by P. J. Tracy
She relaxed a little, but there was still some trepidation in her posture and movements. “The bakery on the corner. They even roast their own beans, so I got some real coffee.”
“My coffee isn’t real?”
Apparently, the question didn’t dignify a response. “Do you want some eggs? Nothing fancy, just scrambled.”
Sam thought of the leftover salads Yuki had left. “You didn’t put kale in them, did you?”
“God, no, why would I do that? No one likes kale, there are only people who don’t hate it.”
“Then I’d love some eggs. What were you humming?”
“‘The Owl and the Pussycat.’”
“You’re weirdly cheerful this morning.”
She flushed and looked down guiltily. “I know it’s weird, and totally inappropriate. I did a lot of thinking last night, I couldn’t stop, and what I came up with at three a.m. is that I’m sad for Ryan. I’m sorry he’s dead. But I’m not afraid of his jealousy or his temper anymore. I forgot what that felt like.”
There was no need for further justification. Ryan was dead and she wasn’t afraid. It seemed like such a simple thing, to live without fear. He envied her the place she was at now but was happy she’d made it there and hoped it lasted. “I get it,” he said, picking up the morning paper from the table and paging to the obituaries. He was profoundly relieved that Rolf wasn’t among the lucky octogenarians who’d died peacefully, surrounded by family. Nope, he definitely wasn’t psychic, just barking mad.
“There’s an article on Ryan in there. It’s small, buried. They quoted Detective Nolan.”
“What did she say?”
“You don’t want to read it?”
“Not really.”
“She said they’re pursuing multiple leads and all the usual bullshit they always march out to the press. At least we weren’t named.” She tried to laugh, but it came out as a weak grunt.
“Anything about the Katy Villa hit-and-run?”
“I didn’t see anything, but I didn’t read the whole paper. Why?”
“She was killed by a black Jeep.”
Melody blinked at him. “How do you know that?”
“I saw it on a news feed yesterday.”
“You didn’t mention it to the detectives last night.”
Sam tossed the paper on a chair. “Didn’t need to. Everybody in law enforcement knows about it, she was the mayor’s daughter. If there’s a connection, they’ll find it, but I doubt there is.”
“Still, that’s kind of freaky, isn’t it?”
Sam made some quick mental calculations. Dr. Frolich was the only one who knew about his episode with Katy on San Vicente, but she didn’t know about the black Jeep he’d been seeing. Melody knew about the black Jeep but not about his connection to Katy Villa. In the spirit of keeping everyone partially in the dark, he brushed off her question cavalierly, hoping his secrets weren’t somehow obstructing justice. “I’m not sure. Part of me thinks so, but like I told you, I’m paranoid. And dangerous.”
“And hyperbolic. That’s your vocabulary word for the day. Sit down, breakfast is ready.”
Sam let her serve him scrambled eggs, toast, and coffee. He helped himself to another pastry, devouring almost everything on his plate before she’d even taken her place at the table.
“I thought maybe you went jogging, then I heard the car.”
“It was a good morning for a drive. I went up Mulholland. The sunrise was pretty great.”
“Too early for Pink’s, though.”
“Yeah. Maybe I’ll go later, it’s my day off. Join me?”
“I work from two to eight.”
“I figured you’d call in a personal day. You have every reason to.”
“I know. I thought about it, but I decided the distraction would be good. Helpful. Stick with a routine and pretend life is normal, you know?”
Sam understood. He also understood that pretending life was normal when it wasn’t didn’t help anything. But it was her choice, and she’d made it clear she didn’t appreciate lectures. “Whatever seems right for you, Mel.”
She toyed with her eggs, pushing them around her plate with a fork. “Any plans besides maybe going to Pink’s?”
“Lift some weights, get a run, then possibly read a script.”
“Like a movie script?”
“Yeah. I ran into a guy yesterday and he gave it to me.”
“Does he think you’re a producer or something?”
“No, he wants me to act in it.”
