Lost (28 page)

Can he see me? Cindy thought. Can anybody see me?

“Yes,” Richard Pearlman said. “You, there, in the middle.”

A heavyset woman in stretch leopard-print pants scrambled to her feet. “First, I want to congratulate you on a brilliant film. And I couldn’t help but be struck by the parallels to Dante …”

“Show-off,” Trish muttered.

“What parallels to Dante?” Meg asked.

“And I wondered whether you were consciously going after something more literary with this film?” the woman continued.

“More literary?” the director repeated, obviously tickled by the question. “First time I’ve ever been accused of that.”

The audience laughed.

Richard Pearlman pointed to a man in the second row. “Yes?”

“How long did it take you to shoot the film?”

“A little over three months.”

“Where did you find the lead actress?” a woman shouted, not bothering to wait her turn.

“Monica Mason, yes. She was great, wasn’t she?”

More applause.

“I wish I could say that I discovered her sitting at the soda fountain at Schwab’s, or tell you one of those apocryphal Hollywood stories you always hear about, but the
truth is that she was just one of dozens of very talented young actresses who auditioned for the part. Her agent sent her over one afternoon, she read for us, and that was that. Nothing very dramatic, I’m afraid.”

Richard Pearlman pointed to a middle-aged woman in the upper right corner of the theater. “Yes?”

“Speaking of dramatic stories,” the woman began, “do you know anything about what’s happening with the police investigation into the two missing girls?”

“Oh, my God,” Cindy whispered. Was this what she’d been waiting for? Was this the reason she was here?

“No,” Michael answered curtly. “I don’t know any more than you do.”

“I understand one of the girls is an actress,” the woman continued.

“Yes, I believe that’s true.”

“Didn’t she audition for you the morning she disappeared?”

“I believe she did, yes.” Michael scratched uncomfortably at the tip of his nose, looked to Richard Pearlman for help.

“Could we confine your questions to the wonderful movie we’ve just seen?” Richard asked. “Thank you.” He pointed to another woman on his left.

“How does it feel to be the subject of a police investigation? Do you feel like you’re in the middle of one of your own movies?”

Michael laughed, but the laugh was strained. “A bit, yes. Any more questions about Lost?”

“If they find her, you should give her the part,” a man shouted out from the last row. “Then you’d have that apocryphal Hollywood story to tell us next time.”

“That’s true,” Michael conceded as the audience laughed.

An apocryphal Hollywood story, Cindy thought, feeling sick to her stomach. Her daughter’s disappearance reduced to an amusing anecdote for the film cognoscenti. “I have to get out of here,” she said, jumping to her feet, Neil right beside her.

“Are you all right?” Meg asked.

“I have to go.”

“We’ll come too,” Trish offered.

“No.”

“I’ll take her home,” Neil said.

“We’ll come with you,” Meg insisted, following after them down the stairs.

“No,” Cindy said forcefully, spinning around. “Please.”

Meg stopped, tears filling her eyes. “You’re sure?”

Cindy nodded. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“The gentleman in the third row,” Richard Pearlman was saying as Cindy and Neil clambered down the steps and into the lobby.

The man’s voice trailed after her. “Has being questioned by the police changed your opinion about Toronto?”

A
N HOUR LATER
, Cindy was quietly ushering Neil inside her front hall. “I think everyone’s asleep,” she whispered. “Can I get you anything? Something to drink?”

“I’m fine,” he whispered back.

“Follow me.” Cindy tiptoed down the stairs leading to the bottom floor, cringing at each creak of the floor beneath her feet, feeling like a teenager sneaking home after curfew. “Can you see okay?” she asked, relying on
the half-moon peeking through the windows to guide them, reluctant to turn on any lights.

“I’m fine,” he said again, settling in beside her on the family room sofa.

“Thanks for dinner.” Cindy was glad it was too dark to make out the stains on the old brown corduroy couch, a couch that pulled out into a queen-size bed, Cindy thought, and felt her face flush. “I was hungrier than I realized.”

And suddenly she was moving toward him, taking his face in her hands and drawing his lips toward hers, then kissing him full on the mouth, her tongue seeking his, her arms wrapping around him, crushing him tightly against her, her hands burying themselves in his hair, pulling him closer, as if there were still too much space between them, her legs curling around his hips, as if she could somehow manage to climb out of her own body and escape into his, as if she needed the air in his lungs to breathe.

