by Tanen Jones
We were pulling up to the Hertz lot, and Billy distractedly searched the signs. “Well, I would if I could figure out where to go. There’s no entrance that I can see…Oh, there we go.” He looked over at me, recovering the conversation. “What do you do, Miss Alice?”
“I’m an actress,” I said, fooling myself even as I said it. “Now ask me where I’m from.”
“You’re not from Washington State?”
“Not if I don’t want to be.” I beamed at him, and he chuckled.
“All right, where are you really from?”
“Los Angeles, California,” I breathed. “Am I lucky?”
“I don’t know,” Billy said, the long deep wrinkle pressing into his cheek as he parked in front of the Hertz rental office. “Are you?”
I handed him the fare, and dug out a penny to put on top of it, Lincoln face up. “I’m your lucky sign,” I said.
Billy laughed outright, picking up the penny and putting it in his cupholder. “I’ll hang on to that,” he said. “Why don’t you hang on to this?” He gave me twenty dollars of the fare back. “For keeping me company.”
I pictured him younger, with yellow hair and the same blue eyes; the specter of his charm was still upon him. “Oh, Billy,” I said. “That’s really kind of you. Really, really kind.”
“Have a wonderful trip, sweetheart,” he said. “Give me a kiss before you go.” He tapped his cheek.
I kissed his melting cheek and hung there for a moment, gripping the roof of the car. The Hertz sign backlit me, setting the stray hairs in my peripheral vision on fire. I wondered if you could possess someone for a good reason; if maybe it was an angel who had visited him after all.
* * *
—
I drove back to the Floreses’ in a little white coupe that smelled like someone else’s perfume. The streets had been sparse at midnight, but they were empty nearing two A.M. Cop cars sat with their headlights off in the dusty shoulders of the road. I switched the heater on and shivered at the change in temperature.
Back in Leslie’s neighborhood, I parked around the corner, in a no-man’s-land stretch of road between two large houses. I walked back slowly, listening to the wind pick up. The neighbors’ window was dark now. I lit another cigarette, wanting the warmth in my lungs.
The back door was still unlocked, and I let myself in, making my way half-blind through the house. I blew smoke out as I went up the stairs, wondering if it would set off the smoke alarm, but the house didn’t react.
I had to pass the master bedroom to get to the guest room. The door was open tonight, and I could see the shape of Dave’s body underneath the covers. Next to him, the bed was empty.
Had Leslie heard me sneak out?
I went into the guest bedroom. There was nobody waiting for me on the bed. I exhaled and locked the door behind me, going into the bathroom to wash my face.
When I came out of the bathroom I saw that there was a shadow in the dim crack of light between the bottom of the locked door and the carpet. It moved as I watched, just a little.
Someone was standing outside the door.
I stopped. Leslie. She’d come in and ask me where I’d been. My mind spun. I’d been buying cigarettes. I’d met a man and he’d invited me to…
But the shadow remained where it was. The doorknob didn’t turn.
It was so quiet I could hear the breathing on the other side.
Was that Leslie breathing? Or someone else?
We stayed there like that, on either side of the door, motionless, for what seemed like hours. Then the shadow moved away and I heard soft footsteps fading as whoever it was went down the hallway.
I got into bed, but I couldn’t lie down. I just sat there, eyes open, looking at nothing, for a long time.
29
Mary
I woke up slumped half-upright against the headboard with a killer pain in my shoulder. The Floreses were awake; I listened to them move around as I got dressed and put makeup on. Dave left first, taking Eli to daycare. Leslie thumped around in the master bedroom, getting ready. I heard her shuffle toward the guest room, and then a note slid under the door:
I’ll pick you up at 4 for the appointment. Please be ready.
She’d pressed down hard on the second sentence.
I waited until I heard her go back into her bedroom, and then I went downstairs and left the house as quietly as I could, sticking a little gum into the back-door lock for good measure. My rental car was where I had left it around the corner. I pulled it up to the intersection and idled, waiting for Leslie.
A green pickup slowed down behind me, then honked. I waved at the driver to go around me.
I tilted my head to see myself in the side mirror. I’d put my hair in a bun and pulled my hoodie loosely over it. Leslie’s bug-eyed sunglasses covered most of my face.
Another car pulled up behind me, and I waved it through. Leslie was taking forever. Maybe she was looking for her sunglasses.
I fiddled with the radio, flipping through channels until the college radio station surprised me with the Stone Roses.
There. Leslie’s big silver Honda trundled down the street past me and turned left toward the neighborhood exit. I waited until she had completed the turn and then followed her, keeping a car between us.
It was sort of exciting to be playing detective like this. The adrenaline cut my exhaustion from a night spent driving to and from the car rental.
The craziest thing was it wasn’t the first time I’d tailed someone like a cop. Paul had cheated on me before. I never thought he’d do it. The first time we’d slept together he’d made me turn in a circle so that he could look at me. He took my clothes off and folded them for me, touching each item sentimentally. I’d made him tell me over and over that he was in love with me. Every time he’d sounded sincere. I can’t believe you’re not famous yet, he’d told me once, stroking down the line on my palm. I hadn’t even told him what it meant yet. His thumb reached my wrist, and I felt the heartbeat in my vein twitch against it.
