My head bobs up and down mechanically. I know what’s coming, but there’s nothing much I can do about it now.
“Jesus Christ,” she says, not waiting for my answer. “Jesus Christ died on the cross to give us all everlasting life and take away our sins. Jesus is with you, always. He is with us all, always. We can either reject him, going it alone, or we can take him into our hearts and he will guide us to our rightful place in the Kingdom of Heaven.”
I nod and smile, like a damn idiot, then get up from the couch. “Yes, well,” I say, “thank you, but I really do have to get back. I’ll let you know if I find anything.”
She adjusts the glasses on her porcine nose and pushes herself up to standing. “But I’m not done. There’s so much more I have to tell you.”
She stares up at me, her eyes wet and red and pleading.
And then, suddenly, I can see—I can see why she was so eager to have me come down here today. I can see why she gave interviews to every paper and appeared on every news report about the kidnapping. I can see why she remembers it all as clearly as she does. I can see why she has Detective Marshall’s business card on her refrigerator over two years later. And I can see why she continues to blame herself for not having stopped that man from taking Teddy.
She wants to be a part of the story.
It’s as simple as that.
She lives alone here. She works collecting tolls at the bridge. She has her cats, her church, her TV shows.
Witnessing Teddy’s kidnapping must’ve made her feel, maybe for the first time ever, truly important.
So of course she would think that God had some greater purpose in letting my brother get taken like that. Because, for her, the greater purpose was that she, finally, got to be somebody.
They put her picture in the paper.
She got to be on TV—not just once, but many times.
“I have to go,” I say. “I’m sorry.”
I start toward the door.
“No, wait—”
Her hand reaches out, as if to stop me.
But I don’t stop.
I keep on going.
I open the door.
And I don’t turn back.
12.
BY THE TIME I GET home, my mom and dad are out at a movie with Janey, so I’m left on my own for dinner. But in all my nervousness and whatever, I find that I’m really not hungry.
I’m going crazy sitting here by myself. So I finally decide, like, fuck it, I might as well go to Preston’s party.
I clean myself up as much as possible and put on what I would consider my coolest clothes—just a pair of jeans and a ripped-up T-shirt over a thermal undershirt—and a big fur-lined army jacket, because it’s freezing outside.
Of course, I know it’s fucking stupid to be going to this thing, but I go on anyway—walking down the avenues for a couple of blocks, crossing over Lake Street and heading up into Sea Cliff where every house is the size of a fucking castle and no lights are ever on in any of the windows and no music is ever heard on the street. People here are so rich, they’re able to shut the world out completely and to shut themselves out from the world.
In our neighborhood, at least, people yell and laugh and fight and burn things and have dead chickens hanging in their storefront windows.
Here it’s all imitation Italian villas and imitation French chateaus and imitation Bavarian estates and imitation Spanish whatever-you-call-them and imitation Japanese-style houses like Eliza used to live in. It’s funny how rich people like to pretend so much. Rich people are like little kids—like Teddy used to be, with his toy cars and action figures and the Superman cape he made out of a bathroom towel. With enough money, they can be anything they want to be.
I remember Eliza’s dad wanted to be a kind of samurai sushi chef—which is why they had that house like some Shinto temple.
Preston’s parents want to be crazy bohemians traveling all over the world. And they can do it, too, ’cause they have the money. They can be whatever they want to be.
While the rest of us are stuck being what we are.
I begin to see cars parked up and down the street—cars that must belong to people attending Preston’s party—lining the golf course and filling the upper parking lot of the Palace of the Legion of Honor.
Preston’s always been super popular, and even though I know for sure none of these people are anywhere near as close to him as I am, I can’t help but feel a little jealous—or just annoyed maybe. Because it’s not like any of these kids actually give a shit about him. Not really. All they care about is the fact that he has a nice house and his parents are never around.
The house is nice, though, it’s true: built alone on the jagged cliffs, surrounded by cypress trees and low-hanging fog, with a Gothic-style pitched roof and marble columns and all sorts of stained-glass windows and skylights.
I go in through the front gate, and there are some upperclassmen hanging out around the fountain, smoking a blunt, I think, and I wave to them meekly. They don’t wave back or acknowledge me, and I think maybe I should turn around. I mean, really I hate parties and I’m not sure what the hell I’m even doing here.
It’s strange to be with kids my age, trying so hard to be cool and fucking popular—especially when I just came from meeting with that woman who actually witnessed my brother being kidnapped.
The way she described that man. It’s so terrible to think about. And yet she still tried to tell me that there is some kind of God looking out for us—protecting us, even.
Can that really be the way it works? I mean, I’m not saying I don’t believe in God—I really do like the idea of some higher power like that. But I don’t think it has anything to do with my brother being taken by some psycho—or these jackasses standing around smoking weed.
Looking at these kids standing in their designer fucking clothes, smoking their designer fucking pot, I can’t help feeling like I want to tear the whole world apart.
