‘See anything?’
‘Plenty,’ she said, dropping two hangers on a stack of leather books. ‘Ready to press on?’
‘You liked the dress.’
She gave me a questioning look. ‘James, no. Let’s go.’
‘I want to.’
She protested but I won. We couldn’t find a sales-woman, so I pushed her into an unlocked dressing room. I stood outside while she put it all together. She exited in a pink camisole beneath the yellow sundress, the sweater on top, the huaraches below. While she was inside, she had let her hair down and fluffed it loose, messy.
She posed, doing a side-to-side runway move. There was a gentle fear in her eyes. ‘Well?’
‘Leave the cut-offs here.’
She laughed. The total at the register was north of sixteen hundred. She carried her raggedy clothes in the bag and we stepped into the sun.
We were seated on the patio at the patisserie across from the Grove Cineplex, sharing a bottle of French wine. We nibbled at a croissant and shared another bottle of French wine. The sun was low enough that most of the promenade was in shadow, and the air was perfect. We watched couples and families walking by and she thanked me for her new clothes every fifteen minutes. After Anthropologie, I’d bought her a cheap pair of black sunglasses from one of the cart kiosks. They had little fake diamonds on the rims and she didn’t want to take them off.
‘Do I look famous?’ she said.
‘Better than,’ I said. ‘After we finish this wine I’m going to take you home and . . .’
‘And what?’ She leaned into me, biting my ear.
I was distracted by a couple walking toward us. I sat forward.
‘Hey, it’s Trigger.’
‘Who’s Trigger?’ Annette said.
‘My manager. One sec.’ I half stood, bumping the table in my excitement. ‘Trigger! Yo!’
Annette’s grip tightened on my hand as Trigger glanced around, looking right over us. At six-six, two-forty, with curly brown hair that he allowed to grow dangerously close to a white-man’s ’fro, Travis Metzger was hard to miss in any crowd. My manager was based in Austin but came to Los Angeles for meetings every couple weeks. I hadn’t spoken to him in months. The last time we had talked he said all I had to do was pick up the phone, he’d find me something, anything, to get the ball rolling.
He leaned toward a jewelry cart and tugged a woman’s sleeve. She turned, and I recognized her as Blaine, his wife. She was a striking brunette with locks that fell in oiled curls. She had a deep Texas tan, and - per Trigger’s hook ’em horns modus operandi - naturally large breasts. She had appeared in the Playboy Girls of Starbucks issue while in college; that’s how Trigger found her. He was getting his hair cut one day, saw her photo, called her agent and closed another deal. The only time Stacey and I had them over to our house, Blaine had still been a marketing major at the University of Texas, which made her almost ten years Trigger’s junior. Despite their age difference, she and Stacey had hit it off. I hadn’t seen her since the memorial service, but she was a sweetheart through it all.
‘I guess you should invite them over for a glass of wine,’ Annette said, releasing my hand. I sensed a resignation in her withdrawal.
They were finishing her purchase. ‘Trigger, over here!’
I felt several of Hugo’s patrons turning to see what I was shouting about. Finally, he saw me, smiled, and pulled Blaine away from the jewelry cart. They cut across the flow of pedestrians. I kicked out two chairs and sat down. Blaine wore a leather jacket and translucent t-shirt above blue jeans fashionably sandblasted white. She was attempting to install the bracelet she had just bought and her head was down until they arrived at the short canvas and steel rail fencing Annette and me in.
Trigger flashed his smile. ‘Ghost Dog, my man, look at you.’
‘Thanks for calling to tell me you were in town, you bastard,’ I said.
‘Spur of the moment, cheem. How you livin’?’
‘Good, man, good. Trigger, this is Annette. Annette, this is the man who makes sure I don’t starve.’
Blaine got the bracelet to click and looked up, already beaming her big white smile. Annette stood to shake hands and Blaine’s eyes darted from me to Annette.
Blaine screamed.
She caught herself before it became a real scream, covering her mouth as she wobbled on her heels and fell into her husband, but it was loud, a shriek that made everyone around us jump. The color drained from her face and her lower lip quivered.
‘Are you okay—’ I started to say.
‘Whoa, girl, easy.’ Trigger did a double-take at his wife, then looked at Annette and he saw it too and his smile faltered.
‘Pleased to meet you, Trigger,’ Annette said without enthusiasm.
Trigger bobbed his head. ‘Likewise. This is my wife . . .’ He was still staring at Annette, his cheeks puckered.
‘Blaine,’ I prompted.
‘Excuse me,’ Blaine said, shaking her head. ‘I wasn’t paying attention.’
Trigger and I exchanged the kind of hopeful and scared look men share when they don’t know if their wives are going to hit it off or tear some stockings.
He recovered first. ‘So, what are you two up to?’
‘A little shopping, a little wine,’ I said.
‘James spoiled me,’ Annette said, thumbing the strap of her dress. She leaned over and kissed my ear. ‘Num num num. Didn’t you? Didn’t you?’
