Pasadena (8 page)

That's the thing about Blue House: Mike doesn't judge. Hell, it's probably his stash.

Shasta is sitting on the old plaid sofa that faces the French doors as we enter. For an LA girlfriend, she's surprisingly age-appropriate for Mike. A weathered, sun-bleached blonde in an Indian-print caftan and shorts, she's got the cards laid out before her in a Celtic cross, a cross pattern of six cards, four down the side. Tiffany Green, one of the girls from my French class last year, is staring at the cards, wide-eyed with the spiritual insight she's just received.

“That's so freaky!” she exclaims. “I . . . Wow, freaky! I'll have to think about that! Thanks!”

She rises unsteadily, bringing a plastic cup with her, and shakes her head as she stumbles out the door.

“Milady,” Mike says, and urges me toward the sofa.

“Hey, Jude,” Shasta greets me, and scoops the cards into a pile again. “Shuffle and ask away,” she says, handing me the deck.

I tap the cards into shape, but I don't shuffle, not knowing what to ask.

Who killed Maggie? Why did she die? Will I be pretty or rich? And what would it mean if I got an answer, anyway? Nothing that would hold up in a court of law.
Seriously, Your Honor, a fortune-teller told me the butler did it.

“Oh, boy,” Shasta says. She's good at reading more than just tarot cards, apparently. She takes the deck away from me and picks up both of my hands in her own.

“You poor, poor thing,” she says. She turns my palms faceup and rubs her thumbs over them. It would be creepy if it wasn't so soothing. “You're not ready for answers, kitten,” she tells me. “It's just too hard right now. I know what that's like. People die and you're left there looking for a reason. Poor thing,” she croons again.

I feel a sigh building in my chest. I look at the cards on the table. I should ask a question. Just a simple question.

Suddenly, Shasta stops rubbing my hands. She squeezes them tight and looks at me earnestly. “Do you want to get high, hon? It might help.”

“No, thanks,” I tell her, and try not to shake my head at the kindness of hippies. “But don't let me stop you,” I add.

She doesn't. She leaves me on the couch, staring at the cards. I flip over the one on top of the deck. It shows a picture of a man in a tunic with a hobo bindle over one shoulder, a dog at his feet, about to traipse happily off a cliff. Beneath the picture a caption reads “The Fool.”

But the card is upside down. I'm going on a journey, and I don't have a leg to stand on.

A sudden movement in the window catches my eye.

Outside, by the fire, Joey has joined the dance.

“I'm glad you're not here all summer,” Maggie said to me. She blew a smoke ring from her stinking Ukrainian cigarette and adjusted her sunglasses with a painted fingernail.

We were decked out in swimsuits and cutoff shorts, cleaning out pitchers in the sink of her pool house, prepping them for a second batch of teenage hangovers and regrets. I washed while Maggie dried with one lackluster hand and smoked with the other.

Outside, in her parents' backyard, half the student body was partying, drinking spiked lemonade and strawberry daiquiris made from a cheap mix. Her parents and Parker were gone for some weekend church retreat and school had just let out for the summer.

Next year, we'd all be seniors, masters of our universe. Maggie bought the vodka and let us splash in her pool, we provided the rest.

“I'll miss you, too,” I said back.

“Don't be a dolt. I'm gonna miss you, but you're lucky.
You see all those fools. Mark Draper just did a cannonball. Jesus. Does anybody do that anymore?”

“Apparently Mark Draper does.”

Maggie pulled down her shades to fix me with a look. “That's what I mean. This is the future of America, Jude. We're college-bound and pathetic. Most of these guys are just looking to skate into UCLA or a CSU somewhere.” She looked out the window and shook her head. “Seriously, we're killing off brain cells just looking at these idiots.”

“Well, you have summer school, don't you?”

Maggie was infamous for taking extra classes at Pasadena City College every summer. I didn't know why. She still sat next to me in AP English each fall, but it made her feel cosmopolitan, as she put it.

“Do you see what I mean?” Maggie said, drawing deeply on her cigarette, then flicking it into the sink. I listened to it sizzle into a wet cinder beneath the soapsuds. “You get to go back east. I have to go to fricking PCC just to talk to anybody who isn't a troglodyte.”

“Hey, I'd be happy to hang out all summer. Me leaving was your idea.”

“Yeah, well, not telling your mom about Roy was yours. Leaving is the next best thing.”

To running
, I wanted to say. When things got bad in my
family, my mom ran from my dad. I didn't want to be like her, but there I was, packing to go.

“You need to work some shit out, Jude. See your dad. Curse him out, or give him a hug—whatever it takes. You can still hook up with Joey next year. He'd look good in a tux.”

“Prom? Really?”

