Shame

by Alan Russell

  “If you touch my children, I’ll kill you. I swear to God I will.”

  “I’ll be carrying Miss Elizabeth’s cell phone. That’s how I’ll be communicating with you. But I think you’d better hurry along right now.”

  Feral didn’t hang up right away. Caleb heard his daughter yell, “Marco.”

  And then, before the line went dead, he heard the killer’s answer: “Polo.”

  “Give me the keys to your car,” Caleb said.

  He got up from the sofa, staggering for a moment on unsteady legs.

  “Look at you,” said Lola. “You’re ill.”

  “Give me the keys now.”

  “You’re too sick to do this alone.”

  He took a threatening step toward her.

  “Let me go with you.” She moved back, trying to keep her purse away from him.

  Caleb grabbed her by the arm. His hands were merciless. She squealed with pain as he wrenched the purse from her hands. He didn’t acknowledge her hurt. Seeing his face, Lola backed away from him.

  But it’s only fear for his family that’s showing, Lola told herself. “I can hide in the backseat of the car,” she said. “I can help you.”

  He turned the purse over and started emptying its contents.

  “You need me,” she said. “Not two hours ago you were out of your mind with fever. You’re still not thinking clearly. You couldn’t be. Or else you wouldn’t just be walking into his trap.”

  He found the keys.

  “You’d be thinking how to stop him once and for all. That’s how you can make your family safe. Not by sacrificing yourself.”

  He started to walk toward the door, but Lola stepped in his path. She spoke quickly before he could throw her out of the way. “We can talk things out in the car. Together we can come up with some kind of plan.”

  Caleb didn’t push her aside. He looked at Lola and she at him. His eyes frightened her. They looked into her and made her reconsider what she was trying to do. I’m not brave, Lola thought, and I’m not a brave. I am a Two-Spirit. And I’m very afraid.

  All I need to do is look away, she thought. That would say everything without her saying anything. As he passed by she could tell him Godspeed and God bless. And then, to make herself feel better, she could call the police. She could promise herself that somehow she’d get the goddamn cavalry out to help him.

  But that would be a lie, and she wasn’t good at lying to herself. Not now, not anymore. Oh, she’d tried telling herself lies for the longest time, but she had always known what was true and what wasn’t. Like now. She was afraid, and there was reason to be scared, but to deny Caleb would be like denying herself.

  “Okay,” he said.

  She steadied him, and he steadied her, as they walked out to her car. Before getting inside she said, “I have to go get something.”

  He sat there for a minute, wondering if he should turn the ignition, wondering if she just wanted him to drive away, and just when he’d decided that she did, Lola returned with a bag and an Indian blanket in hand. She opened the passenger door, put the seat forward, then went to the backseat and lay down.

  Caleb started the car. When he looked back in the rearview mirror she had all but disappeared under the blanket, but he could still hear her rustling through the bag.

  “What did you bring?”

  “My medicine bag. A Bible. Some clothes. Oh—and a gun.”

  34

  LET ME OUT. Lola practiced mouthing the words under her blanket. Lip-synching almost made them a reality. Lola knew that she only needed to say those three words and she’d be safe. But they were fifteen minutes into the drive and she still hadn’t said them.

  She heard a cough from the front seat that sounded as if it was covering a sob. Though he was physically sick and mentally tortured, Caleb was still trying to maintain a brave front. She knew without his saying anything that all he could think about was his children.

  “Maybe we should discuss a plan,” Lola said. Her words seemed to echo back at her, smothered by the blanket covering her.

  His hard tone overcompensated for his pain. “How’s this? Loan me your gun and I’ll kill him.”

  “The gun’s yours. I’ve always doubted I could pull the trigger anyway.”

  “That won’t be a problem for me.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “He’s not going to just let you shoot him,” Lola said. “He’ll be watching you, manipulating you.”

  And making sure no one’s helping you. She could tell him that, make Caleb think her presence was jeopardizing his children, and he’d be the one to insist she leave the car. That way he would be making the decision. She could live with that, couldn’t she?

