Kept Animals Read online

  June swatted him. “She looks fabulous.”

  A barn brat grabbed June’s shoulder and she turned toward her, falling into conversation. Wade angled himself toward Rory. “We need to talk,” he said.

  “Okay,” Rory said, flattening her skirt against her legs. “What now?” He was less threatening here, when he wasn’t staring up at her through the darkness.

  “It’s about Vivian,” he said, and his voice snagged into her like a hook. “I think she’s been fucking around. And I know you can see, that you look, so I need to know, like—if you’ve seen anything?”

  Rory shook her head. “I haven’t.”

  He sized her up. “Nothing? I don’t believe you,” he said. “You know I know about your little preoccupation with my girlfriend, Rory. June told me everything.” Rory was blushing. “At first I was pissed, but it’s cool. I get it. Who wouldn’t want to look? She’s basically famous—or soon to be, anyway. Look, what if I invite you over? I realize it’s not like you know our friends, but if you came tonight—if you recognized—”

  “Tonight,” Rory repeated.

  June turned back toward them. “Would you leave her alone already, Wade. She’s my date to this prom.”

  “Actually I was just inviting Rory to Vivian’s tonight.”

  The church doors opened, and the sonorous chords of the organ started up.

  “To that party?” June said, clearly annoyed.

  “It’s a party?” Rory asked.

  “Yeah,” June said. “Kind of. It was supposed to be a photo shoot. Her dad’s agent planned it? Something to do with the movie he’s wrapping in Mexico. But Wade here keeps inviting people.” June rolled her eyes. “So now it’s a party.”

  People were passing them, filing into the church. Rory saw Vivian, Johnny’s hand steering her inside, like she was his pet.

  “So, you’ll come,” Wade said. “Maybe there’ll be a familiar face.” He winked at Rory. “You’ll point him out.”

  * * *

  SOMEWHERE JUST INSIDE the Colorado border, Gus was pulled over for rolling through a stop sign. License and registration. The truck wasn’t his and the woman on the registration was actually dead, but that was where he was heading—back to California, returning the truck and the horse in the trailer to their proper owners.

  “You got a lot on your mind, don’t you, mister?” the officer said, letting Gus go with only a warning. Dumb luck had been following him, offering up small mercies that he was only beginning to recognize.

  He could’ve left a day earlier or driven eighteen hours straight, and been back in time for the funeral, showing up as disheveled and remorseful as he felt, but the road was proving grueling on his leg. He kept pulling over and getting out to stretch, checking on Chap. Finally, he pulled in for the night, just outside of Vegas, bringing Chap to the only overnight barn he’d found with a free stall.

  When the barn watchman started talking to Gus about the fires in California, how they’d probably been started by gangs, Gus tried to explain about land management and old-growth vegetation, but the watchman just scrunched his nose. “You one of them from the Sierra Club?”

  In the motel, Gus spread the comforter onto the floor and watched the light of the television sputtering on the ceiling, the voices of newscasters interviewing evacuees, one of them saying the money that went to AIDS victims should’ve gone to fire prevention. Twenty-four fires in the course of three days, and arson was the rallying cry around all of them. The spark in Eaton Canyon had been traced back to a transient man trying to keep warm in the middle of the night, and people were calling for the death penalty.

  Gus drove back to the barn, mistrustful of that watchman, but he had in fact put Chap’s blanket on and she was lying on a bed of fresh straw. She lifted her head as Gus drew the stall door open, but she didn’t rise. He eased himself down beside her and leaned back on her shoulder.

  He regretted not trying harder to make it back for the funeral, but in this dismal plywood stall, he felt Carlotta’s hand to his cheek, teasingly telling him, “It’s not like I was there anyway.”

  Gus steadied his breath until he felt the steady thump of Chap’s heart within the barrel of her ribs. How deeply she slept. No more lamps, no more counterfeit days. Just a cool high desert night.

  He’d always believed horses could, in some small way, hear your thoughts. Silently now, he asked the mare for her forgiveness, realizing as he did that this was much the same prayer Rory had been saying to the animals, releasing them from mankind’s sins. Of course she had gone back to the barn for the fox that night. Not to clean up after him, but to give that animal some kind of peace.

