Keep Me In Sight

by Rachel Blackledge

  Pacific Beach. It seems like a happy, sunny place, where guys and gals jog around with surfboards tucked under their toned arms. It seems like a quaint pocket of yesteryear tinged with vibes from Endless Summer.

  I follow the driving instructions and arrive at the first address. Nerves flicker inside my belly. I feel like a Jehovah’s Witness, knocking on someone’s door and helpfully advising him or her that heaven’s almost full.

  I park and walk up the cracked walkway to the front door of a beach bungalow with a narrow empty porch. I knock and wait. Nothing. Then I wait and knock. Nothing.

  My stomach settles somewhat. ‘Nobody home’ seems to have a calming affect on my internal matters. Then I hear a frail voice yell from within, "Just a minute!"

  This person is definitely not Dan. Maybe it’s Dan senior, I reason, as I wait an age for the door to finally open. The elderly man stands there, wearing a terrycloth bathrobe tied around his gaunt body and hotel slippers on his feet. He squints at me through the screen door.

  "Yes?" he barks.

  "Hi," I say. "You don’t know me, but—"

  "Who is it?" cries someone from the back of the house. The voice sounds male. Not young. Not old. Maybe it’s the right Dan, looking after his grandpa.

  "What do you want?" The old man scowls and shuffles closer. "You want to tell me what my house is worth? Or what my neighbor’s house is worth?"

  "Um, no."

  "Damn real estate agents," he mumbles.

  A middle-aged man arrives at the door. "Sorry. My dad’s hard of hearing."

  The old man turns and shuffles away, yelling: "Well you know, Dan, they always come around here. Knocking on my door, telling me that so-and-so sold their house, and how much for, and why don’t I keel over and die so that they can get the listing."

  Dan opens the screen door and props it open with his foot. "Sorry about that. Can I help you?"

  "Are you Dan Evans?" I ask, heart sinking. This is definitely not the Military Man in question. It’s clear, by his sloped shoulders and slight frame, that nobody ever bestowed ‘The Man’ on this fellow.

  "You want to tell me what this is all about?" he asks.

  "Sorry to bother you. I’m looking for someone named Dan Evans. You wouldn’t happen to be in the military, would you?"

  He shakes his head. "No."

  "Okay, thank you. Wrong person. Sorry to bother you." And I leave.

  The next two houses yield similar results. I find the exuberant fourth-grade son of Doug Evans, who wants a dog soooo bad!

  I find Dawn Evans, the retired gardener, who takes me on a walking tour of her front yard. There’s grumpy yuppie Don Evans in La Jolla, who's leaving for lunch at Del Mar. "Not him!" he says, shutting the door in my face.

  And so off I go, back to my car, to cross another address off my list, my message of doom still undelivered. All in all, I’m having a pretty okay day, meeting some interesting people, and I find myself wondering why this wasn’t a ‘thing,’ a sort of social treasure hunt.

  The day comes to a close. Evening falls. I sit in my car and squeeze the bridge of my nose. Because it’s not that much fun, actually.

  I had hoped to get my mission over and done with during daylight hours. Only creeps go hunting around for strangers at night. I look down at my list again. Only one address left. I wish I could visit this last house some other day, but I don’t have any time to waste.

  So I make my way around the dark winding roads of La Jolla, inch down a steep road that runs straight downhill and deposits me onto La Jolla Shores, then skirts around La Jolla Village until I reach North Pacific Beach.

  According to Jeeves, my GPS advisor, my destination is "three hundred metres to your left." That seems right and proper, so I slow down, search the darkened exteriors for numbers, find the right one, pull over, and park.

  The house is a tidy weatherboard home, painted gray and white, with a small porch flanked by two narrow columns. An overgrown bush grows in front of a bay window next to the porch. Light spills onto the walkway from an illuminated fan light above the red front door.

  I climb a couple of steps to the front door. Just as I raise my hand to knock, I hear an argument break out inside the house. A woman is yelling. I can’t quite make out the words. Then I hear loud and clear:

  "Fuck you, Dan! You asshole!"

  And I know she’s talking to Dan. The right Dan. The one I’m looking for! Finally, I can share my news and be done with this heavy, horrible burden. Except that now seems like a really bad time.

