Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway (16 page)

“Yeah,” she said. “I’m doing this Chinese herb thing. No black tea or coffee.”

“Liver heat?” I guessed.

She nodded. “You too?”

“Yeah.”

“Fucking liver,” she said. “It’s like the Chinese equivalent of, you know, take two aspirin and call me the morning. Except no one says that anymore.”

“Right,” I said. “Except it’s like, avoid eating everything good, take six weeks’ worth of herbs that taste like shit, and
then
call me in the morning.”

She laughed. “It’s like, give up everything you like, stop getting angry, and then call me next month.”

The water boiled and she made us each a cup of green tea with roasted barley. Cooling for the organs. We took our tea over to a table near the windows and sat down.

“So,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said. “Right. Well, you know, we were kids. We didn’t really have, like, families. I grew up in Emeryville, which is kind of a shithole. I guess now it’s a shithole with a big mall and Pixar. My parents were kind of in a cult. A new religious movement. Let’s put it like this: it was a cult in the common parlance.”

“What kind of a cult? What did they believe?”

“Nothing too awful,” she said. “It was like this pseudo-Buddhist thing. They meditated a lot, they were pretty spaced out. The kids pretty much roamed wild. They didn’t hit us or anything. They just meditated all the time. This guy Carl was the leader. He was from New Jersey.”

I made a face.

“I know, right?” she said. “I mean, who follows some guy from New Jersey? He wasn’t even in the CIA or anything. He wasn’t very charismatic. It’s not like you couldn’t escape his iron will or anything. He liked to eat Dover sole for dinner. That was the only time he got pissy—when he couldn’t get his fish for dinner. Like with almonds, how they make it with butter like that? And then everyone had to change their name, for, like, this numerological thing, and they had this whole thing about eating seeds. I actually still do that, I think they were kind of right about that. You know, it’s like everything in the plant is already there, right? Anyway. It was like the world’s most boring cult. So, yeah, Lydia. We were fifteen or sixteen when we started hanging out. Are you from here?”

“Brooklyn,” I said.

“So you know,” she said. “You were a bad girl.” You didn’t have to be a detective to guess
that.
“Fake IDs. Sneaking into shows. Shoplifting. Guys. Normal stuff. You know. We were poor. Well, not exactly poor. Broke.”

“How did you guys meet?” I asked.

“Around,” she said. “Going to bars and shows and stuff. She was from Hayward but her parents kicked her out and she was always bumming around—oh, I remember now, we actually met, like, specifically. She was staying with my friend Deena in the Castro. With Deena and her mom for a few months. So we started hanging out and then she stayed with me for a while. At the time it didn’t seem like a big deal—honestly, it seemed kind of glamorous, you know, being so young and on your own. Looking back it looks fucking horrifying. It looks like her parents were out of their minds. Which they were.”

“What was their deal?” I asked.

“Jeez,” Delia said. “Well, her dad had this whole other family, who he had no bones about making clear he liked better. And the mom, she was like this religious nut. Went to church all the time, thought Lydia was, you know, this fucking sinner. Which, believe me, she very quickly became.”

“So, you guys got into trouble?”

“Oh, yeah,” Delia said. “Look, if I had a kid . . .” She paused and sipped her tea. “I mean, I wouldn’t suggest what we did, how we lived—I wouldn’t recommend that to anyone. But honestly, it was a fucking blast. I don’t regret any of it.”

“How did you live?” I asked.

She gave me a look like I was being a little stupid, which I was.

“You know,” she said, and I did. “Drugs. Guys. Music. I mean, Lydia was gorgeous, she was smart, she was fun. Guys would literally follow her around. That was another good thing about the cult. They were big on the idea that things always change, and you don’t want to get, like, stuck or attached. So I knew it wasn’t going to last, and it didn’t. Your body, just, you know. You can’t keep that up. You don’t have the energy and you’re not getting the attention. Lydia and me, we started young. By the time we were twenty-four, twenty-five, we were feeling it. We were pretty burnt. I got more into my art, she got into her music. We were lucky. A lot of girls didn’t have anything else. They didn’t age so well.”

“So Lydia was pretty into music?” I asked. Of course, I knew Lydia was into music. I just wanted Delia to keep talking.

“She was obsessed,” she said. “Most of the girls we knew just slept with musicians, but she was no joke. She knew everything, had this huge record collection, would travel anywhere to see someone she liked. And she was good. Really good. I think she’s so pretty that people sometimes forget she’s actually a hell of a guitar player.”

