“Your ex-wife?” I repeated, curious.
“She’s a cop,” he said, not misunderstanding my interest. “A detective in Tucson. Happily remarried to a guy she knew in high school. I’ve been keeping her in the loop on the situation out here, and called earlier to see if she thought it would be OK to book a short trip back east. She thought not.”
“Did she say to tell the local cops you’d be out of town for a few days?”
“I didn’t ask.”
We became distracted—it was far too easy to be distracted just now—until we were roused by the door leading to the bar opening and closing, and Osiris dashing out of the room to meet whoever was coming into the back hall. We’d just pulled apart when Delia appeared in the doorway, eyeing us speculatively.
“Amanda just called in sick,” she said without preamble, sounding annoyed. “That’s the second Saturday night she’s missed in a row. I’m thinking it’s not a coincidence. It’s too last-minute to get anyone else to come in to cover her shift.”
“I’ll cover for her,” Peter said, making no move to stand up.
Delia stared at him with pursed lips, then shrugged.
“Might as well,” she agreed cynically. “Everybody’s talking about us anyway. At least you and Lola are giving them something new to twaddle about.”
“Is Yvonne here?”
“Running late, but she’ll be here in ten.”
“OK. I’ll be right out.”
“I’ll be in my office.”
With a weary nod, Delia walked out, and we heard the sound of a closing door.
“She’s taking this hard—understandably,” Peter said, rising and tossing our food wrappings toward an overflowing trash bin. The bag promptly slid off, and Osiris moved casually toward it. “Oss.” Two big brown doggie eyes rolled in his master’s direction. “No.”
With a sigh that was almost human, Osiris gave up on the scent of grease and threw himself on the couch beside me, his legs pushing until I was forced to stand up to give him room. Peter picked up the bag from the floor.
“Is there anything I can do to help tonight?” I asked, following him out of the office.
“I think we’ll be OK. Feel free to relax—enjoy your evening.”
“I’ll enjoy it just as much clearing a few empty glasses,” I said. “And you’re short-staffed.”
“We’ll play it by ear,” he said noncommittally, opening the back hallway door for me. “But thank you for the offer.”
The number of people in the barroom had more than doubled, and Lyle was now serving several customers. Peter joined him behind the bar, while I sat on an empty stool at the end closest to the back. A TV overhead was showing a rerun of “Flip or Flop,” which I could follow even without sound. The other TVs showed baseball and golf.
“What’ll you have? On the house, of course,” Peter offered, throwing a bar towel over one shoulder and gesturing toward the rows of bottles behind him.
“Vodka tonic, please,” I said promptly, and watched as he poured out a generous amount of premium vodka. There was something to be said for dating the owner.
■ ■ ■
By nine, the room was crowded and Peter, Lyle and Yvonne were kept busy pouring, cashing out and clearing up. Twice I made a round of tables and picked up empty glasses, which nobody noticed except Peter. Yvonne, after one hard glance, ignored me. She was a sharp-featured woman about my age, I guessed, wearing an extremely tight, low-cut black dress, serving with a sort of no-nonsense attitude and not much small talk.
I sipped two vodka tonics and three glasses of water, appreciating every glance Peter and I shared, every time he touched my waist or back as he walked by, every word we exchanged in passing. It was fun to observe without feeling self-conscious about sitting alone. I used to go out by myself in my early twenties just to go out, and never minded flying solo, but in recent years, even just waiting a few minutes at a bar for a date or a friend I felt like I was being sized up and judged by every male in the place—and whether they found I was worth approaching or not, it was an embarrassing and oddly sordid experience. I blamed LA, but the same thing probably happened in meat markets everywhere.
I didn’t see Tom as the night went on, but Stacy arrived with three girlfriends. She spotted me and came over, leaving the others to order from Peter.
“Hey,” she said in a friendly way. “Are you alone?”
“Not exactly,” I said, nodding down the bar. One of her friends was leaning unnecessarily far across the bar top to smile coyly at Peter while she ordered, artistically showing off her cleavage. He said something and she laughed a little too loudly at what I guessed was a polite witticism.