Her face lit up with a crooked, full-beam smile. It was the first time he’d ever seen all her front teeth. And they were nice teeth, white and even for the most part, but the left incisor was pegged just enough to advertise they were real. A genuine rarity in LA. “That’s so cool. You should do it, Sam.”
“I don’t know shit about acting. Besides, he’s just a kid, working on a student film.”
“So what? Steven Spielberg was just a kid once, working on a student film. Besides, if you don’t know shit about acting, you can’t really be choosy, can you?”
“Good point, but I’m not interested.”
“You don’t think it would be fun?”
“It would be a nightmare. He’s annoying and weird and his script probably is, too.”
“I suppose that’s why you’re going to read it, you want to see just how annoying and weird it is. An irresistible temptation.” She refilled their coffees and finally tucked into her scrambled eggs. She finished them and her coffee before broaching another dark topic. “Do you think we’ll hear from the detectives again?”
“They’ll give you a courtesy call when they find Ryan’s killer. And they will.”
“You’re not worried we’re suspects?”
“No.”
She pushed her plate away, her jolly mood eclipsed by reality now. It was bound to set in eventually. “I still can’t believe somebody killed Ryan. It’s so surreal.”
“It hasn’t hit you yet.”
“It’s starting to. God, who knows somebody who got killed?”
“Most people don’t.”
She pinched her eyes shut. “I’m sorry, that came out wrong.”
“It’s okay, Mel. I’ve never known anyone who got killed in civilian life either. You expect it in war. And I’m sorry about Ryan. Sorry for you. I know you had feelings for him.”
She sighed miserably. “I’m not sure what kind. I haven’t seen the Jeep this morning, have you?”
“No.”
“But you’d tell me.”
“Of course I’d tell you.”
“I’ll ask Teddy about it when I go home, but he would have called if he’d seen it.”
“It’s probably nothing. Like the detectives said, there are a lot of them in LA. Are you staying here tonight?”
She shrugged uncertainly. “I don’t think I need to. But thanks.”
“What about the roses? You still don’t know who brought them.”
“I’ve been thinking about that, and now I’m sure Ryan did. It had to be him. He was just yanking me around, trying to scare me.”
It made sense. It fit with the control freak/sadist personality profile Sam had created from what little he knew about him. But he was getting used to another body in the house, having someone to talk to who didn’t interrogate him about his innermost thoughts or progress in recovery. If there was any progress. “Probably, but my door is open anytime. Even at midnight.”
“I know that and I’m really grateful.” She looked around anxiously, Sam thought, as if suddenly realizing this domestic scene was as surreal as a boyfriend getting murdered, then stood and started clearing dishes. “I should get out of your hair.”
Sam took over and gestured to her chair. “Sit, relax, I’ll take care of this. You did all the heavy lifting.” He filled the sink with hot water and squirted in the last of Yuki’s bottle of organic dishwashing liquid that smelled like grass clippings. He’d been losing pieces of her every day, b
ut this morning, he may have lost everything. He no longer clung to the pathetically feeble belief that there was a logical explanation for the man in her house that didn’t involve intercourse. She was gone. She had been for a while, he just hadn’t let himself see it.
“If you want to talk about why you’re pissed, I’ll listen,” she finally said. “Otherwise you can just tell me to shut up.”
Sam wouldn’t see Dr. Frolich until tomorrow. No reason to discuss it now. He still had to absorb things, and talk to Yuki. “It’s nothing, I just had another dream this morning on top of the one that woke you up last night. It’s frustrating.”
“I like to drive when I’m frustrated, too. Otherwise I just feel trapped inside my own head. It makes me panic.”
“You don’t seem like somebody prone to panic.”
“I am sometimes and it makes me hyperventilate. Do you ever feel trapped by this city? Like it’s a bad relationship?”
Sam placed the last plate in the drying rack and turned around. “I never really thought about it.”
“I grew up here, so did you, but I’ve been thinking of leaving. Get a fresh start somewhere else where I don’t feel like I’m sitting on a powder keg. LA feels different than it did five years ago. I feel different.”
