Magonis nods, not listening, "But, full disclosure here, we found no evidence of a.n.a.l penetration, so I have to a.s.sume your recounting of the event for your friend allowed for a gentlemanly degree of exaggeration, if its true at all." Then he frowns. "Is there really a bar where young women strip underwater?"

Jay, completely confused, but intimidated, and embarra.s.sed, and angry, stands up. "You know what? Thats enough. Were done." He licks dry lips and wont look at Magonis, who quietly closes the day planner. No expression.

"We can be," Magonis says. "Done for today, if youll just confirm: that your girlfriend-sorry, fiancee-Stacy was away on business, that you asked this flower girl out on a date, and that you went home with her-or went somewhere, it would be really useful if you could remember that, but oh well-and then that you, the two of you, you and the flower girl, had s.e.xual relations. Yes, no?"

"She asked me out," Jay says finally, as if that distinction makes all the difference.

Another long silence.

"Im not here to judge you," Magonis says.

"Can you just tell me," Jay protests, irritably, "what the h.e.l.l does this have to do with-?"

Magonis talks over him. "We dont know. We dont know. But." He hesitates. "What would you say if I told you the flower girl was murdered early that next morning."

Jays not sure he heard this right.

Reaching on the desk, Magonis finds and flips an envelope at a dumbstruck Jay.

"Maybe executed. Could have been a professional job. Raising, I dont know, all kinds of questions. As you can imagine."

Jay stares at the older man. There is that uncomfortable stillness that follows truth and recognition, the men measuring each other, one for signs of deception, the other for the tells of intention. Slowly, Jay opens the envelope and pulls out the collection of crime photos he was shown at the hospital among Publics papers: unforgiving forensic pictures of a lurid murder scene: the flower girl floats chalk white in a bathtub of pink water, topless, b.r.e.a.s.t.s slack, hair in her eyes, slurred black mascara and filmy underwear, legs colt awkward, arms flung out, shot twice through her chest.

"I think you told the marshals you didnt know the woman in this photograph."

Jays thoughts clot, thick. "I didnt . . . I didnt make the connection-"

"-Or you lied."

"What?"

"Lied. Made an intentionally false statement."

"Why would I do that?"

"I cant answer for you."

Truly shaken: "What are you saying?"

"Im saying whatever comes into my mind, Jay. Speculation. But then. I wasnt there."

Jay blinks.

"Done? No." Magonis sucks his electric cigarette and shakes his head. "Weve barely scratched the surface."

Hes right.

And yes, Jay remembers the flower shop, corner of Melrose and Crescent Heights, cramped, dark, even in midday, fragrant, the special on a dozen roses from the refrigerated gla.s.s case, the pools of ceiling pin lights, the exotic tropicals, the potted palms.

He remembers the salesgirl writing, she was left-handed and had that weird lobster-claw way of holding the fountain pen to keep her hand out of the ink. Her letters were looped and forward-leaning.

"I have this second job," she told him. "I work nights. But." She looked up. "We close at two . . ."

She handed him a slip of paper with the address of a Glendale strip club where bright light strobed across Jay as he came in, pushing past the thick-waisted underage frat boys clotted around the bouncer at the door trying to convince him they were twenty-one.

When they had adjusted to the darkness, Jays eyes lasered to the luminous cylindrical water tank that dominated the middle of the club, glowing like a lava lamp, a naked mermaid curling, languid, swirling bubbles like free electrons and slowly stripping inside.

Not the flower girl.

No, Jay found his flower girl behind the bar in a tight black strip-club T-shirt, pouring drinks; she smiled when she saw him.

