Lust, Loathing and a Little Lip Gloss (24 page)

As if on cue, my cell phone started vibrating in my handbag. I pulled it out to see who was calling only to see the word
restricted
flash across the screen.

“Yes,” I growled as I picked up.

“Is this Sophie Katz?” asked a meek, familiar voice.

“Yes,” I said again.

“This is Lorna, Zach’s mom? I was wondering if maybe, possibly you might have heard from Zach today?”

“Why would I have heard from Zach?” I asked. I looked down and spotted an empty bottle discarded on the ground, ugly and out of place. Lorna shouldn’t have been calling me. Not unless she suspected something was very, very wrong and had nowhere else to turn.

“I know we don’t know one another very well, but he seems to have taken to you, and now, well, he seems to be missing. He didn’t show up at school and I found this poem in his room…at least I think it’s a poem. It may be a note.”

A chill spread to my lungs, making it hard to find the breath I needed to ask the next question. “What kind of note?”

Lorna choked back a sob. “Please, I need to find him. I’m afraid he may be planning on leaving me like his sister. I can’t lose both my children, Sophie. It can’t happen!”

I reached my hand out, hoping to find something to steady me, but nothing was there. “I haven’t heard from him,” I said. “But I’ll help you look.”

“I don’t have my car.” Each word of Lorna’s shook more than the last. “It’s in the shop and I can’t tell his father—”

“What are you talking about, you
have
to!”

“But it could be nothing, and his father will be so angry. Please, you have a car. You offered Zach a ride that afternoon. Couldn’t you give me one, too? We could go to all of his favorite places and look for him. I’m sure I can find him. I’m his mother,” she said, as if being his mother gave her some kind of advantage in the search. But it wouldn’t, because Zach would know where she would look, and if he really didn’t want to be found he’d be somewhere else.

“I’ll pick you up. But on one condition. You have to tell his dad what’s going on. We need as many people looking for him as possible. Time could be of the essence here.”

She whimpered what sounded like a word of agreement. She then proceeded to give me her address, and as soon as I had it I hung up and called Marcus.

“Sophie, darling,” he cooed after the fourth ring. “I’m sure you have some fabulous new crisis to relay, but I’m about to wave my magic brush and turn a brunette into a blonde. Call you back in an hour?”

“Marcus, Zach is missing. His mom found something that may be a suicide note.”

There was a moment’s pause before Marcus responded. “Tell me where to look and I’m there.”

Less than forty-five minutes later, I had both Lorna and Marcus in my car. “Al blames me,” Lorna said dully as we slowly drove down Haight Street, only a few blocks from where I lived. Apparently, Zach had loved the neighborhood. Funny that I wouldn’t know that, but then again the things that I loved about my new neighborhood wouldn’t be the same things he found appealing. I liked the Victorians, the close proximity to Golden Gate Park, the restaurants on Cole Street. Now we were cruising the tattoo parlors, the head shops, the dive bars on Lower Haight that may have “forgotten” to check Zach’s ID. It was easy to forget that this world merged with my own. I didn’t see it because it didn’t belong to me. What scared me was that it belonged to Zach, a fifteen-year-old with a grudge and a significant sense of self-loathing.

“We need to get out,” I said once we had gone up and down the block three times. “Go to every shop. Do you have a picture of him?”

Lorna numbly pulled out her wallet and flashed me a photo of Zach. “I can’t lose both my children,” she said for the second time that day.

“He looks like…well, think The Cure’s Robert Smith meets Marilyn Manson and you got Zach,” Marcus was saying into his cell from the backseat. It had been his idea to give Breather a call in case he had decided to give Sex on the Beach a try after all. “But he’s young. A teenager, so he’s Robert Smith meets Manson meets a Mouseketeer…Right now he’s only got one toe out of the closet so he may seem a bit out of his element…”

“What are you talking about?” Lorna asked. “My son’s not gay! He’s a good boy! A decent boy!”

Marcus ignored her and continued talking into his cell. “Are you sure, he wasn’t in there at all today? Did you ask all your waitstaff?” He listened for a moment and then made eye contact with me via the rearview mirror and shook his head.

