Her Beautiful Monster

by Adi Tantimedh

  “You sure?” Darrell said.

  “We’re just returning the gun,” I said.

  “We can get a taxi back,” Julia said. “Go on.”

  NINE

  Darrell called ahead and told Keith that Julia and I were getting dropped off at the house with the Flintlock. Darrell and Liz practically screeched off in the car once Julia and I got out at the front door of Ross’s house.

  It was an impressive piece of architecture, all glass and steel, perched over the hills for a full view of the city. We pushed the buzzer at the gate and Keith unlocked it electronically. It was one of those big, sturdy gates that rolled slowly open.

  “Aren’t you going to talk about what happened?” Julia asked as we walked up the driveway.

  “What do you mean?”

  “That Dix bloke saw Kali.”

  “He was completely off his face, Julia. Obviously hallucinating.”

  We reached the front door and I rang the bell.

  “But to see your gods . . . none of us saw anything, just him freaking out. You obviously saw what he saw.”

  “I don’t want to think about it,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because it means the gods aren’t just in my head, and I’d rather not deal with what that could mean.”

  “It could mean you’re not mad. You’re not stressed out—”

  “Julia, not now.”

  “Why not now?”

  “Because,” I stammered. “Because it could change everything.”

  “It could mean you’re not mad,” she repeated. “Isn’t that what you always wanted? You’re terrified that you might be mentally ill. What if you really are channeling the gods, or something from outside yourself?”

  Of course she was right: this was entirely new territory, and it was territory worth exploring, worth thinking about. But between my recent arrival in LA and Dix’s wild behavior, I needed to focus on the matter at hand and worry about the gods later.

  “Julia, this doesn’t make it better. It could make things worse. Much, much worse.”

  “How?”

  “Don’t you see? It makes the world, hell, the whole universe even more terrifying. It’s one thing if I’m just chemically imbalanced. That we can all understand. If it’s all real, that means something else is going on. For starters, if the gods are real, what do they want? What are their plans? Gods always have plans, and if they’ve chosen me to be their instrument or their conduit, where does that leave me? It means they won’t leave me alone. I’m their shaman or their tool, and I’m supposed to carry out their plan in some way that I don’t know. It means I don’t have free will.”

  “So you have thought about it,” Julia said.

  “Yes, and it scares the shit out of me even more!”

  The front door opened. Saved by the Keith.

  “Hey, guys.” He looked extremely relieved, and also a bit stoned. “Sorry it took so long. I have some people here. Make yourselves at home.”

  There was already a party under way when Keith opened the door. Everyone was wearing leather and corsets. I spotted a cat-o’-nine-tails as well.

  “Heeeey, guys.” He was already sloshed. “You have saved my life. Literally.”

  Keith wore glasses, had curly dark hair and an awkward, lanky body. He looked more like a graduate student than the assistant to a Hollywood director. He had the geeky air of someone desperately trying to hide that he was out of his depth and flailing. Darrell had said he wasn’t a bad guy, just a bit hapless, lucky (or unlucky) enough to have been hired as Ross’s second assistant to hold down the fort while the first assistant went overseas with the boss while he shot his new film.

  “Let’s just get the gun back in the case, shall we?” I said. “We’ll feel better about it then.”

  Keith showed Julia and me in. Keith’s friends were all smoking joints in the living room and watching the seventy-inch flat-screen TV. It showed live helicopter footage of a fire starting in the Santa Monica Mountains, not far from where we were earlier.

  “Looks like we had a narrow escape,” Julia said.

  “It’s, like, sooo apocalyptic!” the guy with the cropped bleached hair and chiseled body cried.

  “You have a soul mate, Ravi.” Julia winked at me.

  “Please don’t start,” I muttered.

  “Would you like something? Beer? A water?” Keith asked.

  “I’m fine, thanks,” I said.

  “I could use some water,” Julia said.

