lot of things. But her hand is on my thigh, and her eyes are on mine, and the pulse of the music is matching the pulse in my throat.

"Why?" I ask.

"Because he's watching."

I look toward the house. Through the glass doors, past the dancers, I see a man in a gray suit standing alone in the corner of the living room. He's holding a drink. He's not moving. He's looking right at us.

Claire's hand slides higher.

"Don't look at him," she says. "Look at me."

I do.

And the night opens up like a mouth.