Palm Springs Noir

Sunrise by Janet Fitch

South Palm Canyon

I like cactus. Cactus and old people, old places, things that survive. Quiet mornings. Water soaking into sandy soil before the heat. That’s what I was doing at Morston’s that morning — watering, raking, feeding the tortoises, watering the doves — white doves, like the ones magicians conjure out of thin air. A nice buzz on, just about perfect.

I was pretty much done, taking a drink from the hose, that coppery taste of summertime. Time go home, clean up, feed Mr. Frenchy, get ready for the day. The first customers were arriving.

What made me look up? The cigar. I hate cigars, they remind me of someone I’d like to forget. I staggered too close to a prickly pear, but I hardly felt it as it caught my arm. I recognized that tall trim form, long-legged in jeans, cowboy boots, shaking a match. Even with his bald head covered with a baseball cap and his eyes hidden behind aviator sunglasses, I knew him.

I watched him buy tickets, him and the girl, a pretty redhead in a hat and yellow sundress.

Look at him, laughing.

The LAPD said there was no such person as Jack West. The detective we hired came up empty. Sorry, kids, but you’re never going to see that money again.

His hand rested on the girl’s slim shoulder, a tall man’s ease, her arm around his waist. Christ, he was old enough to be her grandfather. We thought he’d taken off to Venezuela. Mathilde, Matilda... he take the money and run Venezuela. Or Bogotá, that’s where the wife was from, a former Miss Colombia, or so he said.

I found a bit of crumpled Kleenex in my pocket to dab at the blood seeping through my shirt as I watched them move through the ecosystems — all the varieties of cactus, some thirty feet high, others no bigger than your thumb. I could shove him into a patch of ocotillo, leave him crucified, like a bird I’d seen once, impaled on a thorn by the wind.

The girl screamed and batted at her flowered hat, knocking it to the ground. A hummingbird darted away, offended. Jack laughed, settling the fallen hat back on her head. So graceful, so easy. That gold watch, the only sign of his taste for fancy cars and expensive women, rented yachts, larceny.

We’d never seen that kind of flash, Gil and me. Box seats at the Bowl, house in Beverly Hills, boat at the marina, the white Rolls. By the time we knew what had hit us, he was gone. Along with everything we’d ever owned, ever made of ourselves, vanished. Like a magic act in which it was the magician, and not the doves, who appeared and then disappeared.

Had to suck it up. Our credit busted. Gil’s brother doling out a grand or two like he was the Sun King.

Then came the dark days. The shit condo in Reseda, Gil on the couch playing solitaire on a TV tray, watching detective shows... There are things in life you didn’t survive, and we didn’t survive our encounter with Jack West.

You’re young. Get on with your lives, the detective had said. Chalk it up to experience.

I sprayed water on things that didn’t need it, cholla and prickly pear, watched Jack and his date make the circuit and return to the tables of souvenir cactus and succulents. I coiled the hose and slipped out to my car across the street, an Audi from the eighties that’d once belonged to my mother.

Come on, you son of a bitch.

Here they came. Walked down to a silver-bullet Porsche. He folded himself in, leaving the girl to manage for herself. Clearly he was past trying to impress. I hoped they were staying locally; I didn’t have much gas. But I wasn’t going to let him get away. Not even if I had to follow him to LA or San Diego. It was a sign. The universe was giving me a second chance.

I tailed him down South Palm Canyon, past the Palm Canyon Mobil Club where I lived in my grandmother’s old trailer, as far as Coyote Hills Drive, where he turned and climbed. A white brick wall and a gate of frosted glass and black metal shuddering open for a quick glimpse at the house — a modernist platter with what looked like a 270-degree view over the valley. I kept going, found a place to turn around, and parked in the shade of someone’s olive tree.

Jack sure had improved his taste. The man I’d known favored mirrored tiles and round Hollywood beds. That bed... back then, that and Sarita’s lace stockings were the most elegant things I’d ever seen. What a kid I’d been.

Where the jutting roofline permitted, I could see the house’s patio, an angular blue pool, the concrete limited by glorious big boulders. That was my money. Mine and Gil’s, the money he’d stolen from us. A neighbor came onto his front patio and glared at me. Fuck you, sir. Unless he called the cops, I was staying right here.

But the gate was opening again.

I shadowed him back through town, to a sleek modern building with aqua-tinted windows. It housed a Coldwell Banker, a medi spa, and on the second floor — Thompson + Price Design/Build. Jack climbed out of that Porsche like he was Steve McQueen. He had to be fifty by now, maybe even older. I was thirty-six, but I felt sixty. Eight years since he’d killed me. I was a ghost, and he hadn’t aged a day.

Ten a.m. and my shirt was sweated through. My pierced arm throbbed. I ran the AC, listening to Rat Pack radio: Fly me to the moon — hey! I would wait. I was the soul of patience. I was a hawk waiting on a lamppost, a scorpion under a rock. I had nothing but time.

Meanwhile, Mauricio texted me. Echale un vistazo, jefe. It was our joke. Mauricio was my boss. I met him when I’d first landed here — bottomed out, tapped out, living in my grandmother’s trailer. Newly widowed, having a beer and a taco and a good cry. Back when I still cried. My Spanish was pretty good — my only good subject at Birmingham High — and he seemed sympathetic. I told him my sad story.

He too had a problem, he said. He ran a landscaping crew. Recently, the California governor had announced they were going to pay people to take out their lawns and put in plantas tolerantes a la sequía, cactus and natives. It was the future. He was a good gardener, not an idiot with a rake. But owners didn’t think Mexicans could do anything but wave a leaf blower. What he needed was una gringa bien hablada para conseguir nuevos clientes, ¿comprende? An ambitious guy. He wanted that business. I would be the boss, get the gig, then he’d take over. He’d give me 10 percent.

We came up with a name — Xterra Gardens. Gays y hipsters were the likeliest clients, new owners. This being Palm Springs, there was always somebody dying or moving away. I kept my white-lady wardrobe neatly together at one end of my closet — white jeans, canvas shoes, a clean straw hat. El jefe.

Mauricio’s lead was in Cathedral City, el profesor, could I drop by?

Mañana. Problemas personales.

Was Jack ever going to come out of there? Was I going to have to go in? At twelve thirty, he appeared with a young man, handsome, tanned, in a blue shirt and white linen pants, carrying a slim portfolio. Jack laughed at something and squeezed his shoulder. That gesture. I almost spewed. He did that exact thing with Gil. The approving father he’d never had. Jack smelled it on us, our need.

They headed into the Historic Tennis Club, valet parked at Spencer’s — that other Palm Springs of immaculate tennis courts, the members-only cabanas. The young man knew people, shook hands, introduced Jack. Suckers.

Spencer’s is casual but tony, with a kind of Polynesian air, a laid-back patio. I couldn’t go inside in my dirty khakis, but with my leather gardening gloves and big hat, a small rake, I could spy from the garden, where I had an excellent view.

An older woman joined them. Pale linen pantsuit, her hair a soft platinum. The opposite in every way from the redhead Jack had stashed on Coyote Hill. I watched him orchestrate. He let the young man talk, stepping in when the woman asked questions, soothing objections, making her laugh. The young one opened his portfolio, setting their wineglasses aside, their bread plates. The woman took out her reading glasses, leaned over. Diamond ring, platinum tank watch. I wanted to shout, Call your lawyer! but it was none of my business. I had some planning to do.

I threaded the Audi through the network of lanes comprising the Palm Canyon Mobil Club. Meticulous double-wides, even some new microhouses. The New Palm Springs. I liked it better when it was cheap and shitty and full of old people who hated children. Those crusty old broads. Some of them were still around, like Shirley Bliss, my grandmother Lottie’s best friend, two doors down and across the street. The difference in ages hadn’t been apparent to me back then — I had thought her ancient, but she must have only been in her fifties.

At home, I showered and let Mr. Frenchy out of his cage, put him on my shoulder, and grabbed my computer. My lanai wasn’t nearly as nice as Spencer’s, just a cover of funky green corrugated fiberglass protecting my cactus and succulents, an old aluminum glider. I turned on the fountain so Mr. Frenchy could splash. A little cockatiel, he didn’t take much upkeep. Birdseed and fresh water and he was good to go.

I turned on my laptop, typed in Thompson + Price.

Photos appeared. Futuristic condos, walls of glass, oval or circular swimming pools set into cement or wooden decks like the water tank in Petticoat Junction. Good landscaping. I was wondering who did it before I realized that these weren’t actual photographs. It was a projected development at the hem of the San Jacintos off South Palm Canyon, past where Jack had his house.

Sunrise. Not Sunrise Palms or Sunrise Dunes, just Sunrise. I hated that shit. The newest New Palm Springs, bland and generic as a suburban Gap. I preferred the hipster fakery of midcentury modern, built around fantasies of the Rat Pack and tuck-and-roll upholstery, tropical plantings with blue uplighting.

Thompson + Price. Principals Alan Thompson, Licensed Contractor, and Ben Price, Architect. So Jack was now Alan, but the same man grinned out at me, lanky and loose like Sam Shepard as Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff.

I typed in: statute of limitation, fraud. Added California.

Four years. Only murder could still be prosecuted at this late date. But wasn’t it murder? Hadn’t he killed us?

At last, the sun drooped over the ridge of the mountain, the temperature dropped five degrees, and it was cocktail time. I crossed the hot asphalt to Shirley Bliss’s battered single wide, rapped on her sliding glass door. “Yoo-hoo.”

She unlatched the slider. “Just in time.” She wore a little shift of white and gold Lurex. She’d once been a semifamous mobster’s girlfriend. The wig of the day was a long bloodred number — Brandy. She’d been breaking out ice for a margarita, pounding the tray on the sparkly Formica. Her ancient fingers neatly punched the handle out and back, the ice falling, such a nostalgic sound. She’d bartended at El Ranchero, still had a stiff pour.

“Salt the glasses, baby.”

I poured kosher salt onto a flat plate, water in another, wetted the rims, and dipped them while she shook the tequila, triple sec, and fresh lime in a cocktail shaker, overhand.

Out on the lanai with its green AstroTurf and the bird-bath I’d once made in a mosaic class, we sipped our drinks. She eyed me from behind her ombré frameless glasses. “You don’t look so good.”

“I didn’t realize it was a looking-good occasion.”

She was the only person I knew who was armed. When the nation learned that Nancy Reagan had a gun, Lottie and Shirley just shrugged. Of course she did. Who didn’t? Child me was appalled, like when I found Poppy’s revolver in his desk drawer. But that was his generation. Don’t tell your mother, he’d said.

