Lust, Loathing and a Little Lip Gloss

by Kyra Davis

“NO!”

  “Get off of me!” My father yelled and then there was a crash…then a cry of a little boy.

  “What did you do to Mommy!” the boy sobbed.

  “Go back to your room, Kane,” my father said. “Call your dad to pick you up. Unless you’d like me to take you to him now. Maybe that would be best, Andrea.”

  “NO!” Andrea screamed again.

  Her voice was quickly followed by the young Kane’s. “Don’t worry, Mommy, I’ll stay with you! I won’t leave!”

  But Andrea didn’t seem to be acknowledging him. “Martin! Martin, please come back to me! Don’t let him lock me up, Martin! Martin, please!” But now her voice was becoming fainter as she or the tape recorder moved farther into the distance. There was a sharp click. And then there was silence.

  I rested my head against the steering wheel and closed my eyes. Now I knew why Leah had been unwilling to wait for me to get home before dropping off the tape. This was not the father she wanted to remember. She didn’t want to know that our dad had been capable of hate.

  But there was another way to look at it. Our father had done what he had needed to. To protect us. He kept us safe. Now, when my family needed protection, they looked to me.

  I started the ignition again, but this time I knew where I was going. Within ten minutes I was within sight of Sutro Heights.

  I parked the Audi behind the high brush that partially hid the park from the Edwardians positioned across from it. There were hardly any cars on the street. A bus drove by, not bothering to slow as it passed the empty bus stop not ten feet in front of me. Across the street a commercial van pulled to a stop in front of one of those Edwardian houses ready to provide it with whatever services. To my right I could see a muddy path and a bit of the well-manicured lawns that we used to picnic on. An overwhelming sense of nostalgia washed over me, the kind that you feel when you see an old movie that was popular when you were a child, or hear a song that was played at your first rock concert. I took out the tape and put it in my coat pocket before getting out. I found my way to that path and as I walked it I started a conversation with my father. In whispers only I could hear, I asked him how he was, if he was happy, why he had left me. It was a one-sided conversation, but that didn’t bother me. What shocked me was that I had found the courage to ask the questions.

  Ignoring the way the mud was sucking at the bottom of my boots, I followed the path up to the ruins of the Sutro mansion. When I climbed the stairs, I stopped to admire the spectacular view of the ocean. It was wild and unpredictable under the cloudy sky, hinting at another storm that hadn’t yet announced its arrival. My father loved the ocean when it was like this. I wanted to share this with him and there was a little part of me that wondered if I already was. “Can you see it?” I asked.

  “Can I see what?”

  I whirled around to find Kane staring at me. He held the leash of a hideous dog that was completely hairless save for a blond Mohawk streaked across its narrow skull. That styling detail only served to bring attention to the dog’s ears, which stuck straight up like exclamation marks.

  “He’s a Peruvian breed,” Kane said. “The Inca believed they could help their masters find their way to the world of the dead.”

  “Maybe that’s because they look like canine zombies,” I suggested.

  Kane smiled, his eyes moving past me to the waves. The dog strained at his leash and yipped a greeting, or perhaps a warning.

  “You’re following me, Kane.”

  “Did Scott tell you what I want you to do?”

  “You want me to contact a ghost. But I was thinking, maybe you should stop with all the insane demands and just sell me the house for the agreed-upon price. In return, I won’t have you arrested for stalking.”

  “It’s a public park, Sophie.”

  “And when I saw you across from Amelia’s flower shop?”

  Kane shrugged. “We were on a public street. It’s a small city. You gotta assume that we’re going to bump into each other now and then.”

  “I swear to God, Kane…”

  “Why won’t you let them in?” he asked.

  “Who?” The wind was picking up and the dog seemed to shiver at Kane’s side.

  “I’m talking about the dead, Sophie. Why won’t you open your mind to the dead?”

  “How can you be so sure I haven’t?”

  “You won’t even acknowledge the spirit of your own father and he’s trying to contact you! What chance does my mother have of ever getting through to you? Why are you closing yourself off?”

