Chapter Three
It took just over two hours to reach his apartment. A slow and mostly empty bus through Hollywood, an interminable wait at a grim, lonely stop on the wrong end of Fairfax, another bus down Venice Boulevard all the way to the ocean. A foggy night here, colder and clammier than it had been in the hills.
His apartment was stuffy. Vish yanked open the windows. He should get some sleep—he had to open the shop at nine tomorrow, and it was now past two—but he felt wound up, almost jittery. He put on the kettle for a cup of chamomile tea and booted up his laptop.
Sparky Mother. Vish took out the absurd business card and stared at it. Time to figure out who he was, what power he wielded in the industry, what services he could provide for Vish, what kind of fairy godfather he could be.
A Google search. The electronic data trail would give him a starting point: the deals he made, the press he received, the company he kept.
One result.
Vish frowned. That was a mistake. Had to be. Even the lowest-level agent or producer or assistant had more of an online presence than that. Vish himself had dozens of search results for his name, as a few guilty vanity Googles had shown. The articles he’d written, his profiles on various social networking sites, a long-abandoned and frankly embarrassing attempt at a personal website… Vish had all that linked to his name, and Vish was nobody.
He looked at the single result. He wasn’t familiar with the URL—some site called AgentProwl—but it looked relevant. He clicked on the link.
A message board. Aspiring actors swapping gossip about agents, or trying to find agents, or complaining about the agents they already had. He found the right thread, which was about six weeks old, started by someone posting under the optimistic screen name FutureStarr. Under the header “Anyone know Sparky Mother?”:
Hey I met this cute guy at the restaurant where I waitress today and when I mentioned I was an actress he gave me his card and said call him. He said he was an agent I think? I don’t know he seemed legit but then I went to Google him and nobody knows anything about him so it seems kind of weird so does anyone know who he is because I REALLY need an agent and he seemed REALLY interested in me but now I’m thinking he just wanted to get into my pants (or rape me and stab me and dump my body in the hills LOL). His name is Sparky Mother I dont know what agency hes with and I dont want to call him until I know more. Plz help thx.
One response, from one month ago, from a user named DiegoXG:
Sparky Mother ruined my life.
Huh. That was it. That was the end of the electronic breadcrumb trail. Vish sat back and stared at the screen.
DiegoXG, whoever he was, wasn’t going to be any more help than that. Vish clicked on his user name and found he’d joined the AgentProwl site just to post that single message. No other posts, no personal information linked to his profile, nothing.
It didn’t make sense. Sparky had been at the party, and the guests obviously knew who he was. The bumblebee girl, the Interstellar Boys actress, she was on close terms with him and she was famous, or something close to famous. He seemed legitimate, just from the little Vish had talked with him. He even had a shadowy, vengeful enemy. By Hollywood standards, wasn’t that a clear indication of his bona fides?
Maybe he went by a different name professionally, business card notwithstanding. In any case, “Sparky” had to be a nickname. Nobody named their kid Sparky. Vish stared at the card.
Sparky had said this was his office number. He wasn’t in his office tonight. He’d be at home by now, or out with his glamorous friend Poppy. If Vish called now, he’d reach his voicemail, and maybe there’d be some clue there—the name of his company, his full name, something.
Vish took out his phone. Took a deep breath. Dialed the number on the stupid business card.
It didn’t ring. It didn’t connect. On the other end of the line, Vish heard a series of muted electronic clicks, like the phone company was trying its best to establish a connection but falling short. The clicks stopped, replaced by a dull echoing pulse, the sound rising and falling like distant waves rolling onto the shore.
Vish hung on the line for longer than necessary, listening to that electronic void, waiting to see if the call would go through. It didn’t.
So Sparky’s line was down. No big deal. Maybe he’d try again on Monday morning. Maybe he wouldn’t.
He couldn’t quite explain why, but he felt a surge of relief that he hadn’t accepted the ride home from Sparky.
The earthquake struck at just before five in the morning. Vish was in the middle of a half-formed dream, something about yellow-eyed coyotes feasting on the broken-doll corpse of the girl in the bumblebee dress, when an enormous jolt shattered him into consciousness. He opened his eyes in time to see a dazzling array of blue-white sparks bursting skyward, fireworks-style, from the power lines outside his bedroom window, then everything went black.
