Kept Animals Read online

  I made choices in the weeks, the days, even the hours before that fire began that were the equivalent of lighting a match in the underbrush—selfish and risky—and I didn’t stop there.

  TOPANGA CANYON, CALIFORNIA NOVEMBER 2, 1993

  “RORY RAMOS, THERE you are. We were just talking about you,” June said. She was sitting up against the house, on the ground, her elbows on her knees, the stem of a wine bottle between her fingers, and the same wild saucer-size pupils she’d had for hours. Vivian was beside her, on a lounger that had been pulled under the eave of the house, protected from the wind. The pool cover had been removed and bodies were tucked up against the pool stairs, moving against one another, waves undulating around them. “I was telling Vivian how we were sitting out on your balcony that night. How we saw her here, swimming. She didn’t know about your view.” June was squinting down the barrel of her finger, pointed into the trees. “Your mom was out here,” June went on. “We watched her out here, digging in the dirt—”

  “June,” Rory said. “Shut up. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Vivian laughed. “Oh, no. She most certainly does. It’s a pretty amusing story, really, how the two of you hung out that very night. It’s pretty romantic. Such serendipity.”

  June laughed stupidly, then wiped her mouth. “What I wouldn’t give to have a cigarette.”

  “I have them,” Rory said, pulling them from her boot. “Maybe you can go inside, smoke in there. Here, take them.”

  “No, no,” June said, swatting the pack away. “Daddy would smell it on me.”

  It was nearing dawn, maybe 4:00 a.m. The trees were outlined in a turquoise glow. Rory was playing back the night, trying to remember where her backpack had gone. “Where’s Wade?” she asked, looking at both of them.

  “That’s kind of funny,” Vivian said, rolling to her side. “You asking me that.” She was clearly stoned. But also angry.

  In the living room, people were sleeping on the settee, against the walls, on the floor under the table. The hookah had been dragged out of Vivian’s room and was on its side in the foyer. One of Johnny’s surfer friends was snoring loudly in a blue chaise, his head back, mouth open toward the skylights. Rory started picking up chairs, righting spilled glasses. She had played along, dancing with June, talking to the man-boys and the girls who hung from their arms about surf conditions, blackouts at frat parties, and how the Santa Anas ruin everyone’s mood. The man-boys were friends of Naughton, Surf Nazis, the girls apparently impressed. “They don’t let just anyone surf their beaches, unless they’re known, you know? One of them. It’s not racist. It’s just no riffraff, you know?”

  She’d tried to find Vivian alone, saw her moving through rooms, but someone else was always there. And now it was June.

  “Well, look who’s still up.” Johnny’s voice. “And look at that,” he said, seeing the people in the pool. “That’s when you know your Ecstasy is good.” He pressed his hands to the new glass and made a humping motion against it. He was wearing Rory’s backpack.

  “Hey,” Rory blurted. “That’s mine.”

  “Oh,” Johnny said, turning around. He’d wiped his face paint off, but there were shadows of the dark sockets for his eyes and a white line of makeup left at his jaw. “This is yours?” He swung the backpack off and looked at it.

  Rory’s mind was racing. “Yes.” She took it from him.

  “Hey, sorry,” he said. “I swear I wasn’t gonna steal it.” He hadn’t looked inside. At least not in the binder. What would happen, she could not fathom, if he’d seen inside.

  “Fucking sweating, man, fucking sweating.” Wade was coming around the corner, apparently continuing a conversation with Johnny that Rory hadn’t heard. “I just spent six fucking hours terrified of my old man. That was the worst fucking ride, Trouble. The worst.”

  The house’s intercom crackled, and someone slurred nonsense into the microphone.

  Vivian came in the sliding glass doors. “I need to get out of here,” she said.

  “Hey, there’s my model girlfriend.” Wade stepped up and pulled her toward him again.

  “I need to go somewhere else,” Vivian said.

  “Hey, now, I promised Bobby I’d keep you out of trouble tonight.”

  “Well, it’s almost fucking morning, Wade, so job’s all done.”

  “I’m with her, man,” Johnny said, wiping at his nose. “Where should we go?”

