The Never List (7 page)

Tracy rarely went to school, and after a while the truant officers, just as overwhelmed as Child Protective Services, didn’t even bother her. But she read like a maniac. Autodidact, she would always say, and I’ve never seen a more perfect example. The owner of a used book store on Bourbon Street would slip her books as long as she returned them quickly. She read everything, from
Jane Eyre
to
The Stranger
to
The Origin of Species
, waiting out the long days on the sidewalks of the city, oblivious to the noise and smells around her.

She and Ben just barely managed to stay alive with the coins they gathered over the course of the day. They supplemented their meager food supply by grabbing scraps of beignets tossed by tourists or stopping in at the transvestite bar around the corner after hours for leftovers. Tracy put up a strong front, seeming to take it all in stride, and even handed over to her mother a share of their money when they had a little extra. That at least kept her quiet and out of their hair.

When Tracy became a teenager, her crowd morphed into the street kids her own age. The Goth kids. They dressed in black and dyed their hair dark shades of red, purple, or black. They wore chunky jewelry dangling from black strips of leather, bold rings with bloodred fake gemstones, and from their piercings hung silver-plated skeletons or crucifixes. Tracy’s favorite symbol, ironically, was the ankh, the Egyptian symbol of eternal life.

Some of the kids got into heroin. Tracy wouldn’t touch the stuff, associating it with her mother. She drank a little and got into some trouble, but nothing that would get her locked up where she couldn’t protect Ben.

By then he had taken up the charge on the performer front. He was a talented acrobat, having befriended one of the Quarter’s old-timers who mentored him. Some days he could collect ten full dollars, and then they’d go into a bar and order a giant plate of fries and two half-pints. Those were the good days.

Unfortunately, the bars of New Orleans had everything to offer. Straight, gay, transgender. Dancing, leather, S&M. No one carded. In the strange trajectory of Tracy’s life, I suppose it was inevitable that her crowd started gravitating toward the darker side of the city, the parts the bus tourists avoided. Her favorite bar had no sign, just a black door against a black wall throbbing with the beat of industrial music. Nine Inch Nails. My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult. Lords of Acid.

The door creaked opened on its rusty hinge to reveal a dark cavernous interior, like a black hole, with threads of cigarette smoke unwinding out into the night air. That was it. The bouncers, with their slow-healing cuts in the shapes of slave markings, knew Tracy and stepped aside for her to enter.

Later she would admit she’d been naïve. At the time she didn’t understand where this life could lead. All she knew was that she felt like a part of something, something secret, something that gave her a sense of belonging. The rich tourists coming through the city had nothing on them. This was an empire. And the angry music that pounded in her head every night almost matched the anger she felt at her mother and at the world. This was a strong empire they’d built, and she felt its strength coursing through her veins, more powerfully than any Class A narcotic ever could.

Tracy spent four years in that scene. On the rare occasions when she talked about that life, I almost grew jealous of it. The freaks and weirdos had all congregated in the church of New Orleans, a privileged spot in the world of outsiders, and they lived together on the streets, in disintegrating rooming houses, in group apartments, all hanging with bright scarves, cheap jewelry, and unclean sequined garters, in a strange community of acceptance.

Nothing really mattered there: age, appearance, gender, preference. It was all one big melting pot of aberration, and the sex and drugs and occasional violence were only small pieces of the picture, pieces that helped them all live through the experience of being misunderstood, used up, and broken but still deeply, unerringly human. There, in that bubble of underground life, judgment was suspended for an hour, a year, a lifetime, while occasionally a shred of self-esteem and even pride would blossom under the folds of gossamer, lace, and leather.

Then something happened to Tracy that caused all that power to drain out of her. She kept the story a secret from us for years. In
the cellar, we named it the Disaster, so she wouldn’t have to spell out the details of the worst thing that had ever happened to her. The worst thing besides Jack Derber, that is.

And after the Disaster, her mother disappeared again, maybe for good. When she’d been gone for three weeks, Tracy just about decided she wasn’t coming back. She figured she could hide that fact from Social Security for a while and could forge her mother’s name on the checks long enough to get some savings together, but by then she didn’t even care.