  I knock softly, nervously, but nobody answers. Confused, I stand there, wondering if I should come back at a later time. But I made such an effort to get here. And what if I came back and find the house empty? I need to get this over with. Rip off the bandage, I tell myself, raising my hand to rap on the door again. Maybe she didn’t hear me the first time.

  Right before my knuckles strike the door, the lights flick off, plunging the house into darkness. I’m standing there in the shadows, wondering what on earth just happened. Is there a power outage? I glance across the street and see other well-lit houses. Did she blow a fuse? I hope it’s not a tripped circuit breaker.

  I walk down the porch steps and edge my way between the bush and the front bay window, pulling up my hoodie to keep the scraggly branches out of my hair. Where is she? I know she’s here. Is everything okay?

  The window is covered; the blinds shut tight. I’m trying to see around the edges, trying to figure out where this woman went. I peer through a gap and see nothing but darkness. There’s no movement inside the house at all. So strange.

  Where did that chick go? If I can’t talk to her, I’ll have to drive all the way back down here. And there isn’t any time. Maybe I can write her a letter and put it in her mailbox. But what will I say?

  "Hey stranger, someone you hopefully know, named Dan Evans, or possibly yourself, is about to get whacked." No, no, no. That’s not very sensitive. How about, "I’m a psychic with a message from the beyond. Stay away from someone named Erin Lazarus."

  That seems a little better, but she’ll probably think I’m crazy. I’m edging my way over to the other end of the window, wrestling with the overbearing bush that’s poking me in the back, when the slats slam up.

  There stands the figure of a woman, framed in darkness. Stunned, I stumble backwards, buffeted by the bush for a second, then burst through anyway, falling onto my rear end, heart hammering in my chest. The branches close with a swift woosh, blocking her from view. And before good reason can prevail, I’m running to my car.

  Roaring down the street, I’m trying to figure out what to do. I pull onto a dark deserted road, snaking up a hill, and turn left, trying to backtrack to a familiar road. I have no idea where I am or how to get out of here. I’m reaching over to turn on the GPS, when I see a flash of bright light in my rear view mirror.

  I watch, transfixed, as the lights grow bigger, brighter, blinding. Suddenly the driver guns the engine and strikes me from behind at a strange angle that makes me lose control of the steering.

  I slam on the brakes, tires screeching, as I ride up on the curb and strike the trunk of a tree. The air bag blows up in my face, a soft white cloud, smelling like burnt rubber and an electrical fire.

  I slump back, trying to get my bearings, while pain throbs down my face, head, and neck. My headlights stare ahead, bright columns of light penetrating a cloud of smoke and steam and eerie silence. I hiss and hold my hand to my nose, horrified that in my rush to leave Dan’s house, I forgot to buckle up.

  My ears are ringing. My vision turns into tilt-a-wheel, and I think I’m going to be sick. I lean over, trying to get into a better position for the coming unfortunate event, but the queasy sensation fades. I need to get out and exchange details with the person in the other car now. That jerk who rear-ended me.

  I look up at the hood of my car, buckled and steaming. Shit. I’m scrambling, trying to put this together. I place my hand on my forehead and sit there for a
second, trying to gather the strength to get out and talk to that bastard. But I can hardly move.

  My nose runs. I sniff, gently touch my nostrils with the tips of my shaking fingers, pull my hand away, and look. There’s blood. Red dabbles of it. Bright red, not dark red, I tell myself, heart accelerating with fear, trying to figure out which one is deadly, while the taste of metal seeps into my mouth.

  With my fingers pressed against my nostrils, I lean over, open up the glove box and fish out an old pack of tissues. Then I gently press a handful against my nose, thinking bright is right, isn’t that what doctors say? I don’t know, maybe I’m making stuff up.

  There’s another roar of cylinders, a gunning engine. Instinctively, I cringe and lean away from the sound in a move to self-protect, but I look in spite of myself, and see a red SUV with a blonde driver cruise on by, looking at me, while I look at her.

  Erin.

  A few seconds later, fuzzy gray stars fill my vision along with a curious neighbor. "Are you all right?" he asks, leaning close. But his voice sounds like radio static beaming in from outer space.

