"Brenda?" Wendy called.
Jilly's sympathies lay with the downstairs neighbor. Tidiness wasn't exactly her own strong point.
As Wendy went down the hall toward the kitchen, still calling Brenda's name, Jilly wandered over to the desk and looked at what the corkboard held. It was the only area that made her feel comfortable. Everything thing else in the room was just too perfect. It was as though no one lived here at all.
Old newspaper clippings vied for space with photographs of Brenda's friends, shopping lists, an invitation for an opening to one of Jilly's shows that Brenda hadn't been able to make, a letter that Jilly dutifully didn't read, although she wanted to. She liked the handwriting.
"This place gives me the creeps," she said as Wendy returned to the living room. "I feel like a burglar."
Wendy nodded. "But it's not just that."
Jilly thought about it for a moment. Being in somebody else's apartment when they weren't always gave one a certain empty feeling, but Wendy was right. This was different. The place felt abandoned.
"Maybe she really has gone out of town," Jilly said.
"Well, her toothbrush is gone, but her make up bag is still here, so she can't have gone far."
"We should go," Jilly said.
"Just let me leave a note."
Jilly wandered over to the window to look out at the street below while Wendy foraged for paper and a pen in the desk. Jilly paused when she looked at Brenda's plants. They were all drooping. The leaves of one in particular, which grew up along the side of the window, had wilted. Jilly couldn't remember what it was called but Geordie had once given her a plant just like it, so she knew it needed to be watered religiously, at least every day. This one looked exactly like hers had if she went away for the weekend and forgot to water it.
"This isn't like Brenda," Jilly said, pointing to the plants. "The Brenda I know would have gotten someone to look after her plants before she left."
Wendy nodded. "But she never called me."
"Her phone's been disconnected, remember?"
Jilly and Wendy exchanged worried glances.
"I'm getting a really bad feeling about this," Wendy said.
Jilly hugged herself, suddenly chilled. "Me, too. I think we should go by her office."
***
"She didn't tell you?" Greg said.
Both Jilly and Wendy shook their heads. Jilly leaned closer to his desk, expectantly.
"I don't know if I should be the one," he said.
"Oh, come on," Jilly said. "You owe me. Who got you backstage at the Mellencamp show last year when you couldn't get a pass?"
"We could've been arrested for the way you got us in!"
Jilly gave him a sweet smile. "I didn't break the window— it just sort of popped open. Besides, you got your story, didn't you?"
Greg Sommer was In the City's resident music critic and one of its feature writers. He was so straight-looking with his short hair, horn-rimmed glasses and slender build that Jilly often wondered how he ever got punk or metal musicians to talk to him.
"Yeah, I did," he admitted. "And I got double use of the material when I covered Lisa Germano's solo album."
"Isn't it wonderful?" Jilly said. "It's nothing like what I expected. I never knew that she sang, which is weird, considering what a really great voice she—"
"Jilly!" Wendy said.
"Oh. Sorry." It was so easy for Jilly to get distracted. She shot Wendy a slightly embarrassed look before she turned back to Greg. "You were saying about Brenda?" she prompted him.
"I wasn't, actually, but I might as well tell you. She got canned first thing yesterday morning."
"What?"
"Weird, isn't it? She's the last person I would've thought to get fired— she's usually so damn conscientious it makes the rest of us look bad. But she's been acting really strange for the past few weeks. I heard a rumor that she's got a really bad drug problem and I believe it. She looks completely strung out."
Wendy shook her head. "No way does Brenda do drugs."
"Well, she's doing something to herself, because there's not much left but skin and bones. And it's happened so fast— just over the last few weeks." He got a funny look. "Jesus, you don't think she has AIDS, do you?"
Just the mention of the disease made all of Jilly's skin go tight and her heartbeat jump. She'd had three friends die of the disease over the past year. Another two had recently tested-HIV-positive. It seemed to be sweeping through the arts community, cutting down the brightest and the best.
"Oh, God, I hope not," she said.
