Mystery Girl: A Novel (7 page)

And why not? I told myself, as the sea rose back into view. Mountains, beaches, planets all change. Everything passes away. Why not us?

Then, since I was too busy brooding on the cosmos to look where I was going, I tripped and fell on my face. I stumbled on a root and lost my footing in a small avalanche of sand. Unable to pull my hands from my pockets in time, I tipped over, headfirst, pitching forward into the dirt, and skidded and tumbled down the slope. At first I struggled, eating sand and kicking my legs helplessly, with my sunglasses jammed into my skull. Then I gave up and just rolled with it, luging to the bottom, where I landed with a grunt in a pile of rotten seaweed. Spitting sand, I looked up to see my lady reaching the last landing of the staircase. In a panic, I flattened myself against the ground, hiding my face in the stinky greens.

“Are you OK?”

I opened one eye and saw a red heel sunk into the sand beside me. Desperate to hide my identity, I pressed my face deeper into the mulch, and faked a deeper, more guttural voice.

“Uh-huh.”

Her own voice was soft and smart, well educated. Burrowing into the sand and sludge, trying to appear comfortably homeless, I adopted a kind of conceptual disguise, trying as hard as I could to look like a drunken derelict without actually moving.

“Are you sure you don’t need help?” She touched my shoulder gently. I felt nails on my skin.

“Uh-uh,” I grunted back.

“You mean you don’t need help or you’re not sure you don’t?”

That stumped me. I couldn’t think of any response expressible within my phonetic limits. Meanwhile that hand sat lightly on my shoulder, like a bird about to lift. Then—quite cleverly I thought—I grunted, “No need help,” in the manner of an old movie Injun.

“OK, then, I won’t bother you,” she said, one nail tracing a soft line that lingered, tingling for a moment after she left. I remained motionless, breathing dead sea, until my heart stopped pounding. Then, like a stranded sea monster, I opened one sandy eye, and watched her walk the beach, shoes in her hand, not doing anything. The wind sifted her hair. Her dress shivered close to her body.

When at last she left, I took the stairs too, a flight behind her, slopping along in my wet shoes and seaweed-scented clothes. I jogged to my car and had the engine started by the time her Mercedes rolled out. She put the roof up as we headed back to town. It was growing colder, and I could feel the damp wind slap against my face.

The truth, if I admitted it to myself, was that Lala’s betrayal also set me free. It broke my heart, but also cut the cord I’d never even noticed around my neck. Suddenly everything that, for better or worse, had been a given, a certainty, was a question once again. Turned loose, against my own desperate wishes, I suddenly couldn’t help wondering—what would it be like to live alone? For years every decision, from what to eat for dinner to what to do with my future had revolved around her. Even this job I was on. Alone, I could rededicate myself to my own work, write, travel, do anything I wanted, at least in theory. I could theoretically fuck somebody else! The very idea made the blood pound in my veins. If I ever wanted out, this was my chance. But did I want out or back in? And all at once, it occurred to me: everything is possible again, now that she is gone.

14

THE RIDE HOME WAS
a lot less cinematic in my clammy clothes, sand grinding into my skin and the smell of old sea scum hanging around me in a cloud. She made a right on La Cienega, swung a quick U-turn and vanished into one of the drives or lots. I found a meter and paralleled in, just in time to glimpse my quarry disappearing into
a shop somewhere in the rearview. I stripped off my beach clothes and pulled my sweats and a T-shirt from my detective’s kit. I didn’t want to lose her trail now. But could I risk following her on foot, after my fiasco at the beach? Recalling my new employer’s policy on disguises, and figuring I had little dignity to lose, I yanked out Lala’s thrift store blond wig and pulled it on, fitting the mangy yellow curls over my own damp rug in the mirror. I looked preposterous. Still, this was Hollywood, home of the preposterous. That gave me an idea: I took out the little makeup kit Lonsky had pressed on me and smeared red goop on my lips, instantly transforming myself into a shopworn drag queen. In any other town this might stand out, but here it was as good as camouflage.

Strolling up the block in my new getup, I was so distracted by my reflection in the car windows, it took me a second to realize I was headed for Trashy Lingerie. Had Ramona gone in there? What the hell, I decided, take a peek. I felt weirdly liberated. My very oddness made me feel invisible, and no doubt all of the other low-end trannies in the hood were regulars already. I’d fade into the background. I opened the door.