  I carried the Flintlock over to the glass case, turned the key and opened it, put the gun back on its pedestal, and shut the case.

  “All done.”

  I looked at the TV and saw the plume of gray smoke rising from the mountains, then looked out the window. They were massive and gave us a panoramic view of the city, including across town towards Santa Monica, and I could see the same growing cloud of smoke rising in the distance. Everyone at the party just kept looking at the telly when the real thing was right outside the window.

  “You know, Keith, we ought to get going,” I said.

  “I hear ya,” he said. “I’m just here to hold down the fort, batten down the hatches, and wait for Gossamer to call from Romania so I can give ’im a status report on the fire. Probably gonna have to hose down the outside of the house in case the fire gets to this side of town.”

  “Do you think the fire will reach here?” Julia asked.

  “The wind’s blowing in this direction,” Keith said. “Don’t think the fire department’s gonna be able to contain that fire, so we can expect major chaos. I don’t wanna be here when that hits.”

  “Where do you live?” I asked.

  “The Valley,” he said. “Traffic’s already gonna be chaos, even before rush hour hits.”

  “Then maybe we should just call a cab or an Uber and get going ourselves,” I said.

  “Dude,” the goth-looking girl in the leather bustier said, holding up her smartphone. “Ain’t no cabs or Ubers comin’ up here. They’re stayin’ the fuck away from the hills, on account of not wanting to be caught in a brush fire and all.”

  “Bugger,” I said.

  “Look, why don’t you hang out a little?” Keith said. “Once the boss calls and I finish up here, I can give you guys a lift.”

  “That’s very kind of you,” Julia said.

  “Least I can do considering you saved my ass getting that gun back.”

  “Cheers, Keith,” I said. “But is it going to be long?”

  “Ravi, don’t worry,” Julia said. “If the fire reaches this side of the hills, it won’t be for a few hours. The news on the TV just said that.”

  “Right,” I said, unconvinced. “I’m just not so keen on sitting on my arse here for a few hours doing nothing.”

  “But you’re not doing nothing, Ravi,” Julia said. “We’re having an experience very few people get a chance to. Look at all this, the surrealism, the mysteriousness of it all, as if cosmic forces are converging. Just sit and take this all in.”

  I looked around. The gods were here, milling about the house. Shiva sitting on the sofa with the leather kids. Kali dancing in the middle of the living room. Ganesha standing outside near the ledge, looking out at the city and the smoke. They were happy to mingle at this party. Or was it just mingling? Was someone else going to see them, too? So far, the human guests seemed completely oblivious to their presence. More than half of the guests were drunk or stoned, and still didn’t see them. That meant it took more than intoxication to see my gods. More questions. More frightening implications for me.

  Lord Shiva met my eye, as if he read my mind.

  He smiled. Not a smug or malicious smile, but with a hint of sadness, as if he sympathized. He nodded at me and turned back to the conversation on the sofa. They were talking about some government conspiracy or other, mainly about how the Right wanted to criminalize marijuana again.

  “So what am I really doing here taking all this in?” I asked.

&
nbsp; “Why, bearing witness, of course,” Julia said. “Isn’t that what the gods always wanted you to do?”

  Damn. Julia had my number there. Again. She always did.

  “Bearing witness it is, then.” I sighed. “Keith, I’ll have some water after all.”

  “Good idea,” he said, handing me a bottle of expensive mineral water. “Stay hydrated.”

  TEN

  From Olivia’s recordings:

  “I contacted Golden Sentinels’ Hong Kong office to let them know I was in town. If anything were to happen to me, they would at least let Roger and Cheryl know. Everyone in Hong Kong was freaked out that Derek Hong Kam Fong had been snatched off the streets by the Chinese authorities. It was still headline news, and pro-democracy activists were protesting about China’s increasing erosion of freedoms in Hong Kong. Some of the chaps at Golden Sentinels’ Hong Kong office offered to help me out, but I had to turn them down because Golden Sentinels could not be seen to be working on this case. Besides, they weren’t getting paid. The other thing is, the office here is split between the boss, who just wants to keep his head down and keep getting big money clients, and the younger investigators, who want more democratic rights and representation in Hong Kong. I didn’t want to throw a match to those tensions.