  He’s asking more questions that I can’t quite answer, while talking to someone on the phone. "We need help . . ."

  Sometime later, I hear distant ambulance sirens, buzzing in my head like a swarm of bees. Soon, I’m being carried somewhere, floating on a long sturdy cushion surrounded by lots of quick-moving people, asking me if I’m okay. Telling me to hang in there!

  A mask covers my mouth, filling my lungs with the crispest, cleanest air I’ve ever breathed. What is this stuff? I wonder, as someone hovers over the crook of my right arm. Ow! That hurts . . .

  My gaze follows a line that leads to a bag of fluid, floating somewhere off planet, where everything is dim and soft and wonderful, where darkness begins to envelop me and finally washes over me completely.

  27

  BRYNN

  Just one glass, I tell myself as my friend Jaime pours two big ones. As soon as I saw that Peeping Tom dash across my front yard and drive away, I rushed Bear into my car in the garage and drove straight to Jaime’s house.

  "Thanks for letting me stay over," I say to Jamester. She’s a solid friend. She has a tendency to laugh a little too loud, sometimes at inappropriate times, but she doesn’t take herself too seriously.

  She’s also a happy drunk and probably not the best person to be around so soon after almost pickling my liver, but she’s my shoulder to lean on. She’s also a fellow "wine lover" and that means only one thing.

  "You can pay me back in bottles of wine," she says, smirking over her bulbous wineglass and swallowing a good measure, while I nurse mine. "So tell me what happened."

  Her dyed red hair is pulled up into a loose bun. She’s settled into her overstuffed couch ready for a good story, wearing bejeweled cat eyeglasses instead of contacts, the thick lenses magnifying her round blue eyes. It’s called singing for your supper. You get something you need, in my case a place to stay, and the other person gets a good laugh. Except I’m sleeping on Jaime’s couch, so I don’t feel too much pressure.

  "It was horrible," I say, stroking Bear’s silky soft ear as he sits next to me, transfixed by Jaime’s beige tomcat lurking underneath the dining table. "I was talking to Dan on the phone . . . Okay, we were fighting, and I heard someone knock really softly on the front door. Like creepy soft. Like they’d been standing there, listening, trying to time their intrusion. And that really freaked me out. Plus, I’ll be honest, it’s not like I was in the mood to talk to anyone. I didn’t want to answer the door so I turned off the lights. That means go away. Right?"

  "Yeah. Absolutely."

  "Then I heard twigs cracking outside my front window. I thought it was a cat or a raccoon at first so I didn’t pay much attention. But the leaves kept rustling, and I swear I saw a shadow pass behind the window blind. So I wasn’t even thinking that I’d catch anyone red-handed. I mean who stands outside of someone else’s window? So I yanked up the blind, expecting to find nothing, and—and someone was standing there!"

  "That’s crazy."

  "Completely nuts. Something like that has never happened to me before. I felt so violated and exposed. And—and what the heck is wrong with that person? What were they looking for? A peep show? I mean, you can find anything you want online. Why stand outside my window?"

  "The world is full of crazy cuckoo heads," Jaime says. "Remember that time we woke up wearing Shrek costumes?"

  I snort. I can’t help it. Then I laugh out loud, and it feels great. That was quite possibly the most ridiculous night we’d ever had, if I could remember what had happened exactly. Dan had been out of town on a training trip. It was meant to be a mellow get-together, but a booze bomb had detonated at a house party in Mission Beach instead, scattering us far and wide. By the time we gained some sort of consciousness the following morning, sun beating down on our throbbing heads, Jaime had somehow donned an ogre costume, and I’d been transformed into a donkey.

  "So what do you think the Creepo wanted?" Jaime asks, looking pretty warmed up. "To watch you practicing hair of the dog?"

  "A transformative pose I tell you," I say, raising my glass to her. And we both chuckle. "Seriously though, I’m going to tell you something that’s even weirder. I don’t think it was a guy. I caught a glimpse of the Creepo. Either it was a skinny dude, or it was a girl."

