Back in the hotel room I put my tux on while Epiphany fidgets with her dress in front of the bathroom mirror. The smashed lamp that I threw at my father’s figment lies just behind her white heels.
And I can’t help but feel like this is the end. Like my life is on the last reel and there’s nothing beyond today.
Epiphany’s put together a sort of plan. This is a ‘plan’ in the loosest sense of the word, though. And when I tell her that, she says, ‘Trust me.’
The plan, it entails me approaching Phineas while Epiphany mingles in the crowd and getting him to tell me where the girls are.
‘He’s not stupid,’ Epiphany says. ‘The way you said he was asking you questions – he was shocked to see you here. He wants to see how much you remember; if your father told you anything. Why do you think he gave you the invite to the party so easily? He wants to get you close. He wants to find out why you are here.’
‘Why?’ I say.
‘Phineas was always a nervous person. He always worried about what others knew. The guilty are always fearful.’
‘And if he knows I know?’
‘He is going to know you know,’ she says. ‘Because you will tell him. And you will tell him you want to get in on the family business.’
So that’s why Epiphany believes her crazy voices told her to bring me along – because I can convince my father’s old child-molesting colleague to point to the room where his boss stores little girls. And just like that he’ll tell me. And just like that I’ll report to Epiphany, who will slip in and find her daughter and we’ll get out without anyone knowing we are stealing a little abducted girl back.
But I don’t argue. Because that’s her ‘plan’. But me, well, like everyone in this world, I’ve got my own plans.
And besides, despite her being a constant reminder of what my father was, I’m still glad to have her with me right now. When she touched my shoulder last night, all the figments in the room vanished. She can keep me grounded, like Bela did. She can keep me grounded until I’ve done what I’m going to do, and then I don’t care what happens to me.
‘Leave it,’ Epiphany says as I glance at the gun. ‘There will be security checks.’ She clasps a floral pearl choker necklace around her throat. ‘How do I look?’
She asks this not like a real girl would – not meaning if she looks pretty or just to fish for a compliment. When she asks, ‘How do I look?’ she means, ‘Can you tell this is me under here?’
And she is beautiful, Epiphany is. Not a natural Bela beautiful, or a fake Jordan Seabring beautiful, but beautiful nonetheless. She’s beautiful how a raven is: silent, mysterious; its whole body covered by black shadow – like someone dipped a dove in tar to conceal its true form. And as I button my jacket and Epiphany checks her wig one last time, I feel like I’m getting ready for the prom I never had – only this prom, it’s Satan’s Ball.
The taxi drops us at the address marked on the back of my bracelet. A man at the door asks, ‘For Matthew’s?’ He looks like he’s some techno DJ. He leads us through an empty club, past the kitchen, and out the rear door into the alley.
Epiphany asks the man if he works for Matthew.
‘No,’ he says.
Right answer, I think.
He tells us that Matthew rents his place for one day each year – along with some other places around town – so stars can be met by drivers in private, without the chance of paparazzi seeing them. ‘I envy you though,’ the DJ says. ‘The celebs that show up here – man, it must be one effed-up party! It’s fucking wild, right?’
I look at Epiphany, who is looking somewhere else. ‘You have no idea.’
We speed along the French coast in a black Bentley. The driver either doesn’t speak English or has been told not to talk to the guests. Epiphany and I aren’t talking either. We both have too much on our minds.
We’re different things to different people. Your family may love you and tell everybody you’re the most wonderful man in the world, but your employees may loathe you and tell everyone that you’re Satan’s right hand. The guy who’s heart you broke when you cheated on him thinks you’re a manipulative bitch, but the homeless person you gave five dollars to thinks you’re a gift from God. The thing is, in a way, everyone is right.
To me, my father, before last night, he had been a good man who had a hard life. To Epiphany, he was a monster who was sent by Matthew to collect her. Both are true. Different people live in all of us. What my dad took part in with all those girls – the only way to describe it … well, how do you describe it? ‘Wrong’ doesn’t begin to cover it. I wish I knew why he did it. Maybe after everything that happened to our family – after losing a daughter, and a son getting fucked up, and your marriage slowly dying – maybe it was easy to give into something that made you feel anything other than the hurt you drowned in on a daily basis. It was a way to cover the pain. It was what I did with television and my fakes, taken to the next level.
