by Marcus Sakey
Well, bravo, two points for the subconscious. But no need to get ridiculous.
He flashed on an image, a dream, maybe? Emily Sweet standing
THE TWO DEATHS OF DANIEL HAYES 73
in front of a window, wrapped in sunlight, gauzy with it, her dark hair shining. Her lips were pink and parted as if she were about to say something. She wore fitted jeans and a black bra, and he could see the humming softness of her stomach, the curve of her shoulder, a hint of nipple through lace.
Of course, Venice is more or less on the way to Malibu. What’s an hour or two?
In his mind’s eye, Emily Sweet’s lips twisted into a molasses smile, a promise she’d meet him there.
The show wasn’t specific on where the house was supposed to be, but there were frequent intercut shots of local landmarks. The faded letters V E N I C E above Windward Avenue. Jim Morrison looking down from a mural. The boardwalk, Rollerbladers and jugglers and homeless. When he’d seen those on television, he’d recognized them, though the recognition came without any context, the same way he could visualize the Statue of Liberty but had no idea if he had ever actually seen it.
But now that he was here, he did feel a charge, a sense that he had been here. He had driven these streets, eaten in these restaurants. It was jarring in a good way, a pleasant sort of déjà vu, and he found himself growing increasingly excited. Every time he turned a corner, the feeling that he knew this place grew, and around each he expected to see . . .
What? Emily Sweet leaning over a porch railing, waving at you?
Well, yeah. Kind of. And so he drove slow, taking in every stylish boutique, every yoga studio, every tattoo parlor. Lawn-mowered the BMW up and down wide boulevards and narrow streets, looking for the one that held the Candy Girls house, and if not Emily, then at least some answers.
Three hours later, he had a headache, a sick feeling, and the dubious claim of having driven every block of Venice.
The house wasn’t there.
Of course it’s not. You knew that when you started.
Still, it hurt. A surprising amount, actually. Maybe it was just wishful thinking, but during the drive she had become a symbol for him, a sign that all of this had some larger purpose. She was Home and Mother and Lover rolled into one, the temptress with a crooked smile and all the answers.
Get it through your head. There is no Emily Sweet.
By the way, there’s no Han Solo either, and no Santa Claus. Sorry, kid.
Daniel found a place to park, stomped to a restaurant, and ordered a Cuban sandwich and two beers. He sat at a wobbly sidewalk table, chewed numbly, and watched people go about their lives.
It didn’t matter. He hadn’t come here for that. He wasn’t crazy. Confused, yes; scared, certainly. But not crazy. Whacked-out dreams of her may have pursued him across the country, but he’d made the drive based on tangible evidence. The address on the insurance card. That was why he was here.
Sure, it would have been nice to have this strange and glorious symbol guiding him. It would have exempted him from the things he’d done, and it would have given him faith that there was an order, a purpose to things. But wanting didn’t make it so.
Maybe an address on an insurance card is a lousy, prosaic way to stake a claim on your life. But it’s what you have. Deal with it.
He wiped grease from his fingers, downed the last of the beer, and walked back to his car. Time to hit the PCH, see what Malibu had to offer.
Twenty miles and forty minutes later, Daniel discovered he was wrong.
Turned out he was crazy after all.
ACT TWO, PART ONE
“In L.A., you think you’re making something up, but it’s making you up.”
—Steve Erickson, Amnesiascope
A
blurry week ago he had woken on one coast. It had been cold and gray and lonely, beautiful in a desolate sort of way. It had nearly killed him, and maybe he had wanted it to.
Then the dreams, and the police.
The midnight cities in blurs of light.
The Midwest, flat and pale.
The endless fields of grain.
The gaudy playland of Las Vegas.
The heat shimmer of the desert.
The bright bustle of Los Angeles.
The Pacific Coast Highway, a ribbon winding between knuckled
ridges of rock and the blue promise of the Pacific Ocean.