“Still have Nancy’s little bedside gun?”

“Man problems?”

“A guy I used to know. Someone who once took something from me.”

She tasted the salt on her lips. Her drawn-on eyebrows lifted. She already knew the one. “Take my advice, honey. Just walk away. Walk away and keep walking.”

The smell of lighter fluid wafted over from a neighbor’s lot.

I couldn’t get him out of my head. The girl’s laughter, his arm on her shoulder. The car, the house, lunch at Spencer’s. He’d done well for himself. Out enjoying life while my husband was dead, and I was hanging out with old ladies and Mr. Frenchy. I’d waited eight years for this. “I can’t. He’s out there, breathing.”

She gazed up at the overhang, the hummingbird feeders.

“What would Moe say? Poppy?”

She sighed, her shoulders sagging. But she rose and click-clacked back inside, emerging a minute later with the gun — squarish, chrome, no bigger than a sandwich. “So,” she said in a half whisper, “I guess my gun got stolen.”

I stopped in to visit Pamela at Coldwell Banker. She had a couple of tips for me, one up in Old Las Palmas, the other in the Historic Tennis Club. She especially liked the one in the Tennis Club. “A young couple from LA.” Showed me the sales postcard. Where did people get money like that? Crime. Somewhere, there was crime.

I perched on the corner of her desk. “So what do you know about Sunrise?”

“A hundred town houses, high-end. Coyote Hill Drive. They’re still in permitting.”

“And Thompson + Price?” I indicated the ceiling.

“Yum-yum.” She crossed her tanned legs in her pencil-slim skirt, tapped her pen against her white teeth. “The architect’s your age. Rich kid. Cute. But I’ll take the developer. Mr. Personality. I think he’s from Phoenix.”

“Legit?”

She shrugged. “If it gets built, it’s legit. Rule of the veldt.”

Nobody was home at the Historic Tennis Club address. I left a card. Old Las Palmas was two gay guys with a schnauzer. They didn’t want cactus in case the dog hurt himself, but might be open to natives. I made some sketches. Drove out to el profesor in Cathedral City, thinking all the while about Jack West, and Sunrise. What was a deal like that worth? He had that architect, but I doubt he’d split the profits 50/50. How much would be in the kitty as they got ready to break ground? Millions. That was when he’d strike, and vanish. I had to get him before that.

I dialed Thompson + Price. Made an appointment with Ben Price. Could he come up to the house? Yes, it would make things so much simpler. Ilona Sonnenschein.

The Sonnenscheins were in Cannes, and I was watering their plants. We’d put in their garden, and Ilona had taken a liking to me. Probably a poor idea.

I met Ben Price at the Sonnenschein house in the Mesa. I wore my white-lady clothes — white denim jeans, aqua shirt, maybe buttoned a little lower than usual. Turquoise bracelets, and Shirley’s “Elke the Swedish Stewardess” wig, a plausible blond, roughly like Ilona’s. “Ilona Sonnenschein,” I gave him my hand. I’d even polished my nails. I could see his eyes widening. He hadn’t expected any sex appeal.

His eyes jumped to the view, clear across the valley. Then glanced at the house dismissively. Back to the view. I saw it through his eyes — fake Spanish with sixties touches. “I know it’s kind of a mishmash,” I apologized in my best white-lady voice.

He indicated the valley, unrolling like a carpet, bright in the morning air. “This view is what it’s all about, Mrs. ... Sonnenschein.”

“Call me Ilona. And I’ll call you Ben.” I rattled him for some reason. He kept staring, then forcing himself to look away.

I walked him to a secluded patio under the ramada, sat across from him at the glass-topped table. “Ben, I’m going to tell you something in strictest confidence. Is that all right?”

Now he was curious, leaning forward eagerly. “You can trust me.”

“It’s about your partner. Alan Thompson.”

He looked so disappointed. Wounded even. “What about him?”

“What kind of business arrangement do you have with Mr. Thompson? Are you incorporated?”

“I don’t see why that’s any of your concern, Mrs. Sonnenschein.” His handsome jaw tightening.

“Ah, but it is,” I said, folding my hands before me. “Let me explain. A friend of mine, her husband actually, used to be in business with this man. His name was Jack West back then. They had a partnership. A construction company. Your partner waited until the company was flush, right ahead of groundbreaking on a big project, then drained the accounts.”

He went pale. Yes, that’s right, Ben. Your partner’s a crook.

I moved into the seat next to his, put my hand on his arm. I wore a good perfume, Ilona’s Dior, it rose on the heat from my body. The wind shook the bamboo chimes. Water splashed in the small fountain. “They lost everything. The husband committed suicide.”

“It was you, wasn’t it?”

I ran my hand over my sweaty neck and his eyes followed. Those long-lashed eyes, the color of pool water, drank from my neck, my mouth.

“Who are you?” he asked, husky. “I happen to know Ilona Sonnenschein, and you aren’t her.”

“Does it matter? I’m a friend. I wanted to warn you.”

“Consider me warned.” He pressed his lips onto mine.

It’d been a long time since I’d really wanted a man. Maybe it was his desperation I found irresistible. I unlocked the house with the key hidden in the eaves, led him by the hand through the Californio-style living room, red tile floors and pony-skin rug, down the hall to the master bedroom with its low ceiling and heavy Mexican furniture.

We fucked like fat men gorging themselves at a casino buffet, stuffing ourselves with anything and everything. I kept the wig on, he seemed to dig it. He liked playing games. Good. He’d need that. He followed my lead.

We lay together for a while afterward under the big ceiling fan. I got us some ice water from the fridge — the ice was stale.

He drank, then he ran his cool hand up my hip, my flank. “I love this curve. Like a Gehry. Do you have a name?”

I leaned back on his sweaty chest, fleshy with muscle. “You don’t like Ilona?”

“I like her fine. I don’t want to fuck her, though. What’s it say on your driver’s license?”

“Miranda.” I licked the sweat from his shoulder. “Promise me you’re going to look into Alan Thompson, Ben. Call me when you figure it out.” I made him memorize the number of the cheap phone I’d bought just for the occasion.

Late that night, he sent a text while I was in the can. Need to see you. Tonight.

Did I want him coming here? I looked around my trailer. Ratty and unaesthetic, a seventies museum — the Swedish modern lamps, the avocado shag, the whitewashed Formica paneling, my grandparents’ club chairs. He would judge it. Mr. Tennis Club, the architect. But fuck it. I wanted to see him. Sure, come.

It took him all of five minutes. He must have done eighty. Down from Melvyn’s or wherever he drank. He smelled of Scotch and someone’s cigar. I answered the door looking like a rich boy’s wet dream of a trailer slut — my cherry-blossom kimono, loosely wrapped, my dark hair in a messy twist. Mr. Frenchy on my shoulder. I could see a wild despair in him, his tawny hair pulled into spikes — he wanted to grab me, but was afraid of the bird.

“Can you?” He indicated my shoulder.

“That’s Mr. Frenchy. He won’t hurt you.” But maybe he would. I put him back in his cage. “Was I right about Alan?”

He was too unnerved to speak. Instead, he untied my robe the rest of the way.

We fucked so hard, I thought we’d crack the wall.

Afterward, we had a nightcap on the lanai’s glider, shared a j, and he came clean. “He’s already moved a little — to a soils company, to a grader, to a geologist, all at the same address. The same account. He’s getting ready to vacuum it all out. I can’t believe it. I got everybody into Sunrise. My mother. My mother-in-law. My doctor. Friends at the Tennis Club. People in my fraternity.”

“Didn’t you have your lawyer look at the paperwork? Didn’t somebody?” We were idiots but I’d expected a rich boy like Ben to be lawyered up.

He groaned. “I trusted him.”

“We did too.” I stroked the side of his face, kissed his cheek, relit the j and handed it to him. “So, tell me about this mother-in-law.”

He started weeping. “I’m a shit. I’m a complete and total shit, and I’m about to have a full high colonic courtesy of Alan fucking Thompson.”

“You could tell them.”

He shook his head.

“Ever hear of an Indonesian monkey trap?” Holding the acrid smoke.

He lay down with his head in my lap, wiped his eyes on my kimono. Those beautiful muscled arms.

I stroked him as I spoke. “You take a hollow gourd and cut a hole just big enough for a monkey’s hand. Then put some rice in. The monkey comes along, sticks its hand in there, grabs a handful.” I could smell him, smoky and musky, scared and turned on. “But now his hand’s too big to get out of the trap. That’s how you catch a monkey.”

“Why doesn’t he let go?”

“He won’t. He can’t let go of it.”

“And that’s me? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Why don’t you tell your Tennis Club buddies that Thompson’s a wrong guy? That you fucked up. Maybe they can freeze their accounts, pull their cash.”

“I can’t. I need Sunrise to go ahead,” he said, rubbing his head against my thighs. “Not just the money. I need it.”

I understood. He needed it, to prove something. To be the big man. Beholden to no one. I leaned over him, my breasts hovering above his face. “What if something was to happen to Alan Thompson?” I whispered in his ear.

He gazed up, his pretty eyes studying me. “Like what, a car accident?” He still wasn’t getting it.

“I mean cancel his library card. Punch his ticket.”

He laughed before he saw the look on my face. The chuckle died. “You’re serious.” He shook his head. “No, I couldn’t do that. Not in a million years.”

“But I could,” I said. “It would be my pleasure.”

The next day was windy, the palms streaming. I didn’t have to check on Ben, he called me midmorning. He was on board.

“I can’t stand him. He’s chatting away in there with the door open, talking to some contractor. I’d like to drive a stake through his heart. Talking to me like we’re best buddies. What gall.” I could picture Jack — cheerful, hearty, talking on the phone, leaning back in his big leather chair, cowboy boots on the desk. “What do you want me to do?”

I told him to meet me at the IHOP on Dinah Shore Drive, a place where no one was likely to know us. At that hour, it would be mothers with little kids, retirees carefully counting their change.

The IHOP was ice rink cold, I imagined a Zamboni polishing the linoleum. I took a corner booth in the back, wearing the Elke wig and a modest shirt that nevertheless clung to every curve, sending a teasing mixed message of decorum and sex.

Ben looked like money in his pink shirt and his tan. Could he have been more conspicuous? He slipped into the booth next to me, lowered his Ray-Bans. “Come here often, Mabel?”

“I meet all my daddies here.” Every daddy around us was in a wheelchair.

The waitress came by with a menu, refilled my coffee. He ordered a club sandwich, mayo on the side. I got the Rooty Tooty pancakes.

