-3-
Morgan left her building dressed in Portland finery: black from hat to boots, including underwear. Mondays the street sweepers came; she’d forgotten to move the car to the other side of the street. When she reached her uncle’s hand-me-down Mercedes, an unsurprising ticket was waiting for her. It was the third one she’d managed since coming back.
She got in. The car smelled funky. She’d hadn’t hot boxed in months but the interior still reeked of pot. Rolling down the window, Morgan was grateful for fall, for cool nights and a marine layer.
Her uncle had gifted her with his antique mustard colored 240 D sedan the week Morgan earned her license. It had already burned through enough miles to go to the moon and partway back, but the rebuilt engine kept running. Maybe because other than the roundtrip to Portland (with five years in between start and finish) she scarcely drove.
Driving up Newport Boulevard, she crossed the border into Costa Mesa. Stopping at a red light, she offered Hoag Hospital a casual wave. After enduring six years of ER visits, it had taken a murder to rate her own room.
Morgan felt numb. The man’s death seemed unreal. If she couldn’t remember killing someone, how was it a sin?
A few blocks later, as she negotiated a dangerous left into the Costa Mesa Denny’s, Morgan decided that with its lack of turn signals, confusing roads and vast population of Non-English speakers, the city felt more like L.A. than OC. She parked closer than usual and walked to the restaurant. It was not exactly hopping. The hostess looked like she’d landed the job around the time Morrison got kicked out of film school. She had the glazed eyes and lazy smile of a regular drinker as she led Morgan to a booth that could have accommodated a small family. Which was fine. Morgan felt like eating a small family.
The counter was elbow-to elbow with grubby singles. She was happy for her isolation booth.
“Coffee, hon?” The septuagenarian waitress could have been the hostess’s sister.
Morgan nodded, flipping through an abandoned newspaper. She’d expected to see the story but reading about the robbery, and seeing herself described as a “twenty-one-year-old employee,” didn’t make her feel any less disconnected. Sipping coffee, she began to drift –– paper and menu ignored.
For some reason, she couldn’t stop thinking about her mother.
“Miss? Did you want anything other than coffee?”
Morgan jumped. The waitress tapped a pen against her pad; in that moment, Morgan knew exactly what she wanted. “Eggs... and steak. Scramble the eggs. And the steak? Bloody as hell.”
-4-
While Morgan was deciding, Meat was driving. The paper called the girl “local.” Probably lived near her job. The western stretches of the Balboa Peninsula were the ideal home for an empty-headed chick who partied at the bars whenever she wasn’t making a few bucks at her hot girl slacker job. If she wasn’t shacked up with a rich old guy (a typical OC relationship), then there were a ton of cheap sleeps a stumble away, if you knew where to look.
Meat knew where to look.
The chick worked late hours, so she probably slept all day. Parking a few blocks up Balboa from the shops and the bars, (he didn’t want his truck visible near the murder site) Meat realized they had two two things in common. They both slept away sunlight. And they both had someone after them.
Except if he got her first, the cops wouldn’t get him.
Opening his door and jumping out, he felt ready for anything.
His workouts usually mellowed him. Most juicers cycle – going on and off steroids – but he’d been doing the stuff non-stop for months. Part of why he wasn’t sleeping. He glared at a gaggle of Izod wearing faggots bunched up around a Rover. One almost got in his way. Almost. Instead, the guy backed up. Meat saw himself tearing the guy’s arm out of his pink polo before smacking it across the little fruit’s face.
Focus. He didn’t need a fight. He needed a tiny blonde with big boobs who’d made the last mistake of her shitty little life.
-5-
Morgan had a lot in common with her mother. Besides blue eyes, blonde hair, and sun-sickness, she didn’t eat meat. Morgan’s decision followed a third grade field trip to a local farm. The calves with their big brown eyes reminded her of puppies. After that, no matter how much her father yelled, she refused to put a dead animal in her mouth.
Her choice extracted a price.
She’d gotten her first period at thirteen and avoided serious issues until after she moved to Portland. A fact of life suddenly seemed a hell of a lot like hemorrhaging. She racked up emergency room visits and unpaid medical bills. Even when she wasn’t on the rag, she felt weak and tired. She knew a lack of animal protein was partly responsible. And the iron supplements were useless.
Sitting in a Denny’s on an off night, Morgan suddenly knew what she was craving.
