10. Hell Is Other People （driving Around in All Their Cars）
HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE (DRIVING AROUND IN ALL THEIR CARS)
JUDE CLIMBED EASILY, DOCILELY, back down the hatch into his bedroom. My heart had not yet stopped racing.
There’s a devil on my back.
I see it, Jude’s voice whispered.
He pointed to a pill bottle and I handed it to him, looking around for a glass, but he swallowed the dose without waiting for water. He turned on his side away from me, staring at the wall.
My eyes strayed to the shape of his shoulders, the hidden things that lived below. I shivered as I replaced the tiny orange bottle, one of so many that lived beside his bed.
I’d quit tomorrow, I told myself. First thing.
“Okay,” I said. “I’m going to leave now.”
Jude didn’t say anything.
Every second ticked by with significance, another step in retreat that I didn’t take. I didn’t know what I was trying to do, or what it was all supposed to have meant—why did I care if Jude lived, if he died, if something strange was going on under this roof?
“Your doctor is here,” I said. “So if you need anything—”
Jude turned, angling stiffly over his shoulder. It was such an unexpected display of cognizance that I paused, cutting myself off.
Jude said, “Dr. Hodel is here?”
“Yeah, I saw him come in earlier.”
He didn’t seem happy about this.
“Look,” I said. “I’m sure things are difficult for you.
I get it, life is hard. But you still shouldn’t—” What on earth was I saying.
“Everyone needs help sometimes. If you want to talk to someone … like, a professional—I don’t know.
” I shifted uncomfortably, passively aware that I’d seen this man try to kill himself at least twice now, not counting the gray areas where death had been merely implied.
He hardly needed my platitudes about the depths of winter or whatever Shakespeare quote might eventually come to mind.
He didn’t move. As far as I could tell, he wasn’t listening.
Why should he? I scrubbed at the dirt on my jeans with the heel of my palm and shook my head. Death is easy, hija, my grandmother said in my head. Death is known.
Then Jude sat upright and looked at me.
It was back. The thing.
The look in his eyes.
I reeled backward a step.
“He’s trying to kill me,” the monster said.
He smiled courteously. Mockingly.
My eyes caught on the shape of his mouth.
“But he can’t,” the monster finished. Purringly, with satisfaction.
I could almost hear it saying other things. Good girl. This won’t hurt a bit.
“Oh.” The word left me like a puncture to a lung. I took another careful step back. Fortunately most of the room’s obstructions remained stacked on top of the table in the bathroom from my earlier failed roof-escape plan, so almost nothing stood in my way.
“You can run,” the monster said. “I won’t chase you. Not today.”
“You locked me in here,” I reminded him.
“I had something to do,” he finished lazily.
Something about the way he said it. Every moment in his proximity was a dance along the edge of what I could comfortably outlast.
“Do other people know about you?”
“There’s a lock on the door and a full-time secret doctor, genius. Do the math.”
My heart was racing again and yet somehow, I felt freer. Obviously I could now quit this job, which was not and had never been about caring for a person with a disability. There was no pretense about it, no room for doubt. This man was unstable and everyone knew it.
“Why is Jude trying to kill you?” I asked.
“Don’t you have your own devil?” countered the monster. I could almost see him reclining on a chaise, plucking out my eyeballs and eating them like grapes.
I’d already had a feeling that when it came to devils, Jude’s and mine were the same. But now that I knew, everything should have been simpler. Nothing tied me here. The villa had a demon, not me.
But this is a story about opportunity. About the doors that would open for me because I had crossed the threshold into this house.
“Run,” the monster advised.
I didn’t.
But you already know that.
“Can a person be possessed?” I asked Tita Linda.
At noon the next day she was outside on one of the motley collection of chairs beside Alistair’s doocot, drinking tea, which seemed unfathomable.
It was so hot I could barely believe I was alive.
Somewhere, someone was frying turon, a familiar waft of caramelization permeating the courtyard on the wind.
The heat radiated from every direction. It penetrated the marrow of my bones, honest to god, it was that infernal.
“Yes,” she said, apparently unbothered. “Many malevolent spirits in the world.”
She seemed so blasé about the prospect of demons that it once again—counterintuitively—eased my anxiety. “Tell Grandma I found the devil that’s following me around.”
“She can hear you,” said Tita Linda. “And no, you haven’t. It’s still there.”
I profoundly doubted that there were two separate, unrelated devils. But then again, I’d doubted the whole devil thing to begin with. I experienced this thought with discomfort, like being jabbed with a pin.
