Barefoot In The City Of Broken Dreams Part 19

"Is Daniel here?" she said, which really made no sense given that I just a.s.sumed he was knocking on our door. But I could hear fear in her voice.

"No," I said. "Why would he be here?"

She was anxious, squirmy, a body trapped inside its own skin. "He hasn't been home, not in days. I'm really worried." She stared at me. "Look, I don't know what was going on up here, and I don't care. But please tell me if he's here. I want to talk to him."

"He's not here," I said. "We haven't seen him. Do you want to come in?" I pulled the door open wider, in a gesture that was halfway between, "Come in, tell us all about it," and "If you don't believe he's not really here, you can come in and see for your d.a.m.n self."

She brushed past me. She stepped around the apartment, even poked her head into the bathroom and the bedroom. I'd implicitly given her permission to look around, and she'd taken me up on it. (Once again, I worried about dirty underwear and bottles of lube, but then I remembered we had more important things to worry about than Zoe being shocked by the fact that Kevin and I had s.e.x.) "What's going on?" Kevin asked her.

She still fidgeted. "He hasn't come home, and he hasn't gone to school either. He won't answer his phone. I don't know where he is. He's never been gone this long."

There was a long, accusing pause. Sure enough, she faced us and said, "What's he been doing up here?"

I really didn't appreciate the tone. On the other hand, her brother was gone, and she was scared. I looked at Kevin. We didn't really know anything, but it was time to tell her what we did know, right?

"Well, he's been acting strange," Kevin said. "Ever since we moved in."

"Strange how?" she said, too quickly.

"Uh, friendly," he said, even though that wasn't really a good description. But I guess Zoe was smart enough to have some idea what had been going on, because she sort of stiffened in her shoes.

Should we tell her about Wednesday? I didn't know. If he'd been missing for "days," that must have been when he'd left. Were Kevin and I the reason why? But why? We hadn't done anything wrong. Anyway, we couldn't exactly say to her: Yeah, he came here and said he wanted to take a shower, but what he really wanted was to come out naked and show us his b.o.n.e.r, so we'd take him into our bedroom and f.u.c.k him silly.

I remembered something.

"He mentioned a guy who said he could be a model," I said.

"What?" Zoe said. "Who? When?"

"It was a while ago," I said. "Wait. Did he turn eighteen last Sunday?"

Zoe nodded, wary.

"Then it was last week," I said.

That's why he left, I thought. Not because of us, but because he'd finally turned eighteen. Maybe that was also why he'd come on to us. Maybe the guy who'd asked him to "model" had come onto him first.

"Who was it?" Zoe said, still panicking. "You have to tell me!"

I thought back, but shook my head. "I'm sorry, I don't know. It was just an off-hand comment he made. I didn't really think about it."

The light in Zoe's eyes started to dim.

"I'm really sorry," I said. "Really."

She sagged ever-so-slightly. "I don't understand. Why would he just leave? Why wouldn't he at least tell me?"

I didn't know what to say. Everything I could think of was like a line from some bad movie, like, "Everything will be okay. You just need to be strong." Daniel was barely eighteen years old, and eighteen-year-olds are mostly morons. Still, if you couldn't save an eighteen-year-old from himself, there was something seriously wrong with the world.

"It's all my fault," she said. "He needs a man in his life. Someone to knock some sense into him."

This sounded vaguely h.o.m.ophobic, like Zoe was blaming Daniel's confusion about his s.e.xuality on the fact that he didn't have a strong male role model. Maybe that's not what she meant - maybe it was more about Daniel's annoying Tyler-Posey-gone-bad posturing. But even if it wasn't, it was still hard to judge Zoe. She was just a sister loving her little brother, wanting what was best for him.

"We'll look out for him," I said, and I really did hope there was something we could do. I still had no idea if Daniel was "a good kid," but I sure as h.e.l.l didn't want anything bad happening to him.

I couldn't sleep again that night. It's funny how you can be so tired that you can barely sit upright during the day, barely stand to brush your teeth, but when it comes time to finally sleep, you climb into bed and your brain is instantly on high alert. It's like the night amplifies things - not just sounds outside your window, but also your thoughts. The silliest things, things you can ignore during the day, grow at night, becoming clanging gongs inside your brain.