And then he’d stopped calling me.
I couldn’t believe I’d read him wrong. Most people are easy to read, especially when they’re naked. I would’ve sworn to you I had him wrapped around my finger. This time next year, I’d thought, me and him, a house in the Hills…
I’d given him a week to come to his senses and try to win me back. But at the end of the week, I was still alone in my apartment, and he was still nowhere to be seen.
So then I’d driven to his house, turned off my headlights, and waited. It was a Saturday night and he didn’t stay home on Saturday nights. I watched his big lifted truck turn in to the driveway, watched the bathroom light switch on behind the frosted glass. He came back out showered, dressed in nicer jeans and a blue polo that I’d bought him a couple of weeks ago for his birthday.
I followed him through twenty minutes of evening traffic. It was difficult to keep enough space between the cars that he wouldn’t notice me but stay close enough to remain on his tail. Paul never signaled, either; he’d once told me it kept the other drivers on their toes.
He parked on the street and went into a Thai restaurant. I stood on the street, watching the windows. A girl who looked like a teenager stood up when he walked in, and he kissed her, picking up her hand, stroking her palm. She glanced out the window, as if she could feel my stare against her cheek.
I was only twenty-five. Twenty-seven—but Paul hadn’t known that. Nobody knew that. To him, and to everyone else, I was twenty-five. And he’d traded me in.
She was twenty-two, I found out later.
That was the first time.
Anyway, unlike Paul, Leslie used her turn signal religiously.
She turned in to the parking lot of a three-story building that looked like a bank. HARGRAVE RESIDENTIAL, LLC was written on the sho
ppe-style wrought-iron sign outside. I turned in to the Dunkin’ Donuts drive-thru across the street and ordered an iced latte as Leslie went through the big glass doors. Then I found a space and shut off the engine, watching the building across the street.
I stuck the straw in my mouth. Ten minutes passed. Leslie didn’t emerge. After half an hour, I started the engine again and pulled into the Hargrave lot.
Inside, the lobby was designed to look like a home, full of squashy furniture and lined with floral wallpaper. In the center of the room a woman sat behind a huge mahogany desk outfitted with a Mac and a stained-glass lamp. “Hi, how can I help you?” she said as I made my way across the too-thick carpet, leaving little tufty footprints behind.
“Hi, I’m looking for Leslie Flores? Does she work here?”
“Yes, Ms. Flores is on the third floor. Do you have an appointment?”
“I have a job interview at ten. I’m supposed to meet with the person in charge of…” I groped. “HR? Is that her?”
The receptionist glanced at my jeans. “No, Ms. Flores is the director of accounting. HR would be second floor. May I take your name?”
“Oh—I’m Alice.” I gave her a big smile. “I’m a little early, though. I’ll go get my purse and be right back.”
“ ’K,” the receptionist said, her eyes already back on her screen.
In the car, I sucked down the last of the melted whipped cream and glanced up at the Hargrave building.
So it was true. Leslie hadn’t lost her job. She’d been lying to me.
Now I had to find out why.
30
Mary
I got back on the freeway to Leslie’s house. I couldn’t stop thinking about the way Leslie had talked last night, the panic in her voice. Stop fucking around.
What did Leslie need fifty thousand dollars for? I was pretty sure at this point that it wasn’t for her house. I was equally sure that she was desperate for that money.
I pulled into the neighborhood and parked the car on the same adjacent street. A woman in running gear passed me and waved, as if she’d seen me parking in that spot every day of her life. I could barely summon the energy to wave back.
The Flores house was echoey with nobody in it. The noise of the back door shutting clattered around the kitchen. I could have gone to bed again, waited for Leslie to come pick me up. Trusted that we were in this together.
Anyway, you know what I did instead.
I tried the tablet in the master bedroom again first. Dave had left it on top of the bed this time, in sleep mode. I opened the lid and found that it was password-protected. password, I typed. eli. The Mac informed me that if I entered another incorrect password, the computer would be locked. Fuck. I went downstairs.
The desktop computer in the kitchen had been shut off, its screen black. I started it back up. I was about to try password again when something occurred to me. This was the house computer, in a house that had no place to hide things.
I pressed ENTER.
The screen loaded, just like that.
I should have known. It was obvious to me at this point that Leslie loved to pretend she didn’t have any secrets.
I scanned the icons on the desktop. Outlook. Yes. Email. I clicked on that, but it prompted me for a password. I tried pressing ENTER again, but nothing happened. I searched the underside of the keyboard and the back of the monitor, but she wasn’t one of those people who wrote her passwords down, or at least not anywhere I could find them. The drawer to the desk that held the computer itself was full of carefully organized receipts from Target and Sprouts and White House Black Market. A little pouch held coupons, and the rest was loose rubber bands, twist-ties, ballpoint pens, and one of the baby’s dusty old binkies.