As if he could feel my eyes on him, he looked over at me and grinned before starting to mix a cocktail.
“Oh... So that’s a thing, huh?”
“Looks like it,” I said casually, somehow unable to keep the profound confidence I felt out of my voice.
She smiled with genuine amusement, raising her eyebrows.
“Dang. I’d call you a fast worker, but I don’t think that’s it, or you would’ve gone for Tom.”
“It was fast, but… unintentional, you know? It just sort of—happened.”
“I’m glad. I’ve always liked Peter—I mean, thought he was a good guy,” she clarified quickly. “Like I said, the rumor mill is stupid. I never thought there was much to it. Though Hal is kind of a slime ball, it’s not hard to believe he’d be into something shady. One of those sleazy guys who runs around on his wife and always seems to have an angle. He’s hit on me in front of my dates—in front of his own wife, which is just… guhh. It sucks, because Delia’s cool.”
“He sounds like a rat,” I said.
“The rattiest of rats,” Stacy agreed. “He even looks like a rat—thin lips and beady eyes.” She made a disgusted face, and I couldn’t help laughing. “It’s probably an insult to rats to call him one.”
“I can’t wait to meet him. Do you want a drink?” I asked.
“My friends were ordering one for me. But thanks. You’re welcome to join us, if you want.”
We both glanced involuntarily down the bar where her friends continued to banter with Peter.
“Thanks… but maybe another time,” I said.
Given their obvious interest in him, I doubted I’d be too popular with the others once they knew the situation. Even if curiosity or kindness won out over resentment and they were nice to me, they might pepper me with uncomfortably intimate questions that I didn’t want to answer. I didn’t mind Stacy knowing, but she’d already proven herself to be a considerate person, while the only thing I knew about her friends was that at least two of them had amorous intentions toward the guy I was dating.
Stacy accepted my refusal without comment, possibly coming to the same conclusions.
“Well, I’m going to mingle—I’ll find you again in a bit.”
“OK, cool,” I said.
She moved off toward the group as they found seats, joining them at a table in the center of the room. They were all in their 30s or 40s, clearly ready to have a good time on a Saturday night. Nothing wrong with that, it could easily have been me out with my girlfriends in LA. We’d occasionally meet at a bar or club, especially those of my friends who were single, which was most of them. I’d only gotten to know a few women, nobody I’d consider especially close, but my friends had friends, and often the groups would get fairly big.
A while later, right after Peter had come over to check on me, placing his hand on my back, I stood up to find all three of Stacy’s friends staring frankly, and not very appreciatively, in my direction, and knew I’d been right to keep my distance.
My eyes met Stacy’s as I crossed the room toward the bathroom, and we both turned away to hid our grins. It was kind of nice to feel I had an ally, or at least a sociable acquaintance, in an otherwise anonymous crowd. The only other face I recognized was Phil the belligerent drunk, who Peter and Lyle kept a firm handle on.
“Take Oss with you,” he suggested. “I’ll be up around one.”
“Do you want to go to your place instead?”
“Alone?” he asked, surprised—as well he might be.
“No, all of us. You could pick us up.”
He smiled and shook his head, opening the “Employees Only” door for me.
“It’s fine. Get some sleep. I’ll bring up food for Oss’s breakfast.”
I didn’t know how many people saw us leave together, but had a feeling it was noticed, and probably discussed. The thought didn’t bother me; it was just more fodder for the local gossips, which I hoped wouldn’t cause Peter and Delia any more trouble than they’d already had to face. Though, as Delia pointed out, at least it was a new topic of conversation.
We collected the dog from Peter’s office, walking out through the back exit and around to where my car was parked. Delia’s office door was still shut when we passed it.
“See you soon,” he said. “We can book our flight tomorrow morning.”
“Are we being totally impulsive and stupid?” I asked, getting into the car and rolling down the driver’s side window before I shut the door.
“Totally,” he said, kissing me briefly and waving us off.