I whipped the car off Haight and started barreling west down a side street. “Forget the shops. He can only get in so much trouble there. We need to be driving along the beach.”

“But Zach hates the beach!” Lorna cried.

“Doesn’t matter. If he is really planning on trying something he’ll want to go where no one else is around,” I explained, “and no normal person is going to be at the beach on a day like this. And considering the riptide, it’s a good way to…well, we’ll just look there. After that we’ll try the park.”

Marcus tucked his cell into his jacket pocket and let out an audible sigh of frustration. “The park’s right here, Sophie. Let’s try that first. You know better than anyone how easy it is to commit a crime in the park without being caught,” he said, referring to the time I had stumbled upon a mutilated body while going to the park to meet a friend.

“My son would never commit a crime,” Lorna said. “He tries to act tough, but he’s not. He’s vulnerable and…”

“Last I checked, taking your own life was a crime,” Marcus said, a bit too abruptly. “And just so you know, your son is good and decent and probably gay. Zach might be a little less vulnerable if you could acknowledge that those things aren’t mutually exclusive.”

“Really not the time, Marcus,” I said as I pulled into the park. But where to start? This wasn’t the neighborhood playground, this was Golden Gate Park! It was the size of a small town for God’s sake! My eyes flitted from the soccer fields to the volleyball courts to the winding walking paths. “I guess I’ll just park anywhere and we could just split up?”

“Yes,” Lorna said quietly.

“Did you call all his friends?” Marcus asked as I slowed down to look for a spot big enough for my Audi.

“He didn’t have a lot of friends. He didn’t trust people. He did seem to trust you…and he liked Scott. Zach seemed to admire him, and Al encouraged their friendship. Scott took him out a few times. They’d go to ball games and things like that.”

Scott liked it when people looked up to him, so I could understand his willingness to take Zach under his wing, but trying to visualize Zach at a ball game was difficult. “So you called Scott?” I asked.

Lorna hesitated. “I should have, but…I really don’t like Scott. I think he’s a bad influence.”

I did a quick double take. “Are you kidding? He’s a horrible influence, but if there’s a chance that he knows where Zach is you’ve got to call him. What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Sophie, there’s a spot,” Marcus said.

I backed my car into the parking space, my teeth clenched so tight my jaw actually ached. What
was
wrong with Lorna? Didn’t she get it? Didn’t she know what was at stake?

Before I even had the chance to turn off the car engine, Marcus had his door open. “We’ll split up. Everybody keep your cell on and ringer up. Sophie, you call Scott while you look. I’m going to explore the area around the soccer field.”

I watched as he trotted off. Zach had gotten to him somehow. Maybe because Zach’s life was so horrifically distressing. Maybe that’s why he had gotten to me, too.

“Are you going to call Scott?” Lorna asked, still glued to her seat.

I nodded curtly. “Walk back that direction, toward Haight. Be sure to look behind every bush and tree. I’ll go toward the De Young. Call if you find anything.”

“And you’ll do the same for me? You’ll call?” The notes of escalating panic were seeping into her voice.

“I’ll do the same for you. Now go.” It took Lorna a lot longer to get out of the car than it did me. I had to fight the urge to open the door for her, pull her out by her hair and hurl her in the direction of where she was supposed to be searching. But instead I let her get out at her own slow pace. She stopped and stared at me as I tapped my foot impatiently, anxious to call Scott and find Zach. “Did you want to say something?” I asked.

“You think I don’t care enough,” she said slowly. “You think that’s why I didn’t call Al right away, why I didn’t call Scott, why I’m not running around the park screaming Zach’s name.”

“I think,” I said, “that we need to start looking.”

“Maybe the problem is not how much I care, but how scared I am. I failed my daughter, Sophie. I tried to give her a good life, but the one time she came to me for help I…I simply didn’t understand. She died knowing that I failed her and she still believes that, I know it. Betrayal like that can’t be forgotten in death. Maybe I can’t call Al or Scott or search for my son with the same sense of urgency as you and your friend because I can’t face another failure.”

“Oh,” I said. The wind was picking up again, whipping through her already disheveled bob, making her look wild and desperate. “So this is about you.”

