Lust, Loathing and a Little Lip Gloss Page 16

  A psychiatry student could write an entire thesis on mentally disturbed behavior based on the subjects in this room.

  The worst part was that Zach didn’t freak out when his mother whacked him, which meant that he had probably gotten used to it. That little detail immediately changed my perspective of the kid. He was no longer the weird rebel without a cause. He was a teenager that seriously needed help.

  “Perhaps Zach’s right about Jasper,” Maria said in what was clearly forced joviality. “After all, we don’t know if he was ever real. But with this death we have to at least face the fact that Enrico had to have been attacked by something otherworldly. You saw the windows,” she said, directing her words to me. “They were locked. The chain lock was engaged. No human could have gotten in there, and then what you said you heard Enrico say into the phone…” Her voice broke off and she blinked her eyes rapidly. “He saw something. He had so many flaws, but he didn’t deserve this.” She looked at Lorna beseechingly. “I swear he didn’t. I didn’t wish it on him.”

  Lorna stood up and walked to the side of Maria. The image of them was hard to dismiss: Lorna with her unflattering attire and unnaturally peach cheeks and Maria sitting by her side, all glamorous and distraught. It was like they were posing for a promotional photo of an ill-conceived play in which the playwright tried to channel both Tennessee Williams and Neil Simon simultaneously.

  “This is stupid!”

  I jumped, startled by Zach’s voice.

  “Enrico wasn’t murdered by a stupid ghost.” He continued, “He was killed by some totally mortal person who managed to get away with it. And you know what? It’s not sad at all! Enrico was a big fat fuck and I bet that whoever took him out was only paying him back for some major shit he pulled on them!”

  “Zach,” Lorna snapped, her voice stronger than I had ever heard before. “I know you didn’t like Enrico. We all had hoped that he would use your father’s services when he opened his other restaurants, but that certainly doesn’t mean that he deserved to die! He was a human being and he was loved.” She turned to Maria again and said, more softly this time, “He was loved.”

  Zach chose not to answer. Lorna’s hand on Maria’s shoulder tightened and then relaxed a few times until she had eased into the steady rhythm of a slow massage.

  I stole a quick look at Zach, who was back to glaring at the beige carpet. Lorna and Maria were now quietly talking about how awful Enrico’s murder had been, but I was only half listening. I was focused on Zach. This visit had been a lot more revealing than I had anticipated. I didn’t know anything that would help me convince Kane that I had spoken to Enrico’s ghost, but I was beginning to think that I might have found a strong suspect for his murder. Feeling my gaze on him, Zach finally looked up and examined his silent inquisitor. The two of us remained like that for at least a full minute, with Zach seemingly daring me to ask the questions that I refused to ask in the presence of this particular audience.

  “Oh Lord, is that the time?”

  I blinked, Lorna’s voice jerking me out of my thoughts.

  “Al’s supposed to pick me up at my work at five-thirty and it’s almost five now! Zach, we have to go!”

  “I’m walking home,” he said, rising to his feet.

  “Don’t be ridiculous! I told Dad that you would be coming to the office to do your homework!”

  “Tell him I flaked,” he said offhandedly. “Or I could tell him that you left work without checking in with him and came here. Your choice.”

  Lorna looked positively panicked. Maria shot her a sympathetic look and took her hand in hers. “Al just worries about you, Lorna,” she said. “He doesn’t mean to be so impossible.

  He simply can’t help it. He’s a man.”

  “I know, but I really can’t be late and he can’t know I was here. He’ll be furious!” She rushed to the couch where she collected her purse. “You sure you won’t come with me, Zach?”

  He shook his head, not budging an inch.

  “Well, then, I’ll tell Dad you didn’t show up. But please, don’t come home too late. Your father worries about both of us, you know.”

  “Whatever,” he mumbled. Lorna cast him a desperate look before giving me a halfhearted wave and running out, leaving me alone with Maria and Zach.

  “Are you all right, Zach?” Maria asked. Then, without waiting for an answer she continued, “If one is to be creative at all, one must have parents who are at least a little bit crazy.”

