She's Not There

by P J Parrish

Amelia made her way down to the front row and took a seat. She pulled out her glasses and slipped them on. All the dancers had retreated to the wings or were sprawled on the floor at the back of the stage. Jimmy was standing center stage with Victor and a blonde woman wearing a lilac leotard and tattered white practice tutu. Her thin pale face was sleek with sweat and she looked upset.

  “He’s pinching me, Jimmy,” she said.

  “I have to. You’re sweaty,” Victor said.

  Jimmy held up a hand. “Okay, time out.” He looked to the young man. “Victor, you can’t just grab her like a football. Watch me.”

  Jimmy positioned himself behind the woman and put his hands firmly at her waist just below her rib cage. “Use your palms, not your fingers,” he said. “Feel her weight before you push off to lift her.”

  Jimmy and the woman began to move in unison, his hands at her waist, but he stopped just before the lift, grimacing.

  “See the difference?” he asked Victor.

  The young man sighed. Jimmy pulled him away from the woman, toward the lip of the stage.

  “Victor, this is the grand pas de deux,” he said. “It’s not a solo. It’s not about you being a star. It’s about a man and a woman, about trust and connection and telling their story.”

  Victor looked down at the stage, hands on his hips.

  “To be a good partner, you have to sense her center of gravity,” Jimmy went on. “You have to support her, make her feel secure, pull her back when she gets off balance, help her get through a difficult turn. And when you lift her, you must make her feel like she can fly.”

  “I feel invisible,” Victor said.

  Jimmy shook his head. “No, no. It’s two of you appreciating what the other can do and trusting that everything will be all right. It’s almost a spiritual thing. You feel each other. That’s what creates beauty.”

  Victor glanced at the young woman and then back at Jimmy.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Good.”

  “She’s still sweaty.”

  “Go rub some resin on your hands.” Jimmy clapped his hands and retreated to the back of the stage. “Okay, Fred and Ginger, let’s try it again.”

  Amelia watched as Jimmy coached the two dancers through the pas de deux, but she wasn’t seeing the steps or hearing the music. She was seeing herself and Jimmy, years younger, dancing together, but someone was there with them, like a hovering shadow. It was a man, and slowly his face appeared, almost like he was stepping into the spotlight and she was . . .

  His name was Neil. He was a writer, and Jimmy had loved him, too. Loved him more?

  No, Amelia thought as she watched Jimmy on stage. Just differently. That was how Jimmy had explained it to her that night as they sat in an empty lifeguard stand on a moonlit Miami beach. That was how he explained that he was bisexual.

  You own a piece of my heart forever, love. But I can’t fill that empty spot in yours, not like you need me to. You want marriage. You want children someday. I can’t be there for you in that way.

  They decided to end their affair that night. The next day they went back to being partners on stage, and they had remained good friends. She felt that in her bones. But there was a gap in her memory, a huge black looming gap that kept bringing her back to the same questions: Why had she quit dancing? Why had she married Alex?

  Amelia took off her glasses, turning Jimmy into a blur, overcome by a swell of emotion: an ache for what they had once had, but relief that she had not lost him completely. Jimmy’s promise to her, in the end, was that he would still be there for her. As a friend. It was enough, she thought. It had to be.

  “Amelia?”

  She looked up at Jimmy. He was crouched at the edge of the stage, staring at her.

  “Why are you crying, love?”

  “Because I’m here,” she said softly.

  Amelia was quiet on the short bus ride to Jimmy’s apartment, thankful that there was no chance to talk. Fatigue from the long drive, her reconnection with Jimmy, and the tension of not knowing if Clay Buchanan was still on her trail. It was all weighing heavily on her. But as she unpacked her duffel in Jimmy’s small guest room, there were other emotions at play.

  And they centered around Alex.