Lorna’s mouth dropped open as she struggled to respond, but I didn’t give her a chance. I turned on my heels and started toward the De Young, purposely steering off the beaten path. I called out Zach’s name and then I called Scott.

“Sophie!” he said, “I’m so glad you called. Listen, I found the receipt for the brooch, it’s from some antique store in Marin. Apparently it used to belong to some psycho Victorian chick or something. I confronted Venus, but she says she gave it to Oscar before he died and didn’t see it again until you said it was on your pillow. I think she was telling the truth, but—”

“Tell me later,” I interrupted. “Lorna called me. Zach’s missing and he may have left a suicide note.”

“Wait a minute…Zach…how do you…when did…” Scott sputtered through a few more incomplete thoughts before he was able to pull together a sentence. “He
might
have left a suicide note? What does that mean?”

“It could have been a really dark poem à la Sylvia Plath.”

“Sylvia Plath stuck her head in the oven.”

“Right, so no matter how you look at this, it’s not good.”

“Where have you looked?”

“I’m in the park right now. I thought if he wanted to be alone—”

“Okay,” he interrupted. “You search there, I have some other ideas.”

“Like?”

“Like, I’ll talk to you later.”

“Scott, wait! Don’t hang up!”

“Why, what else is there?”

I stopped and bit down on my lower lip. By my feet a small flowering shrub trembled as some burrowing animal pulled on its roots. “There’s nothing else. I just…I don’t want to find another body. Not Zach’s. I don’t think I could handle that.”

And there it was. I was just as cowardly and self-centered as Lorna. Zach could be dead and all I cared about was my own emotional health. The shrub sunk lower as I waited for Scott to reply.

“Soapy,” he said gently. “Unlike me, you can handle anything.”

I smiled and breathed in the damp air. “You think you know me so well.”

“Every inch of you, sweetheart. Now, let’s find Zach.”

I nodded, knowing somehow that Scott would pick up on my agreement without my having to say a word.

“I’ll call soon,” Scott said, and when I didn’t try to hold him on the line he hung up. I slipped the phone back in my purse and called Zach’s name again.

Fifteen, twenty, thirty minutes passed without finding anything. My phone remained silent. I thought of calling Anatoly. After all, he was the private detective. But realistically could he do much more than what I was doing now? Unlikely.

When I reached the steps of the De Young I started questioning the few tourists that were around. I described Zach over and over again, searching their eyes for a glint of recognition, but it wasn’t there. He had disappeared.

By the time my phone rang again I was near tears. The fact that the number on my cell’s screen belonged to Scott didn’t cheer me. “I haven’t found him,” I said when I picked up.

“I have.”

“Is he…is he…” I said, trying to articulate the question that I didn’t want answered.

“If you’re trying to ask,
Is he drunk?
, then the answer is yes.”

“Drunk?” I asked with exuberance. “He’s drunk? Like he’s alive and loaded?” I was jumping up and down now. The people around me must have thought I had won the lottery. “Where are you?”

“I took him back to my place. Venus is making him some coffee.”

For the first time I actually felt some warmth toward Venus. “I’ll call his mom. I’ll bring her over.”

“Right, well, you might want to tell her that Venus has already called Al to tell him Zach’s here.”

“Great! One less phone call we have to make.”

“Yeah, but he’s pretty pissed at Lorna.”

“He can’t really put all the blame for this on Lorna. Teenagers get themselves into trouble sometimes and—”

“Zach has more reason to act out than most teens. Lorna has tried to kill herself twice since her daughter did it four years ago. That’s why Al is always breathing down her neck, insisting that she tell him where she is every moment of the day.”

“Oh, shit.”

“Yeah, that’s what I said. Anyway, he’s coming over and Venus says he’s already ranting about how Lorna has ruined their son. So, you know, be prepared.”

“Scott,” I said slowly, “is everybody in the Specter Society this messed up?”

“If I say yes, will you be mad at me for getting you involved in it?”

“You know I hate you, don’t you?”

“You’ve mentioned it before. I’ll see you in a bit.” He hung up and I did one more little jump for joy before I dialed up Lorna and then Marcus to tell them the news.