Maggie sighed. “You're seventeen, Jude. Live a little.” She looked out the window and lit another cigarette. “I'll try to do the same. Even with this lot.”

She wasn't wrong. It was my turn to sigh. “Well, these are
your
friends,” I pointed out.

Maggie wrapped an arm around me. “You're my friend. Joey's my friend. Dane, Tally, Eppie, Hank, Edina. With a handful of exceptions, the rest are just”—she waved her free arm around me, her silver bauble bracelets clashing with the gesture—“extras. And not very good ones at that. Jesus.” She pointed out the window just in time for me to see Mark Draper dive back into the pool and lose his swim trunks.

“Charming,” Maggie drawled.

I laughed. “We are truly blessed.”

“Come on,” she said. She yanked off her bikini top and dropped her shorts on her way out the door. “Let's show them how it's really done.”

It took me a second to follow. When I did, my clothes stayed on.

Blue House after midnight. Out in the yard, kids are drunk and dancing, or slipping off to make out. I go splash some water on my face in the suddenly empty bathroom, and wander back outside.

I want to go to sleep, but not here, and not at home. The thought of calling my mother to come get me is repugnant, so I return to my perch overlooking the city and wish I had a vice. Ice water and memories do not an Irish wake make.

But Maggie was my vice. All my bad habits and rash decisions balled up into one beautiful girl. She would have danced around the fire, and I would have watched her, laughing. She would have taken a hit from Shasta's little glass pipe, still cold from the freezer, and not even coughed. She would have walked up to Joey and put her arms around him from behind and said, “Take me away from here,” and he would have seen it as a seduction, a rescue. An apology.

But I'm not like Maggie. I never was.

I pull out my phone, and dial home.

I
'm not good for much the next day. I wake up with a headache pounding the back of my skull, and a scream in my throat. I miss my life before this weekend. I miss Maggie. Her death hangs in front of me like a weighted curtain I'm powerless to lift.

It's early, my mom and Roy are still asleep. It was a big night for her, picking me up from an actual party. The house is quiet.

I lie in bed and stare Death in the face. A tear streaks down to my pillow. My hands clench.

I'm sick with anger, with the need to turn back the clock, to erase eternity. Orpheus went to the underworld to
snatch back Eurydice. Superman flew backward around the earth to resurrect Lois Lane.

Me, I sit up, slide my legs out from under the covers, put one foot on the floor, then the other, and will myself to stand.

I pull some clothes from my dresser, and shuffle down the hall to the bathroom. I turn on the shower and take a long hot piss while the water warms up. When I flush, the water pressure from the showerhead dips. This is wildfire season and our plumbing is sympathetic to the needs of the fire department.

I step into the shower, head still beating like a drum, and feel the water on my face like tepid tears. I turn it up as hot and strong as it can go, hoping to scour the pain away, to feel something on the outside instead of this burning futility within, but as I said, it's fire season. The water sputters rather than blasts, and gets no hotter than a cup of vending-machine coffee.

Maggie's funeral is tomorrow. I need caffeine and something black to wear. That means the mall, or Maggie's closet.

Mrs. Kim said I could have anything. The pearls are already around Edina's undeserving neck. But there's a certain dress and hat that might still be waiting for me.

I climb out of the shower. Pull on my shorts and a tank. Grab a Diet Coke from the fridge for breakfast.

Fortified, I head out the front door, my spare set of Maggie's pool house keys in hand.

“I think it's sexy.”

“I think you look like a widow in a bad movie,” I told her.

Maggie stuck her tongue out at me from behind the black birdcage veil she was wearing. “Tally and I picked it up in NoHo.”

God knew there were enough thrift stores and costume resale places around this city for the two of them to play dress up for the rest of their lives. “Tally's a poser. She dresses like a Connecticut housewife.”

Maggie turned to me and vamped, hips thrust out at an angle, one hand thrown back in a casual fake laugh. The black sheath and pumps made her look like Jackie O, complete with pearl choker.

“I think she's got style,” she said. “Tally's traditional. She's just growing into it.”

“So, in another twenty years, the twinsets and pearls will make sense. But her boyfriend will still be a pretty-boy jackhole. Like I said, poser.”

Maggie clucked her tongue and struck another pose. “Dane's not so bad, really. They're kind of like Beauty and the Beast.”

“But who's who?” I snarked. “Mags, seriously, ditch the hat.”

Maggie adjusted the pillbox on her head, humor fading. “Are you kidding? I'd rather go naked, like Godiva,
avec chapeau
.”

I step outside my house. Joey is waiting for me on the curb, an extra-large latte in each hand. I could kiss him. But I have my pride.

Maggie once told me Joey tamed a wild squirrel with bits of food and a safe place to rest in his backyard. Eventually, it was eating out of his hand. But wild is as wild does. One day, it bit him, and that was that. I hope I don't do the same thing.

