It’s who you’re with.
Chapter 22
“Let’s go,” Levon says, waking me up from a nap.
“Where?” My mind is so hazy that for a second I forget what we’re even doing here.
“King of Diamonds.”
“Oh. Right, right.”
As we drive through the industrial section of downtown Miami, homeless guys crouch in storefronts and alleys.
“What was the homeless guy’s name, the one that died?”
“Robert,” he says. “Robert Kempler. He was a professor at Miami Dade College at one point.”
“What?”
“Yeah.”
“So how does one become homeless after being a professor?”
Levon gestures out to the boulevard where the shadowed people still linger, smoking and dealing drugs, some just staring into space.
“Every one of those people—or every homeless person—started out with a home and a job. They didn’t grow up homeless.”
Yeah, and I started out a bored boarding-school student, and now I’m an outlaw.
We scope out the King of Diamonds from across the street. It’s Strip Club 101: a huge, ugly, one-story cement building painted black, with a bright-red door. A large black man with a beret sits outside the entrance on a stool.
“He never got the memo about berets,” I say.
“I think it looks good on him,” Levon says. “Not everyone can pull it off.”
This from a guy who totally can pull off a cowbot hat, not to mention a face I could look at for a long time.
“So, are you going to ask him or should I?”
“Go for it, Black Swan,” he says.
“Oh my God. Do I look like Natalie Portman with this?” I ask, rubbing my shaved head.
“Better.”
I get out quickly and cross the street, trying to emanate tough journalist chick as opposed to teenage fugitive.
“Hi, I was wondering if you could help me out.”
“We ain’t hirin’,” he says, barely looking at me. I notice a scar across the bridge of his nose and a razor-thin mustache.
“Yeah, that’s me, aspiring stripper,” I say.
He looks at me, then really looks at me, and says calmly, “What can we do for you then, young lady?”
“Whisper. I’m looking for Whisper. She used to work here?”
“Sorry, don’t know anyone by that name.”
“How long have you worked here?”
“What are you, my parole officer?” He dabs at his forehead with a folded bar napkin and adjusts his sunglasses.
“No, I’m a girl who’s trying to help a friend.”
“Miss, you need to leave now. This is a twenty-one-and and-over establishment. And I ain’t got time to be messin’ with no kids.”
He lowers his sunglasses and looks at me hard as he says this. Something about his dark eyes reminds me of Jamal, so I make like I’m leaving but walk around the side of the building. He follows for a few steps, but then gets a call on his cell phone.
I search for a side door or another way in.
Toward the end of the block, there’s a back entrance with a cloudy cashier window. There’s a woman in the little booth; fifties; curly, gray hair. She’s a little blurred from the clouded glass.
“Hi.”
“Well, hello there. I know you’re not a customer, and don’t tell me you’re here about a job.”
“No, I’m just looking for a friend. She used to work here. Whisper?”
She puts down the money she’s counting and looks at me. I give her my big eyes and curl my mouth just so. It’s what I used to do when I wanted something from my mother. It usually worked, and from the woman’s sigh, I think it’s working now.
“Her name is Marissa. She left us years ago, but I heard she teaches yoga now down in Sobe.”
“Oh. OK, great. Do you know what the studio is called?”
The woman looks at me, incredulous.
“What is it you want from her, anyway?”
“Just answers to a couple of questions is all.”
“You’re not a cop?”
“I’m sixteen.”
“Well, I don’t know the name of the studio but it’s on Eighteenth, a few blocks off the beach.”
“Great. Thank you so much.”
She nods but doesn’t smile.
I walk back to the front and wait to cross the street. The black guy approaches me, pointing one of his thick fingers.
“Hey!”
“I’m leaving,” I say, “but just FYI, you may want to rethink the beret.”
I run across the street and don’t look back. I get into the truck, giggling. “Step on it.”
Levon starts the truck. The black guy is heading toward us.
“Hurry! Before Mr. Beret makes mincemeat out of me.”
Levon pulls out in time.
“What is Sobe?” I ask him.
“South Beach.”
“That’s where we need to go. Eighteenth Street.”
“I’m on it. What is it, her house?”
“Yoga studio.”
We see two cops on the way, both parked. The first time Levon makes a noise, and the second time I do. We can’t be caught now. We’ve come too far.
Sure enough, there’s a little studio two blocks off the beach called Yogaworks. There’s a class in session. The teacher is a man with a short ponytail and a thin but muscled body. As the people file out, Levon and I sit on the curb. When everyone’s gone, I tell Levon to wait for me. I go inside, and the teacher is hanging up the mats. The place smells like the boys’ locker room at school, but with a hint of something trying to mask it—patchouli oil?
The man sees me and smiles, tilting his head.
“Hello,” he says in a singsong tone.
“Hi.”
“What can I do for you?”
“Well, I’m looking for someone who teaches here. A woman named Marissa?
He smiles again, as if me coming here is perfectly natural, like everything that happens in his life is simply contributing to his bliss. I know the type; there are a lot of them in Oakland.
