Hidden Bodies by Caroline Kepnes
He kicks and he is trapped and he is still correcting his fucking shirt when it gets stuck, still self-conscious about his appearance, still convinced that his appearance matters. Fucking Angelenos. I need a laugh. A break. I kick back and scroll through his Rolodex and I flip over Efron, Zac. I smile. He hits the glass.
“Okay, Robin,” I begin. Robin, not Officer. “I want to know, when you pulled Zac Efron over because his left rear tire looked flat, did you seriously choose to do that because you thought you guys look enough alike that you could play his father in a movie?”
He does not nod this time. He does not yell obscenities. And maybe I should have started with a different celebrity, maybe Unknown, Rihanna (driving without a seat belt) or Nicholson, Jack (flickering headlight). Then, I might have gotten to hear the details behind Robin Fincher’s life of celebrity stalking. But there’s so much I’ll never know because Robin Fincher is so angry at me, the person holding the Rolodex with all the celebrities he wanted so badly to know, so angry at himself, that he becomes a bull. He becomes a zombie. You can see what brains he had evaporate as his eyes shine. His skin is raw, red. He runs headlong into the glass, like a football player whose brain is already gone. He spatters against the walls and falls back, dead.
IT turns out that I have a talent for landscape design. Someday, when Love and I have a place together, I’ll oversee the yard. Sure, we’ll have workers doing a lot of it, and maybe even a professional designer, but I’ll have the final say. I am good at this, at knowing what belongs where. I never would have known this if I had stayed in New York. You don’t really get to go to the park and relocate a tree. You don’t get to take nature into your hands when you live in concrete. But I did great today. I took that fucking cactus that didn’t belong out front and I brought it in the back to the Zen garden. I dug a hole. I went deep. I sweated. I liked it. I miss work. And digging a hole for Fincher doesn’t make me feel the way digging a hole for Beck did. He never broke my heart. He was just a bad cop.
I finish and I return inside to the cool air in the panic studio. I drag Fincher’s body outside and toss him into this hole and I am sweating so much now. I bury him, his Rolodex too, both of them so deep, deeper than Beck. And then the fun part. I plant the cactus above Fincher and his Rolodex. The cactus belongs here. It works here and unifies the space, establishes it somehow, more green, less brown. It’s the right size for this garden and there are other cactuses nearby, so it doesn’t look so lonely and idiotic anymore. It doesn’t stand out the way it did in front.
I drink water and look around this yard and at this cactus, with fat pads and its proud, confident stance. I like it. I swear the thing is even smiling at me. I think it knows that I brought it home. I give it one last look and turn to go. I have so much to do. I have to clean up the mess Fincher made when he killed himself. I have to get back to Love and act like a guy who went for a run. And I will do all this and I will do it soon, but I think it’s important to give yourself time and space to celebrate the work you do.
I think that’s why people in LA fall apart, why they get so needy, so desperate for validation, for their cars, for their body parts, for their talents. They forgot that the sweetest thing in life is to be alone, as you were born, as you will die, soaking in the sun, knowing that you put the cactus in the right place, that you don’t need someone to come along and compliment your work, that someone who did that would, in fact, just be getting in the way. I am at peace here. Fincher is too.
39
THE rest of Cabo passes in a blur of tequila and boat rides and waiting for news from Forty’s agent, and soon we are back in the States but I am still in foreign territory: Love’s home. I’ve never been but it’s like I’ve lived here all my life. It’s new and old in all the right places, with customized red appliances and lush, gargantuan part-leather, part-fur sofas. It’s just where you want to be when you fly back to America after burying a dead cop, unlike my apartment, which is so dated and tarnished.
It sucks to know that Dez sold me out, but then, a friendly neighborhood drug dealer is, at the end of the day, a drug dealer, out for himself. I can’t even hate him for it. I’m just happy to be in Love’s home instead of mine. I could sit here for hours, just looking at her same old Instagram photos: “Love in an Elevator,” “I Just Called to Say I Love You.”
She smiles. “I like this one because of the old school curly blue phone cord.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Old school.”
She says no more pictures. She’s tired of her face. I obey her wish and toss my phone on another part of this voluminous sectional. Oh, to breathe, to know that I did it. I got rid of Fincher.
Love leaps off the couch. “Come on,” she says. “I want you to see everywhere.”
And I do want to see everywhere, I want to sit everywhere. This is a dream house with neon signs like the ones in the Pantry. Love has a playroom with board games and a PlayStation and a karaoke machine and a stage, instruments flung about. The neon sign here says SEX IS BETTER WHEN YOU’RE IN LOVE and she says every room has a sign. The kitchen is MADE WITH LOVE and the dining room is LET LOVE RULE and her bedroom door is closed and the neon above the frame reads AND IN THE END . . . Then she opens the door and her bedroom is the perfect hybrid of our intimate squeaky cell in Palm Springs and the too-big luxury of Cabo and the oceanfront seasonal breeze of Malibu.