  Rory unzipped her backpack and carefully pulled the camera out.

  “You want to go to the beach?” Wade asked.

  Vivian was glaring at her. Rory sensed she wasn’t wanted along now, not after June’s anecdote. Maybe even before that. Vivian had avoided her all night.

  “How about the ranch?” Rory asked. “I mean, it’s going to be yours soon, right, Wade? Maybe Vivian wants to see it?”

  “You’re weird, Spice. I’d think you’d be just as pissed as your old man, but no, you’re just gonna kiss my ass, huh?”

  Rory raised her camera at Wade then. He smiled and she took a picture of all three of them.

  “Does she have to come?” Vivian asked.

  “She’s like my sister’s girlfriend, so yeah. Where is June anyway?”

  Rory rubbed the back of her neck, feeling the weight of the camera strap.

  “She took two Klonopin,” Vivian said. “She’s snoring on the chaise.”

  “Fuck it. Come on, Rory, maybe your old man will have actually braved coming home. Robin said he was on his way back with your little mare.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Vivian said. “Your dad.” She gestured at Wade’s nose. “He’s a real slugger.”

  “At least Spice doesn’t hold a grudge, am I right? I mean, it’s not like I wanted your horse to get hurt. It just happened.” Vivian pulled a half-empty bottle of vodka off the counter and went out the front door. “We can call it even for Fresno,” Wade said, following after her.

  I worry that you will read this and think how naïve I was. But going to the barn had always felt like a solution to me; it was the place where I felt the most useful in the world, that gave me purpose. I had power there. I wasn’t thinking any of this, of course, not so explicitly, but I felt like going there would solve something. Barns are good for hiding, as you know. For secrets and daydreams. Mostly I was excited. I wanted Vivian to see the ranch I loved. I wanted Chaparral to be home, in her stall. The sun was going to rise soon and with it, possibilities. I had only a vague concern about the fact that we had left June.

  Outside the house, Wade handed Johnny his keys, saying he still had trails in his vision. He held the front door open for Vivian, giving her shotgun. “Such a gentleman,” she said. Then he got in back with Rory.

  Johnny pulled out of the gates and Vivian handed him the vodka. “What we should’ve brought was a bottle of champagne. Christen the place,” he said, taking a slug before passing it back.

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. That one old lady is trying to pull some bullshit on my dad. I’m not worried, but it’s gonna take a little longer to finalize the deal.”

  Mrs. Keating, Rory thought. There was still some hope.

  “So, we’re going to see the ranch you might own,” Vivian said.

  Rory could only see the very tip of her nose and lips.

  “Down, girl,” Johnny said. “I think you’re in enough hot water as it is.”

  “Speaking of which, Rory, did anybody at that party look familiar? I invited everybody in Vivian’s little black planner.”

  “Except for a few,” Vivian said. She wasn’t afraid of them.

  “Maybe it’s Bobby,” Johnny said.

  “He wishes,” Vivian said, tipping the bottle back again. “And I fucking told you, it was my English teacher from Westerly. He’s kind of a friend.”

  “He’s kind of a fucking pervert,” Wade said. “If that’s true. But I am calling your bluff.”

  Rory’s mind was scrambling, trying to get a grip, like an animal’s claws agai
nst a smooth surface; did she know anything about Vivian at all?

  The ranch was still sunk in a pocket of night and the gates were locked shut. Johnny leaned on the horn and there was the sound of horses startling, their bodies rushing back against the paddock walls. Rory could see down to Chap’s stall. The door was still open, the stall still empty.

  “Jesus,” Wade said. “A little decorum, would ya, Johnny?”

  “Why?” Johnny smiled. “Don’t your spics get up at the ass crack of dawn anyway?”

  Maybe Gus would pull in soon. Maybe he had driven all night.

  The lights in Sonja and Jorge’s house flicked on, then off, and the beam of a flashlight came bouncing down the path. Tomás’s house, Rory corrected herself. It was his alone now.

  He was running to the gate. “He thinks it’s an emergency,” Rory said. His face was lit up and washed white in Wade’s high beams.

  “Now he looks like a skeleton.” Johnny laughed.