She sank deeper into the club scene, sickened, miserable, and alone. Her life was going nowhere, and she was smart enough to know it. Drinking wasn’t helping. That night at the bar some stranger offered her a hit. That night she took the needle in the dark, her hands shaking with fear and anticipation. Maybe this was the answer after all: the quick way out of the pain, if only for a little while.

She had seen enough people shooting up to know the drill, and she took the leather strap and fastened it tightly around her arm. The needle found its way into her vein easily, slipping in like destiny. The first rush of the drug filled her with euphoria and wiped away her suffering, sweeping it out like a burst of clean air whipping through the city streets at dawn. At that moment, for the first time ever, she thought she understood her mother and wondered if she hadn’t been right about life after all.

Somehow Tracy stumbled out of the club, into the back alley, where she could be alone to savor the pleasure. It was a hot summer night, the air full, so thick with humidity it hit her like a wall as the door slammed closed behind her. The sweat was beading on her forehead, dripping down her chest and into the cheap leather of her hand-me-down bustier. She leaned against the Dumpster out back and slid down into the refuse of a thousand sunken lives—used condoms, cigarette packs, ripped underwear,
part of a rusted-out chain. But even then something at the heart of the pleasure of the drug made the tears well up, made her think about everything that had happened, and she’d cried, an animal howl from deep inside, until she slowly lost that final grip on consciousness.

She woke up, probably days later—she couldn’t tell—in the cellar, on the cold stone floor, in a pool of her own vomit.

     CHAPTER 8     

I sat on the bed in my hotel room, looking at my face in the mirror over the empty bureau. I gripped my cell phone, talking myself into making the call I knew I had to make. It was a Monday morning, and I had Tracy’s office number scribbled on a piece of paper in my other hand. I took a deep breath and dialed.

After three rings I heard her voice answer hello, and I almost couldn’t summon my own to reply.

“Hello!?” she said again, impatient as always.

“Tracy?” She was the only one who hadn’t changed her name.

“Yes, who’s this? Is this a sales call?” She was already annoyed.

“No, Tracy, it’s me, Sarah.” I heard a sound of disgust, then a dial tone.

“Well, that went well,” I said to my face in the mirror. I dialed again. It rang four times, then she picked up.

“What do you want?” she said angrily. Her voice dripped with disdain.

“Tracy, I know you don’t want to talk to me, but please hear me out.”

“Is this about the parole hearing? You can save your breath. I’m going. I’ve talked to McCordy. You and I have nothing to talk about.”

“It isn’t about that. Well, it is, but it isn’t.”

“You’re not making sense, Sarah. Get it together.” She hadn’t changed much in the ten years since I’d spoken to her. I could tell I only had about twenty seconds to persuade her not to hang up. I got to the point.

“Tracy, do you get letters?”

A pause. She obviously knew what I meant. Finally, suspiciously, “Yes. Why?”

“I do too, and listen, I think he’s telling us something in them.”

“I’m sure in his crazy head he is, but they don’t make any sense at all. He is
insane
, remember, Sarah. Nutso. Maybe not legally, maybe not enough to get him off the hook. But crazy enough that we should be throwing out his letters unopened.”

I gasped. “You don’t do that, do you? Throw them out?”

Another pause. And then, quieter this time, with reluctance, “No. I have them.”

“Maybe he’s crazy, maybe not. But listen, I think I’ve figured something out. I think he is sending messages to you in my letters, and maybe to Christine as well. I think there might be something in his letters to you that I might understand, and vice versa.”

She didn’t answer for a long time, but I knew her well enough to know I should wait. She was thinking.

“And how is this going to help us, Sarah? Do you think he’s letting us each know how special we are to him? How much he still loves us? Do you think he’s going to give us some key to put him in jail longer? He is many things, Sarah, but he is not stupid.”

“No, he’s not stupid. But he likes to take risks. He likes games, and he might want to give us a fair hand. It would give him a lot of pleasure to think he was telling us something meaningful and we were too stupid to figure it out.”