Love flops onto her bed and I look at the art above it, John Lennon’s lyrics in neon, the ones he famously misquotes from Paul McCartney.
It is a miracle that she is not a vapid nitwit and this is the rest of my life, under the covers, where we could be in a shitty rat-infested walk-up in Murray Hill or anywhere. It doesn’t matter. We found love and then out of nowhere, the lights go out. Homeinvasionearthquakeendofworld. But then music blasts and Love grabs my hands. “Surprise!”
It’s my song, my Pitch Perfect pool mash-up, and she remembered when I mentioned this way back when we first met, in her Tesla, that first ride. When you are in love you listen. Strobe lights come up and Love starts running and she is tearing off her top and she is slipping out of her skirt and she is unsnapping her bra and she is opening a sliding door onto the patio and she is naked and she is running into the pool and I am naked, following her. Splash. Skinny-dipping, making the pool our own. I am inside of Love in her pool and my song bleeds into her song, bleeds back into her song, and this is perfect and there is nothing but our songs and our bodies and our water and our future and the lemon trees, the orange trees. We fuck and we talk, our songs are on a loop, our life is on a loop, and suddenly my favorite word in the English language: We .
Love has plans for us. We’re going to go to Chateau—she is dying for those truffle fries—and we are going to watch Pitch Perfect—she hasn’t seen it in a while—and we are going to go to my apartment and get my things, assuming it’s not too much too fast.
I kiss her. “God, no.”
Then there is a loud sound in the house; the pop of a bottle of Veuve. Forty. Love calls out to him and he doesn’t answer and then he comes running, fat feet padding, and he cannonballs into our pool and he doesn’t belong here.
Love squeals. He emerges from the water.
“Forty, this isn’t really the best time,” I say, looking at my naked girlfriend, who elegantly swims to the stairs and reaches for her bikini and covers herself with the ease of a Bond girl. I can do no such thing. My shorts are far away, on a fucking chaise.
Forty flops like a sea lion and Love looks at me and I shrug. He swims to the other side of the pool and picks up a waterproof remote control and now a projection screen begins to open on the far wall. I look at Love. “We watch movies here,” she says.
Forty fumbles with the remote. I think he’s on a fair amount of cocaine. His fingers jitter. But he is able to find his destination: Deadline.com
And there, on the front page, on the giant screen, a headline:
FORTY SELLS TWO: MEGAN ELLISON’S ANNAPURNA TO PRODUCE TWO ORIGIN
I rub water out of my eyes and force myself to stay calm. It’s just a headline. A mistake. That’s all. We’ll call the paper or the website or whatever the fuck it is and they’ll change the headline, put my name in it.
I motion for the remote and he tosses it to me. I refresh the page, because maybe Forty already took care of that. Maybe he thinks they already fixed things, got my name in there. The remote is slow. The world is fast, loud. Love and Forty scream and splash each other and I can’t be in this fucking pool waiting right now and my stomach is whirling and I get out of the pool and I streak across the Spanish tile floor and grab my shorts and get into them. I get my phone and I drip on it and I have to protect it. I shiver. My nipples are hard. I turn away from Love and Forty and I go to Deadline but it’s the same shit and then the article itself loads and it gets worse. The article reports that both scripts are written by Forty Quinn and there is no mention of brilliant newcomer Joe Goldberg anywhere. I read the first paragraph over and over, as if my name might be buried in there in some sort of cryptogram Da Vinci Code bullshit but no. I scroll down and scan the screen for the words Joe and Goldberg but again, no. I am breathing fast, like I’m running, like I’m fucking and I’m fucked. He stole my scripts and fucked me.
“Joe?” It’s Love, my girlfriend, the one whose twin brother fucked me. He fucked me. I clutch the phone.
I turn back around. Love is on the deck, squeezing her hair. Forty is still in the pool, treading water. I want a harpoon. I want to end him. Love clears her throat. At some point in the last thirty-five seconds, she put on a hooded bathrobe and picked up her iPad.
“Go on, sister girl,” Forty says. He sucks Veuve out of the bottle. “Let me hear it. Come on, Lovey.”
“And I quote,” she begins. “‘Megan Ellison tells Deadline that she has discovered a major talent in Quinn and plans to fast track The Third Twin and The Mess and . . .’” Love squeals. “‘The bidding war, which lasted all summer—’” Love balks. She stares at Forty. He laughs.
“You always think the worst of me,” he says.
“Every time you disappeared I assumed you were holed up at the Ritz,” she says.
Forty laughs. “Well, not every time, but sometimes women can prove to be very inspirational.”
Love reads to us about the hot property and summarizes the comments. People are saying that Barry Stein is a fool; he’s washed up. He could have had these scripts early on but he has no eye for talent anymore. Not that anyone would ever choose to team up with Stein over Megan Ellison. Megan Ellison is the best and they’re saying Forty Quinn is the best and apparently there’s a murder scene in the desert that will make you see the world in a whole new way and Forty Quinn has been pitching for years and it’s one of those situations where talent and hard work and perseverance pay off and you can’t make it in Hollywood without all three and I am rubbing my eyes again and they sting.