“Then it’s not a bad idea.”
“Do you ever think of leaving?”
“No. Not until this morning.”
Melody sat there patiently, looking at him with her big green eyes. They were questioning, but she didn’t ask the obvious. “Who knows, maybe a change of scenery would be good for both of us,” she finally said.
“Do you want some more coffee?”
She held out her mug. “Thanks.”
Sam almost dropped the carafe when his phone chimed. “Sorry, I have to get this,” he said, hurrying to his bedroom and closing the door.
Chapter Thirty-six
“HI, YUKI.”
“Sam, is everything okay? You didn’t answer my texts yesterday, and you sounded really upset this morning in your messages.”
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Her voice was so concerned, and he’d never known her to be disingenuous with her emotions on the rare occasions she showed any. And she’d never lied to him, at least that he knew of, so it was once again tempting for him to imagine that there was a benign explanation for the man on her front stoop. “We need to get together and talk. Are you at work?”
“No, I took the morning off, I’m going in at noon. Listen, I didn’t handle the whole Seattle thing well, and I’m sorry. We do need to talk.”
No lies yet. “I can come over right now. I can be there in fifteen minutes.”
“I’m busy this morning.”
Servicing a guy with six-pack abs? he almost blurted. “I thought you had the morning off.”
She let out an impatient sigh. “So I could catch up on things. How about an early dinner? If you’re not working.”
“I’m not. Yuki, you cried when you told me about Seattle. I’ve never seen you cry like that. Is there something you’re not telling me?”
She was silent for a very long time. The only thing he could hear was her breathing. “No, I’m just sad. We’ll talk later. Five o’clock at Taiko?”
Taiko—home of silken shrimp dumplings and luscious black cod, dishes that made him question his agnosticism with every bite. He loved that restaurant, and if things went horribly wrong there this evening, he’d never be able to return to further explore the possibility of a religious conversion. “How about Sushi Roku? I’m in the mood for an ocean view.”
“Fine.” He heard background noise, the shuffling of papers, a drawer closing. Either her head wasn’t in the conversation and she was multitasking, or she was exhibiting displacement behavior—like a cat licking itself to defuse a potentially dangerous confrontation.
“Were you here early this morning, Sam?” she finally asked. “I thought I heard your car.”
“There are a lot of loud cars in LA.”
“The Mustang has its own sound.”
Yuki discerning the audible difference between a big block Ford and another engine? It was inexplicable. “I confess. I had a dream that you were being strangled and I couldn’t get back to sleep. I drove by to make sure you were all right.” Sam clenched his jaw, keeping the rest inside.
“How did you know I was all right?”
“A light went on, so I left.”
“It could have been the strangler who turned the light on. You didn’t even wait for me to get the paper, just to make sure?”
Sam felt like he’d swallowed a hot rock that was now burning a hole in his stomach. Yuki was trolling for information so she knew where she stood at dinner tonight. He could ruin her day, like she’d ruined his, and part of him relished the thought. But he would approach this like a special ops mission, where the element of surprise gave you the greatest advantage. “The dream didn’t seem so real anymore, so I decided to get out of there before you got the paper and potentially spotted your crazy husband parked outside your house,” he lied. “At the time, it seemed like it would be hard to explain my presence without sounding unhinged or stalkerish.”
“You just told me, and it didn’t sound either unhinged or stalkerish.”
“The light of day and all that.”
“Dreams are powerful. I thought hearing the Mustang was a dream, too, but I still looked for you when I got the paper.”
And there it was, the big lie. She’d been fairly strategic up until this point, but she’d overplayed her last card by volunteering too much information in an effort to sound casual. Yep, business as usual, got out of bed, fetched the paper, went to make coffee. If you saw a shirtless man on the porch, you had the wrong house.
Sam suddenly felt hollow, like a mammoth void encased in a pouch of flesh. “I was gone by then.”
“I guess you were. See you tonight, Sam, Sushi Roku at five. Goodbye.”