“But?” I said. There’s always a
but.
If there wasn’t we’d all be perfect and no one would ever kill anyone and we wouldn’t need detectives.

“But what?” Delia said.

“So it sounds like you both came out pretty okay,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said. “I think so.” But there was a hesitation in her voice.

“So you guys still hang out?” I asked.

“No,” Delia said. “Not for a long time.”

“Why?” I asked.

“She slept with my husband,” Delia said. “That was, like, ten years ago. He’s not my husband anymore.”

“And she’s not your friend anymore,” I said.

“Well, no,” Delia said. “I don’t hate her or anything. But we’re not friends anymore, no.”

“You sound not very mad,” I said. “Considering.”

Delia shrugged. “It was complicated. I guess—well, I guess it wasn’t entirely unexpected.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Lydia liked men,” she said. “Well, I don’t know. She liked being liked by men. Let’s put it like that. I mean, that shitty childhood. It kinda catches up to you. It’s kinda like—I mean, I don’t mean this literally, but let’s say there’s some kind of, you know, receptor in your body for receiving love, right? Love and affection and all that good stuff. And Lydia, with all that fucked-up stuff with her parents—it’s like those receptors were just never turned on. Like, she could never, ever get—I don’t think I’m making any sense.”

Delia stood up and got us each more tea.

“I don’t know what I mean,” she said as she poured. “I guess I just want to still like her in some way. I mean, we were
close
, you know? Like teenage girls are close. And you know, I’m kind of an angry person, but I’m not really into hating people. So I don’t know—I guess I made up this whole story about how it wasn’t entirely her fault. ’Cause the thing about Lydia is, she never really believed that anyone loved her. Or even liked her, to be honest. She just could not believe that. Not me, not any boy, no one. I mean, here she was—
is
—so smart, so beautiful, so talented, so many people in love with her. It was like—you know when you haven’t watered a plant in too long, and then you try to water it and the water rolls right off?”

I did know, having killed many plants.

“Like that,” she said. “I think that’s a better metaphor than the receptor thing. That didn’t quite work. Like a plant that got too dry and it couldn’t take any water at all. Not if you fucking drowned it. Anyway. Guys would freak out for her. Girls wanted to be her friend. Still do, I bet. And you know, she could buy it for a little while. She had no problem believing that people wanted to be with her or sleep with her or whatever. But when it came down to it, she was one hundred percent sure that no one could love her, not really,” she said.

“Do you think Lydia cheated on Paul?” I asked.

Delia shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. We hadn’t talked in years. But in general, did she cheat? Well, she always did before.”

Delia lit a cigarette and looked out the window. I followed her eyes. Outside was a woman who might have been a streetwalker or might have just been walking down the street. The woman stopped and queried a passing car. The man in the car and the woman came to terms and she got in. Maybe she was just a woman doing her grocery shopping who ran into a friend.

Mysteries never end.

“Paul was a good guy,” Delia said. “He deserved better. Do you think it’s true that, like, someone’s soul can’t rest until you find who murdered them? Until there’s some justice? I read that in a book once. I don’t know if I believe it.”

“I don’t know,” I said. I knew there was something set off its axis when a person was murdered. I didn’t know if it was a soul or just some pocket of the universe that needed to be set right. I tried to imagine Paul’s soul but all that came to mind was a ghost like a child would imitate for Halloween, a lonely thing under white sheets, holes cut out for eyes.

Boo, the ghost said. I scared you.

Brooklyn

C
HERRY TAVERN WAS
a few blocks away from Ben’s bar. It was a disjointed spot on Sixth Street; the lights were too bright and there weren’t quite enough tables and the room was a strange shape. A dozen skinheads checked us out as we went to the bar and ordered bottles of beer. Tracy and I got our drinks and soon were joined by a big kid we knew named Al from Queens, who looked scary but everyone knew was just a sweetheart. Unless he drank too much. In which case he did become scary and was not so sweet anymore. But tonight he was sticking to beer. I went to the bathroom and when I came back Tracy was already questioning him.

“Yeah, I know Cathy,” he said. “I think she’s actually here.”

“Here?” I said, sitting back down. “But we’re here.” For a second it crossed my mind that I was not, in fact, here. Or maybe I was here, but somehow it was a different here—a different piece of here, or the same here in a different time.

I closed my eyes and for a quick flash I saw a woman drowning in dark water, like the Anima Sola burning in flames. Instead of helping her I put on a thick pair of glasses and watched her drown.

