Innocent Monsters

by Doherty, Barbara

  At the time Bobby was just an ignorant truck driver; there was something not quite right about him but it was hard to know what it was exactly Jessica despised so much. But then Lisa miscarried and Bobby went from being arrogant and commanding to selfish and almost abusive and suddenly the two of them were such a good caricature of her own parents, Jessica found it harder and harder to spend any time with her while Bobby was around.

  “No, thanks Liz.” Jessica looked at the floor feeling guilty, searching her mind for an excuse, anything that could save her from saying out loud that she couldn’t stay for lunch because the man Lisa had chosen to spend the rest of her life with was an asshole, because she couldn’t seat and eat meatballs pretending she had not come to tell her Kaitlyn had been murdered. “I’m tired, I think I’ll go home, try to catch up on some sleep.”

  They had another cup of coffee, Lisa had another cigarette, Bobby remained on the sofa watching the Simpsons, then Jessica stood up to leave.

  “Thanks for listening. Again, sorry”

  “Don’t mention it. And it’s ok. Come anytime you like.” They left the room together while Bobby sucked some more coffee out of his cup. “I’ll call you.”

  “I’ll try to answer the phone. Promise.”

  They smiled at each other. Lisa caressed her back as she went for the door.

  “Take care, ok? Whatever happened... I’m sure Kaitlyn wants us to go on as if she’s still here, y’know? I’d want that. I’d want my friends to keep doing all the things I can’t do anymore.” Her hand was still stroking Jessica’s back, melted mascara under her eyes, her hair all over the place. She smelled of lavender. “Now go home and sleep, you look like shit.”

  “So do you. Thanks for everything.”

  JESSICA THREW her jacket down in the hall, went upstairs and ran past the bathroom door heading for her bedroom. The yellow police-line strip still hung along each side of the doorframe. She had cut it open but hadn’t been able to force herself in. It had been almost three weeks.

  She had not washed properly; she had bought a new toothbrush, which was now kept in the kitchen with the washing up sponge, toothpaste and washing up liquid sitting side by side by the tap. She had started peeing in the tiny sink in the closet- sized laundry room downstairs and every time she needed to take a shit, she went to get a coffee at Rico’s, down the road, just so she could use his toilet. So far it had proved an acceptable arrangement.

  This was how compromised her world had become.

  Her bedroom was cold. She had left the window open all night to change the air. The wind blew the white curtains in, then sucked them out, then blew them back in again.

  She sat on the bed facing one of Kaitlyn’s paintings, a picture of a butterfly entirely painted in whites, creams, beige and light browns. White against white, yet so many details and so poignant —an insect with such a short life cycle painted by someone who had died so young. Jessica had found it in Kaitlyn’s room while looking through her things the day after meeting Brown at the police station; she had sieved through her pictures, her filofax, every single scrap of paper, but nothing stood out, nothing seemed suspicious. Brown had thanked her anyway, asked her to bring the filofax to the station.

  Jessica lifted her chin to the ceiling, looking at the cracks branching from a corner to the middle of the wall, around the wire of the light bulb, thin and thick and curvy like roads sneaking through large green mould patches; dark green, almost brown in places. She had mentioned the ridiculous conditions of her ceiling almost every month since the mould had first appeared but her landlord had never done anything about it and she had never really cared enough to make a big fuss over it. It had become a monthly complaint to accompany her rent, nothing more than a habit, a ritual. It had looked the same for the past three years, only maybe slightly darker. So looking up Jessica had to ask herself why it seemed to annoy her today, of all days. What was different? Was it her own sense of helplessness and the resentment that came with it that really bothered her? Was it the knowledge that she couldn’t change anything?

  Truth was, there were some things she could change if she really wanted to. The mouldering ceiling, the stupid landlord who ignored it, the bathroom she couldn’t enter anymore, the forgotten district where she still lived, where houses all looked the same; rows after rows of squared boxes, far enough from the real San Francisco to feel she lived somewhere else... She could change all of it if she really wanted to... Move somewhere else, another apartment, another place... A change.

  Something Kaitlyn couldn’t do anymore.

  And suddenly what Lisa had told her so ingenuously made perfect sense: she could do all the things Kaitlyn couldn’t do anymore, like moving downtown, not because she liked it, not because there was so much more there to discover than Crocker Amazon could ever offer her, but because Kaitlyn wanted to, because she owned a share of the art gallery in Port Street, because she was going to start looking for a place in that area next month. Because maybe if she left, the memory of Kaitlyn’s shocked expression and the vivid image of her blood would stay in this damn house.

  She laid down on the bed still looking up at the ceiling for a few minutes, following the cracks, following the light bulb and its delicate swinging, back, forth... back... forth... and slowly her eyelids became so heavy she couldn’t keep them open anymore; the green mould turned into a green field and the cracks turned into blue rivers and Jessica could almost smell flowers in her room while slowly falling asleep.

  Then she could see Kaitlyn again, sitting in the bath in that strange position, pleading for her not to tell mother, “You believe me, don’t you? It wasn’t me.”

