The Hollow Girl (13 page)

“Look, Vincent,” I said, “we got off on the wrong foot here. Mainly that’s on me. Cantor’s a pain, but he’s right, Siobhan is what we both need to be thinking about.”

“Yeah, I know. You really think she fucked up her apartment like that?”

“Her or a friend. Think about it, she’s got her parents jumping through hoops. Some kids grow older, but never grow up. They spend their lives trying to get the love and attention they felt robbed of as children. You ever meet Siobhan?”

Vincent flushed deep red and cleared his throat. “A few times, yeah.”

He’d slept with her. That was pretty obvious.

I opened the door for him to step through if he so chose. “And ….”

“She was kind of sad and lonely, I guess.”

“Sad how?”

“Not sad, really. More like empty, maybe. She acted like she needed to fill herself up with stuff to do or somebody to be.”

Amazingly, I understood just what he meant. It seemed to jibe with the things I’d heard from Rizzo, Giorgio Brahms, Anna Carey, and Michael Dillman. The Hollow Girl, indeed.

I called ahead to the precinct in the hopes that Frovarp and Shulze had packed it in for the day. Though I was no procrastinator, I wasn’t exactly looking forward to this particular unpleasantness. Most cops gave retired cops a break, while others seemed to enjoy busting the balls of their former brethren. It was hard to figure. No one expected cops to look the other way if an ex-cop was involved in something serious—DWI, assault, spousal abuse, at least not anymore—but there were little things, small matters of courtesy that it was reasonable to expect for time served on the job. Since getting put out to pasture in ’77, I’d had plenty of run-ins with members of the NYPD. Most of the time, even after a rocky start, we’d manage to find ways to work together. I’d even developed friendships with some of the cops and detectives I’d initially butted heads with. That wasn’t going to happen with Frovarp and Shulze. Frovarp especially looked born to spread misery wherever she went.

Unfortunately I’d caught them on their way out the door, but they were willing to wait for me to arrive. They’d gotten a call about the destruction of Siobhan’s apartment, Frovarp said, and they’d gone over enough of the Kremlin video to take note of my visit. Not my lucky day. Not a day to stop to buy scratch-off lottery tickets or bet on a horse. Frovarp’s cold, gravelly monotone set my teeth on edge, so I decided that maybe strolling into the 9th Precinct wasn’t in my best interests. Much easier for them to fuck with me in the precinct house than in public. I was in the middle of explaining how it would be much more to my liking if I met them on neutral turf—Grogan’s or Kid Charlemagne’s—than at the precinct house when my Bluetooth connection informed me that I was getting a call from Nancy Lustig. I put Frovarp on hold, no doubt endearing myself to her more than I already had.

“What’s up?”

“Please come back. Hurry?” Her voice was strange, breathy and desperate.

“Nancy, I can’t do this dance right now. I’m on the phone with—”

“It’s not about the kiss. It’s not about us.”

“What then?”

“Sloane. It’s Sloane.”

“What about her?”

“I can’t explain right now. Just come back.”

She clicked off.

I almost returned to Frovarp’s call, but decided that telling her I wasn’t coming in after all was probably not going to improve my abysmal standing in her eyes. And this way I’d at least be able to get beyond the border of Queens before she could do something peevish like having me arrested. I killed my Bluetooth connection and shut off the phone.

* * *

Nancy Lustig’s house was somewhat more ominous looking at night. Although the in-ground lights along the driveway and walk were lit, the house itself was almost completely dark. How odd, I thought, that a place seemingly constructed on the principle of blurring the distinction between inside and out should feel so foreboding. Or maybe the foreboding was just in my head and not in the house, because I knew the hammer would fall on me when I got around to finally seeing the cops. I’d never been good with that, with waiting for bad news. If it was really bad, like when I was sick, I just wanted to face it and be done with it or have it be done with me. I wasn’t good at waiting. In the Prager family we believed that bad news was always better than no news. Always.

