ADAM SAID MR. G’S WAS CLOSEST, SO WE WENT THERE first. It was on the corner of a fairly busy street. Years earlier I’d pointed out to Talley that you could tell what the important streets were by the direction of the traffic. If traffic only went in one direction, it wasn’t such an important street. But when traffic went both ways, you could tell a lot more happened there.
It was a little-kid observation, and it didn’t always hold true, but as we drove down Laurel Street toward Mr. G’s, I noted the traffic moving in both directions and I thought, Something important will happen here.
At least I hoped it would. Adam circled the block a couple times looking for a place to park and finally pulled into a spot marked Bank Customers Only.
Every time I did anything I wasn’t supposed to do, I remembered my sister: Don’t ask for permission, ask for forgiveness. As if I needed an excuse to remember her.
We crossed the street and walked into Mr. G’s, and it was as if there’d been a sudden total eclipse of the sun. Outside it was bright, but the inside of the karaoke place was bathed in the blue-black color of nighttime.
Even in the darkness, I could tell the place was mostly empty, which wasn’t a surprise. It was just past the lunchtime hour, which wasn’t exactly prime karaoke time. There was a handful of customers, including one woman onstage belting out her version of the old Aretha Franklin song “Respect”—and I mean belting, as if she had an audience of a few hundred, and maybe a few thousand.
Adam and I stood there in the doorway of Mr. G’s for a couple minutes, eyes adjusting to the dark, listening to her sing. She was as good as any singer I’d ever heard. As good as the goddess singing the live version of “Rhiannon” in Juno’s car. I wondered if she was a regular, and if she’d been onstage when Talley had been here. If so, I was sure Talley would’ve been as astounded as I was.
“Respect” ended. The three or four people who were sitting in the audience clapped, and Adam and I did, too. The woman bowed, but she didn’t step off the stage. Instead, a man joined her and they began to sing another song together.
A woman in a green Mr. G’s T-shirt came over and welcomed Adam and me. She said there was a twenty-dollar minimum per person, but we could sing as many songs as we liked. “And sit wherever you want,” she added, extending an arm toward all the empty tables.
Adam looked at me. “You pick again,” he said. “That’s your job. Seat picker.”
“Oh, we don’t have to stay,” I told him, and I turned back to the woman. “We’re only here because I think my sister was here. Maybe you knew her—Talley Weber?”
“No, sorry,” the woman said.
“May I show you her picture?” My phone was already in my hand. I pressed the button to light up the screen and held it out. She shook her head. No, she hadn’t seen Talley.
“I’m pretty sure she sang something from Grease, if that rings a bell.”
“Sorry, it doesn’t,” the woman said.
“Is it possible to look up when songs from Grease were last sung, and who sang them?”
“We don’t have the capabilities to look up such things,” the woman said. “I think there’d be privacy issues anyway.”
“My sister died,” I said.
“Oh. Oh my.”
“I’m only telling you because you were concerned about her privacy,” I said. “If you knew her and she said that it was a secret she was here in California, you don’t have to worry. I already know she was here, so I don’t think she’d mind if you told me whatever you know—if there’s anything you know.”
She shook her head. “I didn’t know her, but I’m truly sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you.”
“If you want to sing something from Grease, you’re welcome to. I could talk to my manager about waiving the minimum.”
“No, that’s all right,” I said. “But thanks anyway.”
“Are they regulars here?” I asked, gesturing toward the couple onstage.
“Jenny and Gil? They come in every now and then.”
“I’m going to ask them if they knew my sister. Then we’ll get going.”
But Jenny and Gil didn’t know Talley, or so they said. Adam and I headed out. I could tell he felt bad that the visit had been a bust, because he was talking up Bel Air, saying he just had a feeling about it. He’d always been lucky at the arcade as a kid—he was the master of Skee-Ball and had earned so many tickets that he’d once won an enormous stuffed tiger. It was as big, practically, as an actual tiger, and it was suspended high above the booth, with a sign around its neck that said you needed ten thousand tickets to take it home with you. Most kids earned however many tickets they earned in a day—fifty tickets, maybe a hundred, and they made do with the lesser prizes. Fuzzy keychains, Slinkies, Chinese finger traps. That sort of thing. They didn’t have the patience to collect tickets, visit after visit, and wait till they had enough for something really special. But Adam believed in delayed gratification and he kept his eye on the prize. Plus he was just so exceptionally good at Skee-Ball.
