The Elizas

by Sara Shepard

  There’s a lump in my throat. “I just want to take a walk by myself.”

  “Of course, of course.” She pulls me in one more time for a hug. She smells like weed, and her weight against mine makes my throat-lump six sizes bigger. “Get some Baked Alaska at Bob’s Big Boy,” she murmurs in my ear. “And a big glass of milk.”

  I start walking.

  It is after five, and Burbank is dead. The roads are wide and empty, perfect for drag races. A girl wipes off the tables of the greasy Mexican joint, and tinkling mariachi music escapes out of speakers. A high-end Mercedes slips silently out of the gates of Warner at the end of the road, then makes a slithery turn onto Olive, escaping for the highway. Its stealthy, amphibious motion triggers memory upon memory of all the weird, unexplainable things I’d recently done.

  Like jumping the fence of a chain hotel and plunging into the first body of water I could find—which happened to be a large, outdoor hot tub. I forced my face into the hot water. Only when I couldn’t breathe did I feel relief. It’s going to end. I’ll be free.

  Or the memory of riding a bike down the path that cuts through Santa Monica and Venice beaches and suddenly, arrestingly, having a palpable fear that someone was chasing me. I turned around, and I did see someone. Maybe lots of someones, all with angry, vengeful eyes. The only way I could fathom getting away was plunging into the Pacific, so I’d made a madcap run across the sand. A wave had taken me down immediately. A father and son dragged me out after the breath had left my body. Why is she coughing? the little boy kept asking. Is she going to be okay?

  And the memory of two nights ago, when I’d crashed into the pool at the Tranquility. The cold water had been so shocking, but once again, I’d felt safe. I flailed onto my back and, for a moment, opened my eyes.

  I stop short just before the curb cut. There was someone on the pool deck, just like Desmond said. The glare from a spotlight blotted out any discernible features, but whoever it was stood above me, chest puffed triumphantly, as I sank.

  I grab my phone and dial the police station again. The same receptionist picks up, and I can’t remember Lance’s last name again, and I can’t bear to go through the spiel of the message one more time. I hang up and demand my phone’s automated assistant give me the number to the Tranquility. “Can I be connected to the Shipstead bar?” I ask after the front desk answers.

  There’s a pause, and then someone else picks up. “Shipstead.” It’s a man with an Australian accent—Sheepstid.

  “G’day,” I say. Whenever I hear an accent I have the urge to speak with one, too. “Uh, I’m a private detective, and I’m checking in on my client’s wife. She says she was at your bar a few nights back, and I want to see if she was there the whole time or if she left and went somewhere else.”

  “Okaay.” He sounds circumspect. “Which day was this?” I tell him. “I wasn’t here Saturday. That was Richie.”

  “Is he working today?”

  “Nope.”

  “When will he next be in?”

  “Uh . . . tomorrow, I think. Or the next day.”

  “I might be dead by then!” My accent is gone. “Can you give me his cell number?”

  The bartender bursts out laughing. “Uh, no.”

  And then he hangs up.

  There’s a blare of a horn, and I jump. I’ve wandered into the crosswalk. I scamper to the curb, my heart in my throat. The image I’ve just seen of someone standing above me as I sink into the pool in Palm Springs skulks around me like a sullen cat. There had definitely been a shadow standing motionless over me, making sure I was floundering to the bottom.

  On my phone, I Google Tranquility resort pool accident. The article Kiki showed me is the only one listed. There were no reported accidents at the resort’s pool besides mine.

  Then I Google Palm Springs stalkers. A twenty-four-year-old girl was stalked by an ex-boyfriend. A forty-five-year-old nurse posted sexy pictures of herself in Palm Springs on Facebook and some crackpot stalked her to the Elvis Honeymoon Hideaway. Neither situation has much in common with what happened to me.

