by Matt Spire
Is that what happened? Is that how they'd started?
“After one in the morning?”
“I'd like to talk. Can I meet you at the bar?”
She paused, uncertain, her lips poised like Fern's.
Sad, smiling, pouty, playful, confused.
What's the fucking difference anyway?
“Of course.”
It's begun to rain again, and Jericho dives under Mila Ristorante's canopy, surprised to find he's walked fifteen blocks.
His memory has become like a winter tree. It grew out of his head long ago. All the facts dried up and fell away, and soon he'll just be following his own footsteps, circles in the snow.
Maybe everything with Maggie was his idea. Or maybe he just wanted her to take Reuben's job as front desk manager. He can't be sure.
So many I don't know's. He wishes all women could be like little Alana. “Oh! Okay!” Running off. Realizing he was full of shit years later. In her head, some whimsical white lie, a fish at a typewriter, not a polaroid of a strange woman kissing her father.
Fuck you, Reuben.
But for what? Being his own honest reflection?
He pulls out a spare cigarette.
It's wet. He wishes he'd talked Reuben into giving him more pills instead.
He tries to think of innocence, of something Alana would say, but his own inner voice calls back in somber rhyme.
Circles in the snow, round and round we go.
3
Glyphs
Eric looks up from the leatherbound book.
“What the fuck is this,” Mae asks. “Someone's journal?”
But now Crane shines his light into a footlocker he's placed on the bed.
“It's all here,” he tells them, rooting through unblemished papers. “Look.”
He hands them a clipping from a magazine. Mae takes it, and Eric is tempted to feel the texture against his fingers. Many years have passed since he felt such clean glossy paper, let alone one from a magazine. However banal, it is a strange artifact from another time.
Mae narrows her eyes at the print. “Gozip? What the hell is this?”
Gozip: Is it true that Jericho held wild parties on your property?
Melendez (former landlord): I knew there was drugs—like, pills—passing through sometimes, but you couldn't ask for a more quiet tenant.
Gozip: We've heard these parties were within weeks of the death. Can you confirm that?
Melendez: Oh, I don't know, Mr. Amara, he seemed very depressed, you know. He didn't move here until months later.
Gozip: Sounds like a pretty lavish lifestyle for an undergraduate drop-out, doesn't it? Expensive women, drugs?
Melendez: Mr. Amara rented the efficiency. No oven, mini-fridge.
Gozip: What about the women?
Melendez: He wasn't living on my property during the trial but if he had women around, I never seen them.
Gozip: What about reports of strange, ongoing experiments? Is it true he likes to lure these women to his home and cut them open with scalpels?
Melendez: When police came, when he overdosed, that apartment was empty, man, just like a mattress and a computer.
Gozip: No, maybe, bloodied panties or strange tupperware containers in the fridge?
Melendez: Man, I tell you, Mr. Amara didn't even have a pair of scissors.
Gozip: Disturbing.
“No,” Eric says, “That Jericho? You're kidding me.”
“Keep reading,” Crane says, motioning to the book.
***
I didn't realize I'd been obsessively collecting articles about Jericho until I'd amassed five shoeboxes full.
It began when I stole the first article about the death from him. Jericho offered that I move in until I got on my own feet, but I figured he really needed someone to look after him.
That was when Jericho only made it into little newspaper articles, back when newspapers were still a thing. The Los Angeles Times. Other articles followed as the bizarre nature of the death caught on. Then the trial. The verdict of innocence. All the grisly details laid bare over the span of eighteen months, but he only saved the worst: the death.
I stole it, I suppose, because I was trying to steal the obsession from him. He'd read the clipping so many times, passing out on oxycontin or morphine and drink, that not a letter was unsmudged, the paper worn thin and soft. He tortured himself with it.
When I stole it, I didn't know there was video footage of the death. Like many others, I didn't see the video until it was admitted into evidence at the trial.
The video just tears your heart to shreds. The newspaper clipping became so meaningless in comparison.
Only he must have watched the entire video in the courtroom. I can't say what happened in that frozen moment, where anyone dared to stare in that room full of turning stomachs, but I had to draw my own eyes. Before the video even turned grotesque, as soon as I saw her, all vitality drained in her last days. His recorded voice echoed through the court, asking if she was certain, and she begged. For the sake of their unborn child, for the sake of little Autumn. The brightest soul of my class, begging. I had to look somewhere, anywhere else, and by chance I caught his face. I watched him, in a state of misery beyond expression. Unflinching. Dante's nightmares could not devise a more horrifying punishment than Jericho endured at that moment.
When time thawed, I became aware of the commotion: several in the room had fainted. There was the rankness of vomit. But Jericho was still.
He'd been broken. No newspaper article mattered, no verdict mattered.
Not long after, his partner from University and only other friend committed suicide. Jericho tried to reach out to his family, to his widowed wife and two little girls, but they refused contact.
That's when the drugs started for him, and the articles for me.
I'd become obsessed with keeping those articles, the written transformation of a man. The slow rise from a nobody to a devil to a god.
I guess that's when it all started.
All those articles, and how much did I read between the lines?