I leave my unopened soda on the front steps.

“You didn't say hello last night,” Joey says.

“I thought you weren't speaking to me.”

“Maybe I would've. If you'd said hello.”

We look at each other for a moment. In the light of day, he's got shadows under his eyes. Just like me. I almost
laugh. That's the thing about parties—everybody looks happy.

Everybody's lying.

I step closer and say, “Hello.”

He hands me one of the drinks wordlessly and we climb into the car.

“Maggie's,” I say. “Then Luke's.”

“Your wish is my . . .” He lets the sentence hang.

I reach out and squeeze his hand. We don't let go until we get to Maggie's.

• • •

The hat is there but the dress is gone. Who says you can't take it with you?

“We gave it to the funeral director to . . .” Mrs. Kim's hands flutter around her face like pale butterflies. “Oh, I wish I had known you wanted it.”

“No, it's perfect,” I tell her, and ask to keep the hat.

“Certainly, certainly,” Mrs. Kim says, already looking around for something else to do or say. “There was one thing, though. A strand of pearls. They were my mother's. She gave them to Maggie before she died.”

The words hit hard and Mrs. Kim sits down suddenly on the couch. Burying her daughter with her dead mother's pearls. Sometimes the circle of life is more of a noose.

“Edina has them,” I say, sitting beside her.

Joey stands in the living room doorway like a bodyguard.

“Edina? Who's Edina?” Mrs. Kim asks.

Joey and I exchange a glance. I shrug. “Another friend. Maybe Maggie gave them to her?”

“Ha.” Mrs. Kim laughs derisively. As if Maggie might have done it against her express wishes, to hurt her. Maybe she had.

“I could be wrong,” I say. “If they turn up, I'll let you know.”

For a moment, Mrs. Kim looks paler than usual. “The . . . the coroner called today.”

Joey leans forward. I stiffen. “Oh?” The strain in my voice is obvious.

Mrs. Kim shakes her head, staring at the pattern in the carpet at her feet. “I don't understand it. They say they found drugs in her. Did she do drugs?”

The look she gives me is so raw with grief that my voice catches in my throat.

When I clear it, she's still waiting, begging me for an answer. “No, Mrs. Kim,” I say. “No, she didn't do drugs. She never touched them.” It's the sort of lie you tell a mother. Aside from pot, it's also the truth.

“Then how did this happen?” she asks. “Valium, they
say, Vicodin, Rohypnol. Where would that come from? Where would she—” She breaks off suddenly, remembering something, or overwhelmed with grief, and in an instant, Mrs. Kim the starlet is back. Placid, poised, impossible to read.

“Mrs. Kim?”

She looks at me for a moment, her emotions brushed off like so many flies. She pats my leg. “Thank you, dear,” she says. “I've got the service information in my office. Let me get it for you.” She rises and totters off, looking old.

“That's hard-core,” Joey says. Even he's surprised.

Maggie didn't do drugs like that. It has to be a mistake.

“Note to self,” I tell him. “Get a closer look at the coroner's report.”

“So, I'm your secretary now?” he asks.

“Nope. You're my better half.”

• • •

“Vicodin, Valium, roofies.” Joey recites the litany of drugs found in Maggie's system.

We're back in his car, headed toward Luke's house. As we head south, the thin, curving palm trees give way to sheltering magnolias again. Joey's eyes flick from the road to me and back again.

“Date rape drugs,” I point out. “And everyone thinks it's a suicide?”

Joey shifts uncomfortably behind the wheel. “We call them date rape drugs, doctors call them relaxants. I guess a lot of people OD on the same stuff when they're trying to off themselves. Mrs. Kim didn't say anything about . . .” He hesitates to say it. “About rape.”

I take off my sunglasses to rub my eyes. The wind and pollen have dried them out. “Maybe the Kims would rather have a suicidal daughter than a raped and murdered one.”

Joey shrugs. “But wait. If Luke had drugged her for sex, why would she dress up for him? Wasn't she going to sleep with him anyway?”

I don't like it, but he's right. “Unless it wasn't Luke.”

“Maybe,” he says, but I know he isn't buying it.

“Besides, if it was suicide, where did Maggie get the drugs? I mean, she sometimes smoked pot, and she tried ecstasy once. But roofies and Valium?”

Joey turns to look at me. “You're kidding, right? Between Mrs. Kim's nerves and Parker's brain tumor, I'd bet there's an entire pharmacy in that house. Valium and Vicodin would be easy.”

“Which might explain Mrs. Kim's adept change of subject. But roofies? What are those, a marital aid?”

Joey turns onto a side street, shaking his head. “No. I don't know about those.”

