Pretty Is Read online

  No one is there. Or, I should say, no one answers; there’s a peculiar quality to the silence that suggests that someone is there, someone who has chosen not to speak. I think I hear breathing, ever so faintly. I think I hear something rustle. I try to discern whether the silence is male or female, hostile or—or what? Something else. Before I draw any conclusions, the silent person hangs up.

  Who could it be but Sean? How did he acquire my cell phone number? I try to consider whether I should be afraid, and of what, but realize that—reason aside—I am afraid. Fear: fescennine, furciferous, farraginous, fardel. I picture Delia’s card, tucked in my wallet; I try to imagine calling her. Could I trust her? Could she tell me anything I don’t know? I push aside the thought of calling Delia, push Sean aside, stow my fear in a little box and stash it at the very back of my mind. I have more important things to think about: the sequel, my contract, my deadline. Yesterday’s message from Amelia, wondering how the book is going.

  A little while later I settle at my computer to write. A steaming mug warms my hands. Across the street, the neighbor’s gray cat chases squirrels. Clouds hang heavy and low. All color has been washed from the world. I shift my eyes to the screen and begin typing.

  After I have pounded madly at the keyboard for an hour or so, I get up, stretch, and return to the kitchen. I rinse my mug in the sink and toss a bag of popcorn in the microwave. (One must eat.) While it pops I retrieve from my bedside table the file in which I have stashed all the newspaper clippings Sean has left in my faculty mailbox. I flip through them until I find the one I’m looking for. “Kidnapper’s Past Yields Few Clues”:

  In the weeks since the recovery of two preteen abductees from kidnapper John Whitlow’s isolated Adirondack hideaway, police have tried to piece together information about the man’s life. A hazy picture has begun to emerge of a painfully shy young man of considerable promise who, in his mid-20s, suddenly changed his name, retreated from the world, and cut all ties with family and friends. Whitlow left little trace in the years that followed until he resurfaced this month as the perpetrator of one of the most highly publicized kidnappings in recent years. Born on May 3, 1965, in Utica, New York, he was christened Randy McDougal but changed his name legally at the age of 21.

  Mr. Whitlow’s mother, Tina McDougal, is currently living in Boonville, New York, a small upstate town north of Utica, but claims that it has been a year or more since she has spoken to her only son. With her lives a young boy, two years old, a thin, solemn child with lanky brown hair. The boy, she says, is Whitlow’s son, though she has no records to prove it, and claims not to know the whereabouts of the child’s mother. He doesn’t seem to take after his father, she adds, watching the boy throw a stick for a large dog of uncertain breed.

  Though it begins as a routine enough story, the piece reveals its “human interest” leanings more blatantly with each paragraph. It’s the same old angle: how could this person become that person? How could this ordinary community, this unremarkable woman, this redbrick school, produce this man? This monster? Were there signs? His high IQ, his shyness, his obsession with books? His failure to attend the prom?

  The article has sparse facts with which to work. His neighboring Uticans aren’t chatty. The mother’s memory seems imperfect. (The article implies that she drinks and even hints at drug use, but stops short of specific assertions about her vices.) His yearbook picture is even more inscrutable than yearbook pictures generally are. One detail has always interested me: Tina McDougal also had a daughter, Zed’s sister, three years younger. She ran away to New York City at sixteen. “Too pretty for her own good,” Tina is quoted as saying. “I always knew she’d end up in trouble.” The girl—Roxanne—had never reappeared. One thing I had forgotten: “Mrs. McDougal says that her son was devastated by his sister’s disappearance. Just out of high school himself, he boarded a bus for New York with the intention of finding her. He claimed upon his return to have been unsuccessful, but his mother has doubts. ‘He didn’t talk much after that trip,’ she says. ‘But in my opinion he did find her, and whatever he found out messed him up so bad he never got over it. That’s what I think.’ She shrugs her thin shoulders. ‘But what do I know?’”

  The article does not come out and say that Roxanne became a hooker, but it invites readers to arrive at that conclusion. Carly May had asked him once if he had a sister. His anger had flared.