Epiphany’s staring out the window, watching the trees speed by us. In the reflection in the window she looks more pale than usual, as if someone has just given her really bad news. There’s a single tear that falls down her cheek. And I think about all the stuff that my father’s done and that she’s done and that I’m about to do.
But out of all the bad shit Epiphany and I have done to each other, the one thing we have in common is love. We’ve both lost people we’ve loved. For me it was Bela and Emma. For Epiphany, it’s her daughter. And I look at her and think of her daughter and think of what my father did. How many men raped her after my father collected her from Mexico? I wonder what it’s like not knowing who fathered your child? And her ear. That’s a direct result of my dad. I wonder, Would a son’s apology make things any better?
But then I think of why I’m going to this party. Who I’m going to find. What I’m planning to do.
So no, I know no words can be spoken that ease the pain we feel.
Epiphany quickly wipes the tear from her cheek. ‘What?’ she says with her eyes.
I don’t know how to ask why she’s crying so I say anything. ‘In Porto, in the alley, you kept mentioning some “awakening”. I didn’t know if you knew what you were saying…’ She doesn’t answer. ‘Forget it, it’s not important.’
Epiphany, she holds her gaze on me as I look back out my window. ‘It’s the name some of the madams gave to special events. Events like this, when girls would be saved for months for a certain occasion. They called these events “awakenings”, because that was when the girls would first realise what their lives would be like from then on.’
As the Bentley curves along the road, the trees break and the view gives way to the Mediterranean. We come to a town where a sign says ANTIBES. As we drive along the coast little piers jut into shimmering blue coves where rowboats hover in the crystal-clear water. At the tip of the peninsula that forms the southernmost part of the town our driver makes a left and we climb a steep road, where our car joins a line of cars. The road becomes a circular drive as the caravan gets closer to Matthew’s villa. The villa is beautiful. Something only the obscenely rich could buy. It’s a white, three-storey baroque château that has two wings on either side. In the green lawns there are fountains and gardens and palm trees and sculpted hedges. At the top of the drive the rich and famous have their car doors opened for them, and they proceed to drift towards the villa’s entrance as if the promises of fame and money and power itself were calling them home.
Our car is one length away from having its door opened for us. Then, as if now is the time to say her last words, Epiphany says, ‘Yana.’
I say, ‘What?’
‘If I could have named my daughter, I would have named her Yana. It’s a name I remember from my childhood. A beautiful name.’
Then she says, ‘Remember it.’
Our car comes to a stop. Epiphany’s breath shallows. I can almost feel her heart beating. She’s waited for this day, planned for it for so long. We look at each other i
n the safety of the car one more time. She takes a deep breath as the door is opened. A man in a black suit greets us as we step out of the Bentley.
‘Very welcome, Sir, Miss,’ the man says, scanning the bracelet’s barcode. He points down the white-gravel walkway. ‘Follow this path to the entrance hall, please. From there, if you keep walking through the grand foyer and go out the back, you’ll come to the gardens. Mr Mann would like guests to know that, besides the second and third floors of the west wing, the entire house is open to them and he hopes you’ll enjoy it.’
We join the crowds and walk through the grand foyer and out the back to the party. We walk arm in arm like this party of the year is just another ordinary day in our stellar, fabulous lives.
Out back, the garden’s grounds are manicured to precision. Flowerbeds dot the greenest grass I’ve ever seen. Every ten feet there’s another stand where a bartender will pour you any drink you want. A live orchestra plays ‘Everybody Loves My Baby’ on the stage overlooking the banquet tables that are already set for dinner. The plates are real china. The glasses are real crystal. The three knives, three forks, and two spoons on either side of every dining set are real silver tipped with real gold.