I grinned, stealing at glimpse at Blaine. She was looking away, too uncomfortable to even participate in the conversation.
‘Sit down,’ I said. ‘Let’s order another bottle of wine.’
Blaine shot her husband a nasty look.
‘Ah, no can do, partner,’ Trigger said. ‘We’re late for a dinner as it is. But I’ll call you tomorrow. We got to put you back to work.’
‘That’d be good,’ I said. ‘I’m ready.’
Blaine was still pretending to be interested in the Puma store display windows to our right. Annette was staring at Blaine’s waist or stomach with . . . interest.
Trigger nodded and looked at me like he really wished I would explain myself. ‘Hastings, what a surprise. ’
Annette was still staring at Blaine’s waist. I followed her gaze up. Blaine’s cheeks had taken on a sickly pallor, despite her deep Texas tan. Her mouth curled into a grimace and she doubled over, clutching herself.
‘Whoops,’ Annette said.
Trigger caught his wife, keeping her from falling over the canvas fencing. ‘Babe? You okay?’
Blaine held one hand over her diaphragm. ‘I’m fine, I just . . . we’re really late.’
‘Oh, honey,’ Annette said softly, pointing subtly at Blaine’s waistline. ‘I think you have a visitor.’
I glanced down. It wasn’t her waistline. A red stain about the size and shape of my thumb was spreading through the crotch of Blaine’s sandblasted jeans.
‘Oh, God,’ Blaine said, placing her shopping bag in front of her crotch. ‘Shit, I forgot what day it is.’ She looked like she was about to cry.
Trigger was still clueless. ‘What? What’d I miss?’
‘Travis, let’s go.’ Blaine threw Annette the most artificial smile I have ever seen. ‘Nice meeting you.’ She shot me a look. ‘Bye, James.’
‘Tomorrow,’ Trigger said as his wife dragged him away.
‘Call me,’ I said. ‘We need to put Ghost to bed for real, man.’
‘Right!’ Trigger waved.
I couldn’t be sure, but when they were about thirty feet down the promenade, I thought I heard Blaine say, ‘Are you kidding me . . . it’s sick!’
When they had disappeared into the crowd I sat down with Annette. ‘Jesus, that was awkward. The poor thing was mortified.’
‘He seems nice,’ Annette said. ‘But she’s got issues.’
‘They must be fighting. She’s not always like that, really.’
I turned and looked at her tousled blonde hair, her big-fr
amed glasses perched on her little nose, the yellow sundress. She was perfect, except for the tears sliding down from behind her sunglasses.
‘They weren’t fighting.’ Annette’s voice was so frail it was almost a whisper.
‘To hell with them,’ I said. ‘They’re just used to seeing me miserable. I’m so sick of people looking at me like I’m a victim.’
But even as I said so, I wondered who I was defending. I felt exposed in public, the eyes of the other shoppers and patrons prying into my affairs.
Annette seemed to read exactly what I needed.
‘Let’s go,’ she said.
16
There is a period where things are missing, hidden behind a wall of white noise. No matter how hard I concentrate, I can’t bring them back. This period was as short as two days or as long as two weeks. The in-between is snow static, a dead television channel, unpleasant to stare at. What did we do during this outage? What did she do to me? What deals were struck? How much did I give away? I don’t care to guess.
The next thing I remember is being in her bedroom. It was late. We were just in from the night, still dressed in street clothes. My cheeks felt cool, rosy from wind like we had been running through the yards and alleys of West Adams, kicking over trashcans and batting down mailboxes, giddy as truants. We weren’t drunk and I don’t remember being full or tired from a meal. I was wound up, ready to run another ten miles or solve a physics problem. We seemed to be in a groove, careless, sliding further into the music of each other. On her nightstand was the giant snifter terrarium, the one with Tiny Mr Ennis inside, resting on his little branch of driftwood. She had found him when she moved in and decided to keep him because he was cute.
‘Good night, Tiny Mr Ennis,’ I said, falling into her cool arms.
‘Who are you talking to?’
‘Your turtle.’ I turned off the lamp, plunging us into darkness. ‘That’s his name.’
‘Oh, you two know each other?’ Her voice was already laced with lust. When she went, she went quickly.
‘No, but I’ve seen him around.’ We began to grapple playfully, in synchronization, a dance so familiar I didn’t have to think of my next move.
‘What if Tiny Mr Ennis wants you to leave the light on?’
‘Is he afraid of the dark?’
‘No, he wants to watch you fuck me.’
I laughed. She didn’t. She turned the light on and plowed back into me. She was becoming frantic.
‘Will you fuck me, James? Will you fuck me until I say stop?’
This was a little too much. ‘I guess so.’
‘But I don’t want you to stop,’ she said. ‘Even when I tell you to stop, keep fucking me. I want it to hurt. I want to be sore. Promise you’ll do it.’
Did she seek punishment? Did she still feel guilty? Yes, but not for Arthur and his evil deeds. Her darkness came from a colder place.
‘I’ll try.’