Chapter 7
The next morning we sat in Peter’s living room charging seven hundred dollars’ worth of plane tickets and fees to his credit card. I had all the cash we could possibly need, even after my supply shopping, but he said we’d work that out later, better to book our tickets online now and use the cash for expenses on the trip. The flight left SFO at five minutes after ten that evening, with a return flight scheduled for Thursday afternoon. We were really going.
I’d been fast asleep, Osiris snoring next to me, when Peter knocked on the camper door the previous night. The bed barely fit the three of us, though I found it cozy to be wedged together. It would have been extremely easy to slip into a repeat of our earlier activities, but we were both tired with a long day ahead of us—and I at least anticipated a lot of opportunities in the coming days… weeks… months… to enjoy the physical side of our relationship. There was also a large dog in the bed and nowhere else in the camper for him to lie down, except the hardwood floor—which he’d already made clear was not going to be acceptable.
I hoped he wouldn’t feel too abandoned with Lyle, who had agreed to dog sit for a few days. At least Osiris would have company: Lyle’s two huskies were playmates of his, Peter had told me reassuringly.
“Did you get a chance to tell Delia?” I asked idly, perched beside Peter on the couch while he balanced his laptop on his knees.
“Yeah. I said you had urgent business in New York that I wanted to help sort out, though nothing more than that. I told her we’d come back if anything—if there were any new developments with Hal. She seemed OK with it.” He smiled quizzically at the memory. “I think she’s already resigned to things being different, now that you’re in the picture.”
“Do you think she feels like we’ve moved too fast?”
He gave a half-shrug.
“If she did, she wouldn’t say so. She’s never weighed in on my choices, though she’s seen me make some pretty big screw-ups. It goes both ways, though. I’ve never questioned or judged what she wants to do—as hard as it can be at times. Especially lately.”
“Hal sounds like a piece of shit,” I agreed.
“He is that. Let’s just hope he stays out of prison for another week.”
Using one of my cards this time, at my insistence, we found and booked a hotel in Manhattan, getting a midweek rate along with a twenty-percent-off booking special. I knew Marianne had said not to use my accounts for anything, but I couldn’t see that it mattered. It was hard to believe it could, and I didn’t want Peter to put anything else on his card after paying for the flights. Not to mention how much he was already doing, along with assuring me that he knew the city well and was looking forward to going back.
I’d only been to New York one time, traveling there with several college friends. We’d spent a long weekend seeing the major sights and celebrating our mini-reunion, which made parts of the trip distinctly hazy in my memory.
On one of the days, I’d left the group and gone to Newark to visit Marianne. I don’t know why she thought it would be a good idea for me to see her at the loft. I’d been so uncomfortable I hadn’t stayed more than a few minutes, and then Mike, a dirty guy with long hair and an aggressiveness I found extremely disturbing, had entered the scene, and I took the train back to my friends.
The hotel we booked wasn’t too far from the headquarters of the United Nations, something I’d missed seeing last time due to my ill-fated outing to New Jersey, though I doubted we’d have a chance to go there. Sightseeing wasn’t going to be a priority on this trip. I had a hard time imagining what we’d be doing, but at this point I was getting used to only seeing one or two steps ahead. Peter had spent considerably more time in New York, visiting a childhood friend in Queens over the years. He was more familiar with the transit system than I was, already knowing how we’d get around in Newark and which trains we’d take to our hotel.
Transportation and shelter being arranged, we moved onto the next task: finding out anything we could about the commune, as I called it. Peter handed me his computer so I could log into my Facebook and Gmail accounts, waiting patiently as I searched for references from six years ago.
“I can’t believe it’s been almost two weeks since I logged into anything,” I said, seeing a startling number of new emails—most of them spam—and notifications come up.
For the first time since I left LA, it struck me that I hadn’t once checked social media. No Instagram updates, no Twitter feeds. No texts, no emails, no messages from dating apps—which, come to think of it, I’d need to cancel my subscriptions to. I’d been completely disconnected from everyone and everything. All those distractions and interactions that had taken up such a large portion of my time and attention had been whisked away along with my phone, left behind in my apartment. It was like I’d gone cold turkey and hadn’t even noticed. Of course I’d been bored and lonely those days at the camper by myself, but I’d vaguely attributed that to the isolation of my situation and no TV. I hadn’t read the news or heard the latest celebrity scandal, and it didn’t seem to matter at all.