His eyebrows jerked upward. He seemed actually shocked that a person would order pancakes at a pancake house.

“What do you want me to order, the chicken cordon bleu?”

We watched the waitress retreat, the bow of her apron. He lowered his voice. “You should have seen him. Swaggering around, on the phone with the fucking city planner. I’m ready, so help me god. Let’s get this over with.”

Over the rim of my cup, I studied him, wearing those stupid sunglasses. Sure, he’d like me to get rid of Jack for him. Keep his Ivy League hands clean. But this was what I’d lived for these last years. The only thing bringing air into my lungs, blood to my heart. “In three nights, you’re going out with him. Just the boys. You’ve got something to talk to him about, confessions, advice, father-son stuff. Leave your car and take his. Don’t park yours at the office, use a garage. He drives, that’s important. Take him somewhere they won’t know you. Not Melvyn’s or Spencer’s. A hotel. A bar at the airport. Not a casino, they’re loaded with cameras.”

Our meals came. I could see the wonder on his face as I tucked into the pancakes. “No carbs at your house? Poor Ben.”

He grabbed my hand. “Miranda, I can’t stand the way I’ve been living my life. Like a stupid kid. But when this is over, it’s going to be different. It’s going to be you and me and the whole wide world.”

“Easy, pardner.”

He let go of my hand. “You’re not getting away from me,” he whispered. “I used to think Alan’s girlfriend was hot. But you melt metal. I’d like to come over there and fuck you into next year.”

You’re not getting away from me. I’d have to think about that. Later.

He texted my burner every hour for the next three days. How it was torture to go to the office. How Alan invited him and Sherry up to his place for dinner, to talk to some people about a development in Laguna Canyon. I hate this.

Miss you.

He’s making his special burgers.

I hope he chokes.

I remembered them well. Worcestershire sauce, a bit of horseradish. Those barbeques we used to have. All that father-son sharing of esoteric grill lore. Reeling us in, putting us to sleep. Well, your son’s awake now, Jack. Sharpening the knives.

He called me, late, from home. Sherry must have been sleeping. I heard the water splash, the sexy rumble of his voice. “As soon as we break ground, I’m taking you to Tokyo. First class. You see Lost in Translation?”

I hadn’t been to a movie in years.

“In that wig, you remind me of Scarlett Johansson.” He loved his games.

“Anybody get killed in it?”

“Jesus, Miranda! Relax. We’ve got this.”

Nobody slept the night before. I went out to the arroyo and shot off some of the fresh ammo I’d bought at the Gun Barn out on Indian Canyon. The blasts were startlingly loud but nobody called the cops, nobody did shit. I imagined him kneeling in the dirt. Goodbye, Jack.

After work they went for some Mexican food, then to a jazz bar. Good. Dark.

How’s it going? I texted him.

Having a good old chat. Says he wanted to be a drummer when he was a kid. Hemet. Jack was from Hemet. A tough little town on the other side of the mountain. A local boy. I’m laughing with a dead man. Flying.

I’d told him to take one of Sherry’s Dexis, so he wouldn’t be totally shitfaced after a night out with Jack. I hoped he’d only taken one.

At last, it was eleven. I drove up to the site in the moonlight, descended into that beautiful bowl of rock and sage and cactus that held all of Ben’s dreams. I could see it as if it were already built. He’d brought me up here before — showed me where the pools would be, the firepits and tennis courts.

I didn’t need any speed to feel like I was flying. Every gesture seemed symbolic now, perfect, relentless. I took an old green army blanket and covered my car so it wouldn’t glow, found my hiding place behind some boulders on a rise, where the moon would be in his face. And then life would begin. The clock that had stopped would start again.

Okay, put a wrap on it, I texted him. Showtime.

I imagined them walking down to the car, no valet. Jack squeezing Ben on the shoulder. The drive down South Palm Canyon, past the mobile court which had been my final resting place. No more. I was going to rise, rise. Any minute they’d be turning up Coyote Hill Drive. I waited, crouching with the scorpions and the tarantulas and the snakes in the desert night. All of the hunters.

Here they came, headlights bursting over the crest. The Porsche jolted as it descended the roughly graded road. It came to a stop right where the big pool was going to be.

They got out, so clear in the moonlight. Cocky Jack with his cowboy boots. Ben yammering about something, waving his arms around. “Yes!” he shouted. “See? This is it. This is the Future Perfect.”

Jack lit a cigar, leaning up against the silver Porsche, offering his Steve McQueen grin. He held one out to Ben. Long and thin, a panatela. See, I remembered... A last smoke, a final farewell.

“I love this place,” Ben said, exhaling. “Maybe I’ll move in when it’s built.”

“Lot of projects ahead,” Jack said. “This ain’t the end.”

Oh, but it was, Jack. Silently, the sand slipping under my shoes, I came down from the rocks. My clothes were dark, my hair, neither of them saw me at first. Then Ben did. And Jack. The gun glinting in my hand. I would have worn the wig, but it would have stood out too soon, spoiled my surprise.

“Hi, Jack. Remember me?”

Ben tossed the cigar, moved away from his partner, skirted the nonexistent pool, giving me a clear shot, and came around to stand by me.

Jack took it in, me, Ben. He was figuring it out. No smile now. “Miranda Constantine,” he said. “Not somebody I’d be likely to forget.”

“Guess you didn’t go to Bogotá. Bet your wife wasn’t even Colombian.”

Even with a gun pointed at him, he managed a laugh. “She wasn’t even my wife.” He hooked his thumbs into his belt loops.

The moon turned everything to bone. “Did you know Gil hanged himself?”

He sucked on his cigar. A cloud of the stinking stuff rose into the moonlight above his head. “What do you want me to say, Miranda? Sorry your old man couldn’t take it.”

“Put your fucking hands on your head.”

He did it, his cigar clamped between his fingers.

“Kneel.”

He didn’t do it. “You were always tougher than him, angel,” he said. “Is this what you did for eight years? Look for me? Get all wet thinking about how you were going to fix me? Think about me every night before bed?”

“That’s right, Jack. I’m a good hater. I don’t let go of things.” The gun tugged at me. The gun wanted to have its say. But first, I’d have mine. I’d waited a long time for this.

“I know what you can’t let go of,” he said. But he looked awfully stupid saying it with his hands on his head.

“The million you stole? The kid I never had? Somebody’s gotta pay for all that. Someone who looks a lot like you.” I didn’t know the last time I’d felt so good. My sails unfurling in the moonlight.

“Did you tell Benjie here about us?”

“There was no us.” I could feel Ben next to me, alert as a hunting dog. “You sick son of a bitch.”

“See, Ben, Gil wasn’t much in the sack—”

“Shut up, Jack.”

“And the lady here was so lonely. Bored. Too much juice for a weakling like Gil. But we were a match, weren’t we, dar-lin’? We set that bed on fire.”

That round bed. Wearing Sarita’s black lace stockings. I’d never had a man like Jack before. A real match.

“You fucked him?” Ben whispered.

“And poor old Gil found out.” He snorted. That smirk.

I raised the barrel of the gun in both hands, closed one eye, lined up the sights. “And you didn’t feel anything. Not one moment of regret.”

“Can’t say that I did, darlin’. It’s what I do.”

“Let me ask you one question,” I said, pulling off the safety. “Answer correctly, I might let you live. Tell me, what’s it all for? You could have made that company work. You could actually build Sunrise. All this scamming and fucking people over, people who love you, who trust you. Just tell me why. Is it just money?”

Alan took one hand off his head to puff on the cigar. He grinned. “The money’s the sideshow, darlin’,” he said. “It’s the winning. Every time I take some simpleton like Ben here, or put one over on the city fathers, those Tennis Club assholes — I win. Even if I die, I win. That’s why you’re always going to be a loser, Miranda, even if you shoot me and leave me to the crows. You’re a great fuck, but you don’t have the brains to come in out of the rain. Eight years, and all you could do with your life was think about me.”

I must have been squeezing the trigger harder than I thought — the blast caught him in the chest. It shoved him backward into the Porsche. Ben shouted, “Jesus!” as the sound bounced off the rocks all around us. Dark blood gurgled out of Jack’s mouth, bubbled out and rolled down his chin, staining his shirt.

The second shot dropped him to his knees. He fell onto his side, clutching his chest, his boots dog-kicking in the sand.

I stood over him, watching his blood, black in the moonlight. “Who’s the loser now, darlin’?”

I’d shoot him again, but at this range I’d have blood all over me.

Ben just stood there, his hands over his mouth. Then he turned and staggered away, threw up all those expensive Scotches.

I pocketed Jack’s cell phone, pried his wallet out. Credit cards, driver’s license, receipts, library card — shit, Danika’d have to return his books — business cards, including one for a lawyer in Phoenix. A fat wad of cash. He’d always liked cash. I took a single bill from it — a twenty — wiped the leather on my shirttail, and put the wallet back into his hip pocket. “You done barfing?” I said to Ben.

I folded back the blanket covering my car, rolled it, stuck it in the trunk, took out a package of Clorox wipes and cleaned my hands, wiped the gun. I’d toss it and the phone into a storm drain on the way to Ben’s car.

“And we just... leave him there?” The smell of Scotch and barf clung to him.

“He had plenty of enemies. They’ll never prove who did it... You coming or you want to walk?”

He looked wild as he climbed in next to me. “But I was the last one seen with him.”

Yeah, things get real, Ben. “Just play it cool, and remember — Sunrise is going to get built. Someone settled a score with Alan, but Sunrise is going to happen.”

He was shaking but I knew I could count on him to keep quiet. If he told the cops he’d have to admit he was the one who lured the man out there. Accessory before the fact. But I didn’t like the way he kept saying, “I can’t believe you did it. How can you be so calm?”

I was more than calm. I was redeemed. I felt like I’d been driving up and down the block all these years, looking for a certain address, and someone had finally pointed to the house. My key had fit. I was home. I won, you son of a bitch.

I dumped the gun and the phone. Ben’s teeth were chattering. “You did great,” I said, talking him down. “You’re free of him.” He nodded, swallowing. “We’ll get through the week, and then you’re going to build Sunrise.”

In a few minutes we were pulling up to the parking garage. Nobody around. Palm Springs, despite its legend, rolls up the sidewalks at ten.

“Miranda.” He crushed me to him, burying his face in my hair. “Let me come home with you.”

“Not tonight. You’ve got to go home and act like you’ve been there the whole time. Get some sleep. Be ready to talk to cops tomorrow. I’ll call you in a few days.”

He was suddenly on fire. “Fuck me, Miranda. I need you.”

Why not? We crawled into the backseat and did it there like two teenagers.

