Still Lives(17)

Two days before Eastman’s first story broke and Nikki officially disappeared, I was walking home in Burlington from my second job as a waitress. The spring sun was out, the lake melted, the lawns sodden, and crocuses were nudging up beside porches and stoops. Little throbs of yellow, the buds promised warmer days. Seeing them, I began fantasizing about my move to New York. In two more months, I’d have saved up enough to rent a room in Brooklyn while I took a bottom-rung job at a newspaper. I’d have the clout of a letter from Eastman, my experience from helping with his research, and my name in the back of his book. I’d find my own stories, one by one.

The fantasy had one glitch: Nikki. In two days, everyone she knew would be changed by Eastman’s article on the backwoods winter drug routes and the ways locals were smuggling opiates into the smaller towns. Eastman had promised to protect her anonymity, despite the fact that local law enforcement might subpoena him. He’d taken Nikki personally into his cluttered office and spoken to her about how he would never betray her to the police or anyone else, but still she should be careful.

Nikki had looked bold in his presence, then self-conscious and blushing. She tugged at her tight blond ponytail, then pushed her hands deep in her jean-jacket pockets until the denim was as taut as a sail, and said, “I’m ready.” But within months we would move on, Eastman and I, and with us would go Nikki’s assurance that what she’d done had purpose and meaning. As I hurried home through the chapped Victorians of downtown Burlington, I imagined Nikki a year from now, five years, living with her betrayal. If the police cracked down, it wouldn’t necessarily help the addicts. It might just mean jail time for the people she knew, while others took their place.

Eastman had made me promise not to contact Nikki, but I wished then that I could offer her a place to stay if she became afraid. The fragile sunshine around me faded and a chill made my cheeks burn. It hurt, that air, but it wasn’t a wind. It was just coldness sinking into everything: the budding trees, the strips of yellowed grass between me and the wet, open street. The cold amplified the slam of a porch door, and the slushy whispers of cars passing. It aged the grand, turreted houses, made their ornate windows seem brittle in their frames. It reached into my coat and enclosed me. By the time I got home, I couldn’t stop shivering.


Something is wrong tonight. I know it with a certainty so strong that it makes my skin prick, like the sting of that cold spring afternoon in Vermont. The light down here has darkened to orange-black. Stained napkins, empty cups, crackers smashed to circles of crumbs—everything that was laid out to delight us two hours ago has been violated by human touch. The caterers have hauled back the tables to create a dance floor, but hardly anyone is here to dance. They’re still upstairs, or possibly they’ve already left, discomfited by a party that is still without its guest of honor. The DJ slowly turns up the beats. The music sounds thin and anxious.

Jayme and J. Ro are talking intensely by the stage, glancing over at the enormous fluffy white cake and a stack of plates that someone has rolled out to the center of the tent. The cake bears the name of the artist and the exhibition in bold red and black:

KIM LORD

STILL LIVES



Nodding at Jayme, Janis signals to a petite brunette caterer, who struggles to roll the cake away and bumps it over a curb, making the frosting slump and a plate fall from the top of the stack. The plate smashes on the tarmac beside our beleaguered museum director, Bas, who has just emerged from the loading dock. The caterer flies into apologetic motion, gathering the pieces with her bare fingers, and after a slight pause Bas reaches down an arm to stop her. She scurries off, presumably for a broom. Bas doesn’t move. He stuffs his hands in his pants pockets, crumpling the front of his pale jacket. He seems to be staring exactly nowhere, not at the broken plate, not at the cake, not at the party, and not toward Jayme and J. Ro striding his way. He looks crushed and exhausted, but not surprised.

It hits me. He hasn’t looked surprised all day.





FRIDAY





7

My neighbor’s cough wakes me. Every morning, he goes out to the wet grass of his garden, turns on his fountain, coughs, and contemplates his mortality. At least this is how I imagine it. Maybe he’s contemplating poetry or his property taxes. I’ve never spoken to my neighbor. I’ve never seen him or his fountain. The wet grass is a guess. His wall is too high. White and peeling, it runs all the way down the alley behind our courtyard apartments. It’s a large lot for Hollywood.

My neighbor’s cough has three sounds: the hack, the seizing breath, and then the rumble. The cough comes and goes, always in that order, though this morning his hack is harsh and deep, and the rumble lasts a long time. The noise of his discomfort disfigures the objects around me: my dresser bare of photographs; Jayme’s scarf and dress, twisted on the floor; her boots flopping against each other like drunks. The single butterfly earring on my nightstand. I lost one last night. I’ve had the pair since the day my grandmother died. They went to Thailand in my ears, pricked my jawbone when Greg cupped my face to kiss me for the first time.

I hold the remaining butterfly for a moment, pressing the sharp stub into the pad of my thumb until the pain wakens me. Then I go downstairs to make my morning tea, filling the pot with water, twisting the knob to the burner.

I click the computer I left on last night: there are a couple of local news articles on Kim Lord’s disappearance. No updates, except that Bas is quoted in one, saying that the museum is cooperating with the LAPD and that the exhibition will open to the public today as planned. By the gentle light of a Hollywood morning and the sound of squirrels chittering in my avocado tree outside, it seems possible that everything will be resolved. Kim Lord will reappear soon with some provocative message for us all, and an extra wave of press will drive more viewers to the Rocque.