  He had been on her mind constantly during the last two days. With nothing to do but think as she drove from Iowa to California, things about their past began to come into clear focus. Some of the memories were good. How flattering and exciting it was in the beginning to be relentlessly pursued by a rich handsome man. How beautiful the wedding had been and how sensual their honeymoon had felt. How good it felt to create something of beauty—a house, a garden, her own image in a mirror or magazine—that made Alex so happy. But it hadn’t been until this morning, listening to Jimmy coach the young dancer, that she realized what had always been missing.

  It’s almost a spiritual thing. You feel each other. That’s what creates beauty.

  She had loved Alex once. And he had loved her. But he was like Victor, trying so hard but never really understanding where her center of gravity was. And she had never really understood his.

  “Hey in there, you okay?”

  Jimmy was calling to her from the kitchen.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” she yelled back. She changed her T-shirt for a sweater, ran a brush quickly through her hair, and went out into the living room.

  “I have Earl Grey, Golden Monkey, and some strange stuff I found in Japantown,” Jimmy said, craning his neck out the archway from the kitchen. “Name your poison.”

  “Earl Grey.”

  “Coward.”

  As she waited for Jimmy to make the tea, she looked around his apartment. It was small, on the second floor of an ugly fifties cubicle-like building. But its big window overlooked a park, and through the wind-tortured cypress trees, she could see the gray-green expanse of the Pacific Ocean. The furnishings were flea-market finds, the walls were filled with messy bookcases and theater posters, and the television in the corner was dusty and unused. It was so much like his studio back in Miami Beach, she remembered, but this apartment felt more settled, more secure.

  There was a silver picture frame on the desk under the window. She picked it up and smiled. It was Jimmy and Neil, dressed in suits with white boutonnieres, standing on a balcony with marble columns in the background.

  Jimmy came in with a tray and set it on the coffee table.

  “Where was this taken?” she asked, holding up the frame.

  “City hall. Very romantic, sort of like Mussolini’s mausoleum.”

  Amelia looked back at the photo and then at Jimmy again. “You got married? When?”

  He stared at her. “Last year. I called you right after the ceremony, remember?”

  Amelia hesitated and then turned away, setting the frame back in its place. Of course she remembered now. That was one of the reasons Jimmy and Neil had moved out here, so they could marry.

  “Where is Neil?” she asked softly.

  “He’s teaching a fiction workshop in Vancouver this week. We talked about this last month. I told you that with him away, this would be a great time for you to come because—”

  She brought up a hand to cover her eyes.

  “Amelia.”

  She turned to Jimmy.

  “Talk to me,” he said. “I need to know what happened to you.”

  What happened? She knew he was asking about what happened since the accident. But it wasn’t just about that. What had happened to her had started long before that night in the Everglades. And it was a tangled yarn-ball, with strands that stretched all the way back to Morning Sun and the lake house, back to ballet classes in Burlington and lonely years in New York. The strands bound her up with her mother and father, Ben and The Bird—and Alex.

  What happened was about feeling like she had walked out into a la
ke and the ground had given way, and she had been drifting down for years. That’s why she had decided to leave Alex, leave her whole life in Florida behind. She needed to feel the bottom under her feet again.

  Jimmy was still waiting for his answer.

  “I had a car accident. When I woke up, I couldn’t remember who I was,” she began.

  “An accident?”

  Slowly, she told him what had happened, retrieving the pieces that she knew, about the amnesia, her fear that someone was trying to kill her, how she fled the hospital and tried to reconstruct her past. When she got to the part about Arnolds Park, she stopped.

  “I shot a man,” she said.

  “What?”

  “He was trying to kill me.”

  “Amelia,” he said, “what the hell is going on?”

  Amelia told him about Clay Buchanan, how his hands felt around his neck, how terrified and stunned she was when she saw him lying in the water. Jimmy’s expression as he listened was unnerving, like he had no trouble at all believing she was capable of shooting someone.

  “Is he dead?” he asked finally.

