I’m on the verge of tears. “Tell me whatever it is you aren’t telling me,” I say to Mari. “If you don’t, I’m calling the police, and I’ll ask them myself.”
“What would you even ask them?” Mari says. With that question, she takes a seat in one of the two rocking chairs that flank her front door. She looks up at me, and it’s as if her entire demeanor changes right in front of my face. “You going to ask them if the man you’re having an affair with actually exists?”
The way her response so easily spills out of her makes me shiver. “Mari, please. I feel very scared right now. Please just tell me what the hell is going on.”
Mari sighs, and then gestures toward the other rocking chair. “Sit. This might take a minute.”
“I don’t want to sit. I want you to speak.”
“Sit and I will.”
“Just fuckingtellme!” I yell. I can’t take this another second!
Mari’s eyes widen in response to my outburst. “Fine,” she says. “Okay. Well ...”
My body is trembling so much, I have to fold my arms over my chest to give myself some sort of anchor. But I’m not sitting down in this crazy woman’s chair until she tells me what the hell she knows.
“I apologize for what I’m about to tell you. I really do. But you have to understand how bored I get sometimes. Louie pulled me away from Los Angeles out here to the middle of nowhere, and nothing fun ever happens. I could sit in my chair for two solid weeks without speaking to another—”
“Get to the point, Mari,” I say. I can’t take a second more of her rambling.
“Fine,” she says, huffing. “He paid me off.”
My mind takes a moment to wrap around those words and what all they could mean. “Who paid you off? For what?”
“Saint. Cam. Whoever he is. I caught him out there in the road that night he told you there was a police chase. There was no police chase.”
A tear spills down my cheek. I wipe it away angrily, upset that my sadness is breaking through my anger.
“At first, I saw the police lights and thought something actually happened. I almost woke up Louie, but decided I’d just go outside and walk down toward your place to have a look for myself. And that’s when I saw the guy. He was setting out fake police lights in the road. There weren’t any actual cops. No body. Just lights. He had some on his car. He put a couple on a tree out by your house.”
I finally concede and decide to take a seat. I plop down in the rocking chair, afraid my legs won’t hold me up for another second, as I listen to her continue.
“I confronted him. I’m not scared of people, and he was on our road being suspicious, so I asked him what the hell he was doing. I caught him red-handed. I told him I was going to call the cops, and that’s when he came clean. Said he knew you, and reassured me that he was just playing an innocent prank. I didn’t feel comfortable with that, so I demanded to know more. He showed me the lights and offered to show me his identification. Told me he was just there because you’re a writer and that you work better if things happen to you that you’re writing about. Hell, it sounded like a reasonable explanation, and he didn’t seem to be threatening. Promised I could wait out by the road until he left to make sure he didn’t kill you. He said he was just there to give you inspiration for your book. That it’s something you two worked up.”
“He said I knew about it?”
Mari nods. “Yep. I mean, he didn’t go into detail about how much you knew, but he said you asked him to scare you. And like I told you before, I know how it is to be an artist. Sometimes we gotta do things to get the juices flowing. I just figured it was some kind of kink, or a fetish that was between the two of you. I tried to mind my business, but I also wasn’t going to just let some stranger kill you. I did wait until he left.”
I rub my temples with my fingers, attempting to navigate everything she just said. That night was the first night I ever met Saint. He pretended not to know I was a writer. But if what Mari is saying is true and he already knew who I was ... he’s been lying to me this entiretime. This stranger has been lying to me and fucking me, and I have no idea who the hell he is.
“Why didn’t you call the police? Or tellmeabout it?” I am so angry at Mari, but the majority of my anger is with Saint. Or maybe myself.How could I have been so stupid?
“I threatened to. Trust me. I told him to get the hell off my property. But then he went and made an offer I couldn’t refuse.”
“An offer?”
“I believe I told you the first time I met you, before that night even happened with him, that I take any acting job if it pays. He offered to pay me to keep my mouth shut and just go along with his story if you asked me about it.”
I feel like crying. Screaming. “You tookmoneyfrom him? To lie to me?”
“Well, it sounds bad now,” she says. “But that night, it was exciting. And it’s not like I just walked away. I stood there while he was at your place, and he wasn’t there for very long. I made sure he didn’t kill you before I took the money.”
“So generous,” I spit. I am so angry with her, my head is throbbing.
“He paid me to pretend. It seemed like something a writer would get a kick out of, so I didn’t think it would harm you in any way. I love pranks, but I love money more than I love pranks, and when you put the two together with a man that good looking, how do you expect me to turn that down?” She’s looking at me like she’s expecting my forgiveness. My understanding.
“You have no idea what you’ve done,” I say to her. Another tear falls from my eye, and she actually looks remorseful.
