The Elizas

by Sara Shepard

  “Was it a bad breakup?” Desmond asks.

  “Yes,” I say with near certainty, thinking of the memory of myself on the floor of the greasy-smelling pizza place and Leonidas lording over me, telling me I’d done something awful that couldn’t be fixed.

  “Did you tell your police contact about Leonidas?”

  I explain that I’ve left a lot of messages on the tip line, but there’s been no call back. “Are you sure Lance is even a detective?” Desmond asks. “He could be a gossip hound. People pay big money for a scoop on an interesting person.”

  “Why would anyone want to gossip about me?” Then I set my mouth in a line. I think about what Posey said: The whole world knows your story. On the other hand, Lance had shown up just thirteen hours after the pool thing. He didn’t know I was interesting yet. Could news travel that fast?

  Desmond adjusts his beret so that it sits on his head at a jaunty angle. “I mean, did this Lance guy show you a badge, something that connected him to the police department?”

  I scratch my nose. “Well, no . . .”

  “So you just took him at his word?”

  “I guess. Although actually, Lance isn’t a detective, per se. He’s a forensic psychologist.”

  Now Desmond looks confused. “Why would they send him to talk to you?”

  “I guess he thought . . .” I breathe out. “He had this idea that maybe I had been trying to kill myself.”

  Desmond doesn’t react right away. “I guess I can see how people would assume that. Being that you were at the bottom of the pool.”

  “I was at the bottom of the pool because someone pushed me in and I can’t swim.”

  “I know that. But why doesn’t he?”

  I sigh. “Lance knew things about me before he even came into the room. And then my mother filled in the rest.”

  “The rest of what?”

  There’s no way I can get out of explaining this. I’m already in too deep. “I had a brain tumor about a year ago.”

  Desmond frowns. “I’m sorry?”

  “A year ago. I had surgery. I’m better, but . . .”

  He looks like he’s about to cry. “Oh, my sweet girl.”

  I explain my tumor and the suicide attempts that led up to it. “So my mother thinks the fall into the pool is just another one of those attempts. I guess she doesn’t think I’m better.” I make a face. “Sometimes it feels like she almost wants me to be sick. Or maybe not sick. Maybe just . . . contained.”

  “How so?”

  I think for a moment. “When I first attempted suicide, she did the normal stuff a mother would do. She cried, she paced, she was really concerned. But after each subsequent attempt, she started to disassociate. It was almost like she was annoyed that it kept happening, that I should just snap out of it already. She kept putting me in the hospital, and she acted pissed when I got out, and she had this whole I told you so thing going whenever I tried to drown myself again.”

  “How did she react when you were diagnosed with a tumor?”

  “I remember her marching in to the nurse one day and being like, Well? Is she better yet? Is she cured?”

  “That sounds like she wanted you out of the hospital, not in.”

  “It was more like she was impatient. She’s just so annoyed at me all the time anyway—it was like this even before the suicide stuff. She never understood me. Everything I was into, everything I said, she just . . . recoiled.”

  “Mothers and daughters,” Desmond sighs. “I’ve always heard that’s a tricky bond.” Then he glances at me. “Thank you for telling me that. You’re very brave.”

  I squirm in my seat. There’s no need for him to memorialize the moment. Then again, Desmond has a point. I haven’t told anyone this much about myself or my family in a long time. Not even Kiki. Maybe it’s because Desmond has no preconceived notions of me, and because I don’t expect to know him after today. Or maybe it’s because he sits so quietly and listens without immediately interjecting an opinion.

  The streets whip by. I count three black cars, six silver. Several people gawk at the Batmobile. “What was the hospital like during your tumor?” Desmond asks.

  “Well, like I said, I can barely remember it. I felt drunk the whole time, probably pumped up with morphine and other meds. All I wanted to do was sleep. I remember talking a lot, but it must have just been in dreams. When I was awake, I had no attention span, and I had splitting headaches if I didn’t take my painkillers.”

  “Gracious me,” Desmond murmurs.

