Trust Me (3 page)

She allowed Art to take her hand as he helped her out of the Jaguar. They joined the others in the lot and entered the restaurant. Other members of the group were already seated in a section where all the tables had been pushed together to make one long row. Art led her to the far end of the row and seated her in the last chair. He then sat at the end of the table, to her right, as though he were the host of a dinner party.

“The salad bar here is excellent,” he said. “Follow me and do everything I do.” She did, even though she wasn’t hungry.

They returned to their seats with identical plates, each covered by little piles of chili, pasta, artichoke hearts, salad greens, and sourdough bread. “To faith, fellowship, and food!” Art proclaimed, and the others, now all seated, laughed and raised their water glasses, their ice teas, and their diet cokes.

⍫

It was past midnight when Art brought her back to her BMW in the church parking lot. He had held court for hours; Holly, like the others, had refilled her plate several times, and the serious mood of the meeting had evaporated. The whole line of approach Art had pursued earlier, during the ride to the restaurant, seemed to be finished as well.

“Holly,” he began as he again held both of her hands, standing at the open door of her car, “it has been delightful having you along tonight.”

She felt flattered. Throughout the evening he had treated her like a special guest. The meeting had been kind of a downer, she thought, but the get-together afterward was quite pleasant.

“I had a great time. Thank you.” She meant it.

“Holly.” He was stern again, intense, saying her name as if he didn’t already have her attention. “I think that you are about to embark on a major voyage of discovery. About yourself and about the world. Tonight was a beginning, but you need a real introduction to this work, and tomorrow night’s seminar is perfect, crucial even, for you at this moment in your life.” He let go with one hand and, reaching in his jacket pocket, pulled out an envelope. Handing it to Holly, he told her, “Please be my guest tomorrow night. Seven sharp, at the Beverly Hills Playhouse. There’s a ticket in the envelope, along with my card. Call me if you would like a ride.”

She was flustered. Something in his manner almost commanded her to go—it seemed too forceful; he certainly wasn’t attractive in this moment. And yet she couldn’t say no. She thanked him again, took the envelope and, disengaging her other hand from his, got into her own car and closed the door. She put the envelope in her purse and started the BMW.

⍫

She listened to music at full volume as she drove—in order not to have to think—but her mind just shouted louder. “Who the hell does he think he is?” His personal interrogation came back to her, with all its attendant discomfort. What an asshole, she thought, shaking her head as she turned into her building’s driveway.

Tony’s car was parked in her spot. It was a decrepit Volvo station wagon, parked askew with its tail end sticking out into the traffic lane. All of his gear was visible in the back—amplifiers and instrument cases—and the driver’s side window was open.

She parked in visitor parking and hurried up to her flat. Music was blaring from her stereo—it had that noisy, messy quality she had come to know as belonging to a live recording of one of Tony’s club gigs. She started to let herself in when the doorknob flew out of her grasp.

“Hey, Miss nighty-night-early-tonight made it home. I know. You tried to sleep and couldn’t so you made the bed and got dressed and went for a FUCKING DRIVE. AM I RIGHT?”
He’s shouting at me
, she thought, i
nside my own home
. He stood holding her door open but blocking the doorway. In one hand he gripped a bottle of Wild Turkey. The words “Get it while it’s hot . . .” came in a distorted roar from the stereo behind him—it was the chorus to a rock song he had co-written.

She brushed past Tony, surprised at her own audacity. He let her through and followed her into the living room. She hit the off button on the stereo and turned back to him. “I want you to leave here right now.”

“Whoah, baby. Aren’t you glad to see me?” he taunted as he stepped toward her. “I called and I called and then I thought to myself, well why don’t I just go over and sneak in real quiet-like and snuggle up with her in bed. Wouldn’t that be nice? But nooo. Check it out. The bitch flew the coop!”

“Get out of here, Tony. You’re drunk. I hate it when you’re drunk. Go home.”

“Where were you?”

“I went to a meeting.”

“Bullshit. Fucking meetings are over at nine. BULLSHIT.” Now he was yelling again

“Look, I went out with the people from the meeting afterward. We went to a restaurant.”

