Sunset City (3 page)

“You should, though,” Audrey said.

Danielle rolled her eyes. “Enough. We have to go. We're meeting people for dinner.”

I wondered if she was running away from the conversation. I decided not to bring up her job next time we met.

“Well, it's great to see you,” I said.

“Me, too,” Danielle said. “This was fun. I'll see you at the screening?”

“Sure,” I said. “Text me the details.”

Audrey rose and smiled.

“Bye,” she said. “It was nice meeting you.”

Danielle got up, swinging her handbag onto her shoulder. She left the envelope of cash on the bar.

“Hey, you're forgetting this,” I said, picking it up. It was soggy with condensation from her glass.

“Keep it,” she said.

“No. That's nuts.”

“I don't need it. I don't want anything from
her
.”

I recognized the tone she reserved for Sally, full of contempt. I knew her well enough to let the subject drop. I nodded, put the envelope in my bag, and waved goodbye. At least I'd tried. Not that I minded keeping the cash. Danielle was always weird about money. I guess it means something different when you grow up rich.

I
n the dank concrete police station Detective Ash asked me questions. As long as I kept talking he seemed pleased, and I didn't have to think about those photographs in the manila folder. As long as I kept talking, Danielle seemed alive.

“What was she doing in that motel room?” Ash said.

“I don't know.”

“Was she seeing anybody?”

“She didn't mention anyone.”

“Who did she meet at the motel?”

“I don't know,” I said. “I told you everything she said.”

“Was she turning tricks?” he said.

“What?” I said.

He regarded me with this patient unwavering gaze, oddly intimate.

“I don't know,” I said.

“Did she ever do anything like that before?”

“Sort of,” I said.

“Tell me about that.”

“This was years ago,” I said. “We were like nineteen.”

“Okay.”

“She had a job dancing at Dolls. This regular at the club, this rich guy, he was really into her. He offered her two thousand dollars to spend the night with him.”

“What happened?”

“She did it. It was a lot of money. And he was nice. She liked him, too. I mean, she knew him, it's not like he was a stranger.”

“What was his name?” he said.

“Tom, Tim, maybe. I can't remember.”

“Where did they spend the night?” he said.

“A fancy hotel. He was rich.”

“Was that the only time?”

“No, she saw him again. A few times, I guess. It didn't seem dangerous. Danielle felt like she'd pulled off a scam, in a way. All that cash in one night—she said it was easy.”

I remembered thinking it wasn't that big a deal. I might have done the same thing, if I'd had the opportunity.

“Were there others?” he said.

“I don't know,” I said. “We stopped hanging out.”

“How did she get along with her mother?” he said.

“She didn't. Danielle hated Sally.”

He waited for me to say more. I hesitated. Even if she was dead, they were still her secrets.

“Talk to me, Charlotte. You're helping Danielle by talking to me.”

His hand touched my arm. His warmth in the cold room felt like a terrible kindness.

“Sally expected Danielle to go to some fancy school and join the Junior League or whatever. Danielle wasn't interested in
that world.”

The detective nodded, made some notes.

“What else?” he said.

“Isn't that enough?” I said.

“You tell me.”

“Sally worked all the time. She was never around. They weren't close, that's all.”

He kept me there a while longer, asking question after question, repeating himself. I went through the same information three, four times. I was too tired to cry. And finally, it ended. He called to the other cop, who walked me out to a squad car. Ash stood by the building with his arms at his sides while bugs danced under the yellow streetlight. It had stopped raining. The police car smelled of old socks, dirty plastic. I stared out the window the whole way home.

B
y morning the city was hot and muggy, awash in dirty yellow air. I changed clothes and went for a run. I headed towards the museum district, where buildings of cool stone rose from the ground. I followed the crushed granite trail behind the zoo, circling the park, passing the man-made pond. I jumped over steaming puddles and jogged home through the neighborhood, brushing the elephant ear begonias that draped over the sidewalk. Some of the broad leaves sagged, broken by the heavy rains. Sweat soaked my clothes. I ran fast, trying not to think, but I couldn't keep Danielle out of my head.

