Beyond the Pale Motel

by Francesca Lia Block

  Now, staring up at that balcony, I realized that Bree had not only been my best friend. The mother of my darling. The lens through which I saw the beauty of the world. She had been my wife.

  I had to protect her, not just for her own sake, and for mine. I had to keep her safe for Skylar.

  A cool night breeze whispered chillingly into the back of my neck. “I am here.” Was he here? The man who had killed and mutilated all those women? Including Leila. The man who had followed Bree home. What if that was the same man? What if he was going to kill Bree and chop off parts of her?

  I turned and vomited into the bushes.

  * * *

  The next day I had a hangover and the shakes and no clients anyway so I decided to call in sick. Besides, I had to see Skylar. I had to. Maybe I’d go see Bree when she got home from work, I told myself. Make sure she was okay. Warn her.

  I drove to the baseball field wearing sunglasses and a cap. The empty baseball diamond radiated heat so the little boys had moved under the shade of some trees. Sweat trickled down my sides as I watched the kids stretching with Jarell, facing someone I couldn’t see. Jarell looked taller and bigger than before, so gorgeous, but I didn’t care. Where was Sky?

  When I spotted him, he became all I saw. Walking back from the restrooms wearing his Dodgers cap. I wanted to run to him so much it made my heart feel like it was a pile of sand, collapsing in on itself.

  Then I realized that I could go to him here. I could just tell Jarell that I’d come by to say hi. He wouldn’t know about the fallout between Bree and me.

  I got out of the car and started to walk toward them. My heart had reassembled itself and was beating solidly against the emptiness of my body. Jarell looked up and frowned at me. I thought, Shit, he thinks I’m hitting on him or something.

  Maybe this was a mistake. But I couldn’t turn back.

  Skylar was running toward me. I almost fell to my knees. He hugged me but not the way he used to. More reserved. Maybe because the other kids were watching. And he was bigger now—taller. He’d grown since I’d last seen him. His eyes shifted away from mine. But all that mattered was that I was hugging him. Still … I wondered if I smelled like drink. Was that why he wasn’t holding me as tightly? Fuck, I couldn’t let him see me cry.

  And then it wasn’t just Jarell walking over.

  It was Bree.

  At first I was relieved to see her. We could talk about Leila. I could comfort Bree, warn her.

  But then she said, “What are you doing here?” Her voice was strained. “Go back to practice, Sky.”

  I watched him run off, glancing back at me over his shoulder—a little wave of his hand, and my heart collapsed again. Bree was wearing yoga pants and a cropped top that showed off her abs. Why was she here? Because Skylar is her son, Catt. Not yours.

  “I came to see Jarell,” I said.

  Bree’s perfectly plucked brows shot up. “Jarell? For real? You’re joking, right? I thought we established that he isn’t interested, Catt.”

  I didn’t think this would hurt; I didn’t think I cared. I did.

  “And shouldn’t you be at work?”

  “Shouldn’t you?” I said.

  “I’m off today. I’m teaching yoga to the kids.” She cocked her head toward Jarell, Skylar, and the other puppy boys.

  “How is Skylar?” I asked. The sun was too hot and I felt faint. My skin itched from the poison sprayed on the grass.

  Bree was scowling at me, lines forming on her forehead in spite of the Botox. “Are you fucked-up?”

  “No, I—”

  “You smell like alcohol. And you look like shit! You’re fucked-up, aren’t you? You come near my son when you are drunk? You disgust me.”

  “I’m not drunk,” I said.

  “You’re pathetic. Chasing after Jarell like that? Coming around drunk?”

  “Please, Bree.”

  “No. No fucking way.”

  “I just wanted to tell you to be careful. Leila—”

  “I don’t want to talk to you about Leila or anything else. You’re fucked-up.”

  The reality was slamming me now. I might never see Skylar, my reason for living, again after this moment. “You can’t do this! He’s my son, too.” I had said it. I couldn’t take it back. “You don’t have to see me but you can’t take him away from me.” Tears were streaking the makeup on my face.

