Dating is Murder (18 page)

“Britta, yeah. She’s been over here a couple times. I never really talked to her. And who’s the guy you just said?”

“Richard Feynman?”

“Sounds familiar. Is he an astronaut or something?”

I tried to imagine Annika dating an astronaut. I thought she would’ve mentioned it. I said, “Did you tell the police about the argument you overheard?”

“No,” Kevin said. “They didn’t ask.”

He gave me a pen and paper and went on talking, about the girls who’d show up at Lovernich at all hours, girls Rico had invited over and forgotten about. I listened with half an ear, then no ear at all, because I found something on the wall, something I knew. Something I’d seen before. A squiggle.
It was the logo on the pill that had been under Annika’s bed.

26

“
I
’ve seen this
before.” Joey, in the passenger seat, studied the squiggle. “Somewhere. Not on a pill, either.”

We were still at Pepperdine, in a parking lot. The weather had changed dramatically in the last hour, from balmy breezes to cold rain, and I’d discovered something about the car I’d inherited from Doc: the defroster didn’t work. My windshield was fogged up, as transparent as an igloo.

“Could I take that to the cops?” I asked, checking the owner’s manual. “It links Annika and Rico. And this argument they had about getting in trouble—”

“The doodling’s meaningless without the pill. And what if the pill’s a No-Doz?”

“It’s gotta be Euphoria. The guy I met at Santa Monica College, Annika’s other tutoree, he said she was looking for Euphoria. If I had the pill, could we get it analyzed?” I thought of Joey’s brother, the cop. “Could Patrick help us?”

Joey snorted. “He’d yell at me for sending it through the mail, he’d say, ‘I don’t know how they do things out in La-La Land, but here in New York rules rules rules . . .’ I could swallow it myself and find out.”

“Detective Cziemanski,” I said. “My new friend. Maybe I could—”

“Sleep with him.”

“No. I’m never having sex again.”

“Really? Does this Simon guy know that?”

I pushed buttons randomly. The windows remained fogged up, despite a noise suggesting a defroster struggling for life. “I hate this car. I should never have ditched my Rabbit. Listen, I’ve known this man seven minutes total, so quit it. And Doc—”

In fact, my mental pictures of Doc were fading like fabric left out in the sun. It was easier to conjure up Ruby: the freckled face, the frizzy hair. When I tried to envision Doc, he was in shadow, turned away.

“I happen to like Doc,” Joey said, “but he’d be the first to tell you to move on. He
was
the first to tell you.”

“He didn’t mean move on to this guy. Simon would be the Rico Rodriguez of my life. All sexual heat and no substance. A professional stalker.”

“But you haven’t told the cops about him.”

“Like they’d care? Annika disappears, do they care? Rico disappears, they don’t even ask his roommates, ‘Gee, notice anything strange lately?’ Brace yourself, we’re going to open windows.”

A blast of cold air hit. I steered the car toward the campus exit. Joey wrapped her skinny arms around herself. “Kevin didn’t know Annika was missing, so what he heard didn’t seem relevant,” she said. “Hey, cops aren’t stupid and they’re not incompetent, generally, so whatever there is to find, they’ll find. Know what Lyle said while you were in the bedroom? Rico dropped out of poli sci to take chemistry, weeks into the semester. By special arrangement. And it was killing him, trying to catch up.”

“Joey, there you go! Rico was making Euphoria.”

“I think you need more than two months of chemistry to design trendy new drugs. And why would that make Annika disappear? Or her mother? You’re right, we have to find Annika’s e-mail buddy, Marie-Whatserface.”

“Dead end. I leave messages at the au pair agency and no one calls back.”

“What’s the number?” she said.

“In my backpack.” I wiped the clouded windshield with a Kleenex and took a left on Pacific Coast Highway. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be, spending the day before Thanksgiving freezing in Malibu in slow traffic with Joey. Not that I didn’t love Joey. But I should’ve been with Doc and Ruby, watching cranberries . . . bake. Broil. Whatever it is cranberries do. Doc and I hadn’t even made it a year. We’d only gotten the minor holidays: Easter, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Bastille Day—

A clipped New England accent came from Joey, startling me. “Mr. Otis, this is Elizabeth Atherton, with the Department of State. I’m here in California and I would appreciate a return call, as soon as possible, please, Thanksgiving notwithstanding.” Joey gave her cell-phone number, signed off, then punched a few more numbers and changed her cell phone’s outgoing message to one more suited to Elizabeth Atherton.