I opened my eyes. Al was looking at me like I was an idiot.

“The
men’s room
,” he said.

“If you talk to me like that again,” I said, “I will break this fucking bottle in your face.”

Tracy laughed.

“All right,” Al said. “Jesus. Let me buy you a beer.”

“It’s cool,” I said. “Let’s just not do it again.”

We finished our drinks and went to the men’s room. Tracy knocked first. A girl’s voice called out, “Fuck
off
.” We opened the door and went in.

The men’s room was actually two rooms. First was a kind of bathroom antechamber with a sink and a few chairs. Through another door was the regular bathroom, which men used for its intended purpose. In the antechamber were two girls passing around a little bag of cocaine and a house key to imbibe it with. One of the girls was Cathy. The other was Georgia.

“Tracy!” Cathy said. “Oh my God! I was just thinking about you!”

Cathy kept talking while Georgia took multiple dips of the key into the little bag. Cathy was a big, pretty, cheerful girl. I knew she lived in the Chelsea projects with a large family, seven or eight brothers and sisters. She wore her hair in a fringe around her head.

Georgia was a tiny, skinny girl. Her face was pretty but mean. She had on a big vintage Persian lamb coat and wore her brown hair swept up on top of her head, and way too much makeup. It was true she was homeless. She was supposed to be in foster care but she kept running away.

“Hey, Claire,” she said, her voice sarcastic and thick.

I didn’t say anything and gave her a look.

What happened between me and Georgia had happened long before, but it wasn’t over. There was a boy, that was true, but friendships never fall apart over boys. We had no expectations for boys; boys were innocent bystanders in the wars of girls.

I hated Georgia. Just looking at her made something burn inside me.

I thought of Chloe. Of how she seemed to want people to hate her.

Meanwhile, Tracy was trying to get Cathy to focus.

“I haven’t seen Chloe in forever,” Cathy was saying, her voice rushed and breathless. “I mean, for a while we were hanging out all the time, you know? Georgia, you remember Chloe, right?”

With effort Georgia tore her eyes off me and looked at Cathy. She’d had more to drink than her friend; her eyes were bleary and red and she wasn’t nearly as wired. She seemed instead like she might fall asleep.

“Yeah,” she said, her voice slightly slurred. “I know her. Fucking bitch.”

“Why fucking bitch?” Tracy asked.

“’Cause of what she did to Cathy,” Georgia said. “How she treated her. Fucking whore.”

“So what did happen?” Tracy asked. I could tell her patience was wearing thin.

“Oh my God,” Cathy said. “I can’t even—I mean, I can barely talk about it. Still. It was like she cut me, you know. Like she cut me right where she knew it would hurt.”

“She actually cut you,” Tracy prompted. “Or—?”

“No, not
actually
,” Cathy said. “What she did was, she fucked this guy I liked. Well, I don’t know if they actually, you know. And I mean, not just liked. He was the one—I mean the only one. Okay. Okay. It was Hank Nielson. You guys know him, right?”

We both nodded. We knew him.

“Right,” Cathy said. “I’ve known him since we were, like, twelve. We went to this summer camp together, this camp for bad kids, and I totally fell for him. And we were friends, but I don’t think he knew. Maybe he knew. I don’t think he knew.”

“But Chloe knew?” Tracy interjected.

“Oh my God,” Cathy said. “She totally knew. Fuck. I mean, I talked about him all the time. She
beyond
knew. So this one night we’re all at Blanche’s, and Hank was there. So he sits with us and everything’s fine, and we’re drinking and drinking. And then suddenly, it’s like, Chloe is flirting with him. I mean at first I thought I was imagining it—”

“You weren’t imagining it,” Georgia cut in. “I was there. Saw the whole thing. Chloe totally threw herself at him. It was totally fucked up.”

“Totally fucked up!” Cathy said. “We went to the bathroom together and I was like, what the fuck are you doing? And at first she was all like, what are you talking about? All like, I’m not doing anything. But then it got worse and worse. She was all, like, telling him how much she liked his band, and she’d never even seen his band. And all, like, touching him and shit. Like, she kept putting her hand on his shoulder and shit. So then we go to the bathroom again and I’m all, what the fuck? And she’s all, you’re not doing anything with him anyway. You know, like he’s fair game now. I mean, he’s my friend, a really good friend, so I’ve always been, you know, not wanting to fuck that up, but that doesn’t mean—”