Half In Love With Death (5 page)

“You sure?” I asked. He needed Mr. Rabbit to get to sleep.

He nodded. “I saw her.”

“What do you mean?” My voice shook.

“I saw her running.”

“Tonight?” I looked hard into his little pointy-chinned face.

He patted Mr. Rabbit's blue head. “No, I saw her in my dream.”

I sighed. “Don't worry. You're not the only one who's seeing her. Everyone is.”

• • •

I hurried over to the bar set up on the patio so I could help make drinks, the way I always did at my parents' parties. Dad stood with his boss Ron and his friend Joe behind a card table cluttered with bottles of liquor and bowls of sliced lemons, limes, cherries, olives, and tiny onions. As I approached, Ron smiled at me, showing his even white teeth, and then turned his attention to the gold watch that gleamed on his tanned wrist.

Joe probably thought he looked cool in his black shirt, but it made him look like a gangster. Mom said he had “connections.” It bugged me that she wouldn't just come out and say that he knew people in the Mafia. He and Margo weren't my parents' close friends. Why were they even here?

Dad asked me to make Rob Roys for Mom, Margo, and Betty. It was easy. They were just Manhattans, only with scotch instead of whiskey. I knew a lot about making cocktails, but unlike Jess, I didn't drink them.

I carried the drinks over to the picnic table where Mom was standing with her friends. They all wore pastel-colored dresses. I was wearing a light turquoise one with puff sleeves. May wore a black A-line dress. Lights flickered in the paper lanterns strung around the yard. As the setting sun turned the sky the same pinkish gold as the Rob Roys, Frank Sinatra crooned from the record player Dad had set up in the kitchen. May fiddled with the thin silver bracelet that matched her silver hoop earrings and her silver-circle necklace, and gave me faint smile as I handed her a ginger ale.

Margo held her cigarette out at an angle. “I'm glad some good has come of the interview, in spite of those awful things Tony said.”

Betty leaned close. “My Linda says you can't believe a word that comes out of that boy's mouth. Can't understand what any girl would see in him.”

Mom flinched. “You know teens.”

Betty lit a cigarette. “Any news about Arnie?”

Mom shook her head. “He hasn't heard from Jess. But with all these sightings, you've got to wonder.” She paused. “Just this morning, someone thought they saw Jess in Nogales.”

Margo widened her turquoise-shadowed eyes. “I hear you can get married for around twenty dollars down there.”

“Tony's probably on his way there to marry her right now.” Betty smirked.

Mom looked stricken. I pushed myself forward. I had to tell them. “Tony isn't on his way there. I talked to him this morning, and he misses Jess as much as any of us.”

“You were talking to him?” Mom was staring at me like I'd done something awful. Everyone was, even May. “Just stay away from Tony, and let us handle this.” She handed me a red plastic bowl from the table. “Go refill the chips, please.”

Cradling the bowl in my arms like something absurdly precious, I went into the kitchen, dumped an entire bag of chips into it, and stuffed a whole bunch into my mouth. How could they talk about Tony that way? If it weren't for him, there would be no leads. He was the one who'd actually gotten people's attention during the interview, the one who mentioned the red car. Even I could see that his dark-lashed eyes didn't have a speck of meanness in them.

He'd seemed so sad when I talked to him by the pool. He was probably agonizing right now over letting Jess slip through his fingers that night. I thought of the huge fight they'd had when we got back from California. Tony had called and asked to come over, but Jess was mad at him for flirting with some girl. He was always flirting. She went on and on about how Arnie was so much nicer, and a better kisser. And then I'm pretty sure she said, “I did it with him.”

Tony yelled, “You bitch,” so loud I could hear him through the phone.

Then she shouted, “It's over,” and told him she didn't want to see him ever again.

Later, the bell rang while we were in the bedroom. She opened the window and leaned out. He looked up and said, “You know you love me, Jez-e-bell.”

She told him to go away, but he didn't. The door was unlocked, and he let himself in. We heard him pounding up the stairs. Before Jess could say a word, he was holding her in his arms.

