Wrong City (3 page)

“Suit
yourself,” Sparky said. He stuck out his hand. “Good meeting you, Vish. And
thanks.”

“Sure.” They
shook. Sparky’s nails were manicured; the white cuff that stuck out from
beneath his suit coat was crisp and immaculate. Diamond cufflinks glittered.

“Call me
Monday, right? We’ll talk,” Sparky said. He sauntered around the front of the
car and slid into the passenger seat.

With a quick
nod at Vish, Poppy pulled forward, flipped a u-turn in the middle of the road,
and headed down the hill.

Vish followed
at a slow walk. As soon as Poppy’s car rounded the first turn, the lights from
the taillights vanished, leaving him alone in the dark.

I
t took just over two hours to reach his
apartment. A slow and mostly empty bus through Hollywood, an interminable wait
at a grim, lonely stop on the wrong end of Fairfax, another bus down Venice
Boulevard all the way to the ocean. A foggy night here, colder and clammier
than it had been in the hills.

His apartment
was stuffy. Vish yanked open the windows. He should get some sleep—he had to
open the shop at nine tomorrow, and it was now past two—but he felt wound up,
almost jittery. He put on the kettle for a cup of chamomile tea and booted up
his laptop.

Sparky Mother.
Vish took out the absurd business card and stared at it. Time to figure out who
he was, what power he wielded in the industry, what services he could provide
for Vish, what kind of fairy godfather he could be.

A Google
search. The electronic data trail would give him a starting point: the deals he
made, the press he received, the company he kept.

One result.

Vish frowned.
That was a mistake. Had to be. Even the lowest-level agent or producer or
assistant had more of an online presence than that. Vish himself had dozens of
search results for his name, as a few guilty vanity Googles had shown. The
articles he’d written, his profiles on various social networking sites, a
long-abandoned and frankly embarrassing attempt at a personal website… Vish had
all that linked to his name, and Vish was nobody.

He looked at
the single result. He wasn’t familiar with the URL—some site called
AgentProwl—but it looked relevant. He clicked on the link.

A message
board. Aspiring actors swapping gossip about agents, or trying to find agents,
or complaining about the agents they already had. He found the right thread,
which was about six weeks old, started by someone posting under the optimistic
screen name FutureStarr. Under the header “
Anyone know Sparky Mother?
”:

Hey I met
this cute guy at the restaurant where I waitress today and when I mentioned I
was an actress he gave me his card and said call him. He said he was an agent I
think? I don’t know he seemed legit but then I went to Google him and nobody
knows anything about him so it seems kind of weird so does anyone know who he
is because I REALLY need an agent and he seemed REALLY interested in me but now
I’m thinking he just wanted to get into my pants (or rape me and stab me and
dump my body in the hills LOL). His name is Sparky Mother I dont know what
agency hes with and I dont want to call him until I know more. Plz help thx
.

One response,
from one month ago, from a user named DiegoXG:

Sparky
Mother ruined my life.

Huh. That was
it. That was the end of the electronic breadcrumb trail. Vish sat back and
stared at the screen.

DiegoXG,
whoever he was, wasn’t going to be any more help than that. Vish clicked on his
user name and found he’d joined the AgentProwl site just to post that single
message. No other posts, no personal information linked to his profile,
nothing.

It didn’t make
sense. Sparky had been at the party, and the guests obviously knew who he was.
The bumblebee girl, the
Interstellar Boys
actress, she was on close
terms with him and she was famous, or something close to famous. He seemed
legitimate, just from the little Vish had talked with him. He even had a
shadowy, vengeful enemy. By Hollywood standards, wasn’t that a clear indication
of his bona fides?

Maybe he went
by a different name professionally, business card notwithstanding. In any case,
“Sparky” had to be a nickname. Nobody named their kid Sparky. Vish stared at
the card.

Sparky had said
this was his office number. He wasn’t in his office tonight. He’d be at home by
now, or out with his glamorous friend Poppy. If Vish called now, he’d reach his
voicemail, and maybe there’d be some clue there—the name of his company, his
full name, something.

Vish took out
his phone. Took a deep breath. Dialed the number on the stupid business card.

It didn’t ring.
It didn’t connect. On the other end of the line, Vish heard a series of muted
electronic clicks, like the phone company was trying its best to establish a
connection but falling short. The clicks stopped, replaced by a dull echoing
pulse, the sound rising and falling like distant waves rolling onto the shore.

