“Yes. Very nice,” I said. “So Annika didn’t seem depressed to you, or—”
“No,” Georgine and Rachel said together. The other mom, Michelle, was silent.
“Did she ever talk about a Marie-Thérèse? Richard Feynman?” I asked.
More head shaking.
“I’ll tell you one thing,” Georgine said. “Maizie, Emma’s mom? Not that she’s unattractive, but come on. She’s not twenty. I don’t care how good her cupcakes are, she’s nuts to have a girl as pretty as Annika live in.”
“Maybe she’s divorced,” Rachel said.
“No, there’s a husband,” I said. “I’ve never met him, but she talks about him.”
“I’ve met him,” Georgine said. “An HMO doc, so I bet she has to work. And those guys don’t keep super-long hours, not like real doctors, so there you go.”
“What are you saying, the husband had an affair with Annika?” Rachel asked.
Georgine glanced at the picnic table. “Hallie, no more cupcakes, you’ll get carsick,” she called, then turned back to us. “It happens. Ever read Jane Eyre?”
Good God. This was something I’d never considered.
Michelle, an athletic brunette, smiled. “So why would you hire her, Georgine?”
“I was separated. Last summer, before Allen came crawling back. Now I’ve got Maria, two hundred pounds and gray hair. Hallie loves her, Allen doesn’t. Hallie! Two more minutes, then we have to go shoe shopping!”
Belatedly, I remembered my own charge. Sazheeq, now in the sandbox, was bathed in orange frosting. How many of those damn cupcakes had she eaten? Stricken, I went to collect her. The party broke up as bigger children and their keepers filtered in for the next class. I separated Sazheeq from the sandbox and Miss Grusha separated twenty-five dollars from me, saying she hoped to see us again.
Rachel wished me luck. “Georgine might be right, but I’ll tell you, I never saw a kid and a nanny crazy about each other like Emma and Annika. I hope for Emma’s sake that you find her. And that it’s nothing—you know. Icky.”
When we got out to the parking lot, Michelle was squatting in front of a Jeep Cherokee, brushing crumbs from her son’s overalls. She stood when she saw Sazheeq and me and flagged us down.
“I didn’t want to say anything in front of Georgine,” she said, “but two weeks ago—well, the last time I saw her—Annika asked me how to find a lawyer. I told her I’m a lawyer. I don’t practice, but I’m a member of the bar. She got a little flustered and said no, she needs the kind who finds lost people, an immigration lawyer. I said that’s not what lawyers do, but she said she’d heard of ones who find people who disappear.”
My heart was beating a little faster. “Disappear.”
Michelle looked down at her son and Sazheeq, staring at each other the way children do before manners set in and force them to either converse or feign disinterest. “Disappear into the judicial system. Noncitizens, held without charges, who don’t get a phone call. She heard about it on National Public Radio.” She rubbed her forehead. “I was in a hurry. I said, Don’t worry, you’re not a terrorist, this wouldn’t happen to you. But she wasn’t the worrying type. She was in trouble, I’m thinking now. Damn it. I should’ve asked more questions.”
“Damn it,” the little boy repeated.
“Okay, you, jump in your car seat,” Michelle said. She opened the Jeep and her son climbed in the back. She reached into her glove compartment, withdrew a business card, and handed it to me. “In case you find her and she’s in trouble. I did estate planning, so as a lawyer, I may not be much help. But as a mother I may be.”
Michelle’s words rang in my ears. I dialed Annika’s mother, as I’d been doing periodically since waking up. I’d done the same the day before, Sunday, until ten P.M. German time. The response was the same now as it had been the last eight tries.
No one picked up the phone.
The answering machine wasn’t on.
Mrs. Glück seemed, in fact, to have disappeared.
There were no horned frogs on my mural. I realized this as I changed into an old pair of Doc’s sweatpants at the Mansion. I was not fond of the grumpy, cannibalistic ceratophrines and had let personal taste outweigh artistic considerations, but really, is eating one’s own species worse than eating “prekilled” pinkie mice or the vitamin-dusted crickets that other pet frogs call lunch? And while I found horned frogs homely, Tricia might thrill to them. People did.
