“What are you doing next week?” Taj called from the backseat, while Nick stood on the curb.
“I don’t know. You tell me.”
“Well, maybe you’re having dinner at my house on Friday night. I make a mean kapusta. And if you don’t know what that is, you’ll have the privilege of finding out.”
“Okay, then,” Nick agreed. “I’ll call you, at the station.”
“Do that.”
The cab drove off, and Nick stood on the sidewalk, watching until it disappeared over the hill. He felt lighter and more energetic than he had in a long time. He also noticed that his headache was gone. Dinner at her house. Who ever invited anyone to dinner anymore? He couldn’t remember the last time a girl had cooked for him. Maxine ate exclusively at restaurants where celebrity presence was guaranteed. If there were no paparazzi idling on the sidewalk, she wasn’t interested. Maxine … Nick shook his head. Already it felt as if they had broken up last year instead of just several hours ago.
Nick
THE PHONE WOKE NICK WITH A START THE NEXT morning, bright and early at eight o’clock. It was a shrill, electronic ring which echoed throughout the ten-thousand-square-foot house and bounced off the marble floors.
“Helllo?” Nick grumbled, still underneath his pillow.
“May I speak to Miss Langley?” a crisp voice asked.
“You mean Mrs. Huntington,” Nick corrected. He turned and buried himself under the comforter. He’d forgotten to draw the curtains the night before, and the sun was streaming into his bedroom.
“No, a Miss Langley. A Miss … er … Fish Langley?”
“Fish? Who is calling please?” Nick asked sternly, tossing the pillow to the floor and sitting up finally. Might as well just get up; he’d never be able to get to sleep again, what with the light.
“This is Citibank. If you please, sir, we’d like to talk to her about her account,” the caller said in slightly accented English. Nick pictured a hapless Indian clerk in Bombay reading from a script.
That was odd. They both had debit privileges on their parents’ Citibank checking accounts, but if the bank wanted to talk to an account holder, why would they want to talk to Fish?
“Hold on,” Nick said. He pressed the intercom. “FISH! PHONE FOR YOU!”
There was no answer from Fish’s room. She was probably ignoring him. It really was too early to deal with anything like this.
“I’m sorry, she’s not here right now,” Nick said.
“Thank you very much, sir. We will try again later.”
Nick put the phone back on its base. Maybe the bank was trying to sell something—they always were.
He yawned and decided to take a morning run.
When he returned from a slog up and down the canyon, sweaty and refreshed, he noticed that Rosa, their housekeeper, had already set up a breakfast buffet in the kitchen. He picked a croissant from the tray and tore it in half, stuffing it into his mouth.
“Hola,” he said. “Fish come down yet?”
“No, Mr. Nick. No Fish.” Rosa shook her head.
Nick looked at the time. It was only ten o’clock. He’d give the kid till noon, then ask her if she knew anything about Citibank, and what she’d thought of the party the night before. She’d be thrilled to know he’d met Taj Holder—Fish had Web shots of Taj in a series of outfits taped to her wall. Fish was a big MiSTakes fan, and she played Johnny Silver’s record around the clock.
Saturday at the Huntington household was usually quiet. If Dad and Evelyn were home, which they weren’t, they would be out at the country club by now for a tennis tournament. Nick checked the calendar by the phone. Dad was shooting in the Czech Republic. Evelyn was making a presentation in D.C. on global warming. Neither of them would be home for another week or two.
Thank God for Rosa. If it weren’t for the housekeeper, who’d been nanny to both Nick and Fish, they would never have had a real home-cooked meal, let alone someone who remembered to sign them up for dental appointments and pick Fish up from acting class.
Nick made himself a plate of cold cuts and pastries, then took it up to his room.
A few hours later, Eric called to ask him if he wanted to drive up to Malibu for a party. “Man, what happened to you last night?”
“Nothing. I went home.”
“Serious?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, you missed out.”
“Where were you?”