By the third day, it was all over the news. Millionaire developer Alan Thompson found dead on the site of his latest development. Two bullet wounds. Motive unclear. A stunned-looking Ben in wrinkled linen and a borsalino. It was fine, he should look stunned. An innocent man, his partner gunned down.

I went to work as usual. The dog people in Old Las Palmas called. El profesor liked our layout. I presented the bid, broken down into labor and materials. But as I was driving back from Cathedral City, I got a call from Shirley. “Doll. It’s bad. Don’t come home. You got cops running all over the place. They’re interviewing the neighbors. Showed me a picture of that guy Thompson. Asked if I knew you. Me, I don’t know nobody — not my own mother.”

Ben had panicked. All he had to do was keep his mouth shut. Fucking Ben. What did Jack say? Trust nobody never. But that’s a hard life.

I met Shirley at the Ralph Lauren in the Cabazon outlet mall. Parked the Audi on the blank side of the mall. “They tore the hell out of your place,” Shirley said under her breath, going through the clothes on the sale rack.

“How’s Mr. Frenchy?”

She took out a silk blouse, turquoise, held it up to me. “This is nice.” Then under her breath: “Eleanor’s got him. But you better think of someone to go visit. Who do you know out of town?”

“How far out of town?”

“Mexico?”

Fucking Ben. Just when I thought I didn’t have anything else to lose, turns out I’d had a life. Her, the bird. My place. Gone. It was my hand in the rice trap, after all.

Luckily you didn’t need a passport to get into Mexico, only to come back. And what was the likelihood of that?

Shirley found an ATM and took out a sheaf of bills, slipped them into my hand. “Here. I owed it to Lottie but she never collected.”

I didn’t argue. I put them in my wallet and texted Mauricio.

Estoy en problemas. Muy serio.

Mi casa. Veinte minutos.

I left my Audi at the mall and threw my good cell phone out the window on the way, into the wastes before Highway 111. She took her time driving to Mauricio’s house, watching her mirrors, staying to sixty. She pulled up in front of his sweet suburban ranchito. I remembered when he lived in a shit RV in Desert Hot Springs. He’d done well for himself.

The vintage maroon Thunderbird drew admiring glances as we sat waiting. Her voice was huskier than ever. “Send me a postcard when you get where you’re going, doll.”

I hugged her, her brittle little bones.

I could still see Jack there in the desert, looking up from the dirt, laughing.

She waited with me until Mauricio’s truck turned into the drive, XTerra Gardens — Ecological, Beautiful, Sustainable. My cell number. He was going to have to change that.

I left at sunset, in a rattling ladderback truck driven by silent Juanito, the oldest of Mauricio’s crew. Sunset washed the valley in soft blues and rosy golds — the farther from the mountain we drove the more magnificent it became. The wind turbines let out their unearthly groans. Behind us, Palm Springs revealed itself only as a little cluster of lights at the foot of immense, solemn Mount San Jacinto, indigo against the oranges and purples.

Up ahead, night was coming. In the desert, night doesn’t fall, it rises. The moon, great and smooth-edged, appeared, eyeing the desert, casting its magic over mean little cities — Indio, Thermal, Mecca — bathing them in a light that would never burn.

I turned on the radio, tried to find something not ranchero. The Voice of the Desert came in, crisp. Frank. Come fly with me... Always Frank.

The Guest by Eric Beetner

Historic Tennis Club

“We have a situation.”

Randall had been renting out the pool house at his place in Palm Springs for about a year and had expected the occasional phone call like this. Grayson, his friend who watched the house while Randall worked in LA, kept the calls to a minimum so Randall knew something serious had happened. Just not plumbing. Please don’t let it be plumbing.

“Can it wait till the weekend?” Randall said. “I’m coming out Friday night.”

It was Wednesday, the worst day of the week. All the Monday haters could shut up — midweek was the worst.

“Um... no. I don’t think so.”

“What is it?”

“I’d rather not say over the phone.” Grayson sounded odd. Hollowed out and monotone, which was unlike his usual flamboyant self.

“Can you take care of it?”

“I kind of need you to come out here.”

“Tonight?” Randall asked.

“Please?”

He’d been only half paying attention until then, but Randall took his hand off the computer mouse and focused on the phone, the strange dull flatness to Grayson’s voice.

“Jesus, you’re scaring me. Did something happen?”

“Just please come out. Tonight. Right now.”

“Okay.” Randall looked around his desk, set designs that had a firm deadline before cameras rolled in three weeks. Still, if Grayson was this freaked out... “I’m leaving now.”

The house was a Mediterranean style in the Historic Tennis Club neighborhood of Palm Springs. Almost fifteen years ago in a market lull, he’d acquired it for cheap in the highly desirable district. He loved the neighborhood and counted the days until he could retire there full time instead of only weekends and breaks between work, of which there had been more and more lately, putting off a permanent move further into the future.

The house was modest and a dated wreck when he bought it, but Randall had a designer’s eye and no family or kids so all his extra money went into it. His neighbors were boutique hotels, homes on the historic registry and, to the west, the San Jacinto Mountains. And of course, the Tennis Club where he had yet to play in more than a decade and a half.

He’d repaired the crack in the pool and had it refilled, then remodeled and turned the pool shack into a livable six-hundred-square-foot guest space. Once the idea of Airbnb came around, it was a natural fit. He paid Grayson, his on-site caretaker, by giving him a free place to live.

In the year since the pool house became an Airbnb, this was the first time Grayson had summoned him to the desert midweek.

He crossed over Palm Canyon Drive and into the placid tree-lined streets with expensive landscaping trying to fool people and keep them from realizing they were in the desert. When he parked at the house, Grayson was there to meet him at the front door, chewing his nails. Grayson was nothing if not a vain man, always worried about his looks and whether men found him attractive, so biting his fingers was a bad sign.

“What in the world is going on?” Randall said.

“Follow me.”

Grayson led him through the house to the backyard. The palm trees were uplit and the pool cast a lazy movement of blue light over the yard and back of the house from the underwater lights. A shadow moved across the patterns of rippling water. Randall looked down into the pool.

A body floated facedown.

When he turned back to Grayson, there was a smear of blood across his lip where he’d chewed his nails until they bled.

Randall tried to keep his voice even and calm, despite the sheer panic going on inside him. “What happened?”

Grayson spoke in a voice that was half whine, half pleading for his life. “He was staying here. He was fun. And nice.”

Randall’s pulse quickened until it made his chest ache.

“We were having fun,” Grayson went on. “He liked me.”

“Grayson, what happened?”

“We were drinking and then we did some poppers...”

“Poppers? Jesus, what is this, the nineties?”

“I fell asleep. When I woke up... he was like this.”

Randall turned back to the pool and looked at the floating body. He was young, early twenties. His shirt floated open around him, like delicate wings catching a breeze. Beneath the fabric Randall could see he was slim and broad shouldered, like a swimmer. Someone who should never have drowned.

“It was an accident.” Randall said the words out loud like maybe he was trying to make them come true. “Yes, it was an accident. He must have had a heart attack, or passed out, or maybe hit his head or something.”

“Did you try to revive him?”

“It had already been hours when I woke up.”

Randall crouched down, sitting back on his heels and staring at the water. “What do we do?”

A single cricket chirped from the planter bed and the sound bore into Randall’s ears like a needle. For all the romanticism around a chorus of crickets at night, a solo insect could drive a person to insanity.

He pictured police. Publicity. Questions. Unwanted scandal and attention.

“We need to get rid of him,” Randall said, not knowing exactly what that even meant. All he knew was that he wasn’t about to deal with police and the investigation into his life this would bring. He’d be a pariah in the neighborhood. The people in this enclave took their status seriously. The Tennis Club neighborhood was where you wanted to be in Palm Springs. And they didn’t have bodies floating in their pools.

And his past wasn’t entirely clean. There’d been a boyfriend back east and it had ended badly. A restraining order against Randall. An order he broke on more than one occasion. There’d been violence, a thirty-day stay in jail. Court-ordered anger management. Randall wasn’t proud of it, but it was in his past — both miles and years away. And he intended to keep it there.

He didn’t like the police, knew what they thought about someone with a record.

He could avoid bringing up his past again, avoid threatening his relationship with his neighbors, his coworkers. If they moved fast, he could hide this.

“You fish him out,” Randall said. “I’ll go pack up his stuff.”

“What? Why me?” Grayson asked.

“Because he died on your watch.”

“It was a little bit of X and a few poppers and some alcohol.”

Randall aimed a finger at him as he walked around the pool, the blue light playing across his skin. “Exactly why I don’t want the cops coming here.”

Inside the pool house Randall found a single suitcase open on the floor. Some dirty socks and underwear next to it. A few T-shirts and shorts in one drawer of the chest. He packed up the toothbrush and comb and electric shaver from the bathroom. It was quick, easy work to rid the place of any evidence of the dead man’s stay.

On the nightstand was a cell phone. They couldn’t hide that he was there. With the way the room was rented out on Airbnb, there’d be a record. They had to show him leaving.

Everything went into the suitcase except for the cell phone. When Randall arrived back in the yard, cell phone in hand, Grayson had hooked the pool skimming net over the young man’s head and was trying to drag him to the side of the pool.

Grayson winced and squeezed his eyes shut. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.” He put down the suitcase and stuffed the cell phone in his pocket. He took the handle of the net from Grayson and towed the body in by its neck to the steps in the shallow end. “Help me,” he said.

Grayson didn’t move.

“Damnit, Grayson, get over here and help me get him out. I don’t like this any more than you do.”

Grayson looked like he was going to be sick, but he joined Randall. The cricket kept sawing away and the sound pushed the needle deeper into Randall’s spine.

They dragged the body out onto the pool deck where it seemed to deflate as the water seeped from his lungs. Now, on his back, Randall could see the young man had been hot — when he was alive.

“How many of my guests have you slept with?” he asked Grayson.

“Jesus, Randy. Not now.”

“How many?”

Grayson turned away from the body. “One or two, okay? Happy?”

Randall often wondered why he and Grayson had never hooked up. He always told himself it was because Grayson was too immature. This kind of behavior proved it. He wanted to kick him out, but they’d be forever bonded by this night.

He removed the phone from his pocket. “We have to open this.” He looked at Grayson. “What was his name?”

“Mickey.”

Randall felt a weird pang of guilt that he hadn’t thought to ask his name before, and now he regretted that he had. It gave the dead man an identity. But the body in front of him wasn’t a person. It was a problem to be hidden away. It wasn’t a human being, just some debris in his pool he needed to get rid of. It was the only way he could do it.

