by Chelsea Cain
“What is it?” Bishop asked.
“A toy,” Kick said. She couldn’t take it with her. It would be like stealing something from a grave. She set the little man back down in the dust.
When they climbed back through the wall, Collingsworth was waiting for them, his cap still in his hands. “I didn’t know it was there,” he said shakily. “All this time, I didn’t know.” He was still covered with debris. Drywall stuck to his eyelashes.
Bishop glanced at Kick. “The boy who lived in there,” he said to Collingsworth. “He got away.”
It wasn’t exactly a lie, it just wasn’t the whole truth. Bishop sold it, though. Collingsworth looked relieved.
Bishop used his shirt to clean the sweat off his chest and the drywall dust off his arms and head, and then he tossed it over his shoulder through the hole they’d smashed in the wall. “Thanks for your time, Mr. Collingsworth,” he said, shrugging his blazer on over his bare torso.
Collingsworth looked confused. His eyes went to the dungeon on the other side of his rec room.
“What do you want me to do with all that?” he asked.
Bishop produced a checkbook from the blazer pocket and scribbled something out on it. “Gut it,” he said. He tore the check out and handed it to Collingsworth, who looked agog at the amount. “Put in a playroom for your grandkids.”
Collingsworth gave Kick a questioning look.
“Spare no expense,” she said.
“Besides, look on the bright side,” Bishop added, clapping Collingsworth on the back. “You just doubled the square footage of your basement.”
30
IT TURNED OUT THAT the Desert Rose’s neon sign was the most glamorous thing about it. The sun had not quite set when Kick and Bishop pulled up and parked. The foothills were distant humps on the horizon, and the setting sun had turned the sky deep periwinkle. The motel was fifteen miles from the nearest town and surrounded on all sides by the empty desert. When they parked the car and got out, Kick could have sworn she heard a coyote howling. It was eighty-nine degrees in the shade.
She followed Bishop into the lobby. A counter stretched across one side, and a mud-colored Naugahyde sectional formed a seating area at the lobby’s center. A set of glass doors on one wall led to the pool; glass doors on the opposite wall led to a restaurant, which was, according to the handwritten sign on the door, Open Most Mornings. The lobby floor was ceramic tile. Kick remembered slipping on it once when she had wet feet from the pool. Other than that, nothing else about the lobby struck her as particularly familiar.
The only motel staff appeared to be the clerk minding the check-in counter. She was engrossed in a celebrity magazine, a position that effectively displayed the cleavage her V-neck T-shirt exposed. Her thick, dark hair was blown out into soft shoulder-length waves and her caramel-colored skin was flawless. She looked up from the magazine with glazed eyes, but when they landed on Bishop, they instantly brightened. She batted her false eyelashes. “Can I help you?” she asked.
Bishop grinned. Kick could practically hear the blood rushing to his crotch. He slid her a sideways glance as if to say, I got this.
Kick hung back a few feet as he swaggered up and slid the photograph of James and Klugman on the counter in front of the clerk. The clerk leaned forward, arching her back a little, so that her T-shirt drew tighter in the right places. Bishop’s eyes moved over her breasts with an appreciative smile.
Kick wondered if she should wait in the car.
“Have you seen this man before?” Bishop asked. His voice sounded different, like he was auditioning to host a late-night radio show.
The clerk looked up from the photograph. “He’s not as cute as you are,” she said.
“No, he’s not,” Bishop agreed.
The clerk blushed, and Bishop shifted his weight forward so that his forearms and elbows were on the counter.
“I’m going for a walk,” Kick announced.
“Wait,” Bishop said. He put his palm on the counter and slid the magazine toward Kick. “Take something to read,” he said. He tapped the magazine with his finger, drawing Kick’s attention to it.
She did a double take.
Her own image was splashed across the cover; she was crouched in horse pose at the park next to her mother and Monster. A bright yellow headline announced the cover story: Ten Years of Freedom! Kidnap Mom, Paula Lannigan, Exclusive!
