Sleeping Beauty (33 page)

“His ‘estate?’ Davin can’t be declared legally…well, you know, for seven years. Seven days seems pretty damn heartless.”

“Not really different from how they’ve always been, right?”

Evan has vacated his seat, wandering over to speak to Croc, the Australian expatriate. Alex circles the table and sneaks into the opening.

“What’s up with the numbers and captains?” she says, slipping her arm through mine. “Is it some sort of drinking game?”

I smile. “Evan Tallant is ‘the Captain.’ Lieutenant Commander Grayson is Number One, Rev Carlin is Number Two, Davin is–” I catch myself. “–
was
Number Three.”

“It sounds like a re-run of Star Trek.” She looks over at Evan, still chatting up Croc. “Does the Captain ever say anything like ‘Make it so, Number One’?”

I laugh. “Evan was still core, really well-known on the scene when the three boys were growing up. He...” I tilt my head, trying to think how to put it. “He saved them, I guess.”

“From what?”

“You may not believe me,” I say as I inhale a lungful of secondhand pot smoke drifting over us, “but there’s a tendency for rampant drug abuse in surfer circles.”

“You don’t say,” she says drily.

“Evan tried to pull them out of that scene. By then his film distribution company was doing really well. He told the boys that if they cut back on the partying and hit the books, he’d pay for four years of tuition at any university they could get into.”

“Holy crap!”

“Gray was the oldest,” I say, pointing to Gray three seats down. “He’s the only guy in our circle you’ll ever see with a haircut that short, so he’s always easy to spot. He got into the Naval Academy, became an officer.”

I jerk my thumb at Rev, who’s still sitting morosely next to West, not speaking. “Rev went to USC for his undergrad and then law school. And Davin...” I swallow.
You’re going to cry
now
?
I scold myself. “Davin was a late bloomer. He was the most, you know, wrapped up in the scene, especially after he came out and his family disowned him.” I clear my throat. “Anyway, he got his computer programming degree, and started working for Evan.”

“Wow, that’s really cool. I mean, who does that? Makes me think I could’ve avoided a lot of student loan debt if I’d just wandered down to the beach and started shooting up heroin or something.”

I smile. “Evan Tallant—last of the great American surfer idealists.”

“What’s the latest on the Great Celery Stick?” says Alex, using my pet name for my favorite assistant district attorney. On the day Rev and I met her in her office, floral perfume must have been the exception and not the rule; I’ve seen her twice since then, an aroma of
Eau d’Céleri
pervading the air around her like vegetables being boiled for stock.

I groan. “Let’s see, she called Rev…” I trail off, trying to remember. I reach across Evan to smack Rev on the arm. “Was that two days ago that Lucinda Gaelic called you?”

“Yup,” he says, his eyes glassy and unfocused. “And every time I think about it, it never fails to make me want to file a motion to withdraw representation and find another client.”

“Why? What did she want?” says Alex.

“She wanted to let us know that she’d gotten my medical files, and that she knew that I’d found out that I was pregnant on October twenty-eighth.”

“And thanks for clueing your attorney in on that little factoid,” Rev says sarcastically.

“So what?” says Alex. “Why’s that her business?”

“She wanted to know if I’d had an abortion.”

“
What
?” Alex says this so loud that most of the table goes suddenly silent.

“C’mon,” says Rev, his words slurred. “She didn’t put it
that
way.”

“Apparently Lucinda Gaelic has a maternal streak no one was aware of,” I say. “She called Rev to say that she was concerned about my appearance and wanted to meet with us as soon as possible.”

“Your ‘appearance?’ Like how–she didn’t think your shoes matched your dress?”

I roll my eyes. “She thinks I got pregnant–that it happened…well, you know,” I say, too embarrassed to connect the pregnancy and the sleep lab footage together for her.

“She
hopes
it happened then,” Rev mumbles, his words a mush of incoherency, he’s so drunk. “I would if I were her.”

“So she thinks I’m six months pregnant,” I explain to Alex. “And she’s wondering why I’m not showing more.” I shrug. “She wanted to know if I terminated my pregnancy.”