I thought about Declan McConnell, and Gina and Regina, and even Daniel. Kevin was right about this d.a.m.n city: there was desperation all around us, hanging in the air like smog. It was a little less visible on some days than others, but it was never gone completely. We were always inhaling it. To make it in this town, people here would walk barefoot across broken gla.s.s.

According to Kevin, my movie deal with Mr. Brander might not be real. So basically, he thought I should feel desperate too.

I was tired of it all. At that moment, I was also tired of lying on the futon, awake, turning and twitching, feeling every itch in my underwear and t-s.h.i.+rt.

I climbed out of bed and went out into the front room. I could be twitchy and anxious just as easily on the couch.

As before, I didn't turn on the lights. I sat there in the dark, staring at the shadows on the floor and listening to the sounds of the city outside the open windows.

As always, cars whooshed by on the freeway.

Far away, a cat howled.

Something skittered in the dried leaves below our window - a racc.o.o.n or maybe a person out walking.

Was I alone in the front room? I couldn't help but remember the ghost of Cole Gordon. He hadn't spoken to me since that one night those months before, and that had been all in my mind anyway, a trick of the acoustics.

A floorboard creaked, probably the building settling. Then I remembered the building was more than sixty years old: wouldn't it already have done all the settling it was going to do? On the other hand, why would a ghost make the floorboards creak? Ghosts don't have any physical presence! (The a.s.sociation between ghosts and creaky floors has never made any sense to me.) I didn't care. Right then, there was only one person in the whole world who knew exactly how I felt, and Cole Gordon was it.

Whatever you do, don't- He'd told me that before, clearly a warning. If I really wanted to avoid ending up like Declan McConnell, or Gina and Regina, or even Cole Gordon, I needed to not do something. But what?

"What did you mean?" I said to the empty room. "Whatever I do, don't do what?"

In the bathroom, the faucet dripped. Had it been dripping before, and I hadn't noticed? I'd been listening to the sounds of the night - the freeway, the leaves outside the window - and I didn't remember hearing the faucet dripping. Then again, maybe it had been dripping since Kevin and I moved in, dripping for so long that I didn't even hear it anymore.

I stood up and walked to the bathroom. I was still in my undies, and for a moment I was embarra.s.sed that if the ghost of Cole Gordon did exist, he was seeing me like that. Then I realized that if he was real, he'd already seen me in far more compromising positions than this.

Moonlight lit up the gla.s.s block windows. It shone down on the wall near the tub.

There was something in that ray of moonlight: an irregularity in the wall, a small rectangle the size of an electrical socket. It had been plastered or s.p.a.ckled over at some point, and painted to match the rest of the bathroom. In the daylight, I'd never even noticed it before, but in the light of the moon, it was obvious.

There had once been an electrical outlet there, but it had been too close to the bathtub - it had probably violated building codes designed to prevent people from electrocuting themselves - so someone had sealed it up, probably decades ago.

That's how he did it.

Cole Gordon had plugged something into that outlet - a radio or a toaster - then gotten into the tub, and pulled the appliance into the water with him. Cole's suicide was probably the reason why that socket had been sealed up in the first place, not some stupid building code.

The water dripped. The floor creaked ever so slightly - I swear it did.

Maybe this was all still in my mind. It probably was. I mean, ghosts? Come on.

I thought about that photo I'd seen of Cole Gordon. I'd imagined I saw fear in his eyes, that he somehow knew the demons were coming for him. He hadn't known then how to stop them, but maybe he did know now. Maybe that's what he'd been trying to tell me.

Would the demons come for me one day? They'd come for Declan McConnell, and Gina and Regina, and plenty of others in this City of Broken Dreams. Maybe they were right outside my door even now, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

This is crazy! I thought. I was being totally melodramatic, as usual. The night had amplified my fears the way it had also been amplifying sounds, and my own thoughts. I didn't have anything to worry about. Things were going great for me! I was different from all those other people.

But maybe it didn't matter if the story of Cole Gordon was real. I knew the "demons" of the City of Broken Dreams existed, at least in some metaphorical sense. So maybe the warning was somehow real too, even if it was only a part of my own subconscious.