  “There were silent moments in my room when I was alone, and I recall staring at my hands as though I’d never seen them before. I whispered certain words to make sure I was saying them correctly. Milk. Balloon. Dog. They’d sounded foreign. It also felt like something had been taken from me, a big hole scooped in my brain.”

  “The tumor?”

  “I don’t know. I never saw a brain scan of it.”

  “Why can’t you swim?” Desmond asks, after a long silence. “I thought every kid in California knew how to swim.”

  “Do you know how to swim?”

  “Indeed. I can even do the butterfly.”

  Show off. “I probably swam a little as a kid, but after a while, I started thinking that all pools of water—or lakes, or oceans—were the River Styx. I read a lot of Greek mythology. My mom had me taking swimming lessons, but I backed away from the pool every time, imagining Doré etchings of a creature rising out of the waves and pulling me down to hell. I never wanted to go in. I would start crying.”

  Desmond clucks his tongue.

  “After a while, my mother canceled the lessons. I’m sure she was embarrassed.”

  “You could take lessons now,” Desmond says. “Unless you still think all water leads to hell?”

  “I don’t. But now, water has this . . . association. I jumped in it or ran into it or ducked under it hoping to die. It carries too much baggage. I’d rather just stay on dry land.”

  “Gotcha.” Desmond taps his forehead. “Mental note: Do not take Eliza to any beach resorts anytime soon.” He holds up a pale arm. “Not that I’m partial to the beach myself.”

  Leonidas’s father’s office is several blocks away. We park in the lot of the Whole Foods I’d pictured so easily—I used to stop here after school, sometimes, when my mother was finishing up work. I got a kick out of shoplifting fresh produce—plums, nectarines, single cherry tomatoes.

  We walk along the street reading the building numbers. When we get to 1104, Desmond studies the sign for Dr. Lorre and scrunches up his face. “Your ex-lover is a plastic surgeon?”

  “Uh . . .” I hate how I’m not sure. “His father is. Leonidas works in reception.”

  “So what’s your plan of attack? You want access to his phone, right? See who he was talking to? Where he’s been?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And how are you going to do that?”

  “Well, I’m not sure. But I’m hoping you’ll provide a subterfuge while I figure that out.”

  Desmond removes his beret and runs his hand over his slick hair. “Give me my instructions,” he says gallantly.

  “Say you’ve got an appointment. Get into the waiting room, then fake a leg injury in the hall. He’ll run to your rescue, and while he’s away from the desk, I’ll grab his phone and look through it. Take pictures if I have to.”

  Desmond is blinking rapidly. “You want me to pretend I want plastic surgery?” He looks chagrined. “That’s pretty much against every principle I stand for.”

  “It’s not like you’re going to actually get the surgery.”

  “What if someone I know sees me?”

  I snort. “You really think your gladiator cronies are going to be hanging out at a plastic surgery office? Get a grip. You’ll be fine. Go in there, and say you’re getting calf implants.”

  He stares at a raised leg. “But my calves are fine! I’ve been told by quite a few ladies I have lovely calves, in fact.”

  I shu
t my eyes. “You know what? It’s cool. We don’t have to do this. I don’t even know you. It was nice of you to drive me here.”

  Desmond places his beret back on his head. “No, no. I’ll do it. I shall cast aside my preconceptions and do it for you.”

  “Seriously, Desmond. It’s fine.”

  “I want to do it. It’s my quest!”

  “If you’re sure . . .”

  “I am beyond sure. But what if a man doesn’t have an appointment around now? He’ll know I’m up to something.”

  “You’ll be faking that injury within a few seconds of getting in there, so you won’t need to explain much.”

  The front door to the building is open, and I march through, holding the door for Desmond. My muscles seem to remember the way to the suite—perhaps I’ve been here before.

  We stop at the glass-paneled door with Dr. Lorre’s name on it. I peek through and see Leonidas’s wobbly, freakishly tall shape at the front desk. He’s leaning over a cell phone, probably the very same phone I’m going to have to intercept. I feel a pinch at the sight of him, head bent down, earbuds in. I can just imagine what he’s listening to: My Chemical Romance. 311. Old, curmudgeonly country. I know this without knowing how I know it.