Randall woke up the phone and it asked for a password. No way he could ever guess it right in a million years. “Maybe it has that face recognition.” He pointed the phone at Mickey’s face. It forced Randall to look closely. The skin was blue-gray in the light from the pool. His lips parted slightly, and his tongue swollen and purple. His eyes were clouded over.

Not a person, just an object.

The phone didn’t react. Randall straightened. “Shit.” He tapped the home screen a few more times, uselessly. “Let’s try his fingerprints. Give me a hand.”

Grayson had stepped away and kept his back to the body. “What?”

“I cannot hold the phone and his hand at the same time. Just come over here.”

Grayson hugged himself and shrank away. “I can’t.”

Randall stalked the space between them and got in Grayson’s face. “You can and you will. Right fucking now. We need to fix this and do it quick, so get your ass over here and help me with his finger.”

Randall spun and marched back toward the body. Halfway there he turned toward the sound of the cricket in the planter, stomping his feet as he went. “Shut up, shut up, shut up!”

The cricket went quiet. When he turned, Grayson was standing next to the body.

Randall held the phone and Grayson shut his eyes and lifted Mickey’s hand while Randall guided the dead man’s index finger to the small button on the bottom of the phone. Nothing happened.

“He’s too bloated and pruned,” Grayson said. “It’s like he’s been in a bathtub for too long.”

“Try another finger.”

Grayson pressed each finger of his right hand to the phone and nothing happened.

“Try the other hand.”

Grayson shivered and leaned away. “I don’t want to touch him again.”

“You have to.”

Randall saw a thought flash over his face.

“Wait,” said Grayson. “He was left-handed. Yes. He used his left hand when he—” Grayson stopped himself and could have been blushing but it was hard for Randall to tell in the dim light. Grayson got the left index finger on the pad and the phone came to life.

Randall found the Airbnb app, opened it, and entered a five-star review for his own guest house. He left a comment: Great stay. Perfect location. Sad to leave, but I’ll be back!

Randall powered off the phone, wiped it free of his own fingerprints, then tossed it on top of the suitcase. He let out a deep sigh, feeling as close to safe as he had since he’d arrived. “Okay,” he said, “let’s go bury him.”

The San Jacinto Mountains loomed. The hills where the sun disappeared each night as it sank toward the other side of the world rose in front of them now like the entrance to a dark and foreboding stadium. At each step Randall thought, No going back now. But really there was. There always was. The steeper the road climbed into the hills, though, the more turning back seemed impossible.

The roads didn’t travel into the hills, rather they snaked around them. The dry, brown San Jacintos were too steep to be developed, not pretty enough for anyone to level the earth and make it habitable. Perfect for hiding a dead body. Not easy to get to, though.

Randall had fallen victim to a salesman when he bought his Range Rover. He hadn’t needed an all-terrain vehicle. He now silently praised that pushy guy in his ill-fitting suit.

With each switchback turn they made, Mickey’s body slid from one side of the back to the other, clunking against the side walls. The confines of the car felt tight around them and Randall could see each sound making Grayson wince as if he’d been touched by a lit match. Around another turn and Randall couldn’t take it anymore. He steered them off-road and wound away from prying eyes into a suitably remote area.

They couldn’t have gotten more than a hundred feet from the road. They weren’t even a third of the way up the hills. It seemed like a terrible place to hide anything, and yet in the darkness he felt as if they could be a thousand miles from civilization.

Randall had been surprised by how malleable and rubbery the body had been as they tried to lift it into the back hatch. Grayson had moaned and made little squeaks at every turn.

“Okay, let’s go quick,” Randall said.

This was really it. No going back. Last chance. As he lifted the shovel from behind the body, Randall knew this was either the best or worst decision of his life. The one that would save him from humiliation and scorn or would make him an accomplice to a very serious crime.

He was exactly that, though, whether he got caught or not. But it was always better not to get caught.

“Do we need to dig a hole?” Grayson asked. “Can’t we just dump him and get going?” He bit at his already bloody fingers.

“We don’t want anyone to find him.”

“Yeah, but if they did, they can’t link him to us. You did the thing with the phone and we cleaned up.”

“How do you explain a guy in the woods who drowned?”

Grayson’s anxiety turned angry. “Just come on, let’s get it done.”

They took turns digging. After twenty minutes and sore palms, they had the shallowest of shallow graves.

“That’s good enough,” Grayson said.

“No, it isn’t.”

“Randy, come on. I can’t do this anymore.”

Randall knew Grayson wanted to get home, get drunk, maybe high, and forget this ever happened. He wasn’t fool enough to think Grayson had fallen for the houseguest. Not in the two days he’d been there. It was sexual, and that’s all. Grayson was the hookup king of the desert. How the guy stayed disease-free was beyond him.

Randall dragged the body, still soggy and flexible to the point that it seemed like the bones had vanished, and rolled it into the hole. It would just be deep enough to cover him and probably leave a small mound. Good enough. Randall wanted this to be done too. He needed his own drink, or three.

He let Grayson weep quietly against the hood of the car while he covered the body in loose, sandy soil.

They drove down the mountain without speaking. Grayson broke the silence with a single sob that made Randall turn to him. Grayson’s head leaned against the cool glass of the window but his eyes were shut tight to the lights of Palm Springs at night as they returned to the neighborhood.

It was too late for Randall to drive back to LA, plus he was exhausted beyond anything he could remember. He and Grayson said good night, then retreated to their bedrooms. For Randall, sleep was as hard to hold onto as water from the pool.

Back in LA, a week of fitful sleep went by. Randall called Grayson to find out if anyone had been around asking about Mickey. Each time he called he could tell Grayson was drunk, or otherwise impaired. He felt a little jealous. He could have done with a week of being numb himself but work beckoned.

He went to the desert the following weekend. He and Grayson barely spoke. The pool house loomed in the backyard like a monument to their crime. Randall couldn’t look at the pool.

“Did the guy come and clean it?” he asked.

“Not until next week,” Grayson said. The smell of weed followed him around like a cologne.

“Call him. Have him come tomorrow or Monday.”

Randall saw the floating body whenever he glanced at the water. He understood how the myth of ghosts came to be. He couldn’t stop seeing the dead man whenever he closed his eyes and if that wasn’t a haunting, he didn’t know what was.

He retreated back to LA Monday morning and considered selling the Palm Springs house.

The cleaning crew had been out, and Randall gave them an extra hundred to do a deep clean. Randall contemplated draining the pool or restricting access, but he knew it was one of the house’s biggest selling points.

Another week went by and with each passing day Randall felt more confident that they’d gotten away with hiding Mickey’s death. He’d never escape his own conscience, but avoiding the police was a cold comfort at least.

The following weekend they had another guest in the pool house who arrived on Friday evening. Randall felt nervous to have anyone stay there, but life went on. For some.

The new guest was a man, arriving alone. Randall, over the phone, reminded Grayson to keep it in his pants.

“How could you even say that?” Grayson responded.

“I wish I didn’t have to.”

Randall arrived late Friday night and found Grayson and the new guest arguing in the doorway to the pool house. Grayson was obviously high.

“I just don’t know why it’s such a big deal?” the guest was saying.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Grayson whined, his voice loud and slurry.

Randall dropped his bag and edged around the pool toward the two men. Fear gripped his chest and he tried to remember the symptoms of a heart attack.

“Hey, hey. What’s going on?”

The guest turned to him. “Are you the owner?”

“Is there a problem with the room?”

“My name is Karl Donlevy and my son stayed here two weeks ago. No one has seen him since and I just want to find out what happened to my boy. This man isn’t answering any of my questions.”

Randall felt the blood rush from his head. His vision went dark at the edges, but he fought to keep it together.

“Your son?”

“My son, yes. Mickey.”

Randall did his best to compose himself, to seem natural when his guts were tangled in knots of fear. He reached for a lie, felt beads of sweat on his upper lip. He turned to Grayson. “Did a Mickey Donlevy stay here?”

Grayson began to weep. No help at all.

“Grayson, why don’t you go inside. I’ll help Mr. Donlevy.”

Karl stepped out of the doorway. “No, no, no. I want him to stay. I think he knows something.”

Grayson turned to Randall, tears in his bloodshot eyes.

“What do I say?”

Randall put a hand on his shoulder and showed all the terror on his face to Grayson to try to make him understand he needed to shut up. With a deep, composing breath he turned to Karl. “I’m so sorry. He drinks. Sometimes too much.” He’s going to fuck this up, Randall thought.

Karl drilled into Randall with eyes hard as stones. “My son was here. You were the last ones to see him. Tell me what happened. Where did he go? What did he say?”

“Look,” Randall said, then had to swallow before any more words would come out. A lie would never fit through the tight constriction of his throat. “He was here. I remember the reservation. Grayson said he stayed the two days and then left. I never even saw him. I don’t know where he went after here, or who he might have gone to see. All I know is he checked out, left us a good rating, and that was that.”

He gasped for breath as if he’d just swam ten laps in the pool. He tried for a casual smile as if this was all a misunderstanding. He studied Karl’s eyes to see if the lie had worked but he could read nothing.

The man turned away from Randall and back toward Grayson. He stepped forward and put a hand on Grayson’s arm and spun him. “You were with him. What are you not telling me?”

“Nothing!” Grayson said.

Randall tried to wedge himself between the new guest and Grayson. “Sir, please.”

Karl wouldn’t let go. “All I want is an answer.”

“I told you,” Randall said. “He drinks.”

“This isn’t just alcohol. He knows something.”

Grayson ripped his arm away. “Let me go.”

“You’ve got to tell me.”

“What do you want from me?”

Randall could see the situation getting out of control. He felt the same stomach-knotting sensation from two weeks before. He tried to move between the two men again, but Grayson was out of his mind and Karl was too consumed with grief and wanting answers.

“I want you to tell me the truth!” Karl screamed.

Grayson straightened and looked at Randall. “I have to tell him.”

A panicked No pushed against Randall’s lips, but he held it in. He pleaded with Grayson through his eyes.

“Tell me what?” Karl said.

Grayson’s bloodshot eyes turned away from Randall. He looked down, his head hanging into his chest.

“Your boy isn’t coming back.”

The two men squared off. Randall hovered nearby, feeling the static charge in the air. Karl’s skin reddened and a vein began throbbing in his temple.

Randall tried his best calming voice. “Okay, listen, if we can just—”

“What’s he saying?”

“Nothing. I told you, he’s drunk. Now if you—”

“What did you do to my boy?”

Grayson began weeping again. “It wasn’t my fault.”