He remembers how, later, he and the girl spilled out, drunk, laughing, into an empty parking lot, pale colored lights of the bar slowly flickering and dying as the place closed down and Jay swung her up into his arms and ran with her, legs aching, across the empty street, to the entrance of an apartment building where the lobby was tile and carved moldings and Deco teardrop hanging lights and an elevator cage waiting, the rattle of its gate, the hand-lever control that rotated and the cables hummed and the car rose and ribbons of darkness looped across awkward groping, and the girl had her blouse open, some kind of lacy black bra, the red snake tattoo-and her fingers curled through the latticework of the rising car- And now this unremarkable Zane Grey Building, office number 204, in which Jay looks at his hands. Magonis waits, his right eye wandering, aimless, as if losing interest.

"Look, its not what you think. I didnt, we . . . nothing happened. Okay? It was one time, I told a lot of stories, they were bulls.h.i.t. No s.e.x, we just . . ."

-They stopped, he remembers, outside apartment 3H. Didnt they? Didnt he lean back against the wall, drunk, blissful, the hallway and the whole world coruscating, and didnt she smell faintly of jasmine, Makers Mark and vermouth, and didnt he let the girl mold herself against him, warm and fecund; didnt Jay brush tears from mascara-streaked eyes as she angled her head and kissed his hand, his neck, his- "-I didnt know her name. I never asked," Jay admits, senseless.

Magonis quietly closes the planner. Switches his bogus cigarette off. No expression on his face except for those crazy eyes.

10

.

OR WAS THE HALLWAY COMPLETELY DARK?.

Or was the kiss just a brush of lips, chaste, regretful?

Or did she fumble for her keys? Sly-sliding wistfully out from the cage of his arms along the textured wall to the deadbolt, and then opened it, she slipped inside, click of a wall switch, light spilling out as she glanced one last time back at Jay as he turned to go. Dark figures swarmed her as the door closed-he never saw them-shadows and shapes, her swift startled intake of breath, the scuffling feet on the hardwood floor.

Or was everything under water?

Harsh overhead light of the bathroom, tub filled with pink, her wide, frightened eyes as she toppled backward toward the roiling surface, filling, and a gun, aimed at her chest, finger thick on the trigger- -and the elevators byzantine prison.

Ascending out of darkness, breaking the surface of water-blades of light cutting Jay into pieces with moving lattice shadows. He gasps for air. Then finds darkness again, above, as the elevator rises rises rises and everything goes black.

He woke confused.

Came awake in a car not his, empty downtown parking lot, framed in the fork of two elevated freeways gridlocked with morning traffic. Leaden roar of the essentially motionless cars. Shimmer of heat waves, light glinting off gla.s.s and chrome, dawn crawling over east L.A., the sun an insult, the air heavy with the brown sick- "She wants you to help her with some clouds."

Surfacing from a fitful nap to the inverted face of Helen: feline enhancements resulting from face-painting at an after-school birthday party.

This upside-down cat Helen peers quizzically at Jay sprawled on his sofa, stirring fully clothed and clammy from angry, troubling daydreams.

"She what?"

"Clouds," Ginger says, unseen, calling out to him from the dining room: "For a school play."

Jay sits up, groggy. Helen just stares at him like Magonis does, but both her eyes work fine. Its like she can see right into him. Not through him; into him.

"Theyre doing a musical," Ginger elaborates.

"With first-graders?"

"And Helen is making props." Squeak of wooden chair in the dining room. Gingers ignoring his question.

Jay shakes the cobwebs out of his head. Not convinced this isnt more dreaming. "What musical?"

"The Pied Piper."

"Guy with the rats."

"Roughly," Ginger says. Shes come to the archway to check on Jay and her daughter, who hasnt moved.

"I didnt know there was a musical."

"There is now."

"Look," Jay begins, "no offense, but Im not really familiar with-"

Ginger explains that one of the teachers wrote it. Book and lyrics. Jay wants to make a snarky observation about grade-school teachers and musical theater, but doesnt even know where to start. Ginger wonders if "ambitious" is the word he was looking for?

"Well-or f.u.c.king impossibly grim, excuse my French."

"Its German, actually. Sixteenth century. And theres a suitably happy ending in this telling."