  “I don’t know. I’ve been searching for news about it for days but there has been nothing about it anywhere. But I feel like he’s still out there, watching and waiting for the right moment to try again.”

  Jimmy had gone quiet, staring at the floor.

  “I don’t know what I did,” she said. “I don’t know what I did to make him want to kill me. It’s the one thing I still need to remember, and I can’t.”

  Jimmy rose from the sofa and came to her, wrapping his arms around her. He didn’t say anything, just cupped the back of her head and pulled her down to his shoulder.

  “The memory will come back, just like all the others have. You’re here now. We’ll figure this out. You’re safe.”

  She closed her eyes. It was true. All the pieces were coming back, snapping into place like that jigsaw puzzle on the table at the lake house. Except another important piece was still missing—the thing that had once defined her and given her life shape, the thing that had been her center of gravity. There was still one other question, and she realized that Jimmy might have the answer.

  “I need to know why,” she said.

  “Why what, love?”

  “Why I quit dancing,” she said.

  Jimmy pushed gently away from her. “You don’t remember?”

  “I remember that I loved to dance, Jimmy,” she said. “And I was good at it. I know I was.”

  “Yes, you were,” he said softly.

  “So why did I give it up?”

  He let out a long hard breath and turned away.

  Something was wrong here. Why was he hesitating? What could be so bad that he couldn’t even look at her?

  “Jimmy? I need to know,” she said.

  He turned to face her. “I let go,” he said.

  “What?”

  “You jumped into my arms and I let go of you.”

  She shook her head, not understanding.

  “We were on tour in Tampa,” he said slowly. “It was the last night, the last ballet on the program, the Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux. We were almost at the end, and I was so tired, my legs were gone. But you were on fire that night and when we came to the fish dive, you jumped and I . . .”

  Jimmy fell silent, unable to go on.

  He didn’t have to because it was coming back now. Just eight minutes, the whole ballet was only eight minutes, but it was one of the hardest in the repertoire. Its climax was the woman launching herself and diving head first toward the wings only to be snared by the man’s arms at the last moment.

  Amelia closed her eyes.

  A crash to the stage. The gasp of the audience. Waves of pain. The heavy red curtain coming down. Voices yelling and the rattle of metal wheels. More pain as they lifted her onto a gurney and Jimmy’s tearful face above her, his hand squeezing hers.

  But he wasn’t there when she woke up after surgery. Alex was.

  It was Alex who had been there at her bedside in the hospital, holding her hand when that doctor told her she would never dance again. Six months later they were married. Soon after that, Jimmy left the company and moved away.

  It was almost a year before Jimmy called her, a year of painful physical therapy and depression. He told her he felt guilty and that he was sorry, not just for the accident but for not being the man she needed him to be. You had Alex, he told her, you didn’t need me anymore.

  At first his apologies just added to the pain, but finally she accepted them, and their friendship re-formed and grew from afar. He was the only connection to the world she had lost, and in a way the only connection to anything real in a life that had become so false.

  “I’m so sorry,” he whispered.

  She took his hand in hers. “Jimmy, it wasn’t your fault. I told you that then and I need you to believe it now. You know what I was like. I wasn’t afraid to push myself.”

  And she had, she knew. She would try for just one more revolution in a pirouette because she knew his hands were around her waist. She would go off balance in a turn because she knew he would pull her back. And she would risk a blind leap into the darkness because she knew he was there.

  Jimmy . . . Alex. And even Ben.

  They had all been there for her, and she had depended on all of them to help her find her footing when the bottom gave away. But it hadn’t made her whole, it hadn’t made her safe. And it hadn’t made her strong, not the way The Bird said she once was. Fearless . . . that girl wasn’t afraid of anything.

  Was that girl still here?

  Yes, Amelia thought. Yes, I am.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Amelia Tobias’s life was spread out before him on the bed.

