Star Island (6 page)

“Okay, sure.” Ann realized she was famished. “Something smells good.”

“Crocodile,” the stranger said.

She managed a smile, playing along. “Mmm, my favorite.”

“That’s what I was taking off the road last night when you almost flattened me. Just a little fella, barely four foot. A FedEx van clipped him, guy never even touched the brakes.”

“Actually, I’m not all that hungry,” said Ann.

The man explained that it was technically illegal to eat a North American crocodile because the species was federally protected. “But it’s a goddamn sin to waste good meat,” he said. “You can write that down as a natural law, young lady—never waste good meat.”

“There’s some aspirin in my purse,” Ann said.

“Of course.”

“And a phone, too.”

He returned with only the bottle of Bayer, tapping three tablets into her palm. She downed them at once and said, “I should really see a doctor.”

“Some call me Skink,” the man said. “Or captain. All depends.”

“Do you live out here?”

“Your car sunk—I take full responsibility. Here, try some.”

The chunks of croc tail tasted all right, Ann discovered. Like overcooked fish.

“I thought I crashed in some trees,” she said.

“Blasted straight through ’em, like a rocket ship,” said the man. “Landed upside down in a crick.”

“Holy shit.” Ann shivered, thinking about how close she must
have come to drowning. However, it seemed odd that her clothes and bags weren’t damp. “Please get me to a doctor,” she said.

“You’re going to be fine.” His smile caught her off guard. For a homeless dude he had unbelievable teeth, so white and straight; a complete set, too.

He said, “Here’s the situation, Ms. Ann DeLusia. I can’t let you go right now.”

“What?” She thought she must have misheard him.

“I need your help with a project,” he said.

She put down the plate. “Captain, stop. You’re freaking me out.”

“When this is over, I’ll arrange speedy transit—that’s a promise,” he told her. “But for a while, you’ll have to stay here with me.”

Ann’s hands were shaking. “Jesus, are you nuts? That’s kidnapping!”

“Truly I regret the inconvenience,” said the man called Skink. “How about some fried bananas?”

The drummer for the Poon Pilots was Methane Drudge. He refused to admit it was not his baptismal name. The group leader gently chastised him, saying, “We’re not going to make much progress unless you choose the path of self-honesty.”

“Yeah, well, you can choose the long hairy path up my ass. How’s that?” said Methane Drudge.

Cherry Pye rolled her eyes, thinking: Another low-rent rocker, covered with cheap Venice ink. How boring.
Booorrrr-ing
.

The group leader pressed on. “Methane, you came to Rainbow Bend voluntarily, like everybody else in this room. You signed a pledge to try this our way, remember?”

Methane laughed hoarsely. “Dude, I was totally baked on China white. I woulda signed a pawn slip for my thirteen-year-old sister.”

“Asshole,” Cherry said. This was why she never slept with drummers or bass players.

It was a small group, only six patients and the therapist. Cherry recognized some of the other addicts from her previous rehabs.
One young woman was almost as famous as she was, owing to a co-starring role on a popular cable sitcom. The woman played the perpetually horny neighbor of a beleaguered single mom who was working her way through dental school.

The group leader said, “Recovery depends on knowing ourselves completely, and we can’t know who we truly are unless we shed our disguises. That’s why we use only our real names here at Rainbow Bend. We’ll come back to Methane later in the discussion. Cheryl, would you like to share?”

“Not really.” Cherry detested being called Cheryl.

“Please,” the group leader said. He was new to the clinic. For being such a high-end nuthouse, Rainbow Bend had a serious problem with staff turnover. Apparently it was difficult finding counselors at any salary who could tolerate a clientele of spoiled show-business fuckups.

“Cheryl, please get us started,” the group leader prodded again.

“Yeah, whatever.” Cherry had gone through the drill dozens of times, but still she would have killed for a cigarette. “Okay, so, things are goin’ supergood. I got a new CD coming out in a few weeks, which is incredibly hot. It’s called
Skantily Klad
, with all
k
’s, and I’m doin’, like, a hundred-city tour. Plus I had a walk-on for Kid Rock last month in Vegas, and he is so
smokin’
. And what else—okay, I’ve probably been partyin’ a little too hard, on account of all the pressure. Tryin’ to finish the album, you know, plus gettin’ ready for the road. There’s, like, eighteen songs to learn and they’re all different. Plus I hadda fire two of the backup singers because they weren’t givin’ me my righteous space, y’know. They had, like, zero respect. So I had to cut those bitches loose and audition some new ones—”

“Excuse me, Cheryl,” the group leader interrupted. “Can you rewind and talk a little more about the partying?”