  He hadn’t raised his voice or even changed his tone, but his anger was projected by the stiffness of his posture and the narrow slits of his eyes. He was dangerous. The dog wagged his tail in anticipation.

  “There have been signs,” I said, reaching for something to placate him with. “The lights in my room went on and off by themselves. My doorbell rang when no one was there to push it. There were footsteps in the hall and—”

  “A bunch of meaningless shit!” Kane snapped. “Those are the kinds of signs that are supposed to spur you into action! You should have sat down immediately and tried to make contact! You should have spoken to her by now, but you are so determined not to see what you don’t understand! You have this extraordinary gift and yet you throw it away in favor of the mundane! Why? Why should I let you move into that house, her house! Why should I let another nonbeliever desecrate my mother’s home?”

  “The other nonbeliever being your father?”

  Kane didn’t seem to hear me. “They said she was schizophrenic, but she wasn’t. The voices she heard weren’t in her head—they were of the dead. She had a gift, but unlike you she embraced it. I have the gift, too. But I can’t hear her! You have to help me hear her. You can do that, but you won’t!”

  “You hear voices?” I asked.

  “Don’t look at me like I’m crazy. I’m gifted! I’m fucking gifted!”

  Right, gifted like Charles Manson. Aloud I said, “I have spoken to a spirit. I think it was your mother. Was her name Andrea?”

  Kane didn’t say anything.

  “She was in love with my father. She was going to sell him her house, but…”

  “Your family told you about this.”

  “Did not,” I lied.

  “Don’t try to fool me, Sophie. I’m smarter than you. And for the record, the only reason my mother offered to sell the house to your dad was because at that time she didn’t know what a complete womanizing asshole he was.”

  “You son of a bitch.” I advanced upon him, my fist raised, but the hound of hell growled and bared its teeth, doing its duty of protecting the Antichrist.

  “You can talk to her,” he insisted again. “I know you can.”

  “Yeah, and who told you this? The voices?”

  “Don’t forget that I can still stop this deal anytime I want to. Maybe I can’t legally insist that you use your gift, but I can raise the price of that house to five million if I see fit.”

  “It’s not a five-million-dollar house.”

  “But I can try to sell it for that. I can put it all beyond your reach and throw you out on the street. And it won’t stop there. I can make you suffer every bit as much as your family made my mother suffer. You, Leah, and that hag you call Mama all owe me, and I’ll collect. It’s just a matter of how.”

  “Are you threatening me?”

  Kane smiled. “That would be illegal.” He leaned down and patted the dog on its lonely strip of hair. “Escrow is up in three days. You have ’til then to contact her. I’ll know if you’re lying, so don’t try it.”

  “It doesn’t matter if I lie to you or not,” I shouted. “No matter what I say you’re planning on throwing me out, aren’t you! This whole thing was a setup!”

  But Kane was walking away now, tugging the dog along as he went. I watched him retreat down the stairs, the wind at his back, pushing him away from me.

  “How do I negotiate with a crazy person?” I muttered. Th
e fact that I was the one talking to myself didn’t faze me. At least I wasn’t hearing voices.

  Except at the séance. But that hadn’t been madness…had it? I looked up at the sky and suppressed the urge to scream. I needed someone to point me in the right direction, or any direction for that matter.

  As if on cue, my cell phone started vibrating in my handbag. I pulled it out to see who was calling only to see the word restricted flash across the screen.

  “Yes,” I growled as I picked up.

  “Is this Sophie Katz?” asked a meek, familiar voice.

  “Yes,” I said again.

  “This is Lorna, Zach’s mom? I was wondering if maybe, possibly you might have heard from Zach today?”

  “Why would I have heard from Zach?” I asked. I looked down and spotted an empty bottle discarded on the ground, ugly and out of place. Lorna shouldn’t have been calling me. Not unless she suspected something was very, very wrong and had nowhere else to turn.

  “I know we don’t know one another very well, but he seems to have taken to you, and now, well, he seems to be missing. He didn’t show up at school and I found this poem in his room…at least I think it’s a poem. It may be a note.”

