Epiphany Jones (29 page)

And, after my dad forcefully checked her genitals, after I climbed out of that polystyrene furnace and got dressed, still trying to understand what I had seen, Epiphany managed to escape anyway. As she was marched back across the back lot, a lighting van was leaving. The driver of the van, he saw the three men and the beautiful young girl with the bleeding ear and thought nothing of it. This was a movie studio set, wasn’t it? And Epiphany, her ears began ringing so loudly. Her voices told her she must run …
now
. And she did. She ran like she never had before. She ran past the lot’s security gate as it opened for the truck to pass through. She ran in her bare feet into the warm California night.

The last time anyone from Matthew’s group saw her was later that night. She was still running. This time through a subdivision. And, as if by fate, she ran in front of a car. Our car. My dad, he was so shocked, he lost control of the Explorer and we crashed into a tree. As the horn blared, Epiphany stood outside the wreck and watched my father slowly bleed. And, despite the crying from someone she could only assume was his son in the passenger seat, she took that accident as a sign that God was just.

After the incident at the wrap party, after the accident, after my mind suppressed its imperfect perceptions of the world because it couldn’t deal with what it had seen, Matthew closed the lot and moved his studio to its existing space. He also didn’t risk having girls in America anymore. He kept them out of the country from then on. And for twelve years, Epiphany wondered if she would ever see the painting, or her daughter, again.

During those twelve years, Epiphany went from country to country, searching. She lived on the streets at times; other times she worked odd jobs here and there. Travelling like a vagabond for that long teaches you
how to survive. It teaches you cunning. It teaches you how to steal. It teaches you how to fight. Then one day her voices told her to return to Mexico to look for LaRouche. And LaRouche helped her. She told her she thought her daughter might be in Spain. But, as Epiphany was about to set off, her voices stopped her. They told her to go to Chicago instead. Her voices had helped her stay alive for this long, she didn’t dare disobey them even though she had no idea what could be in Chicago.

And in Chicago, Epiphany slept on Lower Wacker Drive for weeks, waiting for a sign. Then one night, a man with long, silvery hair who was sleeping on the streets offered her a bit of his old newspaper to feed her fire. And this newspaper, it had an article with a photograph in it. The photograph showed Matthew’s Van Gogh along with Rolin – only now he was called Roland – and two other men. Epiphany knew then why she’d come to Chicago. For a second time, her faith had paid off. She tore out the photograph and kept it with her.

Epiphany began scoping out the museum. And, being a pretty girl, she became friends with one of the construction men working on the renovation. He let it slip that the security cameras would be inoperable three days from then. If he had been a smarter man, he would have noticed that, not only did he not see Epiphany after that, but he also didn’t see a copy of his blueprints for the museum again.

And on that cold April day, Epiphany stood outside the coffee house across from the museum as she prayed and hoped that the SD card would still be beneath the canvas.

In the museum, Epiphany slipped right past security and walked to the lower level, where the blueprints showed her the photography studio was. It is there, her voices said, that she would find the painting on that day and at that time. And her voices, they’ve never been wrong. She walked in to find Roland standing in front of the Van Gogh, talking into a video camera. She asked where the SD card was but Roland swore he didn’t know. Then behind the camera she noticed it in the card reader on his desk.

And it hits me: the memory of that day. I remember being in his
studio. He was fingering the painting like he found an invisible pimple on it and then suddenly he seemed distracted. Then he rushed me out of the studio. That’s when he must have prised the card out from under the canvas and checked to see what was on it.

But Roland had deleted the contents as soon as he saw what it was. And for Epiphany, it was too much. She’d finally found her bargaining chip but this impotent little man had erased it. She threw the empty card at Roland, who was cowering now. To Roland, Epiphany was like seeing a ghost.

And, just as she thought there was no hope, Epiphany, she saw the newspaper clipping framed on his desk. The same clipping she had torn out. And like everyone before her, only after looking at it a second time did she notice me, huddled at my desk in the back of the photograph.

‘Why does he look like him?’ she asked. ‘Who is that man?’

But Roland was already in hysterics.

So Epiphany snapped the leg from the tripod that held the camera and asked Roland my name again. And Roland, seeing the point of the jagged tripod leg in Epiphany’s hand, he screamed my name at her while pleading for his life. And that’s when the videotape went dead.

Roland told her I was my father’s son. He told her I usually take my lunch at the coffee shop across the street. And as he spoke, Epiphany saw his tongue ring and remembered how that tongue had salivated as he took photos of so many girls. And, before she knew it, she’d put the tripod leg through his eye.