  "Skinny dude for sure," Jaime says. "It was a skinny dorky dude who can’t get laid through the usual channels, so he has to resort to peeping. I mean what else could it be?"

  I think about it for a minute. I could have sworn the figure was female, but that narrows the possible suspects down to about half the population.

  I had been so rattled after my call with Dan and shocked to find someone standing outside my window, I hadn’t been exactly concentrating on the details. I’d told Dan about the incident report. I wanted him to put on his warm lover voice and tell me it was all a big fat mistake. But he’d put on his angry military man voice instead. Not on a potentially open phone line!

  "The thing is," I look at Jaime. Her cheeks are bright, her teeth stained red. She’s having a great time. She’s loving this new dramatic turn in my life. "We kind of partied with Dan’s ex-girlfriend at his farewell party."

  She nearly falls off her perch. "You what?"

  "Yeah . . ."

  "I can’t believe I missed that!"

  "You were out of town. Remember?"

  "Oh yeah, the annual Grimes Family Fun Fest. Always worth attending." She rolls her eyes. "So did you wake up wearing a costume?"

  I want to laugh, but the pit of my stomach is opening up.

  "It shouldn’t have happened. It was so stupid. But we ran into her down at Delmonicos, the starting point for the big night, and it seemed innocent enough. Dan wanted her to leave, but she seemed nice and kind of shy. So I called Dan a party pooper and he backed off and then we all drank way too much. You know how it goes . . . everything turns into a big blur, people dip in and out." I leave out the part about how Dan and Erin had talked. "And a few days later, she called Dan."

  "She called him?"

  I nod.

  "What a bitch!"

  I don’t defend her honorable intentions because that would mean mentioning The Photo. So I get on with my hypothesis. "It was just the one call that I know of, and Dan said nothing happened. So . . ." I shrug. "I thought that was the end of it. But then she tracked me down and showed up at my yoga class."

  "No. Way."

  I think about that nuclear bomb of a photo, but I don’t want to talk about it. Not about that. I don’t want anyone else to know. My stomach churns, thinking about the image of her bloody nose, her lip split, her swollen eye . . .

  "So yeah, I think she’s the stalker."

  For once in her life, Jaime has nothing to say. Then her phone rings.

  "Just a sec," she says to me. And to her phone, "Hello? Oh, hey Tiff . . . uh huh . . . I don’t know. Let me check." She covers the phone with her h
and, hardly secretive, and says to me, "Do you want to go out tonight? Tiffany’s at the grand opening of Ocean Palisades, that new oceanfront bar and restaurant."

  "I don’t know . . . I’m not sure I’m up for it."

  Jaime smiles sympathetically, reaches over, and squeezes my knee. "I think you could use a distraction."

  I pull in a deep breath. If I stay here, I’ll sit on Jaime’s couch and drink myself into morose paranoia.

  "All right," I say, getting up slowly. "Maybe I could use a change of scenery."

  28

  GIA

  I’m in an emergency room, I think, with a flimsy curtain pulled half-closed next to my bed alcove. Just beyond, I can see a nurse standing at a wheelie computer station, entering data and struggling with glasses that keep sliding down her nose.

  The loudspeaker squawks overhead, "Doctor Chen to room 13." A woman—not Erin—lingers down by the foot of my bed, waiting for the nurse to finish. So much for privacy. I close my eyes, trying to make sense of the last few hours.

  I’m still groggy from the sedative they gave me, but solving the mystery of how Erin found me is in the forefront of my muddled mind as well as the memory of screeching tires and metal crunching on metal, both making my stomach roil.

  I reach up and gently touch the bandage on my throbbing nose and hiss when pain radiates down my face. My body aches. I feel like I’ve run a few marathons back to back. I drop my hand and try to relax.

  Someone will stop by at some point and tell me where I am, what’s shoved up my nostrils, and my medical status. Stable, they’ll tell me. Shaken, not stirred, surely. Fractured memories of the accident flash in my mind. The steaming radiator of my car. And Erin, driving away.

  There’s really only two ways she could have tracked me down. Through a GPS tracker physically placed on my car or with my cell phone. If she bugged my car, then she’s lost that connection. My car was totaled. It’s probably sitting in a tow yard, a certain write-off now.