Vish hung on
the line for longer than necessary, listening to that electronic void, waiting
to see if the call would go through. It didn’t.

So Sparky’s
line was down. No big deal. Maybe he’d try again on Monday morning. Maybe he
wouldn’t.

He couldn’t
quite explain why, but he felt a surge of relief that he hadn’t accepted the
ride home from Sparky.

The earthquake
struck at just before five in the morning. Vish was in the middle of a
half-formed dream, something about yellow-eyed coyotes feasting on the
broken-doll corpse of the girl in the bumblebee dress, when an enormous jolt
shattered him into consciousness. He opened his eyes in time to see a dazzling
array of blue-white sparks bursting skyward, fireworks-style, from the power
lines outside his bedroom window, then everything went black.

Small, staccato
jolts followed the first big one. In the moments between the jolts, the floor
rocked and swayed and slid. His bed was on wheels, rolling across the deck of a
ship bobbing in a storm. Ah, yes, his very first earthquake. A rite of passage
for living in Los Angeles.

Something
crashed in his living room. There were smaller thunks, too, and a loud rattle.
Was someone twisting his doorknob, trying to get into his apartment? It took a
moment to realize it was just the windows shaking in their frames.

Just under
twenty seconds of motion and chaos, then stillness returned. Vish remained in
bed.

Adrenaline
raced through his body, though he’d neither fought nor fled. He’d been frozen
in place, his brain too overwhelmed to settle upon a single course of action.
Brilliant survival instincts. Top notch.

He sat up.
Pulled his wits together. Swung his legs out of bed. His knees were so shaky he
could barely stand at first. Outside his bedroom window, all was darkness under
that moonless sky.

He left the
relative safety of his bedroom. Moving gingerly, padding barefoot, proceeding
with care. At the entrance to his living room, he whacked his shin and almost
fell across… was that his coffee table? Really? A huge, heavy slab of pressed
laminate material, it had somehow wedged itself in the doorway. Vish tried to
shove it aside, but it wouldn’t budge. He crawled over it on hands and knees.

A flashlight
would be useful. He had one in the junk drawer in his kitchen, probably. It had
batteries in it, but they hadn’t been changed since he moved here. He navigated
his way through the living room by touching the wall, then groped his way along
the kitchen counter until he located the junk drawer. Under matchbooks and
takeout menus, there it was, his flashlight. And hey, it even worked! It was a
tiny thing, pocket-sized, and it emitted a feeble, watery slice of
urine-colored light, but right now it was the only source of illumination in
the apartment. In all of the city, it seemed.

He shone it
around. Things looked okay. One of his cupboard doors had flown open, but the
contents—two juice glasses, two plates, a coffee mug—had remained in place. His
windows hadn’t broken. The building hadn’t cracked in two, the second level
hadn’t come crashing down into the ground floor.

Everything
wobbled. Vish reached out toward the closest wall to brace himself, but the
aftershock stopped at once. Just a little reminder of what had just happened,
just a little something to get his heart racing again.

Noises. A
police siren somewhere, a baby screaming from the apartment next door, where
Mariposa lived with her mother. He’d heard the baby off and on for the past
couple of weeks, the sound of its wails carrying through the cracker-thin
walls. Right now it was howling, a harsh, scratchy, full-throated sound. Didn’t
sound good.

Vish slept in
sweat pants and an old t-shirt. Under the circumstances, he looked presentable
enough. With the aid of the flashlight, he located his flip-flops by the front
door and slipped them on.

Pitch blackness
outside, the stars obscured by the thick fog rolling in off the ocean. Only a
single pinpoint of light in the sky, an airplane en route to nearby LAX. He
groped for the railing that ran the length of the second level and squinted in
the darkness. The damp ocean air smelled of seaweed, undercut with asphalt and
exhaust.

The baby howled
again. Vish rapped his knuckles on the door to the left of his apartment.
“Mariposa? It’s Vish, from next door. Are you and your mom okay?”

Raised female
voices from inside, a flurry of Spanish, and then the door flew open. Vish
instinctively pointed the flashlight at Mariposa’s face, then realized he was
blinding her and lowered it.

“Hey, you.
Yeah, we’re good.” Mariposa wore a pink camisole that stopped several inches
above her navel and a tiny, low-slung pair of lavender boxer shorts. After one
quick glance down, Vish made sure to keep his eyes on her face. “Luis is being
loud, but he’s just dumb. He’s fine.”

