For moments I say nothing. It’s almost too much. Nico. Alive. Here. I swallow, ‘He put the cover over her in bed. Moved her to make it look like she was sleeping – waiting for me.’
Epiphany presses her lips together. ‘Nico is a cruel man. Cruelty comes in many forms.’
I think I’ve reached that point now – the point where even though you want to, you just can’t cry anymore. Minutes pass as we sit in silence. Then Epiphany, always one to ruin a good thing, looks at the frozen image of the silverware factory on the TV again. She says, ‘There’s more you need to know.’
I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. I don’t have the strength to tell her I don’t want to know about my father.
Epiphany waits until my eyes catch hers. ‘When I was held by,’ and she mercifully says Matthew’s people, ‘you can not imagine what it was like. We were moved from apartment to apartment in the city at regular intervals so as not to attract attention. We were never allowed outside. Our flesh became white. They required us to exercise on a stationary bike so our bodies kept nice. If they thought we had put on weight we were made to stand naked on a scale. If the scale showed more than a kilogram gained since our last weighing, our diets were limited; our rapes increased “for exercise”. We were nothing more than prized thoroughbreds they wanted to keep looking good for their enjoyment.’
And here Epiphany’s mercy at sparing the details disappears. Here she speaks between her teeth.
‘For three years we were forced to service them and for three years, since your father took me in Mexico, I hadn’t heard my voices. I prayed every day but they remained silent. But at fourteen … I became pregnant and everything changed. My voices came back to me,’ Epiphany smiles crookedly. ‘The three-year abyss was only a test to see if I remained faithful to them. When Matthew and your father found out I was pregnant it was decided that I would have the child.’ Epiphany, she shakes her head. ‘With all the horrible things they did, they still had a twisted view that they were moral, upstanding Christians and that abortions were out of the question. It was the only thing they ever did that I was thankful for.’
Epiphany tells me that she was separated from the other girls during her pregnancy. She was moved to a nicer private apartment in the city where the girls were taken when Matthew or one of his people wanted a night alone with them. A back-door doctor with crooked hands delivered the baby. But Epiphany didn’t even get to hold it. She screamed as it was taken from the room. The doctor came back with a bucket of water and a cloth. ‘Clean yourself up,’ he said.
Epiphany was locked back with the other girls after her pregnancy. Some of the girls were new. The new ones, they would clutch and hold on to the others as Matthew’s men came to drag them out. ‘We would huddle in our small apartment, only a bathroom and an exercise bike and mats on the floor. Sometimes a man would come around to do our makeup. He was allowed to rape the others as payment. The girls who had their makeup done knew they were in for a hard night.’ Epiphany’s eyes burn. ‘One of the men was limp. He couldn’t take us, so instead he photographed us as we were violated. He got off on capturing rape in black and white, salivating like a dog with each photograph.’
I think I’m going to be sick. I worked with him for so long. He dated my mother. And it hits me. That’s why my mom had El Captain. Roland couldn’t get it up.
Epiphany tells me that, out of all the girls, she was never allowed to be photographed.
I say, ‘Why?’
‘I was the prized one,’ she says. ‘Men are territorial over their property.’
But Epiphany knew the power a young body could have over a man and she promised she would never tell anyone he photographed her if he would only tell her what happened with her baby. So Rolin, he told her that her child would be kept until it could be ‘of use’. It was only then that Epiphany understood she had had a daughter. And Rolin, he took his photos.
Epiphany was determined not to let the same hell happen to her daughter. She began causing trouble. She would try to get the other girls to revolt – but this only got the girls beaten. So she tried something else. Even though they were treated no better than livestock, sometimes the men would become attached to them. They’d talk to them and tell them their worries and fears like they would to a normal girlfriend. There was one man in particular who was obsessed with Epiphany and she, well she used the oldest torture in the book: she became aloof. She hoped mentally mind-fucking this man would get him to have her shipped back to Nico for a new girl. It would be easier to escape in transport than in LA. But her plan backfired. The man started blaming her for his increasing unhappiness and only raped her more to ‘teach her to love’ him.
