But you FUCKED IT UP!!!
You did.
I am NOT sorry we happened. I’m just a symptom of what was wrong in the FIRST PLACE.
He can’t have your brand of crazy in his life anymore.
And Morgan can’t have your crazy in her life either. Police showing up at our house at all times of the day? NOT. COOL. What did you do to Prudence??? Again with THIS??!!
We almost lost Mo how many times last year??? I AM NOT blaming you for any of those times!!! You did what was right. Brooke was a bully. I remember girls crying after class because she’d made fun of their bodies, their clothes, their technique. But THAT IS THE WORLD OF BALLET. BULLIES AND BITCHES. We don’t sit. We don’t chat. We DANCE. Some girls can’t handle that. I’m sorry Morgan wasn’t better prepared for this reality. And please believe me. I NEVER told her to stop eating. I said she should WATCH what she ate. Big difference.
None of this is the point. The point is YOU.
Why are you doing this?? Morgan couldn’t win every role. It’s been a year now, but your jealousy and anger over Brooke taking the lead was immature and ridiculous. And really? I don’t think it’s even that. You’re competing against her mom. Phoebe. You don’t want Phoebe to win. And because of that, all hell’s broken loose. I told Detective Hurley the truth, that you were unhinged last night. Because you were.
Miriam. Okay. I actually APPLAUD you, to be honest. Brutal, but Brooke was brutal. She was a CANCER. You exposed her and only light can clean out darkness. Ballet class is almost pleasant again. BUT YOU HAVE TO STOP THIS!!!
Coming over here last night was PATHETIC.
Billy’s over you. Okay? You LOST. And yes, I’m aware that a cheating man cheats. Once he gets tired of my callused feet scratching him at night, once he gets tired of the way I stand, I’ll grand allegro out of that house and OUT OF HIS LIFE.
Until then tho?
MOVE DA FUCK ON.
Ashlee
P.S. You can stop using MRS now. I know you’re still claiming him. Again: MOVE. DA. FUCK. ON.
4
So big of Ashlee to tell me that she understood me. So self-aware of her to recognize her temporary status as Billy’s wife, especially since Morgan had so many pretty female teachers in her life. Like Ms. James, the math teacher, and Ms. Howard, the college counselor. Ms. Sparks had a boob job done over Christmas break and Ms. Cotton had lost thirty pounds doing months of extreme cleanses, and both women were ready for some lovin’. And Ashlee telling me to drop “Mrs.”? This was the twenty-first century in America—I could use whatever the hell prefix I wanted to use.
So glad that there’d be no internet on Mictlan Island.
No Prudence. No calls or emails or text messages from Billy. No cops. No questions. I could ignore that, all of that, for three days. No Wi-Fi? Not my fault.
As the time to board neared, our small group—comprised of Desirée, Wallace, Red Sox, and me—moved outside and closer to the gangway. The sun had traveled across the sky, and the smooth turquoise sea had turned choppy with whitecaps. The frothy mess made my gut frothier, even though I still stood on land. Didn’t help that those police officers with the laziest Uzis in the world had taken an interest in our little group, especially an interest in me. They kept staring at me, then whispering to each other, staring, whispering. Sometimes they looked at their wristwatches with concern on their faces. What had they planned?
“Can we get going now?” I asked Andreas, a little light-headed. “Some of us have been traveling all damned day.”
“Un momento, señora,” the college kid said. “We are still needing a few more passengers.”
Beads of sweat, these different from the beads of sweat that come from heat, prickled across my skin and beneath my arms. Another apprehensive look at those cops—they had gained two more, for a total of four. One of them now talked into his shoulder radio. What was he saying?
Andreas must have detected my anxiety, and said, “Don’t fear, señora. Captain will get you there in plenty time. No worries.”
We would be gliding over on La Charon, a 182-foot yacht, gleaming white, three stories high and with enough radio equipment in its communications tower to eavesdrop on water-cooler talk in the Kremlin.
“She has a cinema room, a swimming pool, private balconies, and a sun lounge,” the college kid was telling Red Sox. “She also can accommodate up to seventeen people in seven cabins.”
“Ooh,” Desi cooed. “So we each get a room? Cuz there’s gonna be seven of us, right?”
