Zephyr.
The camera fumbled in my hands, and I caught it before it hit the floor.
The time stamp at the bottom of the video-screen said JUL 25 11:58 AM… My wedding anniversary.
Zephyr walked closer to the hidden camera, nearing the refrigerator. She was so close, the lens could no longer see her.
What the hell was she doing here?
“Taj, you finished?” a woman had asked off-screen. “She’s gonna wake up soon.”
I knew that voice.
“No,” Taj had answered.
The video showed Leilani standing in the doorway with a turquoise Tiffany bag in her hand. “I’m gonna get the food out of the car. Can you handle everything?”
“You act like I ain’t never been in this house before with her in it,” Taj said. “And what the hell is this supposed to mean? Never wish me away again, you and—”
The image in the camera’s monitor twisted before me, and I narrowed my eyes to focus. The breakfast bar had moved thirty feet away from me, and I hadn’t even moved from my spot. I squeezed my eyes shut, then opened them—my side vision was gone, and the kitchen see-sawed before me.
Disoriented, I dropped the camera, and waggled my head. I pitched myself out to the living room. My knees gave out before I reached the couch, and as I stumbled, my teeth clicked so hard that I tasted blood. My abdomen tensed, and I puked onto the hardwood floor. The light in the room dimmed, and a cold breeze washed over me. A sharp pain jolted in my belly, and I collapsed face first into the pool of vomit.
75
I opened my eyes to dim, golden light. Smelled pomegranate and sandalwood… and burning. I tried to move my arms, but something held them down. My legs were heavy, each limb sandbagged. Tried to swallow, but no spit came, and it hurt to swallow anyway.
Leilani was kneeling at the coffee table… three miles away. A billion burning candles sat on the table, on the computer desk, on top of the television, everywhere. She lit a final candle, then glanced at me.
I floated above the couch, cold air streaming beneath me. Angels, each the size of penlights, drifted over me like stardust. “Why we at church?” I muttered. Leilani had closed the gap between us, and now, she was so close, I could touch her. “Your head is huge,” I said, snickering. “What’s up?”
Leilani smirked and gazed at me with flat eyes. “You lit a bunch of candles like you do all the time. Then, you took too many pills like you do all the time. Tried to commit suicide.” She shook her head and said, “If I had found you in time, you could’ve lived. But you stumbled over one of your stupid candles and started another fire.”
I grunted, then glanced at the soaring angels. And those golden doves. And a tiny Nicole, naked and praying. Fire? “I started another fire?” I croaked. “Oh, crap. When?” Tried to move again, and this time, my hand flew before my face. But that couldn’t have been my hand. This… thing was as large as a baseball mitt.
“Can you just…?” Leilani looked to the ceiling. “Shut up for a minute. I’m thinking.”
I lay back, and sang, “Burning down the house.” I turned to her, and said, “I’m glad it’s burning. I hate that house, you know?” I shifted, and all 206 of my bones clicked. “Help me up. Wanna go home.”
Leilani’s eyes glistened in the light.
“Don’t cry, Lei. It’ll be ohhh-kaay.”
Without looking, she knocked a candle off the coffee table.
“Wait, wait, wait,” I said. “Why you do that?”
She bit her lip, then said, “I need to start the fire.”
“I’m a little slow right now. Lemme get out—”
“No.”
I giggled. “This is a joke, right? An intervention or something? You talked to Mo, huh? Dude, I took a Tylenol, that’s it.”
“Open your mouth,” she demanded, standing over me now.
I whispered, “Did you know there are angels in here? Ssh.”
“Open it, damn.”
“Why?”
She held out a blue pill. “To take this.”
I perched on my elbow and glanced around the room. So many candles. “I took one of those already. It’s made me a little loopy coz it’s a Nighttime edition.”
She frowned. “It’s not Tylenol. It’s Special K.”
The ceiling looked like dancing sunset. “Special what?”
“Ketamine,” Leilani said. “But you didn’t take two. Why didn’t you take two? Cutting back now? So you can adopt your stupid, little crack-baby?”
