Nine Lives(6)

His manager called an hour later to tell him that they’d passed, but that Amy was impressed, and if anything else came up, etcetera. The call came while he’d been walking through the Brentwood Country Mart, considering buying some new sneakers at James Perse. Instead, he went and got onion rings at Barney’s Burgers, sat at a table, and, seething, began to look for a good prospect. It took twenty-five minutes but just as he was finishing his rings, he saw her. She was perfect: late twenties, yoga pants, not quite as pretty as she’d been told she was, and all alone. He followed her, knowing exactly how to blend in, not be noticed, but always keeping her in his peripheral vision. He followed her into Christian Louboutin, where she was pretending she could afford a pair of shoes, and asked the woman behind the desk if Tracy still worked there. She looked confused, then finally asked, “Do you mean Theresa?”

“Right,” Jay said.

“She works on the weekends.”

“Thanks,” Jay said and left the store just as the blonde did.

He trailed her to the parking lot, where she got into a silvery blue Honda Civic, probably purchased by her father when she turned twenty-five. “It’s a very reliable car, sweetie,” he’d undoubtedly said, then she’d kissed him on the cheek and told him in her little girl’s voice how much she loved her daddy.

After she got into her car and pulled straight out of her parking spot, Jay trotted to his Beemer, managing to find her again on San Vicente heading east. He followed her all the way to Koreatown, memorizing her license plate number. She parked in front of a two-story stucco apartment building and entered through the plate-glass doors using a key on the same chain as her car key. This was where she lived. Jay pulled into the strip mall across the street, parked so that he could keep an eye on the building, and lit one of the two Parliament cigarettes he allowed himself per day. He got on his phone, and went to Instagram, punching in #brentwoodcountrymart, not really expecting to get a hit, but not entirely surprised when the most recent image, a close-up of some latte foam swirled into a heart, was posted by an abbybritell. Her pictures, mostly selfies, confirmed it was the blonde he’d been following. She called herself an actress, writer, and tai chi instructor.

And like that, he owned her. Her name. Her personal photos. He knew where she lived, what she drove. And Jay knew, without a doubt, that he could murder her in the next twenty-four hours. And no one would ever catch him. There was zero connection between Jay Coates from West Hollywood and Abby Britell from Koreatown. He could imagine the headlines already. A pretty white girl murdered in Hollywood. It would be everywhere. He started to fantasize about how it would play out but stopped himself. There’d be time for that later, and, right now, just the fact that he’d learned her name and where she lived was giving him a hot buzz of adrenaline. He felt better as he pulled the car out of the lot and drove toward home. He thought he’d feel good the entire drive, but he didn’t, not really. It had been way too easy tracking that woman, and maybe what he really needed to do was to up the game, actually hurt one of those smug bitches, and then see how he felt.

That night, after doing a hundred push-ups, then his facial routine, he called Madison to let her know he’d watched her NCIS.

“Oh, finally. So?”

“It was so, so good. Your tits …”

“I know. They looked great. And can you believe I got three lines?”

“Technically two.”

“I guess so. You’re right.”

“But it was all great. It’s a solid credit, Mads, you should be pleased.”

“Yay. Thank you, Jay.”

He didn’t tell her about the callback, but before they hung up, he did say, “And, Jesus, good makeup there at NCIS, huh?”

“What do you mean?”

“You were worried, remember? You had that outbreak. You could barely tell. I mean, I could tell, but that was because I was looking for it. The makeup really covered it all up.”

“It did,” she said. “They did a good job.”

Jay could hear the insecurity creeping into her voice, and he quickly ended the call, got under the covers. He fell asleep wondering what it would be like if he had the courage to go visit Abby Britell, or some other wannabe just like her, and actually do the things to her that he dreamed of doing. Really show her who was boss. He reached down and allowed himself to wrap his hand around his dick, hard as a piece of rebar now, but didn’t allow himself to do anything more than touch it. He thought some more about Abby Britell but then he was thinking about Amy Buchman (“Amy passed, Jay, but she was really impressed”), and how he’d like to tie her up and take an actual piece of rebar and make her choke on it. It was this thought that finally calmed him down enough to allow him to sleep.





7





THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 5:15 P.M.


On his ride home from work—forty minutes of solitude that went way too fast—Matthew Beaumont recited the facts of his life. It was a daily routine, a way of remembering what was good, and reminding himself about the things that needed work.

Today he told himself that Emma, his oldest daughter, was a lovely seventh grader who was beginning to show noticeable signs of insecurity and anxiety, just like her mother. But she was so compulsively good, such a people pleaser, that she was easy to forget about in the chaos of their daily lives. Pay attention to her, he told himself, make sure she knows that things turn out okay in the end. Alex, about to turn eight, had finally, and formally, been diagnosed as not only having ADHD, but also oppositional defiant disorder, which explained some of the behavior issues. Not all, as Nancy insisted. But, still, getting the diagnosis was the right first step, and would help the school system in crafting his educational plan. Joshua, his youngest, was fine except for the persistent sinus infections. He needed to have another conversation about alternative medicines with Nancy, who just kept wanting to throw antibiotics into him. Tonight was probably not the night, but this weekend, maybe, depending on her mood.