What I Loved

Violet said loudly. "Who? What do you mean?"
    "I went to see Teddy. We were going out. He opened the door and he was all covered in blood. At first I thought it was a joke, you know, a trick." Mark blinked, then looked at us steadily. "But then I saw him— Me—on the floor."
    I felt as if my brain were rising inside my head. "You knew that he was dead?"
    Mark nodded.
    Violet's voice was steady. "What happened then?"
    "He said he'd kill me if I said anything, and I left. I was scared, so I took the train to Mom's."
    "Why didn't you go to the police?"
    "I told you. I was too scared."
    "You didn't seem scared in Minneapolis," I said. "Or Nashville. You seemed to enjoy Giles's company. I waited for you, Mark, but you never came."
    Mark's voice rose. "I had to go along. I couldn't get away. Don't you see? I had to do it. It wasn't my fault. I was afraid."
    "You have to talk to the police now," Violet said.
    "I can't. Teddy will kill me."
    Violet stood up. She disappeared and returned a few moments later.
    "You have to talk to the police now," she said. "Or they'll come and get you. Call this number. The detectives left it for you."
    "He needs a lawyer, Violet," I said. "He can't go without a lawyer."
    I was the one who called Lazlo's cousin's husband, Arthur Geller, and it turned out that he was expecting the call. When Mark went in to the police station to speak to the police the next day, he would have an attorney by his side. Violet told Mark that she would pay his legal bills. Then she corrected herself, "No. Bill will pay. It's his money."
    Violet let Mark sleep in his room that night, but she told him that after that he would have to find somewhere else to live. Then she turned to me and asked if I would sleep on the sofa. She said, "I don't want to be alone with Mark."
    Mark looked aghast. "That's stupid," he said. "Leo can sleep at home."
    Violet turned to him. She lifted her palms toward his face as though she were warding off a blow. "No," she said sharply. "No. I'm not going to stay alone with you. I don't trust you."
    By posting me as night sentry on the sofa, Violet wanted to make it clear that life was not going on as usual, but my presence wasn't enough to break the spell of the everyday. The hours that followed Mark's arrival were disquieting, not because anything happened—but because nothing did. I listened to the sound of him brushing his teeth and to his voice wishing me and Violet good night in a curiously cheerful tone and then to his shufflings in his room before he settled down to sleep. The sounds were ordinary, and because they were ordinary I found them terrible. The simple fact that Mark was in the apartment seemed to alter everything in it, to transform the table and chairs, the night-light in the hallway, and the red sofa where I had made a temporary bed. Most unsettling was the fact that the change could be felt but not seen. It was as though a veneer had settled over everything, a banal mask that clung so tightly to the hideous form beneath it that it couldn't be pried off.
    Long after the whole building was quiet with sleep, I lay awake listening to the noises from outside. "He has a good heart, my son." Bill had been standing at the window looking down onto the Bowery when he said those words, and I know that he had believed them, but years before, in the fairy tale he called The Changeling, he had told a story of substitution. I remembered the stolen child lying in his glass coffin. Bill knew, I thought. Somewhere inside him, he knew.
    In the morning, Mark went off with Arthur Geller and spoke to the police. The following day, Teddy Giles was arrested for the murder of Rafael Hernandez and held without bail on Rikers Island while he waited to go to trial. You would think that the dramatic entrance of a witness would have ended the case. But Mark hadn't seen the murder. He had seen a bloody Giles and the dead body of Rafael. It was important, but the D.A. wanted more. The law has to muddle along with facts, and there were few facts. The case was mostly talk—gossip, rumors, and Mark's story. There was little evidence to be gotten from the corpse, because the police hadn't found a whole body in the suitcase. The boy had been cut into pieces, and after months of decaying under water, those fragments of bone, sodden tissue, and teeth had revealed his identity—nothing more. We did find out from the newspapers that Rafael Hernandez wasn't Mexican, and he hadn't been bought by Giles. When