  I glance at Desmond. “You still okay?” I ask. He gives a wobbly nod. “So just go in there, say you need to use the bathroom, and do the leg thing.”

  “Which leg?”

  I point to the right one, then change my mind and pick the left. Then I twist the doorknob for him and point into the waiting room, gesturing that he go inside.

  A whoosh of cold air sweeps out as Desmond pushes the door open farther. The door swishes shut again, and I press my ear to the jamb, praying another customer doesn’t walk in the front door for an appointment and witness this. Then I peer through the window, my heart hammering fast. A mottled-glass version of Desmond strides to the desk, and a mottled-glass version of Leonidas says something. There are murmurs I can’t make out, and now Desmond is going toward the waiting room. In seconds, I hear a sharp, completely overdramatized shout from the hallway. Still, I want to kiss him for actually following through with it.

  Leonidas practically vaults from the front desk at the sound of Desmond’s cry. He disappears from view. I count to five, then twist the handle to the door. Cool, lilac-scented air rushes in. I look to the right and left, but the waiting area is empty. Pictures of vapid-eyed women with flawless skin and enormous breasts stare at me from the walls, and across the room is a slightly pornographic shot of a woman’s thighs. A few silicone breast implant samples sit on the coffee table next to a vase full of flowers.

  Desmond moans in the hallway. “Are you okay?” comes Leonidas’s voice.

  “Oh, the pain!” Desmond wails.

  My gaze darts to the desk. There is a computer monitor, an appointment book, a bodybuilding magazine, some forms. I spy an Android phone sitting near a dirty black messenger bag that’s covered with patches for a bunch of eco-conscious action groups. I reach over the desk and grab it.

  The screen is still lit up from Leonidas’s use, which is a boon because that means I don’t have to guess at a passcode. I stare at a line of apps. Fingers shaking, I press the phone icon and navigate to Received Calls. Names pop up on the screen with corresponding dates and times. First I look at his calls made and received on Saturday night, when I was in Palm Springs, and even on Sunday, when I was in the hospital. There are a few of them, but it’s hard to know where Leonidas was when they were made. It’s something I hadn’t quite worked out in my head when making this plan. This phone isn’t going to just give up the information. I’d need access to wireless towers, and I had no idea how the hell to get that sort of data.

  “You tripped over your shoe?” Leonidas is saying in the hallway.

  Then I try to remember the exact time I’d seen Leonidas at the Cat Show on Wednesday. Morning? Early afternoon? I scroll back. Numbers swim before my eyes. Some of Leonidas’s callers are names he’d keyed into his contacts—Mom, Dad, someone named Burt. Other entries are just numbers. I fumble for my own phone and take a picture of the whole screen of numbers, cringing at the fake “click” sound when the camera snaps. I do the same thing with his Outgoing calls—he’d made quite a few of those, too.

  “Let’s see if you can stand on it,” Leonidas is bellowing to Desmond.

  “I’ll never walk again,” Desmond is saying. “I’m done for.”

  There’s scuffling in the hallway. Grunts. “Up we go,” Leonidas says.

  I drop his phone and hurry out from behind the desk. I’m out of the office by the time he and Desmond emerge around the corner. In the silent hall, my heart is a loud drumbeat in my ears. I breathe slowly, willing it to settle down, but it rockets on and on and on.

  A few moments later, the door opens. “I can call an ambulance,” Leonidas is saying.

  “Oh, I’ll make do,” Desmond says weakly.

  “Really. It’s no troub—” Leonidas starts to say, but Desmond shuts the door in his face.

  He turns to me with an expression I can’t quite decipher; it almost seems like he might throw up. “Let’s go.” He grabs my hand and we hurry down the hall into the stairwell. Our shoes clonk noisily down the metal stairs. In the landing, we cock our heads to listen for the door above to make sure Leonidas isn’t following us. All I hear is a small dog barking somewhere in the distance.

  In the parking lot, Desmond bends at the waist. “I just can’t believe I did that. That poor kid. I lied to him. He’s probably worried about me now. He’s probably going to call an ambulance.”

