Bellweather Rhapsody (23 page)

“So this is what it’s like outside my house. Huh. Looks the same.” Rome nudges his glasses and leans in close to Hastings’s wall of crime clippings. “Same violence. Same nutjobs. Like I never left.”

Hastings cannot argue.

“So where is she?” Rome asks. “Where’s the mystery psycho?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do. You went to her room this morning.”

“I know where her
room
is, Rome, but I don’t know where
she
is. There are conference sessions going on all over the hotel. She’s probably at one of them. Rome.” Hastings squints. “Look at you. You’re filthy.”

“Haven’t seen my shower since 1994. Well, I’ve seen it, but it’s been full of home repair manuals. Are you asking me to bathe? Do I offend your delicate sensibilities?”

“Don’t use my razor.”

Rome shuts the bathroom door and turns on the taps. In a moment, Hastings hears him shrieking that he’s
melting, meeeeeeelting!
Rome hasn’t acted this spry, this jokey, in years. It worries Hastings. It feels slightly desperate, as though Rome’s brain is sparking with nervous energy. Maybe he should have let Sheila book him his own room after all.

Frowning, Hastings considers the cardboard box that holds Rome’s worldly possessions—at least those required for a few nights’ stay, which Rome did not remove from his bed as requested. He drops the box on the floor and kicks it aside.

He takes the papers the girl gave him out of his coat pocket and smoothes them flat on his desk. The first article is from the
San Francisco Chronicle
—so she wasn’t kidding when she said she was searching newspapers all over the country. He knows that this ability ought to fill him with awe, with wonder, but it makes him feel terribly small in a terribly large world.

The date of the article makes him feel even smaller, and older: 1969. A single article hidden in thirty years of news, and that computer found it in thirty seconds.

Hastings clears his throat and murmurs as he reads. “‘Body of Local Man Found, Missing Since Concert. The body of Kevin Montrose, twenty-five, was discovered in Golden Gate Park on December twelfth by a park-goer’s dog. Mr. Montrose appears to have sustained a head wound after a fall. His fiancée, Alison Bean, twenty-four, reported him missing on December second when he did not meet her following the concert as planned.’ Graduate student at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music . . . here we go: ‘Montrose was last seen performing at a concert in the park the night of his disappearance. Viola Fabian, twenty-three, who accompanied the deceased on piano, was the last to see him alive. Ms. Fabian told investigators that Montrose asked her to deliver his trumpet to his fiancée, and that he would follow shortly. He was not seen again.’”

He looks up at his wall of news clippings. They are all sordid tales of victims, of crime scenes and criminals, of confessions and trials and technicalities. Yet they share an essential DNA, a circumstantial gravity—of course it was the boyfriend, of course it was the boss—and Hastings has trained his gut to recognize the signs. He knows that this story of Kevin Montrose, or rather, the story of his death and discovery, is the prologue to a longer one. So where is the rest? Was Viola ever seriously questioned? She must have been if she was truly the last to see him alive. The article reports that the police have not ruled out foul play, that the investigation is ongoing. Or was, thirty years ago.

Barbara Stanwyck all but winks at him from his calendar.
You know what that means.

Whatever happened, she got away with it.

14

“B
UNNY BOY,
PSST.
”

Pete Moretti the Tenor is standing on the other side of the dinner buffet from Rabbit, and he is talking to Rabbit, smiling at Rabbit—in fact, it appears as though Pete Moretti has
cut the line
in order to be standing directly across from Rabbit. They’re reaching for the same tongs to grab a slice of grayish roast beef.

“What’s your real name, by the way?”

“Rabbit.” He feels himself blushing in the steam rising off the warming pan.

Pete laughs. “No, your
real
name.”

Rabbit’s face blushes brighter. “Bert. Bertram,” he says.

“My middle name’s Ernest. If it makes you feel any better.” Pete flops a lump of mashed potatoes on his plate. “Want?” he says, and drops a scoop on Rabbit’s plate.

“Thanks.”

“Gravy?”

Rabbit nods and Pete smashes a dent in his mashed potatoes with the gravy ladle. “My
nonna
taught me this,” Pete says. “She called it making lakes.”

