“Wow. How long have you lived here?”
“A few years. Why?”
“Do you have OCD? Or mysophobia?”
“What’s mysophobia?”
“Fear of germs.”
Luke smiles. “I’m not really home much. I don’t have time to mess up the place. I guess it is kind of sterile, isn’t it?”
“Like an eighty-year-old man.”
“Well I’ve taken my annual leave,” he laughs. “So I’ll be home for the next month to get the place nice and filthy. You can help me, since I’ve witnessed how good you are at it.”
“Thanks, smartass.”
Luke potters in the kitchen while I explore. The living room has huge white leather couches, upon which you could probably fall into a coma from relaxation. A shiny screen covers one entire wall, and I wonder if it’s a hologram or just a normal TV. I snoop through a few drawers but find nothing of any interest. He has no books, but that’s not really a surprise.
I pad barefoot down the long hallway, peering into the rooms. There are at least two guest bedrooms that look like they belong in a hotel. Luke’s master bedroom has a double king—I’ve never seen a bed so big. I could lie lengthwise across it with my hands stretched high, and still I wouldn’t be able to reach the edges. His clothes are inside a massive walk-in wardrobe that lights up when I walk in. He has suits—at least fifty of them—on racks that spin. Fifty. I can’t picture him in a suit at all, but he must wear them for work. There are a lot of other clothes, all much nicer than the ratty shirts and jeans he’s been wearing for the last few days. And his shoes! Dozens of pairs—dress shoes, work shoes, sandals and sneakers, so many sneakers! I stand there in the brilliant false light, staring at the sea of footwear, and I begin to feel uncomfortable. It puts into perspective my own abysmal collection of attire. I own two pairs of shoes, and I’d thought it was excessive to buy the second pair because they’re black heeled boots and I can’t wear them during the day.
“Having a good snoop?” Luke asks from the doorway and I spin to face him. He must see something in my expression because his smile disappears and he looks just as uncomfortable as I feel. “It’s disgusting, I know,” he says softly. “Work pays for it. I don’t get much of a choice about any of this—they bought my apartment, furnished it and then paid for my wardrobe to be stocked.” Luke walks further into the closet, running his large hands along the fabrics. “Sometimes I want to burn the whole place down. I wouldn’t miss a single thing in it. Isn’t that stupid?”
I shrug. I have no idea what to say.
“Come on. I’m making breakfast.”
“I’ll be there in a minute. I want to snoop some more.”
He leaves me to it. I look at the wardrobe for another minute, then find my way to the bathroom. Along the way I realize that he has no photos. Nothing framed on desks or walls. It seems like an odd absence. I don’t have any photos either, but I’ve never had anything to take a picture of, nor have I ever owned a camera or a house like this, one that’s begging for a few memories and a bit of life.
The bathroom has a glorious tub set into the floor. It’s deep and wide and I can see spa nozzles. It’s right up against the window, and the view from up this high is dizzying. Lying in that bath you’d be able to see the sky. His cabinet holds toothpaste, aftershave, deodorant and—condoms. I feel a blush creep up my neck as I survey just how many he has. Like four whole boxes of the things! I shut the cabinet with distaste, feeling even more uncomfortable. What the hell am I doing in the apartment of a 26-year-old man who I don’t know from a bar of soap? A man who is an adult with a real job, lots of money and a raging sex life? It’s about as far from where I thought I’d be four days ago as I can imagine. I am an uneducated, inexperienced child who’s never even had a friend, let alone a boyfriend.
I walk out of the marble bathroom and into the marble kitchen. Luke is intent on his cooking, and he seems pretty good at it. He has the practiced air of someone who is at ease with food. Expensive implements are whirling, things are sizzling on the frying pan and the smell is so delectable that my mouth waters. I am intimately acquainted with hunger. Jobs at restaurants or cafés have been good because they usually come with free food. So sitting here and having him cook for me is a luxury without compare.