At first the steak’s texture threw her. She hadn’t eaten animal flesh in over a decade (“nothing with a face,” was her motto.) It wasn’t like its tofu imitators. Using her sharp canines as God intended felt more like ripping than chewing, but when she bit down...
It was heaven. The coffee and OJ just killed time. Once breakfast arrived everything but the meat went untouched. It was amazing. She wanted seconds.
“Big booth for a tiny person.”
Looking up, she used a napkin to wipe the blood from her lips as she examined a dude who looked like he’d raided her closet. The skinny jeans were purple, his flowery vest was worn without a shirt while his long hair was done in alternating shades of fuchsia and orange. In spite of everything, he was still cute. But that didn’t make her more willing for conversation. “I need a ton of personal space.”
“Okay. Cool.”
His attitude and baritone marked him as a vocalist, trailing him was a muscular guy with pierced nips who just had to be a drummer. Morgan looked at them, and at their two comrades left behind in a corner booth. “You guys playing The Detroit?”
“How’d you know?” The beefy guy’s voice was high pitched and druggy sounding. “Dryer Lint. We go on at ten.”
The singer smiled. “We’d can put you on the list.”
Morgan sliced a thin piece of steak. Warm blood ran down the plate, saturating the ignored eggs. Two days ago the sight would have made her queasy. Now it was all she could do not to lift the plate and lick it up.
She returned the vocalist’s easy grin. “It’s Monday, dude.”
“So?”
“So, there’s no cover at The Detroit Bar on Mondays. I don’t need to be on a list. ‘Cept, that’ll give you my name, maybe even my email, and the chance to say you have fans.”
“Never mind.”
Morgan felt a wave of guilt. Not enough to want to hang out with them, but – “Hey!”
The drummer and vocalist turned in sync, identically hopeful expressions coloring their faces.
“A girlfriend dated the owner. If you know any obscure Doors or Zeppelin covers, it’ll help you get a Friday.”
“Thanks.”
The cops still had Morgan’s cell. After putting a twenty over the bill, she scooted out of the booth and slipped around a group of heavyset teens. With a smile and the casual touch of an arm, she knew she could borrow a phone. Instead she found a pay phone.
It was just outside the doors, dirty but working. Grimacing, she put in a couple of quarters and dialed her voicemail. Yesterday she would have guessed these things were extinct, like cassette tapes and typewriters.
The first message was from her dad. Unwanted tears developed as she listened to him apologize for leaving. Then he asked her for forgiveness. He was always asking for forgiveness. And one of these days she might be a good Christian and give it to him.
There was a beep and then Bret came on, speaking a mile a minute. “Holy shit, babe, I leave for Hawaii and it all goes to hell. Just got off the phone with a Detective Magnol... Oh man... Listen, I’m gonna be back Tuesday night – do not open the salon. I’ll call you when I get in.”
Nice. No, hope you
’re okay, no, can’t believe you were almost killed. Fuckin’ duckie. The next message was her sister. Her voice worried Morgan; she sounded sad and sick as she concluded with, “I really, really need to talk to you.”
That was it. No questions or comments about last night. Just that she needed to talk.
Morgan was digging for two more quarters so she could call Stephanie back when a message came on that made her forget all the rest. She hadn’t heard from Colt in a month, but it wasn’t his voice which mattered.
“Morgie! How you doin’, Babe? Sorry I didn’t call earlier, Portland got crazy. But listen, I moved into a place a few blocks from the Fun Center. It’s over on East Bay. Why don’t you drop by tonight? Call me –– Someone here misses you.”
Then there was the sound of the phone being placed on a floor. A moment later, Morgan’s heart seized in a way any mother would recognize.
-6-
Meat met the girl two weeks ago during Bret’s tour of his “investment.” Her name was something stuck-up, like Teagan, or Megan or something. Or maybe stripperish, like Amber or Britney. She’d been giggly and pretty, but he could tell she was judging him. She needed a good beating.
Entering the dim District bar, Meat remembered Lonnie. They became friends their senior year after Lonnie moved to HB from some inland town like Chino or Corona – Meat was never good at remembering that kind of shit. He was smaller, and kind of lost. They played football but usually polished the bench. Lonnie was like a little brother, the guy wanted to be him – not in some gay way, but –
“Help you?”
Startled, Meat realized he’d sat down at the bar and had been staring at an underfed brunette tapping sharp green nails against the pocked wood. Recovering, he ordered a Bud in a bottle which allowed him ample time to admire her tramp stamp as she bent over to retrieve it. That dance, he figured, was designed to extract a tip. Good luck on that, Bitch.