Kick flipped the magazine over and drew it toward her.
“That’s mine,” the clerk protested.
Bishop stepped between them, and Kick saw his fingers brush the clerk’s bare arm.
“What’s your name?” he asked her.
“Carla,” she said, her eyes back on him.
“I’m John,” he said.
Kick backed away with the magazine, toward the sliding glass door.
She noticed how Bishop leaned his head toward the clerk’s, repositioning the photograph on the counter so that the clerk was entirely in his orbit. “Do you recognize him, Carla?” he asked.
“I can only see his ear,” the clerk said.
“Does his ear look familiar?” he asked, and Kick wondered if the clerk could hear the flicker of impatience in his voice.
Apparently she couldn’t. “Do you work out?” the clerk asked. “I work out. I’m only doing this job for the summer. I’m an actress. In LA. What do you do?”
Kick neared the door.
“I’m a casting agent,” Bishop said without missing a beat.
The clerk giggled uncertainly. One of Kick’s palms was on the glass, the other on the plastic door handle. The door was sticky, and Kick jiggled it, trying to get it to glide along its track.
“Are a lot of the staff here seasonal?” Bishop asked.
Kick glanced back at him. He was entirely focused on the clerk, his fingertips on her forearm. Screw it. Kick muscled the door open, stepped through it, and slammed it behind her. Ten percent of the moisture in her body immediately evaporated in the desert air. Her lips instantly felt chapped. The warm, dry heat made her skin buzz, like the faint electrical current created when you put a tongue to a battery.
And a weird thing happened: Kick relaxed. Maybe it was the pool. It was lit from below and glowed in the twilight like an aquamarine jewel. Even Kick, who hadn’t liked pools since she was a kid, found herself drawn to it.
The courtyard itself was nothing special. The two-story concrete-block motel surrounded it on three sides and the kidney-shaped pool was at its center. The pool was empty, the courtyard abandoned. Most of the motel room windows were shuttered and dark. A child’s pink foam pool noodle floated discarded in the shallow end.
Kick sank down into a white plastic lounge chair, tossed the magazine aside, and took off her mother’s flip-flops. The concrete under her feet was warm. She used her phone to scan the latest updates in James’s medical file and then sat watching the changing surface of the water, how the slightest breeze created ripples that changed how the blue light moved.
It was this blue light that drew Kick’s attention back to the magazine. It winked across the cover, reflecting off a pale face in a corner box. Kick reached for the magazine and squinted at it. She had been too distracted by her own image to notice it before—featured in the top right corner was a photograph of Adam Rice. The New Face of Missing Children? the copy asked.
Kick opened the magazine, paging past the images her mother had sold, and the quotes that her mother had given, and the ads for her mother’s book, until she found the half-page story about Adam. It was all a rehashing of what Kick knew. Even the photographs were recycled from other articles. The main image was the one that Kick had clipped and put up on her bedroom wall: Adam’s mother at the press conference, clutching her son’s stuffed elephant. The article had one new quote, from the utility worker who had seen Adam playing in the yard before his abduction. “I
noticed him because of the monkey,” the utility worker was quoted as saying. “It looked loved, like a stuffed animal my kid’s got.”
A white butterfly alit on the surface of the pool and immediately started to drown.
Kick rolled the magazine up and stuck it in her purse, then unzipped the interior pocket and extracted the envelope from the Trident Medical Group. She unfolded it and stared at it dumbly; it was so official-looking, with its medical seal and the American flag stamp. Kick’s name and her mother’s address were visible through the plastic window. It hadn’t been a mix-up. She had given them her mother’s address on purpose because James always went through Kick’s mail, and she knew that if he had intercepted the letter, he would never have given it to her.
Kick slowly extracted the typed letter from inside. The pool reflected off the white paper, rippling it with aqua light.
Seeing the report in black-and-white made it real somehow.
