by Mary McCoy
The letter inside read:
Dear Alice,
I know you don’t want to talk, about it, but if you ever decide you do, you can talk to me. I miss her, too.
Love,
Cassie
I threw it in the trash can. I miss her, too. It took a lot of nerve for her to write that. She barely knew my sister and couldn’t even get a full sentence out around her. What could I possibly have to talk to her about? She hadn’t lost her sister. I had.
But then I thought about how badly I’d treated Cassie, how I’d shut her out, and I fished the letter out of the trash.
I turned the paper over and wrote my reply on the back:
Dear Cassie, Okay, thanks. Love, Alice
Ever since, our friendship had been like that. It wasn’t like I’d discarded her for other friends. I didn’t want new friends, either. For years, it had been just me and my books and my room. Occasionally, a boy would decide I was mysterious and try to make a project out of me. For a few weeks, I’d allow myself to be pried out of my bedroom and taken to diners and dances and the sad parties people threw in their parents’ living rooms. I’d be around people and see what I was missing. The only problem was, nothing ever looked better to me than my bedroom walls. I didn’t feel like I’d been missing anything. The boys eventually decided I wasn’t mysterious and that there were other strange, damaged girls with thousand-yard stares who made better projects than I did.
Cassie didn’t give up on me, though, not completely. She’d occasionally make a nice gesture; I’d respond just enough to keep her from writing me off. She’d invite me to her birthday party; I’d send my regrets and a card. She’d save me a seat next to her at the school assembly; I’d walk homework assignments over to her house when she was out sick. She’d ask me about my sister, and I’d say, No, I don’t know anything. I haven’t heard. I’m okay.
But what I really wished I could say was, Leave me alone. Stop asking. Stop caring about my life.
The morning after I burgled my father’s office, I woke up early, ate a quick breakfast, and left a note saying that I was going to the beach with Cassie’s family. They wouldn’t ask too many questions about that.
Then I went to the trolley stop and caught the Red Car across town to the County Hospital. I was relieved to find Annie exactly where I’d left her the afternoon before, but I was heartsick, too. There hadn’t been a miracle, and the longer she lay there, the harder it was to imagine she’d ever wake up.
Jerry Shaffer was right where I’d left him, too, asleep in the chair next to Annie’s bed, the previous day’s Los Angeles Examiner folded up on the floor next to him. When I said his name, his eyes flew open and he sat up like a shot. Seeing only me, he relaxed and rubbed his eyes.
“Sorry, kid,” he said, clearing his throat. “I must have dozed off there for a minute.”
I leaned over my sister and brushed a lock of hair from her forehead. A fresh bandage covered the angry-looking black stitches and most of the ugly purple bruise that had spread across her face. Even after two days, it still felt strange to be this close to her.
“How is she?” I asked.
“One of the orderlies was in here about every ten minutes last night. I was starting to think something was wrong with her, but the doctor just came by. He says she’s stable.”
“Was there anyone else?” I asked, glad to hear that the money I’d given the orderly had been well spent. “I mean, did anyone else come to see her?”
“Why? Were you expecting someone?”
“She has friends, doesn’t she?”
“Of course she does.”
“Then where are they?” I asked.
Jerry didn’t answer at first. He got up from the chair next to Annie’s bed and began to pace the linoleum. It was a simple question. Of course, where Annie was concerned, I was beginning to see there wasn’t any such thing.
“I’m still looking for them,” Jerry said, then gave me a dark look. “Alice, no visitors is a good thing. A very good thing. There aren’t that many hospitals in Los Angeles, and the person who did this wasn’t trying to put her in one.”
I considered the implications. “You’re saying they think she’s dead?”
“It would explain a few things.”
It was such a strange thing to be relieved about, but I was. I felt a lump in my throat and fought back the urge to cry. It didn’t have anything to do with Jerry being there—I didn’t care what he thought. Crying would have made me feel better, and I didn’t want to feel better. I wanted to do something.
I reached into my purse and handed Jerry the matchbook I’d burgled.
“Marty’s?” Jerry drew in a breath through his teeth. “Where’d you find this?”
“In my father’s desk,” I said. “What do you know about it?”
“I know it’s no place you have any business going to,” he said, opening up the matchbook. “I don’t suppose you tried calling this number?”
I shook my head, and Jerry shrugged. “Something to look into, I guess. There are a few other leads I want to check out this morning. Do you mind holding down the fort for a while?”
“Are you still looking for Annie’s friends?”
“Yeah,” Jerry said, but he paused before he said it, and I wondered whether that was what he was going out to do at all. “I’ll be back in a few hours.”
A few minutes after Jerry left, the orderly I’d paid off the night before stuck his head into Annie’s room.
“Everything okay in here?” he asked.
I nodded, and the orderly stepped inside. He was nice-looking in an earnest, country way, and there was a little bit of a twang in his voice. I guessed he was probably from somewhere around Bakersfield.
“She’s got a lot of people worried about her,” he said. “Your friend the detective, he gave me money to keep an eye on her, too.”
“Really?”
“He went out for a couple of hours around midnight.”
Jerry Shaffer hadn’t said anything about that, or about paying off the orderly, for that matter. I wondered where he’d gone at that hour.