Nancy had her front door open before I’d gotten one leg out of my car and she didn’t stop there. She came running up to me, not so much to greet me as … I wasn’t quite sure what, exactly. Obviously, something about Siobhan had been weighing on her. For the first time since the diner in Sheepshead Bay, she hadn’t fancied herself up for me. The makeup wasn’t perfect. The clothes weren’t tight or revealing. There was only the vaguest hint of that perfume of hers. Her breath had that acidic stomach tang to it. For her to present herself to me this way, to anyone this way, meant that whatever it was, was serious. Nancy’s kind of vanity, a vanity born of inferiority and self-loathing, wasn’t a casual thing. It was more an occupation. I was beginning to understand that maybe it was Nancy’s obsession with her appearance that had caused some of the fracturing between mother and daughter.

Nancy grabbed me by the arm and tugged me toward the house, but it wasn’t like before. This wasn’t about us. She wasn’t a little drunk and this had nothing to do with desire. She almost seemed incapable of speech. I followed her upstairs to the master bedroom, into the walk-in closet, into her office. She pointed at the big-assed computer monitor. I didn’t get it. It just looked like a Facebook page to me, not that I had been on Facebook all that much lately. Pam, in her wisdom, had made me join during my treatment.

“It’ll let me message you when we can’t talk,” Pam had said. “It’ll also give you something to do other than lying on the couch all day feeling sorry for yourself. And you might be surprised at how many people you’ll find who’ll support you, people who’ve been through the same or similar things.”

She’d been right about all of it, of course. I was reluctant at first, like I always was about anything technology based, but it worked. It helped stop me from feeling so isolated. I’d rekindled a few old acquaintances and made some new friends. The irony was that my guilt over Pam’s death had made me withdraw in a way that not even the cancer did, and that no amount of friend support on Facebook would heal.

“Okay, Nancy, it’s a Facebook page. So what?”

“Look!” she screamed, pointing at a small ad on the right side of the screen. “Look.”

There, under the blue Sponsored line with the megaphone icon, stuck in between ads for new method tennis instruction and nonsurgical facelifts, was what Nancy wanted me to see. It was another ad, this one featuring an inch-by-inch headshot of Siobhan Bracken. Above the headshot, in dark blue print, were the words: The Hollow Girl Returns Tonight at 10:00. In smaller black print below the headshot was a clickable link. I clicked on it. I was redirected to a site called “The Hollow Girl Returns.” It featured a larger version of the same headshot that had appeared on the ad. Above the headshot were site destinations: History, Biography, Lost Girl/Hollow Girl Videos, Shop, Contact Me. Under the headshot in bold black print were the words:
Whatever became of the Hollow Girl? Find out tonight and every night at 10:00
. Below that, a disclaimer:

This is performance art and is not intended for any other purpose than to entertain and to stimulate discussion. No one is under any real duress of a physical or psychological nature. All effects in these posts are the result of makeup and digital manipulation. Do not, I repeat, do not seek to assist me in any way, shape, or form. This is a performance and should be treated as such. I accept no liability for any actions taken by the audience.

I moved the mouse to the site navigation listings, but Nancy told me not to bother.

“I’ve done all of that already,” she said. “It’s all very accurate and official looking. You were right, Moe. She set us up. She even has goddamned Hollow Girl T-shirts, sweatshirts, and baseball caps for sale.”

“At least we know what she was doing and why and that she’s okay. How did you find out? You don’t strike me as a Facebook kinda gal.”

“Oh, I’m on there, but don’t spend much time on it anymore. I don’t know. After you left I was still angry with you and maybe a little distracted. I decided I’d go on, answer old messages and see what my friends were up to. That’s when I saw the ad. By the way, did you meet Alexandra?”

“I did.”

“She’s god-awful beautiful, isn’t she?”

“Otherworldly, yeah.”

“I wish she wasn’t so fucking nice, though. It makes it hard to hate her as much as I want to.”

“Why hate her at all? She’s stuck with your ex,” I said.

“Good point.” She nodded toward the office door and walked through it. I followed. “We’ve got some time before my daughter plunges me back into a new mess. Pour yourself a drink downstairs. I’ve got Internet on the big flat screen down there.” She stopped by the door to the master bath. “I’m going to go put myself back together. I’ll be down in a little while.”

“Okay.”

“And, Moe ….”

“What is it?”

“I’m glad you came back … even if it wasn’t what I wanted you to come back for. It makes me feel better about what Sloane’s doing, having you here.”

“Happy to do it.”