I could sense her mulling this over in the quiet over the line. “You have a point. So what do we do? Send each other our letters?”

I took a deep breath. “I think it’s more complicated than that. I think … I think we need to meet.”

“That seems indescribably unnecessary.” Her tone was icy. I could hear her hatred loud and clear.

“Listen, Tracy, I’ll be back in New York in two days. Can you drive down and meet me there? I’m sure you have a lot going on right now with your journal and all that, but I don’t think we have time to waste. What is your cell number? I can text you when I get in, and we can meet.”

“I’ll think about it,” she replied. And then the line went dead.

     CHAPTER 9     

After ordering in herbal tea from room service to recover from my contact with Tracy, I drove back out to Keeler, to pay a visit to Noah Philben at his new office. As a rule, I didn’t like people with radical ideas, and I had, up until this point, structured my entire life to avoid them. Fanatics, mystics, and extremists all tended toward irrational and unexpected action. Statistics could not protect you from that.

I wanted people to fit squarely within their appropriately delineated demographic category: age, education, income level. These facts should have predictive value, and when they didn’t, my ability to interpret and relate to people went askew. As Jennifer and I would always say, at that point, anything can happen, and there were too many categories of “anything” I didn’t like.

Even though the tank of my rental car was not even half empty,
I stopped at a gas station on the way down, taking advantage of what appeared to be an unusually pristine BP right outside of town. I noticed with no small satisfaction that the attendant was locked away from me behind unbreakable plexiglass. If only everyone could be like that.

I found the shopping center with no trouble and pulled into a parking space close to the grocery store, where a buzz of shoppers passed in and out, their carts rattling loudly as they crossed the uneven pavement. I sat in the car for a minute, wondering what the hell I was doing here.

I reached into my bag and pulled out my cell phone, checking it out of nervous habit. It was comforting to see the fully charged battery icon and the five signal bars radiating out at me. My shoulders dropped half an inch at that, and I breathed in deeply.

As I considered my next task, however, I felt the urge to bolt, to race back to New York and forget this whole escapade. I could simply testify, the way Jim wanted me to. No way would they let Jack Derber out of jail—the parole hearing was surely just the State of Oregon going through the motions of its administrative process, wasn’t it? I didn’t need to do this.

But was there a chance?

From what I knew of prison terms, it could happen. The criminal justice system did not dole out that justice fairly and evenly, in proportion to the crimes in question. Someone could spend their whole life in jail over possession of a gram of cocaine, but rapists, kidnappers, and child molesters could end up hardly serving any time at all. Ten years might satisfy the State of Oregon after all. Release was possible, especially if they fell for a religious conversion story, and I knew his behavior in prison had been, naturally, impeccable. I had heard he was even teaching a course in there to the other inmates. Fuck. I had to talk to Noah Philben.

The building looked almost inviting, considering what I’d been
expecting anyway. It was still painted in bright colors, with a giant rainbow mural covering the front wall, a relic of its community-center past. Through the glass-fronted door, I could see an office tucked inside to my left. The administrative staff, a young man and woman, each of whom looked to be no more than twenty-five, sat busily sorting papers. They were clean-cut and eager. This didn’t seem like a cult at all. More like a YMCA. I felt my anxiety lifting.

Bracing myself, I pulled open the door and walked over to the office. The young man looked up at me and smiled. He seemed perfectly normal, except for a glint of heightened zeal in his eyes that made me a little uncomfortable. I hesitated.

“Welcome to the Church of the Holy Spirit. How can I help you?” he said brightly. Too brightly.

I took a deep breath and explained, as politely as possible, that I wanted to talk to Noah Philben. The boy frowned and furrowed his brows, seeming unsure of what to do. I guessed Noah Philben didn’t get a lot of visitors.

“Not sure he’s in yet. Um, hold on just a minute.” He left me alone with the girl. She smiled at me too, a little less forthrightly than the boy. Then, casting her eyes back down, she returned to her paper shuffling in silence. I knew any normal person would have initiated small talk, said hello, at least brought up the weather, but I didn’t know how to do such things anymore. So I just stood there under the bad fluorescent lighting, looking around the room awkwardly.