I take off my glasses again, wishing we had put the top up. “Well, maybe Luke Liu does.” I wipe my eyes. The trees are wreaking havoc on my allergies. Magnolias stretch out before us, a cocoon of glossy dark leaves and creamy white flowers enveloping the never-ending road.

• • •

We find Luke in Central Park, south of Green Street, thanks to a tip from a blushing Amanda. I've got to hand it to Joey—he knows how to work the younger ones. When he knocked on the door, all it took was a sheepish smile and she practically wrapped her legs around him.

Luke is photographing the empty playground like a pedophile planning an assault. He frowns when he sees us crossing the dying St. Augustine grass and turns back to arranging his shot. When we're close enough, he lowers the camera and faces Joey down.

“I know you came by my house the other day. Leave my sister alone, Joe.”

Joey raises an eyebrow, looking more surprised than threatened. “The way you left Maggie alone?” he asks.

Lukey Loo blanches and fidgets with his camera. Pale
as he is, his cheeks turn deep red. “I never did anything to Maggie,” he says.

“No,” I agree. “More like, she did it to you. Or is it more PC to say you did ‘it'”—I use air quotes—“together?”

Luke hunches over like he's going to be sick. “Oh God, oh God. You saw my photos. That's why you came over that night? Just to . . . I . . .” He stops, hands resting on his thighs.

“Sit down, Luke,” I tell him. He nods and finds his way to a nearby bench. Joey and I join him.

Luke takes a few hiccupping breaths and pulls it together. Almost.

“When you asked . . . about it at dinner, I couldn't say anything. It would seem like bragging. But it wasn't like that. It . . .” He looks up at me, pleading. “You don't speak ill of the dead.” He swallows, sits up straighter. “It wasn't the first time she offered.”

Joey and I exchange a surprised look.

“She . . . Well, I always said no. I just took pictures, watched over her. If we were ever going to cross that line, I wanted it to be real.” He shakes his head. “I'm not stupid, you know? Maggie was a tease. She was a slut maybe too, but I loved her. That's why I . . .” He falters, and gestures with the camera. “I wanted her to be safe. But I'm
human and the one time I give in, I let her send me home afterward.”

“You said she'd offered before,” I say. He nods numbly. “So, why take her up on it this time?”

Luke swallows hard. “If you saw the pictures, you saw that car pulling away? That was Dane. Maggie said he was thinking of breaking up with Tally, even though he loved her. You heard the rumor he'd been cheating, right?” His eyes flick to me and down again. “Well, yeah, you heard, because of that thing you said at dinner. Anyway, I guess it was true. And he didn't think he'd ever stop.”

“So why'd he go see Maggie?” I ask.

“I guess they talked about that kind of stuff. I don't know. But Maggie thought it was brave or something. Romantic. She said she'd never had that with anyone.”

“Had what?” Joey asks, looking to me.
A cheating boyfriend? A guy who would dump her?
I shake my head.

Luke shrugs his narrow shoulders. “You know. Love.”

He looks lost for a moment, pulled back to that night. “But then there was me. One-sided, but love just the same. There had always been me.” He slumps in on himself. “If I hadn't slept with her, maybe she wouldn't have . . .”

“Killed herself?” I say. “She didn't.”

He stares at me, a flicker of relief turning to confusion.
“But . . . even if it was just an accident . . . if I hadn't left, maybe she'd still be alive.”

After Luke gets through with his blubbering guilt trip, he agrees to help us re-create Maggie's last day.

“I've got other pictures from that night. Or at least, I will.”

“What did we miss?” I say.

Luke wipes his nose on his sleeve, eyes still glassy, and refocuses. “I'm working on a new series of slides. It's not like regular film, or digital. The grain is fantastic and the black and white can be really intense.” He's in his realm now, a different person. Confident. Excited.

Maybe that's what Maggie saw in him. All I ever saw were the puppy-dog eyes and the camera.

“It needs special processing,” he explains. “Stuff I can't do in my dark room at home. So there's a place I go in Hollywood. I dropped it off the next day, before . . . before I found out about Maggie.”

After he'd already ordered the flowers, I'm guessing. I can see it, lovestruck Lukey Loo drifting down the sidewalk, cupids and hearts floating around him like some sap in a 1940s cartoon, off to get the pictures printed from His Big Night.

Every kid should have snapshots of his first time.
Something to remember it by. And something to brag over later. Which might be true for most teenaged boys, but not Luke. For him, it was high art or nothing.

“When can you pick them up?” Joey asks. It's a foreign concept to me, sending out canisters of film and waiting for prints. The sort of thing my mother used to do. There are still little black-and-yellow rolls of film in the corners of our closet, waiting for someone to care enough to see what's inside.