“Thanks,” Rabbit repeats. Why oh why can’t he think of anything witty to say? Why can’t he be easy? Why can’t he be cool? He grins moronically because he knows the answer to all these questions: he is too happy, he is too excited. This is too awesome to even pretend to be cool.

“What are you doing later, Bert?” Pete tosses him a roll. It hits Rabbit’s plate and bounces into his mashed potatoes.

“Nothing yet,” Rabbit says, “Ernie.”

An easy smile slides across Pete’s face and every one of Rabbit’s internal organs turns to slush.

“Room ten-thirty-three. The Boys from Buffalo are throwing a party in honor of the dearly departed Jill Faccelli. It was going to be a search party, but who are we kidding, right? It’s an Irish wake. Since you and your sister were so close to her, we’d love you to be the guests of honor.”

“Yeah,” says Rabbit. “Yeah, that would be fun.” His mouth is saying the words while his brain is thinking that using Jill’s disappearance, her theoretical death, as an excuse to get tanked is in horrendously poor taste. Then his heart is feeling Pete Moretti tap his elbow. His heart is hearing Pete say he’ll see Bert later, whenever he wants to come up, they’ll be there from eight on.

Alice goes nuts. Rabbit knew she wouldn’t take the invitation or the party in the spirit it was intended; hell, he had a hard time himself, which is why he didn’t tell her until they were back in his room after dinner. Even so, he had never expected her reaction to be so violent. She screams at him—no words, no accusations, just a long, high wail that terrifies Rabbit’s roommate, Daniel (second-chair clarinet, concert band), who was already less than enthused that a third party would be sleeping on their floor for the remainder of the weekend.

“I’m going to take a shower,” Dan says. Rabbit hears him lock the bathroom door from inside.

“How can you even . . . Rabbit, what’s the matter with you? What those idiots are doing tonight is
gross
. And you want to be a part of it?” She takes hold of his arms and sits them both down on his bed. “I thought you believed me. I thought it meant something to you that a girl is dead. Now you want to dance on her grave? Is this ‘getting low and staying low’? Is this how you pay your respects to a—a lost, sad girl, a girl you didn’t even know—by drinking warm Coors? Making out with some skanky band geek? I mean, you went to a Statewide party last night, you know what they’re all about.”

The defiance Rabbit felt at dinner yesterday, the urge to tell his sister to take a flying leap, makes him sit up straighter. “You don’t have to come,” he says. “I’m not holding a gun to your head.”

Alice crosses her arms. “I’m coming and you can’t stop me. I’m going to remind them what assholes they’re being.”

“Don’t you dare, Alice.”

He is angry with her. Not just defiant,
angry.
Whatever happened to Jill, they can’t
do
anything about it, so why shouldn’t they enjoy themselves? For what purpose would his sister even
want
to go, if she’s so morally opposed to it? Other than the same purpose Alice is always serving: her own. The constant desire to be the center of attention, the most important girl in the room.

Alice’s eyes cloud. “Rabbit,” she says softly, “what’s going on? Why are you acting like—”

“Like what? Like how am I acting?”

“Like someone else,” Alice says.

Because I am in love with a boy who might like me back,
he thinks.
Because my heart is running the show today.
“I’m only me, Alice,” he says. “If you’re coming, let’s go.”

The Boys from Buffalo—or the BFB, as their matching homemade T-shirts proclaim—are already drunk when Alice and Rabbit reach room 1033: drunk and beatboxing, that deadliest of combinations. They are singing, harmonizing sloppily to “Groove Is in the Heart,” which is cranked on a stereo in one of two suites connected by an adjoining door. It’s barely nine and standing room only. It’s going to be the longest night of Alice’s life.

Well. Considering last night, maybe the second-longest night.

Someone hands her a beer—Coors Light, what else?—and Alice hands it off to her brother. Rabbit’s head is nodding to the beat. He’s grinning. He looks happier than Alice can remember seeing him in a long time, and she feels sick. This party is sick, these people are sick. The world is sick. When another beer is passed in her direction, Alice keeps it for herself.

She recognizes faces. Harrison Map, Violet, and Jennifer Whatever, from dinner yesterday, are perched on the heater that runs the length of the window, knees drawn to their chins. They’re throwing their heads back and laughing wildly, and when they see Rabbit they wave him over. He joins them without a second’s hesitation. When she sees one of the Buffalo boys, the gorgeous dark-haired tenor who was singing lead when they showed up at dinner yesterday, Alice squeezes her eyes shut. That moment was a million years ago. The Alice who saw that gorgeous boy is a changed girl.

