Trashed

by Alison Gaylin

  “Holy shit, who did that to you?” The woman gave Destiny three plastic bottles of vodka to wash her wounds, a half-eaten bag of Doritos, and a six-pack of Coke—everything she had, she explained. Then she pushed her out, as if the finger were contagious or something.

  Destiny wasn’t sure the vodka had been a good idea. It had burned so bad it made her scream, and after she was through cleaning it, the finger throbbed as much as ever. But what was she going to do? It wasn’t like she could check herself into Cedars-Sinai. She had no money, no insurance. And anyway, she couldn’t risk being seen. Not with him out there. A powerful man—a VIP—looking for her.

  She was afraid to use her phone because he might be able to trace it, but she didn’t have a choice. She had made one call—to her friend Leticia. Leticia was not a Pleasures girl. She was a specialty performer, and the only person Destiny knew who could keep a secret . . . she kept so many of them.

  Leticia had an extra key to Destiny’s house. Whenever Destiny went away for a few days, Leticia would collect her mail, water her plants. She was like that. Trustworthy.

  So when Destiny called Leticia and asked her to use her key, go into her bedroom, remove the sealed envelope from her underwear drawer and bring it, at midnight,to the Starbright Hotel in East LA, she knew Leticia would do it just as Destiny said, no questions asked. She knew Leticia wouldn’t mention the blood on the floor unless Destiny said something about it first. And when Destiny added, just before hanging up, “In the kitchen, you’ll see a picture of me and Snow White from when I was a kid. Can you bring that too?” she knew Leticia would, without telling anyone anything.

  She had specifically said, “Don’t call back.” That’s why it was scary when Destiny heard Nick Lachey’s “What’s Left of Me”—her ringtone—slipping out of her purse. In her head, she started coming up with other things it could be—the neighbor’s radio, her imagination. She didn’t want to believe it was really her cell phone. Destiny communicated with everyone via BlackBerry. Very few people had her number. Very few. Her breathing shallow, she pulled the phone out of her purse, thinking, No, no, please, no. . . .

  Leticia’s number was on the screen.

  “Hey,” Destiny said. “I told you not to—”

  “I’m sorry, baby,” Leticia said, “but I checked your panty drawer, and there was no envelope in there.”

  “There wasn’t?”

  “I checked all the other drawers, just in case you made a mistake, and it wasn’t there either.”

  Destiny bit her lip. He took my money. “Okay, well, did you—”

  “I didn’t find any Snow White picture in the kitchen either.”

  “What?!” He had taken her mom’s picture. For some reason, that hurt even worse than the money. Tears sprung to her eyes. She didn’t want to start crying, not on the phone with Leticia, plus she needed to end the call fast. She made her voice cheerful. “No worries. Thanks for trying.”

  “No problem, baby.”

  I have no money. I can’t leave. “You rock, Tish.”

  “Anything else I can do?”

  “Nah. Listen, I gotta run. See you soon.” Please let him forget me. Please, please. . . .

  “By the way, Dessy, do you have a new boyfriend?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Nothing really.” Leticia chuckled. “It’s just . . . I’ve never seen your place looking so clean before.”

  NINE

  Writing up “the meat,” as Nigel called it, Simone avoided all mention of scarred wrists and secret compulsions, focusing only on her on-the-record interview with Wayne Deegan. While questions still pulled at her—What happened to Emerald’s bracelets? Why would she cut her throat with one of her secret knives?—Simone was able to put those questions aside, keeping her promise to Holly as she crafted Wayne’s anecdotes into a six-hundred-word piece.

  If she did say so herself, the piece was good. The headline read EMERALD’S SECRET TRAGEDY: THE BROTHER SHE NEVER KNEW with an “exclusive” banner across the top. When Kathy read it, she got tears in her eyes and said, “That’s beautiful, honey.” Elliot said the article got him, much like Duran Duran’s “Save a Prayer” got him, “right in the heart.” And Matthew told Simone, “You’re fantastic,” in a way that made her turn the color of a good Merlot. Even Carl the receptionist wanted an advance copy to take home to his mother.

