Chapter 13 The Lie Is Smooth
The Lie Is Smooth
Now, on this day at the start of March, Frankie is buttoning her shirt when the phone rings.
The radio is on in the living room, and she hears the announcer proclaim President Hoover’s failure to stabilize the banks, and California and thirty-six other states’ efforts to take matters into their own hands by declaring a bank holiday.
A bank holiday. Which means the banks are shutting down. Her heart races as she realizes her mistake. There wasn’t much in her savings account, but with so much on her plate, she forgot to take out what she could.
“Folks,” the announcer says, “we’re talking no deposits, no withdrawals, nothing. For how long? Who can say?”
The ringing continues, and Frankie glances toward her jewelry box on the dresser. Under the lining, she’s stashed eight dollars, enough to pay for food and gas for a while. But for how long? Again, the phone rings, and Frankie calls out Virginia’s name, since she’s closest.
The radio drones on. “Roosevelt’s coming in in two days and is going to have his hands full. Will he take this solution nationwide? What will he do? Hopefully more than the Chief, I’ll say that.”
The phone rings again. Finally, Frankie runs down the hall to answer.
“Frankie? Something’s happened.”
She drives fast, painfully aware of a minute’s importance. Over and over again, her mind returns to the day her mother died. Seconds more with her mother—what she would do for even seconds more.
On Glenhollow, she swerves to the curb, tires bumping.
The car door slams behind her, shattering the silence.
Carob pods crack under her feet, bricks wet from rain.
Camellias grow by June’s bungalow, dark-green leaves and bloodred blooms. She keeps going.
The neighbors’ stone wall is on her left, and beyond that a tree-filled lot, undeveloped.
They built a beautiful wall around their property, and then the Crash happened and they never built the house.
Nico. As soon as she knows what she’s up against, she’ll call Nico.
There’s June’s back door. An old water fountain, velvet blooms of algae.
Then the brick path splits off: the straight portion leading to Jack’s bungalow and Arlington Way, while the portion that veers right travels smack between the two bungalows and disappears near the hill at the edge of the lot.
For one second she pauses, thinking she heard something. A spiderweb glistens a warning.
Where the stone wall becomes a wooden fence is where a different neighbor’s property begins, and in seconds their dog is there.
A rush of noise. Furious barking. Bared teeth through the slats.
It’s only when she veers onto the smaller path that leads to Jack’s bungalow that the dog stops, and her heart begins to settle.
Before she’s raised her hand to knock, the door swings open.
Jack. He reeks of bourbon but he’s alive.
Relief floods her—this means he can acknowledge that drinking shouldn’t happen again, and maybe they can keep going, even in private, even at night, because nothing is ever too late if someone is alive.
She’s reaching out to him when she sees the blood on the white sleeve of his dress shirt. A lot of blood.
When he told her he needed her, there was urgency in his voice and he said to come alone. But she shouldn’t have listened; he needs a doctor.
Already he’s down the path, asking her to follow. She tells him to stop, demanding to know where he’s hurt and how badly, but he won’t listen.
Again, the dog hurls itself against the fence. The noise, the blood. Frankie’s heart rate soars until they’ve passed the dog’s yard and the creature silences. She pauses to clear her head, to take a breath, when she sees that Jack has swerved onto the short path that leads to June’s back door.
Now she looks to him.
He faces her, and his voice is barely a whisper. “Please.”
From deep within the carob tree, leaves rustle. The fact that Jack’s standing there calmly tells her all she needs to know, because whatever has happened is over. It’s too late.
And now she knows he called her not as his girlfriend, but as his fixer.
Inside, a clock ticks. The kitchen light is on, the curtains still closed, slices of light between fabric.
There is a glass vase with old pink roses, necks wilted and heads hanging.
It feels as though she’s walked onto a set, everything carefully arranged and loaded with purpose.
When Jack disappears through the kitchen door, she waits for the noise and scramble of the crew at the end of a take.
“Frankie,” he calls.
This, she understands, is a set for a crime.
Because the living room is struck with chaos.
A chair is tipped over, and a lamp is knocked on its side, shade gaping.
Sofa cushions are tousled, pillows missing.