  But instead she said, “He might fix it so he knows you don’t have a weapon on you.”

  “I’ll use my hands, then.”

  Caleb’s voice was measured, even anticipatory. She shivered a little.

  “Don’t let revenge cloud your thinking,” she said. “I could call the police and tell them Elizabeth has disappeared and where we’re headed.”

  “No. I don’t want to send him into hiding. I want it to end tonight.”

  “So does he. And he knows a hell of a lot more about you than you do about him. He’s controlling how the two of you will meet, and he’s prepared his playing field.”

  “I’m used to uneven playing fields.”

  “Maybe it doesn’t have to be so uneven. Maybe we can do something to distract him.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe we can scare him somehow.”

  “Maybe you could do one of your stage numbers. That ought to distract him.” A moment later, Caleb said, “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I know just the one I’d like to do. ‘Staying Alive.’ At the club we always bring out the bubble machine for that one. And I wave a lot of big feathers. Bee Gees music always needs lots of feathers. And my six-inch platform shoes, of course. Sometimes I segue into Nancy Sinatra’s ‘These Boots Were Made for Walking.’”

  She sang the chorus from the song but then found her voice wavering. She had this premonition that the boots were walking over a grave.

  “My stomach hasn’t felt like this in a long, long time,” Lola admitted. “It feels like we’re going to war. Not the kind of war with uniforms and marching, but a more personal kind of war, like when I used to go to high school and I’d know I was going to get beat up, even though I could never be sure when and where the attack was coming.”

  Caleb didn’t say anything, but Lola knew he had similar memories.

  “Back then I used to drink Pepto-Bismol for breakfast,” she said. “I tried to wear the right clothes, men’s clothes, but that didn’t help. The clothes couldn’t hide how different I was. I wasn’t the bad boys’ only target, though. There were other kids who didn’t fit in. I remember praying that today would be their turn and not mine.

  “I’d like to think I have changed since then, that I got stronger when I started putting on dresses, but I don’t know if that’s true. I’m still afraid that all it would take is someone looking at me wrong and there I’d be, begging those bullies to go pick on someone else instead of me. I wonder if we ever really change.”

  “We do change,” Caleb said. “We have to.” He fervently wanted to believe what he was saying.

  “Or is it that as we get older we just try to find ways to avoid conflict, ways that allow us to pretend that we’ve grown stronger? I remember the first time I went out in public in women’s clothing. I was sure everyone was looking at me. And I was sure they were all thinking, ‘There goes the freak.’ And gradually it dawned on me that few, if any, people were taking notice of me. Mostly it’s still that way. When I go out I don’t know whether I’m being bold or whether I’m passing for a woman or whether the world’s unobservant or whether people just don’t care.”

  “It may be a little bit of each,” Caleb said.

  �
�I’ve never been brave, you know. Sometimes I do a very un–Frank Sinatra version of ‘My Way.’ But I didn’t really do it my way at all. Wearing women’s clothing really wasn’t a choice for me. It was as necessary as breathing.”

  “If you weren’t courageous, you wouldn’t be helping me now.”

  “Don’t pin a badge on me,” Lola said. “Truth is, the only reason I haven’t jumped out of the car is because I’m afraid of how much analysis it would take to make me feel right about myself again.”

  “Fear,” Caleb said. “Everyone’s great motivator.”

  Lola heard the echo in his pronouncement. His own fears talking. She could tell he was thinking about his family again.

  “Your kids were playing in a pool,” she said. “He wouldn’t have had the opportunity to snatch them in front of other people.”

  “He knows where they are. That’s all that matters now.”

  “If something happens, I’ll call the Sheriff’s Department. Elizabeth said they were keeping tabs on your family. They’ll be able to protect them.”

  “Thanks.” His gratitude sounded raw and exposed and desperate.

  “I always wanted kids myself,” said Lola. “I had this fantasy that I would meet a man with little children, a widower, and that I’d be their mother. Silly, huh? I’m one of those fools for love, and what’s even dumber is that I keep setting myself up for failure. The kind of man I want is the kind of man who runs away from the likes of me.”