Unlike the other party, this one is what you imagine when you think of the lifestyles of celebrities. Besides the two life-sized statues of characters from The Princess of the Sands (one of Jordan’s princess character and one of her evil stepbrother king, holding his big Arabian sword), there are no other signs that this is a party to celebrate Mann’s latest blockbuster. To Mann, this party is a personal treat – an indulgence in power. And indeed, I know the only reason the two statues are here is because Phineas is like my father, and there’s never an inappropriate time to shill your boss’s product.
The gardens end at a cliff that overlooks the blue Mediterranean, where the yachts of the super rich float like rubber duckies. In the distance you can see the red-rocked mountains of France as they curve around to meet Spain. Above the mountains there are rain clouds forming.
There’s got to be at least a hundred power-players mingling out here. It’s easy enough to point out the stars – some of the hottest ones from today are here: the fat comedian whose heart should give out under his four-hundred-pound weight any day now; the gansta-rapper-turned-action star; the child television actress who’s started making indie films so people will take her seriously. And where you have stars, you’ll have their agents. Agents are always easy to spot because, no matter what they’re doing, they’ll always have one eye on their client – their cash cow. Yet, despite some of the biggest names in Hollywood being here, it’s evident just how exclusive this party is.
‘Is Harvey here?’ an action star asks.
‘Weinstein wouldn’t even know about this party,’ a man from the Mouse House answers arrogantly.
But there’s only one person I’m interested in finding.
‘We need to find Phineas,’ Epiphany says.
When we stepped out of the car, I half-thought that she just might lose it right then and go running off to find her daughter. But no, she’s as calm as ever. I, on the other hand, start to lose my nerve when I notice three men in grey suits patrolling the lawns. Their arms are big – the-size-of-my-thighs big. Their dark glasses and earpieces sit snugly on their muscled faces. And as if brute strength weren’t enough, they’ve all got holstered weapons.
‘Private security,’ Epiphany says.
Imminent death – even when you expect it – always has a way of bringing out the coward in you. And I suddenly remember we could have brought the gun. Despite what Epiphany thought, there ended up being no security check. The gun would have made this much, much easier.
‘This is insane,’ I mumble.
Epiphany locks her eyes on mine and squeezes my arm tight. ‘Stick to the plan, Jerry. It’s going to be fine.’
‘Plan?’ I hiss as my nerves go. ‘So we do have one? Because getting Phineas to tell me where the girls are is more of a best-case-scenario than a plan.’
Epiphany unlinks arms with me and graciously accepts two glasses of champagne when a roving waiter offers them on a silver platter.
‘I mean, let’s hear it then – the plan,’ I say. ‘Because when I saw the bodybuilders with their guns, I got worried.’
‘Calm down, Jerry. You know what happens to you when you get worked up,’ she says, like she’s my mother, then hands me one of the glasses. ‘My voices will tell me…’
‘This is ridiculous,’ I mutter.
‘Stop thinking how ridiculous it is and start asking yourself whether or not you believe this will work. That’s why it’s called a leap of faith, Jerry.’
A leap of faith would be a lot easier with Paulo’s gun.
Epiphany says, ‘You are afraid. Feel it, then let it go.’
I refuse her the dignity of a reply.
She says, ‘Trust me.’
She says, ‘Now keep an eye out for Phineas.’
I scan the grounds. I don’t see him anywhere.
‘We should split up,’ she says. ‘It will be easier to find him. Besides, Phineas wouldn’t mention anything about the girls in front of your date.’
I nod and watch Epiphany as she crosses the lawn, her blond wig shimmering in the sunlight. And then I hear it. ‘Jerry! Jerry!’
And Jordan Seabring, she almost knocks me over as she wraps her arms around my neck. She tells me how sorry she is about last night; how drunk she must have been, and how bad she felt that she made me run off.
And for the next twenty minutes, as I look out for murderers and child rapists, Jordan sits me at one of the tables with their actual silver silverware, and she tells me about how hard her life has been. How her parents pushed her into beauty pageants at the age of three. How they told her to win at any cost. ‘Fame is immortality,’ they said.