Lonnie deserved better. He always had Meat’s back. That tanning salon whore was gonna spend time paying for what she did.
And Meat was gonna enjoy every moment.
-7-
Driving along Bay Avenue, Morgan realized the eastern portion of Newport’s Balboa Peninsula fit Colt to a ‘t.’ In contrast to the western section’s omnipresent bar noise and parties, everything past tenth street was an oasis of calm. All she heard was the ocean.
Colt was someone she could count on, a guy comfortable in the limbo between lover and friend. She’d had over a dozen black-outs since leaving Newport; half of them when she was with him. He’d never taken advantage. She always woke up from those foggy evenings in her own bed with her underpants on. She trusted him.
When they met, she was sixteen. Her mother had been gone for only a few months. Morgan was crashing at her Uncle’s place; Victor was back in Riverside County –– an uncertain threat on the periphery. Colt offered an escape hatch.
In Portland, they’d shared a roof and cooked dinners together like an old married couple. Sometimes they hooked up, but afterwards she felt more confused and withdrawn than ever. Even after she got her own place, their time together was yet another thing she couldn’t figure out.
Returning to Newport Beach should have solved the problem. After all, Colt had hated Orange County.
Crossing Coronado Avenue, she found a parking space on the left side of Bay. Unfortunately when she’d called Colt back from the pay phone all she got was his voicemail. She left a message, letting him know she was on her way. He kept his celly turned off because he loathed the way a ringing phone interrupted his thoughts. Colt was maybe the only guy she knew whose thoughts were worth preserving.
Unfortunately his general description lacked an address. He kept the same hours she did and eventually he’d check her message and turn on his phone. In the meantime...
She’d expected to feel sluggish after such a big meal but instead the steak had left her oddly energized. Retrieving a pink nylon gym bag from her trunk, Morgan made her way to the beach. Crossing Balboa, then the boardwalk, she kept her eyes peeled for police. Technically the beach was closed, but this time of year the cops usually left it alone.
Even in the fringes of the witching hour, the beach attracted the occasional dog walker or stroller. Tonight it was deserted. Thin fog rolled in along the coast. The outskirts of Laguna and the lights of the hills grew obscured. Leaving the cement, she kicked off her shoes and dug her toes into the sand. The sensation was as luxurious as silk sheets.
Morgan missed her board. She’d sold it for gas money. Replacing it was number one on her to do list, but if her job was over, rent and food should probably move up a notch.
Slipping beneath a lifeguard tower, she dropped her shoes in the bag and pulled out a towel. Hanging it from the tower’s edge, she slipped behind the makeshift curtain. After removing her shirt, pants and bra, she placed each item carefully in the gym bag. Since it most likely contained the last clean clothes she owned, Morgan didn’t want them covered in sand.
After carefully undoing her mother’s necklace (and praying Colt was around later to help her put it back on), she leaned out past her makeshift curtain. Glancing around, she felt reckless and energized.
The surf lay twenty feet away; before it stretched a landscape darker than an abandoned basement. Morgan hooked her fingers in the waistband of her panties, shoving them down to her ankles. She stepped out of them, shook off any errant sand still clinging to the fabric, and placed them atop her other clothes. Zipping up the bag, she took a deep breath.
Pushing past the towel, she moved quickly, thrilled but not chilled by the wind against her bare skin. Her feet touched moist sand. Seconds later, she splashed naked into the Pacific ocean. Salt water swirled around her toes, her ankles, her thighs. She didn’t shiver. Instead, Morgan shuffled along, more worried about stingrays and jellyfish than hypothermia.
-8-
Stephanie hadn’t dressed like the whore of Babylon for conversation. The night was still young but her disappointment already felt worse than the leather pants. She wasn’t sure where she’d rather be, but it definitely wasn’t sitting on the porch of Victor’s Chino Hills house freezing her nips off. He wouldn’t even let her in, said something about fresh paint in the kitchen. Then he made some lame joke about getting high off the fumes. Right. Far as she was concerned, getting woozy beat the hell out of answering questions.
They’d kissed when he picked her up a few blocks from her home. Although that sent an electric buzz along her thighs, there was nothing else.
