ELIZA
ON WEDNESDAY, I make a list of people who might hate me. Friends from childhood, old neighbors, my parents, Steadman, people from the writing group Kiki and I belong to whose fiction I critiqued the teensiest bit too harshly, customers from Steadman’s curiosities shop I snubbed, that man I rear-ended earlier this year and, instead of giving him my insurance details, I fled the scene. Any of them could be the right answer, but they all feel wrong. I have done worse things. I know it. I just don’t know what they are.
So how can I get more information on what happened? I try the Shipstead several more times to no avail. I listen to my self-hypnosis tapes in hopes that I’ll put myself into a trance that will conjure back the memory. I look up Amygdala tumors to see if they regularly recur. They can. I look at pictures of some amygdala tumors for a while. They are ugly, white splotches against a dark, spongy mass.
Then I type in Eliza Fontaine-comma-amygdala-tumor, in hopes of . . . well, I’m not sure what. It’s not like the hospital would list my medical records on a public forum. It would be nice, though, to see a scan of my tumor; it would make it easier to picture it in my head again now. But the only stories about me are about my pool plunge and links to the book, which I peruse quickly, then click out of because they all suggest that I’m either suicidal or extremely attention seeking.
I stalk old friends online to see if any of them were in Palm Springs the night I fell into the pool. None of them were. I look up Desmond Wells, too. His picture is front-and-center on the official site of the Ludi Circensus festival in San Fernando. There is Desmond with an ivy wreath in his hair and wearing a toga with a rope for a belt. His legs, I note, are oddly hairless. I wonder why the hell I’m looking at his legs.
I also need to prove to Kiki that I’ve got my shit together and don’t require her concern. It all dovetails nicely into an invitation to her to the Greater Los Angeles Kitty Splendor Cat Show this afternoon. When Kiki was young, so the story goes, she and her family paraded a chubby Maine Coon named Buster around the country in hopes that they’d make the national finals. She still has pictures of Buster all over her bedroom, and rumor has it her parents keep him, stuffed, on their mantel. We don’t have a cat now—her brother hated the experience as much as she loved it, and clearly he makes all the rules—but Kiki says just being in the presence of feline excellence helps fill the void.
The show is in the ballroom of a Westin hotel one block away from the Chinese Theatre and the Hollywood Walk of Fame. All the tables in the space are against the walls, and the room is full of meowing. Most of the cats are in cages, and it’s hard to know who the judges are because everyone’s kind of a clone, male and female alike—dumpy, frizzy-haired, bespectacled, talky. I see about a hundred puffy-paint cat sweatshirts. Men with beer guts wear message tees that say Meow Power. We pass a group of cat dorks telling a joke; the punch line has something to do with a Siamese. “Mister Mistoffelees” from Cats blares over the PA. Admittedly, the cats are gorgeous—most of them look like completely different species than the mangy messes I’m used to dealing with. A Persian looks at me with such intelligence I’m pretty sure he’s reading my mind. I shake a feather I plucked from a drawer at home at a Sphinx, and I swear he rolls his eyes, like I’ve got to be fucking kidding.
I nudge Kiki’s side. “You really used to love this as a kid?”
“Oh, it was wonderful. I had my first kiss during a kitten judging.” Kiki gives me a smirk. “I guess you’re too good for me now that you’re going to be on Dr. Roxanne?”
I couldn’t resist telling Kiki about Dr. Roxanne; she watches a lot of daytime TV, so I figured she’d know who Dr. Roxanne was. Sure enough, when I broke the news, she screamed. “That woman is amaze-balls! Your book is going to be everywhere because of her.” She took my hands and jumped up and down. “We should have a party when it airs!”
Still, I dread Roxanne’s questions. I’m positive one of them will have to do with my illness. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want it to define me. I should have never told Posey about it, but I’d felt like I needed to set the record straight. Only, what if she’s already told everyone? What if that’s what the marketing team is concentrating on now?
I don’t want to be known as the phenom who had her skull cracked open by some sort of new brain-surgery technology and then two weeks later starts—and finishes!—a novel. People will see me as a Rain Man. A spooky savant, possibly with robot parts. Sufferers are more than the sum of their suffering, but the rest of the world doesn’t see that. If Dr. Roxanne prods me to talk about my illness, I’ll never know if my audience buys my book because I am the girl who overcame the brain tumor or because my book actually sounds interesting. Maybe I shouldn’t care. Maybe I should just be happy they buy it, period. But I want them to like it. I want them to like me.
Kiki’s eyes are dreamy as she walks toward a crate of Russian Blues. “Are these descendants of Mr. Azure Enchantress?” she asks the owner, a pale, balding man who is most definitely a serial killer. He nods, and Kiki is off and chatting.
I wander away from the booth. The cages to my right and left are exactly the same. Next are booths of cat toys, organic food, feline vitamins. The ribbons and trophies, not yet awarded, are displayed on a table covered with a blue velvet cloth. I’ve been in here for five minutes, and I’ve had enough of cats. I duck into the hallway that leads to the lobby and suck in cool, hypoallergenic air.