It was a mistake to come; I can see that immediately.
I should leave.
Only . . .
Preston did say that Eliza was going to be here.
Not that it matters.
What matters is finding Teddy.
What matters is bringing my family back together.
Eliza doesn’t matter at all.
But my heart beats painfully fast just thinking about her.
The idea of seeing her again is . . . almost more than I can stand.
My hands shake as I hold them out in front of me.
Past those boys smoking the blunt, past the fountain, and the statues, and the marble staircase, and the front door, Eliza is there—or, at least, she’s supposed to be.
And Preston says she wants to see me, to talk to me, to apologize.
Over two years have gone by, and so much has changed.
I ring the buzzer.
13.
INSIDE, THE MUSIC IS loud, so Preston has to shout, “Yo, Miles, what’s up?”
He has on this crazy knit hat that’s, like, all these different colors of yarn stitched together.
“Come on in, man,” he says.
We walk in through the front entrance and up the stairs past the rows of framed photographs of Preston and his mom and dad. Tonight, since they’re not home, we have free range of the entire house. We keep on walking up to the main dining room and kitchen, where I see maybe a hundred kids hanging out.
“Damn, there are so many people here,” I tell him, dragging hard on my cigarette.
He laughs. “Hell yeah, there are. I told everyone to invite as many friends as they wanted. This is gonna be the party of the century.”
He leads me through the throngs of people dancing and whatever while the rapper dude on the stereo is singing, “Shake ya ass! Watch ya self! Shake ya ass! Show me what you w
orkin’ with!”
“Is this really happening right now?” I whisper to him, but I know the answer and, anyway, he doesn’t hear me.
On the little center island in the kitchen are a bunch of bottles of different hard liquors and orange juice and stuff, and the music is so loud, and there are all these bodies moving against mine. I suddenly feel that pain coming back in my stomach, and then I remember I didn’t eat anything before taking my goddamn medication and so that must be why I’m getting so sick like this. Usually I’d try to space it out, but tonight, since I knew I was leaving, I took them all at the same time—the four tablets of lithium, the three capsules of Prozac, the two Lamictal, the two Zyprexa, the two Depakote, and the one Abilify. And so they are burning like an oil fire through the lining of my intestines.
“Hey!” I yell. “Hey, do you have anything to eat here, man? I’m sorry.”
Preston hands me a drink in a red plastic cup saying, “Here, shoot this, dude, you’ll feel better.”
I repeat my question, but he just keeps saying, “Shoot it!”
And so I fucking do, and it burns going down and I cough and I feel it like more fire in my belly. I imagine it mixing together with all the undigested medication, forming this acid substance that eats through the lining of my stomach and then comes spilling out through my skin right there onto the dark-colored tile.
“Man, I’m serious, do you have any food here I could eat?”
Preston takes his shot and shakes his head and says real loud, “BLAH! Yeah, sure, I think. Look in the fridge, man, you can have whatever.”
“Cool, thanks.”
I start walking over, but it’s like that shot was injected straight into my bloodstream, ’cause I feel dizzy and weak. I crush out my cigarette on the floor ’cause I can’t stand the smell of it for one more second.
Preston has gone now, and I’m all alone with these people moving together like some giant, pulsing organic life-form crawling out of the primordial sea, taking its first steps on land, writhing and gyrating and secreting fluids.
The electric lights seem to pulse and crackle with the sound of the bass thumping on the stereo. I close my eyes and reach out my hand and fall onto the tile. I wretch some, but nothing comes out, thank God, because then there’s a voice and it’s calling out to me, “Miles . . . Miles . . . Are you okay?”
I open my eyes.
I’m not sure if this is another hallucination or what, but she is there, crouching over me.
“Miles . . . What’s wrong?”
She puts her hand on my forehead, and it feels so cool and calming somehow. I smell that old familiar smell of her—like shampoo and clean laundry and I’m not sure what else.
“Eliza?” I say. “Is that you?”
She smiles brightly.
“Yeah, of course.”
She helps me to my feet.
“Come on,” she says, her voice calming. “You wanna go get some air?”
I nod.
And we walk together back outside.
14.
THE WIND IS BLOWING strong across the stone courtyard and Eliza is shivering, so I give her my jacket.
“You sure?” she asks, pulling it tighter around her shoulders.
“Yeah, I’m sorry, I just didn’t eat enough. We can go back inside.”
She shakes her head. “No, not yet. I wanna talk to you,” she says.
Her voice has gotten deeper somehow. Her black hair is pushed back behind her ears.
I struggle for breath a little, but I’m trying to hold it together, so I light another cigarette, looking down into those shining green-blue eyes of hers.
“Hey, I’m taller than you,” I say, smiling.
“Yeah, I wonder when that happened?”
She takes a step closer to me and turns and I can see her profile—her nose so delicate and sculptural, her full lips. I think for the billionth time how goddamn beautiful she is.