  “Love happens when you don’t expect it,” Caleb said. “I didn’t think I’d ever fall in love, or that anyone could fall in love with me. But when it happened, I treated it more like a curse than a miracle. I resisted love’s blessings so much that it was almost like I was embracing Anna and pushing her away at the same time. I guess I was afraid—no, I was sure—that she couldn’t possibly love the real me.”

  “Oh, I can name that tune, sugar. All of us with our shame. All of us built up like porcupines. Reminds me of that question: How do porcupines make love?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Very, very carefully.”

  Caleb didn’t laugh, but she didn’t expect him to. “The only creatures that got to be more careful than porcupines,” Lola said, “are us two-legged kind.”

  She was right, Caleb thought, right about lots of things. It did feel as if they were going into war. That explained their talking like this. No one wanted to die alone. And neither one of them wanted to die that night.

  “There’s this part in the Bible,” said Caleb, “where Jesus says, ‘And if thine right eye offends thee, pluck it out.’ I always wished I could do that, just pluck out all my bad parts. But then I wasn’t sure if I’d be left with any good parts.”

  The car slowed down. “I’m turning on Prospect,” Caleb announced. “Parking’s always tough around here.”

  Getting closer to the war, Lola thought. He was evidently thinking the same thing.

  “Can you give me that gun?” Caleb asked.

  He listened to her rummage through her bag, then saw her arm come out from under her blanket with the gun.

  “It’s loaded?”

  “Yes.”

  He stuck the weapon in his coat pocket, and they drove in silence until Caleb found a place to park the car.

  “Showtime,” he said.

  The crowds were out in downtown La Jolla, lots of beautiful people wearing expensive clothing, out to see and be seen.

  It feels surreal walking the streets, Caleb thought. No one else knew about his war. They were too busy window shopping and laughing to notice him. He knew how Lola had felt going out in drag for the first time, was sure he was experiencing the same feelings of exposure and uncertainty. He was the Bogeyman, had been on the front pages of all the newspapers and beamed out at these people from their television sets, but he was passing among them like a ghost.

  Caleb tried straightening his coat before walking into The Top Hat. He wasn’t dressed for the restaurant. Lola had done the best she could with his shirt, had mended it and tried to wash out the bloodstains, but they were still visible if you looked closely. His chin was bandaged and his face scraped from his run-in with the asphalt, and he needed a shave. Caleb could see his dark stubble in the reflection of the glass front door. His five o’clock shadow contrasted starkly with his newly blond hair.

  The interior of the restaurant had a lot of burnished wood and stained glass, but people weren’t there for the atmosphere so much as the panorama below. Top Hat diners had prime viewing spots of La Jolla Cove and the Pacific Ocean, and the patrons were taking advantage of their aerie, gazing at the ocean while sipping their drinks and nibbling on their shrimp cocktails. No one appeared to notice him, save for the hostess.

  Caleb cut off her pleasantries, merely told her, “I’m waiting for someone,” then took a seat.

  “Perhaps you’d like to wait in our lounge, sir...”

  “No.” Caleb turned his back on her, not giving her another glance. He didn’t take in her name tag or the color of her hair or anything about her. For her sake he ignored her. He remembered his brief encounter with Brandy Wein and how that had been enough to condemn her.

  It was 6:25. Caleb had arrived five minutes early. Time passed, each second making him more jumpy. He tried not to be a clock watcher, tried to resist looking at his watch, but found he couldn’t hold out for long. Every time the phone rang it gave him a start. He was looking at his watch when the phone rang again.

  The way the hostess was talking, Caleb knew it wasn’t another reservation call. “Why, yes,” she said. “I think he’s sitting here. Mr. Gray?”

  Caleb acknowledged the name. He took the phone from her, put it to his ear.

  “Sorry to have kept you waiting,” Feral said, “but you know how time passes when you’re having fun.”

  “No,” Caleb said, “I don’t.”

