Wrong City (11 page)

Vish smiled.
“What for?” he asked. “You did all the hard work.”

“For
everything,” Troy said. “It’s been a fun evening.”

Considering the
excitement at Kelsey’s party, “fun” wasn’t the right word, but the burst of
panic and confusion now seemed trivial compared to the reality of Troy in his
arms. Vish snuggled her closer to him, ignoring the pain in his ribs, and
closed his eyes.

T
roy vanished the next morning. Vish woke
up alone in his bed, and there was no sign of her. It was still dark in his
bedroom. He squinted at the clock. Just after six.

He pulled on
his bathrobe and ventured into the living room. Troy kept odd hours, thanks to
her television schedule, and it wasn’t uncommon for her to rise early and make
coffee, then sit by herself on the couch, reading a magazine while patiently
waiting for him to wake up.

She wasn’t
there. Strange that she’d leave without telling him. She hadn’t mentioned
anything she needed to do this morning—no auditions, no errands, no
appointments. Maybe she’d run out to grab breakfast.

No. She’d taken
her gladiator costume with her. Presumably she wasn’t wearing it right now,
which meant she’d changed into the clothes she kept in Vish’s room. He checked.

Gone.

Everything of
hers was gone, the small armful of sweatshirts and underwear and leggings she’d
stashed in one of his dresser drawers.

Huh. That was
odd, odd enough to give him an uneasy prickle in his chest. But they’d had a
great evening together, all sex and giggles, despite the bizarre events at
Kelsey’s party, so it wasn’t like Troy had left permanently.

He called her.
Her phone rang five times, then went to voicemail. He paused, about to leave a
message, then hung up instead.

He measured
grounds into the coffee pot and tried not to worry.

He didn’t hear
from Troy all day.

He called her
two more times, leaving artfully breezy voicemails. He needed groceries, but he
stayed home, struck by a sense of foreboding, some kind of homing instinct that
compelled him to stay indoors.

He read online
reports about Kelsey’s party. The explosion hadn’t been important enough to
warrant more than a quick mention in the national news, but the gossip sites
were all over it. It was a stink bomb, they claimed, a juvenile prank, likely
planted by one of Kelsey’s former ‘tween-star rivals. Speculation as to the
perpetrator was rife. No one had been injured, and the general consensus seemed
to be that it was all pretty lame. Vish watched some blurry video footage of
evacuated party guests standing outside the restaurant; he caught a brief,
fuzzy glimpse of Troy standing next to him, and it made him feel melancholy.

Troy finally
answered her phone the next morning. Her voice sounded thin and uncertain, and
this scared him almost as much as her words.

“I’m sorry I
didn’t get back to you yesterday,” she said. “I just…” She trailed off. Vish
heard her inhale on the other end of the line, a million miles away from him,
then try again. “I just didn’t feel well.”

“What’s wrong?
Are you sick?” he asked. “Troy, is everything okay?”

“Everything’s
fine. I think I caught a cold or something.” She paused, then her words came
out in a tumbled rush. “I don’t want to see you anymore.”

Vish was
stunned into silence. “Why?” he finally asked.

“It’s just…
it’s not working out,” she said.

“Did I do
something?” His voice sounded calm and level, which was odd, because he was
screaming inside.

“No. Not
really. It’s…” She made some kind of noise, an indeterminate sigh. “I don’t
think I can explain. I just don’t want to see you again. Ever.”

“Can we meet to
talk about this?” he asked. Still calm.

“I don’t think
so,” she said. A long pause, during which Vish felt his heart crumble.
“Goodbye.” She disconnected the call.

Vish held his
phone to his ear with cold fingers and listened to the dial tone. From the
start, he’d expected Troy to exit his life as swiftly as she’d entered, but not
like this. She would’ve been kind about it, full of brisk reassurances that it
wasn’t anything he’d done, that they’d keep in touch, that he’d find someone
better for him soon. That was Troy, not that uncertain, inarticulate creature
on the phone.

Not really
.
What had he done? How had he ruined things?

He almost
called her again. Some remaining scrap of pride prevented him from hitting the
redial button. She wouldn’t answer. She’d spent all of yesterday avoiding his
calls; she hadn’t wanted to talk to him now, though she’d probably figured it’d
be better to cut him out of her life now than spend the next several days
dodging him.

