Orange County Noir (Akashic Noir) (16 page)

"Shouldn't you take your kids?"

"They've been, and I'll take them again before it ends.
Tonight it will be just you and me. How about it?"

I said yes. I said yes to everything-to Levi and his
schemes, now to Shepard.

I went to freshen up.

Levi called from another job while I was in the bathroom;
Shepard had run out of work for him. I told him I had to work
late. I'd been spending more and more time at Shepard's and
less and less time at our sorry excuse for a home. It was getting
to Levi. I knew because when he talked about Shepard, he no
longer used his name.

"The motherfucker tell you anything interesting?" or
"What's up with the motherfucker?" I found a bindle with
white powder in Levi's things. His skin was becoming all mottled and he was losing weight. He denied using crank, said
he had gotten it for a friend, but he was short-tempered and
negative. Now I just wanted to escape with Shepard, go someplace where Levi couldn't find me.

Shepard and I walked hand in hand to his dusty blue jag
and moments later were gliding down Broadway to Newport
and up to Del Mar, his hand on my knee, my hand on his thigh,
to where the dark sky was lit up all red from the lights on the
rides and the midway. The Ferris wheel spun lazily around,
its colorful, happy life temporary-like mine, I feared. This
happiness wouldn't last-it couldn't; it hadn't been a part of
the plan for me to fall for an Orange County Republican. Levi
would never let me have Shepard. I wanted to confess and tell
him what Levi was planning, but I didn't know how I could put
it where he wouldn't just fire me and tell me to be on my way.

We parked and walked toward the lights, toward the
Tilt-a-Whirl and the rollercoaster with purple neon cutting the black sky, teenagers on all sides of us running amok,
clutching cheap stuffed animals and stalks of cotton candy.
Shepard bought us caramel apples, fried Twinkies, and roasted
corn on the cob. We got wristbands and drank draft beer.

It was going on 11:00 and the fairgoers were pouring
through the gates, probably to get a jump on the freeways.
Shepard and I moved against the flow, heading toward the
livestock area, past Hercules, the giant horse, llama stalls, and
a corral where the pig races took place. He said he'd been coming here since he was a kid. Fair diehards moseyed about. My
phone rang-Levi's ringtone-but I ignored it, and I feared it.
Levi said he could always find me. Something about the GPS
positioning on my phone and how he'd rigged it. Cell phones
didn't make you freer-they made your whereabouts known,
and I didn't like it one bit, this hold Levi had on me.

Couples lingered in the shadows. Shadows scared me. I
worried Levi might be hiding in them. Lately everything got
on his nerves and he suspected everyone. He'd screamed at
the next-door neighbor to quit his fool singing. He'd even
pierced the pink inner tube in the pool because he no longer
liked seeing it floating there.

Shepard directed me to the metal bleachers around the
cattle arena. He picked me up, set me on one so our faces
were level, and kissed me. "You make me so happy," he said.

This tall bulky man had grown on me. He pulled a little
robin's egg-blue box from his pocket and flipped it open. A
diamond solitaire.

He took the ring from the box and slid it on my finger.
"You will, won't you?" he said. "Marry me?"

Levi was leaning over the railing of the balcony, smoking with
one of his lowlife loser buddies, when I arrived home at midnight. I'd taken off the ring and sequestered it at the bottom
of my tampon holder.

The light from the water bounced off Levi and his buddy
whose name I forgot. I gave them a half-hearted wave. Levi
nodded and smiled his lizard-cold smile.

"Where've you been?" he asked, flicking his cigarette butt
down into the pool as his buddy took off.

"Had to stay with the kids until Shepard got home." I took
a cigarette from Levi's pack on the cement floor.

"Fuck you did," he said.

I gave him a long look. It was always better to say less than
more.

"Where's the ring?" he said.

"What ring?"

"Mimi, this'll only work if you're straight with me about
the motherfucker."

I went to go into the apartment, but he grabbed my arm.
"I'm gonna tell him all about you, Mimi. You weren't supposed
to fall in love with the asshole. You love me, remember?"

I wrenched my arm away and hurried inside. I poured a
glass of water, trying to think.