And finally Malibu, nestled like a jewel in the warm bosom of the other coast. More beautiful than any place had a right to be. Golden sunlight, salt tang in the air, bungalows in faded shades of mint and turquoise next to multimillion-dollar wonders of glass and stone, waves rolling surfers to shore in long, slow breaks. Twentyseven miles of beach and canyon, of palm trees and skies that promised never to cloud—except from wildfire smoke or mudslide rain. Celebrities huddled behind security gates while homeless philosophers dispensed wisdom outside organic cafés. Daniel hadn’t needed to read the license plate frame on the car ahead of him to know that it said, MALIBU: A WAY OF LIFE. He hadn’t needed his map, either. He knew his way around.
It wasn’t that he remembered the shocking green swath of lawn fronting Pepperdine, or the white houses clinging to the cliffs. It wasn’t that he looked at the Pavilions grocery store and remembered shopping there, or saw the broad span of Point Dume and could picture swimming off it. It was a physical thing. Muscle memory, force of habit, his body knowing when to turn and which direction.
So he’d rolled with it, just followed that instinct until it led him right to Wandermere Road. The same address on the insurance card.
And now, as he looked out at the house, a two-story California Contemporary with lots of glass and a wraparound porch, he realized that somewhere along the line he’d gone crazy. Only a matter of time before he started seeing talking cats and mad queens. That was the only explanation.
Because he was looking at the Candy Girls house.
“Down the rabbit hole,” he said. He tried to laugh, but the sound died.
There was a wall that they had never showed on TV, and a tall security gate guarding the driveway. But what he could see of the house itself was the same: faded peach walls like early sunset, the porch Emily Sweet had stood on while her sister talked to her, the wood-spindle railing. He’d seen it all before on television, and in dreams he’d spoken to the woman who lived in it, a character from a cheap melodrama, a woman who did not exist, and besides which, it was supposed to be in Venice, not here, but here it was, standing between a bungalow and a Greek revival, right out the goddamn car window—
The honk of a horn shook him out of his trance. He glanced in the rearview, saw a VW Beetle behind him. He started to move before he remembered that Emily Sweet drove a Beetle.
No way.
The angle of the sun off the glass made it impossible to see clearly, but that profile, it could be . . . He pulled the parking brake and leapt out. Each step brought her into focus—her silhouette, the fine features of her face, fingers on the steering wheel, and then he’d reached her car, the angle better now. The driver was an Indian woman with wide, frightened eyes. He froze, and the woman who wasn’t Emily fumbled for the transmission, threw it in reverse. The VW shot ten yards backward with a whine.
“Wait,” he said, his hands out and low. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
He had to flatten himself against the BMW as she blew past. The last of her he saw was her middle finger as she turned the corner, leaving him alone in front of a house that couldn’t exist.
Right. Right.
Get it together.
Daniel climbed hurriedly into his car. No sense having made it this far to flip out in the middle of the street. Play it smart. Better to park the BMW out of sight, walk back here, ring the bell.
Then flip out.
5
When he hiked back up from the beach parking lot, he expected to find the house transformed. It had been a figment of stress and lack of sleep and loneliness. His mind
, already strained—to say the least—had gotten confused. He repeated it like a mantra, timing it to his steps, I’m just, confused, I’m just, confused.
But when he reached the address, there it was, large as life. Larger than. A California Contemporary with lots of glass and a wraparound porch.
Okay. Well. Be that way.
The gate was metal, about eight feet high, with a section that would slide aside to allow access to the driveway. A metal post held a small panel at car height. There was a keypad and a call button, which he pushed. It made a buzzing sound that he assumed was mirrored in the house. He waited a long moment, then pushed it again. No answer.
Guess I’m not home.
He must once have known the keypad combination that would open the gate, but that was gone with everything else. Daniel glanced up and down the block. It wasn’t the most opulent section of Malibu he’d seen, but it was still pretty damn nice; most houses guarded by a fence, Mexicans doing lawn work, probably private security rolling around. Best he could tell, no one was looking at him, but who knew.