I wondered if any of my friends had texted me, and what they thought when I didn’t reply. Probably that I was busy; so often we didn’t respond to each other, they’d shrug and assume that I forgot to tell them I was going out of town or got involved with a new guy. In both cases, I realized with dark amusement, they’d be right.
Looking at my various feeds, the endless meaningless posts and stories and photos and videos, I felt even more disconnected. Many of the pictures and words represented people who I cared about, it was just impossible to care about the things they were posting. That made it much easier to focus on the search at hand. Marianne had very little presence on social media. The only account I knew she had was Instagram, and her feed was practically empty. The most recent update was a selfie I’d taken of the two of us, posted by me the day after my dad’s funeral, when we ate lunch at a restaurant on the Bay. It was the last time we saw each other before she showed up in LA.
I scrolled back to around the time she would have been living in Newark. It didn’t take long with the lack of content, but found nothing that I could tie back to her living situation. Really there was very little there at all. It seemed strange, now, that she’d posted almost nothing over the years, but then it was possible I’d just never noticed. Lots of people kept a low profile online. Peter, for one, said he only looked at Twitter and never tweeted anything himself.
“Nothing here,” I told him. “I might have saved the address in my emails, and I’ll see if I can’t find the Facebook page th
ey started.”
Using my own Facebook profile, I scrolled back… and back… and back… until around the time that I remembered Marianne getting involved with the commune, looking at page likes. I was almost ready to give up, feeling I’d gone too far, when I hit “display older posts” and there it was, right on top.
“Holy crap, I think I found them,” I told Peter, almost as surprised as gratified. “‘Free the People,’ that’s what they called themselves.”
He leaned to look with me as I clicked on the page name, half-expecting it to tell me it no longer existed. But the page was still active, whether or not the commune was. It called itself a social group and didn’t list a public owner. There wasn’t much on the group feed, no photos or events. A few articles from anarchist kinds of blogs that didn’t even own unique domains, with WordPress and BlogSpot in the URLs. Conspiracy theories about politicians being hired by terrorists and Wall Street being secretly run by China were two of the more comprehendible examples. The last one had appeared five years ago.
“Not much here,” Peter finally said, after I’d scrolled down and found only the same kind of article reposts, along with a few memes of the type I’d found offensive. Nothing obviously original or tangible. “Hard to believe they’d be able to mobilize, though I guess this could just be a front for something else. What do you remember about the guy who ordered her around?”
I thought back to the sweltering June afternoon when I’d arrived at the warehouse loft.
“I wasn’t there for very long,” I said, “and for most of the time he was in a back room—having sex with at least a couple other people,” I added, making a face.
“Seriously?” he asked, eyebrows raised.
“Yeah. It was—you could hear everything. I mean, to each their own, but… The walls were super thin, just these partitions they’d put up in a big loft space. I’d had to get buzzed into the building, and when I got to the door Marianne was there to meet me. She seemed on edge, invited me inside but kept me in this kitchen area—everything was kind of primitive but they had running water and a fridge. As soon as I heard the—moans and… uck—I started to get really uncomfortable. I could tell Marianne wasn’t happy about it, but she pretended like nothing was happening—she introduced me to a guy and girl who were cooking a vegan stew, or something like that. They were totally blasé about what was going on—and totally stoned. The air was just thick with pot—which wouldn’t have been a big deal, but there were needles and other stuff kind of everywhere—and the place was filthy and smelled like… like BO and rot. I couldn’t see how Marianne could stand it. Another woman came in and asked me if I believed in God and started ranting about all this senseless garbage—the stoned people kept echoing what she was saying. I got fed up and told Marianne I couldn’t stay, and she said she’d come with me and we could get lunch somewhere in the city.”
Spiders in a Dark Web Page 8