What was happening to me? I clearly wasn’t made for the graveyard shift. It adversely affected my cognitive process. What I needed were sleep and carbs, though I was unlikely to indulge much in either.
“Do you believe in demons?” I asked Tita Linda.
“Yes,” she said as if I hadn’t been listening. “And it doesn’t matter whether you believe in them. They’re not Santa Claus.”
“You know,” came the muffled voice of JR, who was cleaning Alistair with a Q-tip from where he was bent inside the doocot, “pigeons are associated with peace and love, much like doves.”
“Great,” I said. “So you’re cool if I carry Alistair around like a talisman?”
JR withdrew his torso with a frown. “I didn’t say protection,” he said. “I said peace and love.”
“Right, my bad.” I rolled my eyes. “Is the love thing just a euphemism for—”
“Breeding,” JR cut in before I could use Roro’s verbiage.
“Is the point … babies?” I asked. “Baby pigeons?”
“Yes,” said JR.
“Peace and love,” added Tita Linda, sipping her infernal tea.
From across the courtyard, a door slammed.
Prelude to fury, missile incoming. JR jumped, and though Tita Linda and I knew exactly who it was, we purposefully didn’t.
I had a feeling I’d learned that kind of stubborn resistance from the one-two punch of weaponized wisdom that was Grandma and her best friend.
It could have been about any number of things, of course. Tita Linda’s house of debris. JR’s existence, coupled with the health and safety hazard of his bird. But only one thing would force my mother outside in this heat.
“Anya Elizabeth. Do you think I’m some kind of hotel? That you can just come and go and drink all the coffee without ever bothering to contribute something to our lives?”
“I’ll buy more coffee,” I said without turning to face her, which I already understood to be a crime.
I was choosing the lighter offense (ignoring her) over the worse one (openly defying her, via my brazen American eye contact).
“Is this, perhaps, the devilry Grandma was talking about?” I murmured to Tita Linda under my breath.
Wisely, Tita Linda ignored me, declining to be complicit in my crimes of filial malevolence.
“I can get you coffee, Tita,” offered JR, shielding me from the worst of her rage by the mere fact of his existence.
Even as he sacrificed himself for me, I understood with my usual perfect clarity why Mom disliked him so much.
Saints could be really annoying, especially when it was a goodness you couldn’t achieve.
Easier to believe it wasn’t possible, and therefore not real.
“Stay out of this, Joel,” she snapped. Jo-el, for Joseph Raphael. On my good days, I was Anyabeth. Of course, I hadn’t had a good day since I dropped out of Chapman for my first TV role. “Anya, you look at me when I’m talking to you—”
“Do you want me to do your shift at the store?” I asked, turning to her with a sort of aggressive cheerfulness, because I knew I couldn’t accomplish anything else that was reasonably upbeat. “If you want me to contribute, I can. I told you, you just have to ask me.”
“I shouldn’t have to ask you. This is what family does. Family is there.”
“There?” I echoed. “Just … there? Lingering? Waiting?” By that logic she should love JR a lot more. “I have a life, Mom.”
“Yes, you’ve made that very clear. A life that has nothing to do with me.” Now she wasn’t looking at me.
“Mom, please.” I was obviously fond of Grandma and close to her until the end, but hers was a problematic school of Catholic guilt and feminine manipulation. My mom was a dedicated pupil, or could be from time to time. “You’re being dramatic.”
“Oh, I’m being dramatic? My daughter the actress thinks I’m being dramatic.
” She said this to the imaginary audience, though I was pretty certain the other tenants could hear.
Not that it mattered. Whoever was frying bananas wouldn’t care—I could hear one of those torrid Filipino soap operas playing in the background—and I could only assume the Upwardly Mobiles were drowning out the world with air conditioning and midday naps, as well they should.
“Why don’t I cover your shift,” I suggested, with—fine—an excessive note of tiredness, like I was suffering from the prospect of having this conversation, which I was. “Okay?”
I could stop and get my paycheck from Emmanuelle later, or maybe Teddy could get it for me.
“I’ll go with Anya,” JR piped up. My mom glared at him.
“You keep that rat where it is,” she spat. “I don’t want to see that thing in the store. We’re supposed to get a journalist from the L.A. Times coming soon.”
“Really?” I hadn’t heard about that. “Mom, that’s great,” I said.
But my mom looked at me like she was searching for the scorn. Like it existed, somewhere, and she would find it if she just looked hard enough—or maybe it was that if she didn’t look hard enough now, she might fall for the glittering falseness of my sincerity.