The traffic into Ventura County from LAX was hellish, made more so by the fact that Freyda Wilkins refused to shut the fuck up despite the fact that neither Vanessa nor Cressida had responded to a single of her utterances for the past twenty-five minutes. Vanessa felt bad about this, because it was good of Freyda to come and pick them up, but all she could think was, Sweet bleeding Jesus Christ, just please pick up on the vibe from your passengers and shut your cakehole. Currently, Freyda was nattering on about some arcane difficulty her oldest son Steiner was having getting his acupressure clinic licensed in Salt Lake City. Vanessa countered a powerful urge to suggest that Steiner move his acupressure business someplace more New Agey than Salt Lake City. The boy had rebelled in his early twenties in a manner perfectly consistent with having been raised among hippie lesbians in Ojai by meeting a Mormon girl, converting, marrying her and moving to Utah. This union, though troubling, had thus far blessed Freyda with five grandchildren, with another on the way and probably many more after that. Vanessa had never asked what the Mormon in-laws thought of Freyda’s living arrangements, though she suspected it was one of those things that simply wasn’t brought up. Grandma had a roommate who was like one of the family, was how they probably explained it to the grandkids.
In the backseat, Cressida scowled out the window at the passing scenery, and Vanessa was grateful for the kind of repressed rage that occasionally brought her to bitter silence, because this would otherwise have been the occasion for an epic rant: multi-car pileup at Trancas leading to a miles-long backup; Subaru minivan dating back to the era before Japanese manufacturers got wise to the fact that American consumers wanted their air conditioners spewing temperatures suited to the farthest, iciest reaches of the solar system; sweet, ditsy Freyda, unable to judge the degree of interest among her passengers in her son’s professional dramas; finally, the CD changer fully loaded with Enya. All of it could have been avoided by turning on KFI and getting the traffic report, but the potent, relaxing sounds of Enya prevailed.
Finally Vanessa realized she couldn’t take another second of the tale of poor Steiner and she blurted out the question she’d been avoiding. “So what’s the word on Magda?”
“Oh, Lordy, poor Cheyenne, she’s just beside herself. She’s pretty sure it’s the sleazeball boyfriend, the sheriff’s department thinks so too, turns out he’s into drugs, well, we knew that, didn’t we? But not just using, apparently selling, is what the rumor on the street is, and no one’s seen hide nor hair of him, which is normal, but Magda? She’s nothing if not reliable at work. In fact, it was that vet she works for who called Cheyenne to tell her something was wrong because Magda, when she’s sick she’ll just show up anyway. They’ve had to send her home before when she’s had the flu for fear she’d give it to the people bringing their pets in! So when she missed two days in a row without phoning, well, that seemed funny.”
“I didn’t know about the boyfriend.”
“Uneducated and uncultured, Cheyenne says, no inclination to work—the only good thing is they aren’t living together. For the life of me, a smart, strong-willed girl like her, how she gets involved with a creep like that.”
“Maybe he’s got a sweet side,” Vanessa said.
“Maybe he’s hung like a rhinoceros,” Cressida said from the backseat, and in the rearview Vanessa could see a nasty smirk on her face, a welcome sign that her mood was improving.
“What are those cars doing here?” Cressida asked when they pulled into the long gravel drive.
They were meant to return in January, but Vanessa broke her hip and required four months’ convalescing and rehab at a facility in St. Pete’s. Cressida had wanted to call the housecleaning service before they arrived, but Vanessa pointed out that, since the house was spotless upon their departure in November, the only cleanup required would be dusting.
“I have no idea,” Vanessa said. A dilapidated pickup truck and a faded Buick Century were parked at the front door, the driver’s-side door of the pickup standing open.
Vanessa’s hip was hurting after the flight and the drive and she limped toward the front door with her carry-on while Cressida and Freyda wrestled with the larger baggage. She peered into the truck’s cab and noted that the dome light wasn’t illuminated. The door-open beeper wasn’t going off, either.
A good ten feet from the door she became aware of a powerful and disagreeable odor emanating from the interior. “Uh-oh, Cress, I think we might have a dead possum.” The closer she got the more intense the smell became, and by the time she had her key out she had to pull a scarf from her bag and hold it in front of her face.
“Shit, I can smell it all the way back here,” Cressida said, suitcase handles in both hands.
“You really should be careful to empty the house of food before you leave town,” Freyda said, and only the fact that she was hauling one of Vanessa’s suitcases kept Vanessa from making a remark that might wipe that superior look off her face.
Cressida and Freyda were standing behind her holding the bags as Vanessa unlocked the top bolt and then the knob, and when she pushed the door inward an outrush of icy, fetid, malodorous gas rushed over her face, and she dropped on her knees to the gravel. A cloud of flies of varying colors and sizes poured from the crack between door and frame, and as one buzzed briefly, alarmingly, into her open mouth, she spat and choked and, finally, puked. The swarm brushed her face, landing on her hair and arms, pausing as if to consider her suitability as a site for feeding or the laying of eggs before moving on to more promising possibilities, and in the near distance she heard Cressida and Freyda scream.