Mystery Girl: A Novel by David Gordon Read Free Book Online

the dark, crouched under the dogshit tree, and my already slanted lefty scrawl had wandered all over the page, at times crossing its own tracks. “Um, OK, it was the oldies. Al Green Is Love, I think.” I was proud of this, naming the record, how many detectives could pull that off? But Lonsky stopped me again.
    “No.” He opened one eye, like a whale peering over the waterline. “Put the notes away.”
    Confused, I did so. Did this mean I was fired? Didn’t he want to hear my exact list of what she ate for dinner?
    “Now,” he said, “shut your eyes.”
    “What? Why?” I felt a little panicked. “She fried vegetables with chicken.”
    “Please, just do it,” he said calmly, like a doctor about to sting a patient. “Just sit back, relax, and shut your eyes. I will shut mine too,” he added reassuringly.
    I lowered my eyelids gingerly, sneaking a shuttered glimpse through the lashes. I settled into the chair and pretended to relax, like the reluctant birthday boy at a magic show.
    “Now then,” he went on, in that deep, rolling tone, “tell me everything you see. Don’t worry about remembering. It doesn’t matter. Don’t worry if it seems pointless. Just tell me what you see now as you recall it. Tell me the story of tonight.”
    So I did. I closed my eyes, and let myself drift, forgetting the details of where I was at the moment, and seeing what came back of that distant time, an hour or two ago, which now seemed no closer or further away than my childhood or the brief, bright flickers that remained from last night’s dreams. In recollection, time is no longer a line. It is a circle and you are at the center, with all of your memories playing around you, rotating in and out of reach. As if tucked in bed, I told him a story, about the house, the light, the smell of dogshit, the curtains, the song. I told him about the palm trees scratching themselves like insects in the dry wind. I told him about watching her cook and how the smell made me think of another warm night long ago with my wife, before she was my wife. I told him about the strange freedom of loneliness I’d found without her, about the lonely freedom of estrangement. How long had it been since I went out, alone, at night, like a stray, with no one at home to know or ask where I had been? I told him about the shut window, the hand moving between her legs, the shock, the fear, the staring eyes.
    “Are you sure?” he asked me suddenly, breaking my trance. My own eyes popped open. He was leaning forward, hands on the armsof his chair. “Are you sure her eyes were closed when she was dancing but open when she masturbated?”
    “Um…” I hesitated, while he waited, staring at me intently, as if a great deal depended on this point. Was this a vital clue?
    “Yes,” I said, seeing it all again, clear as day. “Yes, I’m certain.”
    He smiled and leaned back, nodding. “Very good. See, I told you. You see everything, whether you know it or not. It’s all there.” He retied his belt and folded his hands across the meridian. “Now I wonder, did she want to escape into darkness when she danced but expose herself to the light of her own eyes when she masturbated? Or, on the contrary, was she hoping to connect with herself, to shut her eyes in order to turn within and inhabit her own moving body while she was dancing and then to see herself as an image, a reflection, an erotic object, when she arrived at her orgasm?”
    Did it matter? I wondered. Was this what he sent me to learn? What mystery could it solve, what crime? Where was the victim, and who the criminal, besides me?

12
    LONSKY PAID ME, ANOTHER FRESH hundred-dollar bill in an envelope, and instructed me to be back at my post, outside the cottage, by nine the next morning. I left with a strange sense of accomplishment, but by the time my car had taken me a few blocks, my mood began to sink. Sailing past the other travelers, arm’s distance in their cars, swimming through the lights