Vish glanced
over her shoulder, straining to see into the dark apartment. Under the baby’s
screams, he could hear a radio tuned to a Spanish-language station. Sounded
like a news report. “Luis is the baby?” he asked.

Mariposa
nodded. “My nephew. Little idiot. Mama’s taking care of him for a while until
my brother and his wife move into their new home.” She rolled her eyes. “I bet
he’s been driving you crazy, right? Join the club. I swear, babies suck so
much.”

From somewhere
inside the apartment, someone Vish couldn’t see—Mariposa’s mother,
presumably—rattled off some quick Spanish. Judging by the clear note of warning
in her tone, it was probably something about how her nubile teen daughter
shouldn’t chat in the doorway with an adult male neighbor while wearing only
her skimpy nightclothes.

Mariposa
glanced back and replied in Spanish, her tone that of exasperated teens
everywhere. She turned back to Vish. “Have you been listening to the news? They
said it was a four-point-seven. That’s not very big.” She sounded disappointed.
“They think it was centered in Pacific Palisades, so that’s why we felt it so
bad here.”

“Any word on
damage?” Vish asked.

Mariposa shook
her head. “Don’t know. I heard a big crack, though. Right when it first happened.
Didn’t you?”

“A crack? Like,
here in the building?”

Mariposa
nodded. “Yeah. It was real loud. I think the stairs broke or something. You
didn’t hear it?”

“I don’t think
so. I can check it out for you, though.”

“I’ll go with
you,” Mariposa said. She stepped forward, fully intent on accompanying him in
her tiny shorts and, he now saw, her gigantic fuzzy slippers.

Her mother said
something again, her tone sharper and more pointed. Mariposa huffed out an
impatient sigh and looked ready to argue, so Vish headed it off at the pass.
“Why don’t you stay with your mom and Luis? They could probably use you right
now. I’ll look around and let you guys know if there’s anything you should be
worried about.”

Mariposa looked
unhappy at this, but she didn’t argue. “Whatever, I guess. Thanks for checking
on us.” She smiled. “You’re a good neighbor, you know? I’m glad you didn’t get
hurt or nothing.”

“Thanks. You,
too. Glad everyone’s okay.”

Flashlight in
hand, Vish headed toward the staircase leading down to the courtyard. He bobbed
the pallid beam of light along the ground and the walls as he went. No cracks.

Everything was
silent, punctuated only by the occasional angry wail from Luis upstairs.
Fourteen units total in the building, seven on each floor. Mariposa was the only
neighbor he knew by name. A couple units were unoccupied. Maybe more than a
couple, actually; he’d seen several soon-to-be-former tenants hauling their
stuff out of their apartments over the past year, but he hadn’t seen anyone
hauling stuff back in.

The gate to the
low, rusty fence around the swimming pool stood wide open. That’d be a
dangerous child hazard, if the pool were filled with water. As it happened, it
was filled with furniture—three-legged end tables, dressers with missing
drawers, a sofa with the cushions slashed and the stuffing hemorrhaging out,
all souvenirs of past residents.

An argument
could be made that his cramped East Village apartment had been kind of crappy,
too. Silverfish that swarmed up from the tub drain, a warped bathroom door that
refused to close all the way, a subtle stink of cat piss that intensified on
humid days, even though he’d never owned a cat. He’d waged war on the smell,
wielding bleach and scouring pads and all manner of industrial-strength
cleansers, but had never managed to completely eradicate it. So it wasn’t like
he’d downgraded his situation much by moving out west, really.

He shone the
flashlight around the base of the complex. Aha. The corner closest to the
street had cracked and crumbled away, creating a foot-high jagged gap. Vish
directed the beam inside the hole and saw coiled chicken wire in the space
beneath the thin stucco exterior. Stucco over chicken wire. Everything
considered, it was lucky the entire structure hadn’t collapsed when the earth
moved.

A short scream
sliced through the night. Female, probably, and it sounded like it’d been
abruptly cut off. Vish froze and listened. His heartbeat quickened.

That had come
from just outside the front gate. He hurried out to the sidewalk and swooped
his flashlight in all directions. The beam didn’t penetrate more than a foot or
two through the fog.

He cleared his
throat. “Is anyone here?” he asked. “Do you need help?”