Heartless

by Alison Gaylin

  For a moment, Zoe forgot her concerns about Warren and where he had been all day and even the gun. That was how strong a charisma this short, older man exuded.

  “Zoe?” said Warren. “Are you all right?”

  Rafael’s grin grew broader. “Are you the only one she’s allowed to stare at?” he said, and only then did Zoe realize she was gawking.

  “Oh . . . Sorry. I . . . didn’t realize . . .” Her face was hot.

  “Nothing to be sorry about.” Rafael winked. “You see, I can speak that way to Warren because I’ve known him since he was an adolescent.”

  Zoe turned to Warren. “Really?”

  “Not exactly. Rafael spent six weeks at the High School of Performing Arts as a visiting instructor. That’s how we met.” He smiled tightly. “I was eighteen, though. Hardly an adolescent.”

  “You taught art?”

  Rafael shook his head. “Public speaking. How to sway souls with the voice.” The amber eyes glimmered. “Warren was my star student . . . as you might imagine.”

  Zoe watched Warren, then Rafael. Definitely tension between these two. But why? More than twenty years separating them—former mentor and student, dear friends as Warren had put it, but they seemed more like rivals—two men competing for the same plum job. “Yes,” Rafael said, “Warren has always been quite adept at stealing . . . I mean, swaying souls.”

  Zoe heard herself say, “Why don’t you come inside, Rafael? Have some dinner with us?” She could sense Warren’s back stiffening, but she didn’t care. She wanted to know more. She wanted to pour this minister-turned-artist glass after glass of wine and use every interviewing technique she’d ever learned to solve the mystery of the man standing in front of her—the commercially handsome GAP angel of a man with arms full of groceries and a billion secrets buried behind his clear blue eyes.

  She wondered if Rafael had known Nicholas Denby. She wondered if he knew that Warren owned an illegal gun.

  “Sadly,” said Rafael, “I have other plans for the night. I say sadly because it would be a true pleasure to embarrass Warren in front of such a charming and intelligent young woman.”

  Warren laughed. “That’s a shame.” Zoe could tell he was thoroughly relieved.

  “You never answered Warren,” Rafael said, “about your wrist.”

  “Oh, right,” she said. “I slipped on the cobblestones. It’s just a sprain.”

  He pointed at the bandage. “Dr. Dave?”

  She grimaced a little. “Yes.”

  “Not much in the way of personality, but a first-rate medical man,” Rafael said. “Let me see it.”

  “The wrist?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  His smile was magnetic. “Parting gift.”

  Zoe looked at Warren.

  He nodded at her. “Go on, Zoe. You’ll be amazed.”

  “Okay . . .” She held out her wrist, and Rafael took it, cradling it in one of his palms, while placing the other on top. “Close your eyes.”

  Zoe did. Before long, an intense heat poured out of the top hand like water from a faucet. It coursed into her wrist, and up her arm. It was like nothing she had ever felt before, as if her blood were instantly thickening, strengthening.

  She opened her eyes. Rafael looked right back at her, the same heat radiating from his amber gaze. She was transfixed.

  He released her wrist. “Bend it.”

  She did. There was no pain—as if it had never been sprained to begin with. “Unbelievable.”

  “What did I tell you?” said Warren. “It’s a wonderful trick.”

  It was Rafael’s turn to stiffen. “Not a trick,” he said quietly.

  Zoe asked, “Was that Reiki?”

  His gaze shifted from Warren to Zoe, warming as it did. “Close. I studied with a Brazilian shaman years and years ago.” Rafael cleared his throat. “My wife had just died. At that point in my life, I became very interested in learning how to . . . take away pain.”

  Zoe said, “You sure you don’t want to stay?”

  “Believe me, I would if I could. But I am having a party at my studio tomorrow night, and if you come, I promise you will find out more about Warren than you’ve ever wanted to know.”

  “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” Zoe watched Rafael as he left, bending the wrist back and forth, amazed at the ease of it, the complete absence of pain. “I wish he could do the same thing with my mind.”

  Warren tilted her face up and gazed into her eyes and kissed her. “Leave the mind to me.”