Sitting on a bench stool I say, “You have enough condoms to supply a nation of sex addicts.”
He stops chopping and looks into my eyes. Slowly he smiles. “Well at least you can’t say I’m irresponsible.”
I snort. “I don’t feel any less grossed out by you, that’s for sure.”
“Music,” he says, but not to me. “Blue and white.”
Music starts to play from speakers, something I’ve never heard that’s fun and lively. “Blue and White?” I ask, assuming this must be the name of the band.
“I’m synesthetic,” he explains. “Means I remember things in color and shape and texture. Blue and white music for me is upbeat, something with a lot of bass, stuff that makes you want to dance. I programmed my sound system to understand color cues.”
I feel thrilled by this insight. My eidetic memory is rare, but so is Luke’s synesthesia. The percentage of people who have true synesthesia is roughly 0.05.
“You know apparently everyone was once synesthetic?” I tell him. “Back when the various parts of our brains were all connected. Now our brains are essentially separate, so you’re really rare. It means your brain will have to work harder to make connections, but I imagine it must be beautiful in that head of yours.”
Luke smiles. He watches me, lost in thought.
“What color am I?” I ask. If he says red, I might die.
“Sort of … bluey greeny, with darker edges. Smooth and clear.”
I think about that and find that I like it. “What other things have color?”
“Everything. It’s how I remember names, places, streets … everything. Your color might change if my thoughts of you change, but I highly doubt they will.”
I’m not sure what this means. I decide not to ask, unsure if it would be worse if his thoughts about me were positive or negative. I peer around the kitchen and spot a spectacular collection of wine, rows and rows and rows. I jump off the stool and inspect it, running my fingers along the bottles. At the end of the Wall of Wine is the pantry. This is as big as his oversized wardrobe. I wander inside and am met by a wave of smell. Spices and herbs line an entire shelf. Bottles and jars and containers full of bright colors and various textured items. He has so much fresh food, and it is this, finally, that makes me understand how rich he must be. Even with the apartment, the car, the furniture—he still could have been a normal, middle-class citizen. It is the food that’s truly rare.
It’s different, too. It seems to me that where the clothes and the furnishings are decided for him, and endured because he doesn’t really know what he wants, the food is something that he is careful with, selective and precise. There is reverence, here in these shelves. And that is forgivable. I can allow him this gross excess in the face of all the starvation in the world, simply because I am a girl who loves it when people love.
I backtrack to the entrance of the pantry and lean against the doorway, watching him. He’s lost in the food and the music. I realize I want to play for him, and I have never wanted to play in front of anyone, not since I first started teaching myself. “What are you making?” I ask softly.
“Poison,” he replies. After a moment he smiles. “That’s what Mom always used to reply when we asked her what she was cooking.”
My nose crinkles but I am suddenly immersed in imagining his family. He has a lovely mother, I bet. Perfect. She scolds him and encourages him, and cooks him anything he wants. She doesn’t let him stay up too late, because he has school in the morning, and she helps him with his homework, and watches all of his sports games. He probably has a big family. Two brothers and a sister they all adore. His father is a strong man who works hard—maybe he was a prosecutor before Luke, per
haps it’s a family business. They sit down to dinner together every night and laugh over inside jokes.
“Tell me about them—about your family,” I implore.
And just like that he is cold and unreachable. “They’re not worth mentioning.”
I draw a breath, wishing I could go back to when he had a happy, perfect family. Now I know it can’t be true—not with an expression like that one. I watch him dish up the food and take it to the big glass dining table. He glances at me and gives a crooked smile. “Sorry, but really, they’re not. Come and eat.”
I sit down and dig in, and good god—it’s the best meal I’ve ever had. “Luke! Delicious poison!”
“Pesto baked eggs, prosciutto and asparagus, baked peaches with mint yoghurt and chocolate crepes to finish. Plus a really good cup of coffee.”
“I might have to move in if you cook like this every meal.”
