Follow Her Home (17 page)

I stood still for a moment, a spy in shadow. She leaned into Luke with the same dreamy look as the night before, lenses unfocused. Her small hand rested on his knee like it had every right to be there, and I could see her talking, mouth stretching brightly with each new syllable, tooth in varying degrees of exposure at the border of a well-curved upper lip. Her free hand flitted about her as she talked like a baby bird skirting the nest, and I wondered at the compulsion to reduce this strange and never-still girl to a 2-D image, no matter how pretty.

I walked up and slung an arm around Luke's shoulder like an orangutan. I turned my chin toward him and kept my line of sight focused away from Lori. “What're you drinking?”

“Gimlet.”

I looked at him sideways. “Half gin, half Rose's lime juice, and nothing else?”

“I think it's just gin with a squeeze of lime, but sure.”

“Got one for me?”

He turned to clone his order and I let my eyes wander and widen as they pretended to discover Lori.

“Lori! What're you doing here?” I pulled off the act with all the natural grace of a Hostess Twinkie.

She had been regarding the juncture between my armpit and the back of Luke's neck with pointed longing in a glassy eye that it took me a second to recognize as jealousy. It was like the cottontail of a fleeing rabbit—by the time I saw it, she was answering me.

“I work here.” Her tone and expression were neutral, serene, without a defensive wrinkle.

“Here and Stokel?”

“I'm usually here on weekends. I just took last night off.” She glanced at Luke.

He leaned against me applying pressure with his shoulder. “I was telling her you wanted to come meet a rich, single Korean guy and were too embarrassed to come alone. I can't believe you thought this was just a nice K-Town bar.”

“Cute.” I grabbed a taut wad of his cheek between thumb and knuckle. “Don't be tricked, Lori. Luke wanted to game some Asian girls and needed me to sneak him in. I guess we got a little mixed up. This sure is an interesting place.”

She laughed and brushed my arm with the backs of two fingers, a touch so light I only felt it with hairs I didn't know were there. “Thanks for the ride last night.”

“No problem. Why'd you have to get home so early anyway?”

“I live with my mom, and she's a little strict.” Her lids shut halfway and her pupils gleamed dully at a spot on my shoulder.

“No shame in that.” I opened my mouth to make a dig at Luke's father-dependent living situation, but bit my tongue before it could deliver that lick. But something else caught. “Don't take this the wrong way, but she doesn't mind you working here?”

She shook her head, her eyes hazy and still. “She's the one who got me the job. She's the manager here. You probably met her when you came in.”

I turned to look back around the room and saw the woman who had greeted us at the door, carrying a large bottle of whiskey to one of the tables. She had an even, dignified walk. I hadn't recognized her from the glimpse in her car, with the sunglasses gone and the heavy maquillage in their place.

Korean music played over our heads and I looked from Luke to Lori to see if it was still my turn to keep the conversation rolling. Luke's nose in his cup and Lori's ever-glazed gaze said that it was.

I gave Lori's bicep a playful pat. “What did the bus driver say to the egg?”

Her eyes brightened with a lifting of lashes. “I don't know, what?”

“Gyeran.”

She giggled.

Luke pouted. “Korean joke?”

“Yeah.
Gyeran
is Korean for ‘egg,' and it sounds like ‘get on.' I've got plenty more I know you're dying to hear.”

He swiveled on his nonswiveling stool and came back with my gimlet. “Put this in your face, will you?”

I took it and lifted it for him to clink against his own. “
Gun bae,
dude.”

“
Gun bae
. Drain it.”

I tilted the cup against my lower lip and angled my head to open up my esophagus. A little ice never hurt anyone, and I missed it as the room-temperature gin trickled in a prickly vein into my system. I swallowed half and came up for air. “Tastes sticky.” I regarded the clear fluid. “And bitter as peel.” I took another long tug at it and set the empty glass on the counter with a dry clack.

Lori was looking at me with quiet awe. Luke laughed. “She drinks like a three-hundred-pound man.”

I noticed Lori's face was tan and glowing, with no more than a couple brushes of pink blush ruddying her cheeks. “You don't turn red either, huh?”

