Gone

by Jonathan Kellerman

  “Scary,” I said.

  “Scary-terrifying. I’m dyslexic, not intense dyslexic, like illiterate or illegible, I can read okay. But it takes me a long time to memorize words. I can’t sound anything out. I mean, I can memorize my lines but I really work hard.”

  “Being dyslexic made it scarier to see Dylan like that?”

  “Because my head felt all scrambled up and I couldn’t think straight. And then being scared blurred it. Like my thoughts weren’t making sense— like being in another language, you know?”

  “Disoriented.”

  “I mean, look what I did,” she said. “Untied myself and climbed up that hill and ran out to the road without even putting my clothes on. I had to be disoriented. If I was thinking normal, would I do that? Then, after that old guy, the one on the road who...” Her frown made it as far as the left side of her mouth before retracting.

  “The old man who...”

  “I was going to say the old guy saved me but I wasn’t in real danger. Still, I was pretty terrified. Because I still didn’t know if Dylan was okay. By the time the old guy called the rescue squad and they got there, Dylan was out of the ropes and standing there. When no one was looking, he gave a little smile. Like ha-ha, good joke.”

  “You feel Dylan manipulated you.”

  “That’s the saddest thing. Losing trust. The whole thing was supposed to be about trust. Nora’s always teaching us about the artist’s life as constant danger. You’re always working without a net. Dylan was my partner and I trusted him. That’s why I went along with it in the first place.”

  “Did it take him a while to talk you into it?”

  She frowned. “He made it like an adventure. Buying all that stuff. He made me feel like a kid having fun.”

  “Planning was fun,” I said.

  “Exactly.”

  “Buying the rope and the food.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Careful plan.”

  Her shoulders tightened. “What do you mean?”

  “You guys paid cash and used several different stores in different neighborhoods.”

  “That was all Dylan,” she said.

  “Did he explain why he’d planned it that way?”

  “We really didn’t talk about it. It was like...we did so many exercises before, this was just another one. I felt I had to use my right side. Of my brain. Nora taught us to concentrate on using the right side of the brain, just kind of slip into right-brain stuff.”

  “The creative side,” I said.

  “Exactly. Don’t think too much, just throw yourself in.”

  “Nora keeps coming up.”

  Silence.

  “How do you think she feels about what happened, Michaela?”

  “I know how she feels. She’s pissed. After the police took me in, I called her. She said getting caught was amateurish and stupid, don’t come back. Then she hung up.”

  “Getting caught,” I said. “She wasn’t angry at the scheme itself?”

  “That’s what she told me. It was stupid to get caught.” Her eyes moistened.

  “Hearing that from her must’ve been tough,” I said.

  “She’s in a power role vis-à-vis me.”

  “You try talking to her again?”

  “She won’t return my calls. So now I can’t go to the PlayHouse. Not that it matters. I guess.”

  “Time to move on?”

  Tears ran down her face. “I can’t afford to study, ’cause I’m broke. Gonna have to put my name in with one of those agencies. Be a personal assistant or a nanny. Or flip burgers or something.”

  “Those are your only choices?”

  “Who’s gonna hire me for a good job when I need to go out on auditions? And also until this is over.”

  I handed her another tissue.

  “I sure wasn’t out to hurt anyone, believe me, Doctor. I know I should’ve thought more and felt less, but Dylan...” She drew up her legs again. Negligible body fat allowed her to fold like paper. With that lack of insulation, two nights up in the hills must’ve chilled her. Even if she was lying about her fear, the experience hadn’t been pleasant: The final police report had cited fresh human excrement under a nearby tree, leaves and candy wrappers used for toilet paper.

  “Now,” she said, “everyone will think I’m a dumb blonde.”

  “Some people say there’s no such thing as bad publicity.”

  “They do?” she said. “You think so?”

  “I think people can turn themselves around.”

  She fixed her eyes on mine. “I was stupid and I’m so, so sorry.”

  I said, “Whatever you guys intended, it ended up being a rough couple of nights.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Being out there in the cold. No bathroom.”

  “That was gross,” she said. “It was freezing and I felt like creepy-crawlies were all over me, just eating me up. Afterward my arms and legs and my neck hurt. Because I tied myself too tight.” She grimaced. “I wanted to be authentic. To show Dylan.”

  “Show him what?”

  “That I was a serious actor.”