  Best of all, Nigel said, “Nice work.”

  Nice. Work. The entire drive home, Simone savored those two words like Belgian chocolate, rolling them over and over in her mind. She felt so proud of herself, she almost called Greta and told her everything—the LA Edge folding, her terrible month, her interview at the Asteroid, stealing garbage—just so she could brag about “Nice work.” But by the time she got into her apartment, she’d reconsidered.

  Instead, Simone stopped in the kitchen, opened the Napa Valley pinot noir she’d bought at the Vons down the street, back when she was floored by the fact that they sold all types of alcohol at LA grocery stores. Simone had bought the wine for a special occasion and, though she’d been thinking more along the lines of a hot date, “Nice work” qualified. Anyway, if her first month here was any indication, this stuff would turn to vinegar if she saved it for a hot date, or even a tepid one.

  She took a wineglass out of her cupboard, poured herself a nice-sized serving. The wine was smooth and dry and luxurious on her palate and it soothed all the way down, like an internal massage.

  She sat down on the sofa bed, which was more of a love seat, actually. She’d found it at Ikea and had it shipped—the one piece of furniture she’d bought for her life in LA—because the color had stirred something in her. It was a soft, sweet red, like construction paper valentines.

  Simone took another sip of wine. Sometime in the course of stopping back at her place this morning after Emerald’s, changing out of the tennis whites, showering, dressing, and going back to work, she’d straightened up her apartment, making and folding up her bed in the process. Damned if she could remember any of it, though. So much had happened since then.

  She flipped on her TV. The local news was on. One of those live, televised police car chases they were always showing out here. (Something Orwellian about those, too. Or Mad Maxian. Or something.) An overhead shot—three squad cars chasing a stolen Escalade, an announcer breathlessly intoning, “He’s never gonna get away. He does not stand a chance.” And that, for some reason, made her think of Emerald. Simone had borrowed clothes from her one day, seen her lifeless body the next. How vulnerable that bare hand had been, how sad. A frail woman who made herself bleed, just so she could feel alive.

  She did not stand a chance.

  Back at the office, Simone had seen a photo of Keith Furlong. He was very tall, and not so much handsome as pretty, the type of pretty that takes hard work. In the picture, he was standing in front of his club with Emerald, wearing a pink wife-beater, baggy shorts with hula girls all over them, and an entire jar of gel in his hair. His eyebrows were tweezed, his chest waxed. His muscles bulged in that globular, gym-rat way that spoke more of artfully placed scar tissue than of actual strength. Emerald was gazing up at Keith, an adoring look on her face. He was grinning at the camera.

  Not a chance.

  Was Keith missing Emerald now? Was he grieving like Holly, like Wayne? Had he seen it coming, her death—the violence of it? Or was he out partying with Destiny right now, showing off those bleached teeth and spending her eight thousand dollars, saying things like, “Life goes on”?

  “They’re heading off the Escalade!” cried the announcer. “It is the end of the line for our thief!”

  Simone turned the TV off. She could hear crickets outside her window, the only bugs she’d encountered in LA. And somehow, she found their chirping more lonely than silence.

  She brought the glass into the kitchen and poured the rest of the wine back into the bottle. She needed to turn in. She had work tomorrow, and it would be another big day. She and Kathy were set to pose as
cater-waiters at a party for that movie she’d heard advertised, Devil’s Road. As Nigel would probably say, no one would take hors d’oeuvres from Simone if she had dark circles under her eyes. And regardless, she didn’t much feel like celebrating anymore.

  Later, as Simone lay in bed, lingering in the last moments of consciousness with those sad crickets chorusing outside her window, she found herself thinking of Wayne Deegan . . . alone in the house Emerald had bought him, wandering the paths between his newspaper towers. How long would he last without her Sunday visits, without his little girl?

  She thought of Holly. Would she find another job, move on, recover? Or would all of it stay with her, like a pin stuck in her finger, hurting just as much whenever she looked at it directly: That awful creeping certainty that her boss had not killed herself, she had been murdered. That watched feeling . . . and most of all that powerlessness, knowing that no matter what she told the police, they wouldn’t believe her.