Quickly Epiphany formulated her plan. She placed the small Van Gogh between a
Sun-Times
she took from Roland’s desk and began to leave. But her voices stopped her. They told her to grab the videotape as well –
‘It is essential.’
And as simple as that, she left the museum and crossed the street to the coffee house where a man caught her eye. That man was sitting on the floor of the coffee shop, covered in vomit. She waited by the museum back across the street so she wouldn’t startle me. She waited until I got into a cab. She followed me and, when I left my apartment to return to work, she broke in and left the painting on my couch – her original plan to blackmail me into coming with her.

So here we are. That’s why all this has happened. That’s the secret history of Epiphany Jones and I.

On the TV in the hotel room I stare at the paused, flickering image of the silverware factory for minutes as I try to speak. Whenever I do, nothing comes out. It’s just, what do you say, you know?

‘Jerry–’

‘But, when I first met you,’ I blurt, ‘I mean … in Chicago, you said you’d been looking for me for twelve years–’

‘I’d been looking for a way to get my daughter back for twelve years. You just happened to be that way,’ she says.

And as I sit on this floor with her, as I connect all the dots in my head, my exhaustion turns to anger. I’m angry because there are some people you never like. You never like the person who tells you your spouse is cheating on you. You never like the person who tells you he’s heard the boss is going to fire you. You never like the person who shows you your dad is a sex-trafficking rapist. And above all you never like the person who tells you the guy who murdered your love is still out there and you chased the wrong person to France.

And these people you never like, you want to hurt them the way what they’ve revealed has hurt you. So you attack them any way you can. You tell them that all the above may be true, but their voices are still bullshit. God doesn’t talk to them. They could have known everything they do, done everything they did, without divine intervention. You unleash all your anger at your father and your mother and your whole fucking life against them.

And as I curse her, a terrible chill seizes me. As I curse her, my head begins to tingle like fizzy soda.

And Epiphany, she looks at me and says, ‘Jerry?’

And as I curse her, my vision goes cloudy with black spots.

And Epiphany, through the black spots, she’s looking at me like my body is doing something I’m not aware of.

‘Jerry?’ she says again.

Blackout.

I
t’s dark in the room. My clothes are soaked in sweat. Bela’s hand touches my forehead. ‘You have a fever,’ she says. ‘It will pass. By morning it will pass.’ I nuzzle her hand down to my lips and kiss it. Her hand is so cold.

The nightstand light comes on. It’s not Bela’s hand. Epiphany sits beside me on the bed. She doesn’t know what to make of me kissing her hand. Her cold, cold hand. Not like Bela’s hand. In Epiphany’s other hand is the bracelet Phineas gave me.

‘It fell from your pocket when I moved you to the bed,’ she says. ‘It’s…’

‘The ticket to Matthew’s party,’ I say. ‘It’s tomorrow.’ Let me go back to sleep. Let me go back to Bela.

But, no. ‘My daughter, Jerry–’ And I look at her and I know what she’s going to ask. Questers don’t rest. That scratch on her face makes her look more like a warrior now than ever. It’s the scratch she got in my apartment in Porto.

The one given to her
by Nico
.

‘What you said about Bela being a victim of this whole trafficking thing–’ I shake my head. But just as I thought, that look she had on the pier – that one-dimensional, doesn’t-see-anything-else look is back. ‘I don’t see how this is going to work.’

‘Please Jerry,’ she squeezes my hand, ‘this once, take a leap of faith.’

And in my mind, I see Nico.

He’s standing over Bela’s body.

His hands are squeezing Bela’s throat.

‘Fine,’ I say, ‘leap of faith.’

‘W
hat’s her name?’ I say.

The pause is so long, I don’t think she’s heard me. Finally her voice, sounding almost ashamed, answers, ‘I don’t know.’

We’re in the Carlton Hotel’s boutique. It’s two in the afternoon. We have two hours before we’re supposed to take a taxi to the address on the back of my bracelet. I’m on one side of the curtain and Epiphany is on the other.

I take a moment before replying. I say, ‘How will you know which one she is? How will she know who you are?’

‘We’ll know,’ she says.

I almost don’t recognise her when she walks from behind the maroon curtains. Her raven hair is tied up tight and she’s wearing this white little number. It’s right out of the 1920s. Just like in
The Great Gatsby.
The dress is what you’d expect to see people wearing at those elegant outside summer balls during the tea dances of the Jazz Age.

The woman who runs the boutique walks over with a blonde wig and helps Epiphany put it on.

‘Oh, don’t worry,’ she says. ‘Your girlfriend isn’t doing anything the other girls aren’t.’

I’m not so sure about that.

‘It’s always easier to wear a wig than do your own hair. The wigs will stay styled all night long.’ And I watch as the blonde Epiphany makes sure the long wig covers her mutilated ear.