  Zach laughed humorlessly. “A little bit crazy? Did you just see the shit that I saw?”

  Maria simply smiled. “I believe you will grow to be a true beacon of creativity. How can you not?”

  Zach wasn’t even a little amused. “I’m out of here.”

  I did some quick calculations in my head. I did want to talk to Maria alone, but now I wanted to talk to Zach, too, and while Maria seemed amenable to future conversations this might be my last chance to catch a few minutes with Zach. “If you like, I could give you a ride to where you’re going, Zach.” I offered.

  “How do you know we’re going in the same direction?” he asked.

  “I don’t, but I’ll give you a ride anyway.” I went over to Maria and gave her a quick hug. “I’d love to stop by for a visit again soon. Maybe even in a few days?”

  “That would be fine,” she said with a sigh. “But do call first.”

  “Absolutely.” I hesitated a moment before continuing. “Do you mind if I ask what did you do with Jasper’s scythe after you found it in the ghost town?”

  Maria smiled coolly. “Not a thing. Lorna and I left it in that little city of nowhere—right in the middle of the desert. If it was the murder weapon, it was Jasper that brought it here, not me.”

  I nodded, not sure what else to say, and walked out with Zach. “That may have been the most bizarre social call I’ve ever been on,” I said as we entered the courtyard.

  Zach didn’t answer.

  “Have your mom and Maria been friends long?” I asked.

  “I dunno, I guess,” he mumbled. “They got closer after Maria split with Enrico.”

  We walked through the front entrance without another word. It had gotten considerably colder in the short time I had been at Maria’s and I found myself picking up the pace to get to my car parked down the block. Once both Zach and I were inside my Audi, I turned to him, our proximity making it impossible to avoid eye contact without looking like he was being purposely rude. As I expected, he chose rudeness. “Can I ask you a question?”

  He shrugged and stared stubbornly out the window.

  “Is The Cure staging a comeback tour?”

  Finally Zach snapped his head in my direction. “I’m not trying to look like the singer from The Cure! I’m making a visual statement!”

  “Right, does that statement have anything to do with the weird excesses of the eighties? Because I’m pretty sure that was the last decade that Goth was cool.”

  “Marilyn Manson is Goth!”

  “Which explains why he’s not as famous as he used to be. Zach, I think the time has come to lighten up.”

  He crossed his arms in front of his chest and turned back to the street. “Are you going to give me a lift or what?”

  “That depends, where do you want to go?”

  “My friend’s brother is working the door at this new cannabis club—”

  “Oh, forget it! The police already hate me, the last thing I need is for them to catch me taking a troubled teenager to his drug dealer.”

  “Fine, I’ll walk.” He reached for the door, but not before I pressed the automatic locks.

  “I’ll take you somewhere else.”

  “Somewhere that sells pot?”

  I sighed and looked up at the clouds. “How about we get some ice cream.”

  “Yeah, now I’m really out of here.” He unlocked the door, but I quickly locked it again. “You can’t keep me here against my will,” he whined. “That’s really illegal.”

&n
bsp; “How ’bout an oxygen bar.”

  He looked at me puzzled, but he didn’t reach for the lock again.

  “It’s a cool high,” I said, encouraged. “I’ll buy you a hit.” The truth was I had never done the whole oxygen thing, not even when oxygen bars were all the rage, and those days had definitely passed. But for a teen who knew about The Cure and embraced Goth…well, an oxygen bar seemed just about right. “I’ll even throw in a shot of hemp oil.”

  Zach treated me to an exaggerated eye roll. “Hemp oil doesn’t do shit,” he said. “It’s not like smoking it.”

  “How do you know?” I asked. “Have you ever tried hemp oil?” Zach’s silence answered my question. “Great, then it’s a deal. We’ll go to an oxygen bar, have some hemp and talk things over. I’m trying to figure out what’s up with all these Specter Society people and you seem like just the guy who can give me the real dirt.”

  Zach snorted. “You’re gonna need a shovel.”

  “Got one in my purse.” I dangled my oversize handbag in front of his face before reaching in it and pulling out my cell.

