Borderline (The Arcadia Project, #1)(84)

There was another long silence, but I knew he hadn’t hung up, because I could hear a clock ticking loudly in the background. I remembered that damned clock, the way it had scared me as a kid.

“Would be nice to have somebody in the house again,” he said. He coughed, a sound like nails rattling in a drawer.

“I’d look for a job, of course, too,” I said. “I don’t want to be a burden. Do you know, is there any kind of work for a lady in Graston?” I was operating on the assumption that anything my grandfather considered fit for a lady was doable without legs.

“Billy’s had a ‘Help Wanted’ sign in the window of the market since Lela got herself in trouble,” my grandfather said. In trouble meant single and pregnant, but I had no idea who Lela was. “How old are you now?” he asked.

“Twenty-six.”

“Billy’d be tickled to have you show up. No one’s come about the job so far but schoolkids and Negroes.”

I stood there with the phone in my hand for a minute. Hearing casual bigotry from my flesh and blood was like turning over a rock in my yard and finding a swarm of white larvae. I felt filthy; I wondered how badly those mind-maggots had been gnawing away at my own thoughts of Tjuan, of Ellis and Inaya.

Inaya. My train of thought jumped to a new track and barreled right through the paralysis. My surge of hope wasn’t enough to make me say what I should have said to my grandfather, but it was enough to make me fake saying “Hello? You still there?” and hang up on the old coot.

I had one more card I could play, and if I played it right, I might not have to give up on L.A., or Valiant Studios, or finding Claybriar, or any of it.





39


There was something exhilarating about finding a forgotten ace up my sleeve. The next morning, dressed in yesterday’s clothes, with nothing on me but my wallet, my cane, and my prosthetics, I prepared myself for a magic trick that would make Vivian’s Gotham Hall glamour look like Grandpa pulling a quarter out of my ear. I was about to re-create a life out of nothing. I was no fairy; I was no warlock; I was a god.

I also might have been having a manic episode.

I took a cab to the Target in Culver City, paid the driver to wait for me for twenty minutes, and withdrew some cash from a nearby ATM. Inside the Target I bought a backpack, as much food and water as I could fit into said backpack, and a prepaid phone. Next stop: library Internet to set up my phone service, print out a few Craigslist rental ads, and look up Ellis Barnes, PI.

“Hi there, old friend,” I said brightly when he answered his phone. “I have some information for Inaya that will turn her world on its ear.”

“What did you find out?”

“I said I have information for her, not for you, but I’ve -misplaced her number. Set up a meeting between her and me, and if she isn’t so blown away that she gives you a bonus, I will give you a hundred bucks out of my own pocket.”

“That doesn’t mean a great deal to me,” said Ellis, “but I can tell it means something to you. I will speak to her and call you back.”

I gave him my new number and browsed rental ads while I waited. I didn’t have to be homeless. I just had to leash my Emotion Mind and look at the facts. If you can find a lonely old lady who’s renting out a room of her house, she’ll often skip the background check if you charm her and tell her your tragic story. Month-to-month leases can bite both ways, but they are lifesavers for people with shady pasts.

I jotted down several likely numbers and got halfway to the bus stop before Ellis called me back.

“Inaya wants to know where to meet you.”

“West Hollywood.” I gave him the address of the sushi place. “And tell her to wait for me if she gets there first. I’ll be as fast as I can.”

? ? ?

Most celebrities are not good at going incognito, but Inaya had it down. Her straightened walnut-brown hair was pulled into an unflattering ponytail that stuck out through the back of a baseball cap, and her cheap sunglasses were subtle enough not to scream “starlet in disguise.” Standing there in baggy clothes with her back to the street, she affected a slouching posture that did nothing to advertise her curves. I almost walked by her myself.

“You must be Millie,” she said, staring at my reflection in the window of the sushi place. To face me would have meant facing the throngs of people driving and walking by at midday.

I moved between her and the window so she could talk to me without turning around. She didn’t back up to allow for personal space, so we ended up looking like a couple who’d been together long enough to quit dressing up for dates. Wouldn’t that be something? A quick lunch, then back to her place, falling onto Egyptian cotton sheets, digging my heels into that smooth brown back. Except I didn’t have heels, as if that were the least plausible thing about that fantasy.

“Good to finally meet you,” I said.

“Who are you?” She lowered her sunglasses just enough to hit me with those smoky eyes. It took me a second to activate the language center of my brain.

“When we first spoke,” I said, “I was working for the Arcadia Project. Now that they’ve fired me, I’m free to tell you all the stuff I wasn’t allowed to tell you before. But first I need to make sure you’re not recording or transmitting what I’m -saying. There are very good reasons why the stuff I’m about to show you is secret.”