“If it’s that redhead.” She dropped her legs over the side of the bed, stood and closed her eyes to keep the room from spinning. “Never again.”
She took a deep breath, steadied herself, padded into the bathroom. The toilet seat was down. There was the proof. He really hadn’t been home. Bastard. She sat, peed, then at the bathroom sink she lowered her head and drank.
The water was a river in her mouth, flooding through the cracked desert of her lips and tongue. So cool. She sucked it down, animal-like, greedy. She stopped after a bit, wanting more, but she’d get sick if she continued.
She studied herself in the mirror. She slept in the nude and nude she was. So she hadn’t been so drunk she couldn’t get undressed. She put a finger to the welt on her forehead. It looked like it should hurt. She poked it. It did.
She cupped her hands under the running water, splashed some on her face. It wasn’t enough to make her feel human, so she stepped into the shower, ran the water cold, to wake.
Images from last night rushed through her mind.
Those two men had been after her. They’d recognized her in the Safeway and had been waiting for her on the beach. If it hadn’t been for those homeless men under the pier, who knows what could have happened? That Virgil was big.
She faced into the spray, drank more water. She needed a clear head. She needed to run. She shut off the shower, dried off, jumped into Levi’s and a sweatshirt. She stuffed twenty bucks into a back pocket, in case she was hungry as she jogged by the donut shop. It happened sometimes.
But once outside, she decided to jog down to the beach, where she could run full out. She started as soon as she hit the sand and she poured it on when she got to the place where those men, Horace and Virgil, had tried to trap her the night before. She glanced at the pier, thought about stopping, remembered the disappearing bottle of wine and decided against it. She took a look at the pool. The glass walls glowed orange, reflecting the rising sun. It was no threat now.
Past the pool, she saw the country and western bar. She ran to it, ran past it, through the Safeway parking lot, then the sprint home. In front of the duplex, she doubled over, hands on her knees, dripping sweat. The headache was gone. She was still thirsty, but this was an honest thirst, her body craving the water she’d lost as sweat.
She turned on the garden hose, drank, then sat on the front steps. It was Sunday, still early. The neighborhood was quiet, save for a cat across the street. She watched while it prowled under a car, looking for God knows what. Then it crossed the street, slinked under Gordon’s old Ford and all of a sudden it was out of sight.
Gordon’s car reminded her of the garage out back. Part of their rental deal with him was that they got the garage, Gordon parked out front. He didn’t seem to care. Besides, nobody in their right mind would ever think of stealing his car. What could they get? Maybe fifty bucks.
Nick stacked the old newspapers in the garage. Every other month or so he called somebody to come and collect them. Till then he kept them stacked by paper, filed by date. He said he kept them that way in case he ever wanted to go back and check a story, but Maggie knew it was because he was an obsessive organizer.
That Virgil had said something about her being in the paper. Maggie felt as if she were back in the frozen foods section. Goosebumps shivered up her arms.
The garage seemed huge without cars. Nick still had her Mustang. The newspapers were stacked up against the wall that butted up to the house. Maggie skipped over the Times. She read it faithfully. If what she was looking for was there, she’d have seen it. But she never even glanced at the Long Beach Press Telegram. Nick hardly did either. Still, it was a newspaper and as such, Nick felt he should subscribe. He was a newsman, after all.
She took the top paper off the stack, leafed through it, leaving it in a pile on the cement floor when she was finished. To heck with Nick. Thirty papers followed. She gasped when she opened the thirty-first, because the girl staring out at her from the second page had her face.
She’d half expected it. Had been hoping for it most of her life, but had given up thinking about it after she’d married Nick.
She read the caption under the photo,
This time Huntington Beach resident Margo Kenyon struck out in her petition attempt to keep convicted child molester and murderer Frankie Fujimori behind bars. Ms. Kenyon declares, Fujimori is sure to kill again.
She devoured the article, learning that Margo’s ex-husband, attorney Bruce Kenyon, had defended Fujimori seven years earlier. A month after an innocent verdict, Fujimori had raped and murdered a four-year-old child. Fujimori was declared mentally incompetent. Two years ago Margo had started a petition campaign, which gathered over a hundred thousand signatures and convinced the parole board Fujimori wasn’t ready for society. However, on his next attempt at parole, the board ignored Margo’s petition and released him.
“Margo,” Maggie whispered.
She closed her eyes and pictured her birth certificate. Box number 5. Twin, born second. She had an older sister. Dead just days after her birth, lost to the deep when the small plane her mother had supposedly taken her on had crashed into the ocean halfway between San Diego and Los Angeles. But somehow, like Maggie, her twin hadn’t been on that plane.
She sighed and flashed on the Sunday before high school graduation. She’d gone down to Huntington Beach with a bunch of friends to celebrate. They’d been playing in the sand and the surf since noon, but her fun had been dampened because she’d been worried about her best friend’s blouse. She’d borrowed it, washed it with her red sweatshirt, turning the once white blouse pink. She’d been waiting all day to tell her and just as she was about to a hunk had come up to her, kissed her on the cheek and said, “Nice suit, Margo.” Then, “See you at the dance tonight.” He took off before she’d had a chance to say anything, running down the beach with a football and a gaggle of friends.
That chance meeting was like something out of a science fiction novel, because Margo was the name of her twin sister and she was buried at the bottom of the Pacific in that plane with her mother and those Marines, somewhere between Catalina and the coast.
She’d wondered about it off and on for years. Such a strange coincidence, a boy she didn’t know calling her that. Sometimes, late at night, when she was caught in that world between sleep and not sleep, she’d imagine Margo was alive. But then she’d put it out of her mind, because it hurt so much to feel so incomplete, a sailboat set adrift with no sails, no rudder.
She wanted to cry, she was so happy. Margo was real and now. Maggie was looking at her picture and Margo had her face. She was alive. A kind of pleasure rippled through her. Maggie felt good all over.
She got up from the cool cement floor and went into the house. Straight to the living room and the phone books. She picked up the Orange County edition and found an address on Pacific Coast Highway, 913, #1310. And a phone number. Maggie picked up the phone, put it down and went for the door. Nick had her car, but she knew how the busses worked.
Still in Levi’s and sweatshirt, she caught the bus in front of the Safeway, rode it to Seal Beach, where she changed and took the Orange County Bus to a stop only a block past the Sand and Sea Condos.
She stepped off the bus to a cool morning breeze. It was 9:00 and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. It was going to be another hot day. But it was chilly now. She held her breath against the diesel fumes as the bus pulled away. The place where Margo Kenyon lived was so close. Maggie’s heart thudded as she let the breath out. She walked slowly toward the condo entrance.
“Didn’t see you go out, Ms. Kenyon,” an elderly guard said.