She followed him, meandering so the camerawoman, Jazz, could keep up, to a glass case that held several jars of eyeballs in viscous fluid, carved wooden monsters, and skeletons of different animals glued together to make stranger beasts.
“Any wife of mine can’t be scared of weird stuff,” he said. “Want to know a little secret? I love horror movies. Growing up, I wasn’t allowed to watch them. But I did. They’re my guilty pleasure.”
Tristan wasn’t the most eloquent man, but, to her surprise, Linda found herself entertained by the young airline pilot whose foremost redeeming feature was his pocketbook. Before coming on the show, she had expected to be bored by the sight of his broad chest, and eager to leave his presence, but she didn’t hate his company after all. He was easy on the eyes, just not her type. Sometimes, though, she wondered if the producers hadn’t slipped something in her champagne, some kind of mood-altering drug that made her flirtatious and eager for the dates. Except she wasn’t eager, and that was exactly the reason those producers accepted her application in the first place: she was the token divorcee. She understood her role. She understood her lines. It soothed her to have a script, however unwritten.
“I love horror,” she said. “The bloodier, the better.”
She didn’t watch horror, or movies of any kind. These days, she thrived on reality TV shows, where broke dreamers begged rich people to fund them—and sometimes got what they asked for. She liked the wish fulfillment, and a dating show was a similar animal. Linda’s most prescient hobby, however, was her garden.
Tristan watched her with the doe eyes he could switch on in an instant. He reached out and tucked her hair behind her ear. “You couldn’t be more perfect,” he said.
“Hold there,” Jazz said. “I want that from another angle.”
Linda chewed her lip. She’d known the shoot would be long when the big wig producer assigned Jazz to it. The camerawoman moved to the other side of the couple and set up her rig. Linda adjusted the scratchy microphone clipped under her clothes. “Again,” Jazz said.
Linda stood still, waiting to repeat the scene.
“Linda, your hair,” Jazz said. “Needs to be untucked.”
“Oh, right.” Linda grimaced. The reality show experience was a strange one. She untucked her hair. “I love horror,” she repeated. “The bloodier, the better.”
Tristan’s eyes went full doe as he re-tucked her hair. “You couldn’t be more perfect,” he said. “Shall we?”
When he extended his hand, she clasped it, and they weaved through more glass cases with eerie items. Tristan stopped in the back of the store. Linda paused beside him and discovered the object of his entranced gaze: the dried brown hide of some viscerally upsetting creature. It was five feet taller than they were, with a gaping mouth, knotty lips, hands like branches, and feet like roots. It had no eyes. “I love creepy shit,” Tristan said.
Linda’s stomach twisted. The thing was too uncanny to appreciate as a curiosity. It made her want to stop looking, to forget it ever existed. But Tristan had said something about it, and she was expected to reply. She pulled his words back to the forefront of her mind. I love creepy shit, he had said. But how was she supposed to respond? She knew that already; he told her ten minutes ago. Her life these days was a series of déjà vu, if not from repeating her lines from different angles, then from having the same conversations over and over with the handsome dreg.
“You’re cute,” she said. She kept herself from adding, thank God.
After the taxidermist’s shop, Tristan took her to a courtyard between two hotels. At the courtyard’s center, a convocation of gargoyles hunched over a spurt of water, their backs to whomever was unlucky enough to stand beside the fountain. The crew had draped a round table with a red cloth. On the table, the producers had placed two plates with green beans, mashed potatoes, and two cuts of rare steak. A decanter of red wine was set between two glasses.
Two cameramen joined Jazz. They set up one camera across from the table and one on either side of the couple. The setting sun chilled the autumn air. The producers had kindly set up two outdoor gas heaters.
As Linda settled into a Gothic wrought iron chair, she inhaled the steak’s sweet blood scent. It was a damn pity that The Groom and his potential brides were discouraged from eating on camera. While getting ready for the date, Linda had scarfed a protein bar, but she adored a good steak.
“We’re rolling,” Jazz said.
“You passed the test!” Tristan said as soon as the camera lights went red.
“I didn’t even study,” Linda said.
Tristan guffawed. “You’re smart,” he said. “I like that.”
Linda wanted to readjust in the chair—it was too hard on her ass—but she didn’t want to reshoot.
Tristan poured two glasses of red and passed her one. “Shall we?”
“We shall,” Linda said.
They clinked glasses. “To our future,” Tristan said.
“To our future,” Linda repeated. She sipped the wine. At least they were allowed, nay encouraged, to drink.
“So, Linda Meadows, is there anything I should know about you?”
Linda longed to glance at the cameras, but she kept her gaze focused on The Groom. These situations and conversations weren’t scripted, but they were part of a set of calls-and-responses ingrained in anyone who had ever seen even one episode of the show.
“As a matter of fact, there is,” she said.
Tristan set down his glass as if on cue. “You can tell me anything.” He smoldered.
Linda fidgeted with her pinky ring. She wasn’t nervous to tell him; she was worried she might get it wrong and have to redo the conversation, and she was tired, eager to be alone at the mansion while the other women went on their group date the next day. She needed to get it right. It was expected of her: second one-on-one dates always ended with a tearful confession.
“I was married for five years,” she said. “But it didn’t work out.”
“Wow,” he said. She was never sure if he feigned his surprise. “What happened?”
Linda took another sip of wine and paused for dramatic effect. She had decided what she would say when she accepted the invitation to appear on the show. “We were too young. We didn’t have the same values,” she said. “He didn’t value family. Or romance. And all I wanted was love.”
The truth was she had met him at a time when she was financially broke and emotionally broken, and he offered her a job with his landscaping firm and a hand to hold when she felt darkness closing in. At first, her work slowly healed her, and he soothed her worries: he assured her that she was a good person deep down, no matter what she’d done in her past. But as the years elapsed, he stopped looking at her through his oxytocin-tinted contacts and decided that her healing wasn’t happening fast enough. She was cold, he told her, and sometimes, the glints that gleamed in her eyes frightened him.
Linda wasn’t exactly lying to Tristan: she did want a person of her own, someone to see her in a warm light, but it wasn’t her ex-husband who kept her from it. Rather, she didn’t know how to crack open the cage of her ribs and offer her insides for viewing.
Tristan placed his hand on hers. “I understand. Family’s so important.”
“I feel like I’m broken,” she said. She let her voice catch in the middle. “How could you ever want me?”
“Linda, no.” Tristan took the wine glass from her and set it on the table. He got up from his chair and stepped over to her. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and kissed the lobe of her ear.