She shook her head with small whooshes. “I do. I take a Pepsid before I drink. It helps. You're lucky.”

“Don't puff her up any. She may drink like a three-hundred-pound man, but she only has the tolerance of an unusually sturdy woman. Let's not have her get showy and end up over a toilet. I'm not holding her hair up, not tonight.”

As Luke poked fun of me, I noticed Albert coming in from his break. “Speaking of toilets.” I gave my right knee a convincing wobble and fixed on Lori. “I have to go. Will you come with me to the bathroom?”

She hesitated and looked at Luke, but only for a moment. “Sure. We'll be right back.”

The restrooms were up a short duo of stairs at the other side of the arced bar. The men's and women's faced each other, doors open and separated by a mere five feet of floor. The approaching view showed girls reapplying lipstick, a man in a sweat-through shirt standing regal at a urinal. We walked in single file through the door, Lori guiding me with her small hand pulling mine with a grip so close that I felt the band of coolness from her cocktail ring crushed between my knuckles.

A short line of short dresses stood between us and the stalls. I was hoping for a little more privacy. I disengaged my hand and brushed bangs out of my face. I smiled meekly. I had her alone, but I couldn't boil up a roundabout line of interrogation.

She broke the silence. “Are you and Lucas going out?” Her voice was bright but her eyes were all nerve.

“Me and Luke?” I laughed. She was sweet on him like brown sugar on bacon. Her affections were conveniently placed, but not for her. “Why?”

She flushed a sudden peach. “Oh, no, just, you guys seem close.”

“We're close, but no. He's more like a brother to me. The kind you don't make out with.”

She hid her sigh of relief with the skill of an eight-year-old with a stolen cookie behind her back.

“Actually, Luke was saying he wanted to check out a karaoke place in a bit. Do you know of anywhere good?”

She thought for a second. “There's Bobos.”

“Sure. Would you want to come with us?” I started to formulate my line of questioning for the dark karaoke box. “There isn't really anything for us here.”

Her lips formed a breathless O. “I'd like that. I can ask my mom, maybe. She might let me go early.”

A stall opened up with a forceful outward swing of metal door. A girl dripping with stringed hair and fringed cotton stumbled out in mock-croc heels. “You go ahead.” I gave Lori a little pat on her shoulder.

“I don't have to go, actually.”

“Okay, thanks then.” I dipped in and out of the stall. She was examining herself in the mirror, head tilted, lips puckered, eyelashes batting slowly. I washed my hands and, faced with an empty towel dispenser, patted them dry on the butt of my shorts. “Let's get back to Luke, yeah?” She nodded and followed me out.

When we got back to the bar, Luke was gone. I edged in between bar stools and drummed the counter to get Albert's attention. He heeded my summons. “I see you found Lori. Drink?”

I felt myself flush. “No, actually. But did you see where that guy I was with went?”

“Yeah, sitting right here? He jetted a minute ago.”

“Did you see which way he went?”

“That way.” He pointed to the exit. “He ran.”

“Ran?”

“Ran. As in, the opposite of walking.”

I snarled at him. “Thanks.”

“Where do you think he went?” Lori's voice was flavored with disappointment, but without urgency.

“I don't know, but change of plans. You're coming with me right now.”

“Where?”

“Somewhere we can talk that isn't a bathroom.”

“But my mom—”

I grabbed her by a wrist smooth and spare as bone. My lips found her ear. “Greg Miller is dead. I need you to help me figure out why.”

 

Ten

It took me a couple of weeks to summon the courage to tell Iris what I'd found out. Our last fight had been dreadful, and I knew the potential for greater wreckage was all too high. I had started working at Stokel in mid-June, and I was grateful for the distraction. The commute from Northridge to downtown was a brutal series of car-choked freeways, and I lingered east of Hollywood after work to avoid the crush of rush hour in the other direction. Monday through Friday I left home before eight and was rarely back for dinner. I spent most of my time with Luke. We worked in the same office, and we fell into a routine of leaving together at the end of the day. There was no happy hour for us when we were not even twenty, but we ate a lot of Korean and Mexican, and we watched a lot of movies. On the weekends, I saw Luke and a few friends from high school who were already growing indistinct.