Methane clapped his tattooed hands. “Yesssss! We wanna hear it all.”

Cherry Pye fidgeted in her chair. “Same old shit. I get with certain people, y’know, then it’s back to the evil old ways. You guys can relate, right?”

All the other patients nodded knowingly, except for Methane, who was slapping his kneecaps with both hands, keeping the beat to a song that only he could hear.

The group leader said, “Does it always start with the alcohol, Cheryl?”

“Nah. Whatever’s on the table.”

“So you don’t have a particular drug of choice.”

Cherry shook her head. “I go with the flow. It’s all good.”

“But the results aren’t so good, are they?” the group leader said. “That’s how you wound up here.”

“Hey. You don’t know what it’s like to be me.”

Methane groaned. “Now she’s poachin’ from Tom Petty. Gimme a fuckin’ break.”

“Don’t be such a dick,” Cherry told him.

The group leader thanked her for sharing and said, “Who wants to go next?”

“But I’m not done,” Cherry complained.

“We have to make time for everybody.”

“Yo, she can have my goddamn turn,” Methane volunteered.

“Cool,” Cherry said. Then, re-addressing the group: “I just had one more thing to say: I’m gonna change my name to Cherish.”

“Cherish what?” the sitcom actress asked.

“Just Cherish. One word. I picked it because it sounds, like, totally pure.”

The group leader clucked disapprovingly. “Cheryl, you’re just creating another facade to hide behind. That’s not a path to self-honesty.”

“Let’s take a vote,” she said. “Everybody in favor of Cherish raise your hand.”

“Hold on—there’s no voting in therapy!” the group leader protested.

Four of the five other patients raised their hands. Only Methane Drudge voted no. He said Cherish was bogus. He said it sounded like a brand of lame perfume. Cherry ignored the comment.

“I’m also thinking of getting bigger boobs,” she told the group.

This time the vote was 4–0 against. Everybody except Methane Drudge said Cherry’s current boobs were lovely. The drummer abstained, insisting he had to see them in the flesh before he made up his mind.

“Pervo,” Cherry muttered, folding her arms.

The group leader rose, plainly annoyed by the shift in the discussion. “Break time,” he said curtly, and walked out.

Rainbow Bend had a shady serenity garden surrounded by ivy-covered walls. Cherry found a patch of sunlight and sat down cross-legged in the soft grass. Methane walked up and offered her a Camel. The smoke irritated her throat, which was still raw from the Miami vomitfest. Methane asked how many times she’d been rehabbed and she said four, counting this one.

“It’s all a bunch of horseshit,” he said.

Cherry laughed acidly. “Ya think?”

“What would they do if you said fuck it and then bailed?”

“I dunno. Bill my manager for the whole week?”

Methane said, “Hell, I’m supposed to be stuck in this hog farm for thirty days. There ain’t no way.”

The sunlight warmed Cherry’s cheeks. She closed her eyes and said, “I hear ya, dude.”

“I mean, do you love it here or somethin’? ’Cause I already seen enough.”

“Yeah?” Cherry opened her eyes and looked at the stringy, bleary-eyed skinhead. Why don’t junkies ever brush their teeth? she wondered. Guy can afford a three-hundred-dollar-a-day smack habit but he can’t afford some freaking floss?

Methane said, “Know what we should do? We should split—you and me.”

“Wow.”

“We could hop the damn wall, no problem.” He winked and tapped his cigarette ashes into the koi pond. “Come on, what the hell are they gonna do?”

“Cheer, probably,” Cherry Pye said.

She stood up and tossed her Camel into the ivy. She was thinking about Tanner what’s-his-face back on Star Island, trying to
remember if the sex was any good. She had a vague recollection of helping him put on a condom, but the rest was a fog.

She said, “I’m sure we could walk out the front door just as easy. It’s not a prison, dude. It’s just a spa for drunks and dopers.”

Methane explained that he couldn’t leave by the front entrance because his bandmates, who were a bunch of self-righteous pricks, had hired a couple of Latino gorillas to hang close and make sure he didn’t bolt. It had something to do with the promoter’s insurance policy—Methane was supposed to test clean before he could go on the road again.

“Bummer,” said Cherry.

“So, how ’bout it? Let’s jump the wall and run down to the beach and get high.”