“Oh God,” she cried, abruptly pulling away and pushing herself toward the far end of the sofa. “What am I doing? What’s the matter with me?”

“It’s all right, Cindy. It’s all right.”

“It’s not all right. I was all over you.”

“Cindy,” Neil said, trying to calm her, “you didn’t do anything wrong.”

“What you must think of me.”

Neil stared at her through the semidarkness. “I think you’re the most beautiful, most courageous woman I know,” he said softly.

“Courageous?” Cindy swiped at the tears now falling the length of her cheeks. “Courage implies choice. I didn’t choose any of this.”

“Which makes you all the more courageous in my book.”

Cindy stared wistfully at the man beside her. Where had he come from? Were there really men like this in the world? “Make love to me,” she said. Then more forcefully, “I really need for you to make love to me.”

Neil said nothing. He simply reached for her, strong arms surrounding her like a cape. He kissed her once, then again and again, tender kisses, like the gentle flutter of a butterfly’s wings against her skin, then deeper, his touch sure, unhurried, deliberate, as he began to caress and undress her. She felt the warmth of his fingers, the cool wetness of his tongue, and cried out with joy when he entered her, urgency replacing delicacy as he rocked inside her. Gradually, almost reluctantly, she felt her body building to a climax and tried hard to fight it, to prolong the moment as long as humanly possible, until it was no longer something she could control, and she cried out again, her nails digging into the flesh of his back, her fingers clinging to him as if he were a life preserver in a treacherous ocean. Seconds later, they collapsed against one another, their bodies bathed in a thin coating of sweat.

“Are you all right?” Neil asked after a silence of several seconds.

“Are you kidding?” Cindy asked in return, then laughed out loud.

Neil laughed with her, kissed her forehead, gathered her inside his arms.

“Thank you,” Cindy said.

“Now who’s kidding?”

He kissed her again, drawing her back against the well-stuffed pillows, their bodies folding comfortably
together, their breathing steady and rhythmic.

And then there were footsteps shuffling above their heads, and upstairs’ lights being turned on, and familiar voices sliding down the banister. “I told you there’s no one here,” Cindy’s mother was saying as Elvis began barking beside her.

“And I’m telling you I heard something,” Leigh argued. “Hello? Hello?”

“Hello?” Norma Appleton echoed. “Is someone there?”

The dog raced down the steps, bounded into the family room.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Cindy said, fending off Elvis’s eager paws as she scrambled into her clothes.

“Cindy? Cindy, is that you?”

“It’s me, Mom,” Cindy called out, pulling her T-shirt over her head as Elvis jumped against Neil’s thighs. “It’s all right. You don’t have to come down.”

“What are you doing downstairs?” Two sets of footsteps headed for the stairs.

“Please don’t come down,” Cindy urged, pulling her slacks over her hips, knowing such exhortations were futile, that it was only a matter of seconds before her mother and sister peeked their heads into the room. “I can’t believe this,” she whispered to Neil, who was hurriedly tucking his shirt inside his pants. “It’s like when I was fifteen and she caught me making out with Martin Crawley.”

“What do you mean, don’t come down?” Leigh was asking, her voice edging closer. “What are you doing down here in the dark?” Her hand reached into the room, flipped on the switch for the overhead light, her eyes taking a second to adjust to the sudden brightness,
another second to adjust to the fact that Cindy wasn’t alone. “Oh.”

“What’s going on down here?” Norma Appleton asked.

“I think maybe we should go back upstairs,” Leigh ventured, trying to back out of the room.

But her mother was already blocking her exit. “Don’t be silly. What’s …? Oh.” She stared at Neil Macfarlane. “I’m sorry, Cindy. I didn’t realize you had company.”

“You remember Neil,” Cindy ventured meekly.

“Yes, of course,” her mother said. “How are you, Neil?”

“I’m fine, thank you, Mrs. Appleton.”

“Hi,” Leigh offered weakly.

“Nice to see you again,” Neil said.

Nobody moved.

“I guess I should probably go,” Neil said finally.

“Please don’t leave on our account,” Norma Appleton said.

