The Vanishing

by Bentley Little

  His dad, on the other hand, was weird. Creepy was the word that sprang to mind, and Kirk wondered when that had happened. Like a lot of successful men, his father had never been a regular guy, had always been more than a little unusual, but within the parameters of his position he had always seemed to Kirk fairly normal. Lately, though, Kirk had been struck by how unnerving his dad’s stare had become, how unnatural his minimal body movements seemed. He felt uncomfortable around his dad now. It wasn’t an issue when the three of them were together, but he realized that he didn’t like being alone with the old man, and he understood for the first time that that was why he hadn’t seen his father when his mom was gone.

  Not that his dad had noticed.

  Or maybe he had noticed and was plotting revenge.

  Revenge?

  What kind of thinking was that?

  Kirk was just glad that his mom was there.

  He hung out for a while longer, but when his mother suggested that he stay for dinner, he used that as his opportunity to escape. ‘‘Sorry,’’ he said. ‘‘I have plans.’’

  ‘‘You knew your mother was coming home,’’ his dad said sternly.

  ‘‘I know, but it’s—’’

  ‘‘Someone new?’’ his mom asked, barely concealing her delight at the prospect.

  ‘‘Yeah,’’ he lied.

  His dad was still frowning, but his mom patted his arm. ‘‘You go,’’ she said. ‘‘And have fun.’’

  ‘‘I will,’’ Kirk promised.

  On the street, the doorman caught him a cab, and he stopped off at Nobu to see if anyone he knew was hanging out. Howard Stern was there, along with a few other celebrities, but no one he knew personally, so he had a quick drink and then went on to Mantissa, where he scanned the bar and then positioned himself next to a tall dark beauty who was either alone, abandoned or waiting for a friend. Before he could get up the nerve to speak to her, however, her date returned from the bathroom and the two of them wandered off in search of a table.

  ‘‘At least when you strike out, you swing for the fences.’’

  Kirk turned at the sound of the familiar voice. Waylon Jennings Bryant stood there grinning, holding up a bottle of expensive imported beer in salute. ‘‘I wouldn’t kick her out of bed for eating crackers.’’

  Kirk reddened. ‘‘I wasn’t—’’

  ‘‘Don’t apologize,’’ his friend said. ‘‘I was paying you a compliment. That’s what I admire about you: your chutzpah, your moxie, your . . .’’

  ‘‘Balls?’’

  ‘‘I’m not going to admire your balls no matter how much you beg.’’

  Kirk laughed. Out of all his friends, Waylon had the best sense of humor, or at least the one closest to his own. (‘‘You have to have a sense of humor,’’ Waylon always said, ‘‘when you’re born to parents who made your name into a fucking joke.’’) Kirk leaned forward, looking at the red button pinned to his friend’s jacket. ‘‘WWWD?’’ he read aloud. ‘‘What’s that stand for?’’

  ‘‘What Would Whit Do?’’

  ‘‘Whit?’’

  ‘‘Whit Bissell.’’

  Kirk shook his head to indicate his ignorance.

  ‘‘Star of The Time Tunnel? He was in about a billion B movies. You’d recognize him if you saw him. Second only to Larry Hovis in the pantheon of greats.’’

  That’s another thing he liked about Waylon. He was even more into esoteric pop culture trivia than Kirk himself was.

  As the two of them stood at the bar, talking, the room began to fill up. Kirk glanced at his watch and saw that it was already after seven. ‘‘I’m hungry,’’ he said. ‘‘Want to grab a bite to eat?’’

  ‘‘Sure. Anywhere but here. Last time I was poisoned by the scallops. I swore I’d never eat here again.’’

  ‘‘But—’’

  ‘‘Drink, yes. Eat, no. Come on. Let’s roll.’’

  They couldn’t agree on where to go and ended up at a new Midtown restaurant that specialized in Mediterranean food and was owned by a chef who had a show on the Food Network.

  Gwyneth Paltrow was holding court at a center table, ostentatiously smoking, along with a bunch of her celebrity friends.

  ‘‘Why do so many actors smoke?’’ Kirk wondered as they walked in.

