And Now She's Gone(6)
“That’s off Stocker Street,” Gray said. “In Baldwin Hills.”
“Sure. I don’t know that part of town.”
“Tina Turner had a home there. John Singleton, Tom Bradley, Ray Charles…”
“Wow,” he said, unimpressed. “Anyway, I can meet you there later today.”
“Awesome. So, where do you think she went? The desert or the Strip?”
He lowered his chin to gaze down at her. “If I knew that, I wouldn’t be asking you for help, now would I?”
She thought of his single nice gesture toward her, the gift of water. One small bottle. Though she was fake smiling, she wanted to lunge across the desk and drive his cheap, dry pen through his golden cheek.
He frowned at her as though she were a child. “Her friends probably think I’ve done something to her. I haven’t touched her. I haven’t seen her, and I would never, ever hurt her. Like I said, I’m a nice guy. We’re a typical couple. Yes, I’d get mad. Yes, she’d get mad. I’d scream, she’d scream, we’d both scream.
“Our last argument, though? She told me that she hated me, that she’d kill me if she could get away with it, which was unbelievable. I know she didn’t mean it, but goddamn, it hurt, hearing that. And then, to take my dog on top of that?”
There was a knock on the door, and a cute blonde nurse with Michelle Pfeiffer eyes poked her head in to say, “We need you, Dr. O. It’s getting crazy out here.”
Ian O’Donnell offered Hot Nurse Pfeiffer a ready-made smile. “I’m almost done, Trin.”
A moment passed after the nurse had closed the door. Then Ian’s eyes and Gray’s eyes met—his now shimmered with tears while hers remained as dry and flat as all of Los Angeles. Those dry and flat eyes doubted that they were looking upon a man madly, deeply, truly in love.
Because weren’t men all madly, deeply, truly in love before they were no longer madly, deeply, truly in love—minutes before they shot up classrooms, sanctuaries, dental offices, or bedrooms? Boyfriends and husbands, baby daddies and one-night stands were always madly, deeply, truly in love. Bloody love. Crazy love. Love-you-to-death kind of love.
Gray was a skeptic, a cynic, an agnostic of love. She believed more in yetis, chemtrails, and human-meat restaurants than in that four-letter word. “Here’s your pen,” she said now, dropping the doctor’s nonworking writing utensil back into its cup.
Ian O’Donnell stood from his chair. “I’d like a report from you at the end of each day. Nick promised that in my contract. Even if it’s just a couple of sentences, I want to know your progress. Who you’ve talked to. What they said. Et cetera.”
Gray closed her binder with a pop. “Certainly.”
“No excuses. Every day. Do you understand?”
Ian O’Donnell. The hero, the god, the man who healed people every day. The man who probably always got what he wanted from women. He’d expect nothing less from Gray.
Yeah.
He had no idea.
4
Last year, a day before the Fourth of July, Ian and Isabel had a meet cute. She’d slipped in a puddle out in the UCLA Medical Center courtyard. He’d witnessed her fall from fifty yards away, ran to her rescue, and carried her to the emergency room to personally ensure she received immediate care. Two hours later, Ian had returned to his office with her phone number and Isabel had left the E.R. with a broken ankle protected by a soft cast. The next day, they grabbed a prepackaged picnic basket from a gourmet supermarket and headed to the Hollywood Bowl to watch fireworks. They kissed for the first time as canned Ray Charles sang about America, as fiery red, white, and blue pyrotechnic peonies burst in the skies above the city.
Ian O’Donnell shared this story with Gray as he escorted her to the main entrance. “Again: nice guy here.”
Gray said, “Aww, that’s sweet,” but she knew that if she typed “Boyfriend kills girlfriend neighbor says he’s nice” into any search engine, or “Husband kills wife neighbor calls him nice,” “Husband kills ex-wife neighbors thought he was nice,” or any combination of those words, she would get almost six million results. She’d get stories of police recovering handguns the nice guy had used; she’d read stories of paramedics pronouncing the woman’s death at the scene. That is, if the nice guy hadn’t buried her in a shallow grave, left her bundled in a blanket in the back seat of his truck, or dumped her in a bay, marina, or harbor to disappear her altogether.
Had Isabel Lincoln met her end like this? Was Ian O’Donnell now performing Nice Guy Kabuki because he thought Gray was dumb? Because he thought Gray was awed by him?
If he hadn’t been a jerk, she would’ve been awed, but she wouldn’t ever be dumb.
Today. Because Gray had also stumbled through those heady romances with successful and beautiful men who knew just how successful and beautiful they were. She, too, had looked beyond their arrogance and casual disrespect because ohmigod, look at him; look at me riding in his Bimmer. She’d change him, love him enough so that he’d soften like butter. She’d be the diamond drill bit to his slab of marble. Alas, those successful, beautiful men had never changed. No—she’d changed, pushing away friends, pushing away gut feelings, pushing down tears, all to make him love her. He had been the diamond drill bit and she had been simple hardwood.