I kept Luke in the dark about my Iris investigation. It wasn't that I didn't trust him as a confidant. I needed a refuge from my home life, where I could forget about the silent evenings in our bedroom, the good-night wishes spoken into the fragile tension between Iris and me. When I needed to vent I called Diego, and he met me with an open ear and a saintly understanding, enough of an outlet that I could enjoy my Iris-less hours in peace.

When July came around, my family took a trip down to San Diego for the long weekend. The three of us had never felt so awkward and pasted together, and as we packed and loaded our luggage in slack, joyless quiet, I sensed that none of us wanted to go. It was a horrible realization. The Songs had never been a wholesome American family with soccer practice and pot-roast dinners, but we had had our own cohesion.

The Fourth of July trip was a tradition. We had made the two-and-a-half-hour drive down to San Diego every year since Iris and I were children. We'd been to Sea World multiple times, and my first memory of fireworks involved lying on the hood of our mom's car, with pillows taken from our hotel room. I built a lot of memories in San Diego.

By the second day of constant contact with Iris, I felt my suppressed emotions trying to seep out through my skin like a rash. I had tried to erase my visit to Quinn's house from my consciousness, to obliterate the dirty picture I knew I could never forget. But as the three of us lay in our two beds, watching television and waiting for meals, I could think of nothing but the task I had postponed. I would talk to Iris.

It was a hot Sunday, and while our mom relaxed, taking a long nap in the hotel, Iris and I went to the beach. It was crowded with bodies of different shades, different weights, a long continuation of flesh from shoreline to parking lot. Somehow, we managed to find an open plot of sand, and we lay down our towels and sat.

Iris was wearing a swimsuit I'd never seen before, three triangles of string bikini striped purple and blue. I was used to her body. We had always shared a bathroom, and when we were children, the two of us would bathe with our mother. Nudity was never an issue among the women in our house, and it was only later in life that I realized things were different in other families.

Still, I found myself keenly aware of Iris's body on that beach. She drew eyes as she walked, as naturally as the sun, and I saw men and women turn to stare at her as we made camp on the sand. At sixteen, I couldn't write her off as a child, but she was slight and narrow, with the fragile lines of a gymnast or a dancer. Her skin was pale honey, and it shone on the beach like something new.

She sat with her legs tucked beneath her and gave me her back. She handed me a bottle of sunscreen and said, “
Unni,
could you?” I moved her hair over her shoulders and noticed her roots had grown inches. She had dyed her hair a dark reddish color but hadn't bothered with a touch-up in months.

I rubbed sunscreen into her back, massaging the white into her skin. “Tell me about Quinn,” I said.

Her shoulder blades went stiff under my hands and her head flinched, but she didn't turn to face me. I felt her try to calm her breathing. “Mr. Quinn? What about him?”

I rested my forehead on her hair and kept my hands steady on her shoulders. My chest hurt. “Iris, I know. Please don't lie to me anymore. I can't stand it.”

She didn't say anything for a while, and I felt the greasy lotion between my palms and her shoulders start to mingle with our sweat. When she finally spoke, it was in a whisper that blended with sea noise and beach crowd, and I had to make her repeat herself. “What do you want to know?”

“Everything.”

It was a long story, and to hear her tell it, it was, even now, an epic romance.

She found him difficult, at first, a strict and serious teacher with an infrequent smile. Their initial interactions were innocent, as far as she knew, and when she did poorly on her first exam, he offered to help her study.

They started meeting after school in the teacher's lounge, and in between quizzes, in between outlining notes, they learned about each other. She hadn't expected it, but he made her laugh. He had a dry, teasing humor that seemed so much easier and smarter than the bawdiness of boys her age. She started to find Paul dull.

She confided in Quinn. He emitted an aura of wisdom, and when she was with him, she felt protected. She could be herself around him, a stripped-down, new version—not the fragile sister or the stupid daughter or the quirky friend, but just Iris. And she thrived in those sessions. She became silly and sardonic and when he looked at her and laughed with her she felt brilliant. When no one was around, she tried calling him Elliot. It made him smile. It wasn't long before she dumped Paul and set her heart on Elliot.