Still Lives(70)

“Do you think Brent and Kim Lord were ever …?” I ask.

“He admired her. She admired him,” says Dee. Her tone is noncommittal. “They wanted to collaborate on a show sometime. But sex? I don’t think so.” Her eyes narrow. “Is he your latest suspect? There’s no way. No freaking way.”

There’s always a way. Greg may know. Greg may be the key.

“Of course not. I’ve got to go,” I say, retreating. “Jayme will kill me if she finds me here.”

Dee looks up from stroking the dog. “Call me if you change your mind about the tour,” she says. “It’ll be worth it, believe me.”





24

Long, damp grass grabs my feet as I search the park, trying not to let my eyes alight for long on anyone on this green beside the defunct, pink-gated tracks. Back when Bunker Hill was filled with ratinfested Queen Annes instead of skyscrapers and hotels, Angels Flight ferried people up the hill from their shopping trips at Grand Central Market and its neighboring stores, but the city leaders shut it down when they paved over the slums. The railway reopened in the 1990s, then closed after a runaway car killed someone. Since then Angels Flight has resumed its air of a dusty ruin, someone’s small, lost vision of human enterprise among so many surging, anonymous towers.

Greg’s not in the park, not unless jail has transformed him into the pale young addict with matted hair and a sooty coat, one shoe falling off, another gone entirely, his blackened toes flattened and splayed like fingers. Nearby a middle-aged, brown-skinned gent is lying on a bench, trembling and sleeping, but I recognize his disintegrating blue binder and baseball cap. By noon he’ll become a friendly “lost UCLA student” who “just needs the bus fare to get back to campus.” No one believes him, but his ruse is so absurd that most people pay him to go away.

And he’s one of the easier ones to look at on this steep green, where the hill spills down toward Skid Row. I catch sight of a hump under blankets, shifting and sliding, close to the bushes. Four feet, two heads.

There’s a pressure on my shoulder. I jump and yelp.

A familiar voice says my name. I am turning to look now, and my first impression of Greg is of the weird radiance in his eyes, the look people get when they stare into an aquarium. He’s here. It’s him. My body doesn’t know whether to recoil or throw itself against him, but he’s already reaching for me. The moment we collide, it’s worse. Greg is putting his arms around my back, but there are too many of them, stringy and tight, and his mouth feels like it’s suctioning my hair. Is he kissing me? I freeze, letting it happen, but my insides knot. New heat bakes the backs of my bare legs. The Los Angeles sun is climbing the sky.

Greg murmurs into my scalp something about being sorry and forever, and I let him, because awful as this is, I know it will be harder to look him in the face. Finally he releases me and we just stand there, my eyes on his scuffed blue shoes.

I don’t know what I imagined this reunion to be like, but it wasn’t this awful squeeze and then me, taking a big step back, digging in my purse and holding up the flash drive. “She was taking pictures of Brent Patrick’s wife,” I say, finally meeting Greg’s eyes. “Do you know why? We need to give this to the police.”

“Brent Patrick’s wife?” Greg staggers sideways, as if seeing the flash drive has knocked him off-balance.

We’re attracting attention now, no doubt because I mentioned the police. A blanket hatches and a woman sits up, eying us warily, her blond hair hanging in her face. She could be our age or she could be forty-five. Others are stirring.

“Let’s get you something to eat,” I say, tucking the drive back in my purse and steering Greg toward the stairs.

He follows without protest, still unsteady on his feet. He totters and grips the rail as we take the long flights down to Grand Central Market, a block-length edifice broken by columns and porticos. The dark caverns inside are crowded with food stalls and merchandise, lit overhead by neon signs. Outside, I spy a few empty tables at a small, dirty patio. They border the counter of Tropical Time, Yegina’s favorite establishment, a long silver wall with black spouts and colorful placards advertising dozens of juices: papaya, boysenberry, apple, mango, cherry, coconut. All can be ordered separately or combined. I have stood beside Yegina many times, simultaneously overwhelmed by Tropical Time’s lavish offerings and doubting that any of it can be true. “You thirsty?” I say to Greg, because I have already switched into mothering mode.

He is still descending carefully, frowning and shaking his head, as if trying to loosen a memory. “How did you find out it was his wife?” he asks me.


Egg sandwiches and juices procured, we find a perch at a patio table so caked with street grit that we have to hold our breakfast above it, hovering like we might bolt. Our conversation is jumpy and disordered, too, interrupted by trucks rumbling by. First topic: Brent Patrick’s wife’s appearance on the flash drive. Greg blanches as I explain that I spotted her photo on Brent’s desk, that she has been in an institution for months for her illness.

“Jesus,” he says. “Why didn’t Kim say? She could have told me that’s why she was meeting him.”

“Brent’s just disappeared,” I say. “He went on ‘vacation.’”

“Jesus,” Greg says again. A pigeon flutters heavily down for a halfeaten piece of pizza near us, its iridescent body lunging. “And they still haven’t gone after him?”