Pasadena

by Sherri L. Smith

  • • •

  “Vicodin, Valium, roofies.” Joey recites the litany of drugs found in Maggie’s system.

  We’re back in his car, headed toward Luke’s house. As we head south, the thin, curving palm trees give way to sheltering magnolias again. Joey’s eyes flick from the road to me and back again.

  “Date rape drugs,” I point out. “And everyone thinks it’s a suicide?”

  Joey shifts uncomfortably behind the wheel. “We call them date rape drugs, doctors call them relaxants. I guess a lot of people OD on the same stuff when they’re trying to off themselves. Mrs. Kim didn’t say anything about . . .” He hesitates to say it. “About rape.”

  I take off my sunglasses to rub my eyes. The wind and pollen have dried them out. “Maybe the Kims would rather have a suicidal daughter than a raped and murdered one.”

  Joey shrugs. “But wait. If Luke had drugged her for sex, why would she dress up for him? Wasn’t she going to sleep with him anyway?”

  I don’t like it, but he’s right. “Unless it wasn’t Luke.”

  “Maybe,” he says, but I know he isn’t buying it.

  “Besides, if it was suicide, where did Maggie get the drugs? I mean, she sometimes smoked pot, and she tried ecstasy once. But roofies and Valium?”

  Joey turns to look at me. “You’re kidding, right? Between Mrs. Kim’s nerves and Parker’s brain tumor, I’d bet there’s an entire pharmacy in that house. Valium and Vicodin would be easy.”

  “Which might explain Mrs. Kim’s adept change of subject. But roofies? What are those, a marital aid?”

  Joey turns onto a side street, shaking his head. “No. I don’t know about those.”

  I take off my glasses again, wishing we had put the top up. “Well, maybe Luke Liu does.” I wipe my eyes. The trees are wreaking havoc on my allergies. Magnolias stretch out before us, a cocoon of glossy dark leaves and creamy white flowers enveloping the never-ending road.

  • • •

  We find Luke in Central Park, south of Green Street, thanks to a tip from a blushing Amanda. I’ve got to hand it to Joey—he knows how to work the younger ones. When he knocked on the door, all it took was a sheepish smile and she practically wrapped her legs around him.

  Luke is photographing the empty playground like a pedophile planning an assault. He frowns when he sees us crossing the dying St. Augustine grass and turns back to arranging his shot. When we’re close enough, he lowers the camera and faces Joey down.

  “I know you came by my house the other day. Leave my sister alone, Joe.”

  Joey raises an eyebrow, looking more surprised than threatened. “The way you left Maggie alone?” he asks.

  Lukey Loo blanches and fidgets with his camera. Pale as he is, his cheeks turn deep red. “I never did anything to Maggie,” he says.

  “No,” I agree. “More like, she did it to you. Or is it more PC to say you did ‘it’”—I use air quotes—“together?”

  Luke hunches over like he’s going to be sick. “Oh God, oh God. You saw my photos. That’s why you came over that night? Just to . . . I . . .” He stops, hands resting on his thighs.

  “Sit down, Luke,” I tell him. He nods and finds his way to a nearby bench. Joey and I join him.

  Luke takes a few hiccupping breaths and pulls it together. Almost.

  “When you asked . . . about it at dinner, I couldn’t say anything. It would seem like bragging. But it wasn’t like that. It . . .” He looks up at me, pleading. “You don’t speak ill of the dead.” He swallows, sits up straighter. “It wasn’t the first time she offered.”

  Joey and I exchange a surprised look.

  “She . . . Well, I always said no. I just took pictures, watched over her. If we were ever going to cross that line, I wanted it to be real.” He shakes his head. “I’m not stupid, you know? Maggie was a tease. She was a slut maybe too, but I loved her. That’s why I . . .” He falters, and gestures with the camera. “I wanted her to be safe. But I’m human and the one time I give in, I let her send me home afterward.”

  “You said she’d offered before,” I say. He nods numbly. “So, why take her up on it this time?”