Later that day,
the flu struck, an especially pernicious and incapacitating strain. He spent
the evening sitting on the bathroom floor, clutching his stomach, staying
within easy barfing distance of the toilet.

He sweated and
vomited. He sat in the shower, knees to his chest, and let hot water pound down
on him, too shaky to stand up and too exhausted to shave or shampoo his hair.
He made endless cups of herbal tea that he never touched, because even a tiny
swallow would start him vomiting again. He nibbled on unbuttered toast. He
cried a lot, alone in his bed, and felt feeble and ridiculous for it.

He didn’t leave
his apartment for three days.

On the fourth
day, he ran out of tea. He didn’t have anything stronger than aspirin on hand,
and he needed something that would dull the ache in his bones, would dry up the
thick mucous that had staged a hostile takeover of his upper respiratory
system, would help him get some badly-needed sleep. He pulled a sweatshirt over
the sweatpants he used as pajama bottoms, slid on his sandals, and headed on
foot to the grocery store.

It was cold
outside. Every time he breathed in, the chill in the air seared his lungs, and
he’d explode into a paroxysm of coughing. His throat was nothing but swollen,
shredded tissue. His mouth tasted of blood.

He got lost
along the way, and he ended up stumbling around the canals, which turned into a
maze designed to confound him. The water in the canals had gone green and foamy
and stank of rotting fish. Vish gripped the railing of one of the quaint wooden
bridges and didn’t inhale or look down, because the sight and smell of the
water made his stomach clench.

At the grocery
store, where he clutched his basket with both hands and tried not to sway on
his feet, Vish ran into Mariposa. He was focusing so intently on picking up the
handful of items on his shopping list and returning home without incident that
he failed to recognize her, until she stood right in front of him and waved
with both hands to get his attention.

“Hey, you,” she
said. She was resplendent in an electric blue parka with a pink fur collar over
a denim skirt and flip-flops. “Did you walk here? I could have given you a
ride.”

“Hi, Mariposa.”

She looked into
his basket and spotted the orange juice, the cans of soup, the virulent green
cold medicine, the extra-large box of tissues. “Oh, you’ve got that, huh?”

“What?”

She shrugged.
“Whatever’s going around. Mama’s got it, everyone’s got it. Some kind of flu or
whatever.”

“Don’t get too
close. I don’t want to spread it,” Vish said.

She rolled her
eyes. “I’m immune, seriously. If I don’t have it by now, I’m not going to get
it, right?” She observed him for a moment, her mouth twisting in concern. Vish
hadn’t looked in a mirror for a few days. He probably looked like death. “Come
on. If you’re done here, I can give you a ride home.”

He wasn’t done,
not quite, but he was in no shape to decline the offer. He paid for his
groceries, the checkout process seeming ridiculously complicated. Mariposa
whisked the bag of purchases out of his arms before he could protest and guided
him to her car, which had a crumpled fender and the handle fasted to the
passenger door by a gigantic wad of duct tape. She stashed his groceries in her
trunk and got in. “Put your seat belt on,” she told him. “And don’t tell my
mother about this. I promised her I wouldn’t give any rides to boys, otherwise
she’ll take the car away.”

“I promise.”

She drove
toward their building. “You still with that girl?” she asked. “The one with the
reddish hair?”

“No.” Vish
almost burst into tears just saying that, his first public acknowledgment that
Troy was no longer a part of his life. “She’s gone.”

“Sorry. I
guess. Are you sorry about it?”

“Yes. I am,” he
said.

“She looked
kind of snotty. Was she snotty?”

“No. She was
nice.” Vish closed his eyes and leaned his head against the door. The glass of
the window was cool against his forehead.

Mariposa was
quiet for a while. Then: “You know there’s something living in that hole?”

His brain
wasn’t at its best these days. As much as he tried, he couldn’t make sense of
that. He straightened up and looked at her. “What?”

“The hole in
the corner of the building. From the earthquake, remember? There’s something in
it. I’ve seen something moving in there, lots of times.”

“Probably rats.
Or possums,” Vish said. “I’ve seen possums in the neighborhood before.”

“Yeah.”
Mariposa didn’t sound convinced. “But the weird thing is, I’ve shone a
flashlight around in there. Like, there’s a shadow, and the shadow moves, but
there’s nothing causing the shadow.”

Vish looked at
her, confused. “There must be something,” he said.

“I know.” She
frowned. She pulled into her assigned space in front of the gate. “I guess, but
it doesn’t seem like it.”