  Tomás unlocked the padlock and swung the gate open, stepping back to let them pull in, before hunching over, his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath.

  “Ha, ha,” Johnny said, pulling into the first space outside the office. “We scared the fucking tamales off you, didn’t we?”

  Rory got out and started toward Tomás. The wind had begun blowing again, the cypress trees swaying rhythmically, the halters hanging on the railing of the corral making a fitful clanking.

  Johnny slammed the door to the Scout. “He thought la migra was coming for his ass!”

  The school horses were huddled together under the shed, seeking solace. The lights over the tack room had not gone on—they hadn’t woken the others. “It isn’t even five in the morning. Of course I was scared …” Tomás said, to Rory. Sonja had warned him; INS might come for her, but in her absence, they would ask about everyone else.

  Vivian yelled, “Can we all just get the fuck out of this wind?”

  “Yeah, let’s go,” Johnny said, adjusting his belt buckle. “He’s got beer up there,” he said, with a fist to Tomás’s shoulder. “I know that for a fact.”

  “No,” Tomás said. “I mean, only a few.”

  “Tequila, too, no doubt,” Wade said. “We’ll have a drink, then I’ll give you the tour.” He put his arm around Vivian, but this time she pushed at him, walking away on her own. She didn’t look back at Rory.

  Rory started to follow, but Tomás touched her arm, stopping her. “Are you all right? That’s Vivian Price, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” Rory said. “I’m sorry about this. I didn’t think Johnny was going to wake you.”

  “I’m just surprised you’re with them—” Then Sonja hadn’t told him about Vivian, about them.

  “Well,” Rory said. “I—you weren’t at Carlotta’s funeral. And then there was this thing at Vivian’s house. A party, I guess. I got invited. Wait,” she said, remembering. “I have something for you.” She took his hand, leading him into the office, out of the wind.

  Inside, she flipped on the desk lamp, a banker’s lamp, the sort that threw a soft yellow glow onto the surface beneath it. She lifted her backpack to the desk and started riffling through. “It was in here.” She pulled the binder out—it wasn’t in there—it was in its own sleeve, she’d made sure. “The picture I took of you,” she said. “I printed it. Oh, here.”

  She’d zipped it into the exterior pocket. It was dark and grainy, with little definition, not like the others, but the lines of the car were clear, and the abandon on his face, his independence. She held it out to him, but he was holding the binder.

  “Can I? You said you would show me one day, remember?” She had said this. He laid the binder down and began turning the pages, seeing the prints of Vivian.

  “I don’t know about photography, but these are really crazy.”

  “Because they’re of her?” Rory asked.

  “No,” Tomás said. “I mean, honestly, I didn’t even realize that, not until this one …” The picture of Vivian staring at the lens from above her knees. That was her. That was what Rory loved about that image most; she had captured the Vivian she knew. “How did you do this?” Tomás was asking. “They’re really, really cool—I mean, they’re haunting.”

  She started telling him about Foster and the photo editor he knew and how he’d agreed to wait to show her the negatives until Rory had shown Vivian. “She still hasn’t seen them,” Rory said. “Honestly, I only went to the party to show her and then we were never alone. No one else knows.” Rory looked at Tomás, seeing that he understood, grateful she could read that on his face, that she knew him that well. That he wasn’t judging her. She had an urge to thank him, but the Dutch doors slammed open and Vivian walked in and on the wind that rode in behind her the sleeves of the binder fanned over like a flip-book. She was alone.

  “You have to see these,” Tomás said to her. “Are they coming?” He went to the door, closing it, but there was no view of his house from the front of the office.

  “Hi” was all Rory managed to say.

  Vivian pulled the binder across the table, bringing it closer to her, directly under the lamp. Rory couldn’t see her face, couldn’t read it.