Daniel stood on tiptoes, stretched up to grasp the lip of the gate. He jumped and pulled, managed to get his chin up to the edge and hung there, something below his stomach tingling. He twisted his grip to plant his hands like he was getting out of a pool. His feet kicked at the metal with a loud bong, giving him just enough purchase to get a knee up and throw one sneaker over. For a second his tailbone rocked against the sun-warmed metal, and then he pulled the other leg over and dropped clumsily to the driveway, the impact ringing through his knees and ankles.
That had been harder than it seemed like it should have been. He straightened, dusted off his palms and his jeans.
Now that he had an unobstructed view, he could see more differences between the house in front of him and the one on the show. Flower beds flanked the walkway here, though the flowers were embattled by weeds and grass. There was a porch swing, and although it wasn’t on TV, it seemed right to him. Expected.
The thought sent a chill through him. The whole place did. He was sweatier than the late afternoon sun could account for, and his head felt light. He had a powerful urge to turn around and head back the way he had come. Hop over the fence again, get in the car, and . . .
What?
Daniel straightened his back, wiped his hands, and walked to the house. He started up the steps to the porch, then stopped a few shy of the top. He had the strongest feeling that the next step would squeak. What did it mean if it did? If it didn’t? Which made him sane, which made him crazy?
It squeaked.
I know this place. I don’t know how that’s possible, what it means, but I knew how to get here and I know the sound of the trees rustling in the wind and that porch swing, I know I’ve sat on it before, and, god help me, I feel like I sat beside—
Emily Sweet.
His sneakers made soft suss sounds. He trailed his fingers along the railing, the wood smooth with salt air and paint and touch. At the first window, he cupped his hands to see inside.
The lights were off, but beams of sun spilled in. It looked nothing like the show. The furniture was low and Scandinavian, light colors and graceful curves resting on a rug that looked expensive. The room radiated emptiness, a sixth-sense feeling that no one was home. But someone lived here. Scratch that. He lived here.
He walked to the front door. Through cut glass insets he could see an end table, a marble floor, framed photographs on the wall. He reached for the handle. Locked.
Daniel reached into his pocket and pulled out the ring of keys. The BMW alarm fob, one small key he’d mangled unscrewing license plates, and three others. The second one slid into the deadbolt, snapped it back with oiled ease. He put a hand on the handle, fingers sweaty.
I am Daniel Hayes. This is my house.
So why am I terrified?
He twisted the handle. The door swung open without a sound.
With one last backward glance, he stepped inside.
5
Nothing happened. No trumpets or explosions or gaping holes in reality. He took one step and then another, sneakers squeaking on the marble. The air tasted stale.
The hallway was bright and broad, with an archway leading to the living room, and another at the end of the hall. A staircase of polished wood supported by metal framework rose so that each step seemed to hang in the air. There was a faint patina of dust on the end table by the door, and a beaten copper bowl that held loose change, a receipt, sunglasses. He had an urge to pull out his keys and money and drop them there. “Hello?”
He closed the door— click—walked to the wall with the photographs. There were three of them, black-and-white shots, professionally matted and framed.
All Emily Sweet.
It looked like they had been shot at the same time. All three showed her in a white tee against a white wall, shirt blending so that her features and hair and the skin of her arms seemed summoned forth from light. In the first she was turned to the side, dark hair draped soft over her features, arm pulling the shirt up enough to show the curve of her breast; in another she faced forward but looked away, the barest hint of a smile teasing her lips. The third, the most sensual, had her pressed face-first to the wall, one hand up, her head tipped slightly back, as though caught in a daydream. They were beautiful but not quite professional, the contrast not perfect, the lighting a little off, as though they had been taken by a journeyman photographer. But the look on her face, the trust in the poses, they gave the images power. These photos had been taken by someone who loved her.
Is this what it feels like to go mad?
