Beyond the Pale Motel (2 page)

The sound was off but a selfie of a pretty young woman smiled from the screen. Under the image were the words
HOLLYWOOD SERIAL KILLER STRIKES AGAIN?

Stu hit the volume button on the remote and scrutinized the TV. His eyes were such a pale color the pupils looked like spots of black ink. He rubbed his fingers over his slightly receding chin. “They found this one in the hills like the first. Her name's Adrienne something. Banks, I think. Model/actress, same as before. He cut off this one's legs. Brutal shit.”

The girl before, Mandy Merrill, was found by hikers, not far from the Hollywood sign. Her arms had been cut off, severed precisely at the shoulder joints.

Bree and I looked at each other. There were instant tears in both our eyes. She took the remote from Stu and shut off the TV.

“Arms, legs. It's like he's collecting,” said Stu. “I wonder if someone is going to rip it off for a series or something. I might have to get on that. Oh, snap, did I just say
rip it off?
Bad pun, Stu, bad.”

Bree and I exchanged another glance; we played monster dating games, but neither of us had much tolerance for the real thing.

When I was a teenager, they caught Jeffrey Dahmer and I was haunted by his pale, bloated face—the petulant lips and dead blue predator eyes. How he had lured all those young men, killed them, violated their corpses, cut them into pieces which he stored in his refrigerator. Sometimes he consumed parts of the bodies. I'd read somewhere that he wanted a dead lover because that was the perfect kind—they didn't move or speak. He'd even tried drilling into some of their skulls while they were still alive and injecting acid into their brains to animate them. Looking back on it, I wondered if the metaphor of dismemberment, brutality, and monster-making reflected my own confused and agonized teenage state of mind. I thought I'd transcended all that as an adult, a sober, married woman, but with the mention of the Hollywood Serial Killer the obsessive fear came back like a needle to my spine.

“Okay, that's enough,” Bree said, frowning at Stu.

I rode a surge of nausea and tried to pretend it was because I was pregnant.
Maybe I will be after tonight,
I thought. Better to think of that than of what was happening to these lovely, severed girls who had only ever wanted, I was sure, like me, to be loved by someone.

Looking at Skylar's photo again, I could almost smell his floppy hair—baseball-field dust and chamomile-honey baby shampoo. Skylar made everything feel better, but my heart still ached, overfull with love and fear.

*   *   *

After work I decided to go to Body Farm even though I'd have to redo my hair and makeup, change back into the dress and the boots that crunched, like teeth, the bones of my feet. I needed to sweat off the news and Stu's response to it.

The gym was a small, mirrored mini-mall world full of eastside hipsters, not unlike the place I worked all day, except here they dealt in muscles instead of hair. Big Bob, the owner, was training a ridiculously gorgeous young woman I hadn't seen before. She looked like a pageant contestant—high ponytail, enormous breasts, tiny waist, Bambi eyes and legs—white-hot beautiful even by Body Farm standards, which was saying a lot.

“Cute dress,” she said to me. Genuinely sweet. I said thank you, secretly glad Dash wasn't there to see her.

Bob was kneeling over with his hand on her thigh, stretching it back toward her head, fondling the muscle, and as I passed, he turned and looked at me in a way that sent an air-conditioned blast down my dress. His arm was much thicker around than her leg, and his skin gleamed with spray tan and oil. I've never liked Bob, and between his energy and the plethora of hot, young girls whom I tended to compare myself to, I always thought I'd stop going to Body Farm. Creepy name anyway, isn't it? But I stayed because Scott was there. And, if I'm honest, because it had a reputation for “making” the best bodies in town, or at least Big Bob was known for that. I didn't train with him though; he charged $200 an hour and scared the crap out of me.

“How's my girl Bree?” Bob asked, flashing some teeth.

I said fine and walked away.

Scott was there that night, as always, standing with his hands in the pockets of his nylon Nike sweatpants. He never wore shorts because he'd had some surgery on his leg in his early twenties, although I was never quite sure exactly what it was for, just that he had a big scar he didn't like anyone to see, that he smoked medical marijuana to help deal with some residual pain, and that he couldn't do high-impact exercise.