I found a place over the vegetable sink for a Chaco horned frog, Ceratophrys cranwelli, and set to work. To achieve the mottled effect of the Chaco’s brown-on-beige markings, I needed a daub cloth, and I was searching the Mansion for a rag when I recalled something else about the Chaco. And about Annika.
It was nearly the last time I’d seen her. She’d been looking through one of my frog books, lying on the floor of my apartment. “How do you call this one?” she’d asked. “Chay-ko, like the drug lord?”
I’d told her my guess was Chock-o, more Spanish-sounding, since the frogs were South American. And then, wondering why a drug lord would be a point of reference, I’d asked what her interest in Tcheiko was.
“He grew up in East Berlin,” she’d said. “We hear of him, even before—but he is so evil, this man, and scary—” And then she’d changed the subject, visibly disturbed. I’d wanted to tell her she wasn’t responsible for every bad egg who ever lived in Berlin.
I wondered about this now, thinking about the bedroom eyes I’d seen in International Celeb, but the thoughts troubled me, and I tried to focus on work. I tore off one leg of Doc’s sweatpants below the knee, creating a daub cloth. If I’d had a degree in graphic arts, maybe I’d be better equipped for this kind of work, instead of making up tools as I went along. Not that it was a big sacrifice; the sweatpants were spattered with saffron-colored paint and destined for the ragbag anyway. Which would please Fredreeq.
What wouldn’t please Fredreeq was me stopping for gas on the way home, in full view of Ventura Boulevard at rush hour, without changing back into my “good” sweats. While the gas pumped, I went for the squeegee. A dirty car is a moral issue in L.A., making my Integra a degenerate. A sports car pulled up behind me—strange, considering there were four empty self-serve islands at the station. I turned toward it.
The car was clean. Metallic. A grille like a flyswatter.
A man got out of the car. Tall. Very tall.
The Guy. The Mulholland menace. My heart started thump thump thumping away, the blood sprinting through my veins.
If I dove into my car and drove off, would the pump go with me or would the hose disengage, spraying gas all over Ventura Boulevard? What about my gas cap?
The man walked toward me. Long strides. Relaxed.
What should’ve concerned me was that we were the only ones here at the gas station—not counting the clerk inside, who wasn’t paid enough to intervene, should this encounter turn dangerous. What did concern me, of course, was how I looked.
He stopped in front of me, inches away, and settled against my extremely dirty car, hands in pockets. A beautifully casual pose, like a clothing ad.
“Hello,” I said. It came out crackly. I cleared my throat. “Hello. Again.”
“Hello.”
I could sense his body temperature. Standing this close to someone signaled impending contact: Teeth cleaning. An eye exam. Assault.
A kiss.
This preoccupation with kissing: could I be coming down with a psychiatric disorder, some late-onset obsessive-compulsive stress-induced—
“You’re dripping.”
“I beg your pardon?” I looked down to see the windshield squeegee raining soapy water onto my pants, my saffron-spotted sweatpants, cut off below the knee on the left side, as if I’d borrowed them from a peg-leg pirate.
He reached out and took the squeegee and set to work on my windshield.
I stood, lumplike. Another person would’ve asked what kind of stalker cleans his victim’s windshield, but
not me because I was too busy watching his forearms flex. He wore a pale yellow dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His arms were muscular, tanned, with fine blond hair glinting under the gas station lights and a silver watch going back and forth, back and forth with the squeegee, his moves displaying the grace of an athlete or a professional gas station attendant.
Why on earth was he doing this? Why wasn’t I asking?
He finished, returned the squeegee to its water pail, and instead of using the paper-towel dispenser, wiped his hand on the back of his pants, which made me like him more. They were beautiful pants, charcoal, well-fitting, knife-creased, worn with a belt I recognized as a Cartier. Not that I was staring, I told myself. It’s just sad, having a stalker so much better dressed than oneself.
“Shall I check the oil?”