Alex is incredulous. “She said ‘terminated?’ She actually used the word ‘terminated?’”

“Classy, huh?”

“Big
Terminator
fan, is she?” She shakes her head, muttering, “Who talks like that?” Before I can respond, she tucks her chin and puffs out her chest. “‘Listen, and understand,’” she intones in a deep voice. “‘That terminator is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with...’”

Even six beers in, Andy Gordon, movie director extraordinaire, recognizes the line she’s quoting from the
Terminator
movie. The rest of the people at our table aren’t far behind Andy as far as alcohol consumption is concerned. Jonathan, Rev, Gray, and those closest to them catch on after a few more words, joining in at a volume that no doubt breaks local noise ordinances: “‘It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear!’”

Tag, Dookie, and the rest of the twenty or so people in our private party follow suit: “‘And it absolutely will not stop, ever, UNTIL YOU ARE DEAD!’”

By this time, every conversation in the bar has ceased, every head turned towards us. “Terminator!” bellows some drunk surfer by the front door, staggering to his feet and raising his beer in our direction.

I shield my face with my hand and look away, hoping this doesn’t encourage anyone to whip out a cell phone camera. “Thanks, guys. That’s really helping me with the low profile, keep-this-all-a secret thing.”

“There’s no such thing as bad publicity,” says Alex.

I snort. “Not according to Sebastian Belgium.”

She nods. “Well, yeah, except for that asshole.” She takes a swig of her beer. “You know what they say: ‘When life closes a door, it opens a window.’”

I stare at Davin’s shattered surfboard on The Wall, wondering if there’s another wall out there somewhere I can nail myself to. “Great,” I say finally. “Let me know when you see that open window so I can throw myself out of it.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

November 5
^th

The deadbolt to Davin’s front door is rusty. My fingers are already cold from the damp, chilly November morning, but I wasn’t sure when Davin’s family would arrive to pick his place apart, so I figured the earlier I arrived, the better.

I keep at it, trying to turn the key until my fingers are raw, but it won’t budge.
The interior must be coated with rust,
I think. Davin would switch out his deadbolt about every six months, but the ocean air was always stronger than the anti-rust coating on the lock. I rub my fingers on my jeans and blow warm air on them, psyching them up for another go ‘round.

“Dammit!” I mutter. It doesn’t help that I’m trying this in a dimly-lit hallway just after dawn. I wiggle the key left and right, and I’m just about to give up and go fetch some WD-40 from a store when the tumblers finally give. A twist of the doorknob and I’m in.

Even after only two days, the air inside his apartment is stagnant. It settles on me instantly, like it knows that I’m its only ticket out of here. Davin’s place is small, not much more than a studio apartment really, with a combined living room and sleeping area, a kitchenette and a microscopic bathroom with a shower so small that Davin couldn’t even stand all the way up in it.

I look around at the furniture, trying to remember if any of this is his. Most of these kinds of studios cater to the broke college student and insolvent surfer. In short, they come furnished.

Probably came furnished
, I decide, touching the fabric of the particularly ugly, mustard yellow, fold-out couch. Davin never cared about interior decorating, but even he could do better than this eyesore if push came to shove.

I throw the key on the coffee table and look around. There’s really no question about where to start; the place is so small that there’s nowhere to store anything besides the kitchen cabinets and the bookshelves that surround the bottom, top and sides of the only window in the place. I stand in front of it, putting my forehead to the glass, staring down onto the deserted street.

Well, better not put off the inevitable
, I think. I grab a nearby chair and pull it over to the shelves so I can reach the highest shelves, figuring this is where Davin would put things that had personal significance to him, but wouldn’t be anything he’d need to get his hands on every day.

Oh, wow
, I think. I skim my fingers over a familiar box, the one I couldn’t quite see from the floor. It’s a struggle, but I managed to slide it off the shelf. I have to drop it the last few feet, and the four box tops pop open when it hits the floor, but nothing falls out.