  Gus drove back to the motel, looking at every beige car like it might be Sarah Price’s. In the room, he lay back down on the floor, still picturing Sarah, but up above him now, sound asleep on the bed, her copper hair, her arm hanging down toward him. He touched the ends of her imagined fingers with his own and told her he’d never take another drink again, so long as he lived.

  * * *

  MONA WAS STILL home, the TV flickering in the window, Hawkeye’s motorcycle parked in the shade of the magnolia tree.

  June said she’d wait in the Mercedes. Rory hurried, gathering her camera, her backpack, Sarah’s letter, and the prints that Foster liked the most. Even the one Rory meant to keep for herself, Vivian naked in the shadow of the love seat.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Mona said. She and Hawkeye were sitting on the couch, watching The Lost Boys.

  “Out,” Rory said. She was at the front door. She’d told June she was running inside to change, the one thing she hadn’t remembered to do. She kicked off her sandals and pulled her riding boots on, feeling edgier, tougher in them, at least more like herself. “I’ll be back late.”

  “You’re not missing any more school,” Hawkeye tried out.

  Rory pulled the rubber band from her braid, shaking out her hair, and swiped Mona’s pack of cigarettes from the table behind the couch. As she ran for the car, she heard Mona stand up and Hawkeye say, “Aw, cut her some slack.”

  “She just stole my fucking cigarettes.”

  The stands of eucalyptus along the main road were shining white, their gray-paper bark stripped by the wind. Store awnings flapped like flags of surrender.

  “You sure you want to go?” June asked. “I mean, we really don’t have to. We could just, I don’t know, take a drive.”

  “No, no, it’s cool,” Rory said.

  “I’m sorry I told him about your window,” June said. “I shouldn’t have.”

  Rory shrugged and slid the pack of Lucky Strikes into the side of her boot.

  “He’s so worked up about this guy he caught her being sleazy with on the phone,” June said. “Like he’s some saint.”

  “He heard Vivian on the phone? With a guy?”

  “Yeah,” June said. “Like real sleazy stuff.”

  * * *

  They had to park up the road and walk down—there were that many cars. The gates were open, even the front doors.

  “Oh, this is even more nuts then I thought,” June said. There were two beefy men in black suits with their hands clasped behind their backs on each side of the doors. Bouncers, Rory realized, though they didn’t say anything to June or Rory as they stepped inside. “They always let girls in,” June said.

  The blue recliners were still there, but they’d been organized into a row, as if the foyer were a waiting room. Everything else, all of Everett’s collecting, was gone. The divine intervention, Rory thought. And now the house was teeming with bodies, half of them with painted faces. Skeletons.

  “Oh my god,” June said. “It’s that Day of the Dead shit. Of course.” There was the flash of a bulb, then another. All the furniture was pushed up against the walls, making a dance floor of the central room. Johnny was there, his face painted white, with deep black raccoon eyes and teeth drawn around his Joker-size mouth. “Wade said the movie was like a heist flick, drug cartels, or
some shit, but the big scene happens—”

  “On Día de los Muertos,” Rory said. “Is Everett Price here?”

  “June-baby,” Johnny was calling.

  “No,” June said, moving into the sunken living room, toward Johnny. “Vivian is just helping promote it. No way!” June shrieked, admiring Johnny’s makeup.

  And there she was, Vivian, dancing among the other girls, her hips swaying, her arms waving in the air, her hair swinging against her back, eyes closed. Another flashbulb. She was in a T-shirt and jean shorts. The same outfit Rory had once borrowed. A silent communication? It had to be. Rory needed it to be. She would be patient. There couldn’t have been anyone else, no guy on the phone. Only her. Only them.

  There were several photographers roving around the house. One was stationed in the library, just off the living room. He had a white backdrop set up in front of the floor-to-ceiling bookcase and assistants were holding bounce cards, directing light. There was a line of girls waiting to have their picture taken, their makeup done, flowers pinned into their hair. Another flash. Outside, the pool was newly covered, but the lights were on underneath, a sapphire in the darkness.