I dragged my eyes from his lower anatomy to his face. “No, thanks. I already did that this year.”
He smiled. His face wasn’t hard after all. How had this happened? “I was wrong about you,” he said. “You’re a very good girl, aren’t you?”
I winced. Guys did not, in general, fall for very good girls, any more than girls went for very nice guys. I tried to keep the defensive note out of my voice. “Sometimes I leave shopping carts in the parking lot instead of returning them to their racks.”
An eyebrow went up.
“Sometimes I eat grapes in the produce section. I tell myself it’s to make sure they’re not sour, but after the first eight or ten, I lose credibility. Also, I read magazines I don’t buy.”
“Is all your bad behavior grocery based?”
“I don’t rotate my tires.”
We were flirting. How could we be flirting?
He disengaged the gas nozzle from the Integra with a little flip, sending drops of gasoline flying. It struck me how masculine a gas nozzle is, how feminine a gas tank—how had this escaped my attention my whole life, the sexual nature of pumping gas? He pressed a button on the credit card pad, screwed on my gas cap, then took the receipt that popped out of the machine and handed it to me. “Going home?”
“What?” I was completely distracted by the sex act I’d just witnessed.
“Go home. Take Sepulveda; Coldwater’s bad right now, Beverly Glen too. Freeway’s worse.” He went to the driver’s door and opened it.
I just stood, staring.
“Unless,” he said, “you need to stop at the store for a quick crime spree?”
I shook my head, less in response than to disperse the fog of bewilderment. I felt a horizontal gravitational pull toward him. I resisted it.
“Come,” he said.
I stopped resisting. I can’t say why. I got into the car, and he shut the door after me, gently, then leaned down and in.
“Who are you?” I said.
He smiled. That was it. It changed his whole face. “I’ll call you when you’re home,” he said. “Shouldn’t take more than an hour.”
I did not go home. I might’ve had a mental disorder, I might’ve been under the effect of toxic gas fumes, but I’m not a lemming; I don’t just go home because tall, well-dressed strangers with strong opinions about routes tell me to. I went west on Ventura, because that’s the direction my car was facing, coming out of the gas station. When he passed me and speeded up, that metallic sports car weaving in and out of traffic like a movie stunt car, I did a clumsy U-turn and went on with my life.
20
It had been a week since Mrs. Glück’s initial phone call, the one that changed my life. If not for that call, my frog mural would be finished, I’d have studied for my math-assessment test, I’d certainly have had more rest. But Monday night found me fidgety, distracted, and sleep deprived, facing work on Biological Clock, a show that had once seemed merely seedy and now looked sinister.
The setting didn’t help. RockiSushi was on south La Brea, a block where you took everything of value out of your car after parking it, then considered removing your tires. Fredreeq and I arrived an hour before the B.C. shoot to do hair and makeup, and Joey, as producer, came to ensure that the restaurant was open for us. On a real TV show, Joey said, there would be a makeup trailer at the location, a generator to power it, transportation people to help you park, and a catering truck with coffee and food for everyone. Low-budget reality TV was a lonelier affair. “Paul said they were expecting us,” she said, peering through a window, “but is this place even in business?”
The door was unlocked. We walked into a room empty of people and smelling of fish. Through a curtain a man moved toward us as if through a fog, intoning, “Table for three?” Joey introduced us as B.C. people. He sighed and showed us to the restroom.
Fredreeq stuffed Kleenex around the neckline of my raw-silk blouse while we filled Joey in on the day’s events. I did not, however, mention the tall man. “This Führungszeugnis—” I said. “I think someone discovered that Annika had a police record and threatened her with deportation, which is maybe why she needed a lawyer. And Marie-Thérèse’s e-mail implies that someone on the show was making her life hell, enough to make her quit, and even disappear. I don’t want to offend you, Joey—obviously I don’t suspect Elliot, but since he and his partner hired everyone—”
“Listen, if it’s good for business, Elliot and Larry would make their own mothers disappear. If they weren’t already dead.”
Fredreeq sponged foundation on my face. “Could they make mine disappear?”
