Berkeley Noir Page 2

  Normally, I read his books and feel excited about the possibility of language and how bizarre the world is. Tonight, it just exhausts me.

  It's stuffy in here. It feels like my insides are stewing. I fight to keep my eyes open. The words swim on the page. I need to sleep.

  I go upstairs and lie down on Patrick Bloom's bed, but I can't drift off. This room gives me the creeps. It's the kind of room where someone would go to die, dark and primitive.

  Every time I roll over, I catch my reflection in the shadeless windows and my heart jumps, certain that I'm seeing a ghost. I almost pass out, but the howl of a distant Amtrak jolts me awake.

  It is shockingly, terribly hot. I jump out of bed and rattle the windows, but there's no way to open them. There are no fans, either. I swing the door open, praying for circulation.

  I pluck my iPhone off the bedside table. No response from Jack. Not that I've gotten one from him in months, but still. Nighttime is Jack's time. My mom always hounded him about staying up until three, four, five in the morning and then sleeping all day long.

  If he'll ever respond, it's now.

  My mom met Jack's dad, Dez, when I was four and she was a freshman at Cal. She had recently returned to school after my birth derailed her life; Dez managed a Top Dog. When Dez replaced my spot in my mother's bed, I moved to a cot in the living room. Jack slept on the couch. We weren't supposed to have more than two people in the apartment, but nobody ratted on us. Our neighbors had all kinds of things they weren't supposed to. Pets, drugs, massage businesses, subletters.

  Jack was twice my age and a mystery to me even then. He had a sullen, boyish beauty. At night, if I turned over toward the couch and opened my eyes, I'd usually find him awake and staring back. I began to think of Jack as nocturnal; something other than human.

  Just before finals week of her junior year, a crushed-lilac bruise appeared around my mother's eye. She made Dez pack his bags while she was off in some lecture hall filling in the bubbles on a Scantron. She ended up getting an A.

  After that, I moved back into the bedroom with her. Jack stayed on our couch and Dez sent money every month. What kind of guy dumps his kid with an ex like that? A guy like Dez. He wasn't a junkie or a criminal, just the world's biggest asshole. Still, in turn, my mom cared for Jack. In turn, Jack cared for me.

  When a girl pushed me down on the playground, he followed her after school, shoved her against the wall, and said that if she ever touched his little sister again he'd break her arm. He walked between me and the homeless folks we passed on the street; when they hassled us, he covered my ears and cussed them out. He always shared his candy, panicked if I ate it too quickly, watched me chew as if he were afraid I might choke. He stole pretty things for me—origami paper, hot-pink erasers, stickers.

  My mother ignored the ways Jack grew stranger and darker. As a teenager, he came home with a lip pierced in the school bathroom with a safety pin and tiny, squiggly shapes pricked into his skin by a friend's shaky hand using a sewing needle dipped in pen ink. But that was the Bush era, a time for Bay Area teens to go to punk shows and rage against The Man. Besides, I may have called Jack my brother, but my mom never called him her son. Her responsibility to him, as she saw it, was to make sure he survived to adulthood, no more and no less.

  I hadn't heard anything from Jack for more than a decade when I got a call from my mom in March.

  Jack had gotten in touch to tell her he was back in Berkeley. He gave her a phone number, which she read to me.

  "I have nothing to say to him," I snapped. But I still remembered the number long after I hung up. Memory works in funny ways.

  When the acceptance letter came for journalism school, I said yes, even though I'd never wanted to move back to Berkeley and even though it felt too much like following in my mother's footsteps. This was different. It was grad school. Patrick Bloom was an instructor there. And I had applied before I knew Jack was back.

  I hadn't made my decision for him.

  But I had called him the first week of classes.

  "Jack?" I said after he picked up. When the line went dead, I was certain that it was him.

  I've been texting him since, but I haven't heard a thing.

  I roll over to face the ceiling. I angle my phone toward my face and it lights up. Spots flood my vision. No wonder I can't sleep when this shit is so bright.

  The house I'm watching is cool, you should swing by, I type. And then I add the address. Not that he'd ever come. Not that I'm certain I'd want him to, anyway.