I went to Facebook. Success—she’d set it to autofill her password. Her feed was all onlooker, passive, no interaction, just friends from high school promoting their multilevel marketing schemes and friends from college “Five Years Ago Today”–ing their lush honeymoons. I clicked on Messenger. She didn’t use Messenger to chat, apparently—it was only invitations to public events and messages from Babs at Planet Fitness reminding her to renew her membership.
I started going through her bookmarked sites. No access to any of the bank-account websites that autoloaded in the search bar. Weather reports, a yoga exercise video, some clothing sites with shoes and blouses. I moved on to the desktop. Leslie had a ton of illegible, apparently work-related Excel spreadsheets and Word documents scattered across her background. I went back to the browser history. Children’s YouTube videos, a “lullaby baby” playlist on Spotify. Somebody had searched how to get vegetable-oil stains out of clothing.
I pulled up Gmail—davetherover was automatically logged in. Finally, something useful.
I scrolled through. He didn’t sort any of his email except insofar as Gmail did it for him; his header read “Inbox (1,891).” The unread emails were mostly reminders—from himself and from innumerable mailing lists. Pick up Eli 4:30 pm. Your credit card statement is now available. Join us at Albuquerque’s annual beer and wine tasting event!
I clicked on one of the emails he had already read, from a woman named Cadence.
OK, we’re doing it this way because its easier and none of u text back >:/ Pls fill in your availability n reply with what you wanna bring :) me n sonya are bringing sangriaaa surveymonkey.com/poll/938882220
Dave had replied:
wd like to bring 1 wife 1 baby and 1 gallon posole. is joa bringing karaoke? I want to make mama sing gasolina
Joachim replied:
imma tell her u said that
Cadence replied:
u both uninvited bye
I clicked back through his inbox. His sisters, Cadence and Maria, emailed him a lot, and he had a dull intermittent correspondence with several friends who sent him pictures of their lives in other countries. Scattered throughout were people emailing him links to Clickhole articles or YouTube videos.
Six hundred emails back, it finally occurred to me to click Chats, and suddenly I found an avalanche of archived conversations between Dave and people who appeared to be women he worked with. He used Hangouts even more than Messenger. “Erin” was mostly trading HuffPo-style news articles and occasional snickering about coworkers who didn’t show up in the chats. “Sarah” was the next most frequent name, chatting him several times a week about her boyfriend and her rescue dog—the stuff about the boyfriend was coyly sexual in an attempt to shock Dave, but he only ever replied with “lol” or earnest advice, which made me laugh.
There weren’t any chats with that woman, Elaine. Finally I searched her name. A few mentions of her in the chats with Erin and Sarah, but nothing else. A tiny line of text at the bottom of the search read: Some messages in Trash match your search.
I clicked View messages.
Sixteen deleted messages with Elaine’s name in them. They were mostly confirmation emails from something called Shekel. I clicked on the first one.
Congratulations! You’ve successfully paid Elaine Campbell $355.00. She will be able to redeem your payment in 3–5 business days.
Three hundred fifty-five dollars? I clicked on the next email.
Congratulations! You’ve successfully paid Elaine Campbell $320.00. She will be able to redeem your payment in 3–5 business days.
What the fuck?
I went through the rest of the Shekel confirmations. They stretched back a little over a year. A hundred here, two hundred there. Three hundred or more for the past three months.
There were two Hangouts conversations in the Trash as well. I clicked on the first one.
me: did messenger send you a gif 5 times in a row
Elaine: haha I didn’t see this earlier
No why?
me: it’s freaking out for me imma try it again
That was t
he end of the conversation. I clicked on the other one.
Elaine: I left my phone at home today I’m so bored
me: haha you’ve gotta revert to gtalk like the rest of us Olds
We don’t have fancy emojis here u must express your feelings in the form of ugly yellow blobs
Elaine: —this one’s a sad face
me:
Elaine: that’s work inappropriate
Can you keep a secret?
me: Absolutely not
Elaine: no im serious
Come here
* * *
—
I sat back in the chair.
Had Leslie gone through Dave’s email? Had she looked in the Trash folder?
Why the fuck was he sending Elaine so much money?
I searched the rest of the computer, then the rest of the house. Nothing in the bathroom, in the closet, in the underwear drawers, in the bedside drawers, in any of Leslie’s jewelry boxes. The baby’s room had toys, diapers, gift receipts from friends, and a stained UNM sweatshirt. I went back downstairs and looked in the garage, but the only thing I found was Dave’s weed in an old tin can behind the toolbox. I gave up, rolled myself a joint, and ordered a pizza.
I was on my third slice of tomato-and-olive, high as shit (whoever Dave was buying from was not fucking around) when it occurred to me that Leslie had another place she could be keeping her secrets.
Somewhere Dave never went.
31
Robin
The first time I ever got high: Marisol Borrego’s birthday party in the year 2004. My father was working and Leslie had no car, so I walked from school to the Borregos’ house, sweaty and red-faced by the time I arrived. I wasn’t there to see Marisol—she was one of those children who clung to childhood even into puberty, dragging dolls onto the playground and covering her ears when the older girls talked about sex. Her birthday party was more of the same: pin the tail, Barbie napkins, cupcakes with plastic animal figurines baked in.