There was no food. He’d poured champagne, but it didn’t feel like a party. She wasn’t naive, she knew it was risky accepting booze from a guy she barely knew. And it wasn’t like she trusted him. It’s just, by the time she realized that all they’d be doing was sitting on a porch swing and admiring the stars, a roofie would have at least been entertaining.
“Do you think about her?”
Setting down her empty glass she sighed and waited for a refill. He poured and she took a large gulp before asking, “Do I think about who?”
Stephanie already knew who he was talking about.
Victor stood. Lean muscles moved beneath his thin t-shirt as he stretched. The cold never seemed to affect him. “Your mother.”
“Sometimes,” she admitted. “I miss her – it sucks not having a Mom. And Dad never met anyone else.”
“It’s just you two?”
“Yeah, Morgan bailed right after mom died. It’s weird, I started fixing dinner when I was, like, eleven.”
He walked toward the front door. Victor was peering through its glass when he said, “A beautiful woman should never have to cook.”
She’d smiled, but hated his distraction. She didn’t mind that he didn’t need her. What bothered her was the way sometimes he acted like she was invisible. He’d bought her everything she was wearing –– right down to the panties –– and he hadn’t even complimented her outfit. And why had he bought her the thong anyways?
She w
as gathering the courage to ask if he wanted a modeling show when Victor opened the door without another word and disappeared inside. She didn’t feel like following without an invite. She was not that desperate.
Instead she drained her glass and poured another from the now half-empty bottle of bubbly. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten. The booze on an empty stomach made her feel sleepy, and more than a little drunk.
It was weird. She had been thinking about her sister all day. Victor’s questions took her to the last time she’d seen Morgan. Pulling off her Uggs, Stephanie lay back on the swing and rested her bare feet on one of its arms. She didn’t sleep or dream, exactly, but closing her eyes she returned to that time almost a year ago.
She could smell the pine tree in the hotel lobby and the eggnog her Dad let her try. She could feel the itchy wool over bare arms unaccustomed to sweaters. It had been sleeting for days and she’d never been as cold, not even in Wrightwood. Thank God, Portland had a coffee shop on every block.
It was two days before Christmas. The three of them –– Stephanie, Morgan and their dad –– were in the middle of a family holiday. Already he was capital ‘P’ pissed over Morgan’s crazy, flaky life. That day he’d driven the rental up Burnside, a street resembling a zombie movie set with its shambling cast of skittering, sketchy bums and loitering burnouts.
Her sister’s building lay half-a-block past Burnside and 23rd –– Trendy-third she called it. Instead of a day spent shopping, their father handed Stephanie some cash and told her to have fun. Then he abandoned his offspring for some store selling industrial quantities of plaid.
Morgan buzzed her up. The door was open; when Stephanie entered her sister was laying on an ivory white leather couch in the living room, sipping tea. Everything looked expensive. No wonder Morgan was always broke. The place was old-fashioned, with high ceilings and hard wood floors. Music filtered up from the pub three stories below.
Streetlights activated as Stephanie entered, casting shadows and reflections off the room’s red paint. Morgan’s seemed bathed in devil colors as she loaded a bong. “Close the door and sit down.”
Five minutes later, her older sister was blowing smoke into Stephanie’s mouth. It seemed lesbo at first, but it wasn’t like they touched lips. Besides she did not want to consider the skanky boys who’d sucked that bong.
She’d never been high and if her dad found out, he’d kill her. Well, maybe not kill her but...
Stephanie felt the effects immediately, giggling as she remembered how her father said she should do something Morgan liked.
“Do you remember anything?” It was the first question to penetrate the haze –– the first after ‘want to get baked?’ Morgan wore pajamas, her eyes red-rimmed. If Dad hadn’t canceled, he would have been kept waiting. Her sister was never been on time for anything, not even church.
“Remember what?”
“Dad,” Morgan answered, her eyes blue ice in the twilight.
The room seemed overheated as her sister pulled a thick comforter over her shoulders. Sweat beaded along Stephanie’s arms even as she peeled off her sweater. Laying back against the couch, she decided cold leather against bare skin was the best thing ever.
Then she took another hit. Okay the second best thing.
“What? What about Dad, Morgs?”
Her older sister inhaled sharply, held it all for herself before letting it escape with an asthmatic cough. Then she slid from the comforter and left the room.
A moment later, Morgan returned with two open cans of Coor’s Light. “When we were kids. Like when I was twelve, you were six? ‘Round then?”