Wendy stood up. "Brenda doesn't do drugs and she hasn't got AIDS," she said, "Come on, Jilly. We've got to go."
"But you heard what Greg said about the way she looks," Jilly said as she rose to join her.
Wendy nodded. "It sounds like she's finally found a diet that works," she said grimly. "Except it works too well."
She left Greg's office and walked briskly down the hall towards the stairwell. Jilly only had enough time to quickly thank Greg before she hurried off to catch up to her.
"I don't even know where to begin looking for her," she said as she followed Wendy down the stairs.
"Maybe we should start with this Jim guy she's been seeing"
Jilly nodded, then looked at her watch. It was past five.
"He'll be off work by now," she said. "The admin staff usually leaves at five."
"We can still call the school," Wendy said. "Somebody there will give you his number."
***
"I haven't seen her in over two weeks," Jim told Jilly when she got him on the line. "And she hasn't called for a couple of days now."
"That's just great."
"What's wrong? Is Brenda in some kind of trouble?"
Jilly put her hand over the mouthpiece and turned to Wendy who was standing outside the phone booth. "He wants to know what's going on. What do I tell him?"
"The truth," Wendy said. "We don't know where she is and we're worried because of what we've been hearing."
"Right. And if there's nothing the matter she's really going to appreciate our blabbing all her problems to a potential boyfriend."
"Hello?" Jim's voice was tiny in the receiver. "Jilly? Are you still there?"
"What do I tell him?" Jilly asked, hand still over the mouthpiece.
"Give it to me," Wendy said.
Jilly exchanged places with her but leaned in close so that she could listen as Wendy made up some story about needing to pick up a dress at Brenda's apartment and they were sorry to have bothered him.
"Right. Tell him the truth," Jilly said when Wendy had hung up. "I could've told him that kind of truth."
"What was I supposed to say? Once you reminded me of how Brenda would react if we did lay it all on him, I didn't have any other choice."
"You did fine," Jilly assured her.
They crossed the sidewalk and sat down on a bench. The tail end of rush hour crept by on McKennitt, making both of them happy that they didn't own a car.
"Could you imagine putting yourself through that everyday?" Jilly said, indicating the crawling traffic with a lazy wave of her hand. "I'd go mad."
"But a car is still nice to have when you want to get out of the city," Wendy said. "Remember when Brenda drove us out to Isabelle's farm this spring?"
"Mmm. I could've stayed there for a month..." Jilly's voice trailed off and she sat up on the bench. "We never checked if Brenda's car was in the garage."
***
The car was gone.
"Of course that doesn't prove anything," Jilly said.
She and Wendy walked slowly back up the driveway. When they reached the front of Brenda's building, they sat down on the bottom steps of the porch, trying to think of what to do next.
"Just because she's gone for a drive somewhere on a Saturday afternoon," Jilly tried, "doesn't mean anything sinister's going on."
"I suppose. But remember what Greg told us about how she looked?"
"She loo
ked fine when I saw her," Jilly said. "Thinner, and a little jittery from having quit smoking, but not sickly."
"But that was a few weeks ago," Wendy said "Now people are talking about her looking emaciated, like she's a junkie or something."
Jilly nodded. "I'm not as close to her as you are. I know she's always going on about her weight and diets, but does she actually have an eating disorder?"
The Brenda Jilly knew had never weighed under a hundred and twenty-five.
"She was in therapy in high school," Wendy said. "Which is when she first started suffering from anorexia. The one time she talked to me about it, she told me that the therapist thought her problems stemmed from her trying to get her father back: If she looked like a little girl instead of a woman, then he'll love her gain.
"But her father didn't abandon his family, did he?" Jilly asked. "I thought he died when she was eight or nine."
"He did, which is a kind of abandonment, don't you think? Anyway, she doesn't buy into the idea at all, doesn't think she has a problem anymore."
"A classic symptom of denial."
Wendy nodded. "All of which makes me even more worried. The way Greg was talking, she's down to skin and bones."