  “Were you out to please anyone else, Michaela?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You had to figure the story would get exposure. Did you consider how other people would react?”

  “Like who?”

  “Let’s start with Nora.”

  “I honestly felt she’d respect us. For having integrity. Instead she’s pissed.”

  “What about your mother?”

  She waved that off.

  “You didn’t think about your mother?”

  “I don’t talk to her. She’s not in my life.”

  “Does she know about what happened?”

  “She doesn’t read the papers but I guess if it’s in the Phoenix Sun and somebody shows it to her.”

  “You haven’t called her?”

  “She can’t do anything to help me.” She mumbled.

  “Why’s that, Michaela?”

  “She’s sick. Lung disease. My whole childhood she was sick with something. Even when I fell on my head it was a neighbor took me to the doctor.”

  “Mom wasn’t there for you.”

  She glanced to the side. “When she was stoned she’d hit me.”

  “Mom was into drugs.”

  “Mostly weed, sometimes she’d take pills for her moods. Mostly, she liked to smoke. Weed and tobacco and Courvoisier. Her lungs are seriously burned away. She breathes with a tank.”

  “Tough childhood.”

  She mumbled again.

  I said, “I missed that.”

  “My childhood. I don’t like talking about it but I’m being totally honest with you. No illusions, no emotional curtain, you know? It’s like a mantra. I kept telling myself, ‘honesty honesty honesty.’ Lauritz told me to keep that here, right in front.” A tapered finger touched a smooth, bronze brow.

  “What did you figure would happen when the story got out?”

  Silence.

  “Michaela?”

  “Maybe TV.”

  “Getting on TV?”

  “Reality TV. Like a mixture of Punk’d and Survivor and Fear Factor but with no one knowing what’s real and what isn’t. It’s not like we were trying to be mean. We were just trying to get a breakthrough.”

  “What kind of breakthrough?”

  “Mentally.”

  “What about as a career move?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did you think it might get you a part on a reality show?”

  “Dylan thought it might,” she said.

  “You didn’t?”

  “I didn’t think, period...maybe down deep— unconsciously— I thought it might help get through the wall.”

  “What wall is that?”

  “The success wall. You go on auditions and they look at you like you’re not there, and even when they say they might call they don’t. You’re just as talented as the girl who gets
called, there’s no reason anything happens. So why not? Get yourself noticed, do something special or weird or terrific. Make yourself special for being special.”

  She got up, circled the office. Kicked one shoe with the other and nearly lost balance. Maybe she’d been telling the truth about being clumsy.

  “It’s a suck life,” she said.

  “Being an actor.”

  “Being any kind of artist. Everyone loves artists but they also hate them!”

  Grabbing her hair with both hands, she yanked, stretching her beautiful face into something reptilian.

  “Do you have any idea how hard it is?” she said through elongated lips.

  “What?”

  She released the hair. Looked down on me as if I was thick.

  “To. Get. Anyone. To. Pay. Attention!”

  CHAPTER 5

  I saw Michaela for three more sessions. She spent most of the time drifting back to a childhood tainted by neglect and loneliness. Her mother’s promiscuity and various pathologies enlarged with each appointment. She recalled year after year of academic failure, adolescent slights, chronic isolation brought on by “looking like a giraffe with zits.”

  Psychometric testing revealed her to be of average intelligence with poor impulse control and a tendency to manipulate. No sign of learning disability or attention deficit, and her MMPI Lie Scale was elevated, meaning that she’d never stopped acting.

  Despite that, she seemed a sad, scared, vulnerable young woman. That didn’t stop me from asking what needed to be asked.

  “Michaela, the doctor found some bruising around your vagina.”

  “If you say so.”

  “The doctor who examined you said so.”

  “Maybe he bruised me when he was checking me out.”

  “Was he rough?”

  “He had rough fingers. This Asian guy. I could tell he didn’t like me.”

  “Why wouldn’t he like you?”

  “You’d have to ask him.” She glanced at her watch.

  I said, “Is that the story you want to stick with?”

  She stretched. Blue jeans, today, riding low on her hips, midriff-baring white lace V-top. Her nipples were faint gray dots.

  “Do I need a story?”

  “It could come up.”

  “It could if you mention it.”

  “It has nothing to do with me, Michaela. It’s in the case file.”

  “Case file,” she said. “Like I did some big crime.”

  I didn’t answer.