  Buchanan’s eyes swept over the contents of the Morning Sun cardboard box and then moved up over the room’s stained walls and scarred furniture, settling finally on the limp orange curtains.

  He had been holed up here for two days now, waiting for his strength to return. This morning was the first time he was able to walk around without his head spinning, the first day he could think clearly enough to consider what he was going to do next.

  He rose with a grimace, went to the window, and jerked on the cord to open the drapes. He stared out at the empty highway and flat white landscape.

  Eight days ago he had been looking out at the ocean from his suite at the W Hotel, getting prime rib from room service and Maker’s Mark from the minibar. Now he was living on crap from the Kum & Go, watching TV until he fell into a black-hole sleep, and waking up in sweaty sheets with Amelia’s terror-dark eyes staring up at him.

  Buchanan flexed his fingers, as if that could somehow release the muscle memory of his hands around her neck. He pulled the drapes closed. Picking up the pint of Jim Beam he had retrieved from the floor of the Toyota, he finished it off and tossed the empty bottle in the trash. He glanced back at the bed, and forced his brain to shift away from Amelia and back to McCall.

  Buchanan knew that if he went through with his new plan to help Amelia, McCall wouldn’t stop at killing Amelia. McCall would have to kill him, too.

  He rubbed his face. Somewhere in all of this, he needed to neutralize McCall, or both he and Amelia would be running for the rest of their lives.

  He went to the table under the window where he had left his canvas bag, pulled out his Acer and fired it up, praying he could snag a signal in this godforsaken place.

  Nothing. Dead air.

  He got out his personal cell phone. He had no choice; he’d have to tether his laptop to his cell so he could go online. It would leave a trail if someone wanted to trace him, but he’d just have to take the chance. He turned on the iPhone and activated the Bluetooth setting. He did the same for the Acer, typed in his PIN and chose his PAN network. A minute later, he had Interne
t access.

  He worked fast, not wanting to have his cell live any longer than he had to. The first Google page listed the articles and sites he had seen on his first search of McCall more than a week ago. But now he was doing a deep dive, looking for the debris and dark currents in McCall’s life. And Buchanan knew they were there. Everyone had shit floating just below the surface. Especially lawyers.

  He was four pages in, way past the glowing magazine profiles, business articles, and legal stuff when the word “death” came up:

  SHERIFF INVESTIGATES DUI DROWNING

  DEATH OF LAW FIRM SECRETARY

  The article was dated almost eighteen months ago, and was from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. It was a short piece about a woman named Mary Carpenter, an executive secretary for the McCall and Tobias firm, who had been reported missing by her sister. Two weeks later, her car was found submerged in a drainage canal in remote western Broward County. The autopsy revealed her blood alcohol content was .09, above the legally impaired limit, but not falling-down drunk, Buchanan knew.

  There was a quote from a sheriff’s department spokesman saying no foul play was suspected, that such accidents were “tragically common in South Florida.” The reporter backed this up with a weather report about three days of torrential rain, and statistics from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that an average of fifty-seven Floridians drowned in cars each year in the canals that were used to regulate the Everglades and water supply.

  There was a small picture of Mary Carpenter. She was around forty, plump with short brown hair and a broad smile.

  Buchanan brought up another search screen and typed in “Mary Carpenter Fort Lauderdale.” Only four hits: a brief obit, a link to the National Association for Legal Professionals, a basic profile on the background check site Intelius.com, and her Facebook page.

  Buchanan clicked on Facebook. Mary Carpenter had been dead for eighteen months, but no one had taken down her Facebook page. The most recent posts were dated not long after her death, all notes of mourning and remembrance from friends. Buchanan scrolled down until he finally got to Mary Carpenter’s own last posts. He read a month’s worth but there was nothing out of the ordinary, just the normal posts about her friend’s wedding, her dog Chico, and a trip with her sister Vivian to a Fort Lauderdale tourist place called Flamingo Gardens. Buchanan was about to close the page when he paused.