Karl launched himself at Grayson, tackling him down to the pool deck. He straddled the weeping caretaker and smashed his head against the pool coping. Randall reared back from the sound of bone hitting concrete.

“What did you do to my son?” Karl spit out the words on a string of saliva that dripped from his mouth. His face flared sunburn red and the tendons on his neck were taut like guitar strings. He pounded Grayson’s head against the edge of the pool again.

Randall saw blood drip into the clear water and dissipate into a deep purple cloud. He stepped forward, then halted when he heard new sounds of anguish and rage coming from deep in Karl’s throat.

“Stop.” Randall knew his words meant nothing to the grieving father.

“He was here. What did you do?”

Again, Grayson’s skull cracked against the hard surface.

Randall stood rooted in place, unsure of what to do with the wild animal in front of him. He didn’t want to risk having Karl turn his vicious anger on him and had no idea how to stop him.

Karl stood up, huffing out breath like a bull in the ring. He spun and retreated into the pool house. Randall went to Grayson and turned him over. His forehead had a deep dent in it and his eyes were open and glazed over. Blood leaked from his mouth and from behind his left eye.

Karl came back out to the yard. Randall looked up and saw the gun in Karl’s hand.

“You tell me what happened to my son, you bastard.”

For the second time, Randall found himself on Route 74 on his way into the San Jacinto Mountains. Finding the shovel had been easier this time since it was no longer buried under other unused junk in the garage. He wasn’t so sure he could find where they’d buried Mickey, though. The gun pointing at him from Karl’s hand in the passenger seat gave him sufficient motivation to try. One thing he was definitely not sure of was whether he would return to his beloved Tennis Club neighborhood alive.

The smell of fresh blood leaking from Grayson’s skull filled the car. Randall had had the Rover detailed when he got back to LA. Now Grayson knocked around the same dark space spreading blood that would be much harder to remove.

Karl hadn’t said anything since they got in the car. His mouth hung open as he breathed, and his eyes were far away. Randall didn’t trust the gun in his hand with that lost look on his face. His son was dead, and two strangers had covered it up. Where was a father to go from there?

Randall cursed his foolish decision not to go to the police. A few weeks’ embarrassment, a few awkward interactions with the neighbors, what would it have hurt? Now he was at risk of either being turned over to the cops looking guilty of nothing less than murder or being killed by a distraught and angry father.

Randall could hardly even blame the man.

“It’s been... hard,” said Karl.

Randall turned and Karl kept his eyes staring into the blank distance out the windshield.

He spoke, but not really to anyone. “Mickey had issues with drugs. A suicide attempt.” He cleared his throat, the words seeming to get stuck there. “Two, actually. I always knew... I figured, anyway, that I’d find him like this. Dead somewhere. All I... all I wanted was for him not to be alone at the end. To tell him that I love him.”

Karl fell silent again, his eyes never wavering from the dark road ahead.

“I think this is it,” Randall said.

Karl looked at the bleak landscape lit by the headlights. Randall knew he was thinking how his son didn’t deserve this as a final resting place. Nobody did.

He turned the Rover off the road and found the grooves his tires had left before. Around the bend and away from view of the road, he stopped. They sat in the car for a long time, the headlights illuminating a tunnel in the darkness and at the end of the tunnel — a small mound of earth.

“This is where my boy is?” Karl said.

Randall nodded.

“Get out.”

At gunpoint Randall walked to the mound that hid Mickey’s body. He held the shovel in one hand and stared at the ground, expecting a bullet in the back at any moment.

“He’s in there?” Karl asked.

Again, Randall nodded.

“Dig.”

It didn’t take long. The shallowness of the grave was like an insult. He uncovered an arm first and Karl let out a pained wail and turned away.

“Get him out. You get him out of that fucking dirt. I’m taking him home.”

Mickey’s flesh had gone from gray to dark. The stench was overpowering, and Randall had to stop several times to retch. Karl stood back with the gun in hand and watched.

Randall opened the back to the Rover and dragged Grayson out into the dirt to make room for Mickey. He had no choice but to bear-hug the corpse and lift it into the back.

The smell would never be out of his nose. The feeling would never leave his skin. The guilt had a physical sensation, a rank stench of death. He would never leave this moment, even if he somehow managed to live beyond the next few minutes.

“Am I supposed to put him in there?” Randall asked Karl, looking down at Grayson’s body as he gestured toward the shallow grave.

“You do what you want.”

Karl had wandered to the back of the Rover and stood looking at his son. Randall had placed him awkwardly in the back, a tangle of limbs and dirt-crusted skin.

Randall dragged Grayson by the ankles to the hole and pushed him in. He took up the shovel and threw a clump of dirt over the body. He glanced over his shoulder to where Karl stood in darkness, entranced by the sight of his boy coiled lifeless in the back of the car.

Taking the shovel in hand, Randall crept away from the hole. A light wind around them filled the air with a low static hum. Now and then a bird called out. They were close enough to the road that when a car did happen by, which wasn’t often, they would hear it as a rush of air rising and falling in pitch.

As he grew closer, a look of resolve crossed Karl’s stoic face. He was looking at the inevitable. A moment he had expected, though maybe not in this way. His son, lost to him. It would have happened one way or the other.

Randall saw his worst decision laid out before him. He’d further tortured a man who had suffered already with a son struggling with addiction. And Randall had thought only of himself when he’d chosen to hide the boy’s death from the world.

It hadn’t made the problem go away. It still led Karl to his door. But after Karl, who else would there be? The one man looking for Mickey was here. The one link to the houseguest.

Randall gripped the shovel. He could still make it all go away.

He’d already done the worst, hadn’t he? He’d made his choice for self-preservation.

He lifted the shovel and swung.

He crossed back over Belardo and into his neighborhood. He stood under a stinging-hot shower for a half hour. He rinsed the shovel off with a hose and stored it in the back of the garage behind several boxes of old books.

Randall poured himself a bourbon, no ice. His skin itched with the touch of three dead bodies. His head filled with the smell of fresh blood and two-week-old rotting flesh. His ears replayed the crack of bone as the shovel blade connected with Karl’s skull.

A single cricket needled his song into Randall’s brain.

It would be with him forever, the guilt. The memory. Stench, sound, touch of cold flesh.

He woke to the sound of the phone. The sun was up, but he didn’t know if it was morning light or afternoon sun. He answered. An inquiry: was the pool house available?

“No,” Randall said, his voice weathered and foreign-sounding to himself. “I’m no longer accepting guests.”

A Cold Girl by Kelly Shire

Cathedral City

At seventeen, Jessie knew a few things. Like if you knew a guy and pictured a sweaty scene of the two of you tangled in the dark, chances were good that he’d already beat you to it. He probably imagined his own version, and in X-rated detail, back when you were stalled out on how good his forearms looked in his white dress shirt with the rolled-up sleeves. Nick, for example: though he was her cousin Mia’s boyfriend, she caught him looking at her since she arrived two weeks ago. And she thought about him, plenty. It was hard not to, with them all living under the same roof in Mia’s tiny apartment. She tried not to stare when he came out of the shower after work, a towel wrapped around his waist to walk from the bathroom to the bedroom he shared with Mia.

So, she didn’t feel guilty lying in her sofa bed at night and conjuring up scenarios with Nick, scenes of kissing and rubbing against each other, her hands braced on his golden arms. In her visions, the room was always dark except for a row of white candles in the background, and she was dressed in something filmy and flowing, something that made her look like Stevie Nicks as she wafted into the room. And it was always late, very late at night.

Compared to Palm Springs, the town that was its immediate neighbor to the west, Cathedral City was a poor relation, an awkward middle child, the last kid picked for the team. This was also how Jessie had always felt whenever she stood beside, or thought about, her older cousin, Mia. Mia and her family lived in Cathedral City, but to Jessie, her cousin had always seemed like Palm Springs: more popular, prettier, and desirable.

Jessie wasn’t exactly poor, but she’d grown up in a small bungalow up in Santa Clara. Though her parents’ house in the pricey Bay Area was worth more money, Jessie didn’t understand that. All she knew was that Mia’s parents, her aunt and uncle, owned a sprawling Spanish-style house in the south end of Cathedral City, up in the hills in a neighborhood called the Cove. Jessie had grown up having to swim in her town’s public community pool; Mia had grown up with her own shimmery turquoise pool (with a hot tub!) right outside her patio door.

Jessie was staying with her cousin for six summer weeks in Mia’s cramped apartment in Cat City (as she called it). The first time she’d walked in the front door, Jessie had been shocked at the size and overall run-down state of the place. Mia’s dingy apartment sat a few blocks north of Dinah Shore Drive, one of those long desert streets named for celebrities nobody younger than a hundred could remember. It had only one bedroom, and thin kitchen cabinets painted white that felt sticky to the touch. The floor tiles were white too, but looked gray, and a lot of them were chipped or cracked.

For the first time in her life, Jessie felt like she might be richer, and maybe even smarter, than her beautiful cousin.

Jessie’s mom, Rose, a divorcée immersed in the first stages of a new affair, had arranged the trip to get her out of the house. Jessie lobbied hard against it, but in the end, Rose had prevailed. “Between the pool and all those tourist spots, you won’t even have time to miss your friends,” she swore.

Jessie wondered now exactly what tourist spots her mom was talking about. Everything her mom had ticked off on her fingers was actually located in Palm Springs: the huge water park, the tram that ferried visitors up to the top of the San Jacinto Mountain, even the cool vintage Camelot theater that showed indies and midnight movies. Cathedral City had a franchise miniature golf and arcade park, and a fancy movie theater, but what town didn’t have that stuff? There was literally nothing to do every scorching summer day. Mia’s apartment complex did have a pool, but it was an unshaded, basic rectangle that was usually crowded in the late afternoons with rowdy Mexican kids — real Mexicans, not a watered-down half-Latino mix like herself and Mia.

Both only children, they were the closest things either had to a sibling, though separated by five years and raised in different halves of the state. With her glossy dark hair and striking light eyes against her olive skin, Mia had been popular with boys from the sixth grade onward. Jessie couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t compared every aspect of her looks against her cousin’s — a hopeless game, since they looked nothing alike. Jessie had white skin that resisted tans, brown eyes, and a cloudy mop of hair. She was curvier than Mia, though. Her chest formed a buoyant shelf beneath the T-shirts she’d learned to wear a size too small, and the rounded curve of her hips filled out her jeans in a way that made men on the street lift their eyebrows and turn to watch her pass.