  I leave my iPhone faceup, but it does not illuminate with a message that night. I don't fall asleep until sunrise.

  * * *

  I wake in the afternoon. In the master bath, I examine the deodorant-crusted stains ringing the pits of my shirt. I peel it off, put it in a pile for the laundry. After my shower, I can't find the bath towels, so I wipe Patrick Bloom's skinny hand towel and tiny square of a face towel all over my body. I feel like a cat rubbing itself on things to leave its mark.

  I bring my laptop to the patio. I'm supposed to take notes on an episode of a podcast for my radio class. My whole body hurts from the lack of sleep and, though the podcast is supposed to be some great feat of audio editing, it can't hold my attention. My head keeps drooping.

  When my laptop dies, I realize I forgot to bring a charger. Of course.

  Biking all the way home for a stupid charger sounds awful. I could go upstairs to Patrick Bloom's study. He might have a charger there. But I already bled all over his cutting board; I don't need to make things worse by breaking into his study. I'd inevitably fuck something up. Accidentally set off an alarm or knock over some priceless heirloom—I don't know what kind of delicate, precious things someone like Patrick Bloom would have in there.

  Forget the computer, I'm only here for two more days. I'll consider it a digital detox.

  I want to be having more fun in Patrick Bloom's home than I am. I get the joint I brought and take it outside to smoke on the deck. I hope his neighbors don't complain about the smell. No one cares about pot in Berkeley, but I don't know if the rules are different in the hills. These are the hippies who sold out, not the hippies who became crackheads and now line the streets just a few miles away.

  I take a long rip.

  I was thirteen when I first smoked. We lived in a two-bedroom apartment by then—my mother and I still shared a room, which we split down the middle with a folding wooden divider. Jack had his own room, barely bigger than a closet. It was so small that when he and I sat on the carpet beside his bed, leaning against the comforter that smelled like Old Spice and boy body, the toes of my checkered Vans touched the door.

  "I want you to smoke with me," he said. I snorted like it was a joke, but he looked me square in the eyes. "I don't want you doing it for the first time with some randos."

  I watched how the light flickered off his face as he took the first hit. I tried to match his stoicism, the length of his inhale, the way his finger flickered over the carb. My throat screamed, but I didn't dare cough.

  When the bowl was cashed, Jack put a mixed CD in his Discman and leaned close to share his headphones. His bloodshot eyes half-closed. He tongued his lip piercing, wheeling that little metal hoop around and around. I wanted to be closer to him. I wanted, I thought with a flash that scared me, to lick the curve of skin just above the chain he wore around his neck.

  A song came on and Jack pulled the jewel case from under his bed. The track names were handwritten in Sharpie. The one we were listening to was called "Sister Jack."

  "It's you," he said with a stoner's laugh. He patted my knee and the inside of my leg went electric.

  I grip the banister of Patrick Bloom's patio until the worn wood starts to splinter. I blow a cloud of smoke and imagine it conjuring Jack. Why do I still think of him as part of my life? He's nothing more than a shadow.

  The weed has hit me and I'm starving. I go back to the garden and snap off a head of corn. A grub pokes out from the folds o
f husk. I pluck it out and stomp it underfoot. Inside, I sauté the corn in a thick pat of butter.

  I've smoked enough to tranquilize a horse, but the second my head touches Patrick Bloom's pillow, I find that, once again, I cannot sleep.

  If I move around, maybe my exhaustion will catch up with me.

  I put on my sneakers and leave the house for a walk through the neighborhood. My heart races faster as I make my way up and down the lurching hills. The dark-windowed houses loom overhead and the quiet is punctuated by bursts of sound. A dog barking as I pass, a motorcycle backfiring somewhere high on the twisted roads. I wonder what I'd look like to someone watching from inside one of these beautiful houses. A hoodlum from the flatlands, no doubt.

  I turn onto a road where the sidewalk narrows to a sliver. I hear an engine rumble and then a car careens around a blind curve, flying toward me so quickly that I think I'm going to die. The car jerks to swerve around me, the side-view mirror close enough that I could reach out and touch it. I forget to breathe until the streak of rear lights disappears into the night.

