Authors: Peter Moore Smith
Los Angeles
Copyright © 2005 by Peter Moore Smith
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including
information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may
quote brief passages in a review.
Little, Brown and Company
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Visit our website at
www.HachetteBookGroup.com
.
First eBook Edition: June 2009
ISBN: 978-0-316-07713-2
Contents
Also by Peter Moore Smith
Raveling
For my mother
I
LOOK BACK AND FEEL TERROR — COMPREHENSIVE, ABSOLUTE
— like I was living through one of those familiar bytes of live violence on the news. But at the time, at that instant, I
stood on the cool of the kitchen tiles in my charcoal-colored bathrobe, sipping my usual fusion of coffee and psychopharmaceuticals.
I had pulled the miniblinds up, uncharacteristically, because I was searching for that cat. She had been mewling out there
all night, crying like a human baby, and now, of course, the moment I decided to look for her, she was gone. It was probably
the medication, but I found myself mesmerized by the unfamiliar six-in-the-morning brilliance, entranced by the sunlight glinting
off the crappy sedans and SUVs in the parking lot below. The whole scene seemed so oddly calculated. Soft beams weaving over
the blue and white hyacinths of the old man’s overgrown garden next door, hard gleams shimmering off the waxy leaves of his
laurel tree — it was all almost too thought-out, as though devised by some cinematographic genius. In the quiet rustle of
overhanging branches, I even thought I heard a director whisper,
“Action!”
Then, shattering my reverie, the phone rang.
I had been expecting a call, actually, from my father’s lawyer’s office because there had been a problem with one of my credit
cards at the Vons the other day, and I had left a message with one of the assistants to sort it out. My only thought when
I picked up was, why would they call so early?
“Hello?” I answered.
She said my name.
Then,
click.
It was her, it was Angela, there was no doubt about it.
Unlike that cat, Angela had been absent all night. I had stayed awake long past the hour she usually came over, then grown
bored of waiting and had used the free time to rewrite a few pages of my screenplay before taking a couple of Restorils and
crawling off to bed.
Right now I replaced the phone in its cradle, thinking she would call back any second. She probably wanted to explain where
she had been last night, I told myself, and had been cut off, that’s all.
I looked out the window again. A man I had never seen before walked from my building to his car. He removed his gray suit
jacket and laid it neatly over the passenger seat before starting his old Honda and driving away. I tried to imagine the office
he worked in — a desk, a computer, a coffee mug filled with pencils, maybe even a potted plant, its tendrils curling.
Then too much time passed, too many blue minutes on the blue digital clock of the coffeemaker. This wasn’t right, I kept thinking.
She should have called back by now. I picked up again, punched star-69 and listened to the smooth electronic voice of, the
computerized operator tell me the number of the last call that had come through. I was instructing myself not to freak out.
The whole time I was thinking, Stay calm, stay focused. I wrote Angela’s cell number down on an old unfilled prescription
slip and dialed it immediately, listening to those five impersonal rings before her own recorded message said, “Hi, it’s me.”
She was too cheerful, too sincere. It was an answering-machine answer and didn’t capture her personality at all. “Leave a
message, I’ll call you back.”
This made no sense. If Angela had just called from her cell, why wasn’t she answering it now?
I replaced the cordless in its cradle once again and picked up my coffee mug, taking that final, gritty sip.
I lowered the miniblinds.
I pressed my ear to the wall between our apartments.
I walked out into the hallway and knocked on her door, even though I knew there would be no answer.
I considered the way she had said my name, that tone in her voice, and waited a fraction less calmly.
With every passing second I became a fraction less calm.
I dialed her number again, this time leaving my own message. “It’s me,” I said, trying to make my voice sound unconcerned.
“What did you want, anyway?” But since I hadn’t spoken to anyone all morning, it came out broken.
I let ten more minutes pass, then called again.
“Is everything all right?” I asked the telephone, much more clearly this time. “Angela, what the fuck is going on?”
I hung up.
“A woman,” I said less than a minute later, “my neighbor.” This time I had dialed 911. I knew it was alarmist, but I was starting
to panic.
“What about her, sir?”
“Something’s happened. She’s afraid.”
“Can you be more specific?”
I gave the emergency operator Angela’s address; except for her apartment number, it was the same as mine.
“What is she afraid of?”
“I don’t know,” I blurted. “She called… she called from the dark. It was in the tone of her voice. It was unmistakably the
voice of a person calling from the dark.”
“From the dark?”
I stepped out of the kitchen. “From the dark.” I had an image of Angela. She was inside a closet, under a bed, deep inside
a thicket of bushes. She was hiding, terrified, in danger.
I was agitated, I admit, becoming increasingly irrational.
“Did she say something was wrong?”
“Not in so many words.”
There was a pause, then the sound of hard fingernails typing on a computer keyboard.
I thought I detected the sound of disbelief, too, that telltale sigh of skepticism.
“Can you send someone over?”
The light, if you’ve ever noticed, does things to the human voice. In bright light, people tend to speak through their teeth,
unless their eyes are closed, which causes them to speak softly. In midafternoon light, people speak normally, their voices
originating from inside their throats. As the light fades into evening, the human voice fades with it. Alcohol, I’ve noticed,
can keep a voice bright and strong as the light disappears. In evening darkness, as the eyes become accustomed to moonlight
or artificial incandescence, the voice grows quieter, steadier, more intimate; in total darkness, in complete black, the voice
is often just a whisper.