  A chill spread to my lungs, making it hard to find the breath I needed to ask the next question. “What kind of note?”

  Lorna choked back a sob. “Please, I need to find him. I’m afraid he may be planning on leaving me like his sister. I can’t lose both my children, Sophie. It can’t happen!”

  I reached my hand out, hoping to find something to steady me, but nothing was there. “I haven’t heard from him,” I said. “But I’ll help you look.”

  “I don’t have my car.” Each word of Lorna’s shook more than the last. “It’s in the shop and I can’t tell his father—”

  “What are you talking about, you have to!”

  “But it could be nothing, and his father will be so angry. Please, you have a car. You offered Zach a ride that afternoon. Couldn’t you give me one, too? We could go to all of his favorite places and look for him. I’m sure I can find him. I’m his mother,” she said, as if being his mother gave her some kind of advantage in the search. But it wouldn’t, because Zach would know where she would look, and if he really didn’t want to be found he’d be somewhere else.

  “I’ll pick you up. But on one condition. You have to tell his dad what’s going on. We need as many people looking for him as possible. Time could be of the essence here.”

  She whimpered what sounded like a word of agreement. She then proceeded to give me her address, and as soon as I had it I hung up and called Marcus.

  “Sophie, darling,” he cooed after the fourth ring. “I’m sure you have some fabulous new crisis to relay, but I’m about to wave my magic brush and turn a brunette into a blonde. Call you back in an hour?”

  “Marcus, Zach is missing. His mom found something that may be a suicide note.”

  There was a moment’s pause before Marcus responded. “Tell me where to look and I’m there.”

  Less than forty-five minutes later, I had both Lorna and Marcus in my car. “Al blames me,” Lorna said dully as we slowly drove down Haight Street, only a few blocks from where I lived. Apparently, Zach had loved the neighborhood. Funny that I wouldn’t know that, but then again the things that I loved about my new neighborhood wouldn’t be the same things he found appealing. I liked the Victorians, the close proximity to Golden Gate Park, the restaurants on Cole Street. Now we were cruising the tattoo parlors, the head shops, the dive bars on Lower Haight that may have “forgotten” to check Zach’s ID. It was easy to forget that this world merged with my own. I didn’t see it because it didn’t belong to me. What scared me was that it belonged to Zach, a fifteen-year-old with a grudge and a significant sense of self-loathing.

  “We need to get out,” I said once we had gone up and down the block three times. “Go to every shop. Do you have a picture of him?”

  Lorna numbly pulled out her wallet and flashed me a photo of Zach. “I can’t lose both my children,” she said for the second time that day.

  “He looks like…well, think The Cure’s Robert Smith meets Marilyn Manson and you got Zach,” Marcus was saying into his cell from the backseat. It had been his idea to give Breather a call in case he had decided to give Sex on the Beach a try after all. “But he’s young. A teenager, so he’s Robert Smith meets Manson meets a Mouseketeer…Right now he’s only got one toe out of the closet so he may seem a bit out of his element…”

  “What are you talking about?” Lorna asked. “My son’s not gay! He’s a good boy! A decent boy!”

  Marcus ignored her and continued talking into his cell. “Are you sure, he wasn’t in there at all today? Did you ask all your waitstaff?” He listened for a moment and then made eye contact with me via the rearview mirror and shook his head.

  I whipped the car off Haight and started barreling west down a side street. “Forget the shops. He can only get in so much trouble there. We need to be driving along the beach.”

  “But Zach hates the beach!” Lorna cried.

  “Doesn’t matter. If he is really planning on trying something he’ll want to go where no one else is around,” I explained, “and no normal person is going to be at the beach on a day like this. And considering the riptide, it’s a good way to…well, we’ll just look there. After that we’ll try the park.”

  Marcus tucked his cell into his jacket pocket and let out an audible sigh of frustration. “The park’s right here, Sophie. Let’s try that first. You know better than anyone how easy it is to commit a crime in the park without being caught,” he said, referring to the time I had stumbled upon a mutilated body while going to the park to meet a friend.

