Where She Went (ARC)

by Kelly Simmons

  Emma took the train downtown, getting off at Suburban Station, and walked south. She’d chosen the same dress she had worn last time, to jog the valet’s memory. She’d heard Taylor say that about auditions, that you should always wear the same thing to the callback as you did to the first audition.

  She approached the private club from the cross street, not ready to go past Beck’s quite yet. She’d timed it to be there just after eleven, when she thought the manager would be there but not the staff. The fewer, the better, she believed, until she figured out what exactly was going on there. And until she figured out what exactly she was doing with it all, which could, she thought ruefully, take a bit longer than she anticipated. She’d never written a story that required tracking down sources or lying to get answers. She knew she could ask Jason for help—and knew that she should, at some point—but she wanted to have a solid outline at least, a plan and a couple of paragraphs, before she did.

  The building looked old and vaguely English in style to her eye, like a pub. It reminded her of buildings she’d seen on family visits to New York City or Boston, where her cousins lived; the opposite of skyscrapers, she’d said when she was a little girl, and her mother had laughed. Back then, she’d thought there were only houses and skyscrapers, and then suddenly she knew there were others, these in-betweens. The mullions of the divided light windows had been painted a glossy black. Velvet curtains, a shade somewhere between maroon and brown that her mother would have called cordovan, kept prying eyes out. No curtain, though, on the top half of the locked door, which she wasn’t quite tall enough to see in properly. She jumped a few times, noticed a light on toward the back, perhaps near the stairs. She could make out the shapes of tables, the curve of a bar. She thought she heard the low buzz of music, but it could have been coming from somewhere else.

  She took a deep breath and knocked, waited. Nothing. A firmer knock, three times in a row, and when she heard footsteps, her heart started to pound. A series of electronic beeps, then the click of a deadbolt, and the door opened.

  “Oh,” the man said, startled. “You’re not the new bartender.”

  “I could be,” she said quickly.

  “You could be?”

  “I’m a fast learner.”

  “Good for you,” he said, and though he hadn’t said it with malice, hadn’t said it with anything more than a kind of fatherly teasing, she felt it then, the line of red creeping across her face. She hoped it looked like sunburn. “And bad for him, because he’s late, and I hate people who are late. What can I do for you?”

  He looked to be around forty, though Emma thought every guy who wasn’t her age appeared to be forty.

  “Well, I’m not late,” she said.

  He laughed loudly. “Thank God,” he replied. “You’re too young for that.”

  She was disappointed twice. One, she didn’t understand the joke. And two, he’d called her young.

  “I’m looking for a job.”

  “I don’t hire high school kids.”

  Her eyes widened. “I’m in college,” she said slowly and only a tad defensively. And then, horror—did makeup make her look younger instead of older? Like she was sitting at her mom’s vanity, trying on her makeup?

  “Oh, okay. Freshman?”

  “Yes,” she said, deciding that if she told some truths and some lies, the lies would sound a bit better.

  “Are you eighteen?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, then you can put in an application, in case we have any openings. Which we don’t. Unless the bartender doesn’t show up. In which case we do. But bartenders have to be twenty-one.”

  “Okay, well, I—”

  “You have hostessing experience? I can’t stand one of our hostesses. She manages to look right at you and yet somehow, psychologically, on the inside, she’s rolling her eyes. You know?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Sort of.”

  “Yes, sort of, you know that kind of girl, or yes, sort of, you have hostessed?”

  “Both. One, my roommate is an actress, so she acts polite, but there’s disdain just below the surface. Two, I was the receptionist at a busy hair salon, which is a lot like hostessing.”

  He blinked. “To your first point, that’s precisely the reason I don’t hire actresses or models. I don’t trust them. To your second point—food versus hair. Interesting leap. But mostly female clientele, I assume, at the salon? Our customers are mostly men.”

  Yeah, she wanted to scream, and I know exactly why.

  “Meat eaters. Bourbon drinkers. Wine snobs.”

  “I know the type,” she said carefully.

  “Of course you do,” he replied. “They’re impossible to avoid.”

  The sun was rising overhead, making him squint. He had crinkles around his eyes and mouth, but they weren’t dry and sad, like her father’s had been. His seemed to be happier, to point up. And she thought, once again, that her father might have been depressed. Not just unhappy, not just trapped. The night he died, she was ashamed to admit, she had wondered if he had taken the gun and shot himself, and Salt had just said it was a drive-by shooting to save his pension and his reputation. No one saw the sadness in her father the way Emma had. But what did it help to think this or to know this? It didn’t, so when the thoughts trickled in, she brushed them away, always.

  “Can I…come in maybe? To fill out the application?”

  “What? Oh crap, yes, of course. I’m Sam, by the way,” he said, putting out his hand.

  “Emma,” she replied with just a second’s hesitation. “But some people call me Mary. Long story.”

  “Okay, Emma-slash-Mary. Enter.”

  He turned on the lights over the bar, and the bottles glowed, bounced off the mirrored surface behind them. She couldn’t help noticing there were a lot of other mirrors, too, above some of the tables, tucked into small corners. There were candles on all the tables, and she imagined it would be beautiful, all those candles, reflecting back. But also—all those men looking at the girls from all angles. She felt bile rising in her throat. How could Fiona do this? How could she stand it?

