Here and Gone by Haylen Beck (10)

11

AUDRA DRIFTED IN and out of sleep on slow, sickly waves. Every time the darkness took her, a jagged dream shook her loose again. Over and over, she jerked awake on the bunk’s thin mattress, terrified, disoriented, pain clamoring from her shoulders and wrists. The night dragged its hours out until she lost all sense of their passing. By the time dawn light crept through the skylight outside her cell, the quiet of the place had grown so heavy that she thought she might be crushed by it.

At one point in the darkest hours she had roused from her shallow sleep to see that Whiteside was watching her from just beyond the bars. She had lain there, frozen, afraid to move in case he came at her once more. After a minute or two, keeping his silence, he had turned and left the custody suite.

Whiteside had reminded Audra first of her father, but now he made her think of her husband. She remembered the nights she awoke in their bed to find Patrick sitting at the other side of the room, watching her. Only once did she make the mistake of asking him what he was doing; he had crossed the room in the time it took for her to gasp a breath, grabbed her by the hair, and dragged her from the bed. As she lay on the floor, Patrick leaning over her, he told her it was his apartment, his bedroom, and he didn’t have to explain himself to her.

They had met ten years ago. Audra Ronan had been working at the gallery on East 19th Street – it was named Block Beautiful after the cluster of townhouses it nestled between – for six months, using her evenings to paint. She had enjoyed the job, walking each lunchtime to Union Square to eat whatever she’d been able to afford to pack for herself. The pay was terrible, but what she earned on the occasional sales commission gave her enough to get by. Sometimes enough to go to the big Barnes & Noble at the northern end of the square, or south along Broadway to the Strand Book Store, to treat herself to something from the art section. All the while, she cultivated contacts with the agents of the artists whose work passed through. A couple of them had seen her paintings, told her to keep them in mind when she felt she was ready to start selling.

But somehow she never seemed to be ready. Every piece began with hope that this time the vision in her head would make it onto the canvas unspoiled, but it never did. Her friend Mel told her she was too much of a perfectionist, that she was a classic case of the Dunning-Kruger effect: those with the most talent can’t recognize it in themselves, and those with the least can’t see how little they have. Audra wasted hour upon hour reading articles about the Dunning-Kruger studies, and imposter syndrome, trying to convince herself she could do this. In one piece she found a quote from Shakespeare’s As You Like It:

She printed it out in big letters and pinned it to the wall of her little studio apartment.

Audra had tried cocaine because she’d heard it boosted confidence. She’d smoked weed at college, just like everyone else, and she imagined cocaine wouldn’t be much different. But she found it made her nauseous, the crackling in her brain too much to bear, so she had stopped using as quickly as she had started. She still smoked the occasional joint, but not often. Sometimes it relaxed her, but other times it made her jittery and nervous.

Instead, she drank.

It had started at college, all those parties, and she always seemed to be the last one standing. She can hold her liquor, they’d say. After college, she dialed it back a little, kept it for weekends. But as time went on, and more failed canvasses stacked up in the corner of her studio, she started drinking more. Soon, it was every night.

But she kept it under control. At least, that’s what she told herself.

‘Just give some of the pieces to an agent,’ Mel had said over and over, ‘see what happens. What’s the worst that could happen?’

Rejection could happen. The agent could tell Audra her work was good, but not good enough. And she knew, if that occurred, what little confidence she had would be stripped away. So she kept trying for the perfect piece that never came.

Patrick Kinney had come to the opening night of a new exhibition. Audra had been applying a red sticker to a large canvas on which someone had just dropped twenty-five thousand when a smooth voice spoke over her shoulder.

‘Excuse me, Miss, is this one sold?’

She turned to the voice and saw a tall and slender man, perhaps ten years her senior, in a suit so well made it seemed almost a part of him. When he smiled at her and said, ‘Miss?’, she realized she had been frozen there, staring, for some time.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, feeling heat on her neck and cheeks. ‘Yes, it sold a few minutes ago.’

‘Pity,’ he said. ‘I like it.’

Audra cleared her throat and said, ‘Maybe I can show you something else?’

‘Maybe,’ he said, and she was struck by the way he looked her in the eye, his utter confidence, and whether she realized it at the time or not, she was his from then on. She had to force herself to look away.

‘Are you thinking of an investment, or do you just want something for your wall?’

‘Both,’ he said. ‘I moved into my apartment six months ago and I still don’t have a single thing to look at, other than the TV or the window.’

He had a place in the East Village full of bare walls, he explained as she walked him around the gallery. Patrick bought two pieces that night, totaling forty-two thousand. He left with a receipt and her telephone number.

She got drunk on their first date. Half a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc before she left her apartment to meet him. For the nerves, she told herself. At some point in the evening, she’d had to excuse herself and go to the restaurant’s bathroom to throw up. The next morning she awoke in her own bed with a thunderous hangover and sickly, greasy shame.

That’s that, she thought. I blew it. She was surprised, then, that Patrick called in the afternoon and asked when he could see her again.

Four months later, he proposed, and she accepted, knowing even as they embraced that it was madness. She caught the first glimpse of his true nature a week after that when he arranged an introduction to his parents at their Upper West Side apartment.

Patrick came out to her loft in Brooklyn that evening, let himself in with the key she had given him. Audra remained behind the folding screen that separated her bed from the rest of the place, her clothes hung on rails or folded in wire baskets. She had no money for real furniture. Her nerves had jangled all afternoon in anticipation of the dinner. Would his parents approve? After all, they were from old money, while Audra’s mother came from the wilds of Pennsylvania, her father from Ohio, neither of them with a college education. Patrick’s parents would smell the poor on her and take their son aside, tell him he could do better.