Is what she feels or looks like important? Will she accomplish anything worthwhile before she dies? For she’ll die just as surely as these other people, these strangers drinking Coors and rubbing up against each other, whipping themselves to a froth. She presses her back to the wall beneath the smoke detector and drinks her beer.
Look at all of us,
she thinks.
All of us singers and actors and musicians, all of us dreamers. All our lives, each of us hearing the same things: you’re so bright, you’ve got such potential.
That’s what she feels in this room—a dense, choking fog of human potential. It fills her nose and stings her eyes.

All we need is a spark.

The gorgeous tenor crosses to the window and joins the conversation with her brother and the kids from dinner. Through the milling crowd, Alice watches them. Violet is smiling; she is also gorgeous, Alice thinks. Alice finishes her beer and, like magic, another appears in her hand. These college boys sure know how to host.

Her brother is positively glowing, his cheeks pinked by beer. She loves her brother Rabbit—her brother Bertram. Bert, the good twin. The moral twin, the kind, quiet, smart twin, who’s changing in front of her. She can’t allow Bert to be compromised by this sick, perverted world. Alice needs him to stay Rabbit, needs to remind him that he matters to her. That there is such a thing as good, that Rabbit is good, that she’ll never give up on good.

The song on the stereo in the next room flicks her head back like it’s a silver Zippo.

“Hey, Rabbit!” she shouts. “Listen!”

The din of the party swallows her voice. She shoves her way to the window. Her brother is talking to the tenor when Alice grabs his arm and hisses in his ear, “Rabbit, listen to the song! Listen to what it is!”

“What?” he says.

“Oh, come on, you still know the dance. I know you do.” Alice spreads her arms and backs up, clearing a small space. “We only spent an entire summer learning it.”

She feels the tenor’s eyes on her. She feels Rabbit’s eyes, and Harrison’s and Violet’s and Jennifer’s.

“Whitney Houston?” the tenor says. “When did this turn into my little sister’s sleepover?”

“Rabbit,” says Alice, “get
over
here.” She box-steps and makes a vine to her right. There are overhead hand claps. A spin and a head tilt. A shoulder shrug and a shimmy. She closes her eyes and remembers dancing with her brother in the den, in front of the stereo. She’d begged and begged her mother to buy it for her, even though her birthday was a long way off, and then one Saturday night, after a particularly grueling week of doing all her regular chores
plus
watering the flowers and the lawn,
Whitney
was waiting on her pillow. Listening to the cassette brought on a sensation of intense physical joy that ran from her ears to her feet to her butt to the tips of her fingers. It
made
her dance. She had choreography for every song, but the steps for “I Wanna Dance with Somebody,” her favorite by a mile, came to her on a wave of divine inspiration. The funny thing was, unlike almost anything else she ever did with her brother, she hadn’t had to rope Rabbit in against his will. He’d been watching, interested, drawing a little closer with every passing minute. She finally held out her hand to him.

“You’ve seen it enough. You must know it by now.”

“I do,” he said, and smiled at her.

He still does. He knows. Alice knows he knows.

Of
course
Rabbit knows. Of
course
he remembers every kick, every hip check, every spin his sister choreographed to Whitney Houston the summer they were seven, but there is no way in hell he is going to dance with her.

Not here. Not when he’s seventeen, drinking in a room full of strangers. Not in front of Pete. Not when she’s ground this party to a halt, when all eyes, as always, are on her. Alice looks at him. She’s singing, wants to feel the
heat
with somebody. When she sings she can’t fake it, can’t hide herself, and he can see in her eyes that she’s heartbroken, though he can’t imagine what she could possibly be heartbroken about.

She hardly knew Jill. And Jill is—Jill can’t
really
be dead.

The mood is changing. What was once a stand-around-and-drink party is beginning to jostle itself. Several girls behind his sister, watching her steps, have begun to copy her, and pockets of rhythmic swaying have broken out. Another Buffalo boy, dark, with a high little beer belly straining against his blue BFB T-shirt, appears beside Pete.