Small, staccato jolts followed the first big one. In the moments between the jolts, the floor rocked and swayed and slid. His bed was on wheels, rolling across the deck of a ship bobbing in a storm. Ah, yes, his very first earthquake. A rite of passage for living in Los Angeles.
Something crashed in his living room. There were smaller thunks, too, and a loud rattle. Was someone twisting his doorknob, trying to get into his apartment? It took a moment to realize it was just the windows shaking in their frames.
Just under twenty seconds of motion and chaos, then stillness returned. Vish remained in bed.
Adrenaline raced through his body, though he’d neither fought nor fled. He’d been frozen in place, his brain too overwhelmed to settle upon a single course of action. Brilliant survival instincts. Top notch.
He sat up. Pulled his wits together. Swung his legs out of bed. His knees were so shaky he could barely stand at first. Outside his bedroom window, all was darkness under that moonless sky.
He left the relative safety of his bedroom. Moving gingerly, padding barefoot, proceeding with care. At the entrance to his living room, he whacked his shin and almost fell across… was that his coffee table? Really? A huge, heavy slab of pressed laminate material, it had somehow wedged itself in the doorway. Vish tried to shove it aside, but it wouldn’t budge. He crawled over it on hands and knees.
A flashlight would be useful. He had one in the junk drawer in his kitchen, probably. It had batteries in it, but they hadn’t been changed since he moved here. He navigated his way through the living room by touching the wall, then groped his way along the kitchen counter until he located the junk drawer. Under matchbooks and takeout menus, there it was, his flashlight. And hey, it even worked! It was a tiny thing, pocket-sized, and it emitted a feeble, watery slice of urine-colored light, but right now it was the only source of illumination in the apartment. In all of the city, it seemed.
He shone it around. Things looked okay. One of his cupboard doors had flown open, but the contents—two juice glasses, two plates, a coffee mug—had remained in place. His windows hadn’t broken. The building hadn’t cracked in two, the second level hadn’t come crashing down into the ground floor.
Everything wobbled. Vish reached out toward the closest wall to brace himself, but the aftershock stopped at once. Just a little reminder of what had just happened, just a little something to get his heart racing again.
Noises. A police siren somewhere, a baby screaming from the apartment next door, where Mariposa lived with her mother. He’d heard the baby off and on for the past couple of weeks, the sound of its wails carrying through the cracker-thin walls. Right now it was howling, a harsh, scratchy, full-throated sound. Didn’t sound good.
Vish slept in sweat pants and an old t-shirt. Under the circumstances, he looked presentable enough. With the aid of the flashlight, he located his flip-flops by the front door and slipped them on.
Pitch blackness outside, the stars obscured by the thick fog rolling in off the ocean. Only a single pinpoint of light in the sky, an airplane en route to nearby LAX. He groped fo
r the railing that ran the length of the second level and squinted in the darkness. The damp ocean air smelled of seaweed, undercut with asphalt and exhaust.
The baby howled again. Vish rapped his knuckles on the door to the left of his apartment. “Mariposa? It’s Vish, from next door. Are you and your mom okay?”
Raised female voices from inside, a flurry of Spanish, and then the door flew open. Vish instinctively pointed the flashlight at Mariposa’s face, then realized he was blinding her and lowered it.
“Hey, you. Yeah, we’re good.” Mariposa wore a pink camisole that stopped several inches above her navel and a tiny, low-slung pair of lavender boxer shorts. After one quick glance down, Vish made sure to keep his eyes on her face. “Luis is being loud, but he’s just dumb. He’s fine.”
Vish glanced over her shoulder, straining to see into the dark apartment. Under the baby’s screams, he could hear a radio tuned to a Spanish-language station. Sounded like a news report. “Luis is the baby?” he asked.
Mariposa nodded. “My nephew. Little idiot. Mama’s taking care of him for a while until my brother and his wife move into their new home.” She rolled her eyes. “I bet he’s been driving you crazy, right? Join the club. I swear, babies suck so much.”