What Rose hadn’t counted on in her plans for Jessie’s summer was Nick. Walking into baggage claim at the Palm Springs airport toward waiting families, Jessie spotted her cousin, standing beside a lean guy with a trim beard and shaggy dark hair. She ducked behind a businessman and swiped on a fresh coat of lip gloss. Mia hugged her, then introduced Nick as her live-in boyfriend.

Jessie thrust out her hand to Nick. “Hey, I’m Jessica. Nice to meet you.”

“Nick Vitale,” he said. Jessie watched the ropy muscles in his arm flex as he gripped her hand. “Mia’s told me a lot about you. Nice shirt,” he added.

Jessie plucked at the front of her black T-shirt, emblazoned with a picture of Jim Morrison. She’d cut out the standard neckline and turned it into a deep V-neck. “The Doors are my latest obsession,” she said. “Three months ago, it was Neil Young.”

“You should’ve been out here a few years ago, when he played Coachella.”

“Don’t you mean OldChella?” Jessie teased.

“Ouch,” Nick said, pretending to flinch.

Mia hooked her arm around Jessie’s shoulders in affection and looked at Nick. “See, I told you she’d be cool,” she said, cocking a perfectly plucked eyebrow.

Jessie smiled at Nick, and then, wider, at her cousin. “I’m totally cool,” she nodded. The three of them laughed together.

It began like background music, a song playing in a restaurant or grocery store that you’re not even aware of, until you really listen and it’s one of your favorite songs, and your attention is pulled away from the chitchat at the table, with the checkout clerk, your focus snake-charmed into this one faint melody, these words you cannot help but mouth and even sing aloud. So it was with Nick. Jessie was first aware of her stomach, the way it tightened and churned before Nick was due to return from work, the way she caught herself freshening her lipstick in the bathroom mirror, for what? At first, it seemed Nick thought of her only as Mia did, just a punk kid, until his winks and glances behind her cousin’s back began to accumulate, and soon enough she couldn’t stop thinking about him. And somehow, Nick seemed aware of her new realization; his winks and looks accelerated until the air bristled when they passed each other in the short hallway and cramped U-shaped kitchen.

How did he know? Jessie decided that Nick must’ve heard it too, the hum, the background music that tugged at her attention; heard the way his name reverberated deep in her chest like a thick bass groove; saw how she bit her lower lip not only in witless seduction, but to keep from mouthing his name and singing it aloud.

Nick was one of two bar managers at the strip club over on Perez Road; strip clubs, at least, were something you couldn’t find in Palm Springs. It was one of the only topless clubs in the entire Coachella Valley, so Nick was gone a lot; his work shifts meant that sometimes he was home by early evening, and sometimes he didn’t come home until after two a.m. Sleeping on the pull-out couch, Jessie tried to always be awake when he came in, but most nights he crept in after she’d dozed off and she never heard a thing.

Jessie couldn’t figure out exactly what Mia did for a living — but did it matter? Her cousin was barely twenty-two, and even if it was shabby, she already rented her own place, lived alone with Nick, and drove a sweet (if slightly dented) baby Benz. She claimed she was studying to be a graphic artist and had helped design some of the event posters for the strip club.

“I’ve been taking computer classes over at COD,” Mia told Jessie, meaning the local campus of College of the Desert, a community college. All Jessie knew was that Mia spent a lot of time puttering on her Mac laptop, sometimes drawing animations and logos, but more often shopping online.

Despite Jessie’s visions of deep midnight and flowing lingerie, on the night she bumped into Nick in the dark hallway outside the bathroom it was barely after eleven and she was wearing only a musty old Mott the Hoople T-shirt over her frayed cotton underwear. As she turned off the light, stepped out of the door, and bumped into Nick, two weeks of daydreams clouded her vision as much as the sudden black. She stumbled and Nick caught her arm.

“Oh!” said Jessie.

“Whoa there, steady,” he said. “What are you doing up?”

“Um, I had to pee?” she answered, and her cheeks burned under the cover of darkness.

“Me too,” said Nick, and they laughed in relief. Her eyes were adjusting, and she could make out his features and the white flash of his teeth.

“Well...” she began.

“Yeah.”

“I’ll see you in the morning, then.” She stepped aside to return to the living room and her sofa bed, but Nick moved with her and blocked her path.

“Listen, Jessie, I’ve been thinking about you,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“Mm-hmm.” He edged closer, and she sensed the full weight of his body. In an instant the shadow of possibility had become flesh. A worthy reply stalled in her throat.

“I’ve thought about you a lot too, Nick.”

“Is that right? C’mere.” He took her elbow and drew her closer, back toward the bathroom door. He looked to be thinking hard and stroked his beard with his thumb and forefinger. Jessie wanted to put those fingers in her mouth. He reached behind her, pressing against the front of her shirt to flip the light switch back on. They blinked at each other in the yellow light.

Nick sighed. “What I’ve been thinking, see, is that I may need to kiss you.” And then the electric burr of his mustache was pricking her upper lip and there was only the soft suck of his mouth on hers and the sly tip of tongue that flicked and retreated too quickly. He pressed harder, pushing her spine into the doorframe.

She shut her eyes and tried to remember to breathe as Nick’s hand crept down the back of her shirt, then under the fabric, his calloused hand warm against her skin. A thick finger wormed under the elastic of her underwear and she pulled her mouth away.

“Hey,” she gasped.

“Sorry. I couldn’t help myself.” He ducked his head to smile into her eyes.

They were whispering. They breathed quietly, the house still except for the constant hum of the air conditioner.

“But Mia...”

Nick put a finger to her lips. “Don’t worry. Believe me, she sleeps like a rock.”

“Okay — but she’s your girlfriend, after all.”

“Yep, and you’re her kissin’ cousin. After all.” He grinned. “So, who’s really the bad guy now? You want me to kiss you some more or what?”

She closed her eyes and leaned in toward him.

The rest happened in a blur: they were on the floor, on the thin blue patterned rug in between the sofa bed and TV stand. Nick was everywhere, on her, in her, and then out again almost as quickly, hitching up his athletic shorts and running a hand through his hair.

“See you tomorrow, kid,” he whispered, then walked to the room at the end of the hallway and the bed he shared with Mia, humming a tune that Jessie couldn’t quite place.

The morning after that first time, Jessie overslept. When she opened her eyes sunshine filled the apartment, bouncing off the shiny surfaces of the cheap lacquered furniture. She listened to Mia running water in the kitchen and the grass-blower roar of the community gardeners. The night before felt like yet another daydream. She kicked off the sheets and stared up at the popcorn ceiling.

She sat up, pushed the hair from her eyes. “Where you going?” she asked when Mia walked into the room, nodding at the open map on Mia’s computer screen.

“A tattoo shop Nick’s mentioned, over on Ramon. His buddy works there.”

“You’re getting a tattoo?”

“How do you know I don’t already have some?” Mia smirked. “But no, this is for Nick; it’s his birthday surprise. He wants me to draw the Led Zeppelin logo so his friend can put it on his shoulder.”

“Zeppelin, huh?”

“He really likes that old stuff.”

“So do I,” Jessie said, lifting the front of her concert shirt.

“Well, I guess you two have something in common, don’t you, chica? But listen — Nick and I were talking this morning, and... ugh, this is embarrassing...” Mia grimaced and rolled her eyes.

“Wha—?” Jessie felt her heart thump hard in her chest.

“It’s just — well, we’re running a little short this month. I mean, we’ve been buying all of your food and stuff and — look, I noticed you have a debit card. So, you have your own bank account?”

Relief washed through Jessie. Money? It was only money? “Yeah, my mom’s got access to my account, but it’s mostly my dad, depositing his divorce-guilt money. I can help out, for sure. What do you guys need?”

Mia hugged her, said, “Damn, cuz, I knew you’d be cool,” adding that if Jessie could lend them a hundred, maybe one-fifty, Nick would repay her soon in triple.

Yeah, he will, Jessie thought, trying not to smirk to herself.

She thought of their childhoods together during holidays and vacations. She pictured the framed photo in her mom’s hallway, of her and Mia on a family hike up in Cathedral Canyon, right above her cousin’s neighborhood. She and Mia were standing beside each other on big rocks, both smiling and wearing neon sunglasses. In the background, the valley sprawled, dusty brown against the cobalt-blue sky, like their whole lives, wide open and waiting. The photo felt like a world ago, but the trail, and the same rock formations the town was named for, were all still there, across Highway 111 and a few miles away.

She thought about how Mia had always wielded the power of her years over her with pinches and mild slugs, and how, on the few occasions when Jessie tried to fight back with a half-hearted punch of her own, Mia retaliated by landing a sly hard one on her arm or thigh, leaving a bruise that lingered after she’d returned home. Mia had always been mean.

So what would she do if she found out now, and what kind of mark would it leave? Jessie tried not to think about it. When she felt guilt swarming her head like angry wasps, she thought of her friend Samantha, how blithely Samantha had once said that if a chick couldn’t hang on to her man, that was hardly her problem, was it?

The days passed in a haze of pool chlorine, vertical blinds snapped tight against the sun, and an endless Spotify mix of classic rock in her ear buds. She scrolled through Instagram, checking out images of the strip club. The dancers were sexy and lithe and awfully flexible. Jessie wondered what Nick saw in her, surrounded by all those bodies every night. She wondered what he even saw in Mia, compared to those strippers.

Even so, on those nights when he came home early, Nick always managed to sneak her some signal: a wink, a private smirk. Also, there was that song he always hummed: it was an old Doors song, he told her. She didn’t recognize the slow, snaky blues melody, or the one line he occasionally sang out in a mocking drawl: A cold girl’ll kill you / In a darkened room. She searched for it online: “Cars Hiss by My Window.” She loved it, loved especially how it sounded exactly like three o’clock in the morning.

When Nick was home, the hours flew by. Mia never cooked dinner; instead they’d all climb in her car, and drive for fast food, often ending up at the Taco Bell on the corner of Highway 111 and Cathedral Canyon. “Didn’t this used to be a Jack in the Box?” Jessie asked once.

“Good memory,” Nick said, munching his chalupa.

“This is the same road that goes up into my parents’ neighborhood,” Mia said. “You probably remember when we used to stop in here for chocolate shakes.” So far on this trip, Jessie had only seen her aunt and uncle once, when they’d taken her and Mia out to dinner at Nicolino’s, the hole-in-the-wall Italian restaurant that was a family favorite. It was weird, to think they could all get in the car and be at their front door in a few minutes. Mia’s life felt so entirely different and separate from her parents.

After eating, they usually cruised around town, avoiding returning home to the tiny apartment. Mia would turn up the radio and play her favorite rap station, passing strip malls and car dealerships and a dozen bars and dispensaries that Jessie wished she could enter. It didn’t seem fair how so much fun was reserved for supposed adults.