When we had been going for a while, I told her I wasn’t going to last much longer.
‘Slap me,’ she said between breaths.
‘What?’ I was on top of her, eyes closed, nearly winded.
‘Slap my face.’
This struck me as so absurd I actually laughed a little. ‘No, don’t think so.’
‘I need it. Slap me. Come on. Slap my face.’
Whose voice speaks to you in the darkest moments? When someone invites you to do bad things? Invites - and then begins to beg? Who do you turn to when your Jiminy Cricket is out to lunch and you begin to believe she really does want it?
Smack the bitch, Ghost said. He was cackling, drunk on Henney. She’s a freak, give her what she wants, faggot. If you don’t, I will.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Stop.’
‘Pleeeeease, oh God, do it.’
‘What’s wrong with you?’
She kept panting, even as I stopped moving altogether. ‘Can’t,’ she said. ‘I can’t feel anything. I’m dead inside, James. I’m all cold and hungry in here.’
I rolled off her, disgusted. ‘God damn it, stop talking like that or else I’m out of here.’
She scooted across the bed and clung to me. My back was turned to her and she was crying against my shoulder. After a while I rolled over and looked at her. She was a cocktail of at least seven emotions, her eyes shimmering as she writhed against me.
‘I’ll leave you,’ I said. ‘This will be all over.’
This.
What is this?
‘No, you can’t leave. You have to stay,’ she said, clenching me. ‘Don’t ever say that. I won’t let you leave. You can’t ever leave me again.’
Something in me seemed to dissolve, then. I wanted to say, ‘I never left’, but I couldn’t form the words. The idea that this had been a game now seemed dangerously naive. I wondered at that moment who I was speaking to. I closed my eyes and let it happen.
Static.
White fuzz on a black screen.
I let her do what she wanted, whatever she wanted. She was insatiable. I could not keep up. I tried, but she was always one step ahead of me.
Toward the end of that week she began to rise before me. She would have coffee early out on the porch, and sometimes I heard her talking on the phone, discussing business details, money, her house. There has to be a way, Dan. Find one. I don’t care, I’ll find a job if I have to. I would drift off for a few more hours and then come out of her bedroom to find her with a yellow legal pad on her lap and a pencil between her teeth. Seeing me, she would set her calculations and plans aside. Sometimes she would have breakfast ready, or we’d make the short drive up to Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles. She let me drive her drop-top and the clutch took some getting used to, but it was a nice change from the Audi. Nice to have your head up in the air like that.
‘What’s going on with the house?’ I said one morning, pushing a chicken wing around a pool of maple syrup.
‘There’s hope.’
She was starting to get antsy, but she wasn’t ready to tell me the details yet. I didn’t pry, but I began to worry that she might get the house back. She might get the magic call from her lawyer or find enough money to avoid foreclosure. She might decide to peel. Out of Mr Ennis’s house, out of West Adams, out of whatever thing we had going now, this thing that was getting heavier and stranger every day. I decided it was time to go home. I couldn’t think straight around her. I would slink back to the house, to give her some space for a day or two.
I think it was June. You don’t expect horrible things to happen in June, but they do.
Sunday morning was unusually cool, overcast. The house had two furnaces but I never used them. I awoke early with a chill on my leather couch gone cold. While I was microwaving a cup of yesterday’s coffee, wondering if I was coming down with the cow flu or geese flu or whichever one it was now, I realized I had forgotten to check my voicemail since coming home from Annette’s.
There were eleven messages. The first five were hang-ups. That’s strange, I thought. The sixth was from Trigger. My throat locked up. I knew it would not be good news.
‘Hey, James. Trigger. Call me sooner than later. Thanks.’
That was it. No ‘My man, Ghoster’ or ‘amigo’, just ‘Hey, James’. The tone was . . . well, it wasn’t any Trigger I had heard before. The Trigger I knew said things like, ‘I want to make you a cockload of money!’ and, ‘You beautiful monkey, why you won’t give me no love?’
I scrolled through the caller history and dialed back. His assistant, a young man named Renny, gave me a quick ‘hiya, James’ and put me through.
‘James? That you?’ Trigger sounded like a moist wrinkled shirt stuffed in a wicker hamper.
‘Trigger, hey. Sorry, I was away for a few days. Everything all right?’
Trigger cleared his throat. ‘I don’t have anything urgent here. No jobs, I mean. I didn’t want to get your hopes up. I’m just giving all my clients some notice.’
I had wandered into the kitchen and stood over the sink. The
sink was where I took the bad calls.
‘Aw, shit,’ I said. ‘You’re getting out?’
‘No. Not permanently, anyway. But I’m taking a few months. Things are, ah, pretty hectic around here. At home. I can’t put myself into work. I’m hoping to ride out the year and kick off with a new plan in January.’
January was seven months away. This was not a vacation.
‘No problem, T. I’m not starving here. Do what you need to do. But you don’t sound like yourself, boss. What’s going on?’
The Haunting of James Hastings Page 12