But he didn’t believe it. Somehow he knew better, knew from that part of himself that had vanished. Knew, even as he walked through the arch into the cluttered living room, that there would be other photographs.
There were. And not just of her.
A collection of frames sat on the mantel. Emily and a man in ski wear squinting into the camera against the intense light of an alpine slope. Emily and a man dancing, her caught in the middle of a laugh, his hand in the small of her back. Another taken at arm’s length, Emily and a man in a restaurant, the two of them leaning against each other in the booth, cheeks touching, both smiling a luminous, careless smile. Emily and a man sprawled across the hood of a gray BMW, holding up the title papers.
A gray BMW like the one he had driven here.
And a man who looked just like him.
Daniel floated. The real him was a balloon tethered three feet up and back from his head. He could see himself moving around the living room. His living room. See himself leaning in to look at the photos more closely. Emily arms-deep in a pumpkin, newspapers spread out to catch seeds and orange goop. In one photo a man who looked just like a younger version of him had a cigarette in one hand, and with the other gave the camera the finger. There was Emily in a makeup chair, graceful shoulders bare, someone fiddling with her hair. And here was a man who looked just like him wearing a tuxedo, standing in the ocean with her, the water up to his knees but not quite reaching her white gown.
Daniel reached for the picture. His hands were shaking, and he knocked it backward, managed to grab it before it hit. He lifted it closer, unsteady hands making their wedding photograph tremble.
Jesus Christ.
Their wedding photo.
He could hear his heart, actually hear it, the whooshing thump of the pulse in his neck, his ears. The woman in the photograph, that was his wife. Emily Sweet.
No, you stupid son of a bitch. Don’t you dare. The ice you’re on is too thin to play.
Not Emily Sweet. Laney Thayer. The actress. And that beach, he knew it. It was lonely and desolate and rocky. He’d woken there, naked and half-dead, just days ago.
So then . . .
His obsession with the TV show, with her, it had been about the woman he loved. The real-life woman, not the character from the show. He was married to Laney Thayer. That explained why he knew what time her show was on, why he’d been s
o eager to catch it. He’d been desperate to see her. His brain had been trying to guide him back home after all. More literally than he realized.
Okay, he thought. Breathe. Just breathe. And concentrate.
He took the picture to the couch, shoved aside a throw pillow. Now that he was home, now that he knew the truth, everything should resolve itself.
There was a date calligraphied in the corner of the mat, 05/23/03. The couple in the photograph looked like the American Dream. Young, beautiful, successful, and lit by love. The kind of people who got married on a beach and then walked into the surf, laughing, and screw their formal wear. It was all there—everything everyone wanted.
So why—
He took a breath, closed his eyes, opened them again.
why can’t I—
Easy, he had to go easy. It would come, it would come, it would come.
remember?
He jammed his eyes shut as hard as he could, ground his fists into them until he could see stars and comets, until the jelly shifted under his knuckles. He felt like screaming, like throwing the picture across the room, like grabbing a chair and hurling it through the window in a sparkling rain of glass. He felt . . . he felt so . . . so . . .
Helpless.
Relax. Relax. It will come back. You can feel it, all of it, so close. Just stay loose. Be calm.
Get a drink.
Daniel opened his eyes. Stood up, set the picture back on the mantel. Walked through the living room, the dining room—a showpiece table surrounded by antique chairs, all looking very expensive— to the kitchen. The air changed as he did, a sweet smell of rot.
The kitchen was a cook’s dream. Six-burner Viking stove, butcher block countertops, a window on the back wall to an avocado tree in an enclosed yard. There were dishes in the sink with food crusted on them. The lid of a stainless steel trash can was propped open, the garbage explaining the smell. There were liquor bottles on the counter, mostly bourbon, some Irish whiskey. The way they were arranged, the level of booze in them, he could tell that someone had been doing some serious drinking. Binge drinking. Lose-yourself-inan-amber-sea drinking. And he had a feeling it had been him.