  June was dancing with Vivian and Johnny and all these girls that Rory had never seen before. Dancing to a Nirvana song Rory hated, “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

  In the kitchen, a woman was at the sink, her hands plunged in soapy water, a white apron on her waist. Where was Carmen? Best that she wasn’t here; she would have recognized Rory. An older man with dyed black hair was speaking to this woman in broken Spanish. He had the air of a restaurant manager: fake smiles and a barely contained hostility. Rory met eyes with the woman, silently asking if she was okay. She just rolled her eyes.

  On a stool at the back of the kitchen, a makeup artist was painting someone’s face, cheeks convincingly sunken, blackened sockets haloed in rhinestones. The makeup artist turned on Rory, barking, “She’s my last. I wasn’t hired for this. Only models!”

  “Hey, Bobby.” Wade came in and clapped hands with the black-haired manager. Bobby. So this was Everett’s agent, Bobby Montana. “You’re still here,” Wade said. “I thought you guys were packing up soon.”

  “Hi, Wade,” Rory said, adjusting her backpack on her shoulder.

  Bobby Montana looked at Rory, unimpressed, and turned back to Wade.

  “Hey,” Wade said, as if she were an annoying younger sister. “Go ahead and have a look around, okay?”

  The hallway bathroom was locked and behind the door grunting and a cabinet banging back and forth. Then a girl’s high-pitched squeal, a deeper groan, followed by the sound of glassware breaking on the tile floor. “Shit,” the guy said.

  The poured concrete hallway looked polished. The alcoves cleared, the tables waxed. In a way, Rory had never seen this house before; a different Vivian lived here. A Vivian who’d been sleazy on the phone with some guy. Rory had lost grasp of why she’d come. Why had she brought her camera?

  The door to Vivian’s bedroom was closed. Rory tried the handle, locked. She was considering finding something to shimmy into the frame, but there was the click of a shutter behind her. She turned around to see the couple stumbling out of the bathroom, a photographer capturing their blushing fumble. Another light bulb flashed and Rory heard someone say, “That’s a wrap.” There was the sound of collapsing light stands, the white paper crumpling to the floor. Vivian was laughing, a laugh loosened by liquor. Rory could tell. Maybe something else.

  Half the party was leaving. The makeup artist was closing her compacts, two dozen girls streaming out of the house, the woman who’d rolled her eyes at Rory, the photographers following, hefting camera bags, sweat dotting their brows. Wade was standing with Bobby Montana at the front door. Rory stopped, waiting around the corner out of view.

  “I appreciate you keeping the rest of tonight … mellow? Everett would die if he knew I wasn’t staying, but we’ve got the pictures—it’ll be an amazing spread, The Comeback Kid. Perfect publicity tie-in with the movie, and Vivian will be booking her own jobs in no time. It’s time to move on, am I right? Life goes on. But the fucking traffic! I mean, the 101 was a clusterfuck before these fires.”

  “I totally get it, man,” Wade said. “I got your back. Small crowd now.”

  Vivian was a model? Becoming an actress? What had happened?

  “Just don’t let her do anything stupid. Everett needs to focus. He’s had enough trouble.”

  “You can count on me,” Wade said.

  For a brief moment Rory could hear helicopters in the distance, then the front door closed. And ska music started blaring from the stereo.

  “Ugh,” June said, coming up behind Rory. “I hate this mosh-pit shit.”

  And here was Wade, putting his arm around both of them. “Well?” he asked. “Anybody look familiar? I got this bad feeling it’s one of my friends.”

  Johnny Naughton was moving from person to person with the cavalier air of a retriever, tail wagging. He stopped in front of girls longer, whispering in their ears, leaving white streaks of paint on the unpainted faces, and sure enough, like baby birds, each one opened her mouth and Trouble dropped a tablet—acid or Ecstasy—onto her extended tongue.

  “Not Johnny?” June asked.

  “Hell no,” Wade said. “Guy’s as loyal as a parasite.”