  Waylon shrugged. ‘‘Most of them aren’t very well educated. So they’re not as smart or well informed as the general population. It’s the same reason so many of them become Republican politicians.’’

  ‘‘Ronald Reagan,’’ Kirk said quickly.

  ‘‘Arnold Schwarzenegger,’’ Waylon countered.

  ‘‘Fred Thompson.’’

  ‘‘Fred Grandy.’’

  ‘‘Sonny Bono.’’

  They went on with the competition, the names becoming more and more obscure, until finally Kirk gave up. ‘‘You win,’’ he said.

  Waylon grinned. ‘‘I always do.’’

  They had no reservations and there were no tables available, but luckily Tina and her new fiancé, Brad, were there and seated near the wall. Tina waved them over, and Kirk explained their predicament. ‘‘Join us,’’ she insisted.

  Both Kirk and Waylon looked over at Brad for confirmation. They didn’t know him as well as they did her and didn’t want to intrude if this was supposed to be a romantic dinner for just the two of them.

  Brad smiled, indicating the empty chairs. ‘‘Our dates stood us up,’’ he said. ‘‘Have a seat.’’

  Tina shook her head as Kirk and Waylon sat down. ‘‘April and Orlando. We’ve had these reservations for a week, and they called us five minutes ago, right after we sat down, and said they couldn’t make it. I mean, how rude.’’

  ‘‘A fight,’’ Brad said.

  Waylon laughed. ‘‘What else is new? Whenever I’ve gone anyplace with them, they’re either not speaking to each other or locking lips like two horned-out teenagers.’’

  ‘‘They’re very uncomfortable to be around,’’ Kirk agreed.

  Tina leaned forward. ‘‘Did you ever notice how his eyes start to jiggle when he gets mad? She’ll say something that tees him off, and he’ll still be smiling, still be talking to you, but his eyes will start to spaz out. They’ll just jiggle real fast up and down. It’s like a warning that he’s about to blow.’’

  ‘‘It’s true,’’ Brad said. ‘‘After she told me about that, I watched. And his eyes really do jiggle.’’

  ‘‘Well! I can see why you’d want to go out to dinner with them,’’ Waylon joked.

  ‘‘Orlando’s a strange guy.’’ Brad took a sip of his water, raising a hand to get the waiter’s attention.

  ‘‘I expect to wake up one morning and read about him in the paper,’’ Tina said. ‘‘ ‘Man Kills Wife and Self.’ ’’

  Brad and Waylon laughed.

  ‘‘You think I’m joking, but I’m not.’’

  A chill passed through Kirk. The feeling Tina said she got from Orlando was the same one he’d been experiencing around his father, only he had not been able to articulate it until now. He realized that it was not just the fact that his dad seemed so strange and creepy lately that disturbed him; it was an undercurrent of savageness he sensed there, an almost subliminal recognition that the potential for violence and atrocity lay just beneath his old man’s outwardly placid surface.

  Brad was still chuckling. ‘‘Why did we ask them out?’’

  ‘‘Because they’re a couple,’’ Tina said. ‘‘Because they’re one of our few friends who actually have dates.’’ She stared hard first at Waylon then Kirk.

  Kirk shrugged. ‘‘That’s just the way it is.’’

  Waylon nodded. ‘‘As Bruce Hornsby once said.’’

  ‘‘Do you think Nick Hornby likes Bruce Hornsby?’’

  ‘‘Doubtful. Bruce Hornsby doesn’t have the right cool quotient. And Nick Hornby’s an insufferable snob.’’

  ‘‘Have you met him?’’ Kirk asked, surprised.

  ‘‘No. But I can tell.’
’

  The conversation drifted away into gossip and trivialities, the way it always did when he, Waylon and Tina were in the same room, but beneath it all, Kirk still felt chilled. He kept seeing in his mind his dad’s unnerving stare, his unnatural stillness—

  MAN KILLS WIFE AND SELF

  —and he couldn’t help thinking that something terrible was going to happen.

  Four

  As a social worker in San Francisco for the past five years, Carrie Daniels had worked very hard on her professional demeanor, cultivating an all-purpose facial expression that conveyed concern and would suffice in nearly every situation in which she might find herself. Most important, she’d practiced being nonjudgmental, not allowing herself to show any sign of disapproval or disappointment to her clients.