We had first met freshman year of high school, at the movie theater where we both worked. She stole money from the box office, which we used to buy weed from the projectionist. We smoked on the roof, crouched behind the big
R
of the theater sign. We could see the Galleria and Memorial Park, could turn in a circle and follow the Loop from the mall to the Astrodome, north to the Heights, the whole green tree-lined city, almost scenic. The roof, not the cash or the pot, kept us at that dismal job for nearly a year.

We hung out at Danielle's house, which we often had to ourselves. Sally worked long hours, and Danielle and I pilfered her liquor and swam in the pool. I felt so lucky to be Danielle's friend. She was funny and beautiful. We talked about everything.

I hated it when Sally came home. She and Danielle always fought, and I hid in Danielle's room or read magazines in the pool house, played music loud to drown out the yelling. Even worse, Sally went out of her way to be nice to me, which hurt Danielle's feelings. It was weird all the way around. Still, I liked it better than my place. We had only three rooms, and my mom was always home.

Danielle was easily the coolest girl at our school. She wore outfits no one else could pull off—scarves and hats and glamorous upswept hair. She dressed for class like a movie star at some gala, and it seemed elegant, never pretentious. Sometimes being around her made me feel sparkly, too. But other times I felt like nothing next to her. Whatever I did, she would do it louder, sexier. If a boy liked me, Danielle would come around, bright and silly, and he couldn't help but be into her instead. It wasn't her fault. She was like candy, irresistible. A glow came off her.

She was good to me in ways that mattered. Back in middle school and high school everyone assumed my mom was a junkie. Not just kids, the teachers, too. I could see the judgment in their faces. But they didn't understand that my mom was sick. She took medicine to help with the pain and keep her calm. The doctors were always running tests and giving her new prescriptions. They never figured out what was wrong, but that didn't make it any less real. She couldn't work, couldn't get through a day without an attack of pain so acute it left her unable to stand.

Danielle didn't care what the other kids said. She and my mom got along, too, the few times Danielle came over. Danielle treated her like a person, never acted scared or weirded out, even when my mom was so sick or zonked on meds that she couldn't speak. After my mom died, Danielle helped me clean the apartment. She threw out a bunch of junk and repainted the walls while I was in a daze of grief. She brought me presents: throw pillows for the couch, posters, a set of matching dishes. Eventually she moved in.

As I cleaned out my mother's things I found pill bottles all over the place, in cabinets and drawers, in the pockets of her sweaters. Demerol, Xanax, Percocet, Oxycontin. It was senior year, and my mom was dead. We had parties.

The pills kept coming, automatic refills from my mom's mail-order pharmacy. Massive amounts of them. Danielle and I started selling them to friends, friends of friends, kids from school. We made plenty of money, enough to pay the rent and bills and not have to work. It went on like that for nearly a year. When the drugs dried up I felt relieved, like my mom had finally finished dying.

I actually liked being sober, having energy again. I enrolled in a few classes at the community college and got a new restaurant job. But Danielle loved getting high. After the pills were gone she started snorting heroin. At first it didn't seem that different—just one more drug to try. But Danielle changed when she started shooting up. The dope made her slow and vacant, no fun to talk to. Soon all she thought about was getting high. I knew it was my fault, that my mom's pills got her addicted.

I tried to help her. I gave her rides to the methadone clinic, I encouraged her. She would lie to me, say she was clean, but I would come home from school to find her sweating and shaking,
and I'd know she had a fever from a dirty batch. She couldn't quit.