  “I’ve been wanting to talk to you all night,” Rory said finally. “I have—”

  “Lemme guess,” Vivian said. “An opportunity?” She smacked the back of her hand against the image in front of her—the one Rory had intended to keep. “Were you thinking maybe you’d sell these? Make yourself a little bit famous? I don’t know if you heard all that nonsense with Bobby, but I’m about to become a model, maybe even an actress? Something to transform myself—an opportunity on the heels of Everett’s new feature. Did you know, Rory, there’s an opportunity in every tragedy? It’s true. Bobby Montana said so. In fact, did you know my brother wasn’t even two years old when he died?” She was still flipping through the pictures. “And here I am getting to chill out and smoke a joint in the house of the guy that fucking killed him? So by all means, sell this picture. Make a profit, please. Because this is how I really am, this is exactly how I feel. You nailed it, Rory. I am one fucking gutted animal.” Tears were falling down her face, but there was no crying in her voice. “Go ahead, Rory, please. Make something out of me.”

  Rory looked at her hands. They were shaking, but she couldn’t bring herself to move, to speak. It was the dream she’d had so many nights in a row—it was coming at her in flashes now, but it had changed, nights ago, it had shifted and the animal that woke her—the animal she always saw struggling on the hillside, trying desperately to free itself from the path of her house—was Vivian. Vivian on the night Charlie died. She knew this, she sensed it. And Rory remembered feeling that Vivian stood a chance to get free until she paused and looked right at Rory and smiled, a perfectly posed smile-for-the-TV-cameras smile, and then she was gone. And Rory still had not woken. The house still falling.

  She was right, of course. Of all the things I had stolen, this was the worst.

  Vivian picked the binder of prints up from the desk and she threw it across the room—some prints sliding free of their sleeves—and then the lamp, grabbing it by its stem and slamming it to the floor. Rory heard the green glass shade shatter, but the room had gone dark. The letter, Rory thought, give her the letter from Sarah. She started digging in her backpack again, desperately. The winds were howling outside, rattling the windows in their frames. And then the door opened. “I don’t know where the fuck she went.” Johnny’s voice. “But—”

  Wade flicked the switch on the wall and light sprang onto them like theater lights, too clarifying, too obvious. Johnny was in the doorway. Wade had a bottle of tequila in his hand. The lamp was shattered on the floor. Rory and Tomás were behind the desk. Tomás was blinking, as if he’d been hit, his hair still matted from sleep. Rory had her hand in her backpack, her camera hanging across her chest. The letter had been tucked inside the binder. She saw it now, the ocean waves of Sarah’s handwriting sliding under the edge of the c
ouch. And Vivian was bent over, racked with sobbing. A piece of green glass was stuck in her foot like a wing. The pictures were scattered across the floor. “Fuck,” Rory said.

  “What the fuck is right,” Wade said.

  “Here,” Tomás said. “Let me help.” And he started toward Vivian.

  “Don’t you fucking touch her.” Johnny. Rory saw his hand go to the edge of his belt, to his hip; was he reaching for the gun? Rory put her arm out, stopping Tomás.

  Vivian had the shard of glass pinched between her fingers. She turned her head away and pulled, crying out in pain, then a hysterical kind of laughter. “I did it,” she said, holding the shard. “I did it.”

  “And what is this?” Wade was sliding one of the prints with the toe of his shoe. It was Vivian unraveling from the curtains. Naked. “I know that house,” he said.

  “Of course you do, you stupid fucking prick. You know everything, don’t you?” She threw the shard of glass at him and it bounced off his chest. “You know everyone and everything about everybody, including the man who took my brother from me, so you take me to his house?” She was hitting him with open hands, the glass crunching under her sandals. He hadn’t taken his eyes off the picture on the floor, as if the image were the only thing that mattered. “Where are the keys?” Vivian was demanding, slapping his chest. “Give me the fucking car keys! I’m not fucking staying here with any of you.”

  “They’re in the car,” Johnny said.

  Wade looked up at Johnny, a rattled, crazy look in his eyes. “What the fuck, Johnny?” The door slapped back. Vivian was already gone, the engine of the Scout turning over, the tires squealing against the asphalt. Wade lunged at the open door, yelling, “That’s my fucking truck,” the wind swallowing his words, spiraling them up into the trees. “You fucking bitch.”

  Johnny ran his arm across his nose, looking at Rory. “These are yours?”

  A cellar door was opening, everything hidden suddenly pressing into the light.