We Lie Here: A Thriller, page 3
Just thinking about all this makes the muscles in my shoulders tighten. Just like that, Room 303 feels odd and tiny, and that cheap single-cup coffee maker looks as ridiculous as the faded watercolor of trees standing in a field of tulips.
Downstairs at the hotel bar, I order a Dark and Stormy for me and a Coke with a skewer of olives for my nineteen-year-old sister. “This for Dom?” The prison-muscles bartender smiles and nods toward the patio.
I pause, then nod. “You know her?”
He winks. “Who doesn’t? Tell her that Myles from the Auto Mall says ‘hey.’”
Dominique sits at the farthest outside patio table. She takes a deep pull from her cigarette, then blows dragon smoke to the sky—Snapchatting the entire time. She peers at me from behind her nonprescription Cazals—ugly, boxy things that would look horrible on anyone else. With her perfect long braids and perfect burgundy lipstick, Dominique’s beauty is too big for this town. Her mindset—finesse, flex, and Glo Up on somebody else’s dime—totally fits, though, in the Antelope Valley. I fear she may never leave.
I set the Coke and olives before her. “Bartender Myles from Auto Mall says ‘hey.’”
Dominique leans past me and waves to Myles, then returns to squinting through cigarette smoke to see the menu on her phone. “I’m looking at the food you chose for the party and . . . What the hell is ca-ber-net demi-glock?”
“Demi-glass. Basically, it’s like a red wine glazy gravy, but . . . not. Trust, it’s gonna be delicious with the filet mignon.”
“Filet mignon?” She snorts, shakes her head. “Ohmigod, y’all.”
“You skipped the tasting and so you get no input, nor do you get to criticize.”
She yawns, smacks her lips. “I love her, but Mom is a hype beast.”
“Since 1970,” I say. “What does that have to do with cabernet demi-glace?”
Dominique picks at the ends of her braids. “This is all fake, fake, fakety-fake.”
I cock an eyebrow. “Says the girl wearing sixty percent fake hair.”
“It’s one hundred percent real virgin hair from Malaysia. The girl who wore it before me is more real than ca-ber-net demi-glock.”
“Watch me ignore your trash reaction. Here I go . . .” I whistle and smile at the sky.
She gives me a raspberry.
I shiver with the thought of eating an anniversary cake made of fresh berries and fresh whipped cream layered between moist white cake, every bite followed by a sip of rich Colombian coffee. Dominique can “keep it 100” with her bag of Takis and tall caramel frap in the golf club’s parking lot.
I sip my cocktail, then ask, “Which Barbara am I meeting today?”
“Anxious Bee. There’s a big track meet tomorrow.”
“Her girls healthy?”
“Pepsi had a charley horse yesterday, which means Mom’s number one sprinter may be riding the pine tomorrow. Which sucks for her since recruiters are coming out and she may miss her shot. Her ass will be running from her gig at Walmart to her gig at Chili’s.”
Dominique takes a Snap of her cigarette and soda, then says, “Between planning this party, coaching stupid-ass teenagers, and going through menopause, I think Mom’s finally losing it. And every time she catches her breath, somebody else texts her about Saturday night.”
I slam down my cocktail glass. “They’re supposed to be contacting me. My name and number are on the invitation.”
“Auntie Cece and Xenia ain’t trying to call you,” Dominique says. “And when Mom’s not on the phone or blowing her stupid whistle, she’s been cleaning up, but the wind keeps knocking dirt back in.”
Worst. Chore. Ever. Sweeping grit, only to find more of it an hour later blowing through the cracks of the house. Pissed that I hadn’t done a thorough job, Mom always snatched the broom from my hands and swept it out. But the wind blew it back in. The day would seesaw like this, with neither my mother nor Mother Nature surrendering. Eventually the dust storm would move on due to time or boredom, leaving my mother exhausted but triumphant. She always wins.
“And it’s worse since monsoon is, what, a month away?” Dominique says. “She keeps pacing and looking out the windows like she’s waiting for it to come home from the war. Is that why I’m supposed to go to college? To effing . . . find the best ways to combat freakin’ . . . dirt?”
“Next week,” I say, “she’ll wear a ball gown and swan in to ‘Crazy in Love.’”