“What about everyone else who tries to call you and leave a message?” I asked.

“Let them wonder.” She then started dialing numbers I’d found on Rico’s wall. One was pizza delivery, one was cable TV, and one was no longer in service. Two were answering machines. There were four-digit numbers we thought were codes of some kind, until I realized Pepperdine used a common prefix for the whole campus. We tried preceding the numbers with 456, and it worked. Joey talked to three actual people. One guy said his ex-roommate had been buddies with Rico but had dropped out the previous semester. Another guy admitted to casual acquaintance but said he was late for class and hung up. A girl with a voice so loud Joey held the phone away from her ear said if we wanted to find Rico we should check under rocks or wherever it was snakes hung out. By now we’d progressed a few measly miles, not even to Tuna Canyon.

“Yikes,” Joey said. “Suspects abound. He’s a much better missing person than Annika. My favorite is Kevin, the pathologically nice roommate.”

My own cell phone rang. Joey answered without asking; she knew that driving, shivering, squinting, and cleaning the windshield while talking were beyond my capabilities. “Wollie’s cell phone, Joey speaking,” she said, then paused. “No. She’s having an automotive crisis.” Pause. “Defective defroster.” Pause. “Sixty thousand or so.” She leaned toward me, hair brushing my bare arm, then straightened up. “Sixty-two thousand, two hundred and thirty-four.” Pause. “Wasn’t her idea.” Pause. “I agree. Let me ask you, what are your intentions?” Pause. “Yeah?” Long pause. “Yeah.” I glanced at her. She was smiling. “Yeah.” She turned off the phone and turned to me. “He says to give him a call when you’re not driving.”

“Who?” The hair on my arms was standing up.

“Simon.”

“Okay, turn off that phone. Just turn it off.”

“And by the way, he’s a cop.”

I choked. “A—?”

“Not a regular cop. I just figured it out. He’s DEA. Your boyfriend’s a narc.”

The rain was having a hallucinatory effect. Headlights and taillights appearing smeared and dripping, a Dalí painting. “You mean—some kind of informant?”

“No. An agent.”

“He said that?”

“No, it just came to me. The way you described him, clean, clean-cut, weird. I thought ‘military,’ then ‘law enforcement,’ but that one remark, remember when he asked what you were doing on Temple Street? Why would he ask that? He follows you all over L.A. but he gets fixated on Temple Street. Why?” Joey bounced with excitement. “Because that’s where you don’t belong. That’s his turf, not yours—that’s the building the DEA works out of and he wanted to know if you’d made him.”

“If I’d what?”

“Made him. Found him out. Discovered his identity. They’re paranoid, those guys. He sees you downtown within ten miles of his office, he says, Me, it’s all about me, she’s following me.”

“That’s a complete long shot, Joey, it’s a huge leap of logic—”

“It’s not. I’m telling you, the DEA building on Temple Street, it’s—”

“Then he’s an informant,” I said, taking a vicious swipe at the inside windshield. “In a suit. White-collar informant, taking meetings in the building. Or a janitor. Or he works at the Music Center, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. He can’t be
in
the DEA, he’s terrible at surveillance, I always catch him—”

“Oh, for God’s sake, he’s not surveilling you, Wollie, he’s courting you.”

“Plus he drives a really nice car. Too nice for a civil servant.”

“Look, it wouldn’t be my first choice, to fall for a narc, but that’s because I’m practically a junkie. You’re another story—you don’t even take aspirin.”

“It upsets my stomach. That’s not the point.” I stopped at the light at Topanga Canyon and turned to her. “I don’t know anyone like that. What would we talk about, someone who—does whatever it is he does for a living? Wiretaps and so forth.”