***
“I barely remember this stuff,” Eric says. “I was a kid when anyone last talked about it.”
“We all were.” Crane nods, solemn. “Now, I believe there's more to be found here than just an accomplice's confession.”
4
Lydia
It's early, but the air is awake with earthy rain and coffee, the buttery aroma of the bakery, and there's something discernibly wintry about the air. Even the faint, fishy stench of the far away fresh market adds a richness to the morning bloom.
Lydia sets her book down and stretches. It's too dark for reading, especially under the table umbrella.
A car door shuts around the alley, and she jumps.
“Oh hun, look at you.” It's Florence, owner of The Sandy Sparrow, rushing and fumbling with bags and an umbrella.
“Do you need me to move?”
“Move inside, you silly thing.” Lydia takes the umbrella and bags as Florence unlocks the door. “Thank you. Now, what are you doing in this crazy weather? You're lucky someone forgot to put up the chairs.”
“Woke up early. I thought I'd wait, it's really not too bad.”
“I can't believe no one saw you.” They step inside the dark cafe. “Is anyone even here?”
“I'm sure. It's been smelling wonderful.”
Florence calls to her employees as she disappears into the kitchen, turning on the overhead lights.
Lydia sets Florence's things down and walks back to the entrance. “Would you like me to lock it?” she calls out.
“No. I'm late, hun, didn't you notice?”
She hadn't noticed, really. Nor, until seeing her reflection in the door, had she noticed how wet she'd become. Her dark chestnut hair is drenched black, its short wet clumps ridiculously plastered to her oval face.
“I'm an otter,” she says aloud, shaking her head until it has some messy semblance of v
olume.
“You're a what?”
Lydia smiles and walks along the wall. Florence has hung new art. They're watercolors of ocean scenes in gorgeous detail, but each substitutes humans with fish or dolphins on beach towels and in life preservers. Under each is a title and price.
“Don't judge me,” Florence says from behind the counter. “You know that's what everyone wants to see.”
“This one says 'Shell Life.'” She taps a painting of a starfish tanning on a beach chair, and fakes a frown. “That's not a pun on still life, is it?”
“I don't make them, dear, I just sell them. We'll be ready to go in a moment.”
The door swings open and Lydia locks gazes with a familiar-looking man. Shortish, about her height, and like a shadow, all brown and black with sad blue eyes. For a brief moment, he seems to recognize her too, and she can almost feel his gaze moving across her like fingers on braille. Then he jerks away and marches for the counter.
They've almost passed a few times in the street, she thinks. Late at night when she can't sleep.
She sits and watches Florence and the man talk. He asks if they have coffee, and Lydia snickers. She notices him fidget, looking around nervously, and lowers her head.
After a while, he sits a few tables away with a steaming cup, drawing circles on the table with his finger and stealing glances at her.
Florence brings her usual banana-nut muffin with a chai to the table and asks if she's reading a self-help book.
“Oh, no,” Lydia laughs, flipping the cover over.
“Accounting?”
“Some light reading for the store.”
“Aw.” Florence flashes a patronizing smile, but then she asks how her father's doing.
“There's still some good days in there.”
Really, they're all the same, but people like to hear about “good days.” No one wants to hear, “This is the nine-hundred and first day in a row to be worse than the last.”
“Well, you should bring him down sometime if he's up to it.”
“Sure. He's a recluse now. A big, fat, brown recluse.”
Florence giggles. “Oh, we need to fix that.” Then to lighten the mood she raises a brow and nods to the man, rolling her eyes, and Lydia wonders what he must've said after she tuned him out. Florence walks away, leaving her curious.
That stubbly, pensive, square face and nervous glance evoke something hard to place, like an aging memory of a faint dream. She picks apart more food than she eats and leafs halfheartedly through the book–in part because she has already learned many of its lessons on her own, but mostly because she finds herself distracted by the strange man.
Florence returns, and Lydia places her money on the table.
“It's almost Fall,” Florence says.
“Do you like Fall?”
Florence squints. “Are you going to school this year?”
“Next year, maybe.”
“You're a bright girl, Lydia.”
She sips the last of her chai, deepens to a passive, self-assured voice. “I know. I'm waiting for the professors to catch up.”
Florence snickers and collects the money. Walking away, she says, “This town's one big service industry, hun. Nothing is real here.”
Lydia stands, looks to the windows. The sun is breaking.
The man is looking outside, too. She feels strangely brave.
“Have I seen you somewhere?” she asks, trying to sound as polite and unbothersome as she can.
“I don't know,” he says before turning. It doesn't seem true, even though he's answering for her.
“Oh, well, small town.” He reacts to her smile by staring back at the table. “Well, have a nice day.”
The invisible fingers of his eyes trace her back again, and she can't tell if she likes the flustered sensation it stirs.
***
Back at Eden's Vineyard, Lydia plans her day. She writes “call restaurants” in her notebook, and stares at the next empty line.
With any luck, the emerged sunshine will continue, and vacationing couples will stroll in to complete their night with a merlot or malbec or champagne, their security deposit towards romance.
