Innocent Monsters (5 page)

11 November 2000

THE JEFFERSON Company owned eight of the twenty-eight-storey building in Montgomery Street. Their bright red logo on the roof glistened, massive, an impressive display of their reach and power.

The room in which the party was held was on the eighteenth floor, enormous with marbled walls, spotless cream tiles on the floor, large french doors opening on the balcony, heavy chandeliers beaming from the ceiling, plastic palm trees. Cold, when she had imagined it would be warm and friendly. Waiters squeezing between shoulders, laughter, corks popping, hands clapping but still cold, and Jane Ashley, Stephen Sharp and Ian McKey.

Jessica had bumped into McKey while hovering around the cold buffet table; a short slim man with greasy ash-blond hair, a wrinkled blue suit and microscopic eyes staring at her from behind the lenses of thick framed glasses. He never wore glasses for the pictures on the back cover of his books, the cheater. His eyebrows moved incessantly as he spoke and his voice was high-pitched and annoying, not deep and musical as she had heard it in her head while reading his novels. She detested him instantly. But, oh, he loved her novel so much, absolutely loved it, absolutely loved her in that show, what was it, Sarah-something, yes of course and, oh she looked so much better in the flesh, how could such a beautiful woman write such delicate prose and brilliantly employ a man’s voice? And, oh he knew a restaurant around the corner, Italian, would she like to join him later for dinner? No? Would she at least think about it? Maybe take his phone number? Jessica had declined smiling politely, moved away paying exaggerated attention to one of the waiters carrying glasses of champagne.

She had entered the room filled with excitement despite herself, despite the notion that it was too early to venture herself in the real world, out of the strange comfort of her own sadness, outside her house; now all she really wanted to do was to be alone, someplace where people were real, where authors were the way she had always imagined them, where Jane Ashley was a delicate housewife with a somber aura about her, not a bimbo with long red fingernails and a skin tight dress. This was the woman who made her cry writing about her childhood, about her manic depressive mother, about the wonderful relationship she had built with her father over years of poverty, how could she look so loud and undignified?

And Donald Jefferson, one of the richest men in the country, the founder and owner of the largest slice of the publishing company; Jessica watched him entering the room briskly, moving through guests shaking hands here and there, fat, old, a strange looking combover badly disguising the grey hair thinning on top of his head. His chin wobbled as he spoke. He was noisy and vulgar. His fingers made her think of raw sausages. She could hear him laughing from the other side of the room —probably the other side of the building if she went— and it wasn’t a spontaneous laughter, it was a can-you-hear-how-much-fun-I’m-having-here kind of laughter, fake, perfectly matched with everybody else in the room.

What was she doing here?

Roger Wither appeared next to her holding a glass of champagne in his hand. He was a tall well-built man with black unruly hair curling behind his ears and an odd looking face. His chin seemed too short for the wide lips above it, his nostrils too wide for the narrow nose, his black piercing eyes too far apart, his forehead too steep and too short. He had beautiful hands, though. It was the first thing Jessica had noticed about her editor. But there was also something charismatic about the oddity of his features, he looked different, but not in an ugly way; he was the kind of man Kaitlyn would have found attractive —she always seemed to fall for men whose beauty surfaced with time, not instantly.

The idea of someone reading her manuscript and suggesting changes, variations and corrections to an honest description of her own childhood had taken getting used to; it had seemed almost insulting at first. But Roger had made the process easy from the day she had been assigned to him. He was unpretentious, straight talking, straightforward and sometimes cynical, a quality she had learned to find amusing.

“Havin’ fun yet?” He knocked her side with one elbow.

His strange mouth was stretched into an honest smile, the tip of his front teeth digging into his lower lip. Jessica found herself wishing he had appeared earlier.

“Hey, hi! Where have you been all evening?”

“Drinking, here and there. Y’know, partying. You should try it.” He winked at her.

“Mhm... Actually I’m really too tired for all this.”

“Nah, you ain’t too tired for this. Never say you’re too tired for this.” He moved closer to her ear holding his glass to his chest. “If ya can’t play the star for these people you ain’t ever gonna have fun. Everywhere’s the same, ya can’t hide from it. You’re no one, ya can’t go nowhere and no one gives a shit about ya. Ya might as well be the nicest fucking guy on the whole fucking planet, nobody gives a shit if you ain’t nobody. Know what I mean?”