“Do you know who did this to her?” he asked.
“No,” I said.
“But you think they’re going to come back?” asked the orderly, his eyes wide.
“I hope not,” I said.
“My name’s Eugene, by the way,” he said. “I was just stopping by because my shift’s about to end, and—”
I opened my purse and started to pull out the dollar bills I’d brought along just in case I needed to pay the orderly again. When I held the money out to him, though, he pushed my hand away.
“It’s not that,” he said, shaking his head. “I just wanted you to know that I talked to the nurses on the next shift. I told them about you, and they said they’d keep an eye on your friend’s room if you want.”
It was such a small gesture, but the kindness of it took my breath away. I wasn’t alone—Annie wasn’t alone. There was a whole floor of nurses watching out for her. When I tried to thank Eugene, no sound came out—I could only mouth the words.
I wish I’d let him know how much it meant to me, what he’d done.
Instead, I cleared my throat and said,” I have to go out for a couple of hours.”
It came out more brusquely than I’d meant it to, and Eugene looked surprised.
“You’ll be back, though, won’t you?” he asked.
I hated leaving Annie again, but there was something I needed to know, and it was something I needed to do without Jerry. If I wanted to find out who tried to kill my sister, I’d have to be smart. I’d have to imagine what Annie would have done. That was why I’d told Jerry about the matchbook I found in my father’s desk, but kept the postcard and the photographs to myself. It was why I’d borrowed a phone book from the nurse on duty in the main lobby. And it was why I was going to leave my sister alone while I went out to investigate the two-word message she’d sent me. If it had been me in that hosp
ital bed, Annie wouldn’t have sat around mooning. She would have gone out and gotten some answers.
“Of course I’ll be back,” I told Eugene.
I took the Red Car from the hospital to Hollywood, got off at Western, and walked south down a side street peppered with courtyard apartments and residential hotels. They were the kind that advertised themselves as respectable rooms for nice young girls. However, with each block, the buildings grew less attractive, less respectable-looking—tree roots pushing the sidewalks up at dangerous angles, fountains half filled with brown murky water, graying whitewash on the stucco.
The battered sign for the Stratford Arms dangled from a pair of chains, though the apartments themselves were hidden from view by a canopy of neglected shrubs and ragged-looking palm trees. I walked through the gate and followed the flagstone path up to a screen door with a sign that read OFFICE. The latch on the door was broken, and the door swung open with a gust of wind before I even touched it. A woman was sitting at the desk, poring over a book of newspaper clippings. At first, I couldn’t see her face, just the top of her head, gray roots fighting their way out of a dye job that looked like it had been accomplished with shoe polish.
As the screen door banged against the side of the building, she sat up, her face twisted into a snarl before she’d even had a chance to register the sight of me standing in the doorway.
“Watch the door,” she snapped. “You break it, and I’ll tack it on to your rent.”
Clearly, this was a woman who yelled first and asked questions later. If she thought I was one of her tenants, I didn’t have high hopes that she’d remember Annie. But I went into her office anyway, closing the screen door behind me as tightly and gently as I could manage.
“Sorry,” I said. “Must have been the wind.”
She snorted, then looked at me for the first time. A strange expression crossed her face before it went stony.
“What do you want? I’m not buying any candy bars.”
I reached into my purse and took out an old picture of Annie that I had, one where she didn’t look like she’d been bleached, painted, and tweezed within an inch of her life. I set it down on the woman’s desk.
“I’m looking for my sister, Annie Gates. She lived here a few years ago, I don’t know for how long, and I’m looking for a forwarding address.”
As she picked up the picture and scanned it with a poker face, I kicked myself for saying Annie was my sister. I should have stuck to the story I’d used at the hospital, that Annie was my friend.
“Yeah, she lived here a few years ago. Doesn’t anymore.” She gave me a self-satisfied smirk. “I don’t forget a face.”
“Did she leave an address?”
“I’m not the post office, kid. She was here a few months, then moved on. Why’d you come looking for her now?”
There was something about the way she asked that I didn’t like, something a little too much like genuine curiosity. I made my chin wobble and stuck a fingernail into the palm of my hand until my eyes started to water.
“She’s my sister,” I said, forcing a tremor into my voice. “I haven’t seen her in years, and I heard she might have been here. Isn’t there anything you can tell me?”
I hoped my performance was convincing enough to make her a little uncomfortable, make her tell me a little something, if only to get me out of her office. But whether she could tell my tears were false or not, she seemed to be enjoying them.
She scrunched up her mouth and looked at the ceiling, tapping her fingers together. At least my act was better than hers.
“You know, I think she left with some handsome young fellow.” She nodded, as if that settled it. “I don’t know who he was or where they went. That’s just what I heard from the other girls.”
The other girls, I thought. Now, that was an idea. Maybe one of them would tell me something worth knowing.
“Could I talk to some of them? Maybe one of them can remember his name.”
She pursed her lips, and I knew I shouldn’t have asked. Now she not only wanted me out of her office, she’d make sure I was off her property in five minutes and not snooping around bothering her tenants.