They walked
toward the stairs. Vish looked at the crumbled corner, which was still blocked
off with an orange safety cone. Mariposa glanced over at it too. Her brow
creased.

“I don’t like
looking at it. It scares me.” She shrugged. “Mom says I’m being stupid.”

She probably
was being stupid. So was Vish, because he didn’t like looking at it either.

“You should
stay away from it. Might be dangerous,” he said. He tried to make his voice
nonchalant. “If there’s rats or something, I mean. You could get rabies.”

Mariposa gave
him a sidelong glance, like she knew he was full of crap. “You too,” she said.

It seemed like
good advice.

A
fter six days of misery, Vish felt well
enough to visit Troy. He tried calling first and she didn’t pick up, so he
decided to take a chance and stop by unannounced. She might not even be home,
but Troy’s Saturdays were generally leisurely, especially now that she wasn’t
working. If he could just see her…

He took a bus
down the coast to Hermosa. Inside a paper bag in his lap rested the excuse for
his visit, a pair of cobalt ballet flats she’d left at his apartment. He felt
awful—still weak, still sore, still headachey—but he hadn’t vomited in over a
day, and thus he must be on the mend.

He made his way
down to the beach and wandered along the Strand until he found the right house.
There was no doorbell, so he rapped on the sliding door.

A figure approached
from inside. Vish’s heart beat faster, until he realized it was Lola. She
stared at him through the glass, then slid the door open a few inches.

“Hey,” she
said. “She’s not here. She’s at an audition.”

“She left these
at my place,” he said. He held up the flats.

Lola stared at
them. Vish expected her to take them and close the door, but instead she opened
it a bit wider and craned her head outside. She looked around in both
directions, then ducked back and slid the door fully open. “Go ahead and come in,”
she said.

Vish stepped
inside. Lola closed the door behind him and pulled the drapes across it,
blocking the view of the beach.

“She’ll be gone
all morning, probably, but I don’t need the neighbors telling her you stopped
by.” She nodded at the shoes in his hand. “Keep them or throw them. I’m not
taking them, because she’ll know you were here, and that’s a conversation I
don’t want to have.”

“I don’t
understand,” Vish said. “Do you know why she broke up with me?”

Lola stared at
him. She looked like she had just woken up, all tangled hair and puffy eyes.
“You’re not going to cry, are you? I can’t deal with a crying man today.”

She padded
barefoot over to the kitchen. She wore only a threadbare black sweater, barely
long enough to function as a dress, her legs pale beneath it. Cobwebs of purple
veins covered her skinny white thighs. She yanked open the refrigerator and
stared inside. “You want water or something?”

“No. Thank
you,” Vish said. “Can you tell me why Troy left me?”

She
straightened up, a water bottle clutched in her hand. She looked exasperated.
“Because Troy is a goddamned flake,” she said.

She slammed the
fridge shut and walked over to the couch. “Sit,” she said.

Vish perched on
the edge of a cushion, the unwanted shoes balanced on his knees. Lola plopped
down beside him. She rolled her eyes. “I mean, she’s a friend and I love her,
but she’s always been a flake. And it’s cool for the most part, but I think you
got screwed in the process.”

“What do you
mean?” Vish asked.

She exhaled.
“Here’s the situation. Appreciate this, because Troy would be pissed at me if
she knew I was even talking to you. And if it ever comes out you treated her
wrong or were a jerk to her in any way, you know I’ll have your balls, right?”
She shrugged. “But you seem like a nice guy. Not Troy’s normal thing at all,
but I have to say, she was better with you. Nicer to people, less swept up in
her own personal drama. Less of a bitch, I guess is what I’m saying.”

She settled
back on the couch and took a swig of water. “So a week ago, she comes home in
the morning, and it’s the same goddamned Troy back. She’s in tears. I thought
you might have done something shitty to her, but she told me you hadn’t. But…”
She stopped.

“But what?”
Vish asked. “Why did she leave me?”

“She said you
must have somehow tricked her into dating you,” Lola said. “She thought you
might be evil. That’s a quote, by the way.”

Whatever Vish
was expecting, that wasn’t it. “What?”

“I don’t know,
so don’t go asking me to explain it. That’s pretty much all she said, and when
I pressed her, she didn’t give specifics. Just cried a lot.” Lola shook her
head. “And
that
, my love, is a whole lot like the Troy I know.”