‘There are just so many demands to being me,’ she says as we sit and she drinks a nine-hundred-dollar glass of Cristal. ‘It’s a hard life.’ And, if you’re a cynical fuck like me, you’re probably thinking, how can a young, rich, beautiful star have a hard life? But everything is relative, right? Why would a fifteen-year-old girl fuck a boy on command if she weren’t brainwashed into believing fame was the only goal worth pursuing?
You might think that her money and looks bring her freedom, but she’s as chained as any of us. She’s twenty-seven now. And though she’s not being shown the door yet, she’s definitely being handed her hat. She knows this, so she takes uppers to get through the press events and keep that young sparkle in her eyes. She has surgery at least twice a year to improve parts of her body (‘December it was my hips. February, my ears, see?’). And, though her life is immeasurably better than Epiphany’s or mine or yours, Jordan’s been ruined by what people demand of her all the same. She’s not a real person anymore.
‘Phineas has begun trying to get reporters to refer to me as “The Starlet” like they used to when I got started. He says it will make audiences think I’m young,’ the twenty-seven-year-old says.
A few more guests trickle out to the garden, but I still don’t see him anywhere. From the other side of the gardens, Epiphany stands flanked by some new admirers hoping to get lucky with the mysterious woman with blond hair. She’s holding her champagne glass up to her lips as her other hand playfully tickles the choker around her neck. She gives a throaty laugh. Here she can’t tell her suitors to fuck off like she did in the bar, so she acts polite, all while keeping one eye on me and the other on the look-out for Phineas.
Jordan laughs at something she’s just said. ‘But Hugh, he’s forty and still has another good twenty working years in front of him! He wouldn’t understand. Besides, he’s so busy. You’ve heard Matthew signed him to three pictures? No one in the industry thought Hugh would agree, but he did! Forty million a picture!’
On the orchestra’s stage a cymbal clashes.
In the crowd a supermodel dances.
And I look around and I look around and I look ar
ound and I don’t see him anywhere.
‘That’s sixty million!’ Jordan says.
I say, ‘Look, Jordan, the people who work for Matthew come to this party too, right?’
She says, ‘Please, call me Starlet.’
I say, ‘I mean, it’s not just for your kind, right?’
She says, ‘Do you spell Starlet with one T or two?’
I say, ‘I’ll bring you a dictionary later. But right now, is there a place here where someone who works for Matthew would be? Maybe a room where they all hang out?’
She says, ‘Everyone here works for Matthew. We all owe him for something.’
And then my breathing stops cold. Across the lawn I see him. The one I’ve been looking for since we arrived. The only reason I came. And even from this distance he looks so tall, so built. His dark face is scratched. And as Nico turns to enter the villa, I see a patch of his thick black hair on the back of his head is shaved.
Epiphany was right. He’s alive. He’s here. And as I watch the man I thought I murdered walk around all alive, my whole body suddenly courses with rage.
At our table, Jordan’s going on about how she’s so happy to be with Hugh Fox, the number one Hollywood box-office draw, the man whose name attached to a picture guarantees the film a one-hundred-million-dollar opening. ‘Just being with him has given my career the boost it needed after I turned twenty-five,’ she gushes. ‘And … oh, who are you going to tell? Last night, after you left the party, Hugh showed. He proposed! We’re getting married!’
Please shut up, I think. There’s a man I need to kill. Again.
‘You want to meet him?’ Jordan says like a sixteen-year-old dying to show off her first boyfriend.
‘Love to,’ I say.
And as Jordan goes bounding off to find her forty-million-dollar-a-picture boyfriend, I slide a gold-tipped silver steak knife from the table into the sleeve of my tux and stalk across the lawn. I brush by agents talking business, celebrities dancing to jazz, and waiters dressed in their white penguin jackets, carrying silver trays. Just past the orchestra’s stage I pause at the open doorway and peer into the grand foyer. It’s filled with more waiters and bartenders, more agents and stars and publicists. Then through the crowd I glimpse Nico. He’s climbing the grand staircase. Up my sleeve, my hand tightens around the steak knife’s handle. For something I wished I could have taken back for the longest time, now I can’t wait to get it right.
Epiphany Jones Page 32