  “Could I,” she said, looking up from the paper and pen, “possibly use the ladies’ room?”

  “Sure thing,” he said. “It’s downstairs. Let me check the light though. People keep unscrewing the bulb. Pretty dangerous in high heels.”

  She followed him toward the back. He turned on the light and ushered her through with one arm. A steep set of stairs pitched down toward a lounge area with two velvet sofas. Well, now she understood. Unscrew the lightbulb, screw the girl? She thought of Fiona in her cherry-red shoes, tumbling down the stairs. She thought of a dozen Fionas, falling like dominos, because some idiot needed to grind one out before he got home. She glanced at the plush sofa, a dark turquoise, curved arms, beautiful, really, but she didn’t want to look too closely. Like everything else, beautiful at a distance, but the truth was trickier up close.

  The women’s bathroom had a carved red-and-beige cameo hanging on the door. The bathroom was large, with a sink that would have looked like a trough if it hadn’t been gilt-edged. Velvet curtains draped the high, street-level window. A vanity in the corner lined with candles, a wood-framed mirror, a velvet settee. Velvet, gold, candles, mirrors. The whole effect was heavy and sexy, like somewhere an aging rock star would stage a photo shoot with a famous photographer. The thought struck her suddenly—was this how old-fashioned bordellos looked? Had they thoughtfully designed it to look like what it basically was? The idea of it, the straightforward intention, turned her stomach.

  She sniffed the air, curious. The bathroom didn’t smell like a bathroom—no disinfectant, no bleach. Neither did it smell like bathrooms in clubs—no hairspray, no perfume, nothing covering up anything. It smelled instead of matches, of bonfire. She picked up one of the candles, sniffed, looked at the bottom. Wood smoke, i
t said. Well, that explained it. She wondered if old bordellos had wood fires to keep the scantily clad women warm, if someone had researched that. She wondered briefly how exactly you would put a smell like that in a candle. Crushed wood chips? Ashes? Then she took a minute and jotted it all down, made notes. Another detail for a corner of a story that wasn’t ready to be told. Not yet.

  She slipped back into the corridor and, on an impulse, opened the door to the men’s room. Empty. She stepped in cautiously. It was almost exactly the same as the ladies’ room, except for one detail—a round tray of condoms, fanned out carefully, artfully, like blossoms. The packaging, burgundy and brown foil, the colors alternating. The restaurant’s logo and location were stamped on them in gold. Ridiculous, she thought; if you didn’t know what it meant, you’d wonder why they said London Philadelphia. As if that was a city-state of some kind or the only two locations of all the condoms in the world. She thought of all the old dirty hands that had touched this tray and dropped it. Ewww. Then with the edge of one fingernail, she tucked it back into formation, so Sam wouldn’t have to do that, too.

  There was another door beyond the men’s room, past the sofas, but it was locked. Upstairs, she heard a door open and close, low voices. Then, footsteps clattered overhead, so she hurried back up to see who it was. Another man had arrived, but he wasn’t the bartender. Unless the bartender wore a FedEx uniform and wheeled a hand truck.

  “You one of the new girls?” he asked her amiably.

  “No,” she said, hoping it hadn’t been too quick, too filled with disgust.

  “She’s applying to be a hostess,” Sam said. “So don’t tell her how mean I am.”

  The FedEx guy laughed. “Nicest guy on my route. Don’t let him fool you.”

  Emma smiled. It was hard to square Sam’s personality with the reality of his business. He was friendly without a drop of smarmy. His eyes stayed on her eyes, never travelled elsewhere. She didn’t get even the slightest creepy vibe from him, and that unsettled her further. Stop liking him, Emma. You need to be impartial!

  She finished her application while he tinkered behind the bar, turning bottles to face forward, wiping invisible crumbs and droplets of water off surfaces. He seemed to like people, genuinely. So, how, exactly, had he gotten into a business that could hurt people? She hadn’t actually thought there was the slightest chance of getting a job—this was just a ploy to get inside, look around, ask questions. She’d been expecting a class-A, alpha-male asshole, all business, who would take one look at her and decide her tits weren’t big enough to be worth his time.

  “So you’re the owner? Or the manager?”

  “I am merely the day manager. A peon in the scheme of things.”

  “But you’re not open for lunch.”

  “Very observant of you, since there are no people here eating chopped salads. You ever notice how much men love chopped salads? They just love to shovel it in.”

  She blinked. Did he even know how that sounded? In a place like this?

  “A lot happens during the day. Deliveries, prep, cleaning, hiring. So I handle the day, and someone else handles the night. I own another restaurant, and I spend most evenings there. Now I’ve told you everything. We could go on a game show called How Well Do You Know Your Boss? and you would win.”

  “You seem pretty invested for someone who doesn’t own the place.”

  “Well, I love the person who owns it. And I owe the person who owns it my life.”

  “Your wife?”

  “My brother. You have siblings, Emma-slash-Mary?”

  “No.”

