Any Resemblance to Actual Persons (25 page)

Okay, I know I told myself no more sunrises, told myself that I needed to manage my time better, but here I am at the beginning of another day, the end of another all-night session, hunched over my IBM Wheelwriter 1000. I'm clenching my jaw like a lunatic and I know I'm going to have a killer headache later. I'm going to have to tell Julia that I fell asleep at my desk again, though last time I said that she said she'd heard the typewriter going all night. I said that must have been old house sounds, a branch against a windowpane, the pipes rattling. Tonight, however, I've kept the humidifier running, so hopefully its pleasant blanket of white noise has absorbed all my key-clicking. The humidifier is a new purchase, a gift, I suppose, from Julia. She was concerned about all the nosebleeds I've been getting recently, and when I told her that they were probably just from the dry weather, she immediately bought me a humidifier. It's a strange contraption, built in the shape of a penguin. You fill its belly with water and it spews vapor from its beak. She said it was the only kind the store had.

With the sun up now, I can see our brand-new lawn in the backyard. Chris and Julia just finished it, and it looks pretty great. The new sod arrived yesterday. It came on a flatbed truck in patches, as if for a large grass quilt, each square green and healthy. I had just come back from a long day at COLA and watched them for a while before sitting down to get my work done. Julia told Chris that they had to lay the new sod slowly and carefully or the roots wouldn't take. Chris said okay, but they didn't talk much as they worked. The only sound I heard was the damp
thump
when one of them dropped a square of sod on the ground. It didn't take long, and when they were done, they stood back. The sun through the trees spilled coins of light onto the
new ground, and Julia pointed out the lines where the squares of grass met each other, the vague grid beneath the new green lawn, the seams of the quilt. The lines would disappear in time, she explained, once the roots took hold. But first, she said, they needed to try it out, take it for a test run, break it in. Julia bent down, untied her laces, and pulled off her dirty sneakers. She peeled off her socks and draped them over her shoes, then started walking around on the new grass. “Come on,” she said, looking back at Chris. Chris took off his shoes and socks and began walking around. They both walked slowly, cautiously almost, as if walking out onto a frozen lake, feeling for a certain stability beneath their feet before making any sudden movements. Julia was now in the middle of the yard, and she leaned down to pluck a blade of grass from the ground. “Hey, Chris,” she said, “you know this?” She fit the blade of grass between her thumbs and cupped her hands together. She blew through her palms, the blade of grass the delicate reed. A tone came out, a whistle, the sound itself strained but steady. Then she spotted me watching from the window and stopped. She waved and said, “Come check out your new backyard! Feels great between the toes!” Chris turned around to see me. He was smiling and said, “Yeah.” I thought of my pale feet, my yellow woodlike toenails, and I declined, waved back, said it looks great but I have so much work to do. Julia cocked her head a bit, out of suspicion or concern I couldn't tell. She shrugged, said okay, then lay down in the new grass.

Maybe I'll go check out the lawn now, with Chris and Julia still asleep. I'll take off my shoes, walk around, feel the dew on my feet.

The grass felt nice, really nice. I was out there a good long time, walking around barefooted, thinking to myself that it felt, somehow,
mentholated. This is the prefect way to describe the feeling of dewy grass on your bare feet first thing in the morning: It mentholates you. I then walked inside and found Julia making herself some tea and told her how good the grass felt, that it felt mentholated, but she just looked at me in that way of hers that is both concerned and condescending and said I didn't look well. She started making me some of her chamomile tea and wasn't listening to my further descriptions of the grass. I said I didn't need the tea, that I could just take a Trazodone, but she asked me to stop pacing, sit down, and have the tea. I said fine, humoring her, and I sat down. As I sipped the perfumy but largely flavorless tea, she told me that I would be canceling my classes today so I could stay home and get some much-needed rest. I said there was no need, that I've canceled too many classes this summer as it is, and she looked at me and poked her head forward like a chicken. “How many classes have you canceled?” I told her that my writing was going really well. “Paul,” she said, “how many classes have you canceled?” Not that many, I said, really, but, you know, canceling one class in the compressed summer semester is like canceling a whole week in the normal semester. My writing is going really well, I said again, trying to steer the conversation away from my occasional truancy. “Ah, yes,” she said with a sigh, “the new novel, right?” She untied and retied the belt of her robe. “Paul, when you were wrapped up in your sister's book, I thought it was great. It was between semesters so it didn't interfere with your teaching. It was a real project, with a real goal, and I know it was good for you. But I was happy when you finished with it. I thought I'd get you back, not just watch you disappear into some made-up story. Listen, I support you, of course I do. But you need to be realistic.
After all these years, you need to realize that your job is teaching, not writing, and your responsibilities are to your students, not a bunch of imaginary people.” The tea was affecting me more than I anticipated. I needed to lie down, needed to sleep. I got up, said something to Julia, and walked into the bedroom and fell asleep. Or least my body fell asleep—my brain leapt into hyperconsciousness, frantically listing, on this very machine, all the things I'd missed, all the things I hadn't seen, frantically going back to scenes with the horrifying feeling that it had missed something, just as Ms. Short's killer apparently returned to Leimert Park, hours after dumping her body there, his eyes scanning the dead grass and dry dirt for the wristwatch he'd left behind. I woke in a panic and ran out to my car and tore through my glove box and realized I'd left the green flashlight at Rory's—how long ago was that? Days, weeks? The clock on my dashboard said 7:04, but the dark was disorienting—
AM
or
PM
? How long had I slept? I didn't stop to figure it out. I had evidence of a B&E to retrieve. I drove straight to Canoga Park. On my first drive-by of Rory's apartment, I couldn't get a good enough angle to see if any lights were on, so I parked my car down the block and approached on foot, only then realizing that I wasn't wearing any shoes. I could now see a dim light in the small window beside the door, perhaps left on while they're out to discourage burglars. But closer, the rousing sounds of a Spielbergian film score and the soft but prickly smell of curry masala seemed to be emerging from the window, now clearly open a crack. There was a curtain I didn't remember from before, though a diaphanous one, all doily like a cobweb, through which I could see Edie and Rory sitting on the couch, messy dishes before them on the coffee table. Their faces were lit, aquarium-like,
from the TV, and she was curled up against his body. The movie's music was building to something, though building to what I couldn't see. I could see, however, Rory and Edie coiling into each other in anticipation. She whispered something to him. He scratched her shoulder. She wiggled her feet. When whatever was happening on the screen finally happened, they gasped, then laughed, and I walked away.

