Man's Best Friend - Hardcover

Lytle, Alana B.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593715020 ISBN 13: 9780593715024

Verlag: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

A failed actress must decide how much she will give up—and what lies she will overlook—in order to live a life of luxury, in this irresistibly suspenseful and slightly surreal debut that is The Talented Mr. Ripley meets Nightbitch.

Ever since her year as a scholarship student among the ultra-wealthy at a Manhattan private school, El knows what it is like to feel rich—to feel chosen. And being not chosen is her current living nightmare: at age thirty, she has given up her dream of becoming a famous actress, she has no passions, no great love, nothing to look forward to.

Then El meets a mysterious trust-fund Cambridge grad who holds the keys to the world she has long dreamed of. Bryce may not be particularly good-looking, charming, or interesting, but he has chosen her. El allows herself to be lulled by the ease and safety that his wealth provides, becoming Bryce’s little pet, and giving up her job, friends, and apartment in short order. But when a series of disturbing and slightly surreal events reveal that Bryce is not quite what he seems, but something entirely more sinister, El must face the consequences when his darkness—and her own—are unleashed.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Alana B. Lytle is a screenwriter whose recent credits include Netflix's Brand New Cherry and Peacock's A Friend of the Family. Her short fiction has been published in Guernica. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and sausage-shaped dog. Man's Best Friend is her debut novel.

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chapter one

Come spring they slept with the windows open, and every morning she woke to a tickle in her nose courtesy of the magnolia tree that blossomed outside their bedroom. Still, she restrained the impulse to fidget: she didn't want to wake him. She savored these moments, when his normally restive body was quiet and warm. Her cheek to his chest, she matched her breath to his. She was him, she felt, as much as she was herself. Whenever he was sick or angry or miserable she bore it, too, as a prickling on her flesh, a chill in her bones.

She never contemplated Alone if she could help it. Occasionally, though, an aberrant sound in the distance or an unsettling shadow on the wall of the barn, on the brick exterior of the house, awakened the haunting knowledge she tried perpetually to repress: that Alone lurked beneath their routine, beneath his murmurs of reassurance, beneath his wide, steady hands on her back. When this awareness overcame her she trembled, her gaze darting and hunting unsuccessfully for the place where it wouldn't be true. Where Alone would be a lie. Where their bond would not be fragile. In time, her spells of panic grew less frequent. She relaxed into the idea that Alone, while real, was probably not her destiny-that her relationship was a lasting one. And then the dreams began.

She couldn't fathom why these particular dreams would visit someone like her. She was content with her life! She was old! Her kneecaps cracked like splitting firewood when she overextended, jumped from too great a height. Dreams like these were meant for the young. But we don't choose our dreams: they choose us.

The dream always began in the same place, by the far edge of the property. Sometimes it was cold dawn and the wooden posts of the fence were wet with dew. Sometimes it was late and lightning bugs winked against smoky, baleful sky. The pasture grass that usually came to the level of her belly was, in the dream, well above her head, grown wild. Concealed among the stalks, she crept right up to the fence. Between the squares of sturdy wire she could see the forest, where it sloped down and met the creek. Beyond that lay a valley dotted with several other ranches and beyond that-hills, dense with hickory and oak. It was a massive swath of land, and she'd never explored any of it. And this was just one place. This was just what she could see. She had never questioned the life she'd been given; in fact all her most difficult moments could be boiled down to a fear of losing what had been allotted to her. She had never thought to mourn missed opportunities, untrod paths, unknown faces. She had a home in Ohio, yes, but surely there were other homes. She had love, but was there more love, different love, elsewhere? Was there another place, another situation in which she would be different? Whatever pain her leaving might create, she had a right to know.