  Luke swallows hard. “If you saw the pictures, you saw that car pulling away? That was Dane. Maggie said he was thinking of breaking up with Tally, even though he loved her. You heard the rumor he’d been cheating, right?” His eyes flick to me and down again. “Well, yeah, you heard, because of that thing you said at dinner. Anyway, I guess it was true. And he didn’t think he’d ever stop.”

  “So why’d he go see Maggie?” I ask.

  “I guess they talked about that kind of stuff. I don’t know. But Maggie thought it was brave or something. Romantic. She said she’d never had that with anyone.”

  “Had what?” Joey asks, looking to me. A cheating boyfriend? A guy who would dump her? I shake my head.

  Luke shrugs his narrow shoulders. “You know. Love.”

  He looks lost for a moment, pulled back to that night. “But then there was me. One-sided, but love just the same. There had always been me.” He slumps in on himself. “If I hadn’t slept with her, maybe she wouldn’t have . . .”

  “Killed herself?” I say. “She didn’t.”

  He stares at me, a flicker of relief turning to confusion. “But . . . even if it was just an accident . . . if I hadn’t left, maybe she’d still be alive.”

  After Luke gets through with his blubbering guilt trip, he agrees to help us re-create Maggie’s last day.

  “I’ve got other pictures from that night. Or at least, I will.”

  “What did we miss?” I say.

  Luke wipes his nose on his sleeve, eyes still glassy, and refocuses. “I’m working on a new series of slides. It’s not like regular film, or digital. The grain is fantastic and the black and white can be really intense.” He’s in his realm now, a different person. Confident. Excited.

  Maybe that’s what Maggie saw in him. All I ever saw were the puppy-dog eyes and the camera.

  “It needs special processing,” he explains. “Stuff I can’t do in my dark room at home. So there’s a place I go in Hollywood. I dropped it off the next day, before . . . before I found out about Maggie.”

  After he’d already ordered the flowers, I’m guessing. I can see it, lovestruck Lukey Loo drifting down the sidewalk, cupids and hearts floating around him like some sap in a 1940s cartoon, off to get the pictures printed from His Big Night.

  Every kid should have snapshots of his first time. Something to remember it by. And something to brag over later. Which might be true for most teenaged boys, but not Luke. For him, it was high art or nothing.

  “When can you pick them up?” Joey asks. It’s a foreign concept to me, sending out canisters of film and waiting for prints. The sort of thing my mother used to do. There are still little black-and-yellow rolls of film in the corners of our closet, waiting for someone to care enough to see what’s inside.

  “Tomorrow. I can call you when it’s ready.”

  “Perfect.” I rummage around in my bag. “That reminds me, Maggie’s mom gave me the funeral info.” I find the Post-it note in my purse. The details are already in my phone, so I hand it to him. Any confidence he was feeling shatters and he breaks down again. I feel bad, but it’s getting late and grief is private, so I hand him a few more tissues and Joey and I leave him to it. We’ve got a mall to shop.

  • • •

  Paseo Colorado is more the idea of a mall than the real thing. Here in Southern California, where malls are outdoor temples for sun worshippers with discretionary incomes, the Paseo is a soulless construct. Except for the classy ArcLight theater and a couple of oddities like the antique mall, it’s your grandmother’s shopping center: a big anchor store and a few bland chains.

  We come up the escalator from the creamy white parking lot and out into the sun.

 
“Joe, grab a coffee,” I say, and take the long walk into Macy’s. I haven’t shopped here since junior high. This is the kind of place mothers go to clothe their families for holiday parties and special occasions. Funerals count as special.

  I flip through three sales racks and a few designer clotheshorses before I find a suitable match. Another fifteen minutes in the dressing room and I’ve settled on a sleeveless sheath dress with a lace overlay, black on black. I pull Maggie’s pillbox hat out of my bag and check myself in the mirror. Jackie O all the way.

  On the way out, I stop at the costume jewelry counter and buy a twenty-dollar strand of pearls.

  • • •

  “Ready?” Joey asks, shoving an iced mocha toward me. He’s soaking up the sun at a café table for two. I drop my purchases and sit beside him.

  “Yep.” I suck down a dram of mocha and feel myself relaxing for the first time since I got home.

  “Where next?” he asks.

