Still Lives(50)

“Yeah.” She doesn’t turn. Down the row, a minivan squeals as it wheels up the spiral ramp to the street.

My throat constricts as I say, “I hate Kim’s show, too.”

Instead of answering, Jayme slowly sinks into her car seat and stares over her steeling wheel, through her windshield, to the concrete wall beyond. But she doesn’t shut the door.

I hover over her, trying to articulate what I felt when I looked at the Judy Ann Dull portrait earlier. It comes out clumsy and broken, but I say it anyway. “I mean, I don’t hate what it is. I hate what it says.”

Jayme continues to gaze at the wall, her face in profile, frozen in an expression of sadness and exhaustion. Then she looks down at her hands on the wheel, her graceful, tan fingers, and they tighten until the knuckles flex.

“It wouldn’t bother me so much, but he’s out,” she says finally, in a calm voice, as if we’re discussing some tedious office matter. “He served twenty-two years for abducting another thirteen-year-old. But he got out in November.”

I don’t know what man she’s talking about. I’m afraid to interrupt, though.

“I always thought I was one of the lucky ones,” she says, still gripping the motionless wheel. “The police did nothing about him following me, but my mother moved us here and let me change my name. She knew she had to save me, and she did.”

Jayme abruptly twists away and rummages in her purse and I think she’s searching for something to show me. She searches and searches, her hand grabbing in the bag, coming up empty, grabbing again. All this time she doesn’t meet my eyes. Finally she pulls out her key and slides it into the ignition.

“He’s out now?” I say softly. “Here? In California?”

She makes a noise of derision. “Who knows. Maybe. Guess I think I’m safe now, though, old lady like me.”

“Jayme, I’m so sorry …”

Her hazel eyes finally meet mine. They are full of an ancient bitterness, her loveliness like a halo around it. “Be careful,” she says. “Don’t take any chances for Shaw. It’s not your job.”

Then she slams the door and turns the car on. The air between us fills first with the roar, then the taste of oil and fumes.





17

Steve Curtain does not exist in Los Angeles. There are dozens of Stephen Curtins—a spelling variation—in the United States, but mostly in Massachusetts. A doctor named Stephen Curtin in Pleasanton, California, and a doctor named Stephen Curtin in Arizona appear to be the same person. A Stephen Curtin is a district judge in Idaho. Another is an online consumer watchdog with an expression of such fake, shiny pleasure that he reminds me of the plastic sushi in the windows of Little Tokyo.

Juanita could have heard the name and written it down like the noun is spelled. Or she could have written the notation as shorthand for a name and a place, but I can’t find anything for Curtain—no restaurants, no cafés, no galleries. Nothing except a factory outlet for drapes in El Monte.

My screen glows with cold light. The Internet streams beneath the glass, shifting with the clicks of my mouse.

Greg Shaw Ferguson was arraigned late yesterday in connection with the disappearance of Kim Lord. He had no comment for the press. Photos taken outside the courthouse show him gaunt, with lank hair that hangs in his eyes. Most articles detail the same four things about him: he was Kim Lord’s boyfriend; he is a “young entrepreneur” whose gallery and studios were “hot” or “edgy” or “up-and-coming”; a cloth with blood matching Kim Lord’s AB blood type was found in the basement of his gallery; and he allegedly made more than seventy phone calls or texts to Lord on the day before she disappeared, demanding to see her.

Seventy. Every time I see the number, I get a fresh shock.

A statement by Detective Ruiz crops up frequently: “Greg Shaw Ferguson is currently our only suspect.” Kim Lord’s phone was found in the bushes in Echo Park, less than a mile from Greg’s gallery. Her texts beg him to leave her alone.

A few articles probe deeper: Greg Shaw Ferguson graduated from Williams College and worked as an office assistant for a New York art festival before moving to Thailand to teach English. The years skip ahead to Los Angeles, to Greg’s job for the Beans, the famous movie star and his art collector wife. The Beans said, “We can’t imagine that this is the same Greg Ferguson who worked for us. He was exemplary in every way. A real gentleman.” A photo shows seventy-year-old, whitehaired Sandahlia Bean with Greg at an art fair, her frail, crepe-sleeved arm around him, smiling. These articles also mention Greg’s fondness for papaya salad; his warm, scratchy voice; the death of his mother; the make of his car; his admiration for Jack White’s guitar; the philosopher he’s never read (Nietzsche); and his recent sunset horseback ride over the Hollywood hills.

No one in the media should have access to the texts Greg sent Kim Lord, but nonetheless two texts are often quoted: You have to see me. If you don’t meet me, I will come find you. And You have no right to do this.

I think about what Jayme told me in the parking garage, and what she didn’t tell. It sounded like someone stalked her, maybe some man she knew. She escaped, but also she didn’t. Jayme’s alive, she’s even highly successful by all external indicators, and yet I can’t imagine her without her rigid self-control, her isolating sense of privacy. I don’t know who she would be.