“Welcome to Trashy!” A buxom young lady in a logoed T-shirt greeted me loudly. “Have you been here before?”

I froze. I didn’t even know what sort of voice to use. Male? Female? She-male? I shook my head, No. The wig jiggled. I tried to back out but she blocked me, smiling broadly.

“If you like I can show you our larger sizes for more statuesque ladies. Though you’re actually very slim-waisted.” She touched my shoulders appraisingly, as if measuring me for a strapless gown. I cleared my throat and spoke in a voice that, to my surprise, was actually deeper than my own.

“Thanks but…” To my horror, I spotted Her, Ramona, heading our way with a few hangers clutched in her hand. The shopgirl was oblivious.

“Still, your shoulders will be a problem for smaller pieces,” she went on. “What’s your shoe size?”

As Ramona stepped up, I shook my head and turned away, pretending to be fascinated with the makeup on the counter.

“Excuse me,” she asked the salesgirl. “Do you have these in crotchless?” She dangled slinky bits of black and pink. They didn’t look anything like underwear to me. More like trims she was thinking of adding to underwear.

“Only in the lavender,” the girl said.

“And where can I try them on?”

“Straight in the back.”

“Thank you.” Ramona smiled warmly at us and swiveled away. The shopgirl watched her go, perhaps, like me, imagining how she’d look decorated in those frills. But before I could slink off, she snapped back to my harsher reality.

“I see you’re looking at Azure Galaxy.”

“Um, who?” I had no idea what she meant. A fellow drag queen?

She snatched a bottle off the counter. “I love that one too. Let me show you.”

Too afraid to move, I stood like a statue while she drew on my face. “The sky tones bring out your eyes. And the glitter stands up to your strong features. There.” She squinted at me doubtfully and held up a mirror. “Perfect. Take a look?”

I looked. A very frightened, very ugly, old prostitute looked back. Then I spotted Ramona, swinging over again with her dainties. “Sorry,” I blurted. “I’m late. Got to go.”

“Come again,” the girl called after me. “You look really pretty!”

I jogged to my car, head down, and drew only a few stares and one honk from a passing trucker. I removed the wig and tried to find some kind of wipe or napkin. Of course there was none. Why would there be? This was my car. I tried to rub the blue glitter off my eyelids with spit but only smeared it. Now the whole area around my eyes sparkled. I looked like a raccoon on ecstasy. Then I saw the Mercedes heading south.

This time it was a pleasant surprise. My lady turned onto Beverly Boulevard and led me to the New Beverly Cinema, a rerun house
where I’d spent untold hours. Back on home turf, I parked leisurely and watched the mystery woman saunter up to the theater. I put my broken sunglasses back on to hide the glitter and followed. She went in, tossing a shopping bag with the Trashy logo into the garbage. Why would she dump her new items? the detective in me wondered. That place wasn’t cheap, added the husband. I waited a beat then bought a ticket, hoping the teenaged clerk wasn’t watching as I snuck her Trashy trash from the garbage on my way in.

15

THE DARK THEATER WAS
nearly empty, with featureless silhouettes scattered among the rows. I spotted a shapely shadow taking a seat in front and slid into my preferred spot, the center of the middle row. I hadn’t noticed the name of the film when I came in but I recognized it quickly:
They Live by Night
(1948), Nicholas Ray’s first film, the original doomed-lovers-on-the-run movie. Its story has been repeated so often, and is so stripped down to the core here, that the film came back to me, filtered by cinematic memory, as collage, a poem of images and gestures: depression-era gas station attendants who wore suits, long black cars jittering down narrow roads on skinny tires, Cathy O’Donnell’s sad eyes and pixie face and her body in those sweaters and skirts, Farley Granger’s creased hair and nervous hands molding emptiness.

Why do these old black-and-white movies feel so good to me? So rich, so creamy, so dreamy? It can’t be nostalgia. Color was in full command before I was born. I first saw these movies on late-night TV or video, and began only later to seek true prints. But somehow this realm of silver stars and gray shadows, black nights and slivered moons, seems closer to movie heaven, preserved in that house of secular worship where we few still go to sit silently in the dark.

