After that it all moves too quickly, this almost violent desire caused by the care in a crescent of dirt. I’m half off the bed at one point, my head banging against the floor, then on my hands and knees. I flip him onto his back, riding his dick desperately because I need this release, need . . .

He brushes away tears I didn’t realize were rolling down my cheeks with one thumb and strums my clit with the other, and I buckle against him as the orgasm hits me like a cleansing wave.

Chapter 17

Theo

NOT THINKING TOO DEEPLY BEFORE I ACT HAS LED ME DOWN some pretty bizarre paths in life.

Committing crimes with my dad. Lying to get hired at some hot-shit company. Buying a house with someone I’m not married to while having no real knowledge of how owning property works. Trying to siphon money from rich people, and getting caught.

Searching for my neighbor’s mom’s body so I can move it to a safe location.

I’d thought about the first time I handled a dead body as I shoveled up humid mounds of dirt looking for Yolanda Green. My own mom had been watching back then, blood-spattered and angry at me, like I hadn’t just saved her from being the one on the receiving end of a shotgun blast.

Mom and I don’t talk about that.

Ever.

We don’t talk about how I was seventeen and had to leave town abruptly at the beginning of senior year. That’s when I moved in with my dad and learned some things from him that would have come in handy with burying that first body, or maybe would’ve put a stop to the situation before it got that far.

I don’t know where Sydney’s mother is, but I believe that Sydney put her in the ground. I could be wrong, but I’ve been wrong about worse things.

What I’m not sure about is what happened after I got to her apartment. She wanted me, I wanted her, but maybe it was just one of those weird emotional pressure-valve-release things and she was happy for it to end there.

We both passed out after that first round of sex, waking up hours later to the sound of afternoon noise on the block. She got up and had a cigarette, brushed her teeth, and then we did it again, more slowly this time but just as intense. Then we slept some more, until she pulled me into the shower with her after we lay sweating on her bed for a while. In her clawfoot bathtub, she stood naked and soapy beneath my hands, dodging the shower spray because she didn’t want to get her braids wet as she kissed me.

It seemed like some surreal dream outside of everything that’s happened over the last few days, but now we’re back in reality. My body aches from grave-robbing and weird sexual positions and she’s sitting across the table from me, mouth full of guava tart and wide eyes darting back and forth, everywhere but my direction, as she chews.

The air conditioner whines in the background and I fumble around for something to say. I don’t know the banging-after-attempting-to-hide-a-body-for-you etiquette.

“This is awkward as hell,” she finally says, then takes another bite of her tart and pulls her feet up onto her chair so her knees press against the table and block her chest from view. She’s wearing a thin-strapped white tank top and black capri sweats that are both loose and formfitting.

I nod in agreement. “Definitely at the top of the weird-first-dates list for me.”

She chuckles, crumbs dusting her smile as her gaze finally lands on my face.

“Mine too. I guess.” She sighs. “I think . . . I need to talk about the weird week I’ve been having. If not finding my—anything in the garden hasn’t led you to believe I’m crazy, then maybe you’re the only person I can talk about this with. I’ve actually managed to sleep for more than a couple of hours, and my brain is somewhat functional, though I wish it wasn’t.”

“Try me.”

“You saw the Con Ed dude who tried to get into my house,” she says quietly. Her eyes widen. “Didn’t you? That happened, right?”

“Yes. I saw him, I saw the van, and the entire situation was shady. Look, just tell me what you think is going on. I’ll believe you, okay?”

A sliver of this is bullshitting; I don’t know her that well and any number of mental illnesses could be at play. I don’t think that’s the case, but even if it is, she believes whatever she’s about to tell me, and we can take it from there.

She twists her mouth. “And if . . . if what I say is crazy, will you tell me that? And not just call the cops on me?”

I nod. “I won’t call the police.”

She takes a deep breath. “There’s been other stuff, besides that. Two days before the Con Ed guy, I got into an Uber, and the driver locked the doors and drove me to a semi-deserted street. He started saying wild shit about being an ex-cop and civilizing the neighborhood and—I don’t remember everything. It was terrifying.”

