The fog and the fog and the fog! Maybe it was every ghost from 1906 suspended above, hovering. Three thousand people died from falling structures and fire then. All those spirits, and no wonder they never left. Lost souls, so much trauma—every ghost around us and in us shares that particular history.
A few days later, I met Nicco at Ocean Beach after work. It was late. Dark. Up on its rock, the Cliff House glowed with yellow light through the still-clear night, and the water that pooled in the nearby ruins caught the golden shimmers of the moon. I waited. It was cold, and I rubbed my arms against the chill. And then there he was. In his work clothes. His eyes caught the shimmers too.
His arms went around me, and mine went around him. He smelled like charbroiled dinners and cocktails and night air. Overhead, the clouds looked purple and blue, and they turned the sea purple and blue too. Nicco took my hand. We walked toward the edge of the water. The edge—it could be some metaphor, but it was just what we did.
A few days before, I’d told Nicco that Meredith had gone home sick. He didn’t seem to believe me, but he left it alone. I didn’t say anything about the scary fight or the paintings. Maybe Meredith had taught me a lesson about revealing too much truth, but maybe I also just didn’t want to think about it for a while.
I slipped off my sandals. My feet sank into the sand, and I let the cold sea wash over my toes. Nicco kissed me and I tumbled into it. The cold didn’t matter, because IT made a circle around us, and I was hungry and full at the same time.
“Big sparkle,” I said, nodding toward the Cliff House. Even from there, you could see the candlelight on the tables, the flickering flames, the couples leaning in toward each other.
“Big night.” He grabbed my hair and kissed me hard.
“Tie loosened like a weary businessman,” I said when we broke away again. I scribbled in the air like it was something for his notebook. He had the knot of his necktie scooted down, the top button of his shirt undone. He had to wear a tie for certain catered events and he hated it.
“Who invented these stupid things?” he said. Then, suddenly, he whipped it over his head and tossed it, and a wave caught it and out it went. He didn’t have a lot of money. It was a frivolous and funny thing to do, a playful moment, and it was just another thing to love about him.
“There it goes!” I laughed. It went farther and farther out.
“Bon voyage, tie. Have an awesome adventure.” We watched it like a story. For a minute, it looked like it might come back riding on a wave, but no. It kept going.
“Send us a postcard, tie,” I said.
“Safe travels, pal,” he said.
The fog started to drift in. It got harder to see. We walked the beach. We didn’t get far. I told you, that crazy feeling between us was everywhere. It was a current and a tide and every other force.
“Oh, man,” he said. “Oh, man.” My fingers were in his hair and up the back of his shirt. His hands were cold on my sides.
We stopped. Not for long. We started kissing again. He took my hand. He walked me toward a cove of rocks, a dark and hidden cove. It was sheltered from the wind, but probably not from the patrols who strolled the beach with their flashlights. We were near the ruins. You could think about how the ruins had been destroyed, but you could think about how they’d lasted, too.
We dropped to the ground. The sand was damp and hard, but who cared? My hands were on the bare skin of his hips, jammed down his black pants, and then I popped the button. Hands had DNA, a history of their own. They knew what to do from years and years of being hands. Tongues did.
“Syd, Syd, Syd,” Nicco said. His breath was hot against my cheek. I forgot about being cold. “Syd, are you sure?”
I was nervous and a little scared, but I was sure.
“Yes. But I don’t have anything.” It felt crushing, that we’d have to wait.
“I do.”
“You do?” What a relief, even though I had no idea how those things actually worked.
Nicco did, though. There was the funny smell of rubber, and then of us, and he lifted my hips and put his shirt under me. The ground was hard, and a shirt couldn’t keep away the sand, and I tried to concentrate on the feelings, but everything seemed squeaky and badly fitting and my mind kept up a running commentary, like, This is it. And, So that’s what it feels like, and, I’m not sure, but I think it’s over.