  “Your son? How dare you say that? You’re always trying to insinuate yourself into this role as what? His second mom? Trying to make him love you more. The other night he called me Bree.”

  I didn’t understand.

  She shook her head, lavender locks falling furiously around her face. “He called you Auntie in the same sentence. Auntie.”

  “You’re the one who chose to spend time with loser men over him.” I said it softly but loud enough for her to hear.

  “What the fuck? What do you know about it? About my life. About what it’s like to be a single mom.”

  “I guess I don’t,” I said, my Achilles’ heel on fire.

  Had she hated me for my relationship with Skylar all along? Now she had the excuse she needed.

  “You have to stay away from us,” Bree said. As if I were the danger in her life. How could she think that? I had to tell her to be careful.

  She was crying, too.

  Jarell stalked over, gleaming in the sun, larger-than-life. “What’s happening here? You okay?” This was directed only to Bree.

  She wiped her eyes. He didn’t seem to mind her tears, though mine and Skylar’s had angered him. His voice was low. “We need you, yoga babe.”

  She nodded and ran back to the boys.

  I screamed. A snake had poked its head out from a hole near my foot. I pointed to it so Jarell would know why I had screamed, but the snake head was gone.

  “A snake,” I said.

  Jarell said, “I think you should leave now.”

  Skylar looked up. Even from that far away I could see his eyes. The color of the grass in the sun.

  Those eyes would never meet mine in that life again.

  * * *

  That night I stopped at a different liquor store. I believed the owner of my local place had looked at me darkly the last time, all-knowing from beneath drooping eyelids. Different place, same purchase. I brought Jack home, stripped to my bra and panties, leaving my cutoffs and tank top on the floor, and flung myself at the couch. Tried to listen to music, but hearing Frank Ocean singing about Egypt, strippers, and rich, unloved children reminded me of Bree—she loved that album—so I turned it off. I drank. I fell asleep. I dreamed.

  Of Cyan. He had come into the room wearing a white, button shirt with pearl cuff links and black pants. Was rubbing my ass, teasing my thong up between my cheeks. The fabric pulled against my clit, bringing all the nerves alive. He slapped me gently and then pushed the panties aside and slid a thick finger up inside me while his thumb massaged my clit. I flipped over, and in the same moment he had pulled off my panties entirely. He pushed one of my hands down against his cock, which was huge, bigger than Jarell’s, I remember thinking. It strained and peaked the fabric of his black trousers, which were made of a very soft, expensive-seeming fabric. Gabardine. I noticed that his feet were bare and covered in dirt as if he had come through a wet garden. Which made me think of flowers—Stargazer lilies, in particular. I felt overexposed—pink satin and dark fur pelt—and I wished I had gotten a wax. “Take off your bra and show me those nice, big titties,” he said. I was surprised because Cyan didn’t speak like that. Nor did my brother-in-law (ex?) come into my room and pull off my panties, but somehow my mind seemed to accept that, yet not the other, maybe because the words belonged to someone else, but I couldn’t recall to whom. I tugged my breasts out of the cups of my bra, leaving it on; the hooks were digging into my back, making small welts. Cyan took his cock out and began sliding his fingers up and down the shaft while he watched me. With the logic of a dream he told me he had a tiny camera on the end of his
penis and that he could take pictures of me from the inside. He was excited to see what he would find.

  I woke lying on my stomach, humping the cushions, my fingers searching among them as if I were looking for something in my sleep.

  I managed to make it to work that day, fortified with some dry toast and one small shot of whiskey in my coffee, and even did a decent job on five back-to-back clients, although I did burn my hand on the flatiron once. No one seemed to notice my generally fucked-up state, although I imagined (maybe?) Karli frowning at me in the mirror. But when a new client wanted her hair dyed like a pastel rainbow (she’d seen it on a girl who used to work here a while back), it all hit me again. The longing I felt for Bree and Skylar.

  Hitting, as in literally. I was pummeled by invisible fists and my skin throbbed with imaginary contusions.