But then, on a quiet night in June, three of the girls and Epiphany were brought to the studio lot. There was an orgy with Matthew, Phineas, Donald Diamon and my father. And on this night, her voices spoke to her. They said ‘pay attention’. And as the orgy progressed, Epiphany noticed a blinking light tucked away on a shelf. And at that moment what Epiphany understood more than anyone was that kinks never stay the same. They only grow. They only mutate.
When the orgy finished, while the men were discussing whether to move the girls that night or leave them until the next night, Epiphany crept over to the blinking light. It was just a small digicam – the kind that records video to SD cards the size of a postage stamp. Where a photo used to suffice, Rolin now needed moving pictures.
She knew instantly what she had. That tiny little card she took from the camera showed the most powerful man in Hollywood having sex with little girls. It was the best bargaining chip she could hope for. Not only for her freedom, but her daughter’s as well. But first, she would need to escape.
The next night was the Four Men wrap party and, as I was being introduced to Jordan in the dressing room, Rolin was coming clean to Matthew and my dad about the missing SD card. Matthew was furious. Epiphany could hear the shouting from the room the girls had been locked in since the night before.
Matthew, Phineas, Rolin and my father each took one of the girls separately to demand they give back anything they took. The other girls were confused, but Epiphany knew what the men were looking for. It had been hidden in her vagina for the last twenty hours. When my father demanded Epiphany submit to a full cavity search, she ran. She ran into the dressing room where Jordan had my dick in her mouth. And as Rolin shouted from the hall, she fled out the back door, through the prop room and out across the dark studio back lot.
But, like all studio back lots, the walls were high to keep people out. So Epiphany, she ran across the lot until she came to Matthew’s office. The office was lined with paintings and one of those paintings was a Van Gogh. She didn’t have much time. She heard someone outside and, fearing she was about to be caught, quickly slid the SD card into the top of the Van Gogh, between the canvas and the support frame. She picked up the phone as my dad burst in so he would think she was trying to call the police. He lunged at her, grabbing her earring along with the phone. Her cartilage stretched until it tore. Blood flowed down her neck. That’s when she ran again. She ran until she came to the silverware factory set where I had hidden.
And, after my dad forcefully checked her genitals, after I climbed out of that polystyrene furnace and got dressed, still trying to understand what I had seen, Epiphany managed to escape anyway. As she was marched back across the back lot, a lighting van was leaving. The driver of the van, he saw the three men and the beautiful young girl with the bleeding ear and thought nothing of it. This was a movie studio set, wasn’t it? And Epiphany, her ears began ringing so loudly. Her voices told her she must run … now. And she did. She ran like she never had before. She ran past the lot’s security gate as it opened for the truck to pass through. She ran in her bare feet into the warm California night.
The last time anyone from Matthew’s group saw her was later that night. She was still running. This time through a subdivision. And, as if by fate, she ran in front of a car. Our car. My dad,
he was so shocked, he lost control of the Explorer and we crashed into a tree. As the horn blared, Epiphany stood outside the wreck and watched my father slowly bleed. And, despite the crying from someone she could only assume was his son in the passenger seat, she took that accident as a sign that God was just.
After the incident at the wrap party, after the accident, after my mind suppressed its imperfect perceptions of the world because it couldn’t deal with what it had seen, Matthew closed the lot and moved his studio to its existing space. He also didn’t risk having girls in America anymore. He kept them out of the country from then on. And for twelve years, Epiphany wondered if she would ever see the painting, or her daughter, again.