Try it. Close your eyes and speak:
A loud voice in the dark is as unnatural as a scream.
When Angela called and said my name, her voice was barely a voice at all, but it contained everything — confusion, panic,
fear. Inside it was everything I needed to hear.
______
Weeks before, a couple of months before, I’m still not clear on what day this was, obviously, but at some uncertain point
in time, there was a soft, uncertain knock. It was early evening, dinnertime for most people, morning for me. I looked through
the peephole and saw a blurred, convex image of a pretty young woman holding a bright orange casserole dish, her hands inside
two floral pot holders. I had the idea that she was on some sort of evangelical mission, so when I opened the door, I gave
her my iciest smile.
I expected a reaction. I expected, at least, a look of mild apprehension.
But she just stood there, paralyzed.
The light in the hallway was blue fluorescent, a grim, impoverished glow containing only the cold end of the spectrum, and
far too bright for these pale irises. I squinted automatically, raising a hand to my forehead, and waited impatiently for
her to say something.
A black girl in her late twenties, relatively tall, with long straightened hair colored an unnatural reddish blond, she wore
jeans, a Guns N’ Roses T-shirt. Her feet were bare, her toenails painted a glittery green metallic. Oddly, her eyes were cobalt,
azure, robin’s egg — a shade of blue I didn’t know human eyes came in.
A good five seconds passed.
“I’m so sorry,” she said finally. And something peculiar was developing in those eyes, too, something I didn’t expect. “I
didn’t mean…”
My own eyes, I should mention, are the color of Caucasian infant flesh. My skin is marble-veined, ivory, translucent. My hair
is snowy white, aluminum, a shock of fiber optics. I am white, white, all white, even my eyelashes are white, and what isn’t
white is stark pink. I am, if you haven’t guessed already, an albino. “It’s all right,” I said. “I know you didn’t mean anything.”
I had to clear my throat because I hadn’t spoken to anyone in days. “It surprises people sometimes, that’s all.” I forced
what I hoped was a warmer smile onto my lips. “My appearance.”
There was something else about this woman, something genuinely… not contrite, exactly, or even apologetic — her expression
had gone from stunned to understanding almost instantly, like water pouring into a glass —
kind,
I guess is the word.
“I’m Angela?” she said as if it were a question. “I just moved in down the hall?”
A scent of spices rose from the casserole dish, something mouthwatering I didn’t recognize.
Covertly I inhaled, straining to identify it.
“I heard you,” I said. “I mean, yesterday I heard the truck outside.” There had been the wheezing of air brakes, a couple
of moving men shouting to one another in the stairwell.
“I hope the noise didn’t bother you.”
I shrugged. “I sleep during the day.”
“Me, too!” she exclaimed. “I sleep during the day, too!” It was as though we had something so incredibly uncommon in common,
as though we were the only two human beings in West Hollywood who stay awake all night. Then her face filled with realization,
with that look of kindness again. “I’m really sorry.” Her voice was slightly raspy, permanently damaged. As if a low volume
now would prevent her from disturbing me then, she let it drop to just above a whisper. “Did I wake you?”
I suddenly became aware of my frayed bathrobe, the chalky skin beneath it. I pulled it closer across my chest, tightening
the belt. “It doesn’t matter. I’m not going anywhere.” I wasn’t adequately medicated at the moment, having just gotten out
of bed, and was becoming more and more self-conscious, wary of a strange emotion I hadn’t experienced in a long time.
She inched forward, those intense blue eyes growing wider, and somehow bluer. “I always think it’s nice, you know, when I
move somewhere new, to make something special for my neighbors, especially my next-door neighbor.” She laughed, maybe a little
too cheerfully. “You know what I mean? It’s sort of like an apology in advance. But maybe, maybe I already owe you one for
the noise. Anyway,” she added, “I made lamb stew. If you’re —”
I didn’t bother to hide my amazement. “Holy shit.”
“— a vegetarian, I can always —”
“No,” I said. “No, no.”
“Well…” She held out the casserole, eyebrows lifted. “I hope you like it.”
I took the bright dish and floral mitts into my hands, an awkward exchange because we had to do it — because we were strangers
— without touching.
“My mother used to make lamb stew,” I confessed.
“Really?”
There was another lull in the action, as though a piece of dialogue had been cut from the script. We stood there silently,
regarding one another, waiting, awkwardly smiling. Finally, I offered her one of those I-have-to-go-now head jerks, as if
something desperately important awaited me inside my apartment.
“Um…” She bit her lip. “Aren’t you going to tell me
your
name?”
Now it was my turn to hesitate.
My name.
This is always embarrassing, but around the time I was born, my father worked on various films as a kind of associate producer,
procuring actors, securing locations, setting up meetings. It was, it continues to be, his greatest talent. In the movie
Barbarella,
on which he worked for Dino De Laurentiis in this capacity, there is an absurd character with white hair and white-feathered
wings whose name is Pygar the Angel. And my parents, under the psychedelic influence of the era, so the story goes, named
me after him.
I should be thankful; I could be named Pygar.
I had to force myself to tell her, but when I did, her whole body seemed to brighten. “What are the chances?” she asked.
“The chances of what?”
“I’m
Angela,
and you’re
Angel.”
I hadn’t noticed the similarity at all, to tell the truth. Besides, I imagined the chances were relatively high — they’re
just names.
But it didn’t matter anymore, because at that moment, the woman who had told me her name was Angela turned around and vanished
into her own apartment, her swiftly closing door forcing an artificial breeze down the corridor.