Seeing Danielle like that, nodding, her eyes glazed, her arms bruised—it scared me. She'd get high and drink Cokes and suck on hard candies, letting the plastic wrappers fall as she nodded in and out, idly scratching her arm. Those wrappers littered every room. Eventually Sally found out and quit giving her money. Maybe Sally thought that would make it easier for Danielle to kick, if she had to get a job and go to work every day. But Danielle started dancing and all those girls were doing drugs, too.

One night I went out with friends from work and drank too much tequila. I could hardly move the next morning, for the nausea and pain. In the kitchen I poured a ginger ale and began searching for aspirin.

“You poor baby,” Danielle said. “Why don't you try this. Come on, it's a painkiller. Your headache will go away.”

Still drunk, I assented and let her tie a scarf around my arm. I was grateful for her touch. I'd missed her. She slid the needle in with such care. To be the focus of her attention—it was the best feeling, until the dope hit, and then
that
was the best feeling. For a few minutes I cared about nothing, held in a soft, swirling cloud, until the swirling part took over and I vomited for half an hour. My headache returned, more intense than before. Danielle hardly noticed because she was high, too. I did heroin a few more times after that. I was trying to keep up with her, trying to be with her, but it was never any fun for me. Soon she hooked up with Joey and moved out. And then she went to prison, twenty-four months for possession.

After seeing her on Sunday, I had thought we would be friends again. I kept accidentally thinking that way, and then I remembered she was dead. My mind was going in circles:
it didn't make sense, it couldn't be real, she was fine, I'd just seen her. It felt like I could call her up and she'd answer and I could tell her about the police station. She would laugh about me fainting, we would turn it into a funny story, an inside joke, part of our shared history.

I sat at the computer and typed in Danielle's website, Sweet Dreamz.net. I did it without really knowing why. Maybe I just wanted to see her.

A dozen close-up photos of girls were displayed on a pink grid. You could click on each one to watch a teaser or pay eighteen dollars to get the whole video. I saw an image of Danielle. Hair in pigtails, she leaned forward to show her cleavage. I clicked on her picture and it went to a video clip, twenty seconds of her squatting in stilettos, rubbing her shaved pussy and pinching her nipples, fingernails flashing in the studio light. She looked into the camera and moaned. “$17.95” flashed on the screen and Danielle said, “I'm so-o wet. I need to get fucked.”

I clicked on another video, with Danielle and Audrey together. Danielle bent at the waist, licking and squeezing Audrey's tits. They were smaller than Danielle's and obviously real, with long brown nipples. Danielle's ass bounced in the foreground, and Audrey wailed, her face contorted. The image cut to the price screen again, and a man's voice said, “Hot lesbian sluts. Watch these sluts come!” Another clip showed Audrey being fucked from behind, pounded by a guy, her eyes dazed and huge, her nipples erect.

The videos embarrassed me and I wished I hadn't watched them. I was sad and turned on, and irritated that I could be aroused by something so tacky. I was mad at myself for watching, for being such a perv. What would I tell Danielle next time I saw her? And then I remembered that she was dead.

I slammed the laptop shut and tossed it aside. I was cry
ing again. I had to get out of the apartment, be around people. I needed whiskey. Several whiskeys. I texted my boyfriend Michael,
I need a drink. Meet me?
He wrote back,
At Harp, come on
.

I would tell Michael about Danielle, I would cry while he held me and tried to comfort me. And once that happened, I knew it would seem real. I rode my bike to the Harp, a pub housed in a ramshackle bungalow. I pushed through the crowd to the wooden bar. Pockmarks distorted the neon reflection along its length. Michael sat on a stool in the corner, looking at his phone. The bartender brought my whiskey and I took a long sip. I went over to him.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hi, baby,” he said. He smiled weakly, and I saw that he was very drunk, barely balanced on his stool.

“How long have you been here?” I asked.

“I don't know. Let's get another round.”

“You get it. I'm going outside,” I said.