“Some. He wasn’t a happy...” Why were words so fucking difficult? She’d heard of cotton mouth, but cotton brain? Looking down she read her t-shirt. Corona Evangelical Vacation Bible Camp. Trying hard not to crack-up, and failing, she choked out, “Dad was not a happy camper!”
Stephanie kept laughing. It took at least a minute before she realized Morgan was not joining in. “What? What do you want me to say?”
“You... You avoided the worst, Steph. He took it out on Mom, on me.”
“That’s because you both ticked him off. I was the quiet one, remember?” She didn’t want serious talk. Her insides were inflated with helium; she imagined herself floating out the window, bobbing along over the streetlights. Back at the hotel, the morning weather dude had predicted snow.
Stephanie really, really wanted it to snow.
Inside her head she was pirouetting inside a cloud of soft, cool flakes when Morgan tapped her leg. Reality intruded.
“He used to...” Morgan paused, and took another hit –– again keeping it all for herself. She coughed so hard Stephanie’s own chest ached but when she tried to speak her older sibling waved her arms before swallowing a huge gulp of beer. When she spoke again her voice sounded raw and pained as she whispered, “He used to hit me, Steph.”
Exasperated, Stephanie took her own gulp of beer. “Jeez, Morgan, you were a brat. It’s in the Bible, you should know that.”
“Not like that.”
Stephanie tried to remember anything extraordinary. There were no broken bones, no black eyes. There was yelling, and Morgan probably got the belt at an older age than most, but...
It was no use. Trying to remember anything scary was like trying to remember a TV show from kindergarten. Besides, Morgan and their mom shared a royal heritage. They were both drama queens. Totally baked, Stephanie told her sister exactly that.
Last year, she’d learned the meaning of ‘stoic’ in English class. Immediately she realized it fit her, fit her father. He’d get irritated occasionally, and sometimes he cursed. But she couldn’t remember him getting physical with her – not once. Closest he came was grabbing her arm when she almost darted into traffic when she was five. He hadn’t spanked her for that one and she’d had it coming.
Sitting on the cold swing, Stephanie was still considering her sister’s confession when her thoughts were distracted by a muffled thumping from beneath the porch. When Victor returned a moment later, the noise stopped. Later she would tell herself it was a raccoon, or maybe a cat. But whatever it was, it sounded trapped.
-9-
The water was satin across Morgan’s hips. She felt beautiful and alive and even dangerous.
She swam. The waves were frothy but not high. There was no undertow. But across the coast, lights disappeared inside the fog.
Enjoying an autumn swim in her birthday suit seemed normal. Better than normal. Perfect. Her thoughts diminished to a narrow focus –– there was only her muscles, her tendons, her body as machine. Colt, her dad, her mother, whatever bodies she was responsible for... all faded to oblivion.
There was this perfect serenity she only enjoyed when she was alone with the ocean. Even an hour later, Morgan wasn’t tired.
To her left, the lights outlining Balboa Pier twinkled. The structure appeared thin and fake. She watched it disappear.
A small wave crested over her face. She shook her hair, whipping strands of salt and sea across her back.
She was a superhero. She was immortal.
Parallel to the pier’s conclusion, Morgan heard a familiar song.
She’d felt strong enough to swim to Hawaii. As the song clarified, Morgan weakened. She began treading water recalling the night she first heard it: The Viper Room. On Victor’s arm, she’d been underaged and drunk –– dancing sexy in front of a well-known band performing a private show.
Lyrics jumbled and grew distant. Her hair tangled. Her mouth tasted salt.
The moon slid into a sheath of clouds. The water turned to tar.
In the distance where Catalina rose on clear days, the ocean became an uninterrupted wall scaling the horizon. Behind her, the Pacific Coast Highway connected Newport with other beach cities. Even after midnight it usually resembled a thin strand of rubies and diamonds: brake lights and headlights.
Tonight was only darkness. Music grew louder.
&n
bsp; And she realized then the song was not a memory, it was not in her head. It was all around her as the breaking waves became speakers.
Lyrics clarified.
I won't let you pull me down... *
Morgan had surfed through cloaks of fog. This was more like being trapped inside a locked coffin. The shoreline was a hundred miles away.
Another world lay beneath her kicking feet, her aching arms. It was a simpler world, a world of kill or be killed. Violence equaled survival. Once upon a time she believed this underworld never crested the surface. Now she knew better. Sharks and rays were inconsequential compared to what was pulling her beneath the tide.
I know I’ll find you somehow...