  “My son would never commit a crime,” Lorna said. “He tries to act tough, but he’s not. He’s vulnerable and…”

  “Last I checked, taking your own life was a crime,” Marcus said, a bit too abruptly. “And just so you know, your son is good and decent and probably gay. Zach might be a little less vulnerable if you could acknowledge that those things aren’t mutually exclusive.”

  “Really not the time, Marcus,” I said as I pulled into the park. But where to start? This wasn’t the neighborhood playground, this was Golden Gate Park! It was the size of a small town for God’s sake! My eyes flitted from the soccer fields to the volleyball courts to the winding walking paths. “I guess I’ll just park anywhere and we could just split up?”

  “Yes,” Lorna said quietly.

  “Did you call all his friends?” Marcus asked as I slowed down to look for a spot big enough for my Audi.

  “He didn’t have a lot of friends. He didn’t trust people. He did seem to trust you…and he liked Scott. Zach seemed to admire him, and Al encouraged their friendship. Scott took him out a few times. They’d go to ball games and things like that.”

  Scott liked it when people looked up to him, so I could understand his willingness to take Zach under his wing, but trying to visualize Zach at a ball game was difficult. “So you called Scott?” I asked.

  Lorna hesitated. “I should have, but…I really don’t like Scott. I think he’s a bad influence.”

  I did a quick double take. “Are you kidding? He’s a horrible influence, but if there’s a chance that he knows where Zach is you’ve got to call him. What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “Sophie, there’s a spot,” Marcus said.

  I backed my car into the parking space, my teeth clenched so tight my jaw actually ached. What was wrong with Lorna? Didn’t she get it? Didn’t she know what was at stake?

  Before I even had the chance to turn off the car engine, Marcus had his door open. “We’ll split up. Everybody keep your cell on and ringer up. Sophie, you call Scott while you look. I’m going to explore the area around the soccer field.”

  I watched as he trotted off. Zach had gotten to him somehow. Maybe because Zach’s life was so horrifically distressing. Maybe that’s why he had gotten to me, too.

>   “Are you going to call Scott?” Lorna asked, still glued to her seat.

  I nodded curtly. “Walk back that direction, toward Haight. Be sure to look behind every bush and tree. I’ll go toward the De Young. Call if you find anything.”

  “And you’ll do the same for me? You’ll call?” The notes of escalating panic were seeping into her voice.

  “I’ll do the same for you. Now go.” It took Lorna a lot longer to get out of the car than it did me. I had to fight the urge to open the door for her, pull her out by her hair and hurl her in the direction of where she was supposed to be searching. But instead I let her get out at her own slow pace. She stopped and stared at me as I tapped my foot impatiently, anxious to call Scott and find Zach. “Did you want to say something?” I asked.

  “You think I don’t care enough,” she said slowly. “You think that’s why I didn’t call Al right away, why I didn’t call Scott, why I’m not running around the park screaming Zach’s name.”

  “I think,” I said, “that we need to start looking.”

  “Maybe the problem is not how much I care, but how scared I am. I failed my daughter, Sophie. I tried to give her a good life, but the one time she came to me for help I…I simply didn’t understand. She died knowing that I failed her and she still believes that, I know it. Betrayal like that can’t be forgotten in death. Maybe I can’t call Al or Scott or search for my son with the same sense of urgency as you and your friend because I can’t face another failure.”

  “Oh,” I said. The wind was picking up again, whipping through her already disheveled bob, making her look wild and desperate. “So this is about you.”

  Lorna’s mouth dropped open as she struggled to respond, but I didn’t give her a chance. I turned on my heels and started toward the De Young, purposely steering off the beaten path. I called out Zach’s name and then I called Scott.

  “Sophie!” he said, “I’m so glad you called. Listen, I found the receipt for the brooch, it’s from some antique store in Marin. Apparently it used to belong to some psycho Victorian chick or something. I confronted Venus, but she says she gave it to Oscar before he died and didn’t see it again until you said it was on your pillow. I think she was telling the truth, but—”