“It’s still in my room,” Adam said. “I did a big stuffed animal clean-out when I was in like sixth grade. I made my mom give everything away—except the tiger. I couldn’t get rid of my crowning achievement!”
“Of course not.”
“Look there,” Adam said.
“Where.”
“Out the window, to the right. See the turrets?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s Bel Air.”
He made a turn and we went through the castle gates and over a (fake) drawbridge. The moat was just grass—or rather, patches of grass. Bel Air, on the whole, looked like it’d seen better days. The castle was a bit run-down looking, and there was paint peeling off the corner tower. “When was the last time you were here?” I asked.
“I’m pretty sure it was Roddy Vega’s birthday party in seventh grade,” Adam said. “They have go-karts in the back, and you know, when you don’t have a license, that’s about as cool as it gets.”
“I guess.”
“It’s kind of sad, though, to come back to places you loved when you were a kid, and seeing it the way your parents must’ve seen it back then. And wait till you see inside—it’s even worse.”
The lobby was a giant warehouse-like room with dozens of video games, pinball machines, and of course the Skee-Ball machines running the length of the back wall. I saw the prize booth with various knickknacks offered in exchange for tickets, and the giant stuffed animals suspended from above (though not a tiger).
I asked the guy behind the counter if he’d known Talley. He said he hadn’t. There were a few other Bel Air staff members working the floor—you could tell who they were because of their striped referee shirts. It was the same answer every time, and the same answer when Adam and I went out back to the area with the go-karts and the miniature golf course. “And how late are you open?” I asked.
I’d asked already, back when I’d called Bel Air from the stairwell at school. “We’re open eleven a.m. to eight p.m., Monday through Thursday,” a guy named Harris told me. “Friday and Saturday till ten, and Sunday we close at seven.”
“Never till midnight?” I asked.
“Those have been the hours for as long as I’ve worked here,” he said.
“How long have you worked here?”
“Nearly three years.”
“In all of your time here, have there been any late-night parties or anything like that?”
“Like birthday parties?”
“Sure, or any other kind of party that went really late. Like maybe someone rented the place out and invited people to stay till midnight?”
“How large is your party?” Harris asked.
“Oh, it’s a hypothetical party, not a real party,” I said. “If I had enough people to rent the whole place out, could I?”
“I’m sure you could, but it’s not really my department. Let me introduce you to my manager. Yo, Melinda—” Harris called out.
A woman in the company striped shirt and ripped jeans walked over, and my mind flicked to my father, who was (not surprisingly) staunchly anti–ripped jeans. He’d made an actual rule about it—not only would he not buy them for Talley and me, but also even if we were spending our own money, we were not allowed to come home with clothes that had purposeful rips in them. He didn’t care if all our friends were wearing them, and it was the height of fashion. To him it was offensive. “When I was in college, my jeans were ripped and patched because I didn’t have a choice—because I couldn’t afford anything else,” he told Talley and me. It was about as close as he ever got to talking about all the loss he’d experienced, and how life was harder for him, after his parents died. Talley and I obeyed the no-rips rule.
But now, of course, a pair of Talley’s jeans did have rips in them. The jeans that were cut off her body in the hospital, and were now at the top of my closet, with the rest of her “effects.”
“What can I help you with?” Melinda asked.
I asked her the same questions I’d asked Harris. Melinda said Bel Air wasn’t ever open at midnight, and if anyone had ever tried to sneak in, there were alarms and security cameras, but those things hadn’t been tripped up in a long time—the last time was a fraternity prank. A couple of kids tried to scale the castle walls in the middle of the night, but it was two years ago, and they were guys. One of them broke his leg. The management at Bel Air felt that was punishment enough and didn’t press charges.
I showed Talley’s picture to Melinda, just to be as thorough as I possibly could, though I didn’t expect her to recognize Talley—and she didn’t.
Adam and I walked back out to his car. “I don’t have to be anywhere for a while,” he said. “Actually, I don’t have to be anywhere till tomorrow morning, when I’m going to my mom’s office against my will. So you just say the word—anywhere you want to go, we’ll go there.”
It was a kind offer, but I was done for the day. “Thanks,” I said. “But can you just drop me at my aunt’s house.”
“Sure thing.”