“I intend on it.”
I look up, unsure if he’s serious. He’s looking at me calmly. “Luke …”
“Josi. I have two spare bedrooms. I have too much space to deal with. I have no one to cook for. All I want is a roommate, no strings attached.”
I get back to my breakfast so that I don’t have to reply. His words have made me yearn. And I have never known an element of yearning that has not ended in disappointment. I have to stop my mind from going to the place where I live a life with delicious food and deep baths and music that comes on when you say a color. That life is too absurd, too wonderful.
“So what are your questions?” I ask. Jeez, it must be bad if I seek out questions about the blood moon to avoid another topic.
Luke jumps up and jogs over to a bench. He presses a few buttons and then the contents of his tablet are flashed across a massive white wall. I am suddenly faced with a larger-than-life list of questions.
“Jesus. Did you have to write them all down? I feel like I’m being interrogated.”
“Sorry. I just didn’t want to forget. I don’t have to ask them if you don’t want.”
I sigh and gesture for him to go ahead.
“Have you tried any medications to stop the transformation?”
The word transformation makes me think of lycanthropy. That would be fun. I wish I were a werewolf. “Yep. Loads. Each year I try something different, usually a lot stronger. Never makes a difference. I can be knocked out and semi-comatose and I’ll still wake up and go on a rampage.”
“Okay. Could this have anything to do with the fact that you haven’t had the cure?”
“I don’t see how. Unless we believe the propaganda.”
“I reckon we should look into it. Do you know why you were never cured?”
“Nope.”
“Definitely worth finding out. How old were you when this started?”
“I can’t remember exactly. In the beginning I’d feel really aggressive all day, and I’d have memory loss after, but over the years I started forgetting entire chunks of time. The first years I can remember feeling really bad were probably around ten years ago.”
“So you were about eight. Okay …” Luke taps the tablet and images appear beneath the glass. He starts to make notes about what I’m saying. “The next thing we need to do is make a timeline. I need you to tell me what crimes you’ve committed, what the year for each was, and the location of them. I’ll jot it all down.”
He really does sound like a prosecutor now, and I feel awash with weariness. My memories of the nights when the moon turns red are like fragments, hazy dreamlike things—probably how normal people remember everything. Usually my memories are crystal clear pictures. But the blood moon memories are unnerving half images and fractured pieces.
Suddenly I feel a touch on my hand. I’m still holding my fork, but Luke places his fingers over my knuckles, gently pressing on them until I release my tight grip and relax my hand. I look up and meet his green gaze.
“This is work,” he says softly. “It’s unemotional, clinical work. You don’t need to relive anything. All you need to do is recount the pictures you see. Understand?”
I breathe out and nod, feeling his words reach somewhere inside and calm me. I start from the beginning, doing as he says and recounting pictures. This is what I’ve done my entire life. Everything in my world is a picture, an image I recall in finite detail. This is the same. Separating the two parts of my brain, I start to speak, trusting that he can keep up with me.
I sort through the images, starting from all those years ago when I woke up naked and shivering and nearly dead for the first time. The days after that were the worst of my life. I had no idea what to expect—I was experiencing the sickness, the bruising, the fevers and aches and bleeding all for the first time. Afterwards I became aware, in future years I made preparations, but in the beginning it was a vivid, impossible nightmare of horror.
I become possessed by the pictures of what I’ve done. I tell him everything I can see, all the pieces I can pull out of my head. I try to stay separate from them.
Afterwards he starts to ask questions. Hundreds of them. He is so thorough, so precise. He wants details even I have never considered, and I am amazed by him, even as I’m sickened by the activity. I assume he must be good with details because of his work—he is writing everything down, storing it in his tablet. For the first time in my life, I have given someone the pictures in my head, and he has kept them in a way that makes them real.
*
I feel mortified. Dirty. “Can I have a bath?” I ask abruptly. It is late afternoon and we’ve been talking for hours.
