The Dismantling (29 page)

“Shit, Maria,” Dalia said. “When?”

She told them the story, leaving out Thomas's name. She'd half-expected to feel the immediate lifting of a burden merely because she'd said the words out loud—“I was raped”—but after she'd finished the story and searched inside herself, she found that nothing had changed, not yet. Her friends, too, seemed less shocked than she might have expected them to be.

“I know what I'd do,” Amanda said.

“Oh yeah?” Maria said. “What?”

Amanda shrugged. “If it were me, I'd kill him.”

Dalia snorted out a laugh.

“Bullshit,” Maria said.

“I would. And you should too.”

Dalia cracked up, falling back onto the sand: “You are so full of shit.”

Maria stared at Amanda, the weed fogging her brain. Was she joking? Maria was too fucked up to know. Amanda pulled from the blunt and exhaled a mushroom cloud of smoke. “You're crazy,” Maria muttered. Amanda just shrugged again and handed her the blunt.

Maybe Amanda was crazy, and maybe she'd been joking, but her words—
I'd kill him. And you should too
—lodged themselves in Maria's mind, a burr tugging at the fabric of her attention. She'd daydream behind the counter at the café and the idea would slip into her unguarded thoughts:
I'd kill him.
She'd come to, after another night of obliterative drinking, and the words were right there alongside her hangover:
And you should too.
Slowly, subtly, over the course of a few months and without Maria quite realizing it, the idea shifted from an absurd, offhand comment to a kind of mantra to the first tracings of a blueprint. Soon enough, she thought about killing Thomas, not as an abstract concept, but as a possible reality, a reality that she could design. She thought about how she might feel if he were dead. Not just dead—dead at her hand. There was no ambivalence in the answer that came to her: she'd feel pretty fucking fantastic about it. Revenge, she thought, wasn't one of the great motivating forces in human history because it didn't work.

She made the final, purposeful decision to kill him two months before she arrived in New York. She quit drugs and drinking that same day, a renunciation she'd since maintained with only two very notable and useful exceptions before she was prescribed her painkillers at Cabrera. All her energy and focus went into planning Thomas's death. Once she'd decided on her escape strategy—she learned about Health Solutions the usual way, through internet and chat-group searching—she found out where Thomas currently worked and lived. This wasn't particularly difficult: she cruised around the old neighborhood in San Gabriel, talking to people in the stores and bars, picking up information wherever she could. He'd dropped out of UC Santa Cruz, she learned, and now worked in management at a warehouse distribution center for computer parts in Long Beach. He lived nearby, with his girlfriend, in Carson.

She drove out to the distribution center, glad for once to be behind the wheel of her crappy gray 1998 Civic, the kind of car people forget the instant they've seen it. She watched as the workers dribbled out of the warehouse into the parking lot. Thomas appeared near the back of the group. He wore an ill-fitting black suit and white dress shirt without a tie, and to Maria these clothes looked like a costume and Thomas a teenager playing at being an adult. He drove a dusty black Jeep with a Fox Racing sticker on the side window. She watched from across the street as he pulled out of the lot and turned south, and then she followed a few car lengths behind as he drove toward the 710. She was afraid she'd lose him on the freeway, but it turned out he wasn't going that far. He turned left onto Anaheim Street and pulled into the parking lot of a bar; she parked across the street and waited. He came out about an hour and a half later, swaying slightly, and got back into his Jeep. She didn't see him speak to anyone on his way in or out, and she wondered if he'd been drinking alone. Over the next few weeks, she returned to the warehouse five more times at closing hour. Each evening Thomas went to the bar on Anaheim Street for an hour or two before emerging, visibly tipsy, and climbing into his Jeep.

She sourced some Rohypnol from her old pot dealer, who also moved an assortment of pharmaceuticals for a crooked nurse's aide. He raised his eyebrows when she requested it.

“Can't sleep,” she said.

“This shit is heavy,” he said. “Be careful.”

“Just give it to me.”

He shrugged and sold her a blister pack of ten. “Whatever gets you through the night.”

