by J. M.
“What’s on your mind?”
She lifted her hands to her face and shuddered into tears. “I was so wrong!”
“Hey.”
“Listen! Towards my mom, when she was alive. From the moment I learned to question—the moment I learned to wound—I was the cruelest, most savage bitch in the world to her. Not a kind word, not a break, not a moment. Every little time she was vulnerable, I’d sink my fangs in.”
“Dana!”
“I never saw it until that night on the roof, and then it came flooding over me. All the things I cheated her of, and then the things death cheated her of. She didn’t get to see me graduate. She never got the chance for her and me to be friends.”
“But Dana, you’re not cruel—”
“Horst, you’ve got to believe me.” She squirmed away to face me. “You can’t tell me I’m full of shit now. I’m trying to confess something.”
“All right, but just to say: you might be exaggerating. Everyone disses their parents.”
“You didn’t diss yours.”
Oho, that, that was something she would never know about. The horrible, pathetic fits I threw over my dependency. So bad I could barely stand to look at the concessions they got me. My car, my chair—things I hadn’t earned through work, but wrung from unwilling givers through fits—fits—of screaming and crying. It would be different in a few years, when I would have freedom and my own money. Meanwhile, Christ. Two years before, I had sawed the push handles off the back of my old chair when some Real Housewife in the Nordstrom on Third Street grabbed them and moved me out of her way like an abandoned shopping cart. Without asking me, without a word, shoved me three inches, after I had gotten myself washed and dressed and fed and out the door and down to that mall and parked on an upper level and wound my way through a multi-floor department store, all by myself do I need to say again, and then she pushed me three fucking inches as if I couldn’t travel that monumental distance on my own. As if I was so inert and sub-human that I couldn’t respond to a simple “Excuse me.” Clearing a path to the shoe department for herself and her fugly daughter, getting rid of this obstacle, this discarded, useless—Well, I made a scene for the ages when that happened, right on the spot—and that was nothing compared to the ear-splitting, cat-scaring, sweating, cussing, balled up rage that I unleashed on my grandparents for the next two weeks. They always insisted on whatever way was easier and thriftier for everyone, although they lived in relative leisure and wealth and had nothing else to spend their money on. But dig it—I got my expensive, ultralight chair, with no arm rests and no push handles. The low back stressed my core—fine, I had reason to keep it tight. “Yes, I did,” I said to Dana. “You don’t know what went on inside my house.”
“There was no ‘inside my house.’ I let loose wherever I felt like it. I made sure the entire world knew what a witty sadist I was.”
“I never saw it.”
“Just let me confess, will you?”
“All right, but one last thing—”
She glared.
“Just one. It was different with me. They’re my grandparents, and they took me in—”
“And my mom gave birth to me,” she exclaimed impatiently. “You know, I was born six months after my parents got married. Did you know that? And I wasn’t three months premature, Horst. As soon as I figured out what that meant, I jumped on my mom. I jumped on her, I gave her a hard time! I threw it in her face as if she’d committed some crime, having me six months after her wedding instead of having an abortion. Never asked how she felt, never asked if she was scared, if they tried to shame her, if her bastard father got on his high horse and belittled her over it. And I know he did.”
I had never met Dana’s grandfather, but I had attended his funeral. Come to think of it, Mrs. Hamlet had been upset about his death, but in a complicated way. “She understood you, Dana. She was a mom.”
That brought a fresh shower of tears. I put my arm around her, those smooth shoulders of hers and her parted hair—I seldom got to see the top of a girl’s head. I almost kissed it.
“She’s suffering, she’s alone,” she wept. “You saw her—you saw how sad that spirit was. I can’t unscatter her ashes, I’ve got nothing to show anyone who can do anything about it. They all think I’m just a mixed-up kid. The more time I spend trying to figure it out the less I do, and the less I do the guiltier I feel, and the guiltier I feel the more I hide from it all. Am I making sense?”
“Yeah. So does this mean you’re planning to do something now?”
“Something, yes. I don’t know how it’s going to end, but I have to get started. They’re not losing any time.”
“They’re not?”
“Horst, if you were to pick a few friends of mine to cheer me up and get me to talk about my problems and quit acting strange, who would it be?”
“Well, me obviously, and Heidi and Victor, and Cris, and Tim. Anyone else?”
“How about Rosie and Gale?”
I laughed hard. She gave me an evil, steady smile. “Oh no, you’re kidding.”
“They showed up yesterday acting all concerned—I know, can you imagine? Surprise, surprise, it turns out they’re spies—the worst ones in the universe. I asked them point-blank if Aunt Claudia and my dad sicced them on me and they copped to it.”
“Good lord.”
“Which also shows how clueless my aunt and dad are at recruiting spies. I mean, at least pick someone I’d talk to.”
I pushed a strand of that smooth, frothy hair behind her ear. “Why didn’t you call me sooner?”
Her eyes watered up.
“No, don’t.”
“I’m spooked. I’m sure there’s more than Rosie and Gale.”
“Drive to town and call me on a damn pay phone. I’ll jump in my car and be at your door in a heartbeat.”
