Still Lives(67)

I throw open my office door and skim through the rest of the story before tossing it down. As the Gala night continues, I fade out and Kim Lord and her career take over, and then Kevin is back on the roof with the last few crew members. They linger like “desperadoes after a showdown, their hands in their pockets, faces studiously cool.” Most admired Kim Lord. A few thought she was yesterday’s news. They’d laughed at her Hollywood getups, but now they feel guilty about it, in a deadpan sort of way.

Say you’re Kim Lord. Where are you now? Kevin asks them each in turn.

Baja.

Oh, come on, let her get to Oaxaca at least.

Marfa.

Antarctica.

Torrance.

Up in that window there (pointing toward a skyscraper), looking down on us.

Stuck in traffic.

Eloping to escape her suck-up of a boyfriend.

She’s at LACMA. She got confused.

And then, as if they rehearsed it, the crew falls silent as the first limos start pulling up to bring the guests home. Satin-clad and coiffed attendees disappear into dim interiors. One by one, the party is vanishing, a party ruined by the absence of its guest of honor, but from up here, “close to the starless orange ceiling of Los Angeles,” it still seems like it was a grand celebration.

Serves them right, says one of the crew finally. They all wanted a piece of her.

I’m going to go climb into my crappy Corolla now. Anyone want a ride home?

I’m too depressed to go home. Cole’s?

The last limo pulls away. Valets start plucking up the orange cones. They pull their tips from their pockets, counting the bills.

The crew members start to mumble again.

Those guys probably made more money tonight than I made all week.

Yeah, but we made art history. Didn’t we?


Before I gather my books and folders, I get online to let Kevin know I’ve read his article when I see the headline: “Ferguson Released.” It jolts me so hard that I bite the inside of my cheek, making it throb and bleed.

The medical examiner has divulged little, except that Kim Lord died at some point on Friday morning, the morning after the Gala. That, with some other unnamed evidence, exonerates Greg. Greg has an alibi for Friday morning: he was meeting clients. Greg is in several media photos with his face averted; it looks misshapen to me, as if someone broke his jawbone and stapled it back together.

“Clearly there’s been a miscarriage of justice here, but who’s responsible? We don’t know yet,” says Cherie Rhys, also pictured, her brown hair pulled back, sleek and composed. “But we hope the LAPD finds out.”

Death on Friday. It’s hard to believe. Friday means whoever killed Kim knew we all were looking for her, and murdered her anyway, in cold blood. At midday on Friday, I was with Kevin staring at the Angelus Temple, plotting Kim Lord’s implausible self-abduction, wondering if it was just a ploy for more publicity. On Friday afternoon, I was at Craft Club with Yegina, gossiping and dreading Kaye’s horseback party.

Yegina’s message from yesterday, the one I never clicked: Don tried (ineptly thank god) to hang himself. I am on the way home right now. Will update you when I can.

I scan the rest of my inbox, the words not sinking in.

Your phone’s not picking up. Tour is changed to tomorrow, Weds!; meet downstairs at 11am, writes Dee.

Wow! writes Evie. What did you find? Tried calling you back but just got VM. Do you want to come over after work?

My head lowers itself to my desk, my eyelids prickling as if someone scattered sand under them. In my mind’s eye, I see Yegina’s brother, Don, mounting a bicycle for the first time, home on break from college. He was nineteen. He wanted to learn before he turned twenty. So Yegina and I took him to the broad bike path at Venice Beach. Don’s head looked huge in his helmet, and his legs so skinny in their dark jeans. Ignoring the passing Rollerbladers and moms with strollers, he wobbled and fell and rose again, dozens of times. When he had finally gone the length of a block, Yegina and I whooped and hugged each other. “I made it,” Don shouted back, triumphant, righting his crooked helmet.

I don’t want to cry right now. It feels ridiculous to cry. I need to leave. I hold my skull for a while and then pick up my office phone. I dial my parents’ number. It’s one of the few I know by heart anymore. The sequence of digits draws me back to my teenage years, standing at pay phones in parking lots, waiting for my mother to glide up in her blue station wagon, with its flurries of dog hair, the scent of her lavender soap. Before the phone rings, I hang up and dial another number.

Hendricks takes a while to answer. “Yes?”

Suddenly the words will not come. I’m holding the phone so hard my fingers hurt. A fan starts inside my computer, making a mechanical hum. I reach with my other hand and touch the cool dust on my windowsill, wiping it away. The street below is beginning to choke with morning traffic. I have to get out of here before Jayme arrives.

“Hello?”

My philodendron is drooping, the leaves dark and wilted. I rub the silk of one leaf; it rips.

“I just have to ask you a question,” I say. “You really grew up in the mountains?”

“I did.”

“You know those cold shadow places?” I say. “The canyons where the light never touches because the hills are too high?”

“Where are you?” Hendricks says.