Luke nods, distracted and still focused on the notes he’s taken. He has that line in the middle of his eyebrows. He gets it when he’s concentrating, I’ve learned. He jogs to the bathroom and starts the water running, then comes back and heads for the kitchen once more. He chops and prepares food, and all the while he frowns, miles away and utterly lost in the words I’ve spoken.
I watch his broad shoulders and note the tense shape of them. “What are you thinking?”
He looks up, his expression clear and calm. “I’m thinking we need to go to these crime scenes and find our proof.”
And this, I think, is more frightening than anything either of us has said all day.
The bath is as spectacular as I hoped. My aching body sinks into the hot water with a strange agony of delight. It’s so hot that it burns, but I like it; I like the thought that it’s scalding everything away. The lights beyond the window twinkle and I stare at them, letting my eyes go blurry so the colors dance and sway. I wonder if this is how Luke sees the world—colorful and bright and sparkling. I want to get inside his head and see how it works, see what he thinks and feels and hides. I want to see myself through his eyes, and I want to see his family and his cooking and his job. I don’t know him at all, but I want to, and that makes me nervous.
He’s so calm about all of this because of his cure. His brain isn’t functioning in the correct way anymore, so it’s wrongly interpreting meeting a murderer as something that’s not too bad. Perhaps his fear receptors have short-circuited, or his logic centers. The thought is a sad and disappointing one. I wonder what he’d be like if he was normal. I also wonder what he’d do if I punched him in the face for no reason. Because he certainly wouldn’t get angry. He wouldn’t get annoyed, or want to hurt me back. He doesn’t have a fight response anymore—only a flight one.
I know all of this. I remind myself every day. It’s why I never get attached to anyone—how could I possibly respect a drone, or trust their emotions?
It’s just that … Luke’s different, somehow. He’s sort of … more normal than anyone else I’ve met. Does any of this mean I could stand to live with him? Normal or not, he is still a drone and I am still a monster.
But, but… baths. And food.
Once I’ve blissed out in the bath for a super long time and the water’s getting cold, I climb out and look around for a towel. There’s not one in sight, not even Luke’s towel.
Openin
g the door a crack, I peer out. “Luke?”
“Towels are in the cupboard, Josi,” he calls from the kitchen.
“Which cupboard? I can’t see any …”
“It’s just inside the door there.”
“There are no cupboards—trust me, I’m looking.”
Luke jogs to the bathroom and I jerk back inside. “There’s a cupboard right in front of you. You just have to press the wall and it swings open.”
I start pressing the wall in random places but nothing happens. “It’s not working!”
“Smartest chick I know and she can’t even open a cupboard. I’m coming in.”
“No!” I shriek. “Don’t you dare!”
“Do you want a towel or not?”
“Not that badly! I’ll stand here until I drip dry.”
I hear him laugh and the door starts to open. “Stay to the left and I won’t look, I promise.”
“If you do, I’ll kill you.” I stand to the left and he walks straight into me. “Luke!” I scream in hot shame. He jerks around so that his back is to me, but I did not miss the moment of wide-eyed shock as he walked straight into my naked body. He bursts out laughing.
“You said left!” I hiss.
“I meant my left, not your left.”
“You’re an asshole. You did that on purpose, didn’t you?”
“No!” he protests, but he can’t stop laughing.
No one has seen me naked before. I mean, I can only assume people saw me naked as a baby, but not since then. I’ve barely seen me naked, since looking at my body makes me kind of ashamed.
My gut feels heavy. “Are you laughing because … because my body is … funny or stupid or something?”
“What?” Luke freezes, laughter cut off immediately. He looks like he’s itching to turn around and look at me, but I’m so mortified that I can only shrink back against the wall, as far from him as possible. “Josi, no,” he says firmly. “I caught a half-second look, and I didn’t see much, but what I did see was … You’re … I mean, you look …”
“Okay, don’t say it!” I interrupt. “Just get me the damn towel.”