Great. Desi Scoggins could count.
Andreas shook his head. “Sorry. The rooms are locked since we are simply sailing you over to Mictlan. Don’t worry, though. There’s plenty of space to relax—the Italian builders made sure of that.”
“And how big is this island?” Desi asked.
“Around ninety acres,” Wallace said. “That’s about … two miles around. Lots of vegetation, and it slopes up, up, up to about 328 feet—thirty stories or so high. That’s where Artemis sits and looks over the rest of the island. Really, the view is just breathtaking. Clear waters, six white-sand beaches on one half, and rocky shores on the other.”
“Great. Wonderful. Are there refreshments on board the boat?” I asked, already in need of every margarita being made around the world at that moment.
Red Sox rolled his eyes and shook his head. “She’s about to board a bajillion-dollar yacht but asking for hot wings and beer. Really?” He chuckled. “That’s my homegirl.”
I ignored him, then said to Andreas, “So. Refreshments?”
“There will be margaritas on board,” the kid said, smiling, “as well as fresh fruit and sandwiches.”
My stomach growled when I heard “sandwiches.” “Sounds wonderful. Gracias.” I turned to Desi and whispered, “Watch: Red Sox is gonna be the first one attacking those hot wings and beer.”
Desi didn’t hear me—she was too busy gaping at the blond, red-faced man as he picked up one of his heavy black bags. His biceps flexed and popped beneath the sleeves of his basic black T-shirt. “Ain’t seen nothing like that in a long time,” Desi said, thumbing her blue scarf.
“You get his name yet?” I asked.
“Eddie Sweeney, and lemme tell you: it’s hot as blue blazes out here and it ain’t cuz of the sun.”
“In L.A.,” I said, “you can find muscle-bound men in every shade on the way to the mailbox. We’re the main hub, the Costco, of muscle-bound men.”
“Not where I’m from,” Desi said. “West Virginia ain’t got nothing like him around.”
I knew nothing about West Virginia, or what they had a lot of besides coal mines and the Appalachian Mountains. Not that I’d spotted or flirted with any muscle-bound men in my new neighborhood. In my new neighborhood, scrap-metal-recycling businesses crammed beside ratty duplexes smashed against party supplies rackets hugging liquor stores wedged between apartment buildings and abandoned pet hospitals. There were late-night vendors cooking bacon-wrapped hot dogs on stainless steel carts. Spaced-out addicts stumbling on sidewalks or sleeping on bus benches.
Billy had remained in our two-story Spanish-style on Corning Avenue in Ladera Heights. Rich. Affluent. Powerful. A black Angeleno’s utopia, with palm trees, clean gutters, and a grocery store that sold edible produce and didn’t have to keep razors, baby formula, and cold medicines in locked acrylic cases.
I let Desi gape at Red Sox and turned my attention elsewhere. Like to the creature sitting in the shade of the building. She was a chubby, older white woman with wiry brown and gray hair and skin as beaten as ginger root. She unwrapped a stick of gum and stuck it in her mouth. Was she the nurse? Evelyn something?
In the parking lot, a black Ford Escalade roared to a stop. The driver’s-side door opened, and reggaeton music and a fat Latino wearing an orange guayabera (She thought you were kidding when you purchased this shirt…) poured out from behind the steering wheel. He shouted, “Wait up!” then grabbed bags from the Escalade’s trunk and ra
n over to the dock. With sweat pooling in the pockmarks of his face, he said something in fast Spanish to Andreas, then pointed back to the truck. To us, he said, “Let’s get this party started right,” then fished a silver flask from the shirt’s pocket. It was a beautiful, elegant flask. A flask that Ernest Hemingway or Teddy Roosevelt would’ve taken on safari or to the front lines of the revolution. A flask fought over between the long-suffering wife and the … secret boyfriend. Yes!
What had he filled it with? And could I get a taste?
With eyes shinier than the flask’s silver finish, Orange Shirt shouted, “Salud, mis amigos,” then toasted himself and drank.
“Olé, my amigo!” Desi shouted.