“You know there’s this back room, right? At the party. Dude, I’m telling you, it’s crazy in there. You’ve got to come with me next time.”
“I tried. They wouldn’t let me in. Said I needed a password.”
“Oh. Right. Forgot about that. Didn’t you get one in your in-box?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
There was an awkward silence.
“What goes on in there anyway?”
“Ah, it’s nothing. Nothing to be worried about. I’m sure you’ll get the password next time.”
“Hey, did you see my sister in there, by the way?”
“Your sister—you mean Fish?”
“Yeah. I saw her go inside. They wouldn’t let me follow her.”
“I don’t think I saw her,” Eric said cagily. “It was really dark.”
“Oh. Whatever.”
“So you wanna go to the ’bu?”
“Sure.”
When Nick left for the afternoon, Fish still hadn’t emerged from her room. When he returned late that evening, the house was so quiet he decided she’d already gone to sleep. The next day was the same—Nick had to leave early for practice and didn’t get home until late after hanging out with the team.
It wasn’t until Monday night—three days later—when Fish didn’t come home from school, that Nick finally realized something was wrong.
Fish had never come home on Friday night.
She was missing.
Taj
“IS THIS A NEW BOYFRIEND?” MAMA FAY ASKED, pounding pieces of veal into paper-thin slices. The force of her hammering shook the kitchen counter.
“No, Mama Fay, he’s not my boyfriend,” Taj said, dipping the pounded veal into an eggy mixture and then coating it in bread crumbs and flour. “We just met last week. I told you, at a party in Bel-Air.”
“Why not? He’s not good enough for you, doll?” Mama Fay fired up the stove and poured oil and butter into a sizzling fry pan. When the oil began to bubble, she picked up a cutting board full of onions and gently eased them onto the surface.
The delicious smell of fried butter and onions permeated the air. “Hand me that cabbage for the kapusta,” Mama Fay ordered.
Taj made a face. “What if he doesn’t like kapusta?” she asked, her nose wrinkling at the thought of eating the pungent cabbage and sauerkraut slaw. She’d only mentioned it to Nick as a joke.
“How can he not like kapusta?”
As a concession to Taj, Mama Fay was wearing what she called her Laura Bush outfit: a trim sweater set and a necklace of fake pearls. But that was as far as she would go—the pants were form-fitting and leopard-print. And Mama Fay had styled her hair into a towering beehive and had glued on her most abundant fake eyelashes, so that it looked like two spiders were attached to her eyes.
Taj set the rickety table in the alcove off the kitchen with three places. She didn’t know why she had decided so impulsively to invite Nick over to dinner. Okay, so he’d paid her cab fare, but did she really owe him dinner? It had just come out of her mouth—wanna have dinner at my house?—before she could process what an invitation like that meant.
“What about the old boyfriend?” Mama Fay was asking. “The famous one. The one who went crazy and went to Africa.”
“Who knows?” Taj shrugged. “I haven’t heard from him. Now they’re saying he went to Tibet, to be with the monks.”
“Monks? Why monks? My Lord, I can’t see that boy with the monks.”
Johnny had loved kapusta. He’d loved everything about Mama Fay,
had even enjoyed hanging out at the cabaret. And Mama Fay and the drag queens had adored Johnny in return. So handsome! That hair—how can it be natural! Those eyes! They thought he was more beautiful than any boy they’d ever met.
Johnny had lapped up all the affection. He’d practically been part of the family. In fact, until all that stuff started happening with TAP, when he began getting big, and playing gigs, and then the record deal happened and he was so busy dealing with music execs he didn’t have time to hang out—at least, that was his excuse; Taj knew that at that point there were other girls involved—until then, he was always hanging out at her house.
He didn’t talk about his home life, but Taj figured there wasn’t much to say. She’d seen the bruises on his arm from the beatings his stepfather administered, and as for his mom, according to Johnny she was so tired from working two jobs she never even noticed him.
Did they worry about him like she did? Were they proud of his album? Did they even care that he was missing? Had disappeared?