She surprises him with this comment. Slowly, their more sustained conversations since Helens night terrors have been filled with similar surprises. A pa.s.sion for Korean barbecue. A superst.i.tion involving frogs. Jay has grown so accustomed to Stacys easy two-dimensionality, Gingers raveled, mercurial presence is alternately scary and exhilarating. Sometimes both.

The sum of this-Ginger-the puzzle of Helens willful silence, the craziness of his ongoing internment, and the stress of his sessions with Magonis, is that he has never felt so alive.

Again, Jay starts to say something, but Gingers eyes tell him to shut up, shifting discreetly to Helen and back. Apparently, in another life, she explains, in language she hopes Helen cant follow, the author had Broadway ambitions. But some combination of crystal meth, bad boyfriend, forced prost.i.tution, and involuntary manslaughter has resulted in her being available here on Catalina to share her talents with the children.

Jay, translating: "Shes in the program."

Ginger reminds him that theyre not allowed to ask.

"How many people on this island do you think are-"

Ginger cuts him off, repeating that theyre not allowed to ask. "What difference does it make?" she adds. Then shifts gears, upbeat, "Parents are encouraged to get involved."

Jay decides that its not worth taking the position that this invitation to parents does not, technically, apply to him. Its ungenerous and, in truth, hes interested. "I dont remember clouds in the Pied Piper of Hamelin," he says instead.

"Are you kidding?" Ginger smiles slightly. "Clouds are everywhere," she says. "Youll see."

Clouds.

Clouds, barely moving, in a ghostly blue sky.

Wickedly hungover, Jay leaned toward the windshield, looked out and up, between the curling fat ribbons of elevated concrete freeway, squinting against the gauzy glare of light- "What?"

"I said the plays a virtual cloud convention," Ginger says. "Youre not listening to me."

"No, I am. Its just . . . with Magonis, he gets me in these memory spirals, and . . ."

Clouds.

". . . there was this girl."

Ginger: "Theres always a girl."

Jay shakes his head. "I thought I had dreamed her."

Ribbons of darkness looped across awkward groping, the girl had her blouse open, red snake, lacy black bra-Jays lips skated across the sweep of her shoulder, her fingers curled through the latticework of the rising elevator cage and the girls eyes fluttered and her breath sweet, hot, thick with Kentucky bourbon.

"Tell me." Her voice is too soft, all the edges rounded off. He doesnt trust it.

"I mean, I really cant be sure if she was . . . I might have been dreaming. Its all a mash-up."

"Of what?"

Of Jay, in the car, empty parking lot, hungover, dead yellow sun spliced through the dirty windshield making his eyes hurt, wondering where the h.e.l.l he was.

He says, "And then I . . . you know-"

Jay and Ginger, staring at each other. Aware that Helens eyes are on them from where shes playing on the floor.

"-woke up," Jay says.

Jay leaned toward the windshield. Looked out. Up. Squinting against the glare of the light at the- "And then what?"

-Clouds.

Jay smiles at her, sheepish. "Clouds," he says. "Everywhere."

Raindrops on noses and whispers on kittens . . .

"Isnt it whiskers? Whiskers."

So here is Jay in the Catalina Elementary School cafeteria, carving a huge fluffy cloud from corrugated cardboard, while Helen, close enough to be his shadow, uses pale blue paint to outline a cut cloud shes already slathered with white.

One of her cla.s.smates is crooning her audition piece, high, slightly flat: . . . Pink salmon cabbages melt into string these are two-oo of my FA-VOR-IT thingz!

Night, its cold, a stiff sea wind rattles the windows. In the far corner, near a freshly built plywood platform stage, boys and mostly girls audition nervously for a couple of sleepy teachers. A chunky woman with hair splayed by a scrunchie plays accompaniment on an upright piano, eyes closed, mouthing the proper lyrics. Three brawny dads with power tools study the new stage and murmur gravely. Verse mangling continues unabated, as Jay, all casual, makes conversation with his pretend daughter, the selective mute: "How come you arent trying out for a part in the play?"