  Roxanne is an important piece of the puzzle, no doubt. But right now, another detail demands my attention, something to which I’ve never given much thought.

  It’s the two-year-old boy. Thin, solemn, lanky-haired. He would be—I add swiftly—about twenty.

  I forget to listen to the popcorn. The charred bag collapses when I open the microwave door. Dark smoke pours into the room. It smells vile. I toss the bag in the garbage and return to my computer, promising myself vaguely that I’ll go out later for something to eat.

  It has begun to rain. Most of the snow has melted, and now it rains almost constantly, washing away the sand and slush, along with whatever else isn’t tied down. The small fierce drops batter my window. I’ve become accustomed to working to a snare drum–like rat-a-tat-tat. Earlier this week I managed to wrench my disgruntled character from his trailer and set him on the road, but his movements still didn’t feel natural to me. I knew, deep down, that I was forcing him. It’s like trying to position a doll whose limbs are supposed to be flexible but actually have a limited range of motion; there’s only so much you can do without resorting to violence—jamming their rubbery joints out of alignment and twisting limbs in their anatomically incorrect sockets.

  At which point they tend to break.

  Now, though, something settles into place. The young man moves freely and logically through his world. He’s no longer at a loss for words. He is younger than I thought; there’s much that I’ll have to go back and change. Still, he leaves the trailer and his doting but useless grandmother. He heads off to a state university, with the help of financial aid. He’s not the brilliant student they say his father was, but he is not without potential.

  I am thinking this over when a figure comes into view on the other side of the street, carved into fragments by my many-paned window: all in black, slightly hunched over, umbrellaless. I can’t see his face, but I know. It’s Sean’s gait, his coat. He’s blurred by the rain, but I see him raise his face to my house as he passes. For a second it seems he is looking directly at me. Quickly I reassure myself that, given the distance, the rain, and the warped old glass, this isn’t possible. But he raises a hand in a possible greeting, something like a salute. I get up to boil water for tea; I’m thoroughly chilled.

  When I return to my desk he has vanished. What I mean, of course, is that he has walked away, but it feels as if he has simply disappeared—as if he could rematerialize anywhere, any time. What does he want?

  I nibble on the end of a pen, letting my eyes go out of focus as I stare out at the rain. My novel’s plot unfolds with startling momentum.

  Chloe

  The writer’s name is Stephen, and he takes me to RapScallion. This means he wants to be seen with me, which I appreciate. (Unless it means that he wants me to think that he wants to be seen with me, which would obviously be a little less gratifying.) He’s nice-looking—just a little shorter than I am, looks like he goes to the gym regularly but not obsessively, good (but not too good) hair. You never know with writers. I fear the paunchy and unwashed. Call me superficial.

  On the other hand, he went to Harvard and mentions this within the first ten minutes or so. It’s a potential strike against him.

  We decide to start with champagne, for no apparent reason, and I begin to feel festive. I’m wearing a great dress and haven’t been eating much, so I’m happy with my appearance. I see eyes wander my way as people wonder if they should recognize me. Stephen sees this, too, and it’s obvious that he likes it.

  He raises his glass and offers a toast to the success of our next projects. We clink
glasses overenthusiastically, and both burst out laughing.

  The food is great. I order whimsically and am pleased with everything. We get more champagne. Our knees bump under the table. I want to sail out into the starry night on a champagne wave and land in Stephen’s bed, wherever that is. I glow encouragingly at him.

  And then, as the waiter clears our last plates and discreetly sweeps crumbs from the tablecloth, Stephen starts quizzing me about the movie. The plot, the cast, the ending. “I can’t really talk too much about it,” I say coyly, which happens to be true. “You’ll have to wait and see it.”

  “Oh, you can tell me a little,” he says, with a big winning smile. His eyes crease ever so slightly at the corners when he smiles, making him look just a little older, a little more worldly, a little more devastating, at least if you’ve drunk a bottle of champagne on top of a predate cocktail (or two). I even let myself imagine that I see a hint of Zed in his face. His tanned hand glances against mine. I’m entranced by our picturesquely candlelit fingers resting on the white tablecloth. “Well,” I concede. “There are a few things I can tell you.”