“Can I, uh . . . can I have one of those?” she asks, looking back at me.
“Y-yeah, sure.”
I hand her a cigarette and then try to light it for her, but the wind’s too strong so she has to do it herself.
Somehow that feels like a really big failure on my part.
“I’ve missed you, Miles,” she says, handing back the lighter, and our eyes meet and then dart away quickly.
“Me too.”
She sits down on the step and zips up my big army coat. “I’ve been wanting to see you.”
I sit next to her and I can feel the heat from her body.
“M-me too.”
I keep repeating it like a goddamn idiot.
Me too. Me too. Me too.
“Have you really?” she asks, leaning against me.
“Yeah, totally.”
But there’s an overpowering smell, like rotting flesh, and something burning that seems to come up from the ground around me, inexplicably, and I reel back.
“I heard about what happened to you,” she says plainly.
I move away from her, but not because of what she said; it’s just that the smell is almost gagging me. But she takes it the wrong way.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she says. “We don’t have to talk about that.”
“No, no, it’s okay. Sorry. It’s just my stomach.”
She nods. “Are you on a lot of medication?”
I try holding myself very still again the nausea.
“Uh, yeah, I guess.”
She smiles sweetly. “Well, I understand. I know it’s not the same thing, but I’ve been seeing a therapist, too, for a couple months now. And she wants me to go see, like, one of those psychopharma . . . whatever they’re called?”
“Psychopharmacologists.”
“Exactly.”
I drag on my cigarette, exhaling through my nose.
“What are you seeing ’em for?” I ask. “Are you depressed?” And then I add, quickly, “That is, if you don’t mind my asking.”
She leans against me again, and I watch her fingers twitching as she ashes her cigarette over and over.
“No, I don’t mind. It’s nice to be able to finally talk about it with someone. None of my friends understand.”
“Yeah, none of mine do, either.”
“Right? I missed you, Miles. Remember how much we used to talk on the phone and stuff?”
“Of course. Every night.”
My head is kind of spinning, so I rub my temple with the side of my thumb like I’m trying to put the world on pause.
“So what happened?” I ask hesitantly, not wanting to upset her too much by pushing the subject.
She breathes and smokes and breathes some more. Then she finally says, “You have to promise not to tell anyone else, okay?”
I give her my promise. “Believe me, I don’t talk to anyone anyway.”
She laughs a little. “Well . . . the thing is, my dad left.”
A cold sweat has broken out all up and down my body now because of the goddamn medication.
“He met someone else,” she says.
“Jesus.”
“I know, right? The fucker. After all those years of fooling around and lying and everything, he finally just told my mom straight out he didn’t love her anymore.”
“Jesus.”
My new fucking mantra.
“He moved out that same night, and we were, like, stuck, just the two of us, in this big town house off the French Quarter. My mom barely left her room for three months.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah. She was . . . Well, I mean, seriously, don’t tell anyone this, but she was even hospitalized. It was the doctors who thought we should move back here. At least in the city she has some family, you know? You remember my aunt who lives in Marin?”
“Of course.”
>
Eliza’s aunt is this cool old lesbian who works as a park ranger out at the Point Reyes National Seashore. Eliza’s family took me on a few weekend trips up there when we were kids.
I lean back against the iron railing. “So who was she? Another bimbo waitress?”
Eliza laughs. “No. She’s actually a chef, too, if you can believe that.”
“I’d have thought with your dad’s ego being like it is, that would be way too threatening.”
She smiles. “You remember that, too, huh?”
“I remember everything.”
She stops smiling.
“I know,” she says finally. “Miles, I’m sorry.”
And I say, “No, that’s not what I meant. But . . . anyway . . . I’m sorry, too.”
She’s closer to me now, so I can hear the shallow sound of her breathing against the cold night air. I remember when we went to Hawaii together, back when we were kids. Her mom paid for this cool Hawaiian guy to take us horseback riding along the tops of these cliffs overlooking the ocean. But at one point, when our guide was busy closing the gate behind us, Eliza’s horse took off running and then, not even knowing what I was doing, I kicked my horse hard with my heels and went galloping after her. It was my first time ever being on horseback, but I had to catch her. So I got my horse right up beside hers and somehow that made the horse she was on slow down and relax, until finally we were both able to stop.
She was breathing fast then. I remember it—like she was hyperventilating, so bad she could barely even speak. “Take a deep breath,” I told her. “Come on, you can do it, just take a deep breath.”
And she did. She did what I told her. She breathed deep and long and slow.
I listen to her breathing now—slower, easier.
I kick the toe of my boot into the ground, trying to think up something to say to change the subject.
“Uh . . . did your, uh . . . dad stay in New Orleans?”
“Yeah, and you know how my dad used to be so obsessed with Japan? Now it’s like he’s totally changed and suddenly he doesn’t care at all about the Japanese stuff and he’s become totally obsessed with New Orleans. I swear, he’s gonna start talking with an accent before long.”