I turned the faucet, to try to stop it from dripping, and then I went back to bed. But it didn't stop dripping, and if the sound had always been there before and Kevin and I had never noticed it, now I couldn't get it out of my head. Eventually I got up and closed the door to the bedroom. That m.u.f.fled the sound, but it didn't really help, because I knew it was still out there, never stopping, endlessly dripping on through the night.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

The next day, Sat.u.r.day, Kevin and I took the subway downtown. Downtown L.A. is off most people's radar, but it's more interesting than you'd think. For example, there's the Grand Central Market, which is this old, bustling public market. We ate at this take-out place called Sarita's that sells pupusas: really thick corn tortillas - from El Salvador, I think - filled with cheese and meat and/or vegetables. They come with this little bag of pickled cabbage, which is surprisingly yummy.

After that, around mid-afternoon, I made a very small, very diplomatic request of Kevin.

"I'm leaving you unless you agree we can go visit a couple of different downtown movie locations," I said.

"Well, when you put it like that," he said, "enjoy the rest of your life." He turned and started walking the other direction.

"Oh, come on," I said. "We came all this way!"

He came back to me with a disarming grin. "Okay, lead on, McDummy."

I laughed. I'd slept like s.h.i.+t the night before, but I felt surprisingly good now - bright and alive.

I nodded to a nearby building. "Well, we definitely have to go into the Bradbury Building. It's where they filmed the final scenes in Blade Runner."

"I've never seen Blade Runner," Kevin said.

I stared at him. "Okay, now I really am leaving you."

Kevin rolled his eyes.

"Okay, okay," I said. "The movie itself is actually overrated. It's more the principle of the thing. It's just one of those movies you need to see. The production design basically created the whole 'dystopian' aesthetic."

Kevin smiled, and I knew when I was being patronized, but I didn't care.

Unfortunately, the lobby to the building was locked - there was some kind of renovation going on inside. We could only peer in through the windows in the door.

"See the iron railings?" I said. "And the open-cage elevator?"

"What else?" Kevin asked me, meaning, What other locations are you going to drag me to?

"Well, there's one other building, a couple of blocks from here. Let's see if you recognize it."

As we walked, Kevin asked me, "Just out of curiosity, you look all this up before we leave the house, right? I mean, it's not like you know this stuff off the top of your head."

I considered the question. "Little of column A, little of column B. What we're about to see, I confess I looked it up this morning when I knew we were coming downtown. But, I mean, the Bradbury Building? Blade Runner? What idiot doesn't know about that?"

Kevin glared at me.

"Other than you, I mean," I said.

We finally reached our destination: a grimy building with an elaborately carved front and wrought-iron balconies. On the sidewalk across the street, I positioned Kevin so he was looking right at it.

"Okay, so guess the movie," I said.

"I have no idea," Kevin said.

"Oh, come on. It's obvious." When Kevin still didn't answer, I said, "Minority Report! This is the building where Tom Cruise hides from the little spider-probes?" It was even grungier-looking in the movie, and I wondered if they'd added the dirt with CGI.

Kevin turned to face me. "You didn't really expect me to get that, did you? You just like flaunting your knowledge of movie locations."

"Maybe a little," I said. "It's like you and sports. You say all these things like everyone is just supposed to know them, and I have no idea what you're talking about. I mean, end zone, dead zone, neutral zone? What is all that?"

"Russel?" a voice said.

I turned. It was the casting director from the movie project with Mr. Brander.

"Oh!" I said, but of course I couldn't remember his name. I felt bad that he knew my name, and I couldn't remember his. Now I had to try to fake my way through this little encounter.

"This is my boyfriend Kevin," I said. To Kevin, I said, "This is the casting director on A Cup of Joe."

"Hey," Kevin said, shaking the guy's hand, and I was feeling pretty proud of myself that I'd at least gotten all the way through the introductions without referring to him by name.

The casting director laughed a little. "Well, I was the casting director."

"What?" I said, confused.

"Well, I mean, I'm out."

"What?" I said again. Obviously I hadn't heard any of this. "Since when? Why?"

"Mr. Brander didn't tell you? That figures."

My stomach was suddenly a black hole, so dense with gravity that even light couldn't escape.

I managed to say to him, "What didn't Mr. Brander tell me?"

"We're all out, Andrea, Justin, and me. We finally had enough."