When I got home, I discovered a note from Julia saying she's taken Chris to a movie, which I guess gives me at least an hour or two before they're back, so I have some time to get some work done here while my head still feels clear from the sleep.

So anyway, it was at the very end of this past spring semester, when I'd just finished grading my lightened load of papers and submitted my grades (Yolanda's final grade for the course added up to a B-, but I boosted it to a solid B), when Oliver called me.

I was coming home from the grocery store, walking into the kitchen, my arms laden with plastic bags, the day's mail tucked in my armpit, and Chris walked out of his bedroom holding the cordless phone. As I began unloading the bags, he set the phone on the counter, took a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos—which he loves, forces me to buy, even though I think they smell like feet—and said, “That guy Oliver's on the phone.”

Was this it? The call I'd imagined getting for twenty years? The news that Random House, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster were now engaged in a bloody, knock-down-drag-out auction for the rights to publish one of my novels?

“Paul,” Oliver said when I picked up the phone. “Did you get the package?”

I looked at the mail on the counter. There were two packages, roughly the same size. I grabbed the one on top, but it was addressed to Chris, so I handed it to him as he walked out of the room, and I looked at the second one, a book-shaped box on top of some junk mail. “Yes!” I picked it up. “I'm holding it right now.”

“Listen, I'm sorry we couldn't work together on this one.”

“What?” With the phone wedged between ear and shoulder, I tore open the box, found the book inside. Before my brain had a chance to process the title and my sister's name—still strange seeing “Edith” instead of “Edie”—I recognized the photo on the cover: Betty Short's 1945 black-and-white headshot, her body angled away from the camera, her head cocked over her shoulder, looking up and camera-left. A man's shadow was superimposed over this. And “My Book” finally had a title. Along the top, the words
The Black Dahlia Dossier: Hollywood's Most Notorious Killer Revealed
were spelled out like a ransom note, each word cut from a different newspaper headline, a stylish choice contrasted by the white band running across the bottom that read in a simple sans serif font,
Advance Reader Copy
. I could feel the blood draining from my head, an elevator descending from my brain to the basement, and I had to sit down.

“I just want to let you know that both Edie and I really did want to bring you in on this. Your perspective would have been invaluable, but they're rushing this to press.”

Chris came back into the kitchen holding up a large black T-shirt, a gargoyle screen-printed above the words
Black Sabbath
. “Look what Eddie sent me!”

I looked down at the book. “When did this sell?” I asked Oliver.

Chris walked out of the kitchen.

“You probably heard Paramount is making a movie from that old Cooley novel,” Oliver said, “and I guess it's coming out in January, closer to the anniversary of the murder. We were lucky enough to get Cooley's blurb, and we're really hoping for some cross-promotion.”

I saw the blurb he was talking about, there on the cover:
“The most convincing case I've yet encountered. Perhaps Elizabeth Short's ghost can finally rest.” –Thomas Cooley

“The guys at New Wye,” Oliver continued, “they want to know that they have your cooperation on this. Edie's going to be doing some publicity. If this gets the kind of attention we're hoping for, people might start contacting you, asking for interviews, seeing what you can confirm.”

I covered the book with some flyers for Chinese food.

“Paul? Are you there?”

“Yeah.”

“So what do you think?”

Chris was in the backyard now. I could see him through the window. He was wearing his new T-shirt, so large it hung dress-like to his knees. He had his headphones on and was holding a Discman in one hand; in the other hand he was holding a ruler, using it to whack at weeds.

I said, “I think . . . ”

I rarely saw Chris out in the sunlight, and I was oddly pleased by how he'd turned even the outdoors into his own solipsistic bubble.

“I was thinking about Chicago,” I said.

I heard a static-muffled sigh. “Why?”

“You remember that, right?”

“I remember something you wrote, yeah. You were angry I didn't like it.”

I idly shuffled the junk mail on the table; the tritone printing on the grocery store flyer was unaligned, and all those pictures of mangos and soda bottles were shadowed with reds, blues, and yellows.

“Why didn't you like it?” I asked.

“Ummm. How long ago are we talking here?”

“1976.”

“You were always good with dates.”

“Thanks.”

“You're like Rain Man.”

I've always hated mangos.

“So why didn't you like it?” Outside, Chris was now staring at his feet as he walked in circles, mouthing the words to whatever song he'd wired directly into his head. “Hello?” I said. “Oliver?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I'm here. Jesus, I'm just thinking.”

“Thought we'd been disconnected.”

I tapped on the window. I'm not sure why, perhaps to get Chris's attention. Though, at such a strange moment, I'm not sure what I would have done with it had he given it to me.

“I guess,” Oliver said, “you wrote some shit in there I didn't like, can't remember what.”

“But you remember that night in Chicago, right? That guy's apartment? We stayed there all night. We drifted apart after that, and whatever that night was about seemed to have been the beginning of it. I'm not talking about the story—I'm talking about that night.”