  “Derek’s office was not far from the red light district of Wan Chai. I went over and found that the office had been closed since Derek disappeared, so I tracked down his employees, who were all holed up at home. They told me the morning he disappeared, he never made it to the office. Derek didn’t take the car to work because traffic was bloody awful. He usually took the bus. Whoever grabbed him had to have observed his daily routine before they decided the best time and place to make their move. I didn’t have the names of any Mainland Chinese agents who could have been operating in Hong Kong, and they may not have used any. They could have used local talent, and that meant the Triads. The next step, then, would be to find out which gangs operated in Wan Chai, especially near Derek’s office. Wan Chai had seen its share of gang wars when I was a girl back in the nineties. I remember hearing about murders, police raids and skirmishes, but things had been fairly quiet in the last few years. The area is divided into different turfs overseen by branch gangs. I had to find out which ones had a deal with the Chinese authorities to keep the peace and gather information, particularly on Derek.

  “Here was where I could use my family’s connections.”

  ELEVEN

  Julia and I stood out on the balcony, an elegant structure of steel and wood perched precariously over an abyss. The fall down the ravines of the Hollywood Hills would feel almost bottomless. We watched as the plume of smoke from the other mountains across the city grew bigger. The sound of helicopters in the sky was ubiquitous and endless. Every now and then another police helicopter would buzz by overhead. We even spotted the odd black drone flitting in and out of the vicinity. Police and ambulance sirens echoed in the distance.

  “They’re saying it could become a ring of fire around the whole city,” Julia said.

  “That’s comforting,” I said, not comforted at all.

  “You really should try to enjoy yourself,” she said, her hand stroking my neck.

  “It’s hard to do that when the world keeps looking like it’s on the precipice of disaster,” I said.

  Ganesha was up above, looming large, sitting on one of the few clouds in the clear sky and looking down on the city with interest.

  “Which gods are you seeing now?” Julia asked.

  “Ganesha, as usual,” I said. “Up there in the clouds. But then he’s the god of travel, after all, and everyone has to drive here in LA, so that makes sense. I’m sensing some tension in the air because the fires are going to cause traffic to jam up. Wait, is that—?”

  “What is it?” Julia asked.

  “Over the hills. Vayu is there. God of winds. He’s in casual wear, and he’s just blowing away. It’s as if he’s sending the Santa Ana winds.”

  “You heard what some people say about the Santa Ana winds,” Julia said. “That it’s a kind of purifying wind that blows through the city a few times a year.”

  “So the brush fire that’s carried by the wind might be part of the gods’ process?”

  “Didn’t you tell me Vayu, or Pavana, was about purification?” Julia asked.

  “I never thought of him quite like this,” I muttered. “As in, this literally.”

  Vayu had a cocktail in his hand, and took a sip from it between puffs. It was a piña colada. I never liked piña coladas. Too sweet.

  “I might start to resent the fact that the gods are having a much better time than me,” I said. “But then, they’re gods. Of course they would.”

  “We’re quite the pair,” Julia said. “People don’t quite know what to make of us. You should be living large with it.”

  “Whatever do you mean?”

  “People think you’re some mysterious bloke from England with special abilities,” Julia said. “I’m just the eye candy with the posh accent. I can live with that. It’s how I hide in plain sight and find out people’s secrets. Roger knew that from that start, and you know that.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short, love,” I said. “People have been going gaga for you everywhere we’ve gone in LA. To them, you’re practically Princess Di.”