  I did not go a-stalking again that night. I could not call my sponsor, who, I believed, had betrayed me and who would not forgive my trespasses. (Shana had called me every day for a week and then given up; I had not called her back once.) The person whose face I could not get out of my mind after the dream I’d had the night before was Cyan, of course. So much had happened since I’d last seen him, and I’d been afraid to reach out before. But when I texted a tentative hello, he did not respond. Swigging some more drink, I called Dash. As the phone rang, I prayed. Surprisingly, Dash answered, as if my prayer had worked. I wondered what others might be answered. I tried not to ask for sudden, brutal death to obliterate the pain.

  “Catt? Are you okay? I heard about the girl from the gym,” he said kindly—his voice a gentle scratch—before I had even spoken. “I’ve been meaning to call you.”

  The warmth radiating through the phone made me burst into tears. I couldn’t speak.

  “Catt?”

  “Can I see you?” I managed. “Please. I need help.”

  “Have you been to meetings?” He had pulled away again. “Did you call Shana?”

  I continued to cry and beg. Through my tears I heard Dash ask why I sounded like that. “You’re not drinking, are you? Catt?” I sobbed at him. He said, “I can’t see you. I’m sorry. I have other people to think of now. It’s not just me. You need to get to a meeting. Do you hear me? Call Shana right now.”

  “You can’t even give me this?” I yelped. It felt like someone was hitting me with a switch. “What is wrong with you?”

  He was quiet for too long a time. Then he said, “A lot is wrong with me. Okay, Catt? A lot. And I am trying to do something about that, and part of it is starting a new life and taking care of my new family.”

  “What do you even know about family?”

  “Not much. I’m trying to learn. You have no idea what I went through growing up.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “I have no idea. Because you never told me. You never talked about it. I feel like I know your brother better than I know you.”

  “What? Cyan? What are you talking about?”

  “He came to check on me. We’ve been talking.”

  There was silence on the other end of the line.

  “What?” I said. That dangerous word.

  “I just don’t think you should hang out with Cyan, okay?”

  “I’m not hanging out with Cyan.”

  His voice was a growl. “Whatever you’re doing.”

  “Why not? Why should you care if your brother is concerned about me or not? You left me. You left!”

  I heard a strange sound on the other end and realized that Dash—huge, tatted, punk-rock Dash—was crying softly.

  In that moment I loved him, maybe for the first time. Because he was not the mean boy who could protect me, the hot guy who would validate me, or the father of the baby I thought I would die without. He was, like all of the other men I’d slept with, really, a man in pain. Dash had been in much more pain than I realized.

  “I can’t be around any more fucked-up women. I survived my mother, and instead of running, I kept going back for more. It wasn’t your fault, but I’m done, Catt. I can’t do this. I’m sorry. I really am sorry. You need to call Shana, not Cyan. You need to get to a meeting. Okay?” He was almost pleading.

  So I was like his mother? The person he couldn’t even mention? I’d never even seen a picture of her. She was a monster in his eyes and so was I. I kept going back for more. He meant me.

  He had hung up.

  To torture myself I dragged my bones over to the shelf where I kept our wedding album. Bree had made it for me. It was covered in pink silk printed with black skeletons in wedding veils and top hats, and the pictures were mounted on handmade black paper pressed with pink rose petals. We had thought the album cute and punk rock, not premonitory. Could I find within the pages signs that I had missed? Signs that Dash had chosen me because I was another fucked-up woman? That he would eventually leave me? Dash had no family at the wedding except for Cyan. I had no family at all. It was part of what made our relationship special, I had thought. We were orphans creating our own new clan, which included Bree and Skylar. But what did it mean that Dash’s parents and my parents had damaged us to the point that as teenagers we were already trying to drink ourselves to death?

  Not even a single picture of Dash’s parents existed. He had erased them, and now he would erase me.

  In some of our wedding pictures he wore his sunglasses, but in the ones where you could see his eyes there was something flat about his gaze. I was always looking up at him, almost worshipfully.

  At two I had fallen in love with a dimple-faced, four-year-old boy named Jakey Zimelman. There was one photo—lost during my early drinking days—of me gazing at him with mad love while he beamed for the camera. Nothing had changed, except that my taste in men had gotten worse; at least Jakey’s eyes were warm, even if they weren’t looking at me.