Sometimes I wondered if Scott ever left Body Farm. We used to tease him about sleeping on the machines and showering in the bathroom before we got there.

He didn't fit any of the monster categories. Which is why we loved him. And had never dated him. Sometimes it takes a monster to scare away the stress of daily life.

Smelling of expensive, subtle cologne, Scott gave me a kiss on the cheek. “Hey, Catt.”

“Hi, sweet one.”

He asked how I was.

“Ugh. Freaked-out. Did you hear about that other girl who was killed?”

Scott shook his head. “It's horrifying. Makes you want to go far away and never come back.”

Rick and Todd, with their matching buzz cuts, Aztec tattoos, and Air Force 1s came over, oblivious of what we had been discussing. “Good timing, Catt. We were just telling Scotty here his hair is getting a little long, don't you think?” Rick said.

Toddrick, as we called them, liked to tease Scott about being vain, even more meticulous than they were. His hair was always perfectly cut, by me, of course. He never let anything about him get messy.

I touched his neat, well-shaped head. “Looks good to me,” I said. “Now you, on the other hand…”

Rick backed away. “No way, Edwina Scissorhands, I won't go anywhere named for cannibals.”

“Yeah, Blow is much better for a hair salon.” That was the place in Boys Town where Toddrick went for their matching cuts.

“I'd rather do blow than have my head hunted.”

“I'd rather
be
blown,” Todd offered.

“Okay, cats and dogs, let's not get crazy here,” Scott said. “Besides the horrors on the news, how's it going?” he asked me, pointing at Todd to get on the lat machine.

“Dash is back tonight.”

Scott raised his eyebrows. “You sure you want to get sweaty now? Won't there be enough of that later this evening?”

“Not the way things have been going unless I play it right. But I gotta work off the jitters.”

I'd been nervous about trying to get my husband's attention; now I was thinking about dead girls. As I picked up the first set of weights and smelled the tang of metal, I thought of the girl whose arms had been sawed off, the other without legs. In that moment I was grateful for my own body, which beat with life, especially in Dash's embrace.

“Well, just don't forget how lucky that man is to have you,” Scott said, trying to make me feel better, the way he always did.

*   *   *

Dash, that “lucky man,” and I moved into the bungalow when we got married. He actually carried me over the threshold on our wedding night, into the empty rooms—just the bed and the vanilla gardenia candles and bouquets of pink and white peonies Bree had installed secretly that morning. Dash knew how to fuck; he was big, and hard, and the best I'd ever had, and knowing that he was my husband had made me wetter and more responsive than ever.

“I think you just set a record, babe,” he said, when I came again.

Our place was built onto the side of a hill, overlooking the lake, the palm trees and cypress, bougainvillea and oleanders. You have to climb up a steep, white staircase, pass through the thick arches into the courtyard with its ferns, bamboo, and koi pond. Inside, one bed, one bath. No space for a kid, Dash said, but I knew the tiny office where my desk and futon were could be converted if necessary. Wood floors, white built-ins, including a mirror over the fireplace. The fireplace is not safe to use, but Dash lit a fire in it anyway sometimes. Pink-and-black tile in the kitchen and bathroom. Probably lead-based because of how it shines but I didn't mind. I had once done a whole
Love Monster
post on the toxic beauty of 1950s bathroom tile.

Our poisoned bungalow was all I ever wanted, really. When Dash was there, anyway. He's as big as the Cal King mattress and didn't even fit in the claw-foot tub. His giant black Docs sat by the front door because we agreed we wanted the floor pristine. We had meditated together every morning and before bed, slipping the cool, clicking beads of the malas between our fingers. My mala's made of rhodochrosite, pink and marbled, and his is wood. As a teenager I'd used a rosary to help me fall asleep at night, especially during that Dahmer phase, when I couldn't stop thinking about heads in refrigerators and organs in Ziploc bags. After I got sober and met Dash, Catholicism started making less sense than Eastern religions.

It was better than drinking, better than cigarettes and caffeine, our meditation practice, our lovemaking, our life. But it had been changing in the last year, a slow decline. I didn't want to admit it to myself.