  I pull out the necklace and let the luminous beads spill across the palm of my hand. “Edina’s, of course.”

  • • •

  Edina lives in a small apartment building just north of the 210 at the edge of Altadena. As the name implies, Altadena sits above Pasadena, with its back up against the towering San Gabriel Mountains. Once a genteel place of bungalows and Italian firs, now the city is just Pasadena’s homely little sister.

  Edina’s mother smiles at us from the front doorway of their three-unit cottage apartment and shakes her head. “Eddie’s not home,” she says in accented English. “YMCA.”

  Joey and I get back in the car.

  Apparently Edina’s got a summer job. She’s a lifeguard at the community pool. Imagine that.

  We walk out onto the deck of the Olympic-sized swimming pool surrounded by a fifteen-foot chain-link fence. A stern guy in a pair of regulation red-orange trunks and a white Y camp T-shirt tells us to sign in and take off our shoes. We sign the clipboard, kick off our flops, and march across the pebbled ground to Edina, sitting at the end of the pool.

  Maggie could pull off a one-piece suit, but Edina has the added challenge of the Y’s color—she looks like a misshapen tomato and she knows it. She catches sight of us and wraps a thin towel around her waist. It doesn’t help.

  “What do you want?” she asks.

  “Maggie’s necklace. Her mom wants it back.”

  Edina scowls. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  I sigh. Joey looks bored. “Little pearl number. The choker from the other night. Family heirloom, sentimental value,” I tell her.

  Edina’s scowl falters. “But . . . Maggie gave it to me. She knew I loved it. She said it was mine.”

  “When was that?” I ask.

  Edina looks lost. Her fingers go to her throat, to a choker that isn’t there.

  “The . . . the day she died. I went over to pick up some stuff she was donating to the camp—old beach towels and whatnot.” Her face hardens. “Bet you didn’t know that. She was charitable, your bestie. Even volunteered with the toddlers sometimes.”

  I shrug. “I wasn’t her keeper, Edina. Just her friend.”

  “I feel sorry for you, Jude,” she says. Her eyes flick from me to Joey and back again. “For both of you.”

  If that’s bait, I don’t take it.

  “Can we have the necklace, or do you want to tell her mother no? Funeral’s tomorrow at noon. I’m sure she’d love to meet you and hear all about it in person.”

  Edina opens her mouth, then shuts it again.

  We turn and walk away. I smirk and Joey nudges my arm. “Don’t,” he says.

  “Don’t what?” Now I’m full-on smiling.

  “Don’t enjoy this too much,” he warns me. “When it’s all over, you won’t have any friends left.”

  I wonder if that includes him.

  11

  Mrs. Kim calls me in the middle of lunch with Joey. They want me to help finalize the funeral plans.

  She hopes I haven’t already eaten. I lie around a mouthful of French fries and promise to be there by two o’clock.

  “What was that?” Joey asks when I hang up.

  I wash down my fries with a swig of soda and wipe my mouth. “Lunch at the Kims’ in half an hour.”

  He drops his burger onto the plate. “Are you kidding me?”

  I shake my head. “We’re going to talk funeral plans. Favorite music, flowers, and such. The final touches for the big day. Don’t worry, you don’t have to come.”

  Joey looks relieved. “Seeing them at the funeral will be awkward enough,” he says. His worry passes and comes back pointed in another direction. “You sure you’re up for that?”

  I look at my fingers on the table, and drum them against the laminate top. “What would Maggie do?”

  He smiles and puts his hands in the air, index fingers pointing up. He spins them in circles and we both say, “It’s a party!”

  “What do you think happens when you die?”

  Maggie was high on pot and introspection the night of her grandmother’s funeral.

  “Coroner picks you up, or a funeral home. Then there’s a funeral and they bury you. Or cremate you.” I shrugged. “Then everybody eats.”

  Maggie laughed coughingly. “Very spiritual. I mean, what happens to you, not your body. What happens to your soul.”

  I blinked. We were on the back patio of her parents’ place at two o’clock in the morning, long hours since her mother had cried herself to sleep in her husband’s arms.