  When Jessica woke up gasping, lifting her back off the mattress, the room was already dark, only half lit by the red light of the sunset. She held her head in her hand, still tired, listening to the traffic outside her window.

  11 November 2000

  THE JEFFERSON Company owned eight of the twenty-eight-storey building in Montgomery Street. Their bright red logo on the roof glistened, massive, an impressive display of their reach and power.

  The room in which the party was held was on the eighteenth floor, enormous with marbled walls, spotless cream tiles on the floor, large french doors opening on the balcony, heavy chandeliers beaming from the ceiling, plastic palm trees. Cold, when she had imagined it would be warm and friendly. Waiters squeezing between shoulders, laughter, corks popping, hands clapping but still cold, and Jane Ashley, Stephen Sharp and Ian McKey.

  Jessica had bumped into McKey while hovering around the cold buffet table; a short slim man with greasy ash-blond hair, a wrinkled blue suit and microscopic eyes staring at her from behind the lenses of thick framed glasses. He never wore glasses for the pictures on the back cover of his books, the cheater. His eyebrows moved incessantly as he spoke and his voice was high-pitched and annoying, not deep and musical as she had heard it in her head while reading his novels. She detested him instantly. But, oh, he loved her novel so much, absolutely loved it, absolutely loved her in that show, what was it, Sarah-something, yes of course and, oh she looked so much better in the flesh, how could such a beautiful woman write such delicate prose and brilliantly employ a man’s voice? And, oh he knew a restaurant around the corner, Italian, would she like to join him later for dinner? No? Would she at least think about it? Maybe take his phone number? Jessica had declined smiling politely, moved away paying exaggerated attention to one of the waiters carrying glasses of champagne.

  She had entered the room filled with excitement despite herself, despite the notion that it was too early to venture herself in the real world, out of the strange comfort of her own sadness, outside her house; now all she really wanted to do was to be alone, someplace where people were real, where authors were the way she had always imagined them, where Jane Ashley was a delicate housewife with a somber aura about her, not a bimbo with long r
ed fingernails and a skin tight dress. This was the woman who made her cry writing about her childhood, about her manic depressive mother, about the wonderful relationship she had built with her father over years of poverty, how could she look so loud and undignified?

  And Donald Jefferson, one of the richest men in the country, the founder and owner of the largest slice of the publishing company; Jessica watched him entering the room briskly, moving through guests shaking hands here and there, fat, old, a strange looking combover badly disguising the grey hair thinning on top of his head. His chin wobbled as he spoke. He was noisy and vulgar. His fingers made her think of raw sausages. She could hear him laughing from the other side of the room —probably the other side of the building if she went— and it wasn’t a spontaneous laughter, it was a can-you-hear-how-much-fun-I’m-having-here kind of laughter, fake, perfectly matched with everybody else in the room.

  What was she doing here?

  Roger Wither appeared next to her holding a glass of champagne in his hand. He was a tall well-built man with black unruly hair curling behind his ears and an odd looking face. His chin seemed too short for the wide lips above it, his nostrils too wide for the narrow nose, his black piercing eyes too far apart, his forehead too steep and too short. He had beautiful hands, though. It was the first thing Jessica had noticed about her editor. But there was also something charismatic about the oddity of his features, he looked different, but not in an ugly way; he was the kind of man Kaitlyn would have found attractive —she always seemed to fall for men whose beauty surfaced with time, not instantly.

  The idea of someone reading her manuscript and suggesting changes, variations and corrections to an honest description of her own childhood had taken getting used to; it had seemed almost insulting at first. But Roger had made the process easy from the day she had been assigned to him. He was unpretentious, straight talking, straightforward and sometimes cynical, a quality she had learned to find amusing.

  “Havin’ fun yet?” He knocked her side with one elbow.

  His strange mouth was stretched into an honest smile, the tip of his front teeth digging into his lower lip. Jessica found herself wishing he had appeared earlier.

  “Hey, hi! Where have you been all evening?”

  “Drinking, here and there. Y’know, partying. You should try it.” He winked at her.

  “Mhm... Actually I’m really too tired for all this.”

  “Nah, you ain’t too tired for this. Never say you’re too tired for this.” He moved closer to her ear holding his glass to his chest. “If ya can’t play the star for these people you ain’t ever gonna have fun. Everywhere’s the same, ya can’t hide from it. You’re no one, ya can’t go nowhere and no one gives a shit about ya. Ya might as well be the nicest fucking guy on the whole fucking planet, nobody gives a shit if you ain’t nobody. Know what I mean?”

  She didn’t know, but she grinned at him anyway. His tie was loose, the button of his collar undone, his New York accent heavier than she had ever heard it before, his fucking and shit more frequent than usual. He was drunk, no doubt.

  “Think you should be drinking anymore?”

  He waived a beautiful hand at her. “What are you, my mother? I’m partying, remember? I’ll take the lecture tomorrow, when I got a hangover. So how you holdin’ up? Your sister and all that. How you doin?”

  “Ok. I guess.” She didn’t really want to talk about it now, with him. “I’ll get there. Eventually.”