As I headed into the bungalow, our neighbor from down the block ran by in a streak of neon short-shorts and tan skin. Dash and I called her Skipper; she was always running, sprinting, skipping backward, sometimes twice a day, nose, breasts, and butt pert, high ponytail bobbing. Must have been one of those model/actresses that come to this city in droves, I'd thought. Not quite pretty enough to be Barbie; more like her sidekick. I'd almost asked her to dinner once but decided that between Dash's gigs, our AA meetings, Head Hunter, and Body Farm, my husband and I had enough estrogen in our lives.

That night I was making him
pho
with fresh herbs, rice noodles, shrimp. For dessert—freshly baked chocolate chip cookies, which were our favorite. The smell of butter, sugar, and chocolate, and lemongrass, ginger, and jasmine tea, filled the kitchen. When I heard Dash at the door, my heart flipped like a fish about to be reeled in. I wished I hadn't worn the red dress all day. I should have just put it on after work, but I'd wanted to pump myself up, see if any men looked twice to remind me I was worthy of Dash.

I called out, “Hi, baby,” waited, counted to ten, trying not to rush to him.

He came in while I was crushing the garlic, popping the skin with the flat of a knife, and I glanced up and saw that his face looked different, white and still. Black T-shirt and black jeans as always. Muscles defined by pale blue veins. I always felt small around him, which was part of what turned me on. I was really heavy in high school, and even though I'd lost a lot of weight after getting sober, I was still a big girl. But not in his arms.

“Hey, baby, you okay?” I put down the garlic, wiped my hands on my fruit-patterned, vintage apron, and went to him, untying the apron strings to show off my dress.

He kissed me, but it was in a distracted way, eyes open. He was chewing peppermint gum but I could taste the tobacco and caffeine on his lips.

“What's wrong, baby?”

“I'm just tired. Smells good in here.” He moved away a little too quickly, and something fell and shattered inside of me, like when I had dropped my favorite gold shot glass that time. I should have known. Women's intuition and all. But who wants to know? Delusion is so much more pleasant in the end.

*   *   *

When he finally told me, it was dawn and we were lying awake, sweating, not touching each other. My cat, Sasha, had abandoned her usual post on my pillow. The fan wasn't cooling the room, just making an annoying sound as it blew hot air around. I wanted an icy-cold gin and tonic more than anything at that moment so I went through the acronym of AA warning signs, HALT: Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired. I wasn't hungry. I was tired for sure and very lonely, even with Dash lying there beside me in his underwear. I was angry.

“What?” I said finally. The word that always preceded our arguments.

“What what?” He groaned and turned away from me, onto his side. His back looked meaty and pale in the light that was starting to finger us through the blinds.

“Something's wrong,” I said.

Dash sat up with an exhale and rubbed his forehead. “You always think something is wrong.”

“Well, is it? You haven't touched me, you hardly ate.”

“So this signifies a problem? Because I didn't fuck you after being up for, like, twenty-four hours? Because I wasn't in the mood for
pho
? Seriously, Catt?”

“Just tell me,” I said. I was quietly leaving my body already at that point, everything going numb as I slid out of my skin and observed myself from some odd spot on the ceiling. I looked bloated and washed-out and my hair was tangled.
Get up,
I told myself.
Leave now. Don't listen to him say it.
But I couldn't move.

“Okay, fine. You can't just let anything lie, can you.”

I don't want you to lie anymore,
I thought. In that moment, even before he said it, everything I had been denying was becoming clear.

“There's someone,” Dash said.

“What do you mean there's someone?” I just couldn't move any part of my body. He had met someone? On his trip he'd met someone he liked, that was all. He hadn't actually …

“There's been someone. It's serious.”

I doubled over, grabbing my stomach, feeling the layer of fat there. He'd socked me in the gut with two words and I couldn't breathe.

“What are you talking about?” I whispered. But my voice was getting louder and louder. “Who did you meet?”

He wouldn't look at me.

The thoughts careened into each other as they fought to get out of my mouth. “Who is she? How long has it been? And you're telling me now? Tonight?”