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  Corvus opens the door right as the dog charges again. This time the animal stops, doesn’t pounce, and looks up at Corvus, who’s bleeding from her hand. Whatever movement she makes she makes without breathing. The dog has lipstick prints all over his face, all different shades and colors, panting in place with his entire muscle of a body. She holds her hand out. The dog comes over and licks the cut on Corvus’s hand, whimpering as she comes down low to him on the ground. He whimpers like a puppy. Corvus says, Good boy. Good boy. I love you already.

  She walks downstairs.

  Her eyes grow accustomed to the dark and she can see figures emerging in the room. The dog is no longer panting by her side, but Corvus can faintly hear him banging against walls and yelping somewhere in the house. The pit bull is a little space she owns in the dark, a small truth she uses to calm down, something to focus on and follow around in her mind. Listening to the sound of a door opening with no door to be seen, and with no light to be found, she almost wants to say something.

  Struggling to see, Corvus clenches her fists, bites her lips, and waits for what’s next, breathing so slowly she feels a slight euphoria. Nothing changes for a few minutes: no movements, the large dark ahead remains, every fiber of sound seems imagined while she inhabits herself not moving in place. Corvus crouches to the floor, consciously cracking her knees. She says, There is no place I would rather be.

  Lights flicker on in the basement, a dim then suddenly bright room coming alive. Her eyes can finally see everything. All the girls from outside dancing in the woods are here, ashy from the fire. Some are smiling, some are expressionless and stoned, lined up touching hip to hip only a few feet away from her. Corvus can see empty porn sets being lit up behind them, almost every one filled with clouds of balloons or stale rose petals. Everything is clean and soft and motionless.

  Tim comes walking in through double doors with a camera and tripod in hand, shaking the floorboards, and says, It’s time to clock in.

  Amber steps out from the row, the first of the women to be so bold, and says, Don’t be scared.

  She takes a long time to walk over to Corvus and pets her hand, held inside her own. Her aureoles are small and tan like the rest of her body; her pulse is the softest, warmest ticking. Corvus still hasn’t seen Amber blink once since they first made eye contact, before she suddenly winks at her.

  They lean into each other and whisper back and forth.

  Tim sets up his camera, lighting a cigarette as he aligns the viewfinder with the floating balloons. Some of the girls wave at him but he stares straight ahead to the backdrops, smoking his cigarette, watching it burn.

  After a moment, Corvus nods and steps forward, a blank face. She takes off her shirt and starts to lightly stretch, her shoulder blades rotating like a dancer warming up. Under her breath she says, I fear there is no such thing as being naked.

  There is porn and there is porn and then there is Tim’s method of living with his actors. He claims great success and high Web traffic and that’s why the direct deposits are so large and steady, he says. He preaches high art. I’m always with you, so I know you, I know how to film you, he says. He says this and repeats it like a signature calling card to all the women on set: It’s because I’m always with you, baby. People are watching. Money, money, money!

  Sex becomes entering a room and leaving a room, pounding heartbeats on a schedule. Sex becomes muscle memory. After a few days, Corvus begins to find a rhythm in her new life. Her body surprises her, her mind continues to drift endlessly, and by each day’s end she can hardly describe the way she feels. It is quite possible she feels nothing.

  After settling in, as in her other life, Corvus keeps to herself. What is there for her to talk about anyway? She says, I don’t mind being alone here. The women watch her, and she watches them. Her eyes glaze over. She wears a black ski mask, once a favored prop, casually around the large house in the woods. In her black ski mask, Corvus watches the forest from her balcony as though something is about to arrive, as though something is going to pop out of the woods. She is happy just to feel like she doesn’t want to die.

  Corvus starts with solo videos before working with other women. The other women start requesting to be with her. When Tim is in the scene, Amber is the director. In truth, Amber is a gentler cinematographer, her shots look like photographs, focusing on faces and fingers and soft hands.

  The very first time with Tim, he doesn’t say much. He starts undressing, gives Amber a thumbs-up, and stares at Corvus as though he is speechless. Taking his time, the buttons take forever.

  Corvus looks up at Tim from the bed.

  Tim says, I’m not Perry.