During those twelve years, Epiphany went from country to country, searching. She lived on the streets at times; other times she worked odd jobs here and there. Travelling like a vagabond for that long teaches you how to survive. It teaches you cunning. It teaches you how to steal. It teaches you how to fight. Then one day her voices told her to return to Mexico to look for LaRouche. And LaRouche helped her. She told her she thought her daughter might be in Spain. But, as Epiphany was about to set off, her voices stopped her. They told her to go to Chicago instead. Her voices had helped her stay alive for this long, she didn’t dare disobey them even though she had no idea what could be in Chicago.
And in Chicago, Epiphany slept on Lower Wacker Drive for weeks, waiting for a sign. Then one night, a man with long, silvery hair who was sleeping on the streets offered her a bit of his old newspaper to feed her fire. And this newspaper, it had an article with a photograph in it. The photograph showed Matthew’s Van Gogh along with Rolin – only now he was called Roland – and two other men. Epiphany knew then why she’d come to Chicago. For a second time, her faith had paid off. She tore out the photograph and kept it with her.
Epiphany began scoping out the museum. And, being a pretty girl, she became friends with one of the construction men working on the renovation. He let it slip that the security cameras would be inoperable three days from then. If he had been a smarter man, he would have noticed that, not only did he not see Epiphany after that, but he also didn’t see a copy of his blueprints for the museum again.
And on that cold April day, Epiphany stood outside the coffee house across from the museum as she prayed and hoped that the SD card would still be beneath the canvas.
In the museum, Epiphany slipped right past security and walked to the lower level, where the blueprints showed her the photography studio was. It is there, her voices said, that she would find the painting on that day and at that time. And her voices, they’ve never been wrong. She walked in to find Roland standing in front of the Van Gogh, talking into a video camera. She asked where the SD card was but Roland swore he didn’t know. Then behind the camera she noticed it in the card reader on his desk.
And it hits me: the memory of that day. I remember being in his studio. He was fingering the painting like he found an invisible pimple on it and then suddenly he seemed distracted. Then he rushed me out of the studio. That’s when he must have prised the card out from under the canvas and checked to see what was on it.
But Roland had deleted the contents as soon as he saw what it was. And for Epiphany, it was too much. She’d finally found her bargaining chip but this impotent little man had erased it. She threw the empty card at Roland, who was cowering now. To Roland, Epiphany was like seeing a ghost.
And, just as she thought there was no hope, Epiphany, she saw the newspaper clipping framed on his desk. The same clipping she had torn out. And like everyone before her, only after looking at it a second time did she notice me, huddled at my desk in the back of the photograph.
‘Why does he look like him?’ she asked. ‘Who is that man?’
But Roland was already in hysterics.
So Epiphany snapped the leg from the tripod that held the camera and asked Roland my name again. And Roland, seeing the point of the jagged tripod leg in Epiphany’s hand, he screamed my name at her while pleading for his life. And that’s when the videotape went dead.
Roland told her I was my father’s son. He told her I usually take my lunch at the coffee shop across the street. And as he spoke, Epiphany saw his tongue ring and remembered how that tongue had salivated as he took photos of so many girls. And, before she knew it, she’d put the tripod leg through his eye.
Quickly Epiphany formulated her plan. She placed the small Van Gogh between a Sun-Times she took from Roland’s desk and began to leave. But her voices stopped her. They told her to grab the videotape as well – ‘It is essential.’ And as simple as that, she left the museum and crossed the street to the coffee house where a man caught her eye. That man was sitting on the floor of the coffee shop, covered in vomit. She waited by the museum back across the street so she wouldn’t startle me. She waited until I got into a cab. She followed me and, when I left my apartment to return to work, she broke in and left the painting on my couch – her original plan to blackmail me into coming with her.
So here we are. That’s why all this has happened. That’s the secret history of Epiphany Jones and I.
On the TV in the hotel room I stare at the paused, flickering image of the silverware factory for minutes as I try to speak. Whenever I do, nothing comes out. It’s just, what do you say, you know?
‘Jerry–’
‘But, when I first met you,’ I blurt, ‘I mean … in Chicago, you said you’d been looking for me for twelve years–’
‘I’d been looking for a way to get my daughter back for twelve years. You just happened to be that way,’ she says.