“I got lost,” Orange Shirt said as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hairy wrist. “The streets, man, they’re freakin’ twisty and go in circles and shit, and this cat, man, he told me about this li’l stand that sells roasted armadillo and peppered prawns, and it took forever, know what I’m saying, tryna find this place but I found it, took fuckin’ forever, and lemme tell you, it was worth it.”
“Oh, yeah?” I grinned—a cokehead had joined us.
Wallace sighed, then inched closer to the gangway.
“I’m stoked, man,” Orange Shirt continued. “I’ve done some researchin’ on Mictlan and they got all kinds of seafood over there.” He laughed, then waggled his big head. “I’m Javier Cardoza, the executive chef. That’s why I’m goin’ on and on ’bout food, so don’t think I’m some random weirdo, just excited, man. Oh, hey, I think there’s one more of us!” He pointed over to the parking lot, and shouted, “Over here, amigo!”
A round dark-skinned black man had just climbed out of a chauffeured gold Bentley. He had sweat through his lemony linen shirt (The revolutionaries saw you coming a mile away) even though the luxury car probably boasted the best air conditioner in the country. He pushed up his wire-rimmed glasses, then waved at us.
“Who’s that?” Desi asked, bored now with Eddie’s muscles.
He was only too happy to tell us: Franklin D. Clayton. “Mea culpa for my tardiness,” he said. “I’ve lost track of time. What day is it? Ha. Not to proffer excuses, but I’ve been in meetings—Texas, Arizona, Cali—since Wednesday. My secretary is having a root canal and my wife, Celeste, is in the South of France, so I’m the one currently managing my life. Forgive me now and in advance. Ha.”
Had anybody asked him all that?
“So, are you a lawyer?” Desi asked.
“Goodness, no,” Frank said, chuckling. “I’m a financial advisor in Dallas. One of the most successful, I must add.”
Oh, brother, Brother.
As we strode up the gangway (finally!) to board La Charon, Frank continued to dazzle Desi with recaps of his meetings with Buffett’s people and Greenspan’s people and Soros’s people. As we strode up the gangway, Eddie ignored us and fretted over his big black bags of nuclear weapons. The chef tottered beside Wallace as he described his dream to open another restaurant, of becoming a traveling chef like Anthony Bourdain, with television shows and books on the bestseller lists and trips to the White House. As we strode up the gangway, the quiet woman with the leathery skin chomped her gum and talked to no one, bringing up the rear with her quilted handbag and ancient turquoise suitcase.
A sick man. A country chick. A shaggy nurse. A cokehead cook. An uppity banker. And a mass shooter. My competition, ladies and gentlemen.
I found a quiet place at the polished guardrail and watched smaller boats pull in and out of the harbor. The Valium was wearing off, and now I thought about falling into the sea and never coming out again. I thought about the apartment I’d found online in Cartagena, Colombia, on the coast of the Caribbean Sea. I thought about Ashlee being gone and Billy being gone and Morgan stuck, no, embracing her time with me in her new home country. I thought about winning and revenge and the better life awaiting me after I’d won this competition. I thought of how I looked at that moment, on television, and how I would appear … pensive, reflective, deep.
Back on land, the policía now sat in the shade. Rifles lay across their thighs like guitars. Boys dribbled worn soccer balls between stalls, but stopped to watch La Charon. A deckhand covered in dirt and oil pulled the plank away from the yacht and grinned at me. The policía sat up in their chairs. Even one of the dogs paused to stare at the boat, to stare at me. They were all staring at me.
Let’s go. Let’s go right now. Before—
The wood railing beneath my arms rumbled—La Charon had come to life.
The anchor clank-clank-clanked as it rose from the bottom of the harbor.
Slowly … slowly … the yacht inched away from the dock.
On the other side of the ship, Desi cheered. “Woo-hoo! We’re goin’ to Me-hi-co!”
We were in Mexico already, but I didn’t want to spoil the nitwit’s fun.
Sea lions still barked from algae-covered boulders. Seabirds swirled above us squawking their good-byes.
A picture-perfect adiós—to the old and to the nonsense.
Someone tapped my shoulder.
I startled. Crap. Game over. Handcuffs. Perp walk.
But it was the college kid, with a strawberry margarita in his hand. “For you, señora.”
“Gracias.” Before I took my first sip, I glimpsed the shore.
Oh—!
My breath left me again, and I stumbled back a few steps from the railing.
A teenage girl with straight black hair and eyes so light they looked transparent stood on the dock. She clutched a basket filled with mangos and avocados in one hand, and waved at us with the other. Her smile was bright against her pale skin, and the way she brushed her bangs away from her forehead reminded me of …
I tried to swallow, but my throat had closed. It’s her. My mind wheeled around those two words. It’s her. It’s her. I tore my gaze away from the girl and forced myself to stare into my cocktail at the shards of ice that had escaped the blender’s blades. It’s her.
La Charon gained speed and almost immediately boxed against the shining waves.
I kept my eyes down as I gulped half of my margarita. My hands were shaking and my chest was tight, so tight, but then …
The tequila made the crooked places straight and the rough places smooth. Weak knees? Not anymore. Twisty stomach? Not anymore. It was all “not anymore.” Just my imagination. Just the booze, the drugs … just the sea. It’s not her. It can’t be her.
You got this. You ain’t scared of nothing, of nobody.
Filled with liquid courage and the last molecules of Valium, I found the nerve to look up and out again.
By then, the Mexican shoreline was gone. The policía were gone.
And so was the girl with the straight black hair.
Excerpted from the Los Angeles Times
Wednesday, February 11
NO CHARGES FOR TEEN IN CYBER-BULLYING CASE
“Morgan had nothing to do with this,” the teen’s mother said. According to Miriam Macy, her daughter Morgan is the true victim in this story. “Brooke had been her best friend before she turned on her. And then Morgan’s school turned on her. She’s only seventeen and has to deal with all of this, and it’s simply unfair. Just leave my daughter alone. Just stop, okay? Please?”
But the parents of Brooke McAllister are demanding justice. “They all need to go to jail,” said Phoebe McAllister, Brooke’s mother. “Someone has to take a stand against all the bullies in the world. There’s no excuse, you know. People stood by and did nothing. Morgan is a sweet girl, but she’s complicit in everything that happened. If that means she has to go to jail, then so be it.”
PURGATORY
5
Neither the skinny college kid nor the older man had left the yacht’s wheelhouse to assure us that we weren’t gonna drown today. Since sailing from Puerto Peñasco and boarding La Charon, I hadn’t stayed in one spot. I kept searching for a calmer place, a dryer place—a place that also remained in sight of any hidden ca
meras. I’d found a seat in the middle of the deck, the best view for me, the best view for the cameras. With sunglasses hiding my frightened eyes and with a drink in hand, I was ready for this scene. But I wasn’t ready for this voyage over to the island. Not at all.
How were we supposed to endure two hours of dipping and swaying, lurching and rising? How was it that this yacht had cost the owner a bajillion dollars and yet the damned thing couldn’t sail straight? Why weren’t there other boats on the sea? Why was it so damned cold out here? And where were the airplanes? Had we fallen into the Bermuda Triangle via Mexico? Worse: Did we have a Jonah on board? Someone bringing us bad luck and putting us all in danger? That was the only explanation for this nautical pandemonium.
Not that anyone else had noticed the walls of water that were threatening to knock us all into the Sea of Cortez. Wallace had reclined in a deck chair. He snored lightly, having only made it a few pages in the Esquire magazine now forgotten on his chest.
“Ohmygosh, another one!” Desi shrieked, pointing at a sailfish that had just leapt out of the sea. “This is wonderful. Just like SeaWorld. A sight for sore—ooh, lookit that one!”
Another sailfish, iridescent blue and a million feet long, had burst from the water and hung in the air—one Mississippi, two Mississippi—before splashing back into the sea. Each time one leapt, I gasped. Not out of awe, but more, This will be the end of me, this fish’s nose will break the ship and we will all die, and then I will lose the million dollars and embarrass Morgan on TV.
Why couldn’t I be wide-eyed and constantly thrilled like Desi? “Ohmygosh” dripping from my mouth every time the sky changed. For me—the Jonah?—life sucked right then. Sucked like being trapped in Disneyland’s crowded parking lot on a hot summer day with only ten dollars in my pocket and a lost debit card.
They All Fall Down Page 3