  I Google Los Angeles stalkers, but that brings up too many hits to wade through. Next I search Can the police lie to you. And Police cover-ups. And finally, How to get a memory back from your brain. This leads me to an article about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, which tells me something I already know: memories, especially powerful and emotional ones, are stored in the amygdala, where my tumor resided. These same memories are fragile and easily destroyed when they aren’t given time and space to form—there’s a whole biochemical and electrical process that fixes a memory in place. Also, just because you think you remember something happening doesn’t mean it actually occurred the way you remember it. Brains have a tendency to rewrite memories based on what you’d like to remember, or what someone has told you to remember. Or your mind might conflate two memories into one, the synapses in the brains getting tangled and confused.

  Is that it? Am I confusing the pool incident with an earlier plunge? I want to think so . . . but no. That face standing over me is so crisp in my mind. I have to believe in it. Once I start doubting myself, the memory will slip away forever.

  I need to lie down somewhere. I gaze at the sidewalk, considering it—this street is clean enough to eat off. Then I spot an even more tempting option: a corner bar across from Warner’s that used to be a whorehouse. There’s a winking floozy painted onto the window, a neon wine bottle above the bar. I wonder if a certain someone is inside. My mouth starts to water. My body actually lunges toward the place like a plant leaning toward a ray of light.

  I push through the door and am greeted by twilit gloom. It’s a bar with multiple personalities: the jukebox, bad lighting, and bathroom of questionable cleanliness suggest dive, but then there’s this whole wine cellar corner thing going on, the menu features beef cheeks, and there’s a PBS news broadcast on TV.

  I settle into a stool and gaze down the sparse line of patrons. Most of them, like everyone hanging out in Burbank at this time of day, are either studio people who don’t want to be bothered or screenplay hopefuls who are hoping to rub elbows with someone who will listen to their pitch. The bartender, Brian, tosses a coaster my way with a grumble. He’s always muttering to some guy about what cunts women are, how they’re liars, how they make no sense, how they’re whorish and opportunistic and way more superficial than men. I also can’t stand his hipster beard.

  “Gin and tonic,” I shout to him. He begrudgingly makes it, silently plops it in front of me, and sticks the paper bill in an empty glass.

  Then I feel a sort of magnetic pull, and I know the person I’ve come for is here before I actually see him. There he is: denim jacket, stubble, floppy hair, square jaw. He’s sitting at the other end of the bar, reading a magazine. As if suddenly aware of my presence, he looks up and stares at me, too. His lips twitch. He stands and walks over with a bearlike lope. I stretch off the stool and roll on the insteps of my feet, heart pounding, seething at the sight of him, but also relaxing, knowing exactly how this will play out.

  “Liza,” he says, when he’s close. “Long time no see.”

  I don’t know if he gets my name wrong on purpose or if he really doesn’t know it. It’s also possible I’ve given him this name instead of my real one.

  “I’ve been busy,” I answer.

  He takes a long sip of his drink—it’s something brownish with clinking ice cubes—and passes it to me. He knows I’m not picky. He knows I’ll drink it, which I do. It’s whiskey, the cheap kind. My throat feels gouged.

  He looks me up and down, his eyes twinkling. “You busy now?”

  I raise my eyebrows at him. “Not really.”

  There may be a little more talk than this, maybe even a gin and tonic or two, probably more glares from Brian. But what matters is that after not very much time, Andrew grabs my hand with urgency, and there we are in that horrid bathroom with its crumbling grout and the shit-stained toilet and the foul-smelling urinal ca
ke, my body pressed up against the wall, his fingers rushing to unzip, me feverishly pulling the grungy hospital T-shirt over my head. I shut my eyes and sink into this as best I can. There is acid in my throat. I may vomit soon. But for a few seconds, I can forget everything about who I am and be some girl I don’t know, some waste, a putrid, repulsive Liza a man wants to ravage. That’s all I am worth, deep down. I don’t know why this sort of depravity feels necessary, but it does. Maybe it’s another trick of my amygdala.

  It’s over fast. Andrew hands me a cigarette; he’s always got a pack. He smokes one, too. We blow the smoke out the bathroom window into the alleyway. A limp hank of hair falls across Andrew’s forehead.

  I tap his arm. “Is that a studio pass around your neck?”

  He flicks the ashes from his cigarette into the toilet; the water fizzles. “Maybe.”

  “You working on a writing team?”

  “Maybe.”