Vish stared at
her. “Funny,” he said. “Because that’s nothing like the Troy I know.”

Lola shrugged.
“I don’t know what to tell you. Either you brought out something different in
her, or she was putting on an act to impress you. Or maybe you just saw
whatever you wanted to see in her.”

“So what do I
do now?”

“I don’t really
care, as long as it doesn’t involve Troy.” At his expression, something in
Lola’s face softened. “Look, she doesn’t want to see you. She’s not going to
meet with you or take your calls. Move on. Whatever you thought about her, you
have to accept that it’s over, because there’s nothing you can do about it.”

There was
nowhere to go from there. He could argue that no, he knew the real Troy, and
Troy loved him, or was fond enough of him that she’d never claim he was evil,
for crying out loud, but there was nothing to be gained by it. In the end, he
just left.

He couldn’t
face the bus, so he walked north along the shore, sticking close to the water’s
edge through the vast industrial void of El Segundo. He trudged along the
grassy stretch of Dockweiler Beach while low jets roared overhead from neighboring
LAX, then detoured too far off his course through the maze of docks in Marina
Del Rey. He considered stuffing Troy’s shoes in a trash can, but they were in
good shape and were probably expensive, so he left them on a bench. Maybe
someone could use them.

He kept
walking. Found his way back to the shoreline. Didn’t run into many people. It
was a weekend, but it was a foggy fall day, and nobody wanted to spend it at
the beach.

This might be a
bad idea, walking around. He felt weak and dizzy. He inhaled too much of the
chilly ocean air and erupted into a coughing fit, and his nose turned into a
spigot of mucous. Great. His chest had been tight ever since he’d talked to
Lola. Maybe it was from his illness, or maybe he just needed to have another
good cry, because now he knew he’d lost Troy for good.

The attack came
right when he’d reached the south end of Venice, just beyond the fishing pier.
Someone slammed into his back with enough force to knock the breath out of him
and tackled him to the ground. He choked and coughed, his tortured lungs unable
to get enough oxygen. His assailant pressed against the back of the head and
forced his face into the sand.

He twisted and
bucked and tried to push himself up off the ground. He turned his head to look
at his attacker, and an elbow slammed into his temple. Before his vision
exploded into white light, he caught a blurred glimpse of tanned arms and a
brightly-patterned shirt.

Someone kicked
him in the side. Pain burst throughout his ribs. He rolled onto his hip and tried
to scramble away, but another kick caught him between his shoulder blades, then
another to the back of his head.

Multiple
attackers. The band of surfers. They were on him, four of them, snarling and
spitting, feral in their aggression. They hit him and kicked him, no sense to
any of it. Vish tried to raise his hands to defend himself, tried to curl into
a protective ball, but the blows came too fast from too many directions.

One of them
said something, but he couldn’t catch more than a general sense of the words:
“He can’t reach you here.” Something like that.

“This is too
public.” That was the one he guessed was the leader, the dark-haired one with
the handsome features. “Get him out of here.”

One of the
surfers grabbed both his wrists and yanked on his arms. Another went for his
ankles, but Vish kicked for all he was worth, lashing out at bare legs and
kneecaps. He tried to shout for help and erupted into another coughing fit.

“Hey! Hey!” A
male voice, loud and angry. The surfers paused their attack and looked up. Vish
broke the slackened grip of the one holding his wrists.

“Get away from
him! What are you doing?” Vish looked up. A guardian angel in a white t-shirt
and red shorts sprinted across the sand toward him.

The surfers
scattered in all directions. Vish saw the dark-haired one running across the
sand toward Ocean Front Walk. The kid in the red shorts took a couple of
tentative steps after him, then stopped. He sank to his knees in the sand next
to Vish. A tanned face, young and clean-cut and earnest with concern and
outrage, stared down at Vish.

“Are you okay?”
the kid asked. His hair, which was probably naturally brown, was bleached to a
pale beige by the sun; dark freckles stood out across his nose and forehead.
“Are you hurt? Don’t move if you’re hurt.”

“I think I’m
okay.” Vish started to sit up. The kid looked like he was going to tell him to
keep still, then slipped his arm around Vish’s back and helped him. His white
t-shirt had a red cross on it. Ah. The kid was a lifeguard.

“Who were those
guys? Why were they beating you?” the kid asked. He was maybe nineteen or
twenty, California-handsome and adorably earnest. “Did you break anything? Do
you need an ambulance?”