She didn’t like to swim. She didn’t even like baths. She didn’t like being in the water. It was one of her triggers.
She didn’t know why.
This place . . . she barely remembered it. But she remembered the pool. Even as a kid she had appreciated its color, that perfect Caribbean blue.
She heard the sound of plastic scraping against concrete, looked up to see Bishop dragging a deck chair parallel to hers, and quickly folded the letter from Trident back into her purse. He sat down, tossed the plastic Target bag with her overnight things on the ground at her feet, and then dangled a room key over her lap.
She took the key. Not a key card, she noticed. A real key. It was attached to a shiny red plastic key chain that had the number 18 stamped on it.
“They have a lot of seasonal employees,” Bishop said. The key chain on his room key was stamped with a 6. “But Carla says that a few of the restaurant staff have been here almost twenty years. We’ll show them the photograph in the morning.”
“Carla?” Kick said, looking at him sideways.
“I think she likes me,” Bishop said.
Kick scanned the surface of the pool. She couldn’t see the butterfly anymore. “Are we spending the night here so you can have sex with a motel clerk?” she asked. “Not that I care,” she added quickly. “I’m just wondering, so when I’m eaten alive by bedbugs I’ll know at least it’s in service to a larger goal.”
“We’re staying because it’s late,” Bishop said, “and all the longtime staff will be here in the morning.” He stood up, scratched the back of his neck, and looked away. “And so I can have sex with the motel clerk.”
“Good night,” Kick said, settling back into her deck chair.
“Good night,” Bishop said.
She felt him start to step away, a shift in the light where his shadow had been.
“Bishop?” she called. She was staring straight ahead, at the pool. She couldn’t see Bishop, but she knew he was still there. “You know how Mel said that Klugman spent the money he got for James on a new car?” she asked. “I remember that day. I remember looking for James. I found Mel and Klugman in the garage with the car. They told me that James was gone. And you know what I did?” It was the first time she’d ever said it out loud. “I went swimming.” The knot in her throat felt like a hand around her neck. James wasn’t allowed in the pool, so when they played, they had to play inside. With James not there, she could do what she wanted. She had played in Klugman’s pool all afternoon, happy that he was gone.
“You were a kid; you didn’t understand what it meant.”
Kick sat forward, distracted. The edge of the motel pool was ringed with ceramic tiles. She had remembered it wrong. The two pools, Klugman’s and the Desert Rose’s, had merged in her memory. “I was wrong about the photograph,” she said. “I thought it was taken in Klugman’s backyard.” She lifted her finger, the one with the wire talisman, and pointed at the shallow end of the Desert Rose Motel pool, where the lip was checkerboarded with black and white tiles. “It was here,” Kick said.
31
“THE KEY TO DOING a back float is to relax,” her father said. Beth leaned back into his hand and let his palm support her at the surface of the water. The sky was the same color as the pool, and her body burned with excitement at Mel’s attention. “Just stay clam and relaxed,” her father said. “And do what I tell you.”
They weren’t alone in the pool; there were other grown-ups: the big man in the black swimsuit with the pale legs and the arrow tattoos, and his wife, who didn’t like to be splashed, sat on the edge with their legs in the water. The pool cleaner, who always said hello to her, was using a pool skimmer to scoop up the dead palm fronds.
Her father’s voice always made her calm, and she knew that if she just did what he said, he would keep her safe. “Very slowly, tip your head back until your ears are underwater,” he said, guiding her forehead back with his hand. “Good. Now lift your chin.” It was scary. The water seemed so close to her eyes. “More. Point it up toward the sky.” She lifted it a bit more. She could feel her whole body becoming more buoyant. The water was at her mid-cheek. “Keep your head centered,” he said, “arms a few inches from your sides. Keep your palms up. Now arch your upper back just a few inches.” He moved his hand along her spine. “Lift your chest just a bit out of the water.” He moved a hand and held it just above her belly. “Now lift your stomach until it touches my hand,” he said. She pushed her belly out until it met his palm. “You’re such a good girl, Beth. Now bend your knees and open your legs slightly.” She did what she was told, and he withdrew his hands and stepped away, and for a moment she was terrified, all by herself, in water above her head. Then the thrill of her achievement hit her and she squealed with delight. She was floating. “Listen to your body,” her father called from the edge of the pool. “You’re doing it.”