Dominique points her cigarette at me. “Oh. So. She doesn’t want Beyoncé now. She played me this old Heavy D & the Boyz song. Now that we found whatever.”
I roll my eyes and text the DJ. “That’s her fifth song change this week. Oh—I checked the temp for that day. A high of seventy-three at noon. Perfect weather.”
Dominique grins. “If there isn’t fire.”
“There won’t be, and Mom will look lovely, and Dad so handsome, and we’ll all be on our best behavior.”
“Sure, Jan,” my sister says.
“Very. Best. Behavior. I said what I said.” I flutter my eyelashes. “Can’t you picture it? Mom wearing a faux Christian Dior Spring 2011 couture gown with long sleeves and a cowl neck with layers of blue-beaded lace tulle. With tears in her eyes and a hand over her heart, Mom will flush as guests toss rose petals at her and Dad, who will tower over her in his tuxedo. After Judge Alvin Bader renews their vows, Mom and Dad will enjoy a slideshow and champagne. A Maybach will drive them to Santa Barbara’s wine country.”
Dominique gapes at me. “Flexing, are we?”
“Overkill with the Maybach?”
“Will the queen of England present them with Greenland at brunch in Santa Barbara?”
“Finland.” I knock back the last of my cocktail.
“You still won’t be the favorite daughter,” Dominique says with a playful smirk.
I shrug. “I’ll find some way to make it through the rain. Seriously: I still want to honor her for, you know . . . giving up her dreams to be a mom. We’re not each other’s favorite people—and one day, I’ll figure out why that is—but she deserves this, Dom. Daddy does, too, but Mom worked so hard for us in this place, so let’s give her this one perfect night, okay?”
Dominique bites into an olive, then says, “Ugh. Fine.” We pinkie-shake.
I order another Dark and Stormy for me and another Coke with olives for Dominique. And all is perfect. There’s a breathtaking high-desert sky above us, blue with faint white plumes made by air force jets.
Dominique bites her straw. “I’m dating someone.” She pulls up a picture on her phone.
The brown-skinned man in the picture is bare chested, and his tats—Old English lettering, 2211, 3-18-9-16, and a bulldog—run wild across his torso. With bleached twists on top of his fade haircut, Ransom Andrepont’s ears stick out just like they did when he was a schoolkid two years behind me. He’s also the youngest son of LaRain Andrepont, Mom’s best friend and assistant coach. LaRain must be thrilled that Ransom’s dating up for a change.
Me, on the other hand . . . Bile burns my throat. “Ohmigod, why?” I ask.
Dominique smiles as she swipes from shot to shot. “I don’t have to explain anything to you. We’re magic together, and I’m rubbing off on him.”
I hold up a hand. “I don’t wanna know about that.”
“Meaning, he’s talking about going back to school. Getting a real job.”
“No longer jumping school principals in the parking lot?”
She rolls her eyes. “That was a long time ago. And if she couldn’t handle the job, she should’ve stayed her ass in Baltimore.”
“What about the pediatrician?” I ask, eyebrow cocked. “All that lady wanted to do was check rashes under a baby’s arm and vaccinate niggas.”
Dominique fakes a shiver. “Ooh. Listen to you. The n-word. I thought you overcame. Thought you was ‘woke’?” She stamps out her cigarette on the bottom of her Vans sneaker. “And Ransom didn’t kidnap her, and they dropped those charges.” She sits up straight and proper. “Yes, he liberated a few things—”
“Her Lexus, her Gucci wallet, her stash of St. Joseph’s baby aspirin, and three bags of lollipops. He stole the lollipops, Dom. What kind of depraved shit is that?”
She gives a one-shouldered shrug and laughs. “You’re so judgy. You from Palmdale.”
I chuckle. “Oh, I’ll never forget. Mom is fine with this?”
Dominique smirks. Of course Mom’s fine. Everything Dominique does is fine, just fine.
“So which penal colony is hosting your beloved right now?” I ask.
“He’s in a really nice apartment with a pool,” she says.
“Legally?”
“Don’t you wanna come alive with flavor, darling sister?” She pushes her yellow-gold cigarette case to my side of the table.