  “Being compared to the martyred royal broodmare doesn’t exactly inflate my self-esteem.” Julia smirked.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Ravi, what gets me is how you can’t even enjoy any of this. You have so much guilt and angst about what you do and what you’re afraid you might do. You still worry that you’re going mad when you haven’t done anything of the sort. We all witnessed something extraordinary and you won’t even acknowledge it.”

  “It happened. I admit it. I just don’t want to think about it.”

  “Why not? It means the gods aren’t something that’s just inside your head. Why don’t you want to think about it?”

  “Because it would mean they’re outside of me. Dix was completely off his face on crystal meth and I wasn’t, yet we both saw and reacted to Kali in the same place. We saw where she was and heard what she said. You couldn’t see her. Darrell and Liz didn’t see her. That means there’s something out there, and everything my dad said, everything Mark has been saying, about me channeling something, that I might be some kind of modern-day shaman, that’s not what I want my life to be. I almost wish I was just a seedy private investigator in a seedy little corrupt world.”

  “You’re obsessed with some platonic idea of ‘normality.’ ”

  “All right, I suppose I am. Is that too much to hope for?”

  “And yet you’re with me.”

  “Julia—”

  “You could have found yourself a nice girl who doesn’t have an addiction or depression problem. Instead you chose my brand of damage.”

  “If you’re damaged, I’m every bit as damaged,” I said.

  “So we might as well be damaged together?”

  “It’s better than living with the damage alone.”

  “Sometimes I see Louise,” she said. “But it’s more like I imagine she’s there watching me, saying something to reassure me. I know I’m the one imposing the image of her there. She’s not actually there. With you, it’s different. I wish she really was there watching me. I like to think of her as fully transitioned, healthy. Her hair is fabulous, she’s wearing a stunning Yves St. Laurent dress, she’s got a set of marvelous tits, and she’s happy.”

  “So I have my gods and you have your sister.”

  “Except I’m not worried that I’m going mad. I’m an addict, after all. That’s already a form of madness.”

  “You’re being too harsh on yourself again. You’re not mad, Julia.”

  Her eyes welled up; the wetness glistened in the light of the monitors.

  “I love you so much, Ravi.”

  “And I can’t imagine my life without you,” I said.
>
  “Hey, guys.” Keith came out of the living room. “I’m gonna call Gossamer now.”

  TWELVE

  Gossamer Rand Ross’s white walls were lined with photos of him with various A-list stars he had worked with (and the A-list women he had slept with), which was nearly everyone who was anyone in Hollywood, given that he had made eighteen movies over a twenty-five-year period. The pictures that took the more prominent pride of place, though, were the ones where he was posing with politicians, generals, presidents, and heads of state. The photos with movie stars said “This is me with Fame!” The photos with politicians said “This is me with Power!”

  And given the antiques, paintings, and sculptures that adorned the house, you could safely assume that Gossamer Rand Ross was a man obsessed with wealth, status, power, and the finer things in life. He had a particular fondness for antique weapons and busts of military figures. It would stand to reason, then, that he might want to safeguard this house and its extremely expensive contents from a brush fire that threatened to turn it all into ash and scrap if it hit this part of the hills.

  The party was winding down. Keith’s guests in leather were drifting away, getting in their cars to beat the traffic and get home. The faint whiff of weed was still in the air from the joints that had been smoked.

  Julia and I waited while Keith dialed Ross’s number in Romania. It was late over there by now.

  “Okay, Keith, what’s the status?” Ross had never been in the military but was a major groupie for military-speak and war porn, as many of his movies indicated.

  He sounded wide awake and alert, no hint of sleepiness at all while he listened to Keith give him the weather report and the brushfire warnings from the news.

  “There’s no way I can get movers in now to take all this stuff someplace safe,” Keith said, his voice quivering slightly. “We’re going to have to prioritize, Goss. What do you want me to save?”

  “The guns! Get the guns!”

  “Er, which ones?”

  “The goddamn guns! Get them out of the house! The hell with the art! It’s all insured! Just get the guns out of the house!”