“It’s late. I really should get going.”

“I’ll walk you to the door.” Cindy followed him up the stairs. She, in turn, was trailed by her mother, her sister, and the dog.

Cindy closed the front door behind her as she walked Neil to his car. “I don’t suppose I’ll hear from you again,” she said, smiling as he leaned over to kiss her good night.

“Was Martin Crawley so easily deterred?”

Cindy smiled, waited until his car disappeared down the street before turning back to the house. The front door opened just as she was reaching for it, her mother and sister waiting on the other side, Elvis between them.

“Sort of like old times,” her mother said with a smile.

“I’ll make us some tea,” said Leigh.

H
AVE
you seen a copy of this morning’s
Sun
?” Meg asked Cindy, at barely seven o’clock Monday morning.

It had been eleven days since Julia went missing.

Cindy lowered the phone in her hand and stared at Elvis, who was waiting for her by the front door. “No. I haven’t been out yet. I was just about to take the dog for a walk when you called.”

“Maybe you should let someone else take him,” Meg suggested.

“Why? What are you getting at? What’s in the
Sun
that you don’t think I should see?”

“I just think you should be prepared.”

“For what? Has another girl disappeared?” There’d been nothing in the other papers about any more disappearances.

“There’s a picture of Julia on the front page,” Meg said.

“Again?”

“It’s a different picture. She’s … well, it’s pretty suggestive. And there are more pictures inside. I don’t know where they got them.…”

Cindy dropped the receiver, ran for the door.

“Cindy?” she heard Meg’s voice call after her. “Cindy, are you there?”

Elvis barked in angry protest as Cindy slammed the door behind her and ran down the street. What was Meg talking about? What picture? She’d only given the police that one head shot of Julia. Where could they have gotten more? “What pictures, damn it?” she asked out loud, hurling herself at the newspaper box on the corner, recoiling in horror at the full-page photograph of her daughter that stared back at her with almost deliberate provocation.

Julia was staring directly into the camera lens, her eyes challenging the viewer. She was wearing only the bottom half of a black string bikini, her hands cupped coyly over high, bare breasts.
JULIA’S LOST JEWELS
, the caption beside the picture read.

Cindy stumbled back on her heels as if she’d been struck. It was one of the photographs she’d found in Sean’s apartment, photographs Tom had stuffed inside the pocket of his beige linen pants. How had the paper gotten its hands on it? And what of the other pictures inside? Were they part of the same collection?

She reached into her pocket for some change, realized she’d forgotten to bring any, and slammed her fist on the top of the red metal box in frustration. She cast a wary glance over each shoulder to make sure no one was watching, then kicked at the side of the box, and jiggled its handle, trying to force it open. The damn thing refused to budge. “Shit!” she yelled, spinning around in helpless circles.

A woman walking a small white dog rounded the
corner at Lynwood. “Excuse me,” Cindy called to her. “I don’t suppose you have some spare change for the paper? I could pay you back later.”

The woman’s eyes narrowed, as if she’d just been approached by a foul-smelling panhandler, and she promptly picked up her dog and crossed to the other side of the street.

“Great,” Cindy muttered, racing back down Balmoral toward her house, hearing Elvis barking all the way down the street. “Okay, okay,” she said, opening her door and trying to keep the dog from knocking her down as she rifled through her purse for some change. “Okay, you can come,” she told the dog, grabbing his leash, heading back out the door.

“What’s all the commotion?” her mother called from the top of the stairs.

“I’m just getting the paper,” Cindy said. “Go back to sleep.”

She hurried down the steps and along Balmoral to Avenue Road. But Elvis refused to be rushed, stopping repeatedly to sniff at the grass and lift his leg. “Come on. Come on. We haven’t got all day.”

Cindy stopped abruptly, the absurdity of what she’d just said hitting her square in the forehead, as if she’d just walked into a brick wall.
We haven’t got all day?
All day was exactly what she had. And the day after that. And the day after that. How many days? she wondered, importuning the cloudless sky. How many more awful, blank days waiting to be filled? How many more endless days spent in aimless, if frantic, pursuit of her daughter? How many more useless meetings with police, well-meaning conversations with friends, sadistic phone calls from strangers?
How many more such days could she tolerate? How many more could she survive?