places. I drop to the floor and peer under the bed—nothing but dust—and then lie on my back on the carpet, thinking. The last time I was here must have been six months back. After finishing a job (a B-list rap star, whom we liberated of six figures’ worth of diamond-crusted finger bling), Lachlan took me out to dinner in Beverly Hills and then, too drunk to drive back to Echo Park, back to this condo. I remember waking up hungover in his bed and hearing him rustling around in the bathroom, the soft click of a door being pressed back into place. When Lachlan came back in the bedroom and saw that I was awake, he smiled and dropped onto the bed next to me; but not before I saw his face rearrange itself, as if he was taking a mental eraser to his own expression.
So: the bathroom.
I open the bathroom door and flip on the vanity lights, blinking in the sudden glare. A woman is standing there, looking back at me, her face sallow and hair wild. I almost don’t recognize myself. Sometime while I was in jail, the poised and polished Nina Ross shriveled up and vanished. I’m not quite sure who the person that remains inside my skin might be. I think of Vanessa’s words—I like you more this way—and wonder how this could possibly be true.
The medicine cabinet has nothing but toothpaste and Tylenol, a single bottle of dextroamphetamine, and a very expensive shaving kit. Under the sink, a stack of toilet paper and Kleenex, plus a supersized bottle of Drano. I pull it all out and spread it on the tile floor, just in case something might be tucked in back. There’s nothing there, just some dead silverfish and a square of Con-Tact liner paper emblazoned with yellowing daisies. But I notice that the edge of the paper is curling and bent, as if it’s been pushed at too many times, and when I tap on the base of the cabinet, it sounds hollow. I wedge a fingernail under the corner of the pressboard, and the bottom pops out easily.
There’s a flat shirt box underneath. I tug off the cover and study its contents, heart racing.
Eureka.
* * *
—
Vanessa gives me a ride back to Echo Park. Night has descended on Los Angeles, and rush hour traffic clutches at our car as we join the river of taillights heading east. Her SUV smells like leather and citrus air freshener; the seats are so deep and cushioned after my eight weeks of plastic and metal that I feel like I might suffocate in them. The silence in the car is a thick soup. I can’t bring myself to ask Vanessa what she’s thinking; I can’t afford to care.
She slows to a stop in front of the bungalow, her eyes flicking nervously at the front door, as if wondering whether my mother is going to materialize to confront her. But the lights are out in the house, windows staring black and empty-eyed at the street.
I pause before I open the car door. “Are you going back to Stonehaven now?”
“I’ve got a room at the Chateau Marmont,” she says. “It’s too late to drive back tonight. I’ll leave in the morning.”
I blink. I could go with her. I could go back to Stonehaven and clean up the mess that I made. “Don’t go,” I try instead. The path of least resistance.
She turns toward me, her whitened teeth glinting sharply in the dark, and I see from her impatient expression that our tenuous truce has ended. “Stop saying that, as if this mess you made can be cleaned up just by ignoring it. I mean, honestly. Who are you to give me advice on what to do?” Her breath is quick and hot. “No, really: Who are you, anyway?”
I don’t see as much as hear her father then, in the condescending tone of her voice, her words echoing his: Who are you? I bristle, despite myself.
I’m no one, I think. I’m nobody. But so are you.
“Fine. Figure it out yourself, I don’t care,” I say as I fumble for the door handle.