21

They say insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result. Replace the word “thing” with “man” and I think we can all agree that there are a lot of crazy women out there.

—
The Lighter Side of Death

NO ONE SPOKE ON THE WAY TO SCOTT AND VENUS’S, BUT OUR MUTUAL
relief absorbed the silence and turned it into something wonderful. Of course I realized that things weren’t all hunky-dory. Zach may very well have started this morning off with the intention of offing himself. But he didn’t do it, and that decision, no matter what had motivated it, was worth celebrating.

It didn’t take long to reach our destination. Venus and Scott lived in the Seascape area; their home was nestled between the Bay and Robin Williams’s mansion. Marcus took it in with a low whistle, but made no further comment. It wasn’t until we actually entered the house that the peace was broken. Scott was the one who let us in and as soon as he cracked the door open I could hear Al shouting.

“What were you thinking?” he bellowed. “Do you know what they do to kids who drink and drive? They put them in juvie, that’s what!”

He was answered with drunken laughter. “You can’t drive a bike, Dad! I was drunken riding.” Zach seemed to think he was being incredibly funny because he burst into another fit of giggles.

“Welcome to the party,” Scott said sarcastically as Lorna rushed past him. Marcus and I followed Scott into the living room. Al was hovering over Zach, who was sitting in a leather armchair, a cup of coffee at his side and a bucket clutched between his hands.

Lorna fell to her knees at her son’s feet. “I thought…I thought—”

“You thought what?” Al spat. “You thought he was as pathetic as you?”

Lorna didn’t seem to hear him. She reached out her hand and gently touched Zach’s arm as if testing to make sure that he was really there.

“What would you have done?” Al continued. “What if he had tried to kill himself the way you’ve tried? What if we had lost both our kids? Would you have tried to call him back from the dead the way you’re always trying to do with our daughter? Would you try to redeem yourself by being a good mother to a goddamned ghost? How many times do I have to tell you? When people die, they die! You can drive someone into the grave, but you can’t call them out of it.”

“Al.”

I looked up to see Venus standing in the entryway on the other side of the room. She was wearing a charcoal-gray shift that gently brushed against her slender hips. “Al,” she said again, “I understand that you are upset, but I simply cannot allow this energy to be in my house. I’m afraid the three of you will have to leave now.”

Lorna jerked her head in Venus’s direction, as if she had just remembered that there were people in the room that weren’t Zach. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “Thank you for taking care of him, and thank you,” she said, turning to Scott, “for finding him.”

“Course he found me,” Zach muttered. His white powder was wearing off and the black lines he had painted around his eyes had smeared down his cheeks. “I went to Eddie’s bar, right, Scott? What’d ya call him when ya introduced us? No ID Eddie? Eddie, Eddie…Eddie, Eddie bo beddie, ba nana fanna foe—”

Scott stepped forward and tried to ruffle Zach’s hair, which had been gelled into immobility. “He’s wasted, and doesn’t know what he’s talking about…. And he’s just a kid. Don’t be too hard on him,” he said quickly, directing the last comment to Al who was sending little invisible daggers his way.

“You told my son where he could go to get drunk?”

“No, no. We just ran into Eddie at a game and I may have said I would take Zach to his bar when he turned…okay, I may have said eighteen, but I did tell him to wait until then. I swear.”

Al was turning a bit purple, but fortunately for Scott, Zach was the one who needed attention. So, as a team, Lorna and Al pulled Zach to his feet and, with great effort, led him toward the door.

“One last thing,” Venus said in a voice that managed to sound both calm and demanding. “Lorna, I know that you are a true believer, but it’s clear that your husband is not, and nonbelievers are not allowed to be members of the Specter Society. If you choose to attend any further meetings it would be best if you came alone. Gina Priestly, that wonderful woman who hosts
Haunted San Francisco
on the History Channel, she has shown an interest in our séances. We’ll give Al’s slot to her.”

“Oh, come on, Venus!” I snapped. “This family has been through hell and back today. Do you really need to lay into them with your stupid Specter Society rules?”