  * * *

  It's my last day. I need to keep it together.

  I try working on a hard-copy editing test in the garden under the slanted shade of the house, but my brain is out to sea. Flies dive-bomb the caverns of my ears. I swat them away and one of them tumbles into the mug of expensive coffee I made in Patrick Bloom's kitchen. I could fish it out but, instead, I watch it struggle at the surface until its last twitch.

  I need to go inside, it's too hot. Might as well grab something to eat first.

  I think of Eloise as I go to the carrot bed and try gently tugging on one of the tops. The ground looks soft, but the carrot doesn't budge. I reach my hand into the dirt and feel around for something firm. When I do, I grab it. As I pull my hand up, the soil spews worms with translucent skin. I can see the blackness of their guts.

  I yank my hand away. It's crawling with bugs. I drop the carrot, leap back, and beat the insects from my arm. Ants are trapped in the beads of my sweat, their little legs flailing. One fat-bodied ant digs its mouth into the not-yet-healed cut on my index finger, its mandible pinching into my raw flesh so firmly that its whole body stands on end. I squash it with my thumb.

  The carrot I picked is short and fat. It looks too pale. I've lost my appetite for it anyhow. I shove it back in the ground, even though I'm sure I've killed it.

  I go inside and shower in water so hot that I leave more sweaty than clean.

  I'm walking upstairs when I see the study. I think of finding a charger. Using my laptop would help pass the time. I could get work done. Or just bum around on Facebook.

  The study is locked, though that doesn't necessarily mean I can't get in.

  I shouldn't go in.

  I want to, though. I really, really want to. It is, in fact, the only thing that I want to do. My laptop is part of it but, to be honest, I mostly want to know what it's like in there.

  Isn't that a perk of house-sitting? Peeking into someone's life?

  I run my hands over the smooth wood and examine the lock. Easy. I pull a bobby pin from my hair and wedge it into the keyhole. A trick Jack showed me when we were kids. I wriggle it around until I feel a click, a give, and the lock comes undone.

  Sun streams through the windows, illuminating two tall file cabinets. A towering desktop computer sits alongside a bundle of extra laptop chargers. I set my computer on the desk and plug it in.

  It'll take awhile to reboot. I figure it's okay to look around in the meantime.

  Stacks of books border his desk, which is littered with pens. I come upon a pile of papers. Printouts from Eloise. There's a sticky note on top. Hope this helps, it reads. It's meant for Patrick Bloom but it feels like it's for me—if there's a chance I'll become this guy's assistant next year, I should see what I'd actually have to do.

  It looks like original writing, not articles or studies. Printed in Times New Roman, twelve-point font with a smattering of grammatical errors.

  Something like an essay.

  It's . . . an assignment? A class assignment?

  It's a chapter.

  That can't be right. Patrick Bloom would never have a grad student write something for him. I must be mistaken. I open a file cabinet. There are entire drawers dedicated to different books. First, Man Eat Food. A bunch of papers have headers that say, Winnie Ford. I pull out my phone and look her up on LinkedIn. Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, class of 2002. Currently a senior editor for the lifestyle magazine that did the shoot of Patrick Bloom's home.

  I look through Microgreen.

  Gardening in Eden.

  Truth, Lies, and Celery.

  WalkFit.

  All of them have traces of the assistants who ghostwrote them. Cover pages with their names. Hand-scrawled marginalia. Last-minute swipes of Wite-Out.

  I brace myself and then look through the one for Mother, Wife, Mine, Gone. It takes me an hour of searching through every paper in that pile, but I find it. My favorite line rendered in a student's handwriting: She took her last breath, jagged and true. She was there. And then she was gone.

  He even had them write the book about his dead wife.

  I manage to put the papers back in the files, the files in the cabinet, and I lock the door from the inside on my way out.

  I need to go to sleep. Now. That is the only way I'll get through my last evening in this house. I head downstairs to hunt for something that will seriously fuck me up. I haul myself onto the kitchen counter and search through the highest shelf to find what I'm looking for. A bottle of gin. I take it down, fill a cup, and top off the bottle with tap water.