  But all of those efforts were being sorely tested right now.

  For she had never seen anything like Juan Olivera. The boy sat on the floor of the small apartment’s lone bedroom amid a jumble of torn newspapers and broken toys like an animal. She could see him through the sitting room doorway, looking out at her, and it was all she could do not to stare.

  He had the face of a llama.

  It was a genetic abnormality of some sort—although having just been assigned the case and meeting the family for the first time, Carrie did not know specifics and did not yet feel comfortable asking for any. The child had been hiding when she’d first arrived, either too shy or too wild to greet strangers, but gradually he had emerged from the shadows of the darkened bedroom to peer curiously out at her. He was dressed like an ordinaryyoung boy, was not wearing a diaper or rags or sackcloth or anything, and despite the filth on the floor of the dirty bedroom, he was not confined in any way, was not shackled, caged or bound. What she found so disturbing was not the contrast between his average child’s body and the monstrosity of his facial features, but the fact that his mother seemed not to notice or care, that she apparently accepted all of this as normal.

  And the way he kept staring at her with his black ruminant eyes.

  He scared her, and even as she talked to the boy’s mother, her mind was racing, trying to figure out how such a thing could have happened, how an ordinary woman could give birth to such a . . . monster. Carrie hated herself for even thinking such a word, but it was the one that came to her mind. In her job, she was trained to deal with abuse, with poverty, with all of the ordinary social ills that befell people in the lower economic strata, but physical deformity was not really her purview.

  She tried not to look at him.

  But she kept stealing glances at the darkened bedroom.

  The mother, Rosalia, was a beautiful woman: tall, thin, with perfectly formed features and smooth, unblemished skin. Were it not for the cast-off clothes she wore and the circumstances of her living conditions, she could have passed for a model or an actress. Her English, while not perfect, was delivered in a voice that was soft and clear, with a musical accent that paved over the fractured syntax. As she helped the woman fill out forms, Carrie wondered how such a beauty could have ended up an unmarried garment worker living in this overcrowded tenement.

  Juan.

  Of course. It was the only explanation that made sense. Rosalia had probably been with someone and gotten pregnant, and when the father saw what the boy looked like, he’d bailed. This backstory wasn’t in her file, but it seemed the most likely possibility, and though Carrie had developed an immunity from emotion over the past several years, she felt a sadness for both mother and son that she had not felt for any other clients.

  She continued talking to Rosalia, keeping her eyes averted from Juan, looking at either the other woman’s face or the stack of forms in her lap, not allowing herself to glance toward the doorway, though she wanted more than anything to do just that.

  Rosalia had been turned down for medical treatment at one of the county’s urgent care clinics, which was why she’d called Social Services, and Carrie had been sent over to deliver the bad news that Rosalia’s meager health benefits had been slashed by the governor to finance tax cuts for his wealthy contributors. She’d been spending the past twenty minutes going over Rosalia’s file, writing down additional information, looking for loopholes, trying in vain to find some way to get the woman’s coverage reinstated or enroll her in an alternate program. Now that she thought about it, though, Carrie wondered if Juan’s . . . condition . . . made the two of them eligible for some sort of disability benefits. She’d have to research that when she returned to the office.

  Was there a tactful way to broach this subject, to ask about Juan’s . . . deformity? Infirmity? Handicap? Affliction? Impairment?

  She didn’t even know what to call it.

  No, Carrie decided. Best not to even bring up the idea of additional benefits until she knew for sure. She didn’t want to give the woman false hope.

  And she didn’t want to talk to Rosalia about her son. Not yet. She wasn’t ready.

  Downtown, back at the office, she asked Sanchez, her supervisor, if he knew anything about the boy.

  The bald man sighed heavily. ‘‘I knew this would come up.’’

  ‘‘Well?’’ Carrie prodded after no explanation seemed forthcoming.

  Sanchez leaned back in his chair, met her eyes for the first time. ‘‘Okay. I didn’t hear this from Rosalia, so it’s all secondhand, but I was told by Linda Yee, the woman who owns that building, that in order to get the money to come to America, Rosalia worked in a mule show, or I guess, a llama show, back in Mexico. She had sex with animals while people watched, and . . . and she got pregnant by one.’’