The gun was more difficult. She wrote down a list of all the people she knew in the South Bay who owned a handgun. She stared at the four names. She was sure all the guns were illegal, stolen, or bought on the black market, their serial numbers shaved. She'd have to steal one of them herself; she couldn't risk anybody knowing she'd wanted to purchase the thing. She picked the most careless of the four: it had to be Alvie, a young, low-level Venice heroin dealer who seemed to pour the majority of his profits back into his own habit, the worst cliché of getting high on your own supply she'd seen, and the kind of idiot who'd leave his gun out on the table just to let people know he had it.

She paid Alvie a visit under the pretense of wanting to purchase half a gram. He greeted her at the door, shirtless and sleepy-eyed at three in the afternoon, a spindly kid with a sunken, hairless chest and a wispy attempt at a mustache.

“Hey, Maria,” he mumbled. “I thought you weren't down with this shit anymore.”

“Yeah, well, I believe in change and personal growth.”

He grinned. “C'mon inside.”

It was clammy and dim in the little bungalow, the air smelling of mildew and incense and a sharp, sweet odor she thought might be opium. He weighed out the matte-white powder, poured it into a plastic baggie, slid it across the sticky coffee table. She handed him the cash.

“Listen, Alvie . . .”

“Yeah?”

“You know I don't do this stuff so much . . .”

“Yeah.”

“So I was thinking . . . maybe we could do some now? Together, here in a safe place? Get my sea legs back or whatever.”

“Aw, Maria, I got people coming by later, and—”

“I'm offering, Alvie. Out of my bag. Let's do just a bit.”

She'd been betting that he wouldn't refuse free heroin, and she was right. He took his works out of a box under the coffee table.

“Oh no,” she said, “no needles.”

“Chipping, huh?” He shrugged. “Whatever you want.”

She gave him back the bag, and he tapped out two points of powder, onto a smeary hand mirror. “Lucky this white just came through. It's been all brown around here, and you shouldn't be snorting that shit.” He held out a segment of plastic straw.

“You first,” she said.

He bent his head to the mirror and snorted. “Fuck, that's harsh.” He slid the mirror across the table. “Not too much, okay?”

She nodded and bent to the straw. She took a tiny hit, as small as she could manage without tipping Alvie off. After ten minutes, she felt it creeping up on her, like the first trembling edge of an orgasm.
I remember this
, she thought.
Fuck, do I remember this.
She looked over at Alvie. He seemed basically sober, and she pointed at the bag. “Have some more.” She exaggerated the slur already present in her voice. “My treat.” Alvie didn't turn her down, bending to the mirror one, two, three more times. He held out the straw. She waved him off sluggishly, not quite sure how much she was acting anymore. Finally, after his fourth bump, Alvie started to nod out.

“How you doin', Maria?” he mumbled.

“Yeah, all right.” She watched him through half-closed lids. He sprawled back on the couch, tried to light a cigarette, failed. He giggled and let his head fall to the side, eyes closed. She waited until she was sure he was passed out, and then she pushed herself out of the chair. She made her way into his bedroom, its air thick with a humid funk. She remembered him showing off the gun at a party. He'd pulled it from underneath his mattress, an ugly snub-nosed SIG Pro 2009, and passed it around the room, like a new father showing off baby pictures.
Idiot.
She tried to lift the mattress and failed, toppling over onto the bed. She lay there, her face pressed into his musty sheets. It wouldn't be so bad, she thought, to just take a nap for a minute.
Get the fuck up, Maria.
She laughed a little, the sound muffled by the sheets, and pushed herself to her feet. She reached under the mattress and there it was, the SIG, sitting like a black turd on the white box spring. She grabbed it and let the mattress fall.

“Maria.” She froze: Alvie, calling her from the living room. “Hey, Maria?”

She shoved the gun into her waistband, right at the small of her back, and pulled her sweatshirt down over it. She walked out into the living room as casually as she could. But it didn't matter: Alvie was where she'd left him, his head lazily cocked on the pillow, eyes still closed. “Someone in my room,” he slurred. She crept silently over to the chair on the other side of the couch. She sat down, the SIG digging into her tailbone.