She shook her head sadly as she grabbed my hand on her face. “I’ve been a terrible friend. Guilty, guilty, guilty.”
“Stop.”
“I’ve got so much to say to you, Horst—”
“You’ve said it. You’re saying it. You’re saying it with your eyes.”
“This is exactly what I did to my mother. You know, when I first started my period when I was thirteen, I went to some twitty friends and bought tampons myself and didn’t even tell her for months. Finally she discovered some bloody underpants of mine and I told her everything, and it had been hard, really hard hiding things and being confused and managing it all, and she looked kind of hurt and said, ‘What do you think mothers are for?’ There, I didn’t say that with my eyes, did I?”
“No.”
“That’s the sort of fluffy-wuffy you have to listen to if you want to be friends with a girl.”
“I know.” She had always been that way with me.
“Eeyah, forget about me—until I get this thing done for my mom.” She lowered her face into her hands. “Focus.”
“All right. On what?”
“A mind-fuck. We need to get to Century City.”
A THREE-MINUTE MURDER
We picked up a big order from the place that had everyone’s favorite batter-fried orange chicken and laughed at our privilege—I hated handicapped parking, except on a sunny day on Beverly Drive. The glass towers we were headed for were close by. “So before we get there,” Dana said, “the thing that got me moving is something kind of intense I saw last night.”
“Something else?”
“No, not like that. It sounds stupid, Horst, but it was a DVD Rosie brought. There’s Dominic Cooper shedding genuine salt tears over Catherine Earnshaw’s ghost. The ghost. Of Catherine Earnshaw. Even if it wasn’t a ghost, it’s still a fictional character, and even if it wasn’t a fictional character it’d be dead for three hundred years. How many degrees of separation is that? If real-life Dominic Cooper had one-tenth the motive I have and someone pointed a camera at him, the audience would be running for the doors in terror. And here I am, my mom dead and my dad slutting around with
the bitch who murdered her, and I’m just hating and waiting for answers to drop out of the sky. I wish someone would slap me.”
“Well, you’re not waiting for answers now, are you? You said—”
“That’s where we’re going. By the way, Horst, were you smart? Did you pack a bag? Because I wouldn’t exactly mind if you stayed in Elsinore Canyon for a day or two.”
“Am I smart, you ask?”
She smiled and punched my arm. I wasn’t smart, but I was one opportunistic prick.
Dana unlocked a tall wooden door in a Century City office tower and angled her head in. It was an elegant suite in the clouds, her mother’s old office still not cleared out. She lifted a hand in greeting, and we both slipped in. Among the furnishings and family pictures, a barebones production crew was at work with three actors. Big fans around a desk, a smoke machine. I recognized the guy who was directing, Yanghak Park. He had graduated two years earlier from St. Maroveus.
He called “Cut” at the actors, who broke and wandered to some black leather benches.
“You didn’t have to stop for me,” Dana said.
“You changed the light when you opened the door. Hi, Horst.”
“Sorry,” Dana said. “Anyway, we brought refreshments.”
We unloaded the small feast we’d picked up and improvised a crafts table. “You don’t have to make this thing technically perfect, you know,” Dana said as we dished up food.
“I know,” Yanghak said. “But you wanted it moody, right?”
“Yes. Got anything we can see?”
Yanghak showed us some clips on a laptop. It was all action, no dialogue, everything out of sequence, but I had an idea how it would go together. “Wow.”
“Wait’ll the ambient is added,” Dana said.
“I might have to do some slo-mo to stretch it out to three minutes,” Yanghak said.
“Not too heavy on the effects. I want the story to show.”
“The story will show,” Yanghak said with a hint of acid.
“You fed up with producers already?”
“It doesn’t take long.”
“We’ll bug out.”
The two of them discussed payment and delivery, and we bugged out for the mall.
“What’s that all about?” I said the moment we were clear of the building.
Dana skipped ahead of me and pointed at a movie poster on the side of a theater. It had a picture of a cloak and a dagger. “Want to see The Mouse Trap?”
“I want to hear about this thing.”
She turned and took one of my hands in both of hers, and drew me gently towards the theater. “In a cool, dark place.”
“I feel like I’m being…”
“It’s okay. Come on.”
We got tickets and entered a dim theater. The show hadn’t started yet, and we had it to ourselves. Dana kicked off her shoes, draped her legs over the side of her seat, and planted her toes in my spokes. “This is the perfect place to think about secrets,” she said. “Think of your biggest one, Horst. Your biggest, darkest, deepest secret.” I thought of it. Not such a dark secret, my high-spirited Dana, but definitely deep. “What would you do,” she said, “if you saw the whole thing enacted right before you on a big screen”—she swept her hand out—“with all your nearest and not-so-dearest in the audience, watching it along with you?”
I’d be spewing out both ends. “Oh boy. So, what are you going to do, show Yanghak’s movie?”
“Yes.”
“Some sort of public punking?”
“It’s not a bad thing, you know.”
“What exactly is going to happen?”
“That Hollywood Nite I e-mailed my dad about. We’re having a little entertainment tomorrow evening at Elsinore Canyon. An intimate-sized crowd, but the right people will be there. We’re going to watch a screener of Second Generation, and no one knows it yet, but there’s going to be a short before the main feature. A three-minute murder scene with no dialog, just background music and, you know.”