“Hon, people here tend to stay a few months and move on. I don’t have anyone who’s been here longer than a year.” Then, more firmly and finally, she added, “I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can be of any more help to you.”
She turned back to her news clippings, which I could see now were from the kind of papers that ran pictures of mangled tricycles and covered bodies on stretchers: FIEND ATTACKS SECRETARY IN LOS FELIZ, CHILD DIES IN FIRE ESCAPE COLLAPSE, that sort of thing. I could tell I was being dismissed.
“Could I have my picture back?” I asked.
She looked up, then gave me the once-over again before handing it back.
“Sure, sorry about that.”
I was pretty sure she wasn’t sorry at all. I put the picture back in my purse and closed the screen door gently behind me as I left. As I walked down the sidewalk, I peered over the tops of the hedges, trying to get a look at the courtyard bungalows, wondering which one Annie had lived in. Although it was morning, no one seemed to be home, or at least they weren’t awake yet. The place was eerily quiet.
Something didn’t sit right about the conversation I’d just had, the way the woman had looked at Annie’s picture, the way she’d asked why I was looking for my sister. Who asks a question like that? She’s my sister. Of course I’d look for her. As soon as I turned the corner, I doubled back, slipping behind the shrubs and following them up the length of the sidewalk. When I reached the office, I nestled under a leafy cover and listened. She was on the phone.
“Hey, Rex, it’s Wanda at the Stratford Arms. Sorry to bother you.” Then, after a short pause, “That little blond cupcake who lived over here a few years back, the one with the rich daddy, you still keeping tabs on her?”
There was a twig brushing up against my face that itched like crazy, but I didn’t dare move.
“Yeah, I figured. Anyhow, someone came by looking for her. Some kid claimed to be her sister.”
Wanda’s voice grew more agitated.
“Simmer down, Rex. I didn’t tell her anything. I have no idea how she knew to come here. But like I said, she was just a kid. Didn’t ask too many questions, nearly broke down crying when I said I’d never seen the girl.”
That was interesting. Little as Wanda had told me, she didn’t even want this Rex to know about that. The sarcastic bluster disappeared from her voice. Now she sounded meek and eager to please.
“Yeah, I’ll call if she comes back. Sorry to bother you, but I thought you’d want to know.”
Wanda hung up and her office fell silent. I guessed she’d gone back to her gruesome book of news clippings.
I was about to get up when I heard a small knocking sound behind me. I turned around to see a young woman standing at the front window of the bungalow nearest to Wanda’s office, rapping her knuckles on the glass. We made eye contact, and she motioned me to come closer, then disappeared.
The door to her apartment was hidden behind a clothesline hung with sheets and towels drying in the tiny yard. I hesitated until I noticed a fluttery yellow chiffon dress tucked among the linens. A woman with a dress that dainty, I reasoned, was probably not going to knife me in her living room.
I darted from the hedges toward the front door. It opened before I could knock, and the woman pulled me inside, shut the door behind us, and drew the curtains.
She gestured toward a brown horsehair sofa, which was the only place to sit in the entire room. I took a seat. She stood.
My mother was always saying that I could be pretty if I made an effort. Looking at this woman, I finally understood what she meant. She wore a gray shirtwaist dress, and her only makeup, a little dab of plum lipstick, was applied like an afterthought. Her hair was pulled back in a frumpy-looking headband, and she wore black shoes that looked like they belonged on a man or a polio patient. She wasn’
t trying to be pretty, that was for sure. And yet, she was. She was in her early twenties with a head of auburn waves that shone like freshly polished woodwork, and world-weary eyes that made her look like Lauren Bacall in The Big Sleep. If I made an effort, maybe I’d be halfway pretty. If this woman made an effort, she’d be a movie star.
“I’m Ruth,” she said. “And you must be Alice.”
How was it that everybody seemed to know who I was?
“Are you a friend of my sister’s?”
“Friend. That’s an interesting way of putting it.”
I didn’t like the smirk on her face when she said it, and it occurred to me that I should have applied more stringent criteria than “pretty yellow dress” when deciding to sit down in a stranger’s living room. Criteria like “lives in the Stratford Arms” and “spies on people out her window.” I calculated the distance between Ruth and me and the door, and wondered whether I could get there before she did.
Ruth rolled her eyes. “Oh, relax. I’m not going to hurt you.”
Another door lacquered in coat after coat of white paint separated the front parlor from the rest of the apartment. Without another word, Ruth disappeared behind it and left me alone on the couch, watching the door swing back and forth on its hinges.
There wasn’t much to keep me entertained in her absence. Aside from the horsehair couch and a scarred-looking coffee table, the room was completely empty. The curtains weren’t proper ones. Ruth had just thrown swaths of thick, unhemmed serge over a rod. Even on a sunny Los Angeles day, any scrap of light that found its way through was washed out and gray.
Ruth came back through the door holding two open bottles of Coca-Cola and took a seat next to me on the couch.
“Here,” she said, handing me one of the bottles.
“Thanks.”
We sat in silence, sizing each other up and drinking our sodas, until we both spoke at the same time.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“How do you know my sister?”
Ruth cocked her head to the side. “You answer first. I insist.”