From somewhere inside the apartment, someone Vish couldn’t see—Mariposa’s mother, presumably—rattled off some quick Spanish. Judging by the clear note of warning in her tone, it was probably something about how her nubile teen daughter shouldn’t chat in the doorway with an adult male neighbor while wearing only her skimpy nightclothes.
Mariposa glanced back and replied in Spanish, her tone that of exasperated teens everywhere. She turned back to Vish. “Have you been listening to the news? They said it was a four-point-seven. That’s not very big.” She sounded disappointed. “They think it was centered in Pacific Palisades, so that’s why we felt it so bad here.”
“Any word on damage?” Vish asked.
Mariposa shook her head. “Don’t know. I heard a big crack, though. Right when it first happened. Didn’t you?”
“A crack? Like, here in the building?”
Mariposa nodded. “Yeah. It was real loud. I think the stairs broke or something. You didn’t hear it?”
“I don’t think so. I can check it out for you, though.”
“I’ll go with you,” Mariposa said. She stepped forward, fully intent on accompanying him in her tiny shorts and, he now saw, her gigantic fuzzy slippers.
Her mother said something again, her tone sharper and more pointed. Mariposa huffed out an impatient sigh and looked ready to argue, so Vish headed it off at the pass. “Why don’t you stay with your mom and Luis? They could probably use you right now. I’ll look around and let you guys know if there’s anything you should be worried about.”
Mariposa looked unhappy at this, but she didn’t argue. “Whatever, I guess. Thanks for checking on us.” She smiled. “You’re a good neighbor, you know? I’m glad you didn’t get hurt or nothing.”
“Thanks. You, too. Glad everyone’s okay.”
Flashlight in hand, Vish headed toward the staircase leading down to the courtyard. He bobbed the pallid beam of light along the ground and the walls as he went. No cracks.
Everything was silent, punctuated only by the occasional angry wail from Luis upstairs. Fourteen units total in the building, seven on each floor. Mariposa was the only neighbor he knew by name. A couple units were unoccupied. Maybe more than a couple, actually; he’d seen several soon-to-be-former tenants hauling their stuff out of their apartments over the past year, but he hadn’t seen anyone hauling stuff back in.
The gate to the low, rusty fence around the swimming pool stood wide open. That’d be a dangerous child hazard, if the pool were filled with water. As it happened, it was filled with furniture—three-legged end tables, dressers with missing drawers, a sofa with the cushions slashed and the stuffing hemorrhaging out, all souvenirs of past residents.
An argument could be made that his cramped East Village apartment had been kind of crappy, too. Silverfish that swarmed up from the tub drain, a warped bathroom door that refused to close all the way, a subtle stink of cat piss that intensified on humid days, even though he’d never owned a cat. He’d waged war on the smell, wielding bleach and scouring pads and all manner of industrial-strength cleansers, but had never managed to completely eradicate it. So it wasn’t like he’d downgraded his situation much by moving out west, really.
He shone the flashlight around the base of the complex. Aha. The corner closest to the street had cracked and crumbled away, creating a foot-high jagged gap. Vish directed the beam inside the hole and saw coiled chicken wire in the space beneath the thin stucco exterior. Stucco over chicken wire. Everything considered, it was lucky the entire structure hadn’t collapsed when the earth moved.
A short scream sliced through the night. Female, probably, and it sounded like it’d been abruptly cut off. Vish froze and listened. His heartbeat quickened.
That had come from just outside the front gate. He hurried out to the sidewalk and swooped his flashlight in all directions. The beam didn’t penetrate more than a foot or two through the fog.
He cleared his throat. “Is anyone here?” he asked. “Do you need help?”
Nothing but silence. “Hello?” His voice sounded thin and muted in the fog. He hesitated, keeping still, listening for any response.
Everything was quiet. He was alone. After hesitating a moment longer, heart pounding, muscles still on high alert, he turned back to his apartment building.
In the darkness, his sandaled foot struck a sprinkler head jutting up from the patch of lawn just outside the security gate. He pitched forward and hit the sidewalk, the pain of impact jolting through his hands and knees.
The flashlight went out upon contact with the cement. Vish remained on all fours for a moment, conducting a quick internal diagnostic check. Nothing was broken. His knees hurt and his palms were scraped, but it all seemed minor.
He rose to his feet and brushed off his pants, and that was when the back of his head exploded.