  “I stopped to chat with Elizabeth. I wish I could have stayed a little longer with her. I told her I’d be borrowing her cell phone for a few more hours. She didn’t voice any objections.”

  His emphasis was supposed to be cluing Caleb to her condition. He was telling him that she was unconscious, or gagged, or dead.

  “I want you to take a walk,” said Feral, “a little stroll down to La Jolla Cove. There’s a gazebo at the park there. It’s right across from the lawn.”

  “Walking’s hard for me,” Caleb said. “I had an accident last night.”

  “I think the exercise will do you good. You know what they say about people who don’t exercise—they’re at risk, and by extension so are their loved ones.”

  Caleb didn’t respond to the threat.

  “You’ll find further instructions at the gazebo. I’d hurry if I were you.”

  The line went dead.

  Caleb cut through the La Valencia Hotel, taking its courtyard pathway down to the cove. He tried to be on alert, aware of everything going on around him. As he crossed Coast Boulevard, he sensed that he was passing over a demarcation line, an upstairs-downstairs division that had the rich above and the hoi polloi below.

  The cove wasn’t crowded, but the air was pungent with smoke from fires and barbecues. Caleb took the roundabout way, following the pathway along the rocks. He stopped to tie his shoe and glanced back to see if anyone was following him. No one. But he was still sure he was under surveillance. The only people near him were two tide-poolers probing with a flashlight to see what the retreating tide had left behind. As Caleb rounded the bend, he encountered Frisbee players tossing their discs under the lights. Their boom boxes were positioned around the park, and techno vied with pop as he passed through. Dogs barked—or they might have been sea lions. Caleb knew the sea mammals liked to gather on the rocks around the cove. The end of daylight had brought the surfers in but hadn’t closed the door on all ocean sports. Several night dives were taking place. The scuba divers themselves were mere shadows, their outlines only hinted at by the glow of their underwater green lights.

&
nbsp; Caleb felt like one of those divers. He was having to work his way through darkness, and his illness made it seem as if he was doing everything in slow motion. A mist was hanging along the coast, light but building. The shroud seemed to cling to Caleb, hanging on to him. He tried to fight off the illusion but wished he had one of those green diver’s lights. They reminded him of a wizard’s scepter. That’s what he could use, a magical wand....

  I should have taken more aspirin, Caleb thought. His forehead was beginning to burn again. He couldn’t lose it, not now.

  Someone was in the gazebo. Caleb reached for the gun. There, he thought, touching the metal. The gun would serve him better than any wizard’s scepter. He didn’t pull it out but kept his fingers gripped around it. He crept closer to the gazebo, willing himself to be invisible, imagining himself as part of the fog.

  Fever talking, he thought.

  Inside the gazebo the shadow was moving, twisting. It was like some huge goddamn snake. Caleb took out his gun and stepped inside the structure.

  A couple looked up. Young, no more than fourteen. They stopped their kissing, interrupted by a man with a gun. They were terrified, mouths open, eyes wide and panicked.

  Caleb put his gun away. He didn’t know what to say. Further instructions were supposed to be in the gazebo, but what kind of instructions?

  “Was something left here for me?” he asked. “Some kind of package?”

  Drugs. He could tell that’s what they immediately assumed. And with his sweaty face and dazed manner, Caleb knew he probably looked like the most demented of dope fiends.

  “There wasn’t any package,” the boy managed to say.

  Caleb searched the darkened structure anyway, the boy and girl silently huddling together in the corner. Then he went outside and began examining the exterior of the gazebo. If he hadn’t been looking for the envelope, he wouldn’t have seen it, tucked as it was under one of the side eaves. As he reached for it, Caleb remembered the other envelope, the one with the pictures of Brandy Wein in it. His heart started racing. He pulled the envelope down and was glad to feel its lightness. That meant no new pictures. The envelope was addressed to Gray Jr. Inside it was a slip of paper on which was written, “Mount Soledad Cross. Fifteen minutes. Seek and ye shall find.”