And as I sit on this floor with her, as I connect all the dots in my head, my exhaustion turns to anger. I’m angry because there are some people you never like. You never like the person who tells you your spouse is cheating on you. You never like the person who tells you he’s heard the boss is going to fire you. You never like the person who shows you your dad is a sex-trafficking rapist. And above all you never like the person who tells you the guy who murdered your love is still out there and you chased the wrong person to France.
And these people you never like, you want to hurt them the way what they’ve revealed has hurt you. So you attack them any way you can. You tell them that all the above may be true, but their voices are still bullshit. God doesn’t talk to them. They could have known everything they do, done everything they did, without divine intervention. You unleash all your anger at your father and your mother and your whole fucking life against them.
And as I curse her, a terrible chill seizes me. As I curse her, my head begins to tingle like fizzy soda.
And Epiphany, she looks at me and says, ‘Jerry?’
And as I curse her, my vision goes cloudy with black spots.
And Epiphany, through the black spots, she’s looking at me like my body is doing something I’m not aware of.
‘Jerry?’ she says again.
Blackout.
It’s dark in the room. My clothes are soaked in sweat. Bela’s hand touches my forehead. ‘You have a fever,’ she says. ‘It will pass. By morning it will pass.’ I nuzzle her hand down to my lips and kiss it. Her hand is so cold.
The nightstand light comes on. It’s not Bela’s hand. Epiphany sits beside me on the bed. She doesn’t know what to make of me kissing her hand. Her cold, cold hand. Not like Bela’s hand. In Epiphany’s other hand is the bracelet Phineas gave me.
‘It fell from your pocket when I moved you to the bed,’ she says. ‘It’s…’
‘The ticket to Matthew’s party,’ I say. ‘It’s tomorrow.’ Let me go back to sleep. Let me go back to Bela.
But, no. ‘My daughter, Jerry–’ And I look at her and I know what she’s going to ask. Questers don’t rest. That scratch on her face makes her look more like a warrior now than ever. It’s the scratch she got in my apartment in Porto.
The one given to her by Nico.
‘What you said about Bela being a victim of this whole trafficking thing–’ I sh
ake my head. But just as I thought, that look she had on the pier – that one-dimensional, doesn’t-see-anything-else look is back. ‘I don’t see how this is going to work.’
‘Please Jerry,’ she squeezes my hand, ‘this once, take a leap of faith.’
And in my mind, I see Nico.
He’s standing over Bela’s body.
His hands are squeezing Bela’s throat.
‘Fine,’ I say, ‘leap of faith.’
46
Time to Party
‘What’s her name?’ I say.
The pause is so long, I don’t think she’s heard me. Finally her voice, sounding almost ashamed, answers, ‘I don’t know.’
We’re in the Carlton Hotel’s boutique. It’s two in the afternoon. We have two hours before we’re supposed to take a taxi to the address on the back of my bracelet. I’m on one side of the curtain and Epiphany is on the other.
I take a moment before replying. I say, ‘How will you know which one she is? How will she know who you are?’
‘We’ll know,’ she says.
I almost don’t recognise her when she walks from behind the maroon curtains. Her raven hair is tied up tight and she’s wearing this white little number. It’s right out of the 1920s. Just like in The Great Gatsby. The dress is what you’d expect to see people wearing at those elegant outside summer balls during the tea dances of the Jazz Age.
The woman who runs the boutique walks over with a blonde wig and helps Epiphany put it on.
‘Oh, don’t worry,’ she says. ‘Your girlfriend isn’t doing anything the other girls aren’t.’
I’m not so sure about that.
‘It’s always easier to wear a wig than do your own hair. The wigs will stay styled all night long.’ And I watch as the blonde Epiphany makes sure the long wig covers her mutilated ear.
Epiphany Jones Page 31