  “Who are you calling?”

  “My friend Marcus,” I said. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been to an oxygen bar and he’ll know which ones are still in business.”

  Marcus picked up on the second ring. “I couldn’t hate you more if you were Lindsay Lohan and I was Paris Hilton,” he said.

  I glanced at Zach. “I don’t think they hate each other anymore.”

  “Give them time,” he said. “I had to listen to Dena bitch for an hour about Jason and about how you should have told her that he was in that Speckle Society of yours—”

  “Specter Society.”

  “…and all of her sad little excuses for why she had to dump poor-little-vampire-boy—”

  “Dena doesn’t make excuses.”

  “Apparently it’s her new thing,” Marcus said curtly. “Anyhoo, the point is that I was tortured. This wasn’t one of those ambiguous forms of torture like water-boarding. No, honey, this was a direct violation of the Geneva Convention. I just got off work and I’m going to get myself a cocktail immediately.”

  I gave Zach my best be-patient-smile and plowed on. “I know you’re ticked at me, Marcus, and I do promise to make it up to you, but right now I was hoping you could recommend an oxygen bar.”

  There was a long silence on the other end of the line. “Honey, oxygen bars stopped being fabulous in 2001.”

  “I know, I know, but I’m here with a Goth teenage rebel and this is the only legal drug I can buy him.”

  “Really? Have you tried Wite-Out?”

  “Marcus,” I said warningly.

  “Fine, go to Breather, it’s located on the corner of Market and Church.”

  “Seriously, Marcus? The Castro? He’s not that kind of boy.”

  Zach shifted in his seat and his eyes darted quickly in both directions as if he was afraid of being caught or found out…or maybe dragged out of the closet.

  “Actually,” I said carefully, “The Castro should be okay.”

  “Will it now?” Marcus asked, his interest clearly picking up. “Tell me, Sophie, what are you doing hanging out with a teenager?”

  “Um, I know his mom,” I said, lowering my voice as if there was any way I could avoid being overheard by a boy who was literally sitting one foot away from me.

  “So what?” Marcus asked. “Wait, did this mom ask you to play chaperone for her son? Does she know you’re an unapologetic sinner with a questionable relationship with a cat?”

  “I am not a sinner…by San Francisco standards. And my relationship with my cat is totally normal and on the up-and-up.”

  “Now, now, no need to get your tail ruffled. How old is this teenage Goth boy, anyway? Is he legal?”

  “No, stay away.” I hung up and stuck my key into the ignition. “Ready?” I asked.

  Zach shrugged his consent and within seconds we were on the road making our way toward Breather.

  13

  I used to go to oxygen bars, but that got too expensive so now I just try to hyperventilate over a perfume bottle.

  —The Lighter Side of Death

  IT TOOK A FULL FORTY MINUTES FOR ZACH AND I TO FIND PARKING AND when we did it was a parallel spot between two Harleys. I knew Anatoly adored me, but if I were to hit his bike, even accidentally, it would be hard for him to resist strangling me. So I could only imagine what reaction I would elicit from a couple of gay bikers if I ended up knocking one of these hogs over. Fortunately, I managed to avoid disaster and my parking prowess actually earned me a smile from Zach. Up until that point I had been unaware that his mouth was capable of turning upward.

  As we moved through the crowd, Zach’s head was swiveling back and forth so quickly that you would have thought we were at a sporting event—a really exciting one at that—because with every swivel his eyes got a little bit wider. Obviously he hadn’t spent a lot of time, if any, in this part of the city. I tried to see my surroundings with the perspective of a newcomer. The Castro was…strange. It was a world-famous location, a place where tour buses designed to look like cable cars frequently drove through so that Fran and Stan from Wyoming could take pictures of Real San Franciscan Gays. Yet I always felt the neighborhood lacked a certain authenticity. There were too many restaurants and bars with names like Hot & Hunky. Too many rainbow flags, too many stores selling Marilyn Monroe memorabilia. It’s like the Castro was where gays went to be on stage whenever they were feeling bored with their normal lives as teachers, lawyers and/or choreographers. Breather demonstrated this idea perfectly. When Zach and I walked in, I found myself wanting to shield my eyes to protect them from all the brightness. Candy-colored bar stools were arranged in clusters surrounding little oxygen machines that appeared to be lifted right out of an old Jetsons cartoon…well, okay, the Jetsons didn’t have “Screaming Orgasm Flavored Oxygen,” but if they had it undoubtedly would have been stored in colorful ergonomically designed containers atop contemporary kiosks with backlit bubble walls. Old Erasure songs were playing on the stereo as men milled about, gossiping, drinking nonalcoholic spritzers and sucking on their scented oxygen like it was opium. In the middle of all this was a totally gorgeous, mocha-skinned man who absolutely was not supposed to be there.