  She plucked at lace. “Who cares about any of that? Why do you care?”

  “I’d like to understand what happened up in Latigo Canyon.”

  “What happened was Dylan getting crazy,” she said.

  “Crazy physically?”

  “He got all passionate and bruised me.”

  “What happened?” I said.

  “What usually happened.”

  “Meaning...”

  “It’s what we did.” She wiggled the fingers of one hand. “Touching each other. The few times.”

  “The few times you were intimate.”

  “We were never intimate. Once in a while we got horny and touched each other. Of course he wanted more, but I never let him.” She stuck out her tongue. “A few times I let him go down on me but mostly it was finger time because I didn’t want to get close to him.”

  “What happened in Latigo Canyon?”

  “I don’t see what that has to do with...what happened.”

  “Your relationship with Dylan is bound to— ”

  “Fine, fine,” she said. “In the canyon it was all fingers and he got too rough. When I complained he said he was doing it on purpose. For realism.”

  “For when you were discovered.”

  “I guess,” she said.

  She looked away.

  I waited.

  She said, “It was the first night. What else was there to do? It was so boring, just sitting up there, getting talked out.”

  “How soon did you get talked out?” I said.

  “Real soon. ’Cause he was into this whole Zen silence thing. Preparing for the second night. He said we needed to cook images in our heads. Heat up our emotions by not crowding our heads with words.”

  Her laughter was harsh. “Big Zen silence thing. Until he got horny. Then he had no trouble telling me what he wanted. He thought being up there would make things different. Like I’d do him. As if.”

  Her eyes got hard. “I pretty much hate him now.”

  * * *

  I took a day before writing an outline of my report.

  Her story boiled down to diminished capacity combined with that time-honored tactic, the TODDI Defense: The Other Dude Did It.

  Wondering if Lauritz Montez was her new acting coach, I phoned his office at the Beverly Hills court building. “I’m not going to make you happy.”

  “Actually, it doesn’t matter,” he said.

  “The case settled?”

  “Better. Sixty-day continuance, thanks to my colleague who’s representing Meserve. Marjani Coolidge— know her?”

  “Nope.”

  “She’s scheduled on a roots trip to Africa, asked to put everything off. Once the sixty days are up, we’ll get another continuance. And another. The media scrutiny’s faded and the docket’s jammed with serious felonies, no problem keeping trivial crap at bay. By the time we get to trial no one will give a shit. It’s all pressure from the sheriffs, and those guys have the attention span of gnats on smack. I’m figuring the worst the two of them will get is teaching Shakespeare to inner-city kids.”

  “Shakespeare’s not her thing.”

  “What is?”

  “Improvisation.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m sure she’ll figure it out. Thanks for your time.”

  “No report necessary?”

  “You can send one but I can’t tell you it’ll ever get read. Which shouldn’t bother you because turns out all I can get you paid for is straight session time at forty bucks per full hour, no portal-to-portal, no write-up fees.”

  I kept silent.

  “Hey,” he said, “budget cuts and all that. Sorry, man.”

  “Don’t be.”

  “You’re okay with it?”

  “I’m not much for showbiz.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Two weeks after Michaela’s final session, I spotted a paragraph at the back of the Metro section.

  Abduction Hoax Couple Sentenced

  A pair of would-be actors accused of faking their own kidnapping in order to garner attention for their careers has been sentenced to community service as part of a plea-deal arranged between the Sheriff’s Department, the District Attorney, and the Public Defender’s Office.

  Dylan Roger Meserve, 24, and Michaela Ally Brand, 23, had been charged with a series of misdemeanors that could have led to jail time, stemming from false claims of being carjacked in West Los Angeles and driven to Latigo Canyon in Malibu by a masked gunman. Subsequent investigation revealed that the duo had set up the incident, going so far as to tie themselves up and simulate two days of starvation.

  “This was the best resolution,” said Deputy D.A. Heather Bally, in charge of prosecuting the duo. She cited the couple’s youth and the absence of prior criminal record, and emphasized the benefits Meserve and Brand could provide to the “theater community,” citing two summer theater programs to which the pair might be assigned: TheaterKids in Baldwin Hills and The Drama Posse in East Los Angeles.

  Calls to the sheriff’s office were not returned.

  One continuance had done the trick. I wondered if the two of them would bother to stay in town. Probably, if visions of stardom still stuffed their heads.