  Steve was getting ready for his news trick, but doing a horrible job of it. Either this new razor sucked beyond belief, or he was too distracted to be trusted with a sharp object, because he now had more than a dozen little pieces of tissue paper stuck to his face. How could he take Debbie Cohn to Dreamcoat when he looked like a piñata?

  He needed to focus on the bribe story and get the Royas/ Brink/Clark connection out of his mind—whether there was one or not. Steve had Glen calling people in San Esteban, and so far, he hadn’t delivered any bombshells. Steve had also found the only Morrison Brink listed in Astoria and had left a polite message on the couple’s answering machine about his possibly writing a profile on their late son. No word back on that, either. Outside of calling Zoe in the middle of her vacation and telling her a whole bunch of stuff that she’d say added up to nothing, he had done all he could. It was time to move on.

  He just wished Zoe didn’t need so much protecting. But even as he wished it, part of him knew he didn’t wish that at all.

  Steve cut himself again. Blood streamed down the side of his face, and it stung like hell. He got a washcloth, soaked it in cold water and pressed it against his cheek, but when he removed it, most of the little pieces of tissue fell off, and he looked like he’d been attacked by rabid weasels.

  Jesus, why did he bother shaving?

  The woman next door was screaming, “Why don’t you just go back to your little bitch?!” Steve didn’t know whether it was directed at her husband or one of her four teenage sons, but either way it was soul deadening. Steve’s walls were about as thick as playing cards. If someone had told him when he was a kid that at age thirty-three, he’d be living in Manhattan and working as an investigative reporter for a daily newspaper, he would’ve been psyched as hell—until he got a look at this godawful scene.

  “That’s right!” the woman shrieked. “I know all about your little slut of a whore bitch!”

  And now the whole world knows. Steve grabbed his iPod, shoved the buds in his ears. It was on shuffle-play, and wouldn’t you know it, the so-called entertainment device chose Coldplay’s “Swallowed in the Sea,” Zoe’s favorite song of 2006. He sat down on his bed, and instantly, he was driving his car to Allentown, Pennsylvania, Zoe in the seat next to him. He’d been invited to a press junket at Dorney Park. He’d taken Zoe along because the invite had said, Bring a guest, and they both loved roller coasters, and besides, who else was he going to bring?

  How amazing and sometimes horrible that music could do this stuff to your head. But all he had to hear was that long, plaintive note on the keyboard, that first line about chopping down a tree, and he could see Zoe, her bare feet propped up on the dashboard, using a half-empty bottle of Coke for a fake microphone as she sang along with Chris Martin at the top of her lungs, completely and painfully off-key. . . .

  God, Zoe had a voice like a dog being tortured.

  He thought of that horrible singing voice, those big trusting brown eyes and that wicked laugh and the tentative smile she’d give him whenever she asked, “Is everything okay?” He thought of the way she buried her head in his shoulder during the scary parts of movies and how she got into intense political debates with cab drivers and turned into a shark of a pool player when she was drunk and always made Steve ride the Circle Line with her on the first day of spring. He thought of how, after Daryl Barclay was sentenced to death, she’d gone to Steve’s place for company and slept in his arms and how r
ight it had felt, hard as he’d tried not to think about that, not to feel that. . . .

  Steve’s phone rang. He pulled the buds out of his ears and ran for it, hoping more than anything it was Debbie Cohn calling to cancel. Another time, he’d be fine. Just not tonight . . . Please be Debbie. Please be Debbie. . . . But when he grabbed the phone and checked the caller ID screen, he didn’t see Debbie’s cell number or name. No, this was better. It was Morrison Brink.

  “So you followed Rafael down here?”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Warren replied.

  “What would you say?”

  “I came down to visit him, and I fell in love.” He looked up, gave Zoe a sly smile. “With the town. Not with Rafael.”

  “I figured.”

  “Did you? Aren’t we actors supposed to be ambisexual?”

  Zoe smiled. “I like the way you say that word. Say it again.”

  “Am . . . bi . . . sex . . . ual.”