  I turned to a picture of Bree. She was dancing, but her partner (probably me, while too-cool Baby Daddy watched her from the sidelines) wasn’t in the shot. She wore a strapless, pink tulle dress reminiscent of our fake wedding. Her platinum-blond hair was up and her neck looked long, slim, and somehow—due to the angle of the shot perhaps—very vulnerable. The lighting and the reflection from her hair made her face look even smoother and more luminous than it actually was, almost masklike. Her eyes were closed and her lashes cast shadows. I shivered, and a sick feeling crept up my spine like a monkey climbing a tree. There was that resemblance to Leila. But there was something more.

  I put down the album and googled Cyan’s website. The girls with their doe eyes and legs, their full breasts and streaming hair surveyed me wanly. Leila or Bree would fit right in among them. I took another drink and googled Darcy London. She had started two new clothing lines to go with Mommy’s Lil’ Punk: Hip Hop Tots and Baby Bling. There was a picture that showed her and Dash wearing matching Ray • Ban Wayfarers, wifebeaters, and torn jeans, running from the paparazzi. Dash was holding her elbow, steering her away, snarling back over his shoulder at the cameras, his extended middle finger blurred out. The baby, Python, bobbed in a pouch on Darcy’s chest. He was wearing a black leather visor with silver, star-shaped studs, and one silver earring.

  I felt like I was carrying something dead in my womb.

  * * *

  The next evening I got a call from Todd. Or was it Rick? Whichever one it was said they had broken up. I asked if they were okay. Apparently they were still friends, but his voice sounded as if this might not be true. Then he said he was worried about me, and I told him that pinched nerve was acting up again. He invited me over and I said I would think about it, thanks, inwardly cringing at the idea of socializing. He asked if I had heard about Bob.

  “No,” I said, skin creepily crawling. “What?”

  “A detective discovered hidden cameras in the ladies’ rooms at Body Farm,” Toddrick informed me. “There was lots of footage of Leila, I guess.”

  I wanted another drink. There was a wildfire inside me. “Do they think he’s the…”

  “They don’t know. None
of the other girls went to the gym. But they arrested him so there’s something going on.”

  Somehow I felt no sense of relief.

  #13

  LA summers are a killer. I mean this in the truest sense.

  The heat was abominable, but power outages forced us to limit the use of the air-conditioning. And we still couldn’t keep our windows open at night with that predator on the loose. My mind replayed scenes of dismemberment again and again as I lay in a small puddle of my own sweat. I dreamed of mountain lions and snakes and wounds that wouldn’t stop bleeding. And heads. Decapitated heads. I had heard on the news that an Italian surgeon believed head transplants were a real possibility in the near future.

  Someone had been collecting arms, legs, hands, feet, and breasts. What more did they want? Even though Big Bob had been arrested, I didn’t feel safe. What if the Hollywood Killer was someone else? Someone even worse?

  One night I dreamed of a basement room where I seemed to live. My hair was dyed a deep blue and I had some kind of long forelock falling into my eyes. Women’s torsos were suspended from the ceiling, upside down. Blue liquid dripped from the holes where their necks should have been. One of the bodies belonged to Bree. I looked at my hands and saw the blueness staining my fingers. Or perhaps it was just the fluorescent light in the room. I woke with the terror not of the slaughtered but of the slaughterer caught.

  In the morning I couldn’t stop thinking about Bree. What if she was in danger? What if I could catch the Hollywood Serial Killer? What if I could save her?

  That day I traded in my beloved yellow VW Bug for a used gray Honda, and the next morning I waited outside Bree’s apartment building. I followed her all the way to her new salon, where I watched her through the window; she was laughing with a magenta-haired woman, reflected in a myriad of mirrors.

  A couple of evenings later I drove back to her apartment building and parked out in front. I saw a man sitting in his BMW down the block. As if being controlled by an unseen force, I got up and went over to the car. I rapped on the window with my knuckles. He looked at me.