She began to dig. Invigorated, her paws spit and churned soil so fast that, in mere minutes, she had burrowed a hole under the fence big enough to slip through. As she crawled into the dirt and scrabbled out the other side, her mind raced. I'm doing this. I'm really doing this. All her life she had stayed within bounds: never, ever, could she have imagined crossing the line to be so easy. The thrill of her own capacity for rebellion, for destruction, filled her with a kind of electric purpose-a transporting heat swept through her body-

And then she woke up. Every time, the dream cut off in this same place. When she opened her eyes and surveyed her real life-the thinning bedspread, the scuffed hardwood, the antique clock with the broken chime, even him, sleeping innocently-none of it stimulated her. Gone was the Midas touch that had been her gratitude.

But abandoning home, in reality, was unthinkable. Out of the question, she told herself, as she trailed him, day after day, through the house and the fields, as she rode in the truck with him to the feed store, the package store, the country mart. But even as she banished the idea of leaving, she caught herself regarding him with pity, as if she'd already left. And then she felt guilty for pitying him, which made her feel even more sorry. She wished she could just explain-it wasn't that she wanted to fantasize about running away, it was the dreams, infecting her mind! After several weeks of self-loathing, ruing her terrible ambivalence, she began to feel . . . something else. She noticed herself jerking away when he bent to touch her. Fussing with the collar he'd given her that bore her name. Not waiting for him while they made the morning trek to the barn but going ahead on her own. Sleeping farther and farther away from him (his stubble and his snoring grated her now, as they never had before). She had become angry. Maybe it wasn't fair, maybe she was holding him to too high a standard, but, really, after years of unwavering devotion she becomes moody and withdrawn and he notices nothing? If he paid one ounce as much attention to her as she did him, he would have known something was amiss. He would have made overtures-her favorite dinner, to cheer her up. A special outing to bring them closer. He took her for granted though. His cheerleader. His shadow. But I bet he would notice, she brooded, if I were gone.

She didn't acknowledge to herself that she had made a decision. It was early May, and every year at this time his brother came to stay for several weeks. The brother was a careless, distracted man, prone to leaving the door ajar when he came in from smoking on the front lawn. One evening after dinner, while relaxing on the couch, she saw the brother making his way back to the house. She rose. She could hear him, her companion of so many years, cleaning in the kitchen. The rushing of water, the clanking of pans. She moved to the front door. When the brother lumbered over the threshold he did not even notice her by his feet. She watched the brother shuffle to the kitchen, heard him mumble something and heard, in reply, her love's gravelly laugh. Her chest constricted; for a moment she felt she would suffocate from sorrow.

And then she slipped outside. A lean wind rippled through her fur. She picked up the scent of something rotting and thought of carcasses by the side of the road. She could end up like that. And there were greater threats than speeding cars-there were coyotes. Snakes. Sadists with cold eyes. She would do her best to avoid all the terrible things she knew about . . . but what about all the things she couldn't conceive of? The most dangerous things probably didn't look dangerous at all. She'd spent her whole life in captivity-she wasn't a predator-how could she possibly keep herself safe?

She worried over this for a long, suspended moment, drawing shallow breaths of chill night air. And then a possibility occurred to her, and she set off resolutely down the driveway, down the road and onto the turnpike. Maybe you didn't know whether you were a predator until the hour arrived, until the world opened its jaws and you were staring down the black throat of terror. Whoever tries to harm me, she reasoned, might discover, at their own peril, that I have teeth.

chapter two

The city is a dull parade of chill and half-hearted light-then, all at once, it's boiling hot. Things were different when El was young. Back then, winter slush gave way gradually to clement weeks of rain and pollen, and only after people started packing away their serious coats and ordering their coffees iced did true summer emerge with its choking humidity and overfull trash cans, vile and baking on every corner. There used to be time to adjust: not anymore.

El dabbed sweat from her hairline as she hustled up the steps of the West 4th Street station, glancing at her phone. 12:04. She texted Darcy, her manager: Sorry sorry! 3 min.

From the mouth of the subway she rushed to the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: G.P. Putnam's Sons
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2024
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593715020
• ISBN 13: 9780593715024
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 320
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland