by Ivy Pochoda
Anneke picks her way down the hill on the opposite side of the street.
“I figured you wouldn’t have much reason to be following me anymore, now that all this shit’s about to come out. Yet here you are.”
“You need to listen to me,” Anneke says.
“I can’t imagine what-all you have to say. I came up here to do the speaking. And I’m done.”
“Listen,” Anneke says.
“You know what, forget it,” Orphelia says. “I’m not listening to shit.” She starts heading down the hill. “Explain yourself to someone else. I just wanted to see you face-to-face. I wanted to see your face and let you know that I know. Lie to yourself all you want. But I know.”
Anneke’s eye is fluttering so fast it’s blinding her. She stumbles but keeps up her pursuit. She hates this woman. She hates how this woman and the rest of them endangered her daughter, stirred something in her husband that brought the danger close to home.
“You wait,” she says.
“The fuck I’m waiting. I’m finally fucking free. Free of you and your husband and the shit he did to me,” Orphelia says. “Fifteen years I’ve been living with this shit. You know what it’s like to experience nearly two decades of crazy, two decades of feeling your mind wasn’t your own?”
Anneke does. Fifteen years and more. The uncertainty. The suspicion. The horror that comes so close you have to swat it away. That’s enough to tip the scales, unbalance you, sending you tilting toward insanity if you’re not careful.
But Anneke was careful.
“But I’m free now. There will be a trial and I’m going to be in the motherfucking front row when I’m not on the stand. I’m going to be testifying about your husband. But just so as you know, it’s you I blame.”
Orphelia continues down the hill, Anneke in pursuit. Up ahead the road is eroded so she scrambles up the slight embankment and picks her way through the bracken and debris. Soon Anneke has to change her course. Instead of doing what Orphelia did, Anneke chooses to continue down the middle of the road.
She checks behind her. She’s gone too far. She needs to get back to West Seas before the morning unravels.
“Will you please stop?”
“No I goddamn will not,” Orphelia calls. She’s on an incline, looking down at Anneke, who is several paces behind her. “I will not. I’m only getting going. You know, I ought to thank you. You’ve given me a new beginning. A new motherfucking beginning.” She throws her hands up in the air. “I’m reborn!”
There’s a sound in the distance Anneke can’t quite place—a roar like a rushing river.
“I came all this way to set me free. And you,” Orphelia adds, “your trial is just about to start.”
Orphelia stops walking. She stops talking. Her face is frozen, her mouth an O, her eyes wide to the whites.
This is Anneke’s chance to catch her. She picks up her pace, hurrying down the strip of asphalt that remains the most solid section of road.
Orphelia’s still not moving. She’s laughing.
Whatever is roaring in the distance is getting louder.
Anneke feels it before she sees it—a riptide of mud that grabs her ankles. She staggers forward. There’s a moment when it seems as if she can sidestep the flow, jump to higher ground like Orphelia. But then that moment is gone.
The mud is at her calves.
The mud is at her knees.
The mud is bringing her down.
It pitches her forward, her mouth open to its muck and rubble. Her nose is filled with its thick, foul flow.
Anneke rolls over. Coughing. Gagging.
She wipes her eyes. She is now downhill of Orphelia, who is still standing on the slight embankment watching.
The mud carries Anneke. There’s a moment when she feels as if she is flying. Then floating. She closes her eyes, lets herself be carried.
Is this what the woman in El Salvador felt bobbing in the waves? Was this how she bounced against rocks, weightless on the water?
When did she stop caring?
Was it before she was tossed into the sea?
Or was it when the darkness came across Roger’s eyes, a floodtide of black that swallowed his irises?
Down the mud goes.
The hills of Malibu are receding above her. The mud is rushing, invading some houses and skipping others.
Is this how the world slips away, in slow motion?
Anneke is spinning, buffeted from one side of the stream to the other. It’s almost peaceful.
These women. These women, beautiful and wild. Out of control. These women he loved with a ferocity he couldn’t tame. A passion he didn’t understand. These women who tortured and tormented him. These women who would taunt, screw, and die. These women he loved and hated and destroyed.
These women. All these women who haunted Western.
Anneke had tried to keep them safe. She tried. What more does the world want?
The mud blankets her face, as black as Roger’s stare. One by one things are lost to her: sight, smell, and now sound. She can no longer hear the mud roar. It has filled her ears. She continues down in quiet.
May God preserve you in his light.
May God preserve your family in your heart.
May the beauty of God be reflected in your eyes.
May the kindness of God be reflected in your words,
and the knowledge of God flow from your heart,
that all might see his grandeur all around you
and in seeing, believe.
This is how you lose things.
One at a time.
Enough time to remember each thing as it disappears. Enough to hold it in a timeless expanse in your mind—to turn it over, to see from all sides before it flees.
Enough time to regret all the things you knew.
And then there is black.
Feelia 2014
AURORA, GIRL. TOOK YOUR TIME. DON’T WORRY, BABY. I know you’re working. I know you’ve been pulling in cash. And this time I don’t mind waiting. Walked all the way down that damn hill. But still. It’s cool. It’s okay. Because look at that—that water. You motherfucking forget. Forget that there’s a whole damn ocean right here at the edge of town.
Let this be a lesson.
I saw the most amazing goddamn thing. I saw a lady float away on a river of mud.
Nah. I didn’t stop her. Not my business. Like she was going for a ride on one of the lazy rivers they have in Vegas. Who am I to disturb her peace?
But there she went.
I know mud can kill.
I kept myself safe, baby.
It’s a whole new world out there for me. Gonna fling my window open and welcome the day. New start. A beautiful goddamn start.
Don’t look at me like that, baby. I see you in the rearview. Looking at me like I can’t change. Like I’m gonna be loud and paranoid forever, scared of shit on my street.
Listen to me for a second. Just ’cause I live hard and saw some fucked-up stuff doesn’t mean I can’t teach you a thing. Listen, baby.
There’s this place in my head. Probably in your head too. A place that belongs to you alone. I know that everything inside you should be yours. But live long enough and it isn’t. The world eats away at that shit. The world comes and takes little pieces like a rat eating bread on the sidewalk. Nip, nip, nip.
That’s what your brain becomes. A place other people nip away at, leaving their poison behind.
Where you going, baby? You taking some canyon road?
This Mulholland?
That’s some fancy-ass shit. I don’t mind. Let it twist and turn. Twist and turn away. I got all day. I got all week. Hell, I got the rest of my life. Got it back today in fact. So take your time. Take the scenic motherfucker.
But wait up. Don’t get me off my train of thought about this place in your head. Mine got nipped away. Think of it like a plant with all them leaves and even berries. And one by one a flock of birds comes and steals the berries, shreds the
leaves, so all you’re left with is a weed.
That’s what my head was, a weed. One of them straggly motherfuckers grows in the alleys around Western, more pollution than plant.
Last fifteen years the world was nothing but a flock of vultures come to eat this plant. And I let them. I let them strip me bare till I had nothing.
Now listen up. You got to tend that plant. Spray motherfucking weed killer all around it—and don’t listen to anyone who tells you that shit isn’t healthy or safe. You do what you need to do. Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise. Else we all wind up a bunch of weeds, plucked and tossed.
Me, I’m growing my plant back. Growing it back to all its glory. It’s one tough motherfucker—that’s for sure.
But listen up. It’s easy to let that plant die. Let yourself go dead inside. Let people take even your own thinking away.
You remember how this all began, right? You coming to see me in the hospital. I was so mad because it took you so long to bring me my smokes. You didn’t stick around too much. Had your own shit to do.
I don’t blame you, baby. We’re good now. We’re all good.
The world messed me up hard. Or it tried.
I’m ironing that motherfucker out.
I’m gonna open the window. Stick my face in the wind.
Look at those houses, big-ass motherfuckers. Wonder if folks are happy behind those gates. Wonder if they think they’re safe.
Still smells like smoke. What’s that—a week now. Smoke and that shit that happens to fire with water. Smolder. Smells like a dragon breathed all over this shit.
But it’s gonna come back. This city endures. It motherfucking endures.
Hold up. Turn back.
I said turn back. I want you to pull over. Back at that what-do-you-call-it, outlook.
I’m gonna get out. You come with me.
Check it, baby. Check this view. Sun coming up all over everything. Just perfect.
Check all that shit below us. That’s a whole fucking city just rolling along.
You forget. You forget how big it is. Down these hills, cross that pass, into what’s that, West Hollywood, Beverly Hills. Past that. Cross Pico, farther south. Down to our woods.
I want you to look at that. Take a look.
Motherfucking vast is what.
Bigger than big. Hard to imagine it at all. Hard to hold it in your mind. You feel me?
But I want you to. I want you to try. It’s important, baby. I want you to see it. See the city. I want you to know it. Not to be in it, be played by it. I want you to understand it. To feel it.
And I want you to remember one thing.
We’re a part of that place.
We’re a part of it.
We own it.
It’s ours, baby.
Don’t let anyone tell you different.
Acknowledgments
This book exists because of the expert guidance and critical support of my editor, Zack Wagman, who has championed it since it was a nebulous idea in my head. As always, thanks to everyone at Ecco: Dan Halpern, Miriam Parker, Megan Deans, Dominique Lear, and Caitlin Mulrooney-Lyski, as well as to my tremendous agent Kim Witherspoon at InkWell Management and Jessica Mileo.
For their support and inspiration, accidental and intentional, thanks to Alafair Burke, Megan Abbott, Louisa Hall, and Lee Clay Johnson. For help in too many ways to list here, an immense debt of gratitude to Jennifer Pooley.
I will always remain grateful to Susan Kamil who I believe watches over my literary career even now.
It remains a joy to share this book (and all my books) with my first and best readers, Elizabeth and Philip Pochoda, who remain two sources of inspiration and admiration.
And of course, to Justin Nowell and our wild and wonderful daughter, Loretta Pochoda—may she always be believed.
About the Author
IVY POCHODA is the author of The Art of Disappearing, Visitation Street, and Wonder Valley, which was a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist and won the Strand Critics Award. She lives in Los Angeles.
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Also by Ivy Pochoda
The Art of Disappearing
Visitation Street
Wonder Valley
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THESE WOMEN. Copyright © 2020 by Ivy Pochoda. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Cover design by Allison Saltzman
Cover photograph © Daniel Galán Lorente
FIRST EDITION
Digital Edition MAY 2020 ISBN: 978-0-06-265640-7
Version 04072020
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-265638-4
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