  Zoe grinned. They were at the dining room table, finishing dinner and the bottle of wine. Zoe hadn’t mentioned the safe’s contents yet. She hadn’t found the right moment, and truthfully, she couldn’t imagine that right moment coming anytime soon. It had been such a perfect meal. Tension with Warren notwithstanding, it felt as if Rafael had laid his healing touch on the two of them. Zoe asked questions; Warren answered them. And, starved for information as she’d been for the past four months, she felt that each benign question was an indulgence, each answer a delicate morsel, meant to be savored.

  Where were you born? Syracuse. We moved to Long Island when I was twelve.

  What is your middle name? Horace.

  Seriously? Yes, unfortunately.

  Your first crush? Kimberly Epstein. Kindergarten.

  Your first kiss? Jenny Mangione. Fifth grade—party at Matt Kringle’s house. We were playing seven minutes of heaven.

  First sex? You.

  Stop that.

  I don’t remember anyone else.

  Okay, so he was more forthcoming about some things than he was about others, but it was a good start—a wonderful start, considering where they had been before.

  “Remember when we first met,” he was saying now, “when you were interviewing me in my dressing room?”

  “Yes?”

  “I knew then that I wanted to take you here. I looked into your eyes and I knew.”

  Zoe swallowed the rest of her third glass of wine and gazed at him. “And here I thought you just wanted to get in my pants.”

  “I’m serious, Zoe,” he said. “You know, it isn’t everyone who makes me think that way. It isn’t everyone I invite down here for a visit.”

  You can say that again. The wine was working. Zoe had to be careful. “I’m really . . . honored.”

  “San Esteban is a special place and you are such a special person. I could see it in you even back then—that spark, that . . . that aura. You belong here with me.”

  “White aura. Means I’m young.”

  He looked at her, curious. “It means more than that,” he said. “But where did you hear about auras?”

  “Robin and Paul.” Zoe smiled a little. “Your confidants.”

  “They are good people.” His eyes bored into hers. “But not like you, Zoe. No one in the world is like you.” Warren had always given off a little more heat than the average guy, but since the start of this trip, it was as if he’d turned it up to eleven. Zoe was moved, yet it also made her slightly uncomfortable. Did it always have to feel like this, like he was reaching into her chest and grabbing her heart and twisting? Couldn’t the two of them just lighten up sometimes, maybe tell some dumb jokes, watch a little TV?

  “You know what my all-time favorite bad movie is?” said Zoe. “Phantom of the Paradise.”

  He didn’t reply. The stare grew hotter.

  “I like Showgirls a lot, too. ‘You love doggie chow?’ ‘I love doggie chow!’ ”

  Silence.

  “Guess you didn’t see that one, huh?”

  No answer, so she gave up and stated the obvious. “You’re staring at me.”

  Warren said, “I have a surprise for you.”

  “The roses? Oh, they’re beautiful, Warren, and the crystal vase is just perfect. I should have said something earlier. I saw them right when I came in and—”

  “It isn’t roses.”

  For a brief, crazy moment, she imagined him pulling that gun. But then he got up from his chair and moved up behind her and slipped his hands down the length of her arms. He kissed the back of her neck, and she turned and met his mouth with her own. His lips were soft and tasted like wine, and Zoe swooned into him, as if her bones were giving way, and she thought, I surrender. Grab my heart and twist it all you want. It’s yours. It’s all yours forever and ever. . . . “Is the surprise in the bedroom?”

  He pulled away, shook his head. “I need to drive you to it.”

  Naomi was still winded. Five hours ago, she had taken off after Alejandro, chasing him up one cobblestone street and down the next in that bleak, unfamiliar section of town. . . . Five hours ago, and still, her lungs felt like they had knifes stuck in them.

  She’d been amazed Alejandro was able to run so fast. He was such a big kid, and his center of gravity was so low that he always moved as if he was from another planet and found the air on this one to be a challenge. But he’d had a head start this afternoon, plus he knew the streets and he was obviously (if inexplicably) terrified.

  So Alejandro had outrun the taller, stronger, faster Naomi, putting a full block between them, then a block and a half, then two, before disappearing into an alley or a house or some waiting car—Naomi had no idea. All she knew was, she’d been left doubled over and wheezing on some crumbling sidewalk in a bad neighborhood next to a hole-in-the-wall cantina that reeked of tequila and dog pee, thinking, No way in a billion years am I going into that place to ask for directions.