“And who are you?”
I try to think of a reply fast. Something other than I’m Wade Rex’s kidnapped daughter.
“I have something of hers that I know she’d want. She was a friend of my father’s.”
He seems OK with that answer. He finishes hanging up the last mat, then grabs a towel to dab at his face.
“I’m not at liberty,” he says, but I can tell he knows her. His expression gives it away. “I’m afraid you’re on your own.”
On my way out, I go into the girls’ locker room, where a woman is toweling off next to the shower in the corner.
“Hello,” she says, her face an open book.
This is my last chance. I decide to get to the point.
“Hi. I have a question. Have you been coming here a while?”
“Since it opened, why?”
“Have you ever taken a class with someone named Marissa?”
“Yes, but she no longer teaches here. I think she’s at Flow in Fort Lauderdale now.”
At that moment, I feel another shift, like the first crack in a wall that is flooding from within, the water starting to trickle out.
Flow.
I run to the woman and hug her, not even caring that she’s wet and half-naked.
I still don’t know the end of the story, but I could live off these beginnings.
Chapter 23
It’s all part of a plan, and maybe the plan was happening before we even knew it.
I’m going to take my first yoga class with Whisper, a.k.a. Marissa, to feel her out. Levon’s going to see his grandmother, whose nursing home is als
o near Fort Lauderdale. He drops me off, and we plan to meet up in two hours. He doesn’t even think twice about leaving me. At this point, we’re in this together. The issue of Jamal still lingers in the pit of my stomach—Did he die? If not, will he come after us?—but I can’t change the outcome. It’s too late. And the cops had no idea where we were headed, although anyone with half a brain could figure it out. But Levon is still wearing his hat, and my head is still shaved. And even though we saw a picture of the Toyota again on the news in Levon’s trailer, the pickup truck has never been associated with us.
Flow Yoga has a makeshift lobby painted powder blue with cube-shaped cushion chairs. The woman behind the counter looks like she should be in one of those ads for a prescription drug that makes you happy. That is, before they mention the list of possible side effects, ending with dementia and death. She smiles at me like I’m a camera and tells me the first class is free. I put my new fake email on the sheet and check the “intermediate” box. The room is small but has a vaulted ceiling. The walls are tan, as are most of the people in the class, which is made up of young mom types, a bearded hipster, and a gay couple.
Before starting, she turns right to me and says, “So we have a new person in our group today. Welcome. Your name?”
I pause. I can’t say my real name in case someone saw my story on the news.
“Rena,” I say.
“Namaste,” the whole class says in unison. It sounds very similar to “Have a nice day,” which makes me giggle.
I pray she’s not going to, like, ask me what my hobbies are or to reveal one of my deepest fears. This is supposed to be exercise but it’s feeling more like group therapy.
“OK, Rena, any health concerns I should know about?”
I shake my head, then look down at the wooden floor, willing everyone to stop staring at me. I am wearing shorts and a T-shirt, while everyone else has clothes that are basically painted on their skin. Except the hipster in baggy sweats, who smiles at me. Apparently his yoga fashion needs work as well.
During the warm-up, I steal a few peeks at Marissa. She seems so grounded, so pure, but not in a prescription-drug-ad kind of way. I’m looking for signs, cracks in her armor, but I’m having no luck. She exudes genuineness. Is it really the same girl?
Thankfully, I’m in the last row, so I just copy the woman in front of me, who doesn’t seem that good anyway. At the end, we lie on our backs, palms open to the ceiling. Marissa rubs a stick around a metal bowl, creating a reverberating hum. She tells us, in a deeper, more intense voice, not to think about yesterday or tomorrow, just the clear emptiness of the present while our bodies restore. She talks about a ray of sunlight that came into her room that morning and how it felt like the finger of an angel. I am totally with her, but the finger part throws me, and I can hear one of the gay guys suppress laughter.
“Stay in that clear space,” Marissa murmurs. “Where all the tension releases and you are a cloud, settling into the earth beneath you. Stay in that light space for as long as you want after class. Namaste.”
“Namaste,” everyone group-mumbles.
“Have a nice day,” I whisper.
I plan to take her advice and meditate, but someone farts, and a bunch of people are rolling up their mats and rushing out. Like the fingering angel, it’s kind of a buzzkill. I sit up and watch the rest of the class, some determined to stay on their backs and be a cloud, others completely back into their earthly bodies, hopping over people, taking out their phones. Marissa slinks into what looks like a closet with an orange sari for a door.
The gay couple smiles at me, as do a few of the moms, and eventually it’s just myself and the bearded hipster, who chose to stay on his back meditating through all the after-class chaos. I stand up, walk over, and peek behind the sari.
It’s not a closet. It’s a hallway. The strong smell of incense and eucalyptus oil makes me a little dizzy. There’s a faint sound of a didgeridoo coming out of hidden speakers. At the end of the hallway, there are two doors. One has a homemade sign that says “Massage in progress,” with drawn hands holding the words, and the other one is cracked open.