Back in the hotel room I put my tux on while Epiphany fidgets with her dress in front of the bathroom mirror. The smashed lamp that I threw at my father’s figment lies just behind her white heels.

And I can’t help but feel like this is the end. Like my life is on the last reel and there’s nothing beyond today.

Epiphany’s put together a sort of plan. This is a ‘plan’ in the loosest sense of the word, though. And when I tell her that, she says, ‘Trust me.’

The plan, it entails me approaching Phineas while Epiphany mingles in the crowd and getting him to tell me where the girls are.

‘He’s not stupid,’ Epiphany says. ‘The way you said he was asking you questions – he was shocked to see you here. He wants to see how much you remember; if your father told you anything. Why do you think he gave you the invite to the party so easily? He wants to get you close. He wants to find out why you are here.’

‘Why?’ I say.

‘Phineas was always a nervous person. He always worried about what others knew. The guilty are always fearful.’

‘And if he knows I know?’

‘He is going to know you know,’ she says. ‘Because you will tell him. And you will tell him you want to get in on the family business.’

So that’s why Epiphany believes her crazy voices told her to bring me along – because I can convince my father’s old child-molesting colleague to point to the room where his boss stores little girls. And just like that he’ll tell me. And just like that I’ll report to Epiphany, who will slip in and find her daughter and we’ll get out without anyone knowing we are stealing a little abducted girl back.

But I don’t argue. Because that’s her ‘plan’. But me, well, like everyone in this world, I’ve got my own plans.

And besides, despite her being a constant reminder of what my father was, I’m still glad to have her with me right now. When she touched my shoulder last night, all the figments in the room vanished. She can keep me grounded, like Bela did. She can keep me grounded until I’ve done what I’m going to do, and then I don’t care what happens to me.

‘Leave it,’ Epiphany says as I glance at the gun. ‘There will be security checks.’ She clasps a floral pearl choker necklace around her throat. ‘How do I look?’

She asks this not like a real girl would – not meaning if she looks
pretty or just to fish for a compliment. When she asks, ‘How do I look?’ she means, ‘Can you tell this is me under here?’

And she is beautiful, Epiphany is. Not a natural Bela beautiful, or a fake Jordan Seabring beautiful, but beautiful nonetheless. She’s beautiful how a raven is: silent, mysterious; its whole body covered by black shadow – like someone dipped a dove in tar to conceal its true form. And as I button my jacket and Epiphany checks her wig one last time, I feel like I’m getting ready for the prom I never had – only this prom, it’s Satan’s Ball.

T
he taxi drops us at the address marked on the back of my bracelet. A man at the door asks, ‘For Matthew’s?’ He looks like he’s some techno DJ. He leads us through an empty club, past the kitchen, and out the rear door into the alley.

Epiphany asks the man if he works for Matthew.

‘No,’ he says.

Right answer, I think.

He tells us that Matthew rents his place for one day each year – along with some other places around town – so stars can be met by drivers in private, without the chance of paparazzi seeing them. ‘I envy you though,’ the DJ says. ‘The celebs that show up here – man, it must be one effed-up party! It’s fucking wild, right?’

I look at Epiphany, who is looking somewhere else. ‘You have no idea.’

W
e speed along the French coast in a black Bentley. The driver either doesn’t speak English or has been told not to talk to the guests. Epiphany and I aren’t talking either. We both have too much on our minds.

We’re different things to different people. Your family may love you and tell everybody you’re the most wonderful man in the world, but your employees may loathe you and tell everyone that you’re Satan’s right hand. The guy who’s heart you broke when you cheated on him thinks you’re a manipulative bitch, but the homeless person you gave five dollars to thinks you’re a gift from God. The thing is, in a way, everyone is right.

To me, my father, before last night, he had been a good man who had a hard life. To Epiphany, he was a monster who was sent by Matthew to collect her. Both are true. Different people live in all of us. What my dad took part in with all those girls – the only way to describe it … well, how do you describe it? ‘Wrong’ doesn’t begin to cover it. I wish I knew why he did it. Maybe after everything that happened to our family – after losing a daughter, and a son getting fucked up, and your marriage slowly dying – maybe it was easy to give into something that made you feel anything other than the hurt you drowned in on a daily basis. It was a way to cover the pain. It was what I did with television and my fakes, taken to the next level.

Epiphany’s staring out the window, watching the trees speed by us. In the reflection in the window she looks more pale than usual, as if someone has just given her really bad news. There’s a single tear that falls down her cheek. And I think about all the stuff that my father’s done and that she’s done and that I’m about to do.