Venus took two steps in my direction and stopped. The space between us was charged with our mutual antipathy. “You’re upset that I didn’t tell you about how I was the one to buy that brooch. As I told Scott, I gave that piece to Oscar because he lived in the same house as Cecile. I certainly didn’t put it on your bed. But I suggest you be careful before you attack the rules of the Specter Society,” Venus said sharply. “Kane may not like me, but I do have his ear. How would he react if he knew you had referred to his spiritual practices as stupid?”

“Enough.”

The word was said with such vehemence that it took me a moment to realize that it was Scott who had spoken. He was glaring at Venus.

“That’s enough, Venus,” he said again. “Lay off.”

I swallowed hard and looked away. Later Scott would probably try to tell Venus that he had been defending Lorna and her family, but everyone in the room knew he was really standing up for me.

Lorna was the next one to speak. She looked scared again. Even more frightened than when Zach had been missing. “Al believes. He’s just upset, Venus, he believes—”

“That everyone here is full of shit,” Al spat. “Don’t worry, Venus. I won’t be at another Specter Society meeting. None of us will be. Come on, Lorna. Let’s get our son home.”

Lorna was shaking, although that could have been from the effort of holding Zach up. Slowly the trio made their way out of the room and then, eventually, out the front door.

“You should leave, too,” Venus said, leveling her gaze on Marcus and me.

Marcus, who had been uncharacteristically quiet, took my arm and led me out. It was when we were standing out on the sidewalk, feeling the day’s first drops of rain, that he finally found his voice. “Being a gay teen…it sucks. Doesn’t matter how liberated San Francisco is supposed to be, straight teenage boys are evil. They won’t let you be one of them. There’s no place where you can belong. It’s almost too much to deal with. But Zach, he has to deal with all that—two psychotic parents who hate each other and a dead sister. What chance does the poor boy have?”

“He’ll make it through,” I said, although I wasn’t sure I believed it.

Marcus shook his head. “I need to get back to the salon and see if I can salvage some part of my day.”

“I’m so sorry I dragged you away.”

He held up his hand, signaling that I shouldn’t worry about it. I smiled, grateful that for once he wouldn’t be lording the huge inconvenience that I had put him through over my head. Together we went back to my car. When we both had our seat belts on he turned to me again.

“I do have one question for you,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“Why didn’t you tell me that Venus used to be a guy? Whoever did the surgery did a great job. I wouldn’t have even known if I hadn’t spotted that little scar where her Adam’s apple used to be. And of course her hands. Guess the doctors couldn’t do much about those.”

A damp leaf blew onto my windshield and plastered itself there, exposing each one of its veins and discolorations for scrutiny. I turned to Marcus and said the only two words that would come to mind, taking care to enunciate each syllable:

“Holy shit.”

I dropped Marcus off at Ooh La La and then immediately called Jason. “When you went over to Amelia’s the other night, did she say anything more about Venus?” I demanded as he picked up the phone.

“Who is this?” he asked.

“Sophie!” I swerved to miss a pedestrian as I left Fillmore Street. I was headed straight for O’Keefe’s.

“Whoa, I didn’t recognize your voice. You sound pissed!”

“What did Amelia say about Venus?” I asked again.

“I don’t think she said anything about Venus that night.”

“You don’t think?”

“Hey, we got pretty high, some of the details are kinda fuzzy.”

“Are you kidding me! You said you were going to question her and then you got so high that you can’t even remember if she answered you?”

“Yeah, it happens, but I’d like to think that I never asked the questions to begin with. Amelia’s amazing. Not in the way Dena is, but she really knows how to give of herself without any of the conventional solicitude to societal hang-ups. I don’t want to use her, even for a good cause, you know?”

“
What I know
is that I’m freaking out right now!” I screeched to a halt as the yellow light I had been racing toward turned red. “Remember all that stuff Amelia said about Venus’s brother having surgery or have you completely destroyed your short-term memory?”

“I remember her talking about that.”

“Okay, well, I have a feeling that Venus’s brother didn’t die so much as transform.”

“You talking reincarnation?”