  “Ah, well, then you might not understand. Listen to me,” he laughed. “Blathering to you like you’re a bartender. Where else you looking for a job? I could recommend you.”

  She shrugged. “Anyone with a sign up.”

  “I didn’t have a sign up,” he said quietly.

  “Well, I was walking right by. And it looks like such a nice place.”

  He sighed. “Yeah, it does. You know why?”

  “Why?”

  “Because it is.”

  “Unless you roll your eyes at the day manager?”

  “Exactly.”

  She said goodbye, and he said he’d be in touch if he could figure out a way to fire the other girl, but that was a secret, not to say that to anybody, and she promised. He said he wasn’t sure it was legal to fire someone for the way their eyes moved when he wasn’t looking. She smiled and shook his hand before she left. As she walked down the street toward the valet at Beck’s, she decided that Sam Beck reminded her of her softball coach in third grade. Friendly. Good with young people. Honest. It made her wonder what his brother had done that made him justify doing what he did—even though he claimed to walk away every night and worry about something else. How good a liar, how good an actor did he have to be to sleep soundly every night?

  As she approached the entrance to the store, one of the valets sprang up from his folding chair, smiling broadly.

  “Hey, it’s you!” Michael said.

  “You forgot my name,” she said, pouting.

  “Mary,” he said. “Mary of the yellow dress.”

  She smiled; she knew wearing the same thing was a good idea.

  “But you look fancier today.”

  Yes, she thought. No Converse, actual grown-ass woman heels.

  “Yeah, well, you got to step it up once in a while.”

  “So what’s up, Miss Mary?”

  “I need your help.”

  “Okay.”

  “Can we talk somewhere? Can you take a break?”

  “Not formally,” he said. “But do you want to help me park the next Maserati?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I totally do.”

  Twenty-Three

  Maggie

  Gina had insisted on calling the number herself, and Maggie reluctantly let her, understanding her position. First, Maggie was sleep deprived and not thinking clearly. Second, she could be locked up for just the actions of one evening alone. In a few hours, she’d already contributed to the delinquency of a minor and tampered with evidence. Could she really be trusted to interview someone this important, or would she try to threaten him, spew hate, and make it a trifecta?

  It was a whole lot of discussion considering the phone call went straight to voicemail, a voicemail that said, “This is J. Leave a message.” Of course, everyone knew how infrequently young people even listened to their messages. But a text from Gina’s phone identifying herself as a police officer got no response either. Whoever he was, he was asleep, as any normal person should be. Maggie told her that the editor’s name was Jason, so this could be him. And of course, it could be a thousand other people, too.

  Gina promised to follow up, hailed Maggie a cab, and agreed to call her the next day. Maggie went home, texted Chloe that she’d be out a few more days, then opened her laptop, intending to set up a Facebook page that looked like the poster, but when she logged on, she saw that Sarah Franco had already done this, sent it to her three thousand friends, and tagged the communications directors of their former high school, grade school, and college to help spread the word. Grateful and defeated, Maggie lay back on the sofa thinking about what else needed to be done, and in the doing, or the undoing, her body fell asleep.

  She woke abruptly, arms flailing, to loud knocking and hard yellow light. She looked at her phone—1:00. In the afternoon? How was that even possible? She wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand and went to the door, looked through the peephole.

  Gina. She had on the same clothes as the night before, and her hair didn’t look any cleaner, but Maggie knew better than to start comparisons when she’d slept in her mascara on a sofa. She let her in.

  “Good, you slept.”

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “Sorry to wake you.”

  “No, I’
m glad you did. I have to think about maybe posting a reward. I—”

  “Hold off on that. I have some news.”

  “Did the boy call you back?”

  “Yes, but that’s not really the news.”

  “Do you mind if I make some coffee first? Do you want some?”

  “No, I have to go home and sleep as soon as I leave here.”

  “Sleep?”

  “Yeah, I just got off my shift. Not much action this morning, thank God.”

  Maggie tried to process this. Gina had been working while she was sleeping? She measured grounds, poured water, then waited for it to brew. They stood together awkwardly while the water heated, trickled down across the grounds, not speaking. They were not going to be people who ever got to small talk.

  Gina didn’t look nearly as tired as another person would have after being up all night. Frank was like that, too; Maggie used to call him Camel for his ability to go without food and water and sleep for long periods of time. As if he weren’t quite human, mortal. Those were the people who should be cops and spies. Those were the people who won reality shows where they were castaways without clothes or food. Frank could have won. Maybe Gina, too. Great, she thought; they are exactly alike. Maybe I’ll grow to hate her, too. Oh right, wait. I already hate her. A woman I hate is helping me now, staying up all night because she feels guilty. Because she owes me. Because she’s human after all.

  “So Kaplan’s agreed to dust for fingerprints, get her phone records and the surveillance tapes from outside the dorm. He refused the rest, but that’s pretty good for now.”

  “Wait, what? How did you do that? Did you go to his captain?”

  “No. Going to someone’s captain is like committing treason.”

  “How then?”

  “Simple. I told him you were an old friend of mine.”

  “And he believed this?”

  “I think it kind of turned him on.”