  Parker had a procedure scheduled for the morning, something to reduce pressure on his brain. The tumor was growing, along with the strain on his family. It was just rotten timing that his grandmother chose that week to die. The Kims always got circumspect and quiet before a Parker surgery. And Maggie always got high.

  She and I were the only conscious people on the block that night. A perfect setting to talk about eternity.

  “The Buddhists say you get recycled,” I told her. “And the Christians think you go to Heaven to hang with God. And Jesus.”

  “Become an angel,” Maggie said dreamily.

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  She exhaled long and slow like she was still smoking, although her joint was finished before I even showed up.

  “What do you think?” she asked. I shrugged again. “Is there a Hell?” she pressed.

  I looked down at my feet, still in their flip-flops despite the cold, my robe tied tight over my pj’s. “I hope so.”

  Maggie laughed, a mad cackle. “That’s a stupid thing to hope for. What if you end up there, frying like a fricking weenie roast on Satan’s big old stick?”

  We both laughed at the obscenity of the image, and I swatted her arm for good measure.

  “That was blasphemy,” I said. She kept laughing, waggling her fingers and eyebrows in a Groucho Marx imitation.

  “No,” she said. “That’s entertainment.”

  “Maybe that’s all we can hope for.” I raised an imaginary glass to the cold, starless sky. “Whatever lies in the great beyond, may it be entertaining.”

  Lunch is a virtual party at the Kims’ place. A genuine catered affair. A chiseled twentysomething guy in a white shirt and black apron smiles at me from the depths of the kitchen as Maggie’s father ushers me in.

  “That’s Bruce,” Mr. Kim says, introducing Apron Man. “From Sunset Café. They’re catering the reception after the funeral. We’re tasting the menu today.” He pauses, runs a hand through his clean-cut salt-and-pepper hair. “Thank you for coming. We should have asked sooner. We appreciate your input.”

  “Not a problem,” I say, and follow him out back to the patio. Someone has turned on the misters and a fine spray of cooling water evaporates overhead, just shy of our sunbaked skin.

  Mrs. Kim wears a pair of pearl earrings that, no doub
t, were a matching set with Maggie’s missing choker. The pearls complement her latest facial and the linen sheath dress she’s wearing. Mr. Kim looks country-club sharp in pressed khakis and a pale pink polo. Sprawled in his high-backed wheelchair, Parker glances at me from behind his black-rimmed glasses. He’s dressed all in white: white polo, white shorts, buttoned up and proper.

  I feel underdressed for the spread before me, food and family alike.

  Dropping my bag, I take the seat across from Parker, straightening my tie-dyed tank top as I go. “Hey, Parks. How’s it rolling?”

  Parker sneers at me, then turns it into a smile for his folks. “Terrific,” he says. “I’m finally an only child.”

  “As nature intended, no doubt.”

  Maggie’s mom is staring hard at the cloth napkin twisted in her lap. She’s never scolded Parker a day in his life—why start now? Mr. Kim clears his throat. “Try the salmon, everyone. I’m not sure fish is a good idea for a buffet on a hot day, but it looks delicious.”

  “Maggie hated cold salmon,” Parker says, but his father isn’t listening. He dishes out plates of the stuff—a whole poached fish on a platter surrounded by carved vegetables—then goes on doling out the other dishes as Bruce the Caterer whizzes in and out of the house, adding trays to the spread. Poor guy. Two misery meals for the price of one. I’d rather stick a toothpick in my eye than serve the Kims twice.

  “So, Parker, were you home on Friday night?” I ask.

  He shrugs. “Hmm, I don’t recall having brain surgery that day, so either I was home, or I should fire that surgeon.”

  “That’s a good one, Parker.” His dad laughs and turns to me. “His therapist says humor is a good way to deal with his illness and emotional stress.”

  I nod. I wonder if his therapist knows the difference between humor and sarcasm.

  “What do you think?” Mr. Kim asks suddenly. “Of the food, I mean.”

  “It’s delicious. Go with the curried chicken salad and cold roast beef. The antipasti with extra mushrooms, and maybe that fruit spritzer. Maggie would approve. But Parker’s right. Skip the fish.”