“Nope.” I don’t dare even touch the case.
“You too good for a cigarette now?”
“First of all, you’re too young to be smoking,” I point out. “Second of all, Mom buying you a case like mine is totally ridiculous. I should be able to have something that you don’t. No matter because, finally, I’ve stopped smoking. It’s an unhealthy habit, and we’re more likely to die from it than white women, and I’m not going out like that. And finally, most importantly, I barely have one functional lung. No matter how fabulous Rihanna looks smoking—”
“Fuck, who?”
“I don’t like smelling like tobacco.”
“Bougie.”
“Okay, Miss Pumpkin Spice Latte.” I pluck my rubber band, and the ginger beer and dark rum gurgle in my stomach. I’m nauseated, not because I want to smoke but because Dominique is triggering me. Once upon a time, she also hated her clothes smelling like tobacco. Like me, she’d hide Mom’s cigarettes in the backyard. And somehow, here she is, a menthol lights influencer.
“Some of us can’t afford to see a shrink,” she says, continuing to press.
“It’s covered with health insurance.” I check my purse for the inhaler and find it zipped in the pocket with my sixteen lipsticks. “I know for a fact that you have health insurance.”
“Bougie.”
“Call me something other than the word you learned back in seventh grade.”
“Supercilious. Grandiloquent.”
“Better,” I say. “Seriously: Am I, an asthmatic, bougie for wanting to like . . . breathe without having additional crap clogging my lungs? And instead of worrying about me, you need to worry about a boyfriend named after payment for the release of a captive.”
She drops her cigarette case into her bag. “First of all, his name means ‘deliverance.’ Second, we should head to the house and get past Mom being pissed that you’re staying here.”
Depending on her emotional state, Mom will either:
A. Clap her hands, happy (maybe not happy but . . . fine, just fine) that I’m here, and fine with me being productive.
B. Criticize my choice of hotel, the wash of my high-waist mom jeans, and the fact that my hair curls this way instead of the other way.
C. Flick her hand, shrug, and say, Whatever. What gift did you bring me? or
D. Threaten to abandon us like she’s done a few times after we’ve upset her.
This last option usually results in Mom getting her way. It’s tethered our father for twenty years, and like a family choke chain, Dominique, Dad, and I go only so far. As much as we loathe Mom being there sometimes, the thought of her abandoning us makes us behave.
So I hope for Barbara A or Barbara C.
Maybe I should pop an Ativan just in case Barbara B or D is waiting for me.
Dominique’s eyes widen, and she points at something behind me.
But I don’t need to look.
The increased wind speed and the harried hotel workers rushing to cover the pool tell me everything I need to know.
A storm is coming.
3.
The horizon disappears behind the wall of brown dust. No sun. No top or bottom. But we can still see buildings and cars in the parking lot. Although this isn’t the worst storm, the wind howls with gusts around forty miles per hour, and grains of sand pelt our eyes. The trees bend but they don’t break.
Dominique and I hurry into the lobby. As she and Myles the bartender chat, I watch the dry ground meet the air, whittling cars and trucks down to mere glints of chrome and metal. Just ten minutes long, the storm dies down, allowing visitors to hurry inside or out, eyes squinted either way as one hand covers their face and the other swats dirt from their clothes and hair.
“Ready to go?” Dominique asks, tossing a final wave to her Auto Mall friend.
I nod, hearing mostly the last shrieks from the dying storm. Together we head to the parking lot, everything now weighed down by disturbed earth.
“Don’t say anything to Mom about me staying here,” I tell my sister. “But still back me up. I’m gonna explain that it’s closer to the medical center and with the air quality—”
“Nuh-uh,” Dominique says. “I’m not getting involved.”
I look over my shoulder. “You hear that? Like somebody shouted . . .”
With the wind still whistling and dust still swirling, I can’t hear much, but I do spot a middle-aged Black woman climbing out of a big-ass purple Mercedes-Benz sedan. Her long, flowing duster and scarf match the car. Her gelled black hair is pulled into an up-top bun, and her silver hoop earrings catch muted sunlight.
Dominique stops in her step. “Who dat?”
“No idea.”