She had chosen her clothes carefully. With three good dresses to her name, four decent pairs of shoes, and only a scattering of costume jewelry, there hadn’t been a huge range to choose from, but still, she had given it much consideration.

Audra trembled as she stepped around the screen, doing her best to move with the elegance that she had always felt eluded her.

Patrick stood quite still in the center of the room, staring, his face blank.

When she could stand it no longer, she asked, ‘Well? Do I pass?’

Another pause, and Patrick said, ‘No.’

Audra felt something crack inside.

‘Do you have something else?’ he asked, flexing his hands, his face hardening.

‘I like this,’ she said. ‘I like the color, it’s a good fit, and—’

‘Audra, you know how important tonight is to me,’ he said, rubbing his eyes with his fingertips. ‘Now, what else have you got?’

She was about to argue, but something in his voice warned her against it. ‘Come and look,’ she said.

Patrick followed her to the sleeping area on the other side of the screen, and the two dresses still on the rack. She lifted them from the rail, held each in turn against her body.

‘I’ve seen these before,’ he said. ‘You wear these all the time.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Audra said, ‘I don’t have the money to spend on clothes. I make the best of what I have.’

Patrick looked at his watch, a chunky Breitling tonight, and said, ‘There’s no time to buy anything else. Jesus, Audra, you knew how much I wanted to impress them. And I have to take you looking like that.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, holding back tears. ‘We can cancel, say I’m sick.’

‘Don’t be stupid,’ he said, and her teeth clicked together as she closed her mouth. ‘Come on, we’ll be late.’

He hailed a cab outside, and they did not speak for the entire journey into Manhattan. She stood on the sidewalk while he paid the driver, facing the end of the block, watching the trees of Central Park sway in the evening breeze. Patrick took her arm, led her to the stone steps of his parents’ building.

As they rode the elevator up to the penthouse, he leaned in and whispered, ‘Don’t drink too much. Don’t make a fool of me.’

In the end, the evening wasn’t entirely unpleasant. Patrick turned on his charm in the way that he always did, and his mother gushed over Audra, how pretty she was, and didn’t she dress well? And the ring – just beautiful, where’s it from? How much did it cost? Oh, and you’re Irish too? Where are your people from?

Audra made the one glass of wine last all night, barely wetted her lips with it, while Patrick and his mother emptied two bottles between them.

Patrick’s father – Patrick Senior – drank only water, barely spoke through the evening, offering only a few disjointed comments here and there. Instead, his mother Margaret steered the conversation between occasional barks at the help. And how Patrick gazed at his mother. For a moment, Audra wished he would stare at her like that, but she found the idea too uncomfortable to let it linger in her mind for long.

Afterward, Patrick brought Audra back to his apartment – he had never spent the night at her place – and led her straight to his bedroom. He took her with such force that she had to bite her knuckle to stifle a cry. When he was done, sweating and breathless, he rolled off and held her hand.

‘You did well tonight,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’

While he slept, Audra decided to call off the engagement. Just walk away. She hated the hard bead of self-doubt that he had found in her and worked so skillfully. A lifetime of that? No thank you.

She spent the next fortnight trying to figure out a way to break it off, to find the right moment, the right place. But Patrick was so charming and kind those two weeks that thoughts of splitting went to the back of her mind. And then she realized her period was late, and there was no further thought given to leaving.

Almost twelve years between there and here, her bed in a Brooklyn studio gone, a bunk in an Arizona cell in its place.

She thought: Did Patrick do this? Could he?

Audra supposed Sheriff Whiteside must have been here all night, keeping an eye on her. The camera up in the corner had remained on her all that time, its little red light staring at her. She had turned away from it, but she felt it burning like a laser between her shoulder blades. Now, as the custody suite’s shadows sharpened, she lay on her back, watching it watching her.

Then the light went out.

Audra stayed quite still for a few seconds, waiting for it to come back on again. When it didn’t, she sat upright, ignoring the fresh flares of pain as her feet dropped to the floor. An alarm sounded somewhere inside of her, telling her this was wrong, this shouldn’t be. The camera should not be switched off. Why would it—?

Before she could finish the question in her mind, the door to the custody suite opened, and Whiteside entered, followed by Collins. Audra’s hands gripped the edge of the bunk as her heart quickened. Whiteside marched to the cell door, unlocked it, slid it aside.

‘What?’ Audra asked, her voice rising in fear.

Whiteside stood aside to let Collins enter, then followed her inside.

‘What do you want?’

Neither of the police officers spoke as they approached the bunk. Audra’s hands went up, a reflex, an act of surrender.

‘Please, what do-?’

In one motion, Collins took Audra’s arm, hoisted her up, and threw her to the cell floor. Audra sprawled there, her palms and elbows stinging. She put her hands over her head, ready for a blow from either of them.

‘What do you-?’

Collins grabbed the collar of Audra’s T-shirt, pulled her up onto her knees. Audra looked up at Whiteside’s blank face, opened her mouth to speak again, to plead, but Collins gripped the back of her neck, forced her head down, so she could only see the sheriff from the waist up.

Enough to see him draw a revolver from behind his back.

‘Oh God, no.’

He pressed the muzzle against the top of her head.

‘Oh, God, please, don’t.’ Audra’s bladder ached. ‘Please don’t, please don’t, please—’

He cocked the pistol, the metallic sound of it bouncing between the walls and bars. Collins tightened her grip on Audra’s neck.

Audra raised her hands as if in prayer. ‘Oh, Jesus, please, no, please, don’t—’

A single hard SNAP! as Whiteside pulled the trigger, the hammer falling on an empty chamber.

Audra cried out, a long guttural wail. Collins released her neck.

Whiteside returned the pistol to his waistband.

Audra collapsed to the floor as they left. She curled in on herself, knees to her chest, hands clasped over her head. In the dim early light, even though she didn’t believe, she prayed.