"I wouldn't have thought it was possible to lose so much weight so fast," Jilly said.
"What if you just stopped eating?" Wendy said. "Your basic starvation diet."
Jilly considered that for a moment. "I suppose. You'd have to drink a lot of liquids, though, or the dehydration'd get to you."
"It's still going to leave you weak."
Jilly nodded. "And spacey."
"I wonder if we should report her as missing?" Wendy wondered aloud.
"I've been that route before," Jilly said. "There's not much the police can do until she's been gone for at least forty-eight hours."
"We don't know how long she's been gone."
"Let's give it until tomorrow," Jilly said. "If she's just gone somewhere for the weekend, she'll be back in the afternoon or early evening."
"And if she's not?"
"Then we'll see my pal Lou. He'll cut through the red tape for us."
"That's right, he's a cop, isn't he?"
Jilly nodded.
"I might still try calling the hospitals," Wendy said. She gave Jilly a pained look. "God, I sound like a parent, don't I?"
"You're just really worried."
Wendy sighed. "What gets me is that Brenda's always so... so organized. If she was going somewhere, she'd be talking about it for weeks in advance. She'd ask me to drop by to look after her plants. She'd— oh, I don't know. I thought we were close, but she's been avoiding me these past few weeks— nothing I can really point to, it's only when I look back on it I can see there was something more going on. Whenever I called, she was just on her way out, or working overtime, or doing something. I thought it was bad timing on my part, but now I'm not so sure."
She gave Jilly a worried look. "The idea that she's gone on some weird diet really scares me."
Jilly put her arm around Wendy's shoulders and gave her a hug.
"Things'll work out," she said, wishing she felt as confident as she sounded.
Wendy's anxiety had become contagious.
19
I wait until it's past ten and then realize Ellie's going to pull a no-show. Waiting for her, I find myself wondering about my reaction to all of this. From the voices rising up out of the well and their lost faces manifesting in my dreams to the ghost of the motel's old proprietor... I seem to accept it all so easily. Why doesn't it freak me as much as it should?
I don't have an answer— at least I don't have one that makes me feel comfortable. Because either the ghosts are all real and I'm far more resilient than I'd ever have imagined myself to be, or I'm losing it.
I'm tired, but I'm not quite ready to go to bed. Maybe weak would be a better way to put it. I've had a busy day. Since there's no maid service— along with everything else this place hasn't got— the first thing I did after I got up was go exploring for water. There was the well, of course, but it was deep and I'd no way to bring water up its shaft. I wasn't so sure I'd even want to if I could. Bad enough I called up ghosts, just by thinking of them. I didn't want to know what would show up if I took some water from that well.
Turns out I didn't have to worry. Not a half dozen yards into the forest, on this side of an old set of railway tracks, I found a stream. The water's clear and cold, even at this time of year. Using a battered tin pail that I discovered inside what must have been a tool shed, I carried water back to my unit and scrubbed the floors and walls. It sounds pretty straightforward, but it took a long time, because I had to rest a lot.
I'll be glad when I've regained my strength. I think I've caught some bug— a summer flu or something— because I keep getting these waves of dizziness that makes the room do a slow spin. It only goes away when I rest my head.
I forgot to mention: I checked my weight this morning, and I'm right at a hundred pounds even. When I look in the mirror, I still see some flab I could lose, but I really think I'm getting there. Once I hit a comfortable ninety-six or seven, I'll switch to a hold-and-maintain diet. Well, maybe ninety-five. No point in going halfway.
I just wish I didn't still want a cigarette. You'd think the urge would be gone by now.
Jim's been on my mind a lot. I'd really been enjoying our telephone conversations. I find I can relate to him so much better knowing that he can't see what I look like when we're talking. It seems to free me up and I found myself talking about all sorts of things— the kinds of conversations I had when I was in college, when we were all going to change the world.