  I give him a rough sketch of the plot. I notice after a minute or two that he’s frowning, but I tell myself maybe that’s what he looks like when he’s thinking. When I finish, though, he’s still frowning. Our knees aren’t touching. Through my sparkly champagne happiness I see dimly that I’ve made a mistake.

  “I don’t get it,” he says abruptly. “What’s the guy’s motivation? If it isn’t sexual, then what is it? And what about the girls? Why wouldn’t they try to escape earlier? I mean, it sounds like a sort of basic male fantasy, doesn’t it—falling in love with their captor? But if that’s all it is, then why the insistence on chastity? Is it just for the PG-13 rating? And the policewoman is problematic, too. Why does she identify with these girls? Why are we, as the audience, even interested in her story? I mean really, I don’t quite see the point. The plot doesn’t work for me.”

  I should brush it off. “You’ll just have to wait and see” is what I should say, lightly, while laughing. I sure as hell shouldn’t be offended—he isn’t attacking me, after all. His attack on the movie is tactless, definitely, but that’s all. I feel attacked, though. Blindsided. “I don’t think too many men would admit to that particular fantasy,” I say nastily, still smiling. “Maybe you have some personal issues I should know about?” I know, this doesn’t make an awful lot of sense, but at the moment it feels both witty and cutting. I no longer want to float into Stephen’s bed; I want to carve him up in little pieces. “Honestly, I like writers who don’t insist on spelling everything out, who leave some room for interpretation. I like movies that make you think. That show you that people are, you know, complicated.”

  “Well, I like movies that make sense,” he says, and there’s no handsome eye-crease now. “What I don’t like are scripts that disguise laziness as ambiguity. That’s a cop-out, and the worst kind of pretension.” For a long moment we look right at each other. I feel a hell of a lot more sober than I should, and I have a feeling he does, too. I see things in his eyes I hadn’t even noticed before, things that make me wonder why I’m even here. The hint of Zed vanishes. (Or maybe it doesn’t—he disapproved of me, too, after all.)

  And, maybe because my champagne brain has been reckless enough to allow Zed-thoughts to enter the equation, I make my biggest, stupidest mistake yet. What I should be doing is escaping to the ladies’ and raising an eyebrow at the waiter so that the check will arrive in my absence. Instead I open my mouth.

  “But sometimes things don’t make sense, do they?” I sound a little belligerent in my own ears. “Because, actually, it’s based on a true story. So whether you think it makes sense isn’t the point. The point is that it happened. The point is that life is fucked-up.”

  “I thought you said it was based on a novel.”

  “Well, yeah. But the novel is partly based on a true story, I happen to know.” Why the hell am I doing this?

  He rolls his eyes and gestures—pretty rudely, it seems to me—for the check. “Actually, that doesn’t surprise me in the least,” he says. A snooty note has definitely entered his voice. Harvard counts against him. Bastard. “People working with nonfictional material can be the laziest of all. They think it’s enough to say, ‘this incredible thing happened,’ without bothering to offer motives, reasons, basic explanations. They count on the material to be so shocking that you won’t notice what’s missing. That actually explains a lot about my problems with your movie. No offense.” Now he flashes the smile again, but it doesn’t work on me anymore. “I’m not saying it won’t still be a really good comeback vehicle for you.” Comeback? Vehicle? Obviously there are crazily deep insecurities at work here. It occurs to me that he hasn’t said anything very specific about his own recent work. I’ll never know, because I’m certainly not going to ask.

  We’re standing now, and he actually places his hand on the small of my back as we move toward the door. I sidestep (gracefully, I think) just enough that his arm doesn’t reach, and his hand falls back to his side. Outside, he hands his ticket to the valet. “Where to?” he asks, as if our conversation isn’t still hanging over us like a funnel cloud. “Do you want to go out? I have some friends at Plafond. Or … do you want to go to my place for a drink?” He has moved close again, and I realize suddenly that he is about to bite my ear.