She didn’t know, but she grinned at him anyway. His tie was loose, the button of his collar undone, his New York accent heavier than she had ever heard it before, his fucking and shit more frequent than usual. He was drunk, no doubt.

“Think you should be drinking anymore?”

He waived a beautiful hand at her. “What are you, my mother? I’m partying, remember? I’ll take the lecture tomorrow, when I got a hangover. So how you holdin’ up? Your sister and all that. How you doin?”

“Ok. I guess.” She didn’t really want to talk about it now, with him. “I’ll get there. Eventually.”

A few days after the accident Jessica had called him to cancel one of their meetings, simply told him her sister had suddenly passed away. Roger had seemed genuinely worried, called her twice the following day to check on her, making sure there was nothing she needed, nothing he could do to help, his interest so unexpected she’d hoped he wasn’t after more than an editor/writer relationship —she wouldn’t have had the energy to push him away and it would have made things seriously awkward for them both. But she had managed to make it clear that all she needed was time and space and Roger had not called her again.

They had not spoken in weeks.

“Yeah. It’s shit. Losing someone like that... Look, I’m glad you’ve come. It’s a step forward, right? Gotta throw yourself in your work now. Always works for me.”

“Ah, yes? I thought drink was your medicine of choice.”

“All right, all right. You makin’ me sound like an alcoholic. I’m fucking partyin’, remember? Smartass.”

He gulped down the rest of his champagne and grabbed a fresh one from one of the passing waiters. Jessica had been holding an empty glass for several minutes now.

“You want another one?”

“No. I’m fine, thanks. If I keep this one it looks like I’m joining in.”

“Whatever works for ya. Look, I know it’s party time but let’s talk serious for two seconds while I’ve got ya, ok? We need to reschedule that meeting you cancelled.” He pulled a face shrugging his shoulders. “The
publishing machine
keeps going, y’know. You still got deadlines this year.” Jessica looked at him unimpressed. “I know. I’m an asshole. Not now. We don’t need to talk about it now.”

Roger wobbled on his feet; behind him Ian McKey raised his eyebrows at Jessica from across the room, his glasses falling off the tip of his nose. Christ.

“You know what? I think I’m gonna get some fresh air.”

He frowned squinting. “You ok?”

“Fine, I’m good. Just do me a favour,” she pointed her glass over his shoulder. “You see that rat with glasses in the blue suit? If he comes looking for me tell him I drowned in the toilet bowl.”

Roger turned a few inches, looked shamelessly over his shoulder. “Ian McKey? Nah, he might come rescue you. I’ll tell him everyone knows he can’t write for shit, then he’ll drown himself in it.”

“I love you.” “That was always gonna be inevitable. Call me next week.”

“I’ll call you tomorrow, with that lecture.”

Jessica left her glass on one of the flying trays on the waiters’ hands and walked away leaving Roger laughing on his own.

The balcony turned out to be a small terrace with a few rattan tables and chairs and a wonderful view. On her right she could admire the lights of the Bay and the Ferry Building, below her she could barely distinguish the lights of the traffic. Nobody else was outside and for a second everything seemed far enough, peaceful enough. Quiet. What she really needed.

She had come to Montgomery Street two days earlier, rented a room at the Palace Hotel around the corner just to get away, taste some peace, some silence, some normality.

She had been trying for weeks to go back to her normal life, she had been pretending when it seemed impossible. She’d walked back into her bathroom and cleaned it, freed a couple of spiders that had erected a cosy and elaborate web between the taps and the corner shelf above the bath, and then scrubbed. She’d scrubbed the walls, the sink, the toilet, the floor, scrubbed the bath a thousand times. Surely five bottles of bleach were enough to get rid of anything left in the room. Surely. But it wasn’t enough, Kaitlyn’s presence was still in there, imposing, impossible to ignore as if her lifeless body had never been taken away. And even when she managed to go through a day without thinking about her death, at night the same dream reminded her of what had happened. It was driving her insane. She had to leave. She had to run away from it.

Jessica closed her eyes and took a deep breath in and when she opened them again a man was standing a few feet away from her, tall, grey suit, mid-length silky hash blond hair covered most of his face. One of his hands was holding a cigarette. He wasn’t looking at her, yet she heard him pronounce her name.

“Are you talking to me?” She asked hesitating.

The man turned in her direction, his forearm now resting on the balcony railing, his head tilted towards his shoulder. “Jessica Lynch,” he smiled, “I read your book.”