“So you don't want to see me.” He gripped her chin. She tried to struggle free, but he wouldn't let her. As he pushed his mouth against hers, the hard curve of his biceps made me feel squirmy inside. They kissed and he said he was sorry if he held her too tight, it was just that he loved her so much he didn't know his own strength.

He was so beautiful. When they finished kissing, Jess said she'd only said those things to make him jealous. She loved him more than life itself. It was like I wasn't even in the room. I was deciding that love makes other people invisible, and making a mental note to write this down in case it turned out to be brilliant, when Tony turned to me and said, “Like what you see, Twinkle Toes?” I blushed to the roots of my hair.

Maybe Tony wasn't the perfect boyfriend, but there was something special between them. You just had to be around them to feel it. It didn't make sense that Jess would take off and leave him for Arnie or to follow her dreams. Something must have gone terribly wrong.

After dinner, everyone drifted inside for dessert, coffee, and more drinks, but I stayed by the pool. May was ignoring me, and I was tired of listening to my parents' crappy conversations. So much had happened—Billy's kiss, Tony handing me the flower, my sister gone—and I didn't understand any of it. I was considering making
myself
a Rob Roy when the sliding door opened. Mom walked out with Ron. They stood in front of the orange tree with drinks in their hands. Ron raised his martini.

“I miss her.” Mom leaned her head on his shoulder.

“This may be hard to hear, but you need to hire a private eye.” He touched her hair, a sad smile on his face. “I know someone good.”

“Jack doesn't want to hire one,” Mom said. “You know he has to do everything himself.”

“Then we'll have to make him want to.” He slid his hand along her cheek and tilted her face toward his. I was holding myself so still I thought I might crack.

“Frannie,” he said. He wrapped his arms around her. The sound of her crying softly into his shirt made me ill. He pushed her hair away from her face, kissed her on the forehead, and then by her ear. I hated the way he called her Frannie. No one called her that.

• • •

Mom was in the kitchen with Betty and Margo cleaning up when I came back inside. “Where were you?” she asked.

I could barely look at her. I muttered, “Nowhere,” and then she told May and me to see if the guys wanted more drinks. At the edge of the living room, May put her finger to her lips. Ron was trying to convince Dad to hire the private eye. Dad nodded without going along just like Mom said he would, because he really didn't trust anyone else to do anything. No one could load the dishwasher right. No one else knew how to drive properly. And no one could find Jess, even though he'd already failed so miserably.

Ron flicked his cigarette into the maple-leaf-shaped ashtray I'd made in elementary school. “Jack, the police have decided she's a runaway. That means they've stopped looking. Just have a talk with this guy.”

Dad gazed into the smoky depths of his scotch, as if searching for an answer. “If that's what I have to do, I guess I will.”

Then Joe started talking about having Tony beaten up if nothing else worked, and I thought I might faint. What was going on? It was like they were all ganging up on Tony and heading off in the wrong direction. And really, no one knew what was going on, except maybe me, because I'd been thinking about this. Logically. Leaving May standing there, I ran up to my room, got the postcard and hurried back downstairs. I cleared my throat as I handed it to Dad.

“What is this, honey?” His breath reeked of alcohol.

“It's a postcard of Schwab's Pharmacy that I found on Jess's bureau. I think she's letting us know she's going to Hollywood to become a movie star.” Everyone was watching me. “Maybe you should tell that to the private eye, and he can look for her there.”

“Little pitchers have big ears.” Joe grinned.

Dad eyed me sternly. “The things we're talking about here have nothing to do with you, Caroline.”

“But I know it's a message from her.” I felt desperate and excited at the same time.

“Message?” Dad turned the postcard over. “I don't see anything.” He was looking at me like I was some kind of nut. Everyone was. And maybe I was. I ran out of the room, through the sliding glass doors, and out to the pool.

• • •

I was dumping scotch and vermouth into a silver cocktail shaker when May walked over. She slipped a red flower from the centerpiece behind her ear and said, “Can I have some of that?” I smiled. At least she was finally talking to me.

I poured a glass for each of us and we sat down by the edge of the pool. Lights in the paper lanterns glowed like small fuzzy suns in the darkness. The only sound was the lapping of the water around our bare feet.