Once, they stopped at the community plaza just off the 111, where there were lighted fountains and a movie theater named for Mary Pickford (another long-dead and forgotten celebrity). The sun was just setting behind the mountains and the colored lights of the big central fountain came on. Movie tickets here were too expensive, but they strolled around, watching the Latino kids screeching and scrambling over the fountain, their families relaxing on the nearby turf. The slight breeze tossed the tall palms lining the walkway, each strung with white fairy lights. On a night like this, Jessie could see why this part of her family had never left the desert, despite the terrible heat and retail sprawl. She dug a quarter out of her wallet and threw it into another fountain, between its two spitting mosaic frogs. In the hot night, her whole body was a wish, a yearning for something beyond words.

But lately after dinner, they often piled back into Mia’s beat-up white C-class that matched her dingy white apartment and drove to the nearest Bank of America. Sometimes Jessie took out money, a small fan of twenties she handed to over to Mia. And sometimes she hung back, while Mia, armed with Jessie’s ATM card and PIN, deposited a couple of checks. “Just sign the backs,” she’d tell Jessie, who would obey and pay no attention when Mia turned and handed her a slippery white receipt. Over their heads date beetles shrilled in the trees, louder than the passing traffic on Date Palm Drive.

They kissed and kissed one night until her brain was smooth as a polished marble. In the middle of the thin rug they rolled and grappled until Nick’s hips ground into hers with a shove.

“Take ’em off,” he urged, tugging at the leg of her underwear.

“Wait — not yet.”

“Damnit, Jessie.” He sat up and ran a hand through his hair. “Stop acting like such a cock tease. I see enough of that at work.”

“But I’m not!” she said. “I just wanted to talk a little more, first.”

“Nah. Forget it.” He edged away. “I should get to bed. G’night,” he yawned.

“Wait!” Jessie hissed. She wriggled into her shorts, rose, and pulled down her shirt. She tried putting her arms around his waist, but he twisted away and moved toward Mia’s desk.

“Let it go, Jess.”

She followed him across the room and stood beside him as he switched on the desk lamp. “But it’s still so early! Barely even midnight.”

He kissed the top of her head and mussed her hair. “Time for good little girls to be asleep in their sofa beds.”

“But... there’s something I’ve wanted to talk to you about.”

“What’s that?”

“You know, I’m going home in a few days.”

“Uh-huh.” Nick scratched at his beard. “And?”

“And. So, I was hoping we’d keep in touch. Just us. Maybe you could text me or call me from work on... like another phone, sometime. I’d love to hear from you.” She failed to keep the trembling in her knees from climbing into her voice.

“That’s flattering, sweetheart. But I think you realize why I can’t do that. This is all a one-shot deal here. But we’ve had a good time, right?”

“Well, sure, but I was thinking... see, next June I’ll graduate, and then I can totally move down here for good. It’s less than a year away, when you think about it.” Without meaning to, Jessie’s volume had risen along with the force of her words.

Nick frowned and raised a finger to his lips. “You’re cute,” he said in a near whisper, “but really fuckin’ deluded.”

Unconvinced, Jessie twined her arms around his neck. “Just a kiss good night?”

“Nick? Jessica?” Mia’s voice approached from down the hall.

“Christ,” Nick said, and flung Jessie’s arms away.

Mia appeared in the doorway, blinking and pretty in a lavender chemise, her dark hair spilling around her bare shoulders. “What the hell’s going on?” Her blue eyes snapped in bold relief against her brown complexion.

“I wanted to — well, I was showing him that Zeppelin logo you drew.” Jessie grabbed at a sheet of drawing paper across the nearby desk. She and Nick both looked down at Mia’s rendering of the iconic winged angel, his head and nude torso bent back and muscular arms reaching heavenward.

“This is fantastic, babe,” Nick said to Mia.

“You knew it was a surprise, goddamnit,” she barked at Jessie. “And,” she nodded at Nick, “that still doesn’t explain why your fly is down.”

He looked down and pulled up the zipper. “Whoops,” he said, shrugging. “We were about wrapping it up here.”

“Yeah,” added Jessie.

“Remind me when you’re going home again?” said Mia.

“On Monday.”

“That is just about soon enough for me.” Mia swung around and started back down the hallway. “Are you coming or not, Nicholas?”

“Right behind you, babe.”

During the night, Jessie woke. It felt very late, but when she looked at her phone, she saw she’d been asleep for only an hour. She heard a noise, and another. There was a rustle and squeak, and then Mia’s voice calling out Nick’s name, over and over. Jessie strained to hear anything from Nick, but after Mia’s last shout there was nothing but a muffled tension that lingered throughout the apartment. She mashed the pillow over her head, but it was too late to block Mia’s moans from replaying again and again in her ears, too late to stop the tangled images from forming in her mind.

In the morning, Jessie hurried to put on her swimsuit and get to the pool early. She needed to be away from her cousin.

“We’ll be going up to my parents’ house tomorrow,” Mia told her, as she grabbed a towel and headed for the door.

Jessie stopped. “The three of us?” That sounded promising. Maybe there’d be a chance to corner Nick alone in her aunt and uncle’s big red-tiled Spanish house.

“Another couple is joining us. We’ve got the house for the weekend; my parents are in Laguna to escape the heat. Just pack a few things, okay?” She smiled hard at Jessie and tapped at her phone, her long neon-pink nails clicking against the screen.

Trashy, Jessie thought.

Dozing beneath the lone shade tree near the apartment pool, Jessie nearly missed the call. She saw it was her dad, Jim, and swiped to answer.

“Daddy—” she started, but was cut short by her father’s angry voice. He never yelled at her, not really, but he was yelling now, all the way from the Bay Area. He was yelling about money and what in the hell, what the fuck was she up to, who were these people, and did she have any idea her account was over six thousand fucking dollars in the red?

“The red? What do you mean? I’m sorry! I didn’t know, I swear,” Jessie stammered, around and over the continued noise from her phone. He said other words: check fraud and cops and felony. It all sounded so bad, and she had no idea how to make it better. She thought about the trips to the bank, or sometimes the Circle K with its ATM machine beside the Monster energy drinks and Lotto tickets. All those slips of receipts she’d shoved in her pockets, or even thrown away without a glance.

“I’m coming,” her dad said now. “I’ll be there tonight, maybe tomorrow if I can’t get a flight. Where will I find you? I’d say this is all your mother’s fault, but you need to answer for this too, Jessica. And so does Mia.”

And Nick too, Jessie thought. She didn’t say his name, but her dad would be learning it soon enough.

The group had partied all day under the hazy white sun, diving into the turquoise pool over and over. The misters were on around the covered patio, the outdoor ceiling fans turned. Nick and Mia laughed and kissed often, their arms wrapped around each other, recounting with Leo and Cherise tales of other parties at Mia’s parents’, of post-Coachella all-nighters and trips to Havasu. Once, as Mia bent over the outdoor fridge rooting for a beer, Leo came up behind her, grabbed her thin hips, and started humping. He turned his face to the group and wagged his tongue. “Uh, uh, uh!” His eyes were hidden behind his mirrored sunglasses.

“Quit it, perv,” Mia laughed, slapping his hands away. Jessie glanced at Nick, but he only laughed along with his friends. Later, Nick approached Cherise in her lounge chair, standing with his crotch directly in front of her face. He grabbed at himself and grunted, “Got something for you, baby.” Cherise only stared up at him, one eye squinted shut against the sun, and blew out a cloud of vanilla Juul smoke. “Use it or lose it, asshole,” she chuckled.

To all of this, Jessie forced an echoing laugh and whoop, accepting every beer and joint passed her way. Otherwise, Mia and everyone else seemed to forget she was there. By midafternoon Jessie felt nauseous, rocked by long hours under the sun and atop the wide pool float. The beer and smoke had helped her nerves, though.

Earlier that morning, her hands had shaken. They shook when she googled the phrase on her phone, making sure it applied. They shook when she looked up the local sheriff department’s number, and when she called and spoke to the woman who answered, and then an officer. She kept her voice low, despite the thick plastered walls of her guest bedroom in her aunt’s home.

Her hands had shaken, saying the words statutory rape. Giving Nick’s full name, his age, and then her birth date. “I think he stole my money too,” she said before hanging up. Her mouth had been so dry. Then she called her dad, who was stuck at the San Jose airport, unable to catch a flight until the afternoon. He was calmer than the day before, but still angry. Jessie reminded him of the location of her aunt and uncle’s house; he’d visited plenty of times for family get-togethers be fore the divorce. Her dad said he’d called the sheriff’s department too, that he’d be “bringing a posse.” It all sounded so terrible. Her mouth was so very dry.

She fell asleep in a lounge chair under the patio, beneath cool droplets of the spraying misters. She woke with a start, though she hadn’t slept long. Did she hear a siren, way down the hill? Would there need to be sirens for this money crime that she barely understood? Out of habit, her mind drifted to thoughts of Nick, to their late nights on the cheap blue rug over the hard tile floor. Each time they slept together had been hurried and nearly silent, but in her daydreams, Jessie recast the encounters, making their gestures slow, lingering. Would he go to jail for what they did together? She watched Nick, out by the pool, still drinking, talking to Leo now. His eyes, his mouth, had not sought her out even once since that last night in the apartment.

She turned her gaze from him and lifted her face to the sky, darkening with clouds from the monsoons that pushed up from Mexico in late summer. Far above, a cloud shadowed the earth as it parked before the burning disc of sun. In that moment, a vision descended over Jessie’s eyes: her hot skin, the bare flesh of the party crowd and the unnamed women in her Instagram searches, the mocking eyes of Nick — all of it cloaked in the cool, velvet dark of midnight. Over the laughter and the hip-hop she could hear the wail of a blues guitar. She didn’t have to close her eyes or plug her ears to imagine it. Instead, this cool world opened wide before her and welcomed her, a moment perfect in its seamless reality.

The cloud scooted away and she squinted against the instant return of desert glare. Was she imagining again? No. Here they were, then. Across the pool, just on the other side of a low iron gate, were three men. One was her father, the other two were unfamiliar, but in uniform. They had badges and guns. Things were going to happen now, and quickly.

The music stopped, the voices grew louder and angry. Was that Mia crying? It didn’t matter. It was all over; she was going home, to her mom’s small expensive house, her dad’s modern condo, to morning fog and summer evening sweatshirts. Things would get bad for Jessie for a little while too. But she wasn’t worried: she would always have music, and the perfect darkness of late, late summer nights.