“Speaking of mothers,” I said. “First Mrs. Glück calls me every day, twice a day, and now—nothing. Your child’s missing, what’s the first thing you do when you walk in the house? Check your messages. You’d never leave your phone machine off. So why can’t I reach her? Speaking of phones, would you go in my backpack and make sure mine’s on? P.B.’s been trying to reach me.”
Joey emptied out my backpack. “What’s Algebra, Geometry, and Beyond?”
“Seventh-grade honors math.” Ruby, my almost-stepdaughter, had sent it to me from Japan a month earlier, with instructions to skip the boring parts and go right to the “and Beyond.” Her confidence in my ability was touching, albeit misplaced. “I thought I’d take another stab at that math placement test next week.”
“Next week’s the eclipse,” Fredreeq said, powdering me. “You can’t pass a test in the shadow of the eclipse.”
“I have to. There’s a registration deadline. What’s a shadow of an eclipse?”
“Astrology. Take the test tomorrow, before the eclipse effect kicks in. I happen to know, because I’m comparing your chart and Savannah’s, that you have Mercury trine Saturn tomorrow. A one-day-only transit. A trine like this, you can ace any test.”
“I can’t take it tomorrow,” I said. “I’m not nearly ready.”
Joey flipped through the book. “You can be. I’ll coach you: what’s an integer?”
“I can’t focus on math tonight. Someone on this show was tormenting Annika. Bing, Paul, Isaac, any of us contestants—”
“I think you can leave yourself out of the lineup,” Joey said.
“Hold the phone.” Fredreeq stepped back, hands on hips. “You know my theory on this: I wouldn’t put anything past the saboteurs, but you can’t go acting like you’re on America’s Most Wanted. Savannah and Kim come on like sex kittens, with their capped teeth and collagen lips, and here’s you making citizen’s arrests—”
“Okay, but—”
“No. Joe Friday is not attractive. Hold still while I tweeze your eyebrows.”
“So let’s get back to integers,” Joey said.
“I have no idea what an integer is,” I said.
“A number without a decimal or fractional part,” Fredreeq said.
“If a vertical line can be drawn through a graph that intersects that graph more than once, can the graph in question be a function?” Joey asked.
“No,” said Fredreeq.
“Correct.”
I let my friends talk math in the small bathroom, wondering how so many people in the world unders
tood something so foreign to me. I needed Annika. She had a gift bigger than Isaac Newton’s: she could explain Isaac Newton. She coaxed comprehension out of me the way you’d coax a cat out of a tree, and I doubted I could pass an assessment test without her. It bothered me that my feelings for Annika were not without self-interest. One more crummy thing I’d discovered in the past week.
Vaclav Gadosh, the third male contestant on Biological Clock, greeted me with a wrestling-hold embrace. He was my height and a few pounds lighter, with a model’s chiseled face. He had a scrappy attitude with men and a flirtatious one with women. I found him engaging in a dissipated sort of way.
“Vollie, how are you?” he said, pouring me sake. His accent was subtle, except for the transposition of v’s and w’s. I’d asked him, on our first date, where he was from and he’d told me Culver City. He was reticent about his past. And his present.
Vaclav worked at Rand Corporation, a think tank. For me, the term “think tank” brought to mind people sitting around in swimsuits, dangling their feet in water as they pondered grave issues of international importance. I’d been excited to meet a real tank thinker, for clarification on this, but Vaclav had declined to enlighten me. “I would tell you what we do,” he’d said, “but then I’d have to kill you.” He delivered this shopworn line with pride, as if he’d made it up. Fredreeq believed he worked there in a janitorial capacity.
I studied Vaclav now, chewing absently on a cuticle and sipping sake. He had callused hands, I noticed. How well had he known Annika? He was openly sexual, far more so than Carlito or Henry; did his taste run to nineteen-year-olds?
“Vaclav,” I said, “are you—attracted to—teenagers?”
He looked up, a smile forming. This was his kind of conversation. “Are you?”
“Not sexually. But I know age differences can be—for some people—”
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