  “It’s fine. You’re fine.”

  “And I said I was getting calf implants.” His voice is rising. “What if something happens to my calves as a sort of karmic revenge?”

  “What, like you get calf cancer?” I ask. Desmond looks horrified. I pet his arm. “Don’t worry. Calf cancer isn’t actually a thing.”

  Sweat is pouring down his face. “That just felt so wrong.”

  “Get a grip. You’re the one who wanted to come, and I gave you an out. I thought you’d be braver about all of this, considering you’re a knight or whatever.”

  “A Caesar.” Desmond sounds miserable. And then, to himself: “I can’t believe I lied!”

  We walk back to the Whole Foods parking lot in silence. I’m such an asshole for dragging him into this. Desmond unlocks the Batmobile with a shaky hand. “You don’t have to drive me home,” I tell him.

  His head sweeps up. “But how will you get where you need to go?”

  I show him the Uber app. “I’ll be okay.”

  Desmond places his hands in his pockets. An ambulance siren whoops in the distance, and I can tell he’s getting worried that Leonidas is the one who’s called for it.

  He laughs, wearily. “I guess I’m just not cut out for undercover work, huh?”

  “Nah, you did great.”

  “You think so?”

  “Yes. I got what I needed.”

  “Ah. Well, that’s what I was here for.”

  We look at each other. With a hopeful smile on his face, he almost looks cute. If he shaved and had a haircut and plucked those eyebrows, the raw material is there. I don’t even mind his shortness, really. And his hands, though little, are well made. Pretty, even. There’s something sort of endearing about his extreme worry about calf cancer. It’s the sort of thing I’d worry about, too.

  I’m keenly aware, suddenly, of the hair whipping in my face, of how it feels like my nostrils are flaring like a bull’s, and that my bra can be seen through my sweater. I can almost imagine walking over to him and wrapping my arms around his shoulders. Maybe I should.

  A honk cuts through the air, and we jump. “Anyway,” I say quietly, lowering my eyes. “Thank you.”

  “My pleasure.” Desmond bows. “Let me know if you uncover any interesting information from the phone calls.”

  I pivot, give him a half wave, and turn toward Whole Foods as though my car will b
e there, though you never know where Uber cars will park and how quickly they’ll show up. It feels cinematic to be walking away from him; I hope that he’s checking me out from behind. The air seems crisper, cleaner. I even whistle half a refrain.

  When I hear footsteps behind me, I assume it’s Desmond, coming to spin me around and dip me into a kiss, just like Caesar and Cleopatra. I can’t believe how much I want him to do this, suddenly, nor can I believe how inevitable it feels. There’s a hand between my shoulder blades. I twist around, ready to grin at Desmond, but the sun is in my eyes, and all I can see is a hazy silhouette that definitely isn’t his. Something about the bright sun and the adrenaline and the influx of alcohol in my system makes me abruptly woozy, and as I blink at the figure in front of me—a figure still obscured by the sunlight, looming though, maybe menacing—my field of vision narrows, and my legs crumple.

  “Oh shit,” a voice whispers as I hit the ground. And then: “No! What the hell? Get up! Please! Get up!”

  I roll onto my back, desperate to keep my eyes open. Someone is trying to pull me up. He or she has skinny fingers. Capable arm muscles, though not particularly strong. Minty breath. Maybe hair, long hair, tickles my neck. Only, before I can register what happened, my eyes flutter closed, and I pass out right there in a dingy alleyway, just out of sight of every pedestrian on Weyburn Avenue.

  From The Dots

  After waking up to the IV in her arm, Dot knew she should tone down the drinking, lest she end up addicted. The real addiction, though, was Dorothy. Dot couldn’t stop seeing her. Every Wednesday, she met with her. Their evenings out were relegated to M&F, that dark little club in West Hollywood, or long limo rides around the city, taking in its glamour from behind tinted windows. Champagne flowed in the backseat of the car. Dorothy always had a flask of something. Bernie at M&F presented them with his best wine, and the bartender at the dark nook of a club fed them neon-blue liquid straight from the bottle.