A couple of miles back towards Newford, there's a diner and garage sitting on the corner where a County road Crosses the highway. I noticed a pay phone in its parking lot when I drove by. I'm thinking of driving down tomorrow evening and giving Jim a call. This time I'll really be out of town. The only thing I worry about is moving the car too often. If I keep driving over the lawn, anyone with half a brain will be able to see that someone's staying at the motel.
Then I laugh. What am I worrying about? I'm not trespassing. I paid for my room.
I wonder what a ghost does with money.
I give Ellie a little longer to show up, but when the minute hand's crept to quarter past ten, I finally put on a jacket and go outside. I want to clear my head. It takes my eyes a few moments to adjust to the dark. The night gets absolutely black out here. The stars seem so close it's like they're hanging from a ceiling the height of the one in my unit, rather than in the sky.
But you get used to the dark. Your eyes have to work harder to take in light, but after a while you can differentiate between shapes and start to make out details.
I look around, listening to the crickets and June bugs, the frogs down at the bottom of the pool. My gaze crosses the lawn to where the rose bushes have overgrown the wishing well. After a while I cross the lawn. The tall grass and weeds make swishing noises against my jeans. My legs are damp from the dew, right up to the knee, and my sneakers are soon soaked.
I use my flashlight to light my way as I squeeze through the rose bushes, but it's a more awkward process than it is by day and I'm nursing a few thorn pricks before I make it all the way inside to the well. I shut off the light then and put a match to the candle I brought. There's not much of a wind at all, just a slight movement in the air so that the candle casts shadows that make the rose thicket seem even denser than it really is. I pretend I'm— well, not Sleeping Beauty, but one of her handmaidens, say, hidden away behind the wall of thorns. Did they all sleep straight through the hundred years? I find myself wondering. Or did they wake from time to time and glance at their watches, thinking, "When is that prince coming?"
It's weird what'll go through your mind when you're in a situation such as this. There are people who pay good money to go away on spiritual retreats. I always thought it was kind of weird, but now it's starting to make a little sense. When all you've got is your
self, it changes the way you think. You have the freedom to consider anything you want, for as long as you want, because there aren't any distractions. You don't have to go to work. The phone won't ring. Nobody drops by your apartment. It's just—
"So what are you hiding from, girl?" a voice asks.
I'm so startled I jump about a foot off the fieldstone wall. This is getting to be a bad habit of hers, but I've got to admit, Ellie sure knows how to make an entrance.
I see her sitting on the edge of one of the benches, the candle's light playing a thorny pattern on her white hair. She never made a sound, coming through the bushes, but then I guess a ghost would just float through.
"Who says I'm hiding?" I ask.
"Everything about you says it."
I shake my head. "I just need some time to be by myself, that's all."
"You're not a very good liar," Ellie says. "I think the only person who believes you is yourself."
"I'm not lying," I tell her, but the words ring as false to me as they obviously do to her.
If I stop to think about it, I know she's right. I have been lying, most of all, to myself.
I look at her, half-hidden in the dark, and find myself telling her what's brought me here: all the messy baggage that I seem to drag around with me wherever I go. I have to laugh at myself as I'm doing it. In the stories, it's always the ghosts that unburden themselves.
"What makes you think hiding'll make it all go away?" Ellie asks when I'm done.
"It won't, I guess. There's a lot I'll have to face up to when I get back. I know that. But at least I'll be able to do it with a little self-esteem."
"Seems to me you're just going to the other extreme," she says.
Like she knows me so well.
"You don't know what I'm like," I say. "You don't know how hard it is, just trying to be normal. To fit in."
She seems to consider that. "It's easier when you're my age," she says finally. "Nobody expects you to be pretty or fashionable. You can be as pushy or as cantankerous as you want, and they don't blink an eye."
"I suppose."
"It was easier when I was younger, too," she goes on. "Oh, we had movie stars and singers to look up to, the pretty girls in the Coca-Cola adverts and all, but there didn't seem to be as desperate a need for a girl to make herself over into one of them. We all wanted to, but we didn't have to, if you get my meaning."
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