  Corvus at first says nothing. Her face turns white and she loses feeling in parts of her legs, grabbing hold of the headboard. Shut the fuck up, she says. Shut up. Hurry up.

  Amber fires a gun of confetti in the air, the red light of the camera blinks low battery.

  Corvus uses every single breath in her lungs for timing, not making a noise, and for a moment she thinks, hiding safely inside her head, that some things are easy. As easy as falling. Some things she can do.

  CHAPTER 2

  A YEAR LATER, WOOZY WITH INSOMNIA, CORVUS WAKES UP feeling as though she has been living the same day inside the same week inside a dull year, repeated over and over again. Strange routines pace her invisible life. Pornography bores her, but she loves the smell of the giant redwoods and the quiet of the trees. An enormous moon lights the empty patio. She watches the night sky from the kitchen. She hasn’t seen a bird fly by this place in days, and then she finally sees one in the moonlight: she can’t tell what kind of bird it is, but she watches it until it disappears out of view.

  Corvus walks barefoot and yawns. The poise and happiness of her years are gone but she owns a slowness no one could take from her, a rock no one could dare budge, drinking cold chocolate milk straight from the carton, more in her head than anywhere else. The house pipes hum beneath her without her having a sense of them. The lie she tells sometimes is that she’s doing okay, that there is nothing wrong. Most days, there is nothing to say.

  Feeling something larger than belonging to people, something alone and masterful, Corvus makes fists with her toes, clenching her legs and buttocks, as she reaches for the ceiling. Memories blur, soft pain diminishes. Corvus watches the beginning of sunlight glowing in the trees, looks at the garden appearing outside the window. She says, I miss you, baby. She wonders if prayer can somehow exist in all manners of time, an invisible guardian angel who can always relay messages, so he would always be able to know how much she loved him.

  It takes a few moments before Corvus hears someone else’s breathing, and she turns to see Amber sitting on the stairs, half-naked, legs crossed under her oversized Slayer T-shirt.

  Amber asks, You don’t like the light on? Do you mind if I turn the light on?

  Corvus says, I don’t mind. Whatever you want.

  Amber walks closer to Corvus without turning any lights on, sighing on her way over. She rubs Corvus’s neck and looks out to the overgrown gardens. She stands behind her and runs a single finger down her spine.

  She asks, Are you hungry, Corvus, honey?

  Corvus barely nods and says, I could be.

  The garage door trembles as it rolls up flat to the ceiling. Getting into the passenger seat, Corvus unlocks the door for Amber and tilts her seat back. Amber scoots inside, slamming the door, and touches Corvus’s inner thigh. Sunlight creeps in, and the radio turns on with the ignition, a sad pop song. Pebbles shoot up underneath the hood, creating nothing, small vibrations.

  Seat belt.

  Corvus says, Seat belt.

  You know, I’ve never listened to much Slayer, Amber says. Or any Slayer. I don’t know why I love this shirt so much.

  Corvus asks, Never?

  Amber shakes her head, slowly accelerating downhill through the wooded pines to the highway, the only car on the road in all directions for miles. For some reason, Corvus ima
gines elk running alongside the highway with the high speed of the car, racks and heads lowered and tucked down. The trees are being so quickly passed, it’s as if they flicker.

  And then she sees one real elk, only a single one and he’s standing by himself, already a great distance behind them near a steel traffic barrier. The elk appears so large for so few seconds. His head tilts up with the wind, his antlers scratching against the bark of a tree, shaking the branches.

  Amber says, I don’t know why I lie about it.

  For a long stretch of decline after the woods, there are still no other cars, except for a single sixteen-wheeler speeding past them, quickly exiting off the narrow ramp, softly rattling its big chains and cargo. Corvus imagines the cargo under the black tarp, from caged chickens to empty pipes to chemical tanks, unable to stop inventing. She can daydream whole days and live transported. Together Corvus and Amber listen to the DJ talk about death row groupies and the change in global climate before Fleetwood Mac comes on, “Never Going Back Again.”

  Corvus asks, Was I talking out loud?

  Amber puckers her lips and shakes her head. No. I didn’t hear anything.