  When we first met, he admitted that he hoped to work on a TV drama, maybe a police procedural. This was when we’d had a normal, flirty bar conversation, before he understood I was easy and desperate and didn’t need verbal foreplay to strip naked. But I didn’t play the game entirely—I told him nothing about myself. But now, I kind of want to tell him something. I just don’t know what.

  I think of it as he’s zipping up. “I was almost killed two nights ago.”

  He looks at me, really looks at me, and raises an eyebrow. Then he snorts and rolls his eyes. “Yeah, right.”

  “It’s true!” An additional thought appears in my mind with astonishing force. And I could kill you, too. I almost gasp out loud, shocked my mind coughed that up.

  He licks his finger and uses it to stub out the cigarette. It makes a dangerous sizzle, and he drops it in the toilet. Another sideways glance, and then he finally buttons his pants. “We’ve all got our stories, Liza. We’ve all got our stories.”

  From The Dots

  After Dot was banished to the ICU, Dorothy’s schedule got very busy. She wrote Dot cards that the nurses passed through that explained she was in “meetings.” Maybe Riders of Carrowae was finally getting published. Maybe she’d met a man—husband number three. Dot had gotten over the Los Angeles magazine thing, mostly because it had had the reverse effect of what she’d feared. Recently, the doctors had decided to allow her fifteen minutes of visiting time a day, and seven kids from school had come to see her. They’d brought candy, DVDs, and paperback books she hadn’t read yet. A pale girl named Matilda who Dot had always admired sat at the side of her bed and marveled at the needle marks on Dot’s arms.

  Two days later, another card from Dorothy came; she was going on a three-month trip for research. Dot was horrified. She called Dorothy’s cell phone.

  “How can you leave me in here?” Dot cried.

  “I know, I know,” Dorothy said. “But you’re strong. You can handle this. And I’ve let work go for a very long time, dear. An agent is finally interested, and they’ve given me a deadline. I’ve got to get back to it.”

  “But I thought the book was done,” Dot said.

  “That’s the thing,” Dorothy said. “People aren’t into barbarian novels right now. My agent wants me to restructure it and make it about the Holy Grail. So it’s essential, you see, that I go to southern France. This new direction won’t work unless I see the region firsthand.”

  Dot seemed to sense a distance in her, like her aunt was angry at something Dot had done. Did she think Dot had said something to the nurses to banish her to the ICU? But what was it Dot shouldn’t have said?

  She was feeling better, though. Clearer, with no new seizures. The next day, friends from school stopped in again, and Dot was able to have a whole conversation with them without feeling dizzy and nauseated. Then her mother appeared in the doorway wearing jeans and a T-shirt instead of work scrubs. Dot didn’t have time to pretend she was sleeping. Her mother’s face broke when she saw Dot awake. She made a big deal out of placing her car keys in a pocket of her purse. When she looked up again, there were tears in her eyes.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be at work?” Dot said coldly.

  Her mother settled on her bed. “I took the day off.” She inspected her carefully, sort of hesitantly. “I’m really sorry, Dot.”

  “Sorry about what?” Dot asked.

  Dot’s mother’s eyes filled. “Everything.”

  Then she pulled a box out of her purse. Inside was a music box with a spinning ballerina on the top. When she turned the crank, the box played “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

  “Ballerinas?” Dot said, making a face.

  Her mother’s smile twitched. “I know it’s not your thing. I just thought . . .” She made the ballerina spin again. They watched her dance in silence.

  Not long after, the fog that had hung in Dot’s head was completely gone. The doctors announced that her blood work numbers were perfect, and there was no more suspicious brain swelling. They even did a trial day without seizure medication, and even then the seizures didn’t return. Dot’s mother, her soon-to-be stepfather, and her stepsister met with the doctors, and though it was a happy meeting, Dot couldn’t stop thinking that there was something wrong with the family picture. It was supposed to be Dorothy in here with her, finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

  “When will Dorothy come back?” Dot asked her mother.

  Dot’s mother industriously packed her things into a new plaid suitcase. “You’re going to love our new house. Almost all the renovations are done.”

  “Has Dorothy seen it?”