By the dim light of a bright scene, I checked Ramona’s bag. The contents were fabric of some sort, but not the little nothings I expected and for a moment, drunk on the movie, I imagined a bloody scarf or something noir. I held the items up to catch the screen light and saw a bra in one hand, panties in the other. Both seemed quite nice, plain cotton and of reasonable sizes (big enough and small enough respectively) but nothing scandalous. Nothing Trashy. As I pondered this, the lights came up. The movie had ended. One fellow turned around in his seat, staring at me blankly and sucking soda through his straw. Scowling, I stuffed the underthings back into the bag and stood, remembering too late that my glasses were off and I looked like Ziggy Stardust’s older sister. And then I realized: the curvaceous form in the front row I thought was Ramona was really a corpulent man in Lennon glasses and a ponytail. A film nerd like me. The Mystery Lady had vanished.

I rushed from the dim movie theater into the brightly lit night. Darkness had fallen, and as always after a late matinee, reality seemed insubstantial, as if it had been soaking in sleep while I was gone. I peered up and down the boulevard, hoping to spot the suspect’s vehicle, to decipher the blinking sets of lights. I hustled across the lanes to my car, digging for keys, and the LA drivers, unused to an East Coaster diving into traffic midstream, swerved and honked, the sound of their horns bending around my ears. As I fumbled at my lock, still craning my head for Ramona, from the corner of my eye, I saw, or thought I saw, my own wife drive by. I spun around. She was headed east and I was on the wrong side. I took off running after her, the wrong way, on foot, for a block to the corner, and now drivers were honking and yelling and I was out of air, out of shape, my breath ablaze in my chest. And then I saw it, the Jesus fish on the back. It wasn’t Lala. Embarrassed, if only before myself and Jesus, I walked back to my car, the warm desert wind drying the sweat on my face.

I drove to Ramona Doon’s house and snooped around. It was
dark and silent. The curtains were drawn. I camped outside for a while, and then, accepting defeat, I called Lonsky to report. I’d lost both of our girls.

“Kornberg! Where have you been? I need an update on the case.”

“Yes, well, Mr. Lonsky, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but I lost the girl at the movies. I followed her in but she must have slipped out.”

He rumbled under his breath. “That was amateurish. Damned amateurish.”

“Sorry. But I guess I am an amateur, aren’t I?”

“Anything else? Anything that can help?”

“Well, actually, she left some things behind.” I hesitated. “Some underwear in a bag. Does that help?”

“Underwear?” He perked up. “Of course it does. She left it at the movies?”

“Not right on the seat. She went into a shop, bought some very expensive lingerie and I guess changed into it, then discarded her regular stuff in the trash.”

“You retrieved her soiled undergarments from the garbage?” he asked in his stentorian tones.

I shrugged and blushed at the phone. “I guess.”

“Nice work,” he boomed. “Now you’re thinking like a detective!”

“Really?” I couldn’t help feeling a tiny bit better.

“Anything else to report?”

“Well…” I decided to leave the part about the wig and falling into the seaweed aside for the moment. “Not really.”

“And she isn’t at home. You couldn’t even guess what direction she drove?”

“No, well. I guess I got distracted…”

“By?”

Now I regretted speaking. “My wife. I thought I saw her drive by, that’s all. But it wasn’t her.”

“I see.” There was a pause. “I think you’d better come over.”

16

MRS. MOON LET ME IN,
smiling and nodding this time, and gestured toward the study, where Lonsky waited, sitting in an armchair, a volume of Shakespeare in his hand. He was wearing a dark gray summer suit, pink shirt, and black tie, with black socks and black velvet slippers. He shut the book, then shook my hand gravely and gestured toward the chair that sat beside his, a chessboard on the low table between them.

“Shall we play?” he asked.

“No thanks,” I said. “I barely remember the rules.”

“Move a piece, Kornberg,” he muttered. “It helps me think.”

I shrugged and slid a pawn forward one space.

Lonsky spoke in low tones. “Firstly, my thanks. Although the denouement of the day’s events was other than desired, you acquitted yourself somewhat competently for a neophyte on his maiden voyage. Nevertheless you let the quarry slip the net and we must make amends.” He moved a pawn of his own, forward two spaces, to face mine. “I recommend you return to her home early tomorrow morning. When he loses a thread, the good detective returns to the last reliable point and attempts to find the trail. Your move.”