But out of all the bad shit Epiphany and I have done to each other, the one thing we have in common is love. We’ve both lost people we’ve loved. For me it was Bela and Emma. For Epiphany, it’s her daughter. And I look at her and think of her daughter and think of what my father did. How many men raped her after my father collected her from Mexico? I wonder what it’s like not knowing who fathered your child? And her ear. That’s a direct result of my dad. I wonder, Would a son’s apology make things any better?

But then I think of why I’m going to this party. Who I’m going to find. What I’m planning to do.

So no, I know no words can be spoken that ease the pain we feel.

Epiphany quickly wipes the tear from her cheek.
‘What?’
she says with her eyes.

I don’t know how to ask why she’s crying so I say anything. ‘In Porto, in the alley, you kept mentioning some “awakening”. I didn’t know if you knew what you were saying…’ She doesn’t answer. ‘Forget it, it’s not important.’

Epiphany, she holds her gaze on me as I look back out my window. ‘It’s the name some of the madams gave to special events. Events like this, when girls would be saved for months for a certain occasion. They called these events “awakenings”, because that was when the girls would first realise what their lives would be like from then on.’

As the Bentley curves along the road, the trees break and the view gives way to the Mediterranean. We come to a town where a sign says
ANTIBES
. As we drive along the coast little piers jut into shimmering blue coves where rowboats hover in the crystal-clear water. At the tip of the peninsula that forms the southernmost part of the town our driver makes a left and we climb a steep road, where our car joins a line of cars. The road becomes a circular drive as the caravan gets closer to Matthew’s villa. The villa is beautiful. Something only the obscenely rich could buy. It’s a white, three-storey baroque château that has two wings on either side. In the green lawns there are fountains and gardens and palm trees and sculpted hedges. At the top of the drive the rich and famous have their car doors opened for them, and they proceed to drift towards the villa’s entrance as if the promises of fame and money and power itself were calling them home.

Our car is one length away from having its door opened for us. Then, as if now is the time to say her last words, Epiphany says, ‘Yana.’

I say, ‘What?’

‘If I could have named my daughter, I would have named her Yana. It’s a name I remember from my childhood. A beautiful name.’

Then she says, ‘Remember it.’

Our car comes to a stop. Epiphany’s breath shallows. I can almost feel her heart beating. She’s waited for this day, planned for it for so long. We look at each other in the safety of the car one more time. She
takes a deep breath as the door is opened. A man in a black suit greets us as we step out of the Bentley.

‘Very welcome, Sir, Miss,’ the man says, scanning the bracelet’s barcode. He points down the white-gravel walkway. ‘Follow this path to the entrance hall, please. From there, if you keep walking through the grand foyer and go out the back, you’ll come to the gardens. Mr Mann would like guests to know that, besides the second and third floors of the west wing, the entire house is open to them and he hopes you’ll enjoy it.’

We join the crowds and walk through the grand foyer and out the back to the party. We walk arm in arm like this party of the year is just another ordinary day in our stellar, fabulous lives.

Out back, the garden’s grounds are manicured to precision. Flowerbeds dot the greenest grass I’ve ever seen. Every ten feet there’s another stand where a bartender will pour you any drink you want. A live orchestra plays ‘Everybody Loves My Baby’ on the stage overlooking the banquet tables that are already set for dinner. The plates are real china. The glasses are real crystal. The three knives, three forks, and two spoons on either side of every dining set are real silver tipped with real gold.

Unlike the other party, this one is what you imagine when you think of the lifestyles of celebrities. Besides the two life-sized statues of characters from
The Princess of the Sands
(one of Jordan’s princess character and one of her evil stepbrother king, holding his big Arabian sword), there are no other signs that this is a party to celebrate Mann’s latest blockbuster. To Mann, this party is a personal treat – an indulgence in power. And indeed, I know the only reason the two statues are here is because Phineas is like my father, and there’s never an inappropriate time to shill your boss’s product.

The gardens end at a cliff that overlooks the blue Mediterranean, where the yachts of the super rich float like rubber duckies. In the distance you can see the red-rocked mountains of France as they curve around to meet Spain. Above the mountains there are rain clouds forming.

There’s got to be at least a hundred power-players mingling out here. It’s easy enough to point out the stars – some of the hottest ones from today are here: the fat comedian whose heart should give out under his four-hundred-pound weight any day now; the gansta-rapper-turned-action star; the child television actress who’s started making indie films so people will take her seriously. And where you have stars, you’ll have their agents. Agents are always easy to spot because, no matter what they’re doing, they’ll always have one eye on their client – their cash cow. Yet, despite some of the biggest names in Hollywood being here, it’s evident just how exclusive this party is.

‘Is Harvey here?’ an action star asks.