He lay heavy on top of me, and kissed my neck and my face, and then we rose, and brushed off and got dressed. It was so foggy white out there now, it was just us in a strange, unseeable world. And even though right then kissing might almost have been better than actual sex, hands and crazy desire more physically awesome, I was happy, and I felt close to him. I felt different, but a larger different. I was glad we hadn’t gotten caught. He held my hand. Our hips bumped as we walked. The fog had become so thick that I couldn’t see three feet in front of us, but it seemed like a mystery, not a haunting.
He led me back to his van. It was a seventies-song cliché. He set out a blanket, and we lay on the floor. We did it again much more slowly, and more of those songs made sense then.
Nicco drove me home. He was right, because sex did change things between us. I didn’t want to go.
I told him this.
“Me neither,” he said, and then I watched him drive away like I was some lovestruck heroine in a movie.
When I turned toward the house, I noticed that it was completely dark. I opened the door, and there was Max, waiting up for me like the worried mother I never had. He leapt on my legs and then dashed out to pee. He circled and circled and pretended to make a weighty decision and then just went on his same old bush he always went on.
There were no open guest room windows with nervous voices drifting down that night. I stood on the grass and let the moonlight shine on me. I felt longing, but it was the good kind of longing—a yearning for things that haven’t happened yet. I was happy, in spite of everything that was going on at home. I was so happy that I picked up Max. I picked his big, huge self right on up. He seemed a little surprised yet patient about being suddenly off the ground.
“Oh, big, giant buddy. I love you, you big, beautiful beast,” I said, and then I kissed his velvet head and set him down before I broke my back.
When I went inside the house, the little hairs on my arms stood up. That ghost—she blew her cold breath right down my skin. Something was wrong. I didn’t know what yet, but I could sense a change. The alarm had been turned on, so Lila and Jake were asleep in bed, I assumed, but I felt a strange absence. An echoey space. Something, someone, gone.
The house was quiet except for Max’s toenails in the kitchen and the slurp of him having a long drink of water, and the ticking of the clock in the White Room, and the roar of the sea outside.
The White Room pulled me forward. Tick, tick, tick. And then I saw what the absence was. I saw what was gone. The huge painting, Crying Girl, otherwise known as a woman, with her red lips and her finger wiping away that tear.
There was just a large, empty space on the wall. I could see the holes where the hanger had been.
I felt a curl of nervous fear. My mind tried to put pieces together, but I didn’t have the pieces. I had the words from the night before, though. Watching us. Stakeout. Prison.
In the dining room—Jacqueline. Gone.
I went upstairs to the guest room. I was scared to push open the door. And then I did. I looked. Crates—gone. The whole room was empty.
There seemed to be only two possibilities. Either Jake had hidden the paintings, or the police, or whoever had been watching our house, had taken them, which meant they’d probably taken Jake, too. You know, off. Away. To jail.
I felt shaky and clammy. I started to panic a little. If that had happened, though, Lila would be awake, crying and hysterical, wouldn’t she? Maybe Lila’s friend Louise would be here too, her “crisis manager,” who always showed up when there was a problem. I’d have gotten calls from Edwina, wondering what was going on. But 716 Sea Cliff Drive was still and silent.
There was only one way to know for sure if Jake had been carted off. I crept upstairs to their room.
I listened. It seemed so quiet.
My heart was pounding. After that horrible fight that night, anything seemed possible. I didn’t know what I might find behind that door.
My hand shook. Lila’s room was strictly off-limits. I suddenly thought of that scene in Nefarious when Lila’s character goes to the home of her lover and his wife and sneaks into their bedroom, with plans to bludgeon them with a hammer.
I turned the knob slowly, slowly, slowly. I pushed the door open.
I peered inside.
Two lumps, two sleeping bodies. Lila on the far side, her blond head on the pillow, her breath raising and lowering the covers. Jake, closest to the door, the back of his head facing me, his body curved around hers.
The paintings hadn’t been seized by police.
He’d hidden all those women, I realized. The crying ones, the faceless ones, the beautiful ones, the ones without mouths to speak, the ones who were only bodies. He’d hidden them so no one would know what he’d taken.
I hated him then.
I hated him so much. For the bruises and the paintings and his ownership of that house and more. Honestly, for a moment I wished I were Lila’s character with that hammer in her hand, walking toward that bed.