“Did you?” She smiled back at him weakly hoping he would go away as fast as he had appeared, hoping he would leave her in peace.

“Uh-huh. Good book. Haven’t read anything so deep in years.” He brought the cigarette to his lips without taking his eyes off hers and stepped closer holding out his free hand. “William, William Blaise.”

“Nice to meet you, William.”

His hand in hers felt incredibly warm, his grip tight as he studied her fingers around his hand, her arms, her hair, her shoulders, her neck, her face, with a strange look in his eyes, a mixture of lust, admiration and confusion that made her feel uneasy, naked. She withdrew the hand hiding it under her arms now wrapped around her waist.

“Not enjoying the party?” He asked.

“Just needed some fresh air.” And peace and quiet. And should she ask him to leave her alone?

“It’s full of snobs in there. Not exactly the way you want to spend a night like this in San Francisco.”

He sighed and looked away, his eyes lost in the lights of the Bay, his hair rippling just above his shoulders teased by the breeze blowing softly. His nose was small and pointed from the profile, like that of a little boy, cute and immature.

“What are you doing here?” She asked him.

“I came to meet you.”

He was still looking away, she saw his lips curl in a smile and smiled herself. “I mean, really, why did you come here if you don’t like these people?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Why did
you
come? You don’t like them, do you?”

“Well, I’ve been invited, I have a contract with them.”

“Yeah, that sounds like a good excuse.”

“Doesn’t it?... I don’t know, I guess I thought it would be different
...” I thought Ian McKey was a professional, I thought Jane Ashley looked like a housewife...
“Do you write?”

“Me? Uhm... No, probably not the way you mean. Do you ever read the San Francisco Post?”

“Might have. Couldn’t swear on it.”

“I’m a graphic artist. I draw the cartoon strip for the paper. Mostly.”

“Wow, really? You don’t look like the type.”

He laughed. “What is it? Am I missing a beret? Or glasses? Or is it the long hair?”

She felt embarrassed by her own remark and didn’t like it. “I don’t know, I just always imagined newspaper cartoonists to be middle-aged, slightly balding and just not as... Well, young as you, I suppose. That’s all.”

“Understandably. I don’t do that old fart political stuff you’re probably thinking about. You should buy the paper tomorrow. Page twelve, then you’ll see me differently.”

“Maybe I will. But forgive my ignorance, I still can’t see the connection between you and the Jefferson Company.”

“The Post has commissioned a collection of my work. The Jefferson Company is publishing it. I know Roger.”

“Roger?”

“Roger Wither, I believe he’s your editor.”

“So he is.” She considered him with suspicion.

“Don’t worry, I’m not a stalker. That’s pretty much all I know about you. I didn’t follow you over here. I don’t know where you live.” Jessica suddenly burst out laughing. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing. I’m sorry. It’s just the idea of anyone willingly following me to Crocker- Amazon. I’m pretty sure only drug dealers travel that far.”

“Crocker Amazon, uh? I just assumed you lived somewhere downtown. Where is that?”

“South of Mission Street. Between San Francisco’s border and Daily City. I think most people from around here don’t even recognize it as one of
their
districts.”

“Too far out?”

“Totally.”

“Pretty?”

Jessica thought about it, about the takeout spots with their faded pizza signs and the tired bars clustered around what was considered to be the main strip; she thought about the suburban feel of the residential areas and the vast, ever green Playground, where she had spent many afternoons as a teenager with Kaitlyn when there seemed to be nothing else to do. She sighed. “Pretty enough, I guess, but nothing special to be honest... I don’t know, I should have moved years ago.”

“So... Why do you still live there?”

“Good question. Let’s see... My family lived in the area because that’s were we could afford a house at the time, then when I got my own place, I kind of stayed because my mother lived there... I don’t know. I wished I had a really interesting answer to give you but I don’t. Something I have discovered about myself over the years: I resist change.”

He sucked on his cigarette again then threw it over the balcony. “She’s still there? Your mother?”

“No. She died a few years ago. Truth is, I haven’t got an excuse in the world to live where I do.” Not anymore, nobody in the world. “I’ve just been caught up in things with the book and all that, and moving just hasn’t really been a priority. But I was hoping to spend Christmas somewhere else this year.”

“Moving? Really? Where to?”

“Still San Francisco, hopefully downtown.”

“Looking to buy?”