“Bullshit.” Tony lunged forward and grabbed her purse. He reached in and pulled out her compact. “Nice,” he said, and threw it over his shoulder. He followed with her wallet, hairbrush, and address book, throwing them aside, until he got to the envelope.

“Hey now. What have we got here?” He opened the envelope and pulled out a business card. “Dr. Art Bradley, Psychologist, Licensed Family Counselor, Co-dependency and Substance Abuse Specialist, hey, in Bevahlee Hills, dahling. Oh, and look here!” He pulled out the ticket. “The Bevahlee Hills fuckin’ Playhouse. Well, isn’t that nice. Tomorrow night.” He stepped up to her and lowered his face to her, then moved around to whisper, “I thought we
had”—his tongue flickered warmly in her ear—“a date tomorrow night.”

“Tony, goddamnit, cut it out.” She turned her head and tried to pull away, but Tony’s hand shot out and caught her hair. She felt a shock of pain as he wrenched her around and flung her, by the hair, back into the stereo console.

“Tony, please, you’ve got it all mixed up. Stop.” She was pleading with him, but somewhere in the back of her mind she was furious, ready to push a brick in his face if only she could get her hands on one.

“All mixed up. You’ve got it all mixed up,” he mimicked. “All mixed up? Mix this up, you little cunt,” and his hand shot out and caught her right above the eye in a backhanded slap that she heard before she felt.

At that moment a voice came from the door. “Holly! Holly, is everything okay?” The voice had a lisp; it was Arnie, her next door neighbor, very sweet, very gay, and not her first choice for the moment, but Tony simply said, “Oh Christ,” and turned around and left. As he passed Arnie at the door he said, “What a fuckin’ joke,” and then he was gone.

CHAPTER 5

⍫

Jeff was startled out of oblivion by a bump against his mouth.
It had started out lips on lips, but caress turned into collision; teeth had gnashed against his teeth. He looked up and groaned. Lilah was standing over him, swaying, a goofy look on her face, teeth bared in a crazed grin. He knew that look. It meant that she had taken one, probably several, of his Xanax bars. He also realized that she had gotten into his bank bag.

“So, man, you’re busted,” she managed, with effort, to enunciate. “You’re doing heroin.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” he yelled, wide awake now. He jumped up and marched off into the spare room, Lilah following. His briefcase was open on the bed, its contents scattered everywhere. On the floor were a magazine and a long clear glass vial. The vial’s contents were arranged into little piles and lines—more than half was in the carpet. It was the LSD. The humidity was beading on it; the part in the rug was gone forever. The substance, in its pure form, had represented over ten thousand doses. Lilah put her finger into one of the little piles and leered at him, triumphant.

“You’re a fuckin’ junkie, man. That’s why you got sick.”

He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “What the FUCK is the matter with you?” he yelled. Lilah stared at him as if he had a poisonous spider on his nose. “What the fuck are you doing?” She put her finger in her mouth. That amount alone could have sent thirty people to Mars for twenty-four hours; God knew what she had already ingested.

He grabbed her by the wrist and yanked her up and out of the room. He slammed the door while she yelled something about how the color of the powder had clued her in that there was heroin in the vial.

He locked the door and started trying to salvage what was left. The LSD was almost half gone. Rich’s investment was in the toilet. He took stock of the rest of the room. The large bag was still in its spot on the shelf. That was good. He counted the Xanax; there were three missing. With the coke it was hard to tell; he didn’t keep close tabs on his personal stash. He snapped one of the bars in half and ate it, along with a Valium, put everything back in the briefcase, and cleared off the bed.

He lay down, his heart thumping like a basketball on a gym floor.

⍫

The next thing he heard was shouting from outside. He looked at his watch; he must have slept for an hour. There was a brief silence, then a crash and the sound of breaking glass, and then he heard Lilah shout, “CAST THE DEVIL FROM YOUR HEART. THE DEVIL IS IN YOUR HEART.” This was followed by a voice from the neighboring apartment building—“Give it a rest, Lilah!”—and laughter. A different voice yelled, “Party time at Lilah’s again!” followed by, “Shut the fuck up, all of you.”

Another crash. BOOM. Something heavy this time. He could picture her throwing things out of the living room window.