My muscles twitched, and my heart pounded in my chest.
“You know what I really think about that?” Without waiting for my reply, she turned and knocked another candle off the table.
The votive tumbled to the floor and rolled towards my quilt.
I sobered some, and said, “What do you want?”
“Now you ask me that?” she screeched. “Now? After Truman leaves you everything? After you tell me you’re gonna raise some kid who will get my brother’s shit before I do? How is that right? How do two strangers get all my family’s money?”
I stared at the wax from the fallen candle dripping onto the hardwood floor. “The candle’s messing up my—”
“It’s always about you,” she shouted. “Taj told me about your sessions together. Just how damn whiny you were. How can I go on? Why is he visiting me? Make him stop.”
“She helped you do this.”
“Hell, yeah, she helped me,” Leilani said. “I’m too tall to sneak around this damn house, slamming doors and hanging crap on walls without you hearing me. And she got out of L.A. tonight before they could arrest her for fraud or some crap like that. America’s so hostile to small businesses.”
I remembered: the tape.
Taj at my fridge. Leilani with that bag. And then, the world had disappeared.
“My brother was a fool,” Leilani said. “He shoulda divorced you as soon I told him about your ass.”
“Told him what?” I asked, struggling to sit up.
Leilani narrowed her eyes. “That you were sleeping around on him.”
I stopped moving.
“I saw you go into Jake’s house, and I saw you and Jake on the living room couch. I saw the whole damn thing. And I drove to Truman’s office and I told him that night. He went off. Screaming, cursing… He hated your ass.” She wandered to the computer table and knocked over another candle.
Icy tears stung my cheeks as I whispered, “He came to my job in the morning. We made up. He told me he loved me. I was planning to confess that night. I swear.”
Leilani stood over me. “Trust me. If he had lived, he would’ve left you.”
“We would’ve worked it out,” I said, my voice strained. “He knew I loved him, that I wanted to be married to him.”
“Bullshit,” she shouted, her face now just inches away from mine. “You loved what he gave you. And now, you get to be the saintly widow, right? Why oh why did he ignore me, right? I hate this house. If only I’d been a better wife blah blah blah…” She reached behind her and knocked over two more candles. “And there I was, having to take care of your lying, cheating ass, hoping that you’d give me what I deserved since you no longer did. I hated you every minute of the damned day.
“And I didn’t want to do this,” she said, flicking her hand at the candles. “I tried to scare you into doing the right thing… It was obvious that you were crazy as hell, that you felt guilty for doing what you did, so what was the harm? You needed to be punished by somebody since Truman wasn’t here to do it himself. And you were gonna O.D. anyway, between the Xanax and that other crap. I gave you the gun, hoping that maybe you’d stick the barrel in your mouth and pull the trigger.
“Everything me and Taj did around here worked cuz you were getting crazier and crazier… But you didn’t O.D. You didn’t shoot yourself in the head. Don’t know why, but bitches like you always live. So now I gotta be direct about it.” She sat on my chest, and all the air in my body was forced out. �
�Open up.”
I struggled beneath her, but only my legs could move. “Get off me,” I tried to shout.
Leilani clawed at my mouth, but I whipped my head back and forth—she couldn’t get a hold. She tired of struggling with me, and grabbed the .22 from the coffee table.
“We’re friends, Lei,” I said, gasping for air, noticing that my quilt had caught fire.
She placed the gun’s cold nuzzle against my temple.
Smoke billowed up to the ceiling, and the smoke alarm started its screech.
Leilani glared at the plastic disk above us, and said, “Damn, that’s loud.”
Down the hall, the alarm box squawked. The female operator said, “This is APX Control Center. Is everything okay there?”
Leilani smiled as though the woman could see her. “Yeah,” she shouted. “I just burned something in the oven.”
“Hello?” the operator said. “Ma’am, you’re gonna have to speak up. I can’t hear you.”
Leilani rushed to the doorway, and shouted, “I just burned something in the oven.”