“I’m talking sex change, you idiot! I think Venus
is
her brother. And I’m thinking that Venus may be so insecure about having once had a penis that she’s killing off all the people who threaten to out her.”

“Wow, Sophie, you need to drop the prejudices that have been fed to you by the mainstream media and embrace some scientific realities. If Venus did get a sex change, all that shows is that she’s willing to do what it takes to be true to her inner self. It doesn’t mean she’s violent. All studies show that transsexuals are no more or less well-adjusted than the rest of us.”

“The rest of us?” I scoffed. “What
rest of us
are you referring to? Would the four people who have tried to kill me in the past few years qualify as the rest of us? The world may be filled with well-adjusted transsexuals, but Venus is clearly not one of them. She’s a fucking voodoo priestess for God’s sake!”

“Yeah, you may be onto something there,” Jason said begrudgingly. “Are you gonna talk to Amelia?”

“I’m going to O’Keefe’s right now.”

“She’ll be more comfortable opening up if I’m there,” he said. “I’ll meet you out front.”

As I rolled through stop signs and swerved through lanes, I tried to get a handle on my excitement, but it was impossible. I realized that there was no more urgency now than there was before, but I felt like this new revelation was the key to everything. And it was shocking. I mean struck-by-a-lightning-bolt shocking. Scott, the world’s biggest womanizer, was living with—
sleeping with a tranny!
Maybe Jason was right; maybe I needed to be more open-minded about these things, but I knew that Scott never would be, which meant he didn’t know. And with a little luck I would be the one who would get to tell him.

By the time I arrived and found parking Jason was already standing in front of O’Keefe’s. He was chewing on a toothpick. A bright green dragon glared at the world from the front of his black T-shirt.

“Does Amelia know you’re here?” I asked, once in earshot.

He shook his head and glanced behind him. “I caught a glimpse of them through the window, but they didn’t see me.”

“
They
didn’t see you? Who’s they?”

“Amelia, Dena and that sorbet-asshole! What the fuck are they doing here? Did you call Dena?”

“No…wait, well, sort of.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

If we had been in a commercial I would have bought myself a moment by stuffing a Twix candy bar in my mouth. “I may have mentioned this store to her,” I said carefully.

“Since when does Dena care about plants?”

“I think it was the name. Dena’s a big O’Keeffe fan, you know. She says some of her paintings inspire her in her line of work.”

“Yeah,” he said begrudgingly, “she does love O’Keeffe. I love her, too. Her paintings of flowers made me want to be a gynecologist.”

“Right…well, I have to talk to Amelia about Venus,” I said, glancing at the door leading into the shop. “If you don’t want to come in that’s totally fine, but I’m not waiting.”

“I’m going in.” His voice suggested that of someone ready to infiltrate the fort of a heavily armed enemy.

As I entered, Amelia looked up from a perfectly tended orchid and beamed, not at me, but at the man behind me with the toothpick in his mouth. Dena stood with her finger linked through Kim’s belt loop, ready to drag him wherever it was she wanted to go.

“I didn’t expect you!” Amelia said. She turned to Dena and Kim and shrugged her shoulders in a halfhearted apology for the interruption. “Jason and Sophie are friends of mine,” she explained. “And they’re flower lovers, too. Perhaps
they
could make a suggestion about what floral scents work as aphrodisiacs.”

“Sophie’s my friend, too,” Dena said coolly, her eyes glued on Jason.

Kim cast a nervous glance in Jason’s direction before quickly deciding to focus on me. “Hey, Sophie, what’s up?”

I took a deep breath, ready to spill my new information. “Well—”

“
And
I know Jason,” Dena interrupted. “He and I do have similar tastes, so why
not
ask for his opinion? Let’s have it, J. Is there something here that turns you on?”

Jason finally removed the toothpick from his teeth and laid it in his palm, clearly unsure of what to do with it.

“Whoa, I’m picking up on some really amazing energy here.” Amelia stepped forward so she was positioned between Dena and Jason. “Are you into Jason?” she asked without the slightest hint of malice.

“That’s over,” Dena said definitively, but her eyes stayed with Jason. Kim shuffled his feet. It was a small shuffle; Dena really did have a tight hold on him.