His chest hurt,
but that was as much from the week of nonstop coughing as the kicks he’d
received. The surfers had worn sandals, which hadn’t inflicted all that much
damage. He’d be bruised all over, but everything considered, he’d gotten off
lightly. “I’m fine,” he said.

He tried to
stand. His arm still around Vish, the kid helped him to his feet. “Did they mug
you?”

Vish touched
his back pocket. His wallet was still there. “No. Maybe they didn’t get around
to it.” He looked at the kid. “Thank you for saving me.”

The kid
grinned. “My job,” he said. He pointed a short distance ahead to a squat beige
structure on the sand. It was topped by a short tower with a glass-walled
observation deck that ran along all sides. “That’s the lifeguard HQ. Can you
make it there? There’s a medic on duty, and I want him to look at you.”

“That’s not
necessary,” Vish said. “Thank you, but I’d rather just go home.”

“I have to file
a report.” The kid looked abashed. “It’s part of my job. And you should have
someone check you out. I’m not kidding. You had four dudes whaling on you.”

Vish hesitated,
then nodded. “Okay. Sure.” One of these days he was going to learn how to put
his foot down and take a stand against all these kind, considerate people who
kept wanting to send him to doctors.

The kid took
his arm and led him up the beach, like a good-natured grandson taking his
doddering grandfather for a stroll. “Do you know why they jumped you? Did they
say anything?”

Vish shook his
head. “I think I’ve seen them before, though. Once around here, by the shops,
and once down in Hermosa.”

“I’ve never
seen them on this beach. They’re not regulars, at least.”

They made it to
the building. Inside, it was roomy and clean. The kid guided him to a small
white examination room and gestured toward a padded cot. “Have a seat, okay?
I’m going to see who’s around.”

Vish stared at
the laminated CPR posters taped to the walls until the kid returned a couple
minutes later. He was accompanied by an LAPD officer. She looked young and
grimly competent, with her dark hair pulled into a smooth bun. In spite of the
chill in the air, she wore a short-sleeved uniform shirt paired with shorts.
Her utility belt sagged under the weight of its load: holstered gun,
walkie-talkie, handcuffs, mace.

“We radioed for
the nurse. He’s treating someone at the north end of the beach right now, but
he’ll be here soon as he’s done,” she said to Vish. “I’m Officer Guerrero. Kip
said he saw you get attacked?”

Kip. Vish
almost smiled. The lifeguard looked like a Kip. “Yes. I was out walking, and
four guys ambushed me from behind.”

Officer
Guerrero took a small notebook and a ballpoint pen out of her back pocket. She
leaned against the wall. “So you don’t have any idea why they attacked you?”
she asked. She sounded completely neutral, like she neither believed nor
disbelieved him, and yet Vish felt himself striving to sound more convincing.

“No, ma’am,” he
said. He thought she winced at the “ma’am.” “Like I told Kip earlier, I think
I’ve seen them around before, but I don’t know why they’d beat me up.”

“Where was
this?”

“Once in the
South Bay, once around here. I was just out walking with my girlfriend both
times. The first time, they said something to me, but we pretty much just
ignored them.”

“Yeah? What’d
they say?”

“I don’t
remember exactly. One of them said something about how I was a dead man. ‘Dead
man walking.’ Something like that.”

Her brows
raised. “Well, that seems significant.”

“Yeah, but it
didn’t sound like he was threatening to kill me. It wasn’t like he was angry at
me or anything. He and his friends were just hanging out, and I think he wanted
to get under my skin a little.”

“Yeah, well,
mission accomplished.” Officer Guerrero scrawled in her notepad. “Your
girlfriend know them? Maybe had some kind of problem with them that you don’t
know about?”

“She said she
didn’t know them,” Vish said.

Guerrero looked
at him and her expression sharpened. She’d zeroed in on his words, pinpointed
his uncertainty. “That might’ve been what she said, but did she?”

Vish shook his
head. “I don’t think so. They weren’t the type of people she’d know.”

She stared at
him, unblinking, for far too long. Vish fought an urge to fill the silence with
nervous chatter. Finally, she flipped to a blank sheet and passed her notebook
and pen to him. “Give me her name and info,” she said. “We can check with her.”

Vish hesitated.
“Do you have to?” he asked. “We broke up recently.”

This earned him
another unblinking stare, this one laced with a blast of ice. “Her name and
number, please.”