But she can't rely on that.
She yawns, regretting the mild chai. Nothing would feel better than her soft bed, the cool draft of her window.
Around her stand narrow aisles brimming with the dull glimmer of bottles. Nothing to restock, and these modest sales would diminish in the coming months.
She spends a few minutes chalking up a description of a new fall beaujolais on their blackboard, even drawing the berries and pomegranates. They look like a horrible pile of severed eyeballs or little white olives and onions, so she redoes them in purple and red chalk. Remembering it's Saturday, she adds an apple brut cava, and the word “TASTING” in huge letters at the top. Careful to avoid anywhere it might get wet if the rain returns, she places the sign outside under the giant mural.
She always feels strange putting silly drawings under the mural her father had commissioned, an enormous homage to the mother Lydia never knew. It faded prematurely, and was too stylized to resemble her mother in an eerie way, but it is vast and emotionally dense.
In the kitchen she grabs a tonic water and mouses up the loud wooden staircase. Her father Claudio is resting, silver hair matted to his pillow, but opens his eyes and grunts when the door creaks too much.
“Good morning,” she whispers.
“Is it?”
She sits in his wheelchair. “Good, or morning?”
He mixes a laugh and cough, pulling himself up. “Either. It can't be morning.”
“Let's see. I ate breakfast. They delivered the paper. The sun's up. I'm sorry. No one's waiting on you.”
“You should've woken me earlier.”
“Oh, come on! Make up your mind, old man!”
She understands what he means. Ever since she was little, he woke up at dawn to unload cargo at the docks until he had enough money to open Eden's Vineyard. Old habits die hard even when they can't be practiced.
“Bah.” He motions to his bedside table. “I smell rain.”
She takes his pills from the drawer, dragging the wheelchair closer with her feet, and stops.
The bottle is so light in her palm. That isn't right at all–no, it should be nearly full.
Digging for another bottle, the right bottle, she grits her teeth–no, no, no–tries to channel the energy into shaking her leg. But there are no other bottles and she knows it.
In the last couple months, father's been taking twice as many pills. And behind her back, too. Acting stoic.
“You're imagining things,” she says of the rain. She's terse, but she can't help it. “It's a beautiful, sunny day. We should go for a walk.” She hands him two pills and the tonic water.
She's tried to ignore it, hasn't checked in a few days but–she grips the hollow, weightless bottle–what were there?–fifteen, twenty? She can't ignore it anymore. More and more go missing.
Downstairs the door opens, and Reuben calls out.
Father takes his pills, swallowing hard. “It is late,” he says. “Dust off my cobwebs and take me downstairs.”
And down the longest eight steps in the world they go. Every day she can feel that miniscule difference, his weight dropping pound by pound, as she strains less and less to hold the chair–everyday it's easier, and everyday it's harder all the same.
“Your clothes are damp,” he says halfway. “I might be a haggard troll, but I'm not blind.”
“It's beautiful out!” she insists. “I fell in the fountain.”
“What fountain?” she croaks, imitating his voice. “The one near the new church. What new church? The church near the bookstore they built twenty years ago. What new bookstore?”
“Oh, stop.” But he coughs, which she guesses is a laugh.
She needs to keep talking, keep him laughing. Anything to cover the agonizingly slow thump, thump, thump of the wheels hitting each step, jarring
his pained bones and pummeling his dignity.
Big, fat brown recluse. Not so much.
Reuben is filling the register when they emerge. “Gonna be a big one today.”
“Good,” her father says, “I can almost afford the concubines to push me around.”
He insists on wheeling himself through the aisles, examining the stock, then settles in the corner, exhausted.
Lydia brings the daily mail. The paper is the only thing he'll invest himself in, his last connection to anything beyond these walls.
“Looks the same as yesterday,” he says.
“We did pretty good, even for a Friday,” she tells him. It's a half-truth, but it doesn't matter. He only pretends to keep track of business. “And I call the restaurants today to take their fall and winter orders.”
He ruffles the paper. “Is Macbeth still at the theater?”
“I’ll also host a tasting today for some of our new fall items.”
“Nice drawing,” Reuben says in a tone that's either condescending or flirting. She imagines he uses the same tone for both.
“Here, Caligatha Ensemble. Fridays at nine and Saturdays at seven this month. We missed last night.”
“It's Saturday, Dad. We can't close.”
He might seriously expect them to. She can never tell how confident he is of their financial stability. It had been a mystery beginning with her gradual inheritance of overdue bills and sloppy bookkeeping. She suspected whatever poor business skills he had only suffered as he shifted focus of all his fortitude onto the cancer.
“They're only performing Macbeth because of Halloween, I'm sure of it.”
“Oh. Then it's settled. We'll close up at five so we have time to make our picket signs.”
She would like to take him. A year ago, he stopped visiting his last spot in the outside world, the beach at dusk, where he stared out at the golden horizon as though witnessing the parting gates of heaven, waiting to join Lydia's long-gone mother. But now all sense of wonder is dry. Whatever meaning the play holds for him, she wants to believe it promises he still has vitality remaining, buried deep down.