  We sure as hell aren’t on ear-biting terms. “You go ahead,” I say. “I’ll just get a cab.” I raise my arm, and immediately, thank God, for once in my LA life, a cab appears. One of the valets seems to have wrangled it and it’s probably someone else’s and God knows what it will cost me, but there it is. The universe is cooperating with my drama. I leave him standing there looking confused. “Thanks for dinner,” I say breezily. “Hope you’ll enjoy the movie!” I actually blow him a kiss, overdoing it a bit.

  In the cab, though, I cry. I cry and cry, and laugh, and realize that I’m fucking lonely. The driver ignores me. It’s nothing he hasn’t seen before.

  Lois

  Sean settles into the chair across from my desk. A cloud of smoke and dampness accompanies him, as usual, although it isn’t raining for once. Dressed in his customary musty black layers, he seems to have his own private climate.

  I ask him to remove his iPod headphones. “I’m not listening to anything,” he objects.

  “It’s my rule. I can’t talk to people who are wired.”

  He yanks the buds from his ears.

  Sean was disruptive in class today—sighing theatrically, slumping back in his chair as if in pain, loudly crinkling the bag of some vile snack he was ingesting. I got the distinct impression that he hadn’t done his reading. I get the distinct impression that he has not come to my office to discuss Tristram Shandy.

  Before break, week after week I kept resolving to kick Sean out of class if he continued to make my life unpleasant. I considered reporting him. I debated whether I had more to gain or lose by exposing my past to get rid of Sean. The answer should have been obvious, but I clung to the secret that was my story. New developments have inspired me to change tack.

  As always, I battle physical revulsion in his presence. His hair badly needs washing. Acne blossoms behind the greasy veil of his bangs. I make a conscious effort to sit up straight, aware of my desire to conceal as much of myself as possible behind my wood-grain-finished fortress of a desk. At the same time, knowing what I think I now know, I also feel an unaccustomed flutter of excitement: Sean represents new possibilities. There are things I can learn from him. Under the desk my left foot taps wildly to some frantic beat of its own.

  “Well?” I finally say. He has come to see me, after all; I didn’t ask him to stop by. I must not reveal that I am, for once, glad to see him.

  “I want to know what it was like,” he says. He seems to be picking intently at a hole in his jeans. Solemn, dark, lanky? Well, yes. Among other things.

  “What what was like?” I think I know, but I want to
be sure. Could this be what he wants? Is he finally playing his hand? My heart feels skittish, uneven. I breathe slowly. I give nothing away.

  “Being kidnapped. Like, held prisoner. It was a pretty long time, wasn’t it? Everyone wondered why you two didn’t escape, or at least try. My theory is you didn’t want to. That’s what I want to hear about.”

  “Your interest in my past is inappropriate, to say the least,” I retort primly. Is there something familiar in the curve of his nostrils? I try to picture his face cleared of acne, enlivened by charm, touched by sun and time. “I don’t understand why you want to know.”

  “You’re always telling us we should be intellectually curious. Maybe this is just me being curious.”

  “You forgot the ‘intellectual’ part.” I study him while waiting for him to stop posturing and say something interesting. His clothes are secondhand, I decide. He’s affecting a sort of slacker style as a way of disguising poverty, but you can tell that this is a kid who has no money for extras. I know he lives in a ramshackle apartment complex off campus; cheaper than the dorms but seedier, too. Site of drug busts and late-night fire alarms and probably not much sleep. It occurs to me that his life has not been easy.

  He shifts in his chair, and that slight motion releases another wave of stale ashtray and musty closet. “Whatever,” he says. “I’ve done a lot of research. I guess I pretty much have what I really need already. I can always just make up the stuff I don’t know for sure, right? But it would definitely be better if I could get your side of the story.”

  I have been waiting for months for a reference to his motives; this is as close as he’s come. I am gripping my pen tightly; before I allow myself to speak, I deliberately relax each finger. “Why? What do you need it for? I am mystified, I confess.”