The woman runs to catch up with my sister and me, and I’d like to tell her to take her time, that she ain’t gotta run, but she’s already standing in front of us. She smells expensive, offering a perfect-teeth smile through her huffing and puffing. Her eyes are red from the grit, and her mascara is gummy. “You’re Yara, right?”
I nod. “May I help you?”
She grins at my sister. “That means you’re Dominique.” Her smile broadens. “I’m Felicia, your cousin. Second cousin, to be exact, on your mother’s side.”
Dominique and I look at each other, then shrug.
“We met a long time ago,” Felicia says to me. “When you were just a baby.”
“Ah,” I say.
She hands me a business card. “You know Cece.”
My mother’s first cousin. More like my aunt than my cousin, Cecilia McGuire Campbell is busty, bawdy, and brazen. Her short, precision-edged blonde haircut requires a razor blade. She’s been the ghost singer for many popular vocalists that she will not name . . . yet. But you have two of their albums, Aunt Cece always says with a wink. For Christmas presents, she sends Dominique and me concert tour T-shirts and sweatshirts along with autographed pictures from the headliners she sings behind, her own signature beneath more famous names.
“I’m Cece’s daughter,” Felicia says now. “Your mom and I grew up together.”
Cece is singing at the anniversary party, but this Felicia . . . I have no idea who she is.
Her eyebrows crumple. “I know that I’m not on the guest list, if that’s what you’re worrying about.”
Cheeks burning, I clear my throat. “I, um, can check to see if we can add a guest. Always room for family.”
Felicia shakes her head. “I don’t care about that. Don’t worry.” Her voice is deep like Cece’s, and it’s smoother, a Rolls-Royce compared to her mother’s Shelby Mustang.
“Wait—how did you find me here?” I ask.
“Ma told me that you suggested guests stay at the Holiday Inn because it’s nicer than the other hotels and it has a bar. Then Ma told me that Bee told her that you were arriving today, and that Dom told her, your mother, that you were staying here and—”
Anger bursts over me and I glare at Dominique. “You told her already?”
Dominique stammers, “I-I-Yara—we were just talking and it slipped out.”
“And I asked the front desk to call your room,” Felicia continues, “but the phone kept ringing and so I waited in my car closest to the entrance until I saw you.”
I glance at the business card. She works for Northrop Grumman down in El Segundo.
Dominique also looks at the card. “Strategic business analyst. What’s that?”
Felicia grins. “I take a lot of information and make it make sense. And I’ve been doing that in my own life, making things make sense. It still doesn’t, and it’s been more than twenty years now.”
Dominique slaps on a synthetic smile and salutes. “Good for you, Cousin Felicia. We really need to—”
Felicia squints at my neck, gasps, and covers her mouth with a hand. “Oh my . . .” She reaches for my lightning bolt pendant.
“Oh, hell no!” Dominique swats Felicia’s hand.
Felicia makes a startled bark as my chain breaks from my neck and coils in her fist.
Eyes wide, I yelp and clutch my now-bare neck. A lump lodges in my throat, and I can’t speak. My skin stings. Cousin Felicia has scratched me.
Dominique snatches my pendant from the woman’s outstretched hand and slips it into her pocket. She says to me, “I’ll get it fixed.”
“Yara, I texted earlier,” Felicia whispers. “Did you get my messages? They probably showed up as being from ‘Unknown’ since I’ve never contacted you before, but I’m hoping you read them.”
Numb, I can only waggle my head. The air is filled with foreign particles, but my lungs are gobbling oxygen and forcing air back up my throat. I start coughing, coughing, choking.
Felicia clasps her hands before her lips, prayer-style. “I’m so sorry,” she says between my hacking. “I didn’t mean to . . . I . . . I saw it and I thought . . . and I . . . I haven’t seen a pendant like that in decades . . .”
Dominique spins me around and pushes me toward my car. “We ain’t gotta stand here and listen to this bull.” She turns back to Felicia. “No, you can’t come to the party. Now back off.”
“Wait,” Felicia cries out. “I don’t have a lot of time. Just give me a minute—”
Dominique growls, “No!”
I climb into the Jeep and catch my breath. My mouth tastes like dirt and salt. A fine layer of dust has slipped into the car and settled across the dashboard.