  I plunk a handful of ice cubes into my glass and drink it like it's medicine. I'm out of weed, but this guy has to have something fun. I rifle through the bathroom. Ibuprofen, acid reflux meds, a box of Tums. Aha, there it is. A prescription bottle with the label torn off. The pills inside are white and round. They look like Ativan, though I'm not totally sure. Fuck it, let's find out. I down two with a gulp of gin.

  I put on sweatpants, take off my bra, lie down in Patrick Bloom's bed, and wait for this shit to kick in. I don't even care that my sweat is soaking into his beautiful, expensive comforter.

  My body starts to feel heavy, yet floaty. This is good. I release a big sigh. My phone is resting on the bed next to me. I pick it up. My fingers tingle as I dial Jack. It goes to a generic voice mail. I call once more, twice, three times.

  I laugh. Jack is not going to pick up. He's never going to pick up.

  I remember being sixteen. Lying on my bed, my presence cloaked by the wooden divider in the room, reading a book for class. I knew from the heavy footsteps that Jack had come home. When he came in and slid my mom's drawers open, I peered around the screen to see what he was doing.

  Jack was adept at plowing through my mom's things. I knew that she hid cash in her sock drawer because I'd gone looking once and pocketed twenty bucks. But Jack wasn't looking for something, he was looking to hide something. Something wrapped in a deconstructed brown grocery bag, bound in tape, and tucked under his arm.

  "What are you doing?" I asked. Jack jumped. I'd never startled him before.

  "Mari, if you don't tell anyone, we can pretend you didn't see anything."

  I didn't need to know what was in that package to know that my mom would kick him out if she found it. The idea of that happening was more than I could bear.

  I couldn't tell Jack no. Yet he saw my hesitation and knew his secret wasn't safe. His face warped with disgust. He stormed out, shoved the package into his backpack, and left. He didn't come home until the next day.

  Jack gave me the silent treatment after that and lived with us for only a few more weeks before disappearing again. That time we didn't find him, not in a strawberry field, not anywhere.

  Once in a while, I'd plug his name into Google, but it was like he had never existed at all.

  Why did he give my mom his number if he didn't plan on picking up his s
tupid phone?

  Fucker.

  I keep calling.

  Finally, the ringtone starts ending sooner. He's actively silencing my calls. He's seeing them come through. Jack is out there.

  Or maybe his phone is just blocking me.

  My vision gets fuzzy.

  I blink, slowly. My eyes close. Sleep cradles me.

  Is someone knocking on the front door? I prop myself up. My drool has soaked Patrick Bloom's pillow. I look at my phone. It's three a.m.; I've been unconscious for nine hours. The drugs are wearing thin, but I'm still stoned.

  I hear two more loud pounds and the chime of the doorbell.

  I stumble downstairs and see the silhouette of a man in the front window. Tall, lanky. I know exactly who it is.

  I open the door. Jack is wearing a black T-shirt and has a short, tidy beard. He looks older than his thirty-two years. Time and sun have etched lines into his skin. I want to run to him, but he's practically a stranger. I remember that I'm not wearing a bra and cross my arms over my chest.

  "Mari, I need your help," he says. Panic thrums behind his eyes. He turns to walk to the street and I follow him, a little sister's instinct. My head is drowning in Ativan and my tongue feels like it's filled with wet sand.

  "How'd you find me?" I manage to slur.

  "You texted me the address."

  "Oh." Right. Of course.

  "No one can track it," he says. "You have my burner number."

  Why does my brother have a burner phone? And why is that the number I have for him?

  He takes me to his car, opens the door, and gestures for me to look in the backseat. There's a thick plastic bag. It's misshapen, but I suspect from its size and heft what it is. Shock rushes through my system, but I'm not as terrified as I know I should be. Thank god I'm on drugs.

  "Who was it?"

  "It's not part of the job to know that." He emphasizes the word job as if this is like any other job he's had. Like pulling beer cans out of bushes on Frat Row or clearing out an anthropology professor's drainpipe or picking strawberries in Gilroy or dealing drugs.

  "Where did you . . . ?" I don't have to finish the sentence. Chop up the body.