“Nah, Alvie,” she said quietly. “Don't think so.”

His head lolled on the pillow and he slitted his eyes at her. “No?”

“Nope.”

“Fucking gremlins.” He giggled and closed his eyes again. She waited for about fifteen minutes, until the bump had mostly worn off. Then she stood, pocketed the baggie, and shook Alvie's shoulder. “Thanks, Alvie.”

He looked up at her and nodded drowsily. “Been a pleasure.”

Three days later, she drove her Civic to Thomas's warehouse and followed him, as usual, to the bar on Anaheim. Once she'd watched him go inside, she drove a few blocks away, parked, and checked her purse for the SIG and the pills. She had to keep moving, she knew—she couldn't risk pausing and thinking too much. She walked quickly back to the bar and stood at the door, listening to the murmur of talk on the other side.
You know what you have to do. All that's left now is to do it.
She opened the door.

The bar was dim inside, as she'd hoped, its windows tinted. She scanned the crowded room and found Thomas sitting alone at a high table in a back corner. His head was bent over his phone; he hadn't noticed her yet. She ordered herself a Tecate. She was a woman drinking alone at a bar. She waited a few minutes, sipping at her beer—the first alcohol she'd tasted in months, bright and crisp and wonderful—and pushed away the impulse to turn around. She wanted him to notice her first; she thought it would seem less staged that way. She waited a few more minutes, and when she went to take another sip of her Tecate, she found the can nearly empty.
Easy now.

She rose from the bar stool, turned around, and looked straight into Thomas's eyes. She froze for half a breath, and then she felt her face—
thank God—
shape itself into the expression she'd practiced in front of her mirror for weeks: a kind of startled puzzlement, as though her brain hadn't quite caught up with her eyes. Thomas looked like he'd been kicked in the stomach, all the bluster knocked out of him. He recovered quickly though, his expression resolving into an ironic, slightly smug smile.

She made her way over to his table.

“I thought you were up in Santa Cruz,” she said. Her voice sounded obscene to her own ears—false, too loud.

“Nah.” He shook the ice in his drink—a rum and Coke, Maria could smell it. “That didn't work out.”

“What are you doing in Long Beach?”

“I could ask you the same thing.”

“So ask me.”

He looked at her for a long moment. His face had filled out, the flesh of his neck thickened. She could see he was trying to place her into some kind of story, trying to identify the point at which he'd intersected her life—trying to figure out where she was coming from.

“I work nearby.” He sipped at his drink. “What about you?”

“I live in Redondo,” she said. “But sometimes I like to come over here and have a drink at a place where I don't know anybody and nobody knows me.”

“Guess I fucked that up for you. Sorry.”

“I'll get over it.” She glanced at his drink. “Need a refill?”

“I'll do it.”

She waved him off and went to the bar. She bought him a rum and Coke and herself another Tecate, and she carried the drinks back to their table. She looked around: nobody seemed to be paying any attention to them.

“You drink alone?” she asked. “First sign of an alcoholic.”

“I don't see anybody here with you either.”

“Yeah, well, I'm a foster child. I'm supposed to be fucked up. What's your excuse?”

“I deal with people and their bullshit all day long. If I come here and have some drinks alone, it's like a buffer, so I don't bring any of that negative crap home.” He paused. “So, pretty much why anybody ever drinks after work.”

“Home to what?”

“Home to my girlfriend.”

“Ah.” He stared at her. He was trying to figure out how he should act around her, Maria saw, and failing. “What's her name?”

“I don't want to talk about her with you.” He licked his lips. “Look, maybe I should go.”

“Why, do I make you nervous?”

He stood up.

“Oh, stop it,” she said. “Calm down and let's have a drink together. We're adults now, right?” He hesitated, one foot on the floor. She slid his drink closer to him. “Sit. Please. I want to talk to you.”

He sat down and took the drink. “My parents are going to be blown away when I tell them about this.”

“They would be,” she agreed, “but I'd rather you not tell them.”

“Why?”

“Let's just keep it between us.” She made her voice light, neutral. Maybe she was flirting, maybe not.