“Holy shhh. That’s some stunt, Dana.”
“I’m kind of scared, to tell the truth.”
“Your Aunt Claudia will be there?”
“She’ll be the guest of honor.” Her voice grew serious. “I’m going to watch her like a hawk. See how she reacts.”
“How incriminating do you think it could be?”
“I don’t know. I want another pair of eyes. Can you stand to be part of this, Horst?”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Watch her, that’s all. Tell me if you see anything, tell me if I’m imagining things.”
“What if you’re right?”
The theater went dark, and Dana shrank into her seat. A trailer for an action thriller came on.
A cliché shot of people huddling under umbrellas at a rainy cemetery. Dana leaned over and caressed the push rim of my chair. “Did you ever not want to live?”
She had asked me lots of questions over the years about my condition, but never that one. “For a while. Maybe a week. I was on autopilot.”
She crept her hand over the back of mine and spoke softly into my ear. “Why didn’t you let go?”
“I don’t know. I guess my will to live ran out the clock.”
“You took a risk. Other people don’t. They’re afraid they’ll wind up dead.”
Other people were right, or half-right. Half of me had wound up dead.
On the screen, a woman in black doubled over in tears. “We could escape the whole ordeal courtesy of a ten-cent razor,” Dana said. A man bled horribly and fell out a window. “Is there such a thing as a ten-cent razor?”
“I don’t know. I use a straight-edge.”
“I wax.”
The movie started. On the screen, a jet, tiny as a pin, carved a white vapor trail through a vast night sky. “But what’s over there?” Dana said. “On the other side of the grave. It’s not fricking Costa Rica.”
On the screen, an angelic little girl smiled as she pointed a gun at the camera. Dana whispered. “What if hell is a sea of hatred and spite, and the only relief for the damned is to drag in other souls?”
I kept my head near hers. I was as serious as doomsday. “If that was true, I would be the best boy in the world and I’d fight temptation night and day.”
A firing squad shot a man. Dana whispered. “What if it turns out eternal justice is harsh? What if the only thing that counts is your actions, and it doesn’t matter if you feel penitence or remorse or confusion?”
I looked into her eyes. She wasn’t just confused; she was scared. “Confusion about what, dear?”
“Everything.”
I stroked her arm with the back of my hand. “Tell me what you’re confused about.”
“I just don’t know what’s over there.”
“Mercy, Dana.”
YOU DON’T GET THIS BY CLICKING
The guy in the blue hat at Wilshire Mac looked at the work order and then at Dana with a trace of impishness. “We saved the stuff on your phone, but your laptop is a different story. We couldn’t transfer all your apps.”
Dana paused as she reached for her pile of devices. “Anything I’m going to miss?”
“Probably not,” he said, “unless you want to be spied on.”
“I don’t—want to be—”
“Strictly speaking, at this exact moment I am your official I-T guy. So I can reveal that you’re being spied on.”
“Did I click on something?”
“You don’t get this by ‘clicking.’ Did you let someone else use your laptop?”
Dana lifted her old laptop between her fingernails. “This one, right?”
The guy in the blue hat nodded.
“No.”
“Did you leave it lying around somewhere?”
“Not that I know of. What’s on it?”
“It’s a legitimate app that companies put on their employees’ devices to make sure they’re not goofing off. You can install it so it’s pra
ctically invisible on the client machine—which would be your laptop. No monitors, no icons, no directories, no log files. And the client app is specific to each machine, so…”
“So…”
“So that’s why we’re having this conversation. You wanted to transfer all your apps. But for this one, the admin will have to do a fresh install—if you want to keep putting, I don’t know, all your documents and media and communications on a secret location that you apparently don’t know about.”
“You mean, all my private stuff is out there somewhere?”
“Potentially. As I said, there are no log files on your machine, but someone could have all your e-mails, your messages, maybe your documents, media, internet history, your Skype audio and video are possibly being streamed—”
“To where?”
“We could find it if we did a deep scan, but that would be an overnight in the shop and the place it’s all going to is probably a passworded directory anyways.”
“How long has this been going on?”
“The client was installed on May fifteenth of this year. If you want to know what’s been copied out, your best bet is to find the admin’s machine. It’ll have the full version with all the records. Here’s the app.” He spread her work order in front of her and highlighted a line with a yellow marker.
A minute later, I circled around to the front of the store in my car and Dana ran out from the sidewalk with her bag of devices. I got the impression from her face that our dinner conversation was going to be lively. “I knew it,” she gasped as she jumped into my car. “I found the other spies.”
It was a lively dinner indeed and then another lively hour in Starbucks examining her laptop. She clicked through every file and record, fuming all the way. “It was Polly. May fifteenth, look, I was sick at home that day—you remember, I had the flu?—and my parents were in San Francisco, you must remember that because I told you how my mom didn’t want to go while I was sick. So they couldn’t have done it because they weren’t there, and it couldn’t have happened at school because I wasn’t there. He snuck around my stuff while I was sleeping, my God! And then he was hunting for my phone in the solarium last night.”