“Honey. How many of your acquaintances share your political values?”

I shrugged. “Lots. I don’t know. Most of them.”

“And how many of those people do you want to get naked with?”

I thought about it. The list was not long.

Joey smiled. “I rest my case.”

Three hours later
I’d dropped Joey in Los Feliz, where her husband’s BMW was getting detailed, and got myself back to West Hollywood. It was now fully dark and pouring rain. I was inching closer to accepting Simon’s alleged profession. Since shooting up together wasn’t on my romantic agenda, what did I care?

But when had I acquired a romantic agenda?

Frozen and wet, I walked up the steps to my building. My down-the-hall neighbor was struggling with the front door, armed with groceries, and I ran to unlock it.

“Turkey?” I asked, nodding toward his grocery bag.

He groaned. “Darling, you don’t even want to know. Seventeen for dinner tomorrow. All male. All gay. And that dreadful little efficiency kitchen of ours. If you hear screams, that will be me. Drop in, if you like. Bring estrogen.”

“Thanks,” I said, stopping at the mailbox alcove. “But I’m working.”

I was glad
Biological Clock
was shooting. If you’re not with family on major holidays, people worry, calling to see if you’re being sufficiently festive, yelling at you if you eat Chee-tos for Christmas dinner. There had to be millions of others like me, orphans by circumstance, geography, or choice, but a cultural conspiracy was afoot to make us feel otherwise. Work, I decided, was the antidote.

I retrieved from my mail cubbyhole a huge assortment of holiday catalogs and some bills, and turned on my cell phone. It buzzed and pulsed, alerting me to all the unplayed messages acquired while it had been turned off. I ignored it. How had Doc talked me into a cell phone? They were more trouble than pets. My phone changed sounds, announcing an actual live call. All right. No point in putting it off any longer. “Yes. Hello,” I said.

“It’s Simon. Playing hard to get?”

I tried to conjure up Doc’s face, but Doc-in-my-head had gone out to dinner. “No,” I said. “I’m no good at that.”

“Lucky me. Okay. You had questions.”

“Are you a DEA agent?”

“Hell, no. Where’d you get that idea?”

I sank to my knees, picking up dropped mail. “Thank God. So what do you do for a living?” A blast of cold heralded the arrival of people dressed in pilgrim hats, doing a rock rendition of “Simple Gifts” in three-part harmony.

“Is there a church service going on there?” Simon asked.

“Of sorts. I’m in the lobby of my building.”

“Go upstairs. Call me in ten minutes.”

I didn’t dwell on how he knew I lived on an upper floor; I was too relieved to know he was not in the Drug Enforcement Agency. Relief is a beautiful, underrated feeling. I reached my apartment and stuck my key in the lock.

The door was already unlocked.

Uh-oh.

I hesitated, my hand on the doorknob, thinking,
Maybe I left the apartment unlocked this morning
while Ruta’s voice yelled,
Run. Run while you have the chance.

Too late.

From the other side of the door a voice called out, “Wollstonecraft? Is that you?” A voice I knew as well as my own.

“Yes, Mother,” I called back, closing my eyes. “It’s me.”

27

“
A
ctually, ‘It is I.’ ”

My mother sat curled on the sofa, a theatrical piece of furniture in leopard skin. My mother wore white. Her pants and caftan, drapey as a tablecloth, pooled around her, obscuring her small frame. The arrangement was so artful it would be a pity for her to stand and spoil the effect, and my mother, in fact, did not stand.

“What?” I said.

“You don’t say, ‘It’s me,’ dear, but ‘It’s I.’ Are you going to give me a kiss?”

I leaned over my mother, feeling graceless and large, and touched my lips to her very soft cheek. She closed the coffee-table book
Aerial Views of Los Angeles,
and smiled. “You look well. My word, have you always had those breasts?”

“Since I was twelve.”

“Oh, good. I’d hate to think you had them enlarged. Mine have always been small. A more pleasing look, especially as you age. The well-endowed look matronly.”

My mother was pretty much as I remembered her. Her hair was a touch more silver, the blond I’d inherited from her giving way gracefully. She wore no makeup, and I could smell the moisturizer she’d used for years.