  A few days after the accident Jessica had called him to cancel one of their meetings, simply told him her sister had suddenly passed away. Roger had seemed genuinely worried, called her twice the following day to check on her, making sure there was nothing she needed, nothing he could do to help, his interest so unexpected she’d hoped he wasn’t after more than an editor/writer relationship —she wouldn’t have had the energy to push him away and it would have made things seriously awkward for them both. But she had managed to make it clear that all she needed was time and space and Roger had not called her again.

  They had not spoken in weeks.

  “Yeah. It’s shit. Losing someone like that... Look, I’m glad you’ve come. It’s a step forward, right? Gotta throw yourself in your work now. Always works for me.”

  “Ah, yes? I thought drink was your medicine of choice.”

  “All right, all right. You makin’ me sound like an alcoholic. I’m fucking partyin’, remember? Smartass.”

  He gulped down the rest of his champagne and grabbed a fresh one from one of the passing waiters. Jessica had been holding an empty glass for several minutes now.

  “You want another one?”

  “No. I’m fine, thanks. If I keep this one it looks like I’m joining in.”

  “Whatever works for ya. Look, I know it’s party time but let’s talk serious for two seconds while I’ve got ya, ok? We need to reschedule that meeting you cancelled.” He pulled a face shrugging his shoulders. “The publishing machine keeps going, y’know. You still got deadlines this year.” Jessica looked at him unimpressed. “I know. I’m an asshole. Not now. We don’t need to talk about it now.”

  Roger wobbled on his feet; behind him Ian McKey raised his eyebrows at Jessica from across the room, his glasses falling off the tip of his nose. Christ.

  “You know what? I think I’m gonna get some fresh air.”

  He frowned squinting. “You ok?”

  “Fine, I’m good. Just do me a favour,” she pointed her glass over his shoulder. “You see that rat with glasses in the blue suit? If he comes looking for me tell him I drowned in the toilet bowl.”

  Roger turned a few inches, looked shamelessly over his shoulder. “Ian McKey? Nah, he might come rescue you. I’ll tell him everyone knows he can’t write for shit, then he’ll drown himself in it.”

  “I love you.” “That was always gonna be inevitable. Call me next week.”

  “I’ll call you tomorrow, with that lecture.”

  Jessica left her glass on one of the flying trays on the waiters’ hands and walked away leaving Roger laughing on his own.

  The balcony turned out to be a small terrace with a few rattan tables and chairs and a wonderful view. On her right she could admire the lights of the Bay and the Ferry Building, below her she could barely distinguish the lights of the traffic. Nobody else was outside and for a second everything seemed far enough, peaceful enough. Quiet. What she really needed.

  She had come to Montgomery Street two days earlier, rented a room at the Palace Hotel around the corner just to get away, taste some peace, some silence, some normality.

  She had been trying for weeks to go back to her normal life, she had been pretending when it seemed impossible. She’d walked back into her bathroom and cleaned it, freed a couple of spiders that had erected a cosy and elaborate web between the taps and the corner shelf above the bath, and then scrubbed. She’d scrubbed the walls, the sink, the toilet, the floor, scrubbed the bath a thousand times. Surely five bottles of bleach were enough to get rid of anything left in the room. Surely. But it wasn’t enough, Kaitlyn’s presence was still in there, imposing, impossible to ignore as if her lifeless body had never been taken away. And even when she managed to go through a day without thinking about her death, at night the same dream reminded her of what had happened. It was driving her insane. She had to leave. She had to run away from it.

  Jessica closed her eyes and took a deep breath in and when she opened them again a man was standing a few feet away from her, tall, grey suit, mid-length silky hash blond hair covered most of his face. One of his hands was holding a cigarette. He wasn’t looking at her, yet she heard him pronounce her name.

  “Are you talking to me?” She asked hesitating.

  The man turned in her direction, his forearm now resting on the balcony railing, his head tilted towards his shoulder. “Jessica Lynch,” he sm
iled, “I read your book.”

  “Did you?” She smiled back at him weakly hoping he would go away as fast as he had appeared, hoping he would leave her in peace.

  “Uh-huh. Good book. Haven’t read anything so deep in years.” He brought the cigarette to his lips without taking his eyes off hers and stepped closer holding out his free hand. “William, William Blaise.”

  “Nice to meet you, William.”

  His hand in hers felt incredibly warm, his grip tight as he studied her fingers around his hand, her arms, her hair, her shoulders, her neck, her face, with a strange look in his eyes, a mixture of lust, admiration and confusion that made her feel uneasy, naked. She withdrew the hand hiding it under her arms now wrapped around her waist.

  “Not enjoying the party?” He asked.

  “Just needed some fresh air.” And peace and quiet. And should she ask him to leave her alone?

  “It’s full of snobs in there. Not exactly the way you want to spend a night like this in San Francisco.”

  He sighed and looked away, his eyes lost in the lights of the Bay, his hair rippling just above his shoulders teased by the breeze blowing softly. His nose was small and pointed from the profile, like that of a little boy, cute and immature.