My stomach tightens with the sudden fear of what can happen to a woman trapped in the back of a stranger’s car. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t know you,” she says. “This week has been like three years long, but this was before you even came here to have coffee.”

She could have disappeared before I’d even had the chance to get to know her.

“Plus, there’s no record of the driver in my account.” Her hands shake a little now and she puts the half-eaten tart down. “Everything started to happen so fast that I couldn’t keep up. That same day, Preston got arrested on some bullshit. And then Mr. Perkins was gone. Drea hasn’t responded to my texts and calls. I heard noise upstairs in her apartment a couple of nights ago, and when I went up there, there were bedbugs on her bed. A lot of them.”

Her increasingly speedy words crash to a halt as she shudders.

“They took the bodega. And then the garden. Everything is . . .” She presses her palms to the outside corners of her eyes and pulls back, stretching the skin while blinking rapidly. She’s trying to prevent another deluge of tears.

“What do you think this all means?” I ask, sounding calmer than I feel. I’m getting that feeling of something bad heading our way.

“I don’t know,” she says. “It feels like someone is messing with me. Not just me. With all of us. But that doesn’t make sense, does it?”

I’m trying to piece together the random things that don’t seem random to her and figure out how to respond when a familiar howling bark comes from outside the house.

“Count,” Sydney says, the tart dropping onto her plate as her body sags with relief. “Thank god.”

She hops up and jogs out of the apartment toward the front door, and I follow at a slower pace; if I’d jogged after her, I would have rammed right into her when she stops short at the top of the outer stairs.

The moving truck comes into view as I step out behind her. There’s a dark-haired middle-aged woman and her blond-fading-to-gray husband standing out front as movers cart their belongings inside. He’s wearing khaki shorts and a button-up shirt and she has on a breezy, expensive dress. Neither of them would look out of place at a gathering at Kim’s parents’ house.

They have a dog on a leash, an old hound who looks up at Sydney and tries to run to her, only to get tugged back.

Sydney slips into flip-flops and starts walking slowly down the stairs. “Count?”

The dog strains toward her again and the woman tugs the leash hard enough that he whines sharply.

“Down, boy,” the man says. “Be a good boy.”

“Are you our new neighbor?” the woman asks with that slightly condescending smile Kim’s mom always used to give me.

“I’m Mr. Perkins’s neighbor,” Sydney replies. “He’s coming home today.”

The couple look at each other, seemingly baffled, before looking back at Sydney. “We own this house,” the woman says. “Our daughter Melissa moved here first, since she was starting school, and then we decided we wanted an adventure in the city, too.”

“Brooklyn is the number one most happening place to live now, even more exclusive than Manhattan,” the husband adds, his voice a parody of a country club Chad that isn’t a parody. “All of our friends are just flocking here, and we didn’t want to be the last ones!”

They laugh, and I just watch them, my whole body feeling heavy as my brain tries to fight what my gut is screaming at me: This isn’t right. This definitely isn’t right. They’re just moving into someone’s house. Mr. Perkins’s house. The man I possibly saw something happen to, and who I was told was visiting his family.

“No,” Sydney says. “Mr. Perkins is coming back for the block party. And that’s his dog.”

The man looks taken aback. “We got this dog at the shelter. Someone had abandoned it—you know some people don’t like dogs. Reminds them of when they could be chased down and returned to slavery. That’s what I heard.”

“It really is a shame,” his wife says, frowning. “The dogs didn’t do anything to deserve that kind of hatred.”

“Whoa,” I cut in, but Country Club Chad talks right over me.

“As for Mr. Perkins, trust me, he was paid more than enough to be able to move somewhere else. Wherever he wanted. I don’t see what the problem is.”

“He wouldn’t move without telling me or anyone else,” Sydney says angrily. “And where would he go? This is his neighborhood. We’re his neighbors! He wouldn’t just leave us.”