Taj went to the bathroom to check on her appearance. Nick was arriving soon. He’d sounded distracted when he called, but he’d promised he would be there tonight.
She was wearing a little plaid dress she’d hemmed to mini length, black stockings, and platform heels, and she had taken care to blow-dry her hair perfectly. God, what do I care. He probably thinks I look really stupid. But she applied a second coat of lip gloss anyway.
Nick
NICK PULLED UP TO THE ADDRESS TAJ HAD GIVEN him. It was in a desolate area of the Hollywood flats, next door to two empty lots. He noticed a couple of junkyard dogs sniffing around. His first thought was that the neighborhood was uglier and grittier than he had assumed, and the second was that he was a snob for thinking like that. He didn’t like to think of himself as a snob.
The patch of garden in front of the house was full of weeds and rotting plastic furniture. Did Taj really live here?
He walked up to the door and rang the bell.
He heard some yelling from inside—“GET THE DOOR!” “GOT IT!” “JEEZ!”—and a few minutes later Taj was standing in the doorway.
She was wearing some kind of dress that skimmed her body and was cut short on the thigh. Nick thought she looked amazing, and he told her so.
“Yeah, I remember now—you’re the one who thinks I’m pretty.” Taj smiled. “Are those for me?”
“They’re for your … uncle, actually,” Nick said, handing over the vase of flowers he’d picked up from Eric Buterbaugh’s Beverly Hills boutique earlier that afternoon.
“Aw, so sweet! Come on in,” Taj said.
Nick ducked inside and was immediately struck by how cozy and delightful the bungalow looked with its comfortable couches and whitewashed floors. Not at all like it looked on the outside. Someone had picked out some nice things—the lamps were interesting and beautiful, and there were original prints framed all around.
A large woman (or a man dressed as a woman) walked out to the living room from the kitchen.
“You didn’t tell me your friend was so handsome!” Taj’s uncle beamed. “C’mon, give Mama a hug!”
Nick smiled nervously and allowed himself to be fawned over.
“Look,” Taj said. “Flowers.”
“Nice.” Mama Fay nodded. “Thank you, my dear.”
“C’mon,” Taj said, pulling on Nick’s arm. “Let me give you the tour.” Taj placed the flowers on a nearby side table.
“This is a cool house,” Nick said, marveling at the family pictures and the wood-paneled den. He meant it too.
“It’s so not. I bet our house could fit in one room of yours,” Taj said, guessing correctly.
“Yeah, but it’s a dollhouse. No one really lives there,” Nick said, looking over all of Mama’s old pictures from when she was a Marilyn Monroe impersonator, as well as all the tchotchkes in a glass case, souvenirs from when Mama Fay had traveled the world on her musical tours—miniature obelisks from Egypt, porcelain dolls from the Netherlands, painted fans from Japan.
“Are these your parents?” he asked, pointing to an old Polaroid of a young couple sitting on a bench, the Statue of Liberty in the background.
“Yeah, that’s them. They’re from New York. Their parents moved there from the Ukraine. They’re both first-generation. They moved to L.A. before I was born.”
“What happened to them?” They were a good-looking couple, Nick thought. He could see where Taj inherited her looks.
“They died in a car accident,” Taj said. “It’s kind of why I don’t drive. I’m too scared.”
Nick reached over and touched her hand. “I’m sorry.”
“It was a long time ago. I don’t even remember them. My first memory is of Mama Fay teaching me all the words to ‘I Will Survive.’ She raised me.”
“Was he always like that?” he asked.
“You mean, in drag? Uh-huh. She was real pretty when she was younger.” Taj picked up an old vinyl photo album from the bottom shelf and paged through it until she found what she was looking for. “Look. This is Mama Fay when she toured Asia.” Mama Fay was dressed in a tight-fitting cheongsam and carrying a parasol.
“You know, in the eighties, when she went to Ukraine to visit her relatives, they asked her if she was an American celebrity. Mama Fay was going through her Cher phase.”
“What did she say?”