I push it another inch. Marissa is scrolling on her cell phone while lying on a small white couch. What did she ever see in Wade? What do all those groupies really see in him? Yeah, he can sing, but he’s skinny and scary looking. I’m so glad I got my mother’s looks, not that I’m even half as beautiful as she was.
I knock gently, and Marissa looks up.
“Hi, sorry. I wanted to say how much I loved your class.”
“Thank you,” she says, sitting up, her smile betraying nothing of her past. “Come on in.”
I move through the doorway and stand there awkwardly.
“I was curious… Do you just think of what to say? You know, at the end of class…”
“Yeah, it’s not scripted, if that’s what you mean.”
“Amazing. I love the imagery.” She smiles again, like I’m the breath of air she needed. I ride the wave. “And your voice, it reminds…” My face gets warm. “It reminds me of my mother, actually.”
“Oh, how nice.”
“You seem to have this glow, like, you clear the shadows.”
“Clear the shadows. I like that.”
I don’t tell her that it’s a line from Billy Ray’s song.
She walks over to open the window, and as she reaches for it, the back of her shirt rises. There’s a tattoo on the small of her back, a little off center. It’s a poorly done butterfly.
“Well, thanks so much for the class.”
“You’re welcome,” she says facing me again.
I start to leave but take a really deep breath and will myself to turn around.
“Marissa?”
“Yes?”
“This is awkward, but I have this project for school. I have to write about someone I admire, and I have to interview them. It’s just a few questions… Maybe I could call you sometime?”
“Of course!”
Marissa writes her cell number on the back of her business card, then edges me toward the door, but I’m not ready to go yet. Not without confirming she’s Whisper.
“So, this is going to sound strange, but do you like the Black Angels?”
Her eyes go dull for an instant, her cheeks reddening in a flash of shame.
“Uh, yeah. I used to. Why?”
“Just wondering. They’re playing Friday, and I may have an extra ticket.”
“That’s really sweet of you, but I’m… Yeah, I’m busy Friday.”
Marissa smiles her enlightened yoga smile. Even with the tramp stamp, she’s clearly reinvented herself.
“Anyway, nice to meet you.”
We smile at each other, and as I walk away, I try to picture her as a stripper, or even an escort, coming on to Levon’s father in the backseat. It seems plausible, especially from her reaction when I brought up the Black Angels and the tattoo. If the friend approach doesn’t work, we’ll have to get some dirt on her—some reason why her present life can’t know about her past one.
Levon is pulling up as I leave. I get into the truck and hand him the business card. As we drive back to the trailer park, he’s silent. I can tell something’s up.
“How was your grandmother?” I ask.
“She didn’t recognize me.”
There’s water in his eyes, and I am quiet, trying to give him space. Still, part of me wants to touch him—on his cheek or behind his ear—to give him a small gesture of sympathy. I don’t know how he feels, but I can imagine it. My own father barely recognized me to begin with.
I read the signs going by: beauty shop, car wash, dry cleaners. When I glance at Levon, he blinks out two tears. I take his hand, and this time he grips mine tight.
“I just keep thinking how stupid my father was to believe Wade,” he says. “To take his bait.
That was two years he could’ve spent with his mother. The reason why she doesn’t recognize me is because she hasn’t seen him. It’s too confusing.”
“Did she know the circumstances? When he first went away?”
“I told her it was a mistake, that he would do his time and be a better man for it.”
We drive along the canals with docks where fishing boats and whalers float, tied up until their next use.
A cop pulls out of a side street and starts following us, and I can feel heat rising in my face. Levon pulls his hand away and puts both on the wheel, gripping tightly. I can see a vein pulsing in his neck.
Not now. We are so close.
After a couple of blocks, the cop turns, and we let out a collective breath.
I try to say something, but Levon puts up his hand. His mood has darkened. How can you feel so close to someone and then the next minute so far away?
A few miles later, I tell him about Marissa, that I think she’s Whisper.
“Oh yeah? Tell me this. Why would she want to dredge up that part of her life? She seems to have moved on.”
“I’m working on her. She likes me. If I can gain her trust—”
“Dammit, Candy! This isn’t a TV show. This is my fucking life!”
He is fuming, and I can hear my stomach rumble as I sink a little farther into the seat. We stop at a light, and outside my window, a scraggly man shakes a stained coffee cup.
“That man didn’t deserve to die,” I say very quietly.
Levon responds even more quietly. “I know. What about Jamal?”
We stare at each other, neither of us knowing the answer.
Chapter 24
Levon shows me his corner of the trailer, behind the makeshift wall.
“Not much, but it was home for a long time.”
“You’re moving out though, right?”
“That’s the plan.”
There are some movie posters and another picture of the girl. She looks pretty, but in a masculine way, like she might be good at softball or horseback riding. Levon catches me looking at the picture.
Stealing Candy Page 11