Goodbye. One simple word people said to one another all the time. Context was everything.
He stared at his lucky cat for a while, trying to empty his mind. The cat stared back with flat, unfeeling black eyes.
* * *
Melody was subdued when he finally came out of the bedroom. She’d tidied things even more, washed their coffee mugs, put plastic wrap over the plate of pastry, and his mother’s throw was folded neatly and draped on the arm of the sofa. The countertops sparkled and the cheap table was crumb-free. She looked at him expectantly and gestured to the empty wine bottle sitting by the sink. “I wasn’t sure where your recycling was, I didn’t want to snoop around.”
“I’ll take care of it. Thanks for cleaning up.”
“I’ll get going, then. Jim is probably hungry.”
“Who’s Jim?”
“My scrub jay. I feed him peanuts. He’s pretty tame now. If I leave the window open, he’ll hop in and grab the peanuts out of the basket on the kitchen counter. Maybe he left me the roses.”
Sam was stunned when he felt a chuckle rising up his throat. It never made it all the way, but it had gotten close. Apparently you could still think about laughing when you were standing on the edge of a cliff, gazing down at the end of the world as you knew it. Or maybe he’d just given up on feeling shitty and was entering some kind of manic phase in an attempt to retain or reclaim his sanity.
“Want to take a drive first? Pink’s opens in half an hour.”
“A hotdog at nine-thirty in the morning after we just ate breakfast?”
“Reckless, I know. But you’re dealing with the fact that your boyfriend was murdered and I just found out I have a cheating wife.”
Melody’s face changed very little, but it was enough to intimate sorrow and disappointment that was genuine, familiar to her. She’d been betrayed in life, too. Maybe in different ways, but when a cornerstone of your existence crumbles, you recognize the same malady in others and feel the pain all over again.
“Oh, no. Are you sure, Sam?”
Was
he? “I’ll tell you about it over a bacon chili cheese dog. You said we should wait until we’re both happy before we take a ride in the Mustang, but the way things are going, we’ll both be dead before then.”
Chapter Thirty-seven
SAM AND MELODY SAT AT ONE of the tables outside, eating their dogs and observing the eclectic assortment of people gathered at Pink’s so early in the morning. There were the disheveled partiers coming off benders, none of them looking nearly as good as the couple at the scenic overlook had; tourists checking off an LA landmark before the line got too crazy; a truckload of landscape workers; and a TV host and his crew filming a live segment.
He and Melody stood out most of all, though, a lovely young woman in a dress with fully inked arms and a black bruise under her eye that makeup and sunglasses couldn’t entirely conceal; and her dubious companion, a man with half a face who drove an iconic piece of American automotive history.
Melody slurped orange soda through a straw angrily, as if she was punishing the soda and the straw. “What a bitch. I want to strangle her myself.”
“There are two sides to every story. Yuki’s been through a lot.”
“And you haven’t? Don’t make excuses for her. You said that exact thing to me about Ryan yesterday and you were right.”
“I guess I did.”
“You don’t fuck over people you love ever, especially when they’re hurting. Bitch.”
Melody was taking the news of Yuki’s infidelity badly, as if it was a personal effrontery. “No, but I have to listen to what she has to say, so I’m not going to pass judgment until I talk to her tonight.”
“It seems pretty cut and dried to me. Why are you so calm?”
“I’m not, but losing my head isn’t going to help anything.”
She let out a disgusted snort. “I don’t know what your shrink would say about it, but in my opinion, if that’s the kind of person she is, then you’re better off without her.”
Were things really so cut and dried? Betrayal seemed simple, all or nothing. But eight years of marriage and sacrifice and extraordinary struggle wasn’t simple, and it changed you, changed your perspective. Melody didn’t have that type of relationship experience, couldn’t understand it, so there was no reason to argue the point. But her outrage made him feel good, even though it didn’t alleviate the pain. He couldn’t be furious with Yuki, at least not right now, so she was his surrogate. “Let’s get out of here, Mel. I’m worried about Jim starving to death without his peanuts.”