Oddly enough, I was.

It was 9:50, and I had settled in on the white leather sofa in front of the flat screen. I’m not sure “settled in” is the right way to describe it, because in spite of the sofa being a stylish objet d’art, the thing wasn’t quite as comfortable as stainless steel. I’d taken Nancy’s suggestion, pouring myself an inch of fancy Scotch in an equally fancy crystal tumbler. I’d done likewise for her, although she had yet to make an appearance. I was a rotten alcoholic. Just a few cycles off the day-long benders I had been indulging in for weeks, and I was barely shaky. I could casually take a sip here and there without sucking at the bottle like a starving baby. I guess I had Nancy to thank for that. Unintended consequences make the world go ’round.

Then there was Pam. I’d been able to think of her again just lately without wanting to light a match to my guilt and burst into flames. For the past two months, all I pictured of her during my waking hours was her body protruding from under the front end of Holly D’Angelo’s Jeep. That or Pam in her coffin, cold, eyes forever closed, her face utterly neutral and damning. But since the day Aaron shook me out of my stupor and lost his patience with me, I’d been able to remember Pam apart from my culpability in her death. It was a relief to have Pam restored to me as something other than a source of pain. I suppose I had Nancy to thank for that, too.

As if on cue, she came down the stairs dressed much like Alexandra Cantor had been dressed earlier in the day—only there was so much more calculation in Nancy’s choices. The neckline of her white sweater fairly swooped down and her slacks looked painted on rather than slipped into. Everything about her was now just so: her crushed herb perfume evident, but not overwhelming, her hair shining, falling perfectly on either side of her shoulders. Even her decision to come down in bare feet seemed like something she’d taken time to debate. I pictured her in front of a mirror with ten pairs of shoes, trying each pair on, considering which would have the desired effect. When she said she had to put herself together, she wasn’t being figurative. Though I knew that not even a woman as breathtakingly beautiful as Alexandra simply fell out of bed looking like an airbrushed goddess, she had fewer steps to take than a woman who had constructed her appearance. I wondered if Nancy still thought all the effort was worth it. I wasn’t complaining.

She sat down on the sofa and fiddled with the controller, picked up her drink, and took a sip. She turned, wearing her smile as a mask. Nancy was trying very hard to hold herself together, but there were cracks in her veneer. She was hoping those cracks wouldn’t turn into fissures after watching whatever it was her daughter had gotten up to. Nancy hit the refresh button on the controller when the satellite box indicated it was 10:00. Nothing.

“I called Julian to let him know,” she said, voice strained. “He’d already gotten calls about it.”

“He have any ideas about what’s going on?”

“No, he’s as nervous as I am.”

She hit the refresh again. A black rectangle appeared center screen with Siobhan’s now familiar headshot. It was a fairly recent photo and while she hadn’t suddenly blossomed into Alexandra, she was indeed much more attractive than Nancy had been when she was younger. Still not pretty, per se, but her face had thinned out some and it made up nicely. Not nicely enough to get a lead role, apparently. Nancy enlarged the box to full screen and pressed the play arrow. When she did, the disclaimer that was on the website appeared, superimposed over Siobhan’s headshot. Then, after enough time elapsed for viewers to have read the disclaimer, someone did a voice-over of it.

“That’s Sloane. That’s her voice,” Nancy fairly shouted, happy and relieved to hear her daughter’s voice.

As Siobhan read it, each word on the screen changed from black to yellow to black again. The screen faded to black. Five seconds later, the void was replaced by Siobhan. Not her headshot, by her.

She was wearing an outfit not unlike what she had worn in the “Suicide Posting” on Valentine’s Day, 1999: a plain white T-shirt, ripped jeans. For all I knew, it might’ve been the same outfit. She’d lost some weight and the clothes hung loosely on her. There were dark stains on the tee over where the fake stitches that closed the false, self-inflicted stab wound had been. She seemed to be sitting on the same stool she had sat on all those years ago. The room and backdrop looked exactly the same, though I knew that wasn’t possible. Siobhan—Sloane then—had done the posts from her bedroom and the basement of a house that no longer existed. I was sitting in the house that had been built where the old one had stood.

The shock was evident on Nancy’s face. I could see her asking herself:
How can that be
?