I said, “How did you get in?”

“The plumber.”

“What plumber?”

“The woman plumber, in the plumber suit. An effeminate young man let me into the building, and the plumber let me into the apartment. A little kitschy, isn’t it? I would never put animal skin against these purples.” She gestured to the walls and carpet. “Of course, I wouldn’t use animal skin in any case. Even faux.”

“It’s a sublet,” I said, distractedly. “Cheap. Almost a house-sit. For my friend Hubie. Was this plumber . . . plumbing?”

“I have no idea. Gay, I suppose. Your friend. They can be kitschy, can’t they? Generally with more taste than this.”

I perched on a chair. Maybe the building super had let the plumber in. Maybe I had a leak I didn’t know about, dripping into the apartment beneath me. These things happened. I’d call the super. “How’s life at the ashram, Mom? I thought you—”

“Dear, is it so difficult to use my given name? I’ve requested—”

“Sorry. Estelle.”

“No, the new one.”

“Sorry. Prana. Didn’t you say only an act of God could get you back to L.A.?”

“It was an act of God that brought me.” My mother set the coffee-table book on a coffee table already cluttered with books. “I am concerned for your chi.”

I stood. “Okay, let me just change before we launch into . . . chi. Something to drink?” I detoured to the kitchen for a diet root beer.

My mother, galvanized, followed me. “Green tea, if you have any.”

“I don’t.”

“Champagne, then. Or wine. Wollie, I came as soon as I heard.”

“Heard what?” Being Estelle/Prana’s daughter entailed feeding her cue lines to her monologues. I hadn’t seen her in five years, but I could do my part in a coma.

“I have not been off-ashram since the autumnal equinox, but this week was my turn at market, so yesterday, in the checkout lane in Solvang, I saw it.
TV Guide.
”

“Yes?” I found a bottle of wine, some cheap Chardonnay I’d gotten at Trader Joe’s, and scrounged around for a corkscrew.

“Need I describe the effect it had on me? My daughter—on the cover?”

I stopped to gape at my mother. “I’m on the cover of
TV Guide
?”

My mother stared back, cheekbones high, nostrils flaring. “Your name. Your photo, the size of a tiny stamp. One among dozens, and the headline ‘Who Will We Remember Six Months from Now? And Why Do We Care?’ Despicable grammar. So you’re on this television show,
Biology Today—
”

“Biological Clock.”

“—a participant in—what is it, some science program?”

“Reality TV,” I said.

“What is that?”

“Television that uses real people in situations—. Never mind, you wouldn’t like it. It’s a job, Mother, temporary, something I fell into and—”

“My God, I used to lie awake nights, fearing my children would one day be drafted. And now my daughter, a willing tool of the patriarchy—”

“Mom. Reality TV—okay, it’s morally decadent. I’m not out there curing cancer or shutting down nuclear reactors, but I’m making the rent, paying off credit cards—”

“Please elevate yourself to the level of this discussion. I speak from a spiritual plane.” My mother’s hands gripped the Formica counter. She was fine-boned and fragile, more delicate than I’d ever been. Her forearms brought to mind some exotic bird. “Don’t you realize the danger, that your image miniaturized and multiplied millions of times over, on television screens everywhere—”

“Actually, the show’s not that popular.”

“—exacts a price?”

“What about actors?” I asked. “They’re all in danger?”

“Actors are interpretive artists, playing parts, which minimizes the effect, but yes, they are damaged, as is obvious when you meet one. This is the cost of art. But you reveal yourself without the filter of character. Why do you suppose indigenous people shy away from cameras?”

The phone rang, and I grabbed it in irritation. “I don’t know a lot of indigenous people. Yes, hello.”

“There’s a couple of Hopis I could introduce you to,” the voice said.

“Hold on,” I said to the phone, then addressed my mother. “I have a contract. I can’t break it, it would be unethical. Bad karma.”

My mother drew herself up to her full height. “Don’t bandy about words the meaning of which you have no true understanding. This is my life’s work, and I tell you that walking away is the only course of action with integrity.”