The lobby is sparse this time of day. Sounds echo off the high ceiling. I close my eyes, enjoying the public bustle. I like that workers at a hotel have to be friendly and accommodating at all times. Like, if you have a meltdown in the lobby, someone at the front desk will hurry to your side and give you a glass of wine. A little kid plunges her hand into a basket of potpourri at the desk, and no one says anything. A man in a suit, perhaps a manager, notices me and gives me a wink. There’s something about his expression—or maybe being in a hotel, period, with its clean smell and sexy lighting scheme—that gives me a flutter of déjà vu, and then a bolt of terror. I look at this man again, certain he’s someone nefarious. He has already turned away.
Then I hear a voice. It’s golden-toned and snarky as it snakes across the lobby. I turn in the direction of the sound as someone stands. He’s got a shock of red hair, a large head, and a long, skinny body. The voice belongs to a boy-man on his cell phone. His walk is loping and bobbing, like a goose—but it’s a walk I’ve seen before. If my brain could vibrate, it would right now.
I know him. I just don’t know why.
I’m so startled I lurch back, banging hard into a table containing pamphlets for things to do in LA.
“Are you all right?” an older lady in a puffy-paint cat sweatshirt cries behind me.
I give her a distracted smile. My gaze returns to the redhead by the couch. Part of me wants to walk over there so he can see me, but being that I can’t place how I know him, maybe that’s a bad idea. I slink along the wall and settle into a chair that’s significantly closer to him. I tuck my head into my neck like a pigeon and ball up my body so he’ll pay me no mind. My hope is that proximity will spark something in my memory.
“Hey, it’s okay,” he murmurs into the phone. “It’s going to be fine.”
He plops back on the couch and puts his feet up on the coffee table. Rude, I think. I used to know someone who did that: Who? He has a mildewed laundry/male hormone smell billowing around him: unwashed clothes, dorm rooms, sex. My stomach twists.
“I don’t think the cops will ask anything,” he goes on. “I mean, why would they ask you? And you don’t need to bring up Eliza or Palm Springs.”
What?
A cold blast of air from the AC wafts up my shirt, only adding to my chill. The guy stands up again, and I look away, feeling caught, feeling visible. Amazingly, though, he doesn’t seem to see me. “Don’t stress about it, then. Anyway, it might blow over. They haven’t called you yet, right? They might not call.” A long pause. “Well, I can talk you through things to say, things that won’t make them ask more questions.”
Abruptly, he walks away from the couch nook and heads for the revolving doors to the street. I sit up straighter in my chair. Fumble for my phone. Still puzzled as to who he is, I snap a picture of his profile. As I slip it back into my pocket, he’s gone. How has he moved so quickly?
I spring up. The revolving doors are just ahead, but there are a bunch of tourists in front of me, some going in, some going out, and I have to let all of them go first. After a lot of bumbling suitcases and shopping bags and a fold-up stroller that comes unfolded inside the revolving door, after two teenagers chewing sugary-scented gum and a woman who literally stands right in front of me but doesn’t push the door to move, I step outside. The air smells like exhaust and Chanel perfume. The Walk of Fame, visible to my right, is madness: church groups in matching T-shirts, dirty college kids, pretty girls in short skirts and big sunglasses, mothers with babies strapped to their chests. I don’t see a redhead anywhere. I stand on my tiptoes. He can’t have gone far. If I could even see the top of his head, I’d know which direction to go. But it’s like he’s disappeared into a hole in the ground. My ears are still ringing. My body is slick with sweat. What did I just hear? How can I just be standing here, doing nothing?
The revolving door spins again, and three kids scurry out, knocking into me. I wheel back, and my bag upends, spilling onto the ground. “Oh,” their mother says, hurrying behind them as they run toward the street. “God, I’m sorry. They’re animals.”
She crouches to help me to pick up the Kleenex, wallet, and mascara that have tumbled out of the bag. “I’m fine. It’s fine,” I say, and she leaves. A copy of The Dots has fallen out, too; I placed it in my bag before I left today. The book has fallen onto a stack of rental property leaflets, upside down as compared to the rest of the titles. It reminds me of when a tarot card reader lays down a card inverted. I pick it up, wondering if, like a tarot card, the pages inside reflect the opposite message of what I originally wrote. I crack the spine and read a few sentences toward the end. And actually, it does seem to have worked. It’s Dot who’s acting like a monster, Dorothy the martyr. It’s incredible how language can turn in on itself so easily, containing so many different meanings.
“There you are.”
Kiki blusters through the double doors, now clad in a puffy-paint cat sweatshirt, too. She stops when she sees my face, her cheeks going pale. “What’s the matter?”
I look at her blankly, my throat dry. I call up the picture I just took on my phone. It shows the redhead, his chin jutting, his hair in his face, his eyes wide, two dirty skater shoes splayed out pigeon-toed. “Do we know this person?”
Kiki studies the screen, then searches my face. Her throat bobs as she swallows. “Eliza.” She speaks very carefully. “Eliza, that’s Leonidas. I’m pretty sure he used to be your boyfriend.”