  “Wait here,” I said to Zach and marched over to where Marcus sat on his bright orange bar stool. “What are you doing here? I told you he’s underage!”

  “Is that him?” Marcus asked, craning his neck to see Zach. “My God, what’s wrong with him? Is he in costume?”

  “Marcus, why are you here?”

  Marcus turned his twinkling eyes toward me and flashed me a blindingly white-toothed smile. “I wanted to do a good deed.”

  “How is picking up on a fifteen-year-old a good deed? Wait, do I even want to hear this?”

  “For God’s sake Sophie, that boy is hardly a masculine version of Lolita and even if he was I don’t do teenagers. I play exclusively with the big boys, the bigger the better,” he added with a wicked grin that made it impossible to escape his meaning. “I’m here to be a mentor to a troubled queer youth.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “Of course I’m kidding. I came here because I have this horrible feeling that you’re about to put yourself in danger again, and as your friend I’ve decided that I should at least try to be around enough to minimize the risk.”

  “Really?” I asked, immediately softening. “Marcus thank—”

  “That said, it is a given that when a Goth teenager asks you to take him to an oxygen bar in the Castro that’s a huge cry for help!”

  I looked over my shoulder at Zach. He was unsuccessfully trying to hide his observation of two pastel-shirt-wearing men in the corner making out. Zach’s expression reminded me of Dorothy’s when she initially stumbled into Oz. Give him a pair of pigtails and a small dog and he’d be all set. “He’s a weird kid,” I said frankly. “I can’t figure out what to make of him.”<
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  “Why did you agree to chaperone anyway?” Marcus asked, his shoulders relaxing slightly as the music switched from Erasure to one of his favorite Madonna singles. “Don’t tell me you’re developing a maternal instinct. This has to do with the house, right?”

  “Right. I brought him here in the hopes of getting some information out of him about Enrico’s murder.” I gave him the Cliff Notes version of what went down at the flower shop and then at Maria’s.

  Marcus shook his head in despair. “I can’t believe you. At what point did you decide to try to turn your life into a Fear Factor marathon?”

  “I didn’t decide…” But then I waved my hands in the air, abandoning that line of defense. “I don’t need to explain myself to you. You’re not even supposed to be here. But since you are…” I reached over and toyed with one of his short and neatly groomed dreadlocks. “You could help me out with this. Maybe get him to open up about his family and Enrico Risso? He has some issues surrounding those people and I need to know what they are.”

  Marcus grumbled something unintelligible before rolling his eyes in defeat. “I’m in, but only because someone has to keep you in line.” He then snapped his fingers in the air, grabbing Zach’s attention. “Yoo-hoo,” Marcus sang. “Sweeny Todd, come join us, sweetie.”

  I could see Zach’s cheeks ripen under all that white powder, but he came over to the oxygen station that Marcus had staked out.

  He looked at Marcus’s smiling face and then quickly looked away, becoming very absorbed in his oxygen selection. “I think I want that one,” he said, pointing to a pale orange container on the bar.

  “Sex on the Beach?” I asked. “Sure, why not.”

  Marcus gave Zach an approving nod. “Good choice. I was around your age when I tried sex on the beach for the first time, and let me tell you that sand got into all sorts of nasty places.”

  “Marcus!” I snapped. “This is how you mentor the youth?”