I pull the Sentinels out one by one, lining them up on the floor in tight formation: smoke detector, alarm clock, teddy bear, air freshener, dictionary, tissue box, clock, desk lamp. I have such a love-hate relationship with these little decoys, that for a second I don’t know if I want to burn them or chisel their likeness from a hunk of marble.

At the bottom of the box is a plastic cylinder of computer disks and a pamphlet I’ve never seen before, the cover reading “Self-Recording Hidden Camera with Motion Sensor DVR.”

I crinkle my brown.
Self-recording
? I pull it out and turn to the first page.

These are the best on the market if you are looking for a very discreet and easy-to-set-up hidden camera. There’s no need for any external recording device, because there is a DVR built right in with the hidden camera. Footage can be watched on a PC, TV, or transferred to permanent storage on your PC or external media such as a DVD.

“What the–?” I keep reading, trying to square the information in the pamphlet with the reassurances I’ve gotten from Davin and West over the last couple of years that the cameras do
not
record, that they “turn on” when they sense motion in a room and stream live footage to a secure website, enabling either of them to keep an eye on me from any computer with an internet connection.

I thumb through the rest of the pamphlet. It’s mostly tech gobbledygook, and other than the “the’s” and “and’s” I might as well be reading Chinese. I’m sure–
sure
–I’ve gotten something all wrong. I would’ve gone right on convincing myself that my technological deficiencies were leading me to draw false conclusions–until I get a closer look at the computer disks. I unscrew the opaque cover and ditch it before pulling off a healthy stack of disks.

Each silver disk is labeled with a black permanent marker. I sift through them like playing cards, reading each before tossing it to the floor like an apathetic blackjack dealer.

Compilation Episode 3

Compilation Episode 2

Compilation Episode 1

The disks following “Compilation Episode 1” are all blank. I stare at the three on the floor, confused.

It’s like I did a “KLS pilot show,”
I think,
and the studio was so intrigued that it ordered more episodes
.
Either that, or there’s a new TV show out called “Compilation” that I haven’t heard of
.

Still, there’s something missing.
Shouldn’t there be a Compilation Episode 4
since I’ve had four episodes?
Where’s the missing disk?

Davin doesn’t own a TV, but his open laptop–in sleep mode by the look of the blinking power light–is sitting on the coffee table, surrounded by copies of surfing magazines, catalogues, a few beer bottles, and a plate of half-eaten waffles with a fly stuck in the syrup. I push it all aside and randomly smack the keyboard to wake the computer up.

Instead of the black screen I’m expecting, it glows the light blue of a familiar website. In the middle of the page is the color-coded map of San Clemente, and the range schedule that Davin used to plan a trip to the island.

Not anymore,
I think sadly. It’s so hard to accept that he was sitting right where I’m sitting a few days ago, planning surfing jaunts, and now…

“Ugh!” I groan, closing my eyes until the stab of grief passes.
Would’ve been better if he’d gone to Clemente,
I think.
At least he’d still be alive.

With a sigh, I push the button on the side of the computer that ejects the disk tray. I have
Compilation Episode 3
in my hand, ready to drop into the slot when I realize there’s already a disk in there. The words are upside-down, but I can read what it says without spinning it a hundred and eighty degrees:
Compilation Episode 4
.

I stare at it, wondering why this particular disk gets the coveted spot in Davin’s computer rather than being mothballed with the others in the unreachable box near the ceiling. I leave
Compilation Episode 4
in the tray and push it back in.

The media player program opens on his computer, and a dialogue box pops up on the screen, asking me if I want to play the disk. My hand shakes as I try to maneuver the on-board mouse to click the “YES” button. The media player considers the disk for a moment before calculating that it contains hundreds of hours of footage. At the same moment, the seek bar slowly inches forward. I turn the volume up as loud as it’ll go, and settle in for the cinematic experience called “My Life.”

The video begins with Davin carrying me into my apartment, West following behind him. “Just put her in bed,” West says to him. “Her doc says that even with the new meds, she’ll probably be out for a few days.”