  “He brought all kinds of weird shit,” June said. “He gave me these.” She held out her palm. A little white square and a blue pill, a K stamped across its center.

  “Enjoy,” Wade said, moving toward the living room. He stopped and turned back toward Rory. “Take your backpack off, would you? You’re making me nervous.”

  “Yeah,” June said. “Let’s just stay. I’m actually glad we came.”

  A tall brunette leaned in and kissed Johnny on the cheek. When she pulled away, he grabbed the back of her head and kissed her on the mouth. When he moved on, the girl turned to her friends, wiping her mouth, wide-eyed but laughing.

  Wade and Vivian were walking down the hall, his arm around her, her head tipped onto his shoulder.

  It was a sickness, this jealousy. Compounded now by someone she didn’t know.

  “Here,” June said, sliding Rory’s backpack from her arm. “Let’s just put this in here. They’ve got all the pictures they needed for tonight anyway.”

  There was time; there had to be. She would wait. And then she would turn a corner and Vivian would be standing there, alone.

  “Well,” June said, holding open her palm again. “Shall we?”

  TOPANGA CANYON, CALIFORNIA JULY 2, 2015

  THERE IS ONE main road through the canyon, a switchback line cut into the mountainside that skirts the edge of the cliff for seven miles. A funnel-like road made narrower by scrub oak and outcroppings of rock. I cannot imagine anyone walking these roads, yet as soon as I think this, there is a hitchhiker, his grin bright against his sun-worn face, holding a hand-scrawled sign: THIS WAY TO HEAVEN?

  Soon after the road widens, small shops with hand-painted signs come into view. One-story places with porches and chimes, peace flags strung from their overhangs. There is the market, the parking lot alongside it, the creek bed, all visible from the main road. Outside the market, men shift from foot to foot, beating dust from their hats, waiting for a car to slow, someone to wave them over—the possibility of a meal.

  * * *

  No one heard from Sonja again. Grandad said she likely went to Tucson, that he remembered her having family there. Or maybe she went back to Veracruz. Jorge was deported after serving five years. “I hope they found each other again,” Grandad said.

  “Did you ever visit him?” I asked.

  “Christ, Charlie.” He got up and walked around the room. Running his hand over his head. He kicked the end of the kitchen cabinet. “If I was proud of who I’d been, don’t you think we’d have told you all this sooner?”

  * * *

  Dear Charlie, Mama’s letter read.

  I’m not sure where I should begin.
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  In some way every life is the result of a chain reaction of various incidents, but your life, your conception, really, it hinged on rather tragic events. And I feel responsible for most of them.

  The fire in 1993, the one that Grandad and I have always said is why we left California, started on the morning of November 2, 1993. The same day you were conceived.

  I was only fifteen. But I already considered myself a photographer and I was already dreaming that I would one day have the life that I have been lucky enough to have. A home among horses, our collies, and sweet Jo-jo goat. I didn’t know what kind of photographer I would be, but I knew I wanted to travel, to see the world through the lens of a camera. What I didn’t expect, of course, was you.

  Up ahead, I see the fork in the road, the turn onto Old Topanga. There’s a fancy restaurant on the corner there, its patio strung in fairy lights. Grandad said they never went there, that it was a place for tourists, but there’s nothing gimmicky about it and now I think he meant it wasn’t somewhere they could afford.

  There is still no gas station. No hospital. A two-room post office and only one fire station off the main road.

  The first call came in from a home up above Calabasas Peak. A man pouring himself a second cup of coffee who yelled for his wife, pointing at the white genie of smoke rising just beyond the summit. There’s smoke, he told the operator. And then, with the phone still in his hand, there was ignition; a flash of brightness, the flare so strong and high that he and his wife looked skyward, imagining a plane or a bomb had fallen from above. Power lines were tossing in the wind like jump ropes strung from hill to hill, but no, as far as he could see, none of the poles had come down. It looks like it’s near the water towers, he said, yes, off Old Topanga Road. Far from any homes, but definitely a threat to the ranch nearby. First there was the crackling sound of brush, then came a whistling gust of wind, followed by a stampede of flames.