Free A Field Guide to Deception by Jill Malone Page A

can’t have any on your meds. Well, you and Simon can have mango Odwalla. You’ll share, won’t you, Simon?”
    Liv’s mouth tasted metallic; she’d taken another couple of pills before she left her camper. Her brain stretched and retracted like silly putty around Bailey’s monologue and the hot, bright evening and the robust food. And Simon, glowing beside her, biting into a shrimp with relish. And Claire dressed in a purple tank top and short pale shorts. Claire, for whom all fury had drained away, like Liv’s headache. Liv blinked slowly, fought herself not to giggle. She noticed, perhaps for the first time, how much Simon resembled his mother: their thin, angular faces, and bold marmoset eyes, pianist’s
fingers, and small, beautiful ears. The table was quiet, and Liv focused on each of them. Waiting.
    â€œHeadache gone?” Bailey asked, a bit slowly, Liv thought, dramatically.
    â€œQuite gone.” Liv beamed, and ate an oyster. Remembered a trip to Pike Place Market, the men in their aprons, the crowded stalls.
    Bailey talked for the entire meal. Next to Liv, Simon kept Murdoch beside his fork, and studiously ignored both his train and his utensil. Claire and Bailey drank the bottle of wine, and opened another. Strips of steak, sweet peas, sautéed kale, Liv feasted on every dish Bailey served them.
    â€œBailey,” Claire said, “this food—I can’t even describe it. I feel like I’ve never really tasted anything before. There’s taste beneath the taste, if you know what I mean. Does that sound crazy? I mean it as a compliment.”
    â€œThen I’ll take it that way,” Bailey laughed.
    There was coffee, of course, and a dessert of pineapple, cream cheese, and toasted almonds whipped together and plated hot.
    Liv let her mind boomerang around the meadow like Simon’s little plane. She thought of the first time she’d worked demolition. Paired with a baby dyke from North Portland, they’d been unleashed on three rooms with sledgehammers and no restrictions. At the end of the day, when the crew chief returned, they’d been dirty, bleeding, and joyful. She could smell those rooms, and feel the tears to her skin, and the grime.
    For a moment, Liv’s mind became so lucid that it leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the mouth, and she understood that along the way her joyfulness had been lost. And her sense of wonder, wonder as an effortless bliss, the kind that Simon carried with him everywhere, Liv had dropped at some past moment, in some place she could no longer even recall. She wanted that delight back, to carry on her shoulders, or cradle to her chest.
    â€œYeah,” Liv said suddenly, the fingers of her hand elastic, blossoming here at the table as she reached for her coffee cup. “Wow.”

Eleven
    Claire in bed
    Two days after her slip, Liv, stoned on the recliner, rolled the tobacco Bailey had brought her. Swirling the beer in her bottle, Bailey glanced again at her watch. Claire had disappeared three-quarters of an hour ago to put Simon to bed.
    â€œHere,” Liv said, handing a cigarette to Bailey.
    â€œThanks.”
    They smoked. Liv watched the smoke pillow into the night. “So, you met her at the Mercury?”
    â€œYeah,” Bailey said, “you’ll laugh when I tell you how.”
    â€œMake me laugh.”
    â€œThey thought she was you, all those girls you fucked. They came one after another trying to hook up with her and she’s just sitting there all confused, trying to drink her gin while girl after girl approaches, and stomps away a second later pissed or disappointed. Fucking sad, dude. I had to intervene.”
    Liv flicked her lighter awake, asleep, awake. Claire and the girls in the Mercury, one after another like some marathon job interview under Bailey’s observation. A psych experiment, a case study, and Liv could see them, all their hopefulness, and their