I took a big sip of my drink, and coughed. “Not sure I like this.”

“You'll get used to it,” May said, “and then it will be fun.”

I guzzled some more, and it burned all the way down. “What a boring party.”

“Everything's boring. Even Billy.” She averted her gaze. She must have broken up with him and not the other way around, but I wasn't about to ask. I wondered if she knew anything about her dad and my mom, but couldn't imagine asking about that either. She sipped her drink and went on, “What your dad said when you showed him the postcard was mean. You were only trying to help.”

“He wouldn't even listen to me.” The burning was now a warmth in my chest.

“I hate the way adults think they know everything and we don't know anything. They never listen.” Reflections wavered on the water, touching and parting silently. She pushed her pale, silky hair from her face. “Do you really think Jess is in California?”

“That's what Tony and his friends say.”

“My sister Linda told me that, too.” She drank some more.

“She knows Tony?”

“Everyone knows him. He's a legend.”

“'Cause he has all those parties?”

“No. He's the kid who couldn't die. Don't you know that?”

I nodded. “Jess told me something about it, but not the whole story.”

“When Tony was in sixth grade, we got so much rain there were rivers in the desert. He went swimming in one with his friends and got swept away. When they found him, they thought he was dead. But on the way to the morgue, one of his eyes twitched. If no one had noticed he might have been buried alive. It was in the paper. They called him the miracle boy.” She smiled. “Later he became a state diving champ. Strange, huh?”

I took another big gulp and said, “Jess told me that when Tony died he walked in the darkness, and when he came back to life that darkness gave him special powers, like seeing things before they happen.” I looked up at her, figuring she'd be impressed.

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, and some kids think he can never die.”

I dipped my hand in the pool. “Do you think he can die?”

“Of course. We all die.” She stared at me. “You can't believe everything everyone tells you.”

“I don't,” I said, though I wanted to believe in things like that.

We drank some more, and after a while it didn't taste so bad. May curled up on the tiles next to the pool. As she trailed her hand in the water she said, “I'm really sorry about what happened to Jess. It must be so hard for you.” Her words sent a chill through me. She was talking like something terrible had already happened. Everyone was saying things like that, and I hated it.

My feet looked pale under the water, almost as if they didn't belong to me—as if they belonged to a drowned person. For a second, I had this creepy feeling I wasn't in my own body. “I wish I could do something to help find her,” I said, “but everyone acts like I'm just in the way.”

She propped herself up on an elbow. “Don't be silly. Just because adults don't want to listen doesn't mean there's nothing you can do. They don't know everything. We see things and hear things they miss.” I wondered if she was right, if I really could do something. She took the flower from behind her ear and dropped it in the water. “And we know things we don't tell.”

“Do you?” I asked.

“Everyone does.” She turned her gaze to the moon, high and white in the sky. Clouds sailed past it. A faint breeze brushed my ear. The red flower bobbed on the water.

“Tony gave me a flower just like that,” I said.

Her small eyes widened. “When?”

“This morning. He's really sad about Jess.”

Her expression became serious. “You should stay away from him. Linda says you never know what will happen with him and those kids he hangs out with.”

I leaned forward. “You mean at those parties he has in the guesthouse?”

She nodded knowingly.

The sliding door opened and her mom called out that they were leaving. May walked over to her with surprising steadiness, one foot in front of the other like something she'd learned in charm school, and with a flick of her wrist she clicked the door shut.

I stumbled onto the chaise longue. It felt like the backyard was some mad carousel going around, and then I tasted puke at the back of my throat and everything inside me came up. As vomit flowed across the tiles, I shut my eyes. In that darkness I saw Jess in a tiny movie in my head. She looked like a Barbie doll, wearing sunglasses smaller than thumbnails, a red bikini, raising a tiny plastic hand, and as she waved, behind her another Jess appeared, even smaller and more doll-like, and behind her another and another, and with each new Jess there was a plink sound like ice cubes in a glass. They were stepping stones extending into infinite darkness until she was a speck, small as a distant star, and it was like she was going further and further away, but it was reassuring because at least she was somewhere, and I was seeing her, even if it was only in my head.