  Suddenly Amber is wearing sunglasses. The sun is rising.

  There are no photographs in the house, only paintings and mirrors and plain brown wallpaper. Tim likes to collect video, and the only televisions in the house are all in his editing studio. The sky above the house today is so blue you can almost hold it, but no light comes through Tim’s side of the house. No windows.

  Tim knows it is a special day and he feels a thrill, a little kick in his step. He makes sure no one is behind him and walks lightly on his feet through the hidden door behind his closet, behind his hanging jackets.

  In his studio, all of the TVs are turned to mute, a sea of quiet movements. Most of the TVs play pornography on a loop. An entire wall of light and pornography. All of the hundreds and hundreds of VHS tapes on racks along the wall are labeled with clean white stickers.

  Tim walks over to the rack and pulls out a tape.

  White label, black letters: MOMMY.

  He pushes the tape inside one of the VCR players and all the screens suddenly sync to the same black-and-white image: a woman in a rocking chair in front of a fireplace. She’s facing away from the camera and looking at the fire. Tim remembers as a child loving to record the fireplace and watching the flames for hours. He can hear his mother silently nodding her head, rocking expressionlessly in her chair. The lights in the house were always kept dimmed or turned off. She hated everything the light touched. Like clockwork, she struck Tim senseless in the sunlight.

  Living under her roof for thirteen years in mostly dark rooms and hallways, Tim molded a quiet person to grow into. He’s even quiet when, on screen, his mother clutches her neck with a stiff hand in sudden reflex and collapses like a sack of bricks to the floor: a stroke. Tim remembers not responding. He remembers no panic, no out-of-body travel. He didn’t try to resuscitate her, search for help, or even walk closer. Tim had instead walked over to the home entertainment center and played a VHS, The Shining. He had walked downstairs to the kitchen and made two Hot Pockets and watched the microwave until the timer beeped.

  On the wall of TV screens, his mother shakes before she stops moving, and she’s contorted herself almost off camera. The body stops moving, and the fire burns in the background.

  Tim remembers picking up the camcorder, walking it closer to his mother so it looked right down at her. He had turned the camcorder around, and now all the screens show Tim’s young face. He has just turned thirteen, and there are crumbs on his chin.

  Tim turns up the volume. Little Tim says, Mommy is dead. All the screens say, Mommy is dead. His voice is distant and warbled but his face on screen looks relieved. His eyes look happy.

  Tim rewinds the footage and starts it from the beginning. He watches it over and over again on the wall of televisions. Today is the anniversary of her death and Tim celebrates with cheap red wine, Klonopin, and Hot Pockets. He is King Klonopin.

  Look at you, Mommy, he says, all by himself. He slurs his words.

  Tim walks to a cell phone ringing on his desk. The ID reads PARTNER, the phone vibrating in his hand.

  Tim answers, looking for a cigarette, and says, I was thinking about painting again.

  Something is muffled on the other end. He powers on his monitor and searches his website, checks his bank account, accesses sister sites and more pornography. The blue screen reflects in a square inside his glasses; the pupils are large, dreamy, and dilated. The top three requests in red font on a black background:

  Teen (399)

  Abuse (543)

  Snuff (1674)

  Tim asks, How is the hippopotamus? The hippopotami.

  Her mood changes when she is finally sitting down at the diner, Amber scooting in next to her on the same side of the red vinyl booth. Corvus stares through the window at the spare traffic, feeling somewhat frail then comfortable before some despair seeps in, a brief dark moment when she’s not blinking or moving, not really looking at anything at all. There is no song in her head today. But for a moment, there is no stress. Nothing better to focus on than the window and the highway, the way the overcast is breaking up in the sky.

  Amber admires all of Corvus’s faces and follows her line of sight. Beyond them like paintings are endless cedars and the almost pitch-dark forest, and more trucks are creeping for open parking spots outside the diner. Sunlight reflects off the parked cars and the wet pavement, and the diner’s morning rush is gorgeous: tall muscular men dressed in flannel and jeans or business suits. Corvus quietly accumulates thoughts and deep inner strength, taking large sips of coffee, keeping her chest warm. She craves a cigarette.