  ‘‘That’s impossible!’’ Carrie exploded. She felt her face redden. She was outraged that someone would even say such a thing. ‘‘First of all, I don’t believe Rosalia would ever do anything like that.’’ She thought of the woman’s soft musical voice and gentle beauty. ‘‘I know I only just met her, but you can tell a lot about a person by talking to them, especially if they’re the type of person who . . . if they’re capable of . . . something like . . .’’ She shook her head disgustedly. ‘‘Second of all, that couldn’t even happen. It’s not physically possible. Whoever told you that’s a liar.’’

  Sanchez shrugged. ‘‘What’s more likely: a genetic abnormality that makes a human face look like a llama’s or a genetic abnormality that allows a human egg to be fertilized by llama sperm? Take your pick. I don’t know, and I don’t really care. All I’m concerned with is that we get them the assistance they need. These are the people who fall through the cracks. They don’t apply for aid because they don’t even know enough to know what they don’t know. They’re exactly the kind of family we should be helping, and it’s up to us to steer them in the right direction and make sure they receive the proper support so that maybe, one day, they can lift themselves out of poverty.’’

  ‘‘You’re right,’’ Carrie said. ‘‘You’re right.’’

  ‘‘Okay, then.’’ He turned back to his paperwork.

  ‘‘It’s just—’’

  Sanchez looked up again.

  ‘‘—that I feel so . . . helpless here. Because no matter how much time and effort we spend, no matter how much money we throw at the situation, that boy’s always going to be . . . what he is.’’

  ‘‘Yes. And sometimes you have to accept that that’s how things are.’’

  ‘‘But—’’

  ‘‘I know.’’

  Carrie looked down at the case folder in her hand with its pertinent data about Juan Olivera that gave no clue at all to the real facts of the boy’s existence. ‘‘What kind of a life do you think a child like that can have?’’ she asked.

  ‘‘Not much of one,’’ Sanchez admitted. His voice was kinder than usual, almost soft. ‘‘That’s why you have to let this go.’’

  But she couldn’t.

  The llama boy haunted her dreams.

  In one particularly vivid nightmare, Carrie went to the Oliveras’ apartment to meet with Rosalia and was sitting in a torn
vinyl chair across from her when suddenly the lights went out. It was night, and a power outage must have affected the entire neighborhood because the streetlamps winked off and every light in the apartments across the street was out. Rosalia moaned chillingly, as though in fear for her life, and said something incomprehensible in Spanish, followed immediately by two words whispered in English: ‘‘He’s coming.’’ Carrie had no idea what that meant, but her body was suddenly covered in gooseflesh and she was filled with a feeling of blind panic. From somewhere within the pitch-black darkness came a raspy chuckle, a terrible, evil sound that made her think of horror-movie monsters. Her eyes were adjusting to the darkness. The moon was out, and by its indirect glow she could see Juan creeping out of the bedroom, into the sitting room, toward her. He was naked and walking on all fours, and his llama head rocked crazily from side to side as he advanced on her, still chuckling. Rosalia prayed in Spanish, her desperation obvious even through the language barrier. Juan opened his mouth, showing fangs . . .

  And then Carrie awoke.

  In another dream, Social Services had been contacted by the police. Rosalia had died of starvation, and Juan was alive only because he had eaten her legs. The decision as to what to do with the child had been left up to her, since she was his caseworker, and Carrie decided that as he seemed to be more animal than human, he was to be pawned off to a zoo or sold to a circus.

  It was wrong of her to entertain such thoughts, though she obviously did, and she was embarrassed by her primitive reaction to the boy. She wanted to help him, wanted to ensure that he had as normal a childhood and as easy a life as possible. But that was an intellectual response. Emotionally, she was frightened of him. It still did not seem possible that such a person—

  creature

  —could exist, and her mind had a difficult time simply acknowledging the reality of his being. No matter how hard she tried, she could not reconcile her knowledge of biology with the boy she had seen in that apartment. Is there a human brain behind those animal eyes? she wondered. Does he merely resemble a llama or is he part llama?