“Well, I’m not gonna. Excuse me.” I spoke into the phone. “Is this—Simon?”

“It is.”

“I’ve had a fatiguing day,” my mother said, oblivious to the fact I was talking to someone else. “I shall retire. Your refrigerator leaves something to be desired. Is there a place to buy tofu tomorrow?”

“Hold on, Simon.” I slid the phone to my chest. “Yes, Prana. This is still L.A.”

“Good. I have borrowed a pair of socks.”

This could go on forever. “Simon,” I said, “I’ll call you in ten minutes. Someone’s about to barricade herself in my bedroom and I’m desperate to get out of these pantyhose.”

“You’re wearing pantyhose?” he said.

“Pantyhose?” my mother said. “Good God, how Republican.”

Prana had appropriated
not just socks but my bed, all four pillows, the cashmere sweater Joey had given me for my birthday, and the half box of Godiva chocolates stored in my refrigerator. She’d also marked her territories with scented candles and lotions. None of this surprised me. Leopards may go to live in ashrams, but they don’t change their spots.

The good news was that my mother was soon tucked away to sleep, read, meditate, or whatever it was she did in “retirement.” She could do it for up to twelve hours, I knew from experience, a blessing for those who needed a half day to recharge their Prana-tolerance batteries.

I was back in the kitchen, in sweatpants, when the phone rang. “You have an elastic idea of what constitutes ten minutes,” Simon said.

I poured Cocoa Puffs into a bowl. “I come by that naturally.”

“Okay. So you thought I was a DEA agent—”

“No, Joey thought that.” I opened the refrigerator. Instead of milk, I found a carton of something called Soy So Licious. I looked down. My milk carton was in the garbage can. “Oh—and she wondered what kind of car that is you drive.”

“A Bentley.”

“Is that a big deal?”

“It’s a Continental GT. The cheap Bentley.”

“Oh, okay.” Again, I was struck by how easy it all was on the phone. “So you’re not some kind of drug dealer.”

“No. I’m not any kind of drug dealer.”

“Good. Not that I wouldn’t associate with you if you were. But we’d never have a long-term relationship. Or even dinner—” I poured Soy So Licious over my Cocoa Puffs. It looked milklike, but not white enough.

“Lunch?”

“Yeah, lunch. I’d have lunch even if you worked for the DEA. Lunch is a noncommittal meal.”

“Are you asking me to lunch?”

“Well, not—”

“Yes,” said a new voice. “Come tomorrow for brunch.”

Silence. Then I found my voice. “Prana, what a ghastly thing to do, listening in on my phone calls. Would you hang up, please?”

“I am not eavesdropping. I picked up the phone to call Solvang.”

I mentally ground my teeth. “Simon, meet my mother. Mom, tomorrow’s Thanksgiving. I’m sure Simon has—”

“I’m aware of the date. I’m not a mental defective. Noon, Simon.” My mother went into a purr she reserved for the male of the species. “If you care to bring something, champagne would not go amiss.” There was a click.

I cleared my throat. “It would make me very happy if you’d ignore—”

“I’m very happy to come for brunch.”

“—because it’s news to me we’re even having it, and you must have family plans. Besides—brunch: such a pretentious meal. Who has brunch on Thanksgiving?”

“I love brunch. Eggs Benedict, bloody Marys. . . . See you at noon.”

“Wait, this is—awkward and—I don’t know your last name, or anything about you. You can’t come to brunch, you don’t want to meet my mother, I don’t want you to meet her, I’m not even sure—okay, you’re not DEA, but who are you, what is—”

“My last name is Alexander. I’d love to meet your mother. I eat everything except beets, no allergies, and I’ll try not to embarrass you in front of your family.”

“Okay, but the thing is—”

“I need to talk to you in any case. In person. It’s why I call. Repeatedly.”

“Yes, but—”

“And I know who Richard Feynman is.”

That stopped me cold. I’d forgotten for a moment, but it all came flooding back. Annika. Annika’s missing mother. Annika’s probably dead boyfriend Rico, his own blood in the trunk of his car. “Who is he?”