“Yes, of course. Mama Fay’s always been famous in her own head.”
Nick could see that. There was a lot of love in the room. He thought back to the cold, empty house in Bel-Air. Where the only person who used the stove was the maid.
“I thought you were cooking.”
“I helped—doesn’t that count?” Taj grinned. She felt nervous and wasn’t sure why. “Let’s go out here.”
Taj led him to the back door, to the patio where there was a tiny garden filled with bougainvillea and lavender jacaranda trees. The garden looked out at a view of the Capitol Records building. Hollywood Boulevard’s bright lights beamed up to the sky.
“Isn’t this such a great view? We moved here when I was eight. Before then we just lived out of hotel rooms, but Mama decided it wasn’t good for me to be around all those nightclubs, and she decided to settle here, where my parents had lived.”
She took a seat on the ancient swing and motioned for Nick to sit down next to her. He pushed off with his foot and rocked them back and forth. The night air buzzed with the sound of chirping crickets.
“It’s so quiet.”
“Yeah.”
“You wouldn’t think …”
“Wouldn’t think what?” Taj asked, a little defensively.
“Nothing—it’s just not how I expected it to be.”
Taj relaxed.
“I’m sorry, I’m just a bit out of it … See, my sister’s disappeared,” Nick said. He’d been trying not to think about it for a few hours, but it was impossible. He was worried.
“What do you mean?” Taj asked, concerned.
“This is so jacked, but I didn’t even notice until Monday. I mean, Fish keeps to her own schedule, and she goes in and out whenever she wants to. She’s only thirteen, but …”
“Fish? You mean the kid who was in the paper today?” There had been another story, but this one was buried in the metro section. No longer headline news.
“Yeah.”
“God, Nick, I’m so sorry. Don’t you have to be at your house? If she calls?”
“My parents are there. I mean, my dad and my stepmom—Fish’s mom. They were arguing about whether to report it, but I finally convinced them. They didn’t see the need; I mean, she’s done this before.”
“Run away?”
“No. Just not tell us where she is. Last summer she went to visit her dad in New York without telling us, and we had no idea where she was for days. Evelyn just thinks she’s at a sleepover or something. Although it’s been a week, and we’ve asked all her friends and they all say the same thing.”
“Which is?”
/>
“The last time they saw her was at that party—you know, the one up on Benedict Canyon. They all got separated when they went into that back room. And her friends said they don’t know what happened; they think she took a cab by herself. She does that. I don’t know what to think.”
“Jesus.”
“Taj, I have to ask you something.”
“What?”
“What really goes on in that back room? I mean, do you think someone there could have hurt—”
“No!”
Nick watched as Taj bit her thumb.
“Look, I’m sorry, but I can’t really say. But that’s not the way it works,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
She shrugged. “It’s harmless. Nothing could have happened to her in there.”
“I wish I could believe you.”
“Nick …”
“What do you know about that guy who throws the parties?”
“Sutton? I don’t know—he’s just some rich kid, right? I thought he was a friend of yours.” Taj shrugged.
“He’s not. He goes to Bennet, but we’re not friends.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know much about him. Johnny—he was the one who dealt with Sutton, mostly.” She pursed her lip and looked like she wanted to say more, but didn’t.
Nick pressed his latest theory on her. “Don’t you think it’s a bit strange, Taj, how Johnny’s disappeared? And now my sister? And what about all those kids in L.A. who are missing? Do you think TAP might have something to do with it?”
“The website?” Taj sounded incredulous. “You must be joking.”
“I don’t know. I’m just thinking aloud. I just find it odd that all these things have been happening. And I think it might all be linked to TAP”
“What makes you think so?”
“I don’t know, I’m just guessing. Fish spent so much of her time online at that site, and then the parties are sponsored by them.”
“The parties are totally separate,” Taj said.
“Hey, why are you getting so defensive?” Nick asked, noticing how tense she suddenly looked.
“DINNER’S ON!” Mama Fay called from the kitchen.