  What if Holly was right?

  TEN

  Ring . . .

  Simone jolted awake, her eyes seeking out the clock by her bedside: 6:00. Her phone rang again, and she groaned. Was Nigel going to do this every morning? She checked the caller ID. It wasn’t Nigel. She picked up the phone, her heart pounding. “Mother?”

  “You’re still asleep?”

  “It’s six in the morning. Is everything okay? Is Dad—”

  “Oh, honey. I’m so sorry. Yes, yes. Daddy’s fine. I forgot about the time difference.”

  Simone exhaled hard.

  “Shall I call back later?”

  “No,” she said. “That’s okay. I’ve got to get up soon anyway.”

  “Well, I think you’ll be glad I called, because I have some very exciting news.”

  Simone rubbed her eyes. “What is it?”

  “Your sister has been nominated for a Glory Award.”

  “A . . . a what?”

  “A Glory, dear,” she said. “It’s one of journalism’s highest honors.”

  “It is?”

  “For broadcast cable journalism, yes. Anyway, Greta has gotten tickets for all of us. The ceremony is a month from now in New York City, and it’s televised!”

  “But—”

  “Don’t worry about plane fare. Your father and I will send you a ticket.”

  “I just . . . I don’t know whether I can get the time off.”

  “You just tell them your sister has been nominated for a Glory and they will definitely give you the time off,” she said. “They’re journalists, aren’t they—the people you work for?”

  “Uhhh . . .”

  Simone’s mother’s voice went soft. “I’m sorry, Simone. I didn’t even ask. How are things going at the Side?”

  “The Edge, Mother.”

  “You doing all right? You need us to send you anything? ”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure? I know the cost of living in Los Angeles is not—”

  “I’m fine. . . . Terrifyingly fine.”

  “I am so glad to hear that.”

  “And I can afford my own plane ticket.”

  Simone said good-bye and hung up the phone quickly, thinking about how, in the past few days, she’d probably told more lies than she had in her entire adult life. But out of all of them, the lies she’d just told her mother were the ones she couldn’t imagine taking back.

  Simone arrived at work to Matthew looming over Carl’s shoulder, both of them staring intently at the receptionist’s computer screen. “Did he just call her his breakfast, lunch, and dinner?” Carl said.

  “Better dialogue than Alexander,” said Matthew.

  “Yes, and for a celebrity sex tape, it’s well acted, too!”

  Simone peeked at the screen, saw what looked to be Colin Farrell . . . quite a bit of Colin Farrell. If Simone were watching this with Matthew Varrick’s lips inches from her ear, she definitely wouldn’t have enough breath left in her to answer phones in a professional manner. Carl had to be straight. Like a Kinsey 1. That was the only logical explanation.

  Simone cleared her throat. “So I guess that’s considered work-related research?”

  When Matthew and Carl turned to look at her, their smiles disappeared. “Hello, Simone,” said Carl. His eyes were big with concern.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “It will pass.”

  Simone hurried back to the reporters’ room. Elliot and Kathy were both there, involved in a hushed and animated conversation that ended—immediately—when Simone walked through the door.

  “What the hell is going on?” said Simone.

  Kathy shook her head.

  Elliot said, “No offense, but I’m really glad I’m not you.”

  Before she could say any more, Nigel stormed into the room, his lips a crack in his face, the anger in his eyes so pure it bordered on murderous.

  She expected him to explode—literally—but when his voice came out it was witheringly quiet. “Tell me why I should ever trust you again.”

  “I . . . I . . . what?”

  On the desk nearest Simone, Nigel carefully placed a layout from next week’s Interloper. “We have a spy there,” he said, “who faxed this to me this morning.”

  Simone looked at the page. All the air seemed to rush out of her body at once.

  The headline read, EXCLUSIVE! EMERALD’S DAD: MY SECRET BATTLE WITH HOARDING DISORDER. The page was filled with photos of Wayne Deegan in his worn Dodgers sweats, standing in various rooms of his house—surrounded, sometimes enveloped, by those threatening stacks of newspapers.

