The listing for my apartment complex had called it “beachfront real estate,” and I guess that was true, only the beach was pretty far in front of the real estate.
You couldn’t hear the ocean over the planes, which swooped so low over the Gardens that when they landed in the morning, all the car alarms were set off like fussy newborns. Some mornings, I thought I could swipe my fingers along the undercarriage of those metal birds if I jumped.
You could smell the ocean, though. Even through the motor oil and the garbage left too long baking in the sun, even through the waxy, perfume-like jasmine bursting on the knuckled trees in the courtyard, you could still smell the vegetable saltiness of the ocean. That was the real name of the complex, Jasmine Gardens, for the trees—but those same trees attracted thick, hairy-kneed spiders. When Lou started calling it Tarantula Gardens after I moved in, it stuck.
Slinging my purse down next to the couch, I didn’t bother to turn the lights on—the bulb had gone out the week before, and I hadn’t yet bothered to replace it. My apartment wasn’t exactly welcoming to come home to—couch, carpet, and walls all a shade of Builder Beige I hadn’t bothered to update. A patio that was more like a two-by-four plank of plywood taped to the side of the building. A wrought iron fence with bars like loose teeth kept the patio this side of a personal injury lawsuit. Luxurious living. Lou called my lack of decorating “willful poverty,” but then, she was always running up tabs to buy the most expensive items, racking up class on her credit cards.
Style cost extra. What I saved in rent was more money that could funnel back to the Lady to pay off my debt. I could move out if I wanted something nicer, but why bother with marble countertops, or a posher zip code, when I spent more time away from my bed than in it? Tarantula Gardens was home, but it wasn’t forever. I’d always known that.
But I’d thought I’d have more time before it ended.
The last time I’d paid my own rent, I’d been a different woman. That woman would’ve been depressed by this apartment. She would’ve taken Builder Beige personally. Even with the debt and the threats, I had much to thank the Lady for—murdering that woman was perhaps top of the list.
As long as the Lady kept signing my checks, I didn’t wonder, too much or too often, about who she was, or why she did what she did. It was enough for me to know that what I was doing made life a little more difficult for men like Hiram Klein, for whom life had never been particularly difficult.
But it did bother me that Lou had a real relationship with her, this woman about whom I knew nothing. The two of them, bent heads looking through the newspapers, picking out names. Networking with the nouveau riche at galas, dressed to the nines. Arm in arm, sipping from each other’s champagne. How that would go on after me. Without me.
I stood up, my face hot, thinking I’d grab a drink. Instead, I went to the window and pushed it open, sticking my face into the warm night air that smelled equally of jasmine and festering garbage.
I wished I hadn’t said anything about Ellen. I hadn’t meant to. I’d wanted to take the words back as soon as they were out of my mouth. And she’d ask about it tomorrow. I knew that if I tried to smooth it over, like Jackal had with the photographs, Lou would see through it. She’d know I was lying to her, and then she’d start to wonder, and maybe she’d call the Lady and the two of them would put their heads together and figure out some other things before I had a chance to fix any of it.
The score from Klein would depend on the footage, and the story I could craft, what I thought I could use to trigger him. If it was meant to be fifty large, could I push it as high as seventy-five? Slip the eight back to the police for the bribe, a couple more to ensure Jackal’s silence, and still pay off the debt. Playing fair, or close to it. The Lady would never know.
I took another sip of the warm night air, pondering it. Outside, the low rumble of the planes overhead set the glass in the window trembling. When I’d first moved to Los Angeles, I’d hated everything about the city, the traffic, the people. Everything. Los Angeles was an endless appetite, ninety-two smaller cities stapled together and consuming everything in its path. Even with my doors locked tight, I could feel the city trying to make its way in—the Santa Anas sweeping through freshly soldered seams, pale afternoon light spilling through blinds zipped shut, the sight of beautiful people on every corner turning you inside out against yourself. In the beginning, living in Los Angeles was like having a constant spotlight shining on you and at the same time like being invisible.
It had taken Lou, and the Lady, and even Jackal, for me to understand that the best part of the city was its artifice. Use the spotlight as a weapon. Wear the con like a coat. That’s when Los Angeles became my city.
Somewhere a cat yowled, and I turned my back on the window. I’d never asked myself—I’d never wanted to ask myself—if there had been other girls before me. I’d never wondered what would happen if I didn’t want the job anymore. How impossible it would be for the Lady to let someone with so much knowledge about her business leave it. It had seemed we could go on indefinitely, the three of us, carrying out the Lady’s orders, making this little corner of the city our own.
Little pinpricks of cold danced down my arms, into my stomach. When I’d been fired from my last job, I’d been sure I’d never put my life back together. But then I’d met Lou—or, rather, Lou had found me. There were other cities in the world, but there weren’t other Lous.
Even if I didn’t close Klein and somehow managed to escape the Lady, I’d have to leave Los Angeles. Maybe even California. I’d have to leave Lou, and Jackal. I’d be back to square one: no references, no work history. Not as Jo. Not as the woman I’d been before Lou and the Lady, either. I’d made something of myself by Lou’s side. If that was gone . . .
I turned off the lights and walked to the cupboard and grabbed a bottle of gin and poured myself a nightcap.
I fell asleep that night on top of my bed, sheets pulled up to my neck, sweating through the cotton. If I had dreams worth remembering, they were ghosts by the time I woke.