Levi hurried in behind me. "Don't fucking walk away from
me, Mimi."

"I'll do what I want."

"Fuck you will." He pulled me to him, pressed his mouth
against mine, hiked his hand up my top. "C'mon, baby, what
happened to us?"

I pulled free. "Leave me alone, you asshole."

"I own you," he said. "I came all the way out here to find
you and claim you and now you're mine."

"Whatever drug you're doing, it's making you crazy."

"Crazy for you," he said, grabbing me with one hand and
undoing his belt buckle with the other.

I'd never given into a man forcing me and I wasn't about
to now. I tried pushing him away, but his grip on my arm only
grew tighter.

"You always liked it with me before," he said. "Mr. O.C.
motherfucker better'n me now, Mimi?" His face looked
strained, a Halloween mask. "He won't want you when I tell
him who you really are, when I tell him everything you planned.
He'll take his ring back and then where will you be?"

"What I planned?"

He jammed his hand down my pants and hurt me and
that's when something snapped. My prized marble roller sat
on the counter behind me, where it always was. I felt for it
with my free hand and almost had it, but it slipped away.
My hand landed on Levi's hammer. I brought it around and
cracked it against his skull as hard as I could. His sea-foam
green eyes went wide, as if he were seeing me for the first time.
Then he crumpled to the linoleum. A trickle of blood issued
from his ear.

"Levi!" I gasped. "Shit!"

The way his eyes gazed into the living room without blinking gave him a peaceful look I had never seen.

I tried to think. Should I pack up my things, including
my pastry roller, and split? I considered cleaning my fingerprints off everything in the apartment, but I wouldn't be able
to get rid of every little hair, every little cell of mine that had
flaked off. I knew about DNA. I could be easily tied to Levi,
even without a car or California driver's license. Even without my name on the month-to-month lease or on bills; I still
received my mail at Leonora's. To the mostly Latino transient residents, I must've looked like any other gringa. But I talked
to Levi on my cell phone all the time. I could even be tied
to him through Shepard. They would visit Levi's former employer and find me there, loving my new life.

No, I couldn't simply leave.

I pulled down the shades and locked the door. I wiped my
fingerprints off the hammer after placing it near Levi. I turned
on the shower as hot as I could stand, peeled off my clothes,
and stepped in. This would calm me and help me think.

As the scalding water poured down my face, it came to
me, what I would say and do: I came home, Levi was here with a
drug-dealing buddy, I took a shower and heard something. When I
got out of the shower, I found my boyfriend on the floor.

I turned off the water, wrapped myself in a towel, and
jumped into my role. I hurried out to the kitchen, as if I'd
heard something bad and found Levi hurt on the kitchen floor.
I bent down to see what was wrong. Water puddled about me
and mixed with Levi's blood. I ran screaming from the apartment onto the balcony. As I started down the steps, the towel
slipped from my body, and I let it. I was a crazy naked lady.
Residents-men in underwear and T shirts and women in
nightgowns-started emerging from their hovels.

"Call the police!" I made a good hysteric. Someone had
done my poor boyfriend in.

Women called in Spanish to each other. More than once
I heard the word "loco." A short dark woman with gold front
teeth wrapped me in a Mexican blanket, patted my wet hair,
and cooed to me in Spanish. The sirens grew closer. A crowd
had gathered around us and upstairs at the doorway to the
apartment.

There would be an investigation, but after a while I would
be cleared. No one ever saw us fight. There was no insurance settlement coming. Why would I kill my boyfriend? The authorities would search instead for the lowlife who did him-or
not. Probably not. Who cared about one more druggie dude
going bye-bye? My first chance I would call Shepard, tell him
details about what happened that he would have heard about
on the news. I would tell him how Levi made me say I was
his sister, had threatened my life even, had never wanted me
to fall for him. I would remind Shepard that I loved him, every inch of him. Shepard believed in me, would never think I
could do something like this.

I knew how to be patient. Shepard and Piece of Heaven,
California, would eventually be mine, and before long, the
ring would be back on my finger.

obbie froze as he felt a cold, metallic object press into
the back of his neck. He realized what it was. The
barrel of a handgun. This night was not turning out
the way he'd hoped.