  “You told me he promised us an exclusive!” Nigel bellowed. “You told me he wouldn’t sit for a photo shoot! You never even mentioned he’s a nutter!”

  Simone read. The article was both candid and respectful—especially for something printed in a supermarket tabloid. In a first-person piece that read as if Wayne were speaking out loud, he detailed his lifelong struggle with OCD—the hoarding aspect of which had only become prevalent in the last several years—and bipolar disorder. “It’s hereditary,” he told the reporter. “I think Emerald may have had it, too. I sure know there have been times when I wanted to kill myself. I yearn for my only daughter—for the grandchildren I will never have. But the truth is, I can relate. I know the pain she must have felt. I know it because I have felt it, firsthand.”

  Simone winced. Nigel had every right to be angry. Compared to this, the piece she’d written was a bedtime story for toddlers.

  “As of now, you are on probation,” said Nigel. “If I do not get something brilliant from you by the end of the week, do not bother to come in on Monday. Your trial here is complete.”

  He left the room. Kathy and Elliot looked at Simone as though she’d just been given two days to live. She picked up her cell, tapped in Wayne’s number, and tried to control her anger. He was still a grieving parent, after all. You can’t scream, “What the fuck?!” at a grieving parent.

  “Mr. Deegan?”

  “Hi, Simone.”

  She cleared her throat. “Listen . . . I know it’s a terrible time for you but—”

  “You heard about the Interloper.”

  “Yeah, I mean . . .”

  “I know. I promised you the exclusive. I hope you didn’t get in too much trouble.”

  “To tell the truth, I did.”

  “I’m really sorry. It’s just . . . about five minutes after you left, this really nice young man showed up. We got to talking and . . .”

  He kept speaking, but Simone was having difficulty distinguishing the words. She was too busy staring at the small byline at the bottom of the page. Reported by Neil Walker.

  “. . . and his father had hoarding issues too. . . .”

  “Do you.” Simone’s voice came out a full octave higher than its usual range. She took a breath. “Do . . . you . . . happen to know if this reporter was driving a black Saab?”

  “He was!” he said. “Saw it when I walked him out to his car. Do you know
him?”

  “No,” said Simone. “I do not know him at all.”

  She was aware of Nigel’s voice out in the hallway stammering into his cell phone. “I . . . I know. . . . Yes, Willard, he did promise an exclusive . . . but . . . but . . . but . . .”

  Simone said good-bye and hung up the phone, still glaring at Walker’s byline.

  As Simone and Kathy drove to the Devil’s Road party, another Devil’s Road commercial played on the radio.

  “That’s good luck,” Kathy said, somewhat lamely. “Hearing a commercial for the movie whose party we’ll be infiltrating.”

  Simone said, “Not a superstition I’m familiar with.”

  Over Kathy’s speakers, Dylan Leeds said, “Please dewnt be thaht way, Dahniel.” Again Simone thought, Where have I heard that voice? And again she drew a blank. The announcer then mentioned that the film had been directed by Jason Caputo. The son of the deceased Oscar-winning director Terrence Caputo, Jason was getting a lot of press as a wunderkind, a talent, a “hot find.” But come on. . . . With a name like Caputo, how hard could it be to find him? Some people had all the luck. The announcer listed the film’s other stars: Garrett Durant, Miranda Boothe, Blake Moss.

  “Ooh, Blake Moss,” said Kathy. “Now there’s a naughty boy.”

  She was right. The star of a huge sex scandal around eight years back, Blake Moss was known more for his kinky tastes and wild, bacchanalian parties than he was for his movie roles. Simone perked up. Maybe she would get some dirt at this event. Maybe her job would be saved.

  “Don’t hold your breath,” said Kathy.

  “Huh?”

  “Blake Moss won’t go to a party unless he can snort cocaine off some starlet’s ass crack.”

  Simone’s spirits dropped. “That’s pretty impressive,” she said, “that whole mind-reading thing. Have you always been able to do that, or did you take a class?”

  “Santeria,” said Kathy.

  “Ah. Should’ve known.”

  On the radio, Ray Charles sang “Busted.” Simone wondered if that, too, was good luck—or if he was simply reading her mind.