“Let’s save that for brunch.”

“Who is he?” I nearly screamed it.

He was silent.

I pulled myself together. “Listen, Simon Alexander, whoever you are—who are you, by the way?”

A pause. “Someone with an interest in your well-being.”

“Why do I feel like I’m on a game show? Personal or professional interest?”

“Both.”

Well. That was something. “And you’re not in the DEA? And you weren’t on Temple Street the other day?”

“I’m not in the DEA. I was on Temple Street the other day.”

“Doing what?”

“We’re working out some jurisdictional issues with the DEA.”

“Who’s—who is—” My voice shook a little. “‘We’?”

Another pause, during which my breathing stopped. Then: “The FBI.”

I woke with
a stiff neck, a sore back, and no immediate sense of why I was on the living room sofa with the sun assaulting my face. Slowly I remembered my mother.

And the FBI.

It was so much worse than the DEA, I’d gone into a coughing fit when I’d heard the words. I have no history with the DEA. The FBI, on the other hand, has been pissing off my family since the days of J. Edgar Hoover. And not just my biological family. Ruta had been a Communist in the Nixon years, a lonely era for Reds. She’d populated my fairy tales with witches, goblins, and G-men. I hadn’t gone into this with Simon. I’d gotten off the phone as soon as I could, collapsing onto the sofa for a night of unrest and dreams populated with witches, goblins, and G-men.

The doorbell rang. My body cranked itself into a standing position. Still sore from Krav Maga—what had those people done to me?—I hobbled to the door.

Uncle Theo and P.B. stood in the hallway.

Suppressing alarm, I hugged my brother. P.B. wore a green striped shirt with khaki pants I’d given him for his last birthday, which was okay, except that he’d paired them with floral bedroom slippers he must’ve acquired at Rio Pescado. I was exasperated with Uncle Theo for having allowed this sartorial flub until I saw that Uncle Theo wore an orange fringed poncho suggestive of a pumpkin or a monk. “What are you guys doing here?”

“Summoned for brunch.” Uncle Theo hugged me and held out a sheaf of wheat secured with a twist tie. “We caught a ride with some of P.B.’s troops, on a holiday pass. We ran into that nice bookshop man on Santa Monica, who says to stop in soon.”

This was bad. P.B. was a social wild card under the best of circumstances, and brunch with the FBI was not the best of circumstances. His schizophrenia featured a preoccupation with surveillance by alien forces and government agencies. He was not currently delusional, but even asymptomatic he was intense. As for Uncle Theo, he’d actually known Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. Numbly, I accepted the sheaf of wheat, a bag of kaiser rolls, and a box of sprouts, and went into the kitchen, where P.B. tuned my radio to a show about insects they’d been listening to in the car.

I looked at my watch. Simon, if he showed, wasn’t due for two hours. Plenty of time for me to run away from home.

Prana emerged from my bedroom, planted kisses on the cheeks of her brother-in-law and son, neither of whom she’d seen in five years, and announced she was off to the store. Uncle Theo went too. P.B. stayed behind. I straightened the apartment and myself, my sense of foreboding growing. An hour later, the shoppers returned to take over the kitchen. A half hour after that, Simon showed up.

Seeing him in my doorway with yellow roses in one hand and Dom Pérignon in the other nearly knocked the wind out of me. He was dressed in gray pants and a soft white shirt. I wondered about the effect he’d have on the seventeen gay men showing up for dinner down the hall later. I hadn’t found him good looking that night at the minimall, but he was getting progressively more handsome, a phenomenon I didn’t understand. This thought, however, was succeeded by a drone in my head: “FBI. FBI. FBI . . .”

There was that awkward—for me—hello moment where we had the option to kiss, hostess to guest, but of course I couldn’t kiss an FBI agent, so I took the flowers and champagne, which acted as a barrier. I avoided looking into his eyes, as one avoids staring at the sun during a solar eclipse, and closed the door. The living room shrank. Did he have extra-high ceilings in his own house? Did the FBI live in houses, like regular people? Was he wearing a gun, by the way? Tucked into his sock? Why, why, why was he here?