32
KICK POUNDED ON THE door to Bishop’s motel room. After a minute the door opened a few inches and Bishop peered out across the chain.
“I want to talk,” Kick said. She had come straight from her room and was barefoot, wearing what she’d bought at Target for sleepwear: a black tank top and boxer-like pajama shorts.
Bishop closed the door in her face. Kick waited. Bugs batted against the caged light fixture overhead. Every room was fitted with a chain lock above a standard doorknob lock, both easily defeated. All Kick would have needed was a paper clip and a rubber band. She hadn’t even locked her room, because why bother?
Kick heard the chain drop.
“It’s two a.m.,” Bishop said. He was standing in the doorway, wearing black jeans he’d clearly just pulled on, and no shirt or shoes. The scratch marks she’d left on his arms looked like they had been drawn on with a shaky red ballpoint. A plastic jug of juice dangled from his hand.
Kick peered past him, into his room. It looked identical to hers. Green carpet. The same psychedelic tropical leaf pattern on the bedspread. The bed looked like it hadn’t been slept in. “Are you alone?” Kick asked, squeezing the envelope in her hand tighter.
Bishop looked over his shoulder into the clearly empty motel room. “Uh, yes?” he said.
Kick was relieved. Purely on Bishop’s behalf. Because he had probably dodged an STD, and self-restraint was not exactly his style. “I thought the motel clerk might be here,” she said, walking past Bishop into his room. His air-conditioning worked better than hers , and she crossed her arms, her skin pebbled from the artificial chill. It smelled like mildew and stale cigarette smoke. A print of a coyote howling at the moon in the desert was bolted to the wall over the bed. His suitcase was still packed, next to the wall. “Or has she already come and gone,” Kick said.
Bishop closed the door, took a slug from the juice, and wiped his mouth with his hand. “You know, contrary to popular belief, I can go a night without getting laid,” he said.
Kick snorted.
Bishop turned his desk chair around
and sat in it, and Kick caught a glimpse of the stitches that still peppered his back. His laptop was plugged in behind him on the wood laminate surface that passed for a desk. He had been sitting at his computer when Kick had knocked, she guessed. The laptop was closed, but it was on.
Besides the desk chair, the other seating options were the bed and a stained orange-upholstered reading chair.
Someone was listening to a Spanish-language radio station on the other side of the wall.
Kick didn’t know where to sit. The carpet felt sticky under her feet. She stepped over to Bishop and took the jug from him and tipped it into her mouth. It was orange juice, sweet and pulpy. She looked at the label. Fresh-squeezed. There was no way he got this at the pool vending machines, which meant that, at some point earlier that night, he’d made the twenty-minute trip into town without her.
She passed the jug back to him and he took a swig.
“Was there something in particular you wanted to talk about,” he asked, studying her, “or did you just want to infect me with your insomnia?”
He didn’t seem to register that she was practically naked.
“How many women have you had sex with?” Kick asked. The question sounded as awkward out loud as it had in Kick’s head.
“More than you,” Bishop said. His gray eyes were fixed on her. “I mean, I don’t know that. I’m assuming.” He grinned to himself as he took another slug of juice. “I don’t know what you’re into.”
Kick let herself stare at him. The scar on his neck was beautiful, as thick as yarn.
She had thought that she would tell him about the Trident Medical Group, about the test results, that he might talk her out of what she was thinking. But that’s not why she was here. The back of her neck was on fire.
A mariachi band started up on the Spanish-language station.
Bishop rested the jug on his thigh and looked at her expectantly.