I reached beneath the couch cushion, and touched the machete’s cold handle.
“You don’t need the fire department?” the operator asked.
“No,” Leilani said. “Thanks, anyway.”
I slipped off the couch and stood—Jell-O had replaced the cartilage in my knees.
“That’s fine, Mrs. Baxter. I need your code word.”
I gripped the machete, and wobbled closer to the door.
“Code word?” Leilani said. “I don’t… Hold on.” She looked back over her shoulder and said, “Nicole, what’s the—”
I swung the long knife through the air. It stopped its glide midway through Leilani’s neck, and warm blood geysered from a violated artery, bathing my hands. Leilani’s finger reactively pulled the trigger, and a shot blasted from the gun’s barrel. My right thigh burned with heat, and I crumpled to the floor.
Leilani, still clutching the gun, collapsed beside me.
I grabbed my wounded thigh, my sweatpants now soggy with blood. Icy pain sparked through my body each time I took a breath. I cried out as I dragged myself past Leilani’s crumpled body and into the darkened hallway. But I stopped. It hurt too much to move. It hurt too much to breathe. Tears and spit pooled beneath me—I couldn’t do it. I closed my eyes and hid my face in my arms.
76
The sky was cornflower blue. Soft wind kissed my cheeks and hair. Long blades of grass tickled my arms. I lay in a field of candy-colored poppies, and in the distance, colorful hot air balloons drifted across the horizon like dandelion seeds.
A man was walking towards me.
I narrowed my eyes, but still couldn’t see his face.
He came closer… closer…
Truman wore khakis and a crisp, white shirt. His eyes were bright, and his skin—the color of Maui earth—radiated in the sunlight. He smiled at me.
I trembled—so happy to see him—and held out my arms. “Let me touch you.”
He sat beside me, then kissed my cheeks, my lips …
I nuzzled his neck. Citrus and sunscreen.
He held my face in his hands and whispered, “Live.”
I nodded.
Truman kissed me again, then said, “Wake up, babe. You need to go.”
My eyes popped open as glass shattered in the den. A sea of flames was sweeping over the couch. Fire chewed at the computer desk. The smoke alarm continued to shriek.
Wake up, babe. You need to go.
I grabbed at the doorknob and pulled myself to stand. I limped down the hallway, ignoring pain with each step. Thick, acrid smoke billowed from behind me, and I coughed as smoke filled my lungs. I clung to the walls for support, and made it to the staircase. I placed too much weight on my injured right leg, and crashed down the stairs, coming to a stop in the middle of the landing.
The smoke alarm in the bedroom had started its own shrieking. Every space of silence had been filled with noise.
I scooted to the second step. Then to the third step. The fourth… I reached the first floor, but couldn’t see anything. I grabbed the banister and pulled myself to my feet. My left leg shuddered as I hopped through the foyer. I opened the front door and threw myself into the cold, moist air. I stumbled, and flopped onto the flagstone pathway.
The only sounds in the neighborhood were coming from my house—all that shrieking, all that shattering. Before I passed out, I heard the faint rumble of fire trucks making their way through sleepy Beachwood Canyon.
The After Life
January
After a December without rain, tar-colored clouds banished the sun to another galaxy and released a deluge Los Angeles hadn’t seen since the El Niño storms of 1997. The rain fell heavy all day and without pause. The sky was falling, and so was everything else. Newscasts showed reel after reel of trees falling on houses, houses falling down hills, hills falling into the Pacific Ocean.
I stood on the ladder in my renovated den, pushing a paint roller across the wall, listening to the storm.
“Scarlet’s still a bold choice,” Monica said, sitting on the drop cloth and chomping on a tempura carrot.
“Dr. Clark said that I needed to make bold choices to improve the quality of my life,” I said. “Scarlet paint is just one of many.” I glanced down at my friend. “I’m glad she hated Bolivia.”
Monica smiled. “It’s hard living without a Target in your neighborhood.”
I finished painting the last strip of bare wall, then winced. I sat on a rung and massaged my thigh.