  “And your room! It’s very big, Dot. And it has a window seat. You’ve always wanted one.”

  “Is Dorothy out of town?”

  Finally her mother looked at her squarely. “I have no idea,” she admitted offhandedly, as though the question were a little absurd. As though Dot had just asked the whereabouts of a certain squirrel they saw at the park, or whatever happened to that ladybug who frequented their upstairs bathroom.

  “Do you know why she left?”

  One shoulder rose. “She’s like this, Dot. She’s always been like this. She comes and goes. You can’t rely on her.” Something in her face shifted, and her throat bobbed. And then: “Your room’s a little oblong and unconventional, but I think you can make it work.”

  Despair and anger rattled through Dot. Clearly her mother was still jealous of Dot and Dorothy’s special bond. What if her mother hadn’t told Dorothy their new address? What if she was never able to find them? What was wrong with her mother? Then she realized: she had a cell phone; she could text Dorothy the address herself. Take that.

  Buoyed once more, she asked, “Can I pick the color for my walls?”

  Her mother paused from packing. “What were you thinking?”

  “Black.” Dot grinned nastily.

  Her mother zipped up the suitcase efficiently and then grinned right back. “Perhaps yellow would be more cheerful. I was thinking yellow and gray.”

  Nurse Lisa, on the prowl by Dot’s door, beamed. “Yellow and gray is a lovely combination.” She went to hug Dot goodbye, but Dot ducked away from her arms. Could Lisa also have had something to do with Dorothy’s leaving?

  They’re jealous bitches, Dot thought, remembering what Dorothy had said about the nurses. Even if it was just in her head, swearing made her feel embarrassed and ashamed. But it also made her feel kind of better, too.

  ELIZA

  MY AGENT, LAURA, calls the next morning while I’m still in bed. I should be up, of course, doing sun salutations or jogging or greeting the day with a barbaric, disease-free yawp, but instead I’m under a thick mink blanket, drooling.

  “You sure came up with a creative way to drum up attention for this book,” Laura crows after her assistant patches me through.

  “Huh?” I sit up creakily and look at the clock. It’s 6:14 a.m.

  “This stunt in the pool! The press is amazing—it was picked up off that little Palm Springs website, and now it’s
gone viral. The Dots is on the map! There have been three articles about you on publishing blogs. Even more people are clamoring for an advance copy than before, and your pre-order sales got a bump. Good going, girl!”

  I start to say something, but she talks over me. “There are even rumors that you think someone’s trying to kill you.” She lets out a short little ha of breath. “You really are like Dot from the book. It’s a performance piece, really. Life imitating art. Keep it up!”

  I’ve never met my agent because she lives in New York and I have a fear of flying, but I have concocted a mental picture of her that I envision every time we talk. I see her as a tall, stalk-like, tornado of a woman with sleek, perfectly highlighted hair and a large, square diamond ring on her right hand. I bet she has wide, frantic eyes that rarely blink. I bet she’s one of those people who makes constant eye contact. I bet she screams at her assistants but they are still devoted to her, like tortured but pampered little lapdogs.

  I still can’t believe she even likes my book. A week after I’d mailed the first draft to Laura, she’d called me in hysterics. “This is great! Chilling!”

  “Wait, really?” It seemed so unfathomable. I was proud of the book, but also embarrassed by it. Maybe the story was silly. Maybe it was the most ridiculous thing ever written. I’m not a very good judge of good fiction versus bad, considering all I’ve read my whole life was epic poetry and trashy horror. I wondered if every so-called writer went through such a roller coaster of ambivalence or if it was just me.

  Now, I wriggle my feet out from under the covers and gasp. I have forgotten that I painted my toenails black last night, in a post-sex-with-Andrew sloppy drunken flurry, and for a moment I think I have gangrene.

  “I didn’t try to kill myself,” I tell Laura. “We need to issue some kind of statement.”

  “It’s not like anyone believes what they read on the Internet,” Laura scoffs. “The point is you’re officially interesting. I’ve gotten a few requests for interviews. Your publisher wants to send out more galleys to bigger reviewers. Do you have anyone you’d like me to send it to?”