“My mom would die.”

“Aw, come on,
Cherish.”
The drummer smiled and traced a finger along her neckline.

She smiled back at him. “Sounds nice. Say it again.”

“Cherish? You like that, huh?”

She stood up, dusting the seat of her pants. “Okay, let’s go. Me first.”

Methane boosted her over the five-foot wall, the vines abrading her palms. She came down on all fours in some dry scrub on a high slope overlooking the Pacific Coast Highway. The drummer landed with a grunt beside her, wrenching an ankle. They followed the wall to the corner of the property and took a hiking path down the hill.

When Methane said his leg hurt too badly for him to continue, Cherry told him to man up. They couldn’t call for a ride because neither of them had a cell. Rainbow Bend had confiscated the devices upon admittance, due to a problem with patients secretly phoning their drug dealers, who would dutifully drive out to Malibu and lob Baggies of pills, rocks, buds and powder over the wall. On some mornings the serenity garden looked like the Customs locker at LAX.

“Just keep walkin’,” Cherry told the drummer.

“But I think my damn foot is broke,” he whined.

“Don’t be such a twink.”

The path emerged a few hundred yards from the white gatehouse that stood at the tree-lined driveway leading up to the Rainbow Bend chalet. No members of the Poon Pilots’ security detail were visible, but the gatehouse attendant appeared to have taken notice of the two unlikely hikers. Cherry was dressed in a manner that wouldn’t normally arouse suspicion in Malibu—Hudson jeans, Rafe sandals and a black DK top—but Methane looked like a degenerate neo-Nazi child molester. He’d been delivered to Rainbow Bend wearing unlaced combat boots, a shredded white undershirt and baggy, low-flying board shorts that displayed not only his ass crack but the tattoo of a snake-entwined swastika.

Cherry Pye said, “Know what? Let’s split up, dude.”

“Shit, baby, I can barely stand. Gimme an arm.”

Briskly she began walking down the street. The drummer hobbled after her, cussing under his breath.

A silver four-door sedan was idling at the downhill end of the block, facing away. A heavyset civilian sat behind the steering wheel, his capped head lolling. Cherry walked up and tapped her fingernails on the trunk, startling the driver so much that he knocked the Bluetooth out of his ear.

When he rolled down the window, she said, “Can you give me a ride?”

“Me, too,” chimed Methane from behind.

The man asked where she was headed.

“Holmby Hills,” Cherry replied. “Then Burbank.”

“Hey, what happened to the beach?” said Methane.

The driver looked curiously at Cherry. “You mean Burbank airport?”

“If it’s not too big of a hassle. I’m totally good for the gas.”

“No problem.”

“I got, like, a major meeting in Miami.”

“Sure. Hop in.”

Cherry Pye slid into the front passenger seat. “Nice wheels. Is this the new C-Class?”

“S,” said the driver.

“Killer.” It’s an expensive car to be stinking of french fries, Cherry thought. The guy looked familiar, although she couldn’t place the face.

Methane rapped on the side of the Mercedes and said, “Back door’s locked, bro.”

“Let’s roll,” Cherry said to the driver.

“What about your friend?”

“Mental defective, I mean big-time. Just drive.”

“Absolutely.”

“Hey,
Cheryl!”
Methane shouted snidely. “Tell him to open the fuckin’ door!”

She didn’t bother to look back as they sped away, leaving the drummer gesticulating in the middle of the street. Laying an adorable smile on the paunchy driver, Cherry said, “Thanks. My name is Cherish.”

“I know who you are.”

“Yeah?” She glanced over the seat and saw among the crumpled McDonald’s wrappers a large camera bag and a pair of binoculars. She said, “Oh, don’t fucking tell me.”

The man extended a greasy hand. “Claude Abbott. Big fan.”

The real-estate crash couldn’t have happened at a more inconvenient time for Jackie Sebago, whose privileged circle of investors collectively had sunk more than nine million dollars into Jackie’s condominium project. To allay their concerns, the Sebago Isle Limited Partnership, LLC, invited the investors to a lavish retreat at the exclusive Ocean Reef Club on North Key Largo, a legendary haven for rich, fretful white guys. On the recreational agenda were tennis, golf, deep-sea fishing, Pilates classes, hot-stone massages, a private concert by Michael Bolton and—if necessary—a tour of the development site, located along County Road 905 only a few miles south of the club. The tour would be brief, as only two slabs had been poured.