But the pillows are there, she sees, on the floor by the sofa, but then so is a stockinged foot and a leg, and now her heart pounds a remembrance of her mother, and Frankie’s breath comes up short and she sees a dark-green satin dress stained above the abdomen, darker still at the chest. Again, the safety of pretend: Makeup artists use chocolate syrup for blood.
Film is black and white, a prop master once said, but I tell you, you clip an artery, and the blood’s dark, so we’re not far off.
And this is dark but also red. Too red, really, all that wasted color for black-and-white film, and by the time Frankie looks up at June’s face, she’s feeling the pressing edge of reality, sharp like a blade.
She’s seen June dead in films over and over, but it’s the color of June’s skin, ashy pale, that is beyond what they’ve achieved. “How did they do that?” she asks, taking a step forward.
Jack stops her. “Don’t. You’ll get it everywhere like I did.”
The stillness of June’s face is remarkable. I think there was a struggle, Jack is saying, and she was shot, but Frankie’s watching June’s lips, waiting for them to move.
“The makeup.” But again, he’s stopping her because she’s stepped in blood, and the shoe print it leaves is red, bright red, and ultimately it’s that color that clues her in because it’s too red for syrup, just like June’s face is too pale for makeup.
Her skin is the same shade that Fiona’s face was hours after she died, yet without a hint of powder.
There is a scent that reminds Frankie of the carob tree outside, a strange, almost sweet decay.
All at once it hits her. Backing away, she trips. Jack grabs her arm.
“No.” She presses her hand on her mouth. Sick. There’s the sticky grab of red where she stepped.
“I had a dream I was in the war,” Jack is saying. “Or I thought it was a dream. I must’ve heard the shot. I don’t know. I woke up with an empty bottle of Old Stagg.”
June’s handbag is on the desk, open. Shoes toppled by the door.
The details. Frankie knows she needs the details, but the second she notices something, it slips away.
Over and over she scans the room. A champagne bottle on an end table, open.
Empty. The cork on the ground. A juice glass beside the bottle with a small amount of liquid still inside.
Another glass, clean, on the other end table.
She feels as though she’s struggling to get back inside herself.
She needs to be present. “Start with what you remember.”
“Jolting awake. Not long after I fell asleep, I think. I thought they were firing on us.”
“Because you heard the shot.”
His words are slow, as if he’s wading through memory to find them.
“I guess. I thought it was a dream. Then this morning, I wanted to talk to her. I wanted to get her on board with calling things off. And I found her, and everything got tangled. For an hour or so, I didn’t know what was what.
” A pause. “It used to happen like that, time tangling up.”
The long shadow of war. Its effect never truly over. “After you saw her, but before you called me—did you go back to your bungalow?”
He shakes his head. “I was still in her kitchen when everything started making sense.”
Something scratches on the glass. A branch that’s against the window.
“Go to the bedroom. Make sure the curtains are closed.” She’s getting back to herself, snapping to. When he shuts the door, she calls Nico. It’s not yet eight a.m., the day after a premiere, which means he could be sleeping. Waiting, she faces the wall, feeling June like a presence at her back.
When Nico says hello, his voice is groggy.
“Hi,” she says cheerfully, which she knows will alarm him. “Can you come to bungalow one? Now?”
To this, there is silence. And then he tells her he’s on his way.
Time is stuck. It feels as though hours have passed, but it’s still only morning. Frankie is alone in the kitchen, staring at pink roses that make no sense.
Ida. Though Frankie’s never liked her, the woman will be destroyed. Nico will handle it. Like he has car accidents and fights and even an incident when a star was caught shoplifting. Everything will be fine. He just needs to get here.
The clock ticks. Light stretches on the table. A dust mote glitters in the air. Still, it is morning. Still, the unbelievable has only just happened.
Shock transitions to logic; there are things she needs to do. All the windows in the living room are covered, and the bedroom was dark. But it’s hitting her that she should’ve made Jack leave and not just hide. If anyone sees him here, with blood on his shirt, they will think he did this.
Then, the sound of a car. When she hears it, she hurries through the living room.
A speck of orange through the curtain: Nico’s Bugatti.
He’s left his car in the middle of the road, facing the Dead End sign at the end of the street as if the road is merely a driveway.
Without looking back, he’s storming up the pathway.