“You okay?” Monica asked.
I nodded. My leg still ached even though the bullet wound had healed.
“You should eat,” Monica suggested.
“After I finish the room.”
Monica waggled her finger, but before she could admonish me further, the telephone rang.
I grabbed the receiver from the top of a paint can and plucked a tempura carrot from the container.
“Nicole, it’s Flex.”
“Hey,” I said. “Happy New Year. What’s going on?”
“We found him.”
During the cremation service, I stared past the mortuary workers, stared past the draped pallet hosting the plain coffin. I didn’t talk. Didn’t cry. Dry-eyed and mute, emotion manifested on my tight mouth, and on chipped and chewed fingernails. Monica clutched my arm in case the truth hit me: Truman was dead. The proof was in front of me.
Two hours later, the kind-faced mortician handed me a silver box. “His ashes,” she whispered, nodding to the container.
Close to fifty people had waited for Monica and me to arrive at the pier: Flex, Keith, Jake, friends and coworkers, even Dr. Clark.
Jake kissed my cheek, and asked, “You okay?”
I shook my head, and said, “Don’t know.”
He nodded, understanding all that I couldn’t—or didn’t know how to say.
I tried to smile as I jabbed his chest with my finger. “I haven’t forgotten: you owe me dinner.”
He gripped my hand in his. “Of course. Just tell me when.”
I clutched the box as Monica talked to Flex and to the bishop of her church. Glanced up at the clear blue sky—the storms had moved on.
Monica returned to my side. “Ready?”
People chatted softly as the S.S. Deep-Cee chugged 1,000 yards away from California’s shore. Monica had carried out my wishes, and my guests sipped Moët and nibbled on Brie and sliced green apples while listening to Truman’s favorite Peter Gabriel CD playing softly on a boom box. A few of Truman’s favorite things. Wished that I could’ve given everyone boxes of licorice and pints of Cherry Garcia…
I’d always find empty Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream cartons hidden beneath our bed and left on his desk. Once, sugar ants had discovered the sticky-sweet container in the downstairs den, and Truman couldn’t understand how the ants…
Monica touched my hand. “We’re almost there.”
I handed Monica the si
lver box.
She left my side, and passed the box to Bishop Turner.
During our second Christmas season together, Truman and I had bought a tree from Home Depot. After we had forced the noble fir into its stand, we discovered that the tree leaned left. “So it’s not perfect,” I said. “Who is?” Around 3:30 in the morning, our imperfect tree crashed to the carpet. The police came with flashlights and drawn guns. “We received a call about a break-in…”
The boat’s engine quieted, and Monica whispered, “Ready?”
I nodded.
Keith talked about Truman’s brilliance and his unwavering spirit as he climbed the highest mountain in the world.
Monica told the story of me bumping into Leilani’s cute big brother at a New Year’s Eve party back in 1994.
Others talked about Truman’s integrity, his sense of humor, his love of life…
Two days after retuning home from our honeymoon, Truman and I had gone grocery shopping. We had filled our shopping cart, adding the prices of each item we had plucked from the shelves. Cereal cost $4, cheese cost $3. Bread, $2.50. “Gettin’ kinda high,” Truman had said. Back then, he made about $26,000 a year and I made less than that. At POULTRY—$6 for two chicken breasts—we gawked at each other, and without saying another word, abandoned that cart full of food and went to Denny’s for dinner.
Bishop Turner clutched a basket Monica had filled with Casablanca lilies and white roses. Flex attached a thick line to the basket’s handle.
Keith read Dorothy Parker’s poem.
I think no matter where you stray
That I shall go with you a way…
The basket lowered and touched the foamy sea.
A sob broke from my chest. Someone wrapped their arms around me—Monica, Jake, I don’t know—as that basket dropped beneath the ocean’s surface, as Truman’s ashes disappeared into the depths below.
Silence on the Pacific. Soft murmurs of the grief-stricken.
Lilies and roses bobbed on the waves, drifting further away… further… Until I could no longer see them.
The View from Here Page 24