  The long tree branches sway in waves in the wind. There is an element of fear in how slowly Corvus is breathing, as she watches the rustling forest. Bright yellow and red leaves fall to the ground.

  Amber takes a bite of her pancake, chews despondently, and says, If only disappointment burned more calories.

  Corvus says, If only.

  Amber says, Some days, I don’t want to wake up in the morning.

  Corvus says, I’ve been having trouble sleeping. But I’m used to it.

  Through the window, a single cyclist rolls uphill and past the diner. A sparrow, just above him, flies the other way.

  The men inside the diner barely say a word. Chew, chew. The conversation from booth to booth, table to table, is muffled and far away. Sleepy, nothing conversations. Corvus takes a moment and wonders where everyone is going today, ignoring her faint reflection in the window, eyes glazing deeper out. Another cyclist passes.

  Amber says, Hey. I almost forgot. Amber licks and sucks the maple syrup from her fingers and reaches in her purse for something. She takes out and lights a small striped blue candle and sticks it through a muffin top. The blueberry bleeds a little. The music on the loud stereos in the diner is another pop song. The candle burns and glows, and Amber grows ecstatic and softer, even easier to be around. She says, Happy anniversary.

  Corvus says nothing and stares at the candle.

  Amber says, I can’t believe it’s been one year since I’ve met you.

  Corvus blows out the candle and says, Thank you for being so nice to me.

  A snap, a sound in the distance: a loud barking. A fuzzy brown spot bounces along the edge of the road. It vibrates and grows bigger and bigger, running out of the thick of the forest and heading to their exact window at the diner. The girls rise in their seats, each pressed against the glass, suddenly alive with a rush of adrenaline and a feeling of phenomena, something like peaceful alignment. Empty of incoming traffic and pedestrians, the road looks as though it can go in both directions forever, everything surrounded by hills or trees. The pit bull jumps up and down at their window, barking happily, and Corvus immediately recognizes the dog. Her heart pounds in recognition. Amber covers her face in glee and jumps up and down in the booth as though the dead could walk and are
walking right now, and the men in the diner all stare at them, some smiling and some tapping into cold, cold looks.

  Amber says, Oh my goodness, he followed us here!

  Amber’s eyes are all pupil.

  Corvus says, I love this fucking dog.

  Everyone has their favorite particular body part, Amber says, walking barefoot from the cool stone marble balcony, her soft robe billowing around her in the draft as she comes into the main room. She says, I like collarbones, veiny hands, and I like feet, too. And shoulder blades. Everyone should always appreciate a good shoulder blade.

  Corvus lies on the floor in her sweater and says nothing, one leg bent to the ceiling, carefully watching the glass chandelier above her. She realizes she doesn’t know what she wants or where she needs to be. She doesn’t know what to do with her days here, and she’s not really sure what happens now or what happens next. Mindlessness is next to godliness, Corvus thinks, and although she feels a little anxious, there is little fear in her. It feels good to go with the flow without a plan. Gone are the days when she felt perfectly at home. Corvus plays a secret game of holding her breath, a deep breath, and not moving a muscle. Uncertainty is fine.

  The pit bull lies down next to her, flopping and resting his heavy head on her stomach.

  Amber stares at her feet on the hardwood and says, I haven’t worn shoes in days. She wiggles her toes like her feet are thinking.

  Corvus exhales and says, I like collarbones too, and nods without looking at Amber or the other girls in the room, who are popping Klonopin like icy breath mints. All of them are either sprawled out like Corvus on the floor or playing pool a few yards away. She can hear the snap collisions of the billiard balls, the echo of the hollow pockets every now and then being struck. Looking straight up, Corvus watches as Amber slowly appears, upside down and standing over her, her blond hair almost masking her face, a shadow blocking the light from the ceiling.

  Amber says, I like your collarbone, and walks to the pool table, touching the small of everyone’s back on her way there. Her way is enchanted, Amber’s magnetism tickles, and the room responds to her in smiles and warm laughter. Small tattoos, birthmarks, and little scars cover nearly every naked body. While admiring their beauty, Corvus thinks about literally pouring herself out, every last drop. She likes that one stupid song of being bled dry.