The noise and the air-conditioning and the crowd were too much for me. I could feel tears already burning my eyes. I found an empty picnic table on the patio. This corner near the building was dark, away from the streetlights. Finally Michael stumbled outside, carrying two whiskeys. He sat across from me on the opposite bench and took a cigarette from my pack. I lit it for him. I'd rarely seen him smoke. I lit one for myself, too.

“Charlotte, we have to talk,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Something happened.”

He looked at me strangely. “How'd you know?” he said.

“What do you mean?”

I wanted him to see that I was upset and put his arms around me, but he was too drunk, he wasn't paying attention. He took a deep breath, looked away from me.

“I saw Sonja,” he said.

“So what.” Sonja was his ex. I knew she worked at the art supply store and lived nearby. I saw her around the neighborhood sometimes, too. I didn't care about her or whatever gossip she had told him. Danielle was dead. Who gave a fuck about Sonja?

“We . . .” he started and stopped. “Charlotte, I'm sorry,” he tried again. “You know I love you. I respect you. I know this isn't fair.”

“What isn't?” I said slowly.

“I slept with her,” he said.

I thought of Sonja's long red hair, her pale freckled arms. I'd always thought she was way prettier than me.

“I didn't plan it,” he said. “It just sort of happened.”

I couldn't think properly. I felt stunned, slow. I was glad we were outside in the dark. I didn't want him to see my face while he was saying these things.

“I ran into her at a show. At Rudyard's. We got to talking and it was like—like old times, I guess. Charlotte, I'm really sorry.”

A question occurred to me. “When?” I said. “When did you sleep with her?”

“It was like a month ago.”

“Jesus, Michael.”

“I know, I know, I should have told you earlier.”

“You should have told me? You should have never done it!”

“I know, you're right.”

“Just that one time?”

“Well . . .”

“You've been fucking her for a month? How many times?”

“I don't see why that matters.”

“Where? At her place?”

He shrugged, miserably.

“Oh, at your place? In your bed? Where I've slept, like hundreds of times?”

“I'm sorry,” he said.

“Are you going to see her again?” I said.

“I'm not explaining this very well,” Michael said.

“Then explain it better,” I said.

“I'm going back with her. We're back together. I can't see you anymore.”

I felt the words before I understood their meaning. It was a physical feeling, a dizziness and a pain in my stomach. I flinched.

“You're great,” he was saying. “You'll find someone, I know you will. Don't take it personally, okay?”

“Don't take it personally? Fuck you.”

“Charlotte, please.”

“No,” I said, loud. “Stop it.”

I was trying not to cry. I drank, not looking at him. A stream of cars passed, fluttering the trash in the gutter. Someone tossed a cigarette from a driver's-side window. It hit the street in a bouquet of sparks.

“Charlotte, we can still be friends. Sonja wouldn't mind. I care about you. That hasn't changed. Maybe after a while we could all hang out. I think you'd like her.”

“Sonja wouldn't mind?”

“All I mean is, I don't want to lose you. We had some good times, you know?”

He was wasted, slurring. That made me mad, that he had gotten drunk before he could tell me. That he couldn't do it sober. Maybe he had been drinking with her before I came to meet him. I felt anger, but also an unexpected gratitude. This pain was better, more manageable than my grief over Danielle.
I was thankful for the distraction. Even so, I couldn't listen to him anymore. I got up to leave. He put his arm out, reached for me, and I knocked him away. The contact energized me and I shoved him. It felt good so I did it again.

“You asshole,” I said. My voice sounded cold.

He grabbed me and tried to hug me, but I pushed him away. I left. I didn't say another word, didn't look at him. I went over to my bike, unlocked it, and rode unsteadily over the cracked sidewalk to the street. At the corner I turned off Richmond and crossed the neighborhood to the bayou. It was buggy along there. The water was still pretty high and I could hear it rushing. The trail was smooth and dark and abandoned, except for hovering clouds of gnats. I rode as fast as I could until my legs were tired and I didn't feel anything anymore and the last few days seemed like something I might have imagined.