A FEW WEEKS LATER, Judah sends me an e-mail. He wants me to visit him in California. Screw the evergreens, he says. Come see the palm trees! But I’m not interested in the palm trees; I just need to get out of Seattle for a few days. Sometimes I feel like the ghost of Peter Fennet is following me around town.
I spend a lot of time wondering why this time is different—why, after I killed Lyndee and Vola, I never had nightmares. I wonder if it’s because I killed Peter Fennet before he had the chance to commit the crime.
I tell Judah I’ll come, and he buys me a ticket. On the third weekend of June, I board a plane to Los Angeles with my newly purchased duffel bag. I have never flown before and have to ask strangers what to do.
“Where is the B gate?”
“Do I wait in line now? Or will they call me by name when it’s time to board?”
“Can I put my bag anywhere, or is there a space assigned to me?”
The flight attendants are frustrated with me, and passengers look on with sympathy when I ask if there is a separate bathroom for women. It’s all a nightmare until I disembark and walk down to baggage claim where Judah is waiting for me. I run to hug him, dropping to my knees and throwing my arms around his neck.
“Hey Margo,” he whispers into my hair. “I missed you.”
“Take me to your home,” I say, standing up. And then, “How are we getting there?”
“Cab it,” he says. “My place isn’t far from here.”
He says, my place, but there is something in the tone of his voice that says it is not just his place.
Judah has a girlfriend. Her name is Erin, a horribly androgynous name with too many hippie dippie spellings: Aaron, Eryn, Errin, Erinn, Aryn. I hate her on sight—all slender, feminine five feet six inches of her. Though, as it turns out, she spells her name the regular old way: E-r-i-n. She is lithe and thin, the bones in her wrists so frail and dainty I could break them with one meaty squeeze of my hand. I envision myself doing it every time she touches Judah. She has tattoos and an eyebrow and tongue piercing, and wears clothes whose only purpose is to say: I am a free spirit. I eye her pitch-black hair, which she keeps in a charming messy knot on top of her head, and hate the white blondness of my own hair. Erin is a nurse, so she has that naturally caring thing going on. Very annoying. Her brother is blind, so I suppose she has a soft spot for handicapped men.
She pretends not to see his wheelchair. That’s what really bothers me; she acts like he’s just this regular guy, with regular guy legs. “Let’s take Margo to the farmer’s market today. Let’s go for a walk on the beach. Let’s ride the Ferris wheel.” To which Judah has to remind her that he doesn’t have the right wheels on his chair to ride the sand, and that the boardwalk near the Ferris wheel doesn’t have good wheelchair access, and that the farmer’s market is so crowded on Saturdays, that the last time they went they had to leave for lack of sidewalk space. She whispers to me that Judah can do anything we can do, but he just needs encouragement, and then winks conspiratorially. No, he can’t, I want to say. That’s why it sucks. I’m not saying treat the guy differently; just treat the situations differently. He has a goddamn handicap.
But Judah seems to like her new world optimism, brushing off her attempts to make him feel normal with a pat on her butt and a smile. They banter back and forth, and, if I weren’t so jealous, it would be one of those cute things you dream of having one day.
“I don’t need to do anything, guys, serious. I’m just here to see—to visit with you. You don’t have to entertain me.”
On my third day here, Erin decides to take us to dinner at the pier in her little Toyota that farts more than it drives and smells weirdly of crayons. Halfway to the restaurant, her brother calls.
“Yes, Joey,” she says. “Of course I can … Right now. Okay.”
She hangs up and tells us that his ride bailed, and she needs to take him to his therapy session. “If he doesn’t go to therapy, he gets super depressed,” she tells us.
“You should take him,” Judah offers. I suddenly brighten up in the back seat at the idea of getting rid of Erin for the night.
“I’ll drop you at the restaurant and pick you up after,” she says.
“No need,” Judah tells her. “Go be with Joey. We will take a cab home.” Erin kisses Judah on the lips, and drives away, leaving us outside The Organic Vixen.
“Wanna go somewhere else?” Judah asks.
“What? You don’t like hippies and organics and shit?”
“And shit,” says Judah. “Let’s get some pizza.”
I push his chair along the pier until we find one of those by-the-slice places. I carry our slices to the table on soft paper plates and slide into the bench opposite him.
“Sometimes,” he says, “I miss the Bone.”
“You do not,” I tell him, biting into my slice. The cheese burns the roof of my mouth, and I reach for my Coke.
“Come on, Margo. You don’t even miss it sometimes?”
I shake my head. “What is there to miss, Judah? The poverty? The litter? The dead eyes everyone walks around wearing?”
“It’s our home. There is something to that.”
“Bad things happened there. Things that changed me. I don’t see it that way.”
“Your mother?” he asks. “Nevaeh? What else?”
He’s pushing me. Is that why he brought me here?
I set down my pizza, wipe my fingertips on a napkin, trying to avoid his eyes.
“What are you asking me?”
He looks around to make sure no one is listening, then leans in.
“Lyndee,” he says. “Do you know what happened to her?”
“Someone killed her,” I say flatly. “It’s what she deserved.”
Judah draws back as if I’ve slapped him.
“What she deserved?”
“She killed Nevaeh,” I say matter-of-factly.
“How do you know that?”