  Luckily for her, Reiki Master Paul had been driving by and spotted her. He’d given her a ride home. “What were you doing in that neighborhood?” he had asked.

  When she’d said, “Just walking,” Paul had given her a look she didn’t like much—the same look he gave people who interrupted him at La Cruz. “Kids and their secrets,” he had said.

  Why did Reiki Master Paul care what neighborhood she hung out in?

  The minute she’d walked through the front door, Vanessa had hugged her so tight, you’d think that Naomi had spent the last five years being raised by wolves. And then Paul had pulled Vanessa into the kitchen, a look on his face like, “We’ve really got a problem here.” Like they were her parents or something. Gross. Naomi had wondered if Paul had one of those crosses in his closet, too, and remembered Jordan saying, There’s . . . weird stuff going on, and she couldn’t even be on the same floor as those two anymore, she was that freaked out. . . .

  Naomi had run upstairs to her room. She’d gone online and looked for Corinne, but there was no Corinne—she hadn’t been online all day. Her desert dream flashed into her mind: the hooded angel, standing over her, saying, You are safe. She wanted to cry but she couldn’t.

  Ten minutes later, Vanessa was filling her doorway, saying, “Paul tells me you were at Parque de las Lavanderas. What were you doing there?”

  “How did he know I was there? The place where he picked me up had to be at least a mile away.”

  “Don’t answer a question with a question.”

  “I thought he just happened to be driving down that street. Why was Paul following me?”

  “Naomi, I told you—”

  “If he saw me at Parque de las Lavanderas, he knew what I was doing there. Now you tell me, Aunt Vanessa. Why was he following me?”

  At that point, Soccoro had come in, telling Vanessa that “Señor Glen Campbell” was on the phone.

  “You’re kidding,” Vanessa had said. “I haven’t spoken to Glen in years.” But not long after she’d left to take the call, Vanessa’s bedroom door was slamming and James Taylor was on
full-blast.

  That had been four hours ago. It was eight o’clock, and Soccoro was cooking sopa de ajo, the warm, spicy smell of it wafting out of the kitchen. It was Naomi’s favorite—savory garlic soup with an egg cracked on top, with Soccoro’s fresh-baked bolillos on the side—but still, Naomi was dreading dinner. She couldn’t stand the thought of sitting across the table from Vanessa, her head brimming with questions she didn’t know how to ask.

  That was why, five hours after chasing Alejandro, she still felt winded. She was finding it harder and harder to breathe in this house.

  “How would you feel, Vanessa, if Naomi were next?”

  “Don’t you ever say that, Patty. Don’t you ever fucking say that to me!”

  Naomi replayed that exchange in her mind. She knew she should probably take some comfort in her aunt’s anger, but she couldn’t. Not when Vanessa knew what “next” meant— but was so intent on keeping it from her.

  She stared at her computer screen. After checking for the millionth time to see if Corinne was online, she’d gone on some medical Web sites and started reading up on post-traumatic stress. Most sufferers start to feel some improvement after six months, read the article on her screen. With proper therapy, however, recovery can begin sooner. James Taylor bellowed “Blossom come my way today!” for easily the seventh time tonight, and Naomi thought, Yeah, right, proper therapy, and suddenly she couldn’t take it anymore. She had to let these questions out of her head or else her lungs would shut down and she wouldn’t be able to breathe at all.

  She got up from her desk, opened the door of her bedroom and walked down the hall to her aunt’s room. She pounded on the door. When she heard nothing in response, she yelled, “Aunt Vanessa! I need to talk to you!”

  No answer.

  “Why did Mrs. Woods have a slash on her face? Does it have something to do with your club? Does it have something to do with the cross in your closet?”

  Naomi waited for a few moments. No reply. If anything, the James Taylor seemed to get louder. “Does it have anything to do with Grace?”

  She held her breath and braced herself, amazed and impressed she’d actually found the guts to say that name out loud. There was still no reply, but Naomi wasn’t having that, not anymore. She grabbed the doorknob, turned and pushed.