“CAST THE DEVIL FROM YOUR HEART.” There was a muffled thump, as though a large piece of furniture had just been pushed over. Jeff dozed.

He woke to a scream. “AAAH! GET AWAY FROM ME! FUCK YOU, DEVIL.” This was way past out of hand. He reached over to his briefcase and fished out another Valium. He needed, and intended to get, at least ten more hours of sleep.

⍫

This time he was awakened by a new sound. It came from the direction of the front door and had a crisp authority, a staccato rhythm of great purpose. After a silence, it resumed. He sat up on the edge of the bed. There was another silence, followed by, “POLICE! OPEN THE DOOR!”

“Shit.” He froze. He heard the unmistakable sound of the front door frame giving way, followed by heavy footsteps and the squawking of a police radio.

“YOU,” he heard Lilah shriek, “CAST THE DEVIL FROM YOUR HEART.” She was really out of her tree. More footsteps. A female voice said something he couldn’t hear. A male voice laughed, the walkie-talkie blared, and the footsteps fanned out throughout the apartment.

He got up and shut the closet door. Then he put his ear to the wall, trying to hear what was going on in the living room. He considered the window, but throwing out the bag and briefcase would surely attract attention. Climbing out was out of the question.

He couldn’t hear much, but things seemed to be settling down. The female voice asked questions, Lilah’s voice responding in a singsong fashion. He reached in the pocket of his trunks. The amber vial was there. He whisked it out, unscrewed the cap, and inhaled what was left inside, savoring the medicinal smell as he put the vial under the mattress. He licked his thumb and index finger, then used them to clean his nostrils in a pinching motion. A hard object rapped against the door to his room.

He opened the door and saw a cop holding a big nightstick. The cop was huge. Jeff was six feet tall and he had to look up at the guy.

“What’s your name?”

“Jeffrey Fenner, sir.”

“What’s been going on around here?”

“Well sir, I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? What the hell have you been doing?” The cop was incredulous.

“Sleeping. Well, trying to, anyway.”

“You slept through this?” The cop gestured for him to step out and look down the hall into the living room.

He looked out and saw four other cops standing by the door—one was the woman he had heard—and Lilah bound onto a stretcher on wheels. The living room was a mess, with stuff all over the floor and the couch and chairs tumbled over. He stepped back into his room. “It’s probably better if she doesn’t notice me,” he said.

“Why is that? What’s going on here, anyway?”

“Well, sir, ah . . .” His nose was about to drip. He started to reach for it, then let his hand drop. “I’m in grad school over at UCLA. Uh, biology, sir.” He saw an opening. “Anyway, I saw an ad for a roommate in the campus newspaper. I’ve only been here for ten days and I’m already looking for a new place. This girl,” he jerked his thumb in the direction of the living room, “just parties too much.” He was on a roll now. The cop looked bored but was clearly waiting for more. “So this weekend I was in San Francisco, visiting my folks. I had to take the midnight shuttle home and I think I ate some bad food at the airport ’cause I was sick as a dog by the time we landed in LA.” All this time he was standing in the doorway, eyes locked with the cop in the hall.

“So I get home and she had just gotten back herself. She was fighting with her date and seemed pretty loaded at the time. I needed to sleep so I just stayed in here and locked the door.” He had no idea where the story came from—it just flowed. He remembered the disappointment of not qualifying for college.

The cop looked at him in silence, softly tapping the nightstick into his palm. He thought of the scale—it was right next to the gun in the closet, along with the coke and the money. A voice from the front door said, “You ready?” and the cop replied, “Yeah, let’s clear out.” He looked at Jeff and said, “Get some sleep,” then turned around and left.

He heard the front door pull shut, then creak open on its broken hinge. In the outside hallway, footsteps receded until finally it was quiet. He waited for ten minutes, then got dressed, gathered his bag and briefcase, and walked to his car. As he rolled out of the driveway, he shook his head, thinking about what he had just pulled off. He had skated on some thin ice before, but this morning was a capper.

Driving through Brentwood toward the beach, he grimaced at the brightness of the day. It was hot, but he didn’t care. His apartment was four miles away. If he made it there, he could sleep until dinnertime, or maybe all the way through to the next morning, and things would be different. He would be rested, he would eat, and then he would figure out what to do.