Love strokes my head. “Are you okay?”
“The chlorine hit me hard,” I say.
“It’s a saltwater pool,” she says. She kisses my head. “Maybe you should go inside and wash up?”
All I want is to get away from Forty but I know what I have to do first. I have to put on a fucking show. I have to stand up and walk over to the pool and I have to extend a hand to him. I have to shake his damn, wrinkled hand.
“Congrats, my man.”
“Thanks, Old Sport,” he says, and tears off his sunglasses. “The best news is, this is only the beginning.” I think he winks. I don’t know. Maybe that’s his resting face and I never noticed it. I blame my aspirations, the ones I fed every time I sat down at Intelligentsia to write. Fucking idiot I am. I am so much better than this. I should have spent my summer writing a book and Forty lowers his voice. “Megan says we have a big future together. Huge.”
The pronouns are discombobulated. We as in he and Megan. I am not in the we even though their we could not exist without me. ME. Megan Ellison. My skin crawls. “That’s awesome,” I manage. “You did it.”
He nods. Slow. “Yes,” he says. “I fucking did it.”
Love squeals. “You guys, it’s on Variety now!”
The news is everywhere and I am nowhere and Love doesn’t know it but she is celebrating my demise. I go inside but I don’t go to one of the seven bathrooms to wash up. No. I go to Forty’s knapsack where I find his iPad and pull up his Gmail. I read the e-mails, so many e-mails, between Forty and his agent, this dumb fucker who thinks Forty grew into his voice. I don’t know what you did this summer, but whatever it is, it worked. Well done, 40. Here’s to 40 more.
And there are more e-mails, here’s one from Barry Stein. He wants to know when Forty became so fucking funny yet also so goddamn original, are people saying Tarantino? This feels like Tarantino and that compliment is mine. I wrote these scripts and here’s one, someone at CAA, someone who wants to know how he came up with this CAGE! TRAPPING THAT GIRL IN THE CAGE AFTER THAT BEACHY WEEKEND, TO GO FROM THE BEACH TO THE CAGE. FUCKING AMAZING FUNNY TWISTED SHIT MISTER MAN YOU ARE GOD. HOLY FUCK ALSO CAN WE GET BACK TO THE THIRD TWIN? BECAUSE HOW DOES YOUR BRAIN GO THERE AND HERE?
Outside, you can see that Forty has drunk his own Kool-Aid and crossed over to the dark side. He believes it, all of it, he brainwashed himself with compliments and coke, hookers and agents. And he didn’t even come up with the fucking title—Captain Dave did. Outside, Love gets all hoppy and bouncy when “Love Is a Battlefield” begins to play and she is correct. This is war.
I go upstairs and step into Love’s giant shower. I have to believe in myself. I will fix this. I try to have my own celebration. People said those things about me even if they think they were saying those things about Forty. But then I think of the way my neck ached, the way I wrote at Intelligentsia and suffered through those other people around me, the motherfuckers with MacBook attitudes and loud voices—So I just had a meeting about directing that McDonald’s commercial and I’m thinking I might just do it—and it was me slaving, rushing like a mad man to my PO Box to keep up my cover, the bookselling business that Forty suggested as a way to allay suspicions of my being a gold digger. The door opens. It’s Love.
“Hey,” she says. “Got room for me?”
I nod and all this time, I was concerned about the wrong man. I wasted my time worrying about Milo when I should have been keeping eyes on Forty. Milo was never a threat. He loves Love and she doesn’t love him back and most of the time in life, I’m starting to realize, love is not the problem. It’s the people like Forty, like Amy, like Beck, the people who are loveless. And it’s possible to know this right away. Forty labeled me Old Sport because he didn’t want me to have a name. It is possible to know people. They show you who they are. You just have to be looking.
Love says if I still want to be a writer, Forty could give me pointers and I love her too much to tell her the truth. They were in the womb together. They remember the ’80s together. They were born together and they will take it to the grave together.
Just the same, I step out of the shower. I text Forty: We need to talk.
40
FORTY never wrote back, not just to me. He didn’t write back to Love or his mother or his father or Milo. He fell off the face of the fucking earth, which is odd behavior for someone who just scored a two-picture deal. His absence is a wrecking ball and Love is a tired, brittle, worried mess and this is what I cannot allow. I can’t let him do this to her, to us. He can steal all my scripts. Fine. But he can’t torture Love. She knew right away what he was up to. Four days ago, eight hours after I texted him, she made a declaration: “I’m calling it,” she said. “He’s not sick. He didn’t break his phone. He’s on a bender.”
Love’s parents came over, worried, pacing. Are we sure he isn’t in Malibu? What about that loft downtown he bought a while back? Dottie is such a mother. She didn’t want to think it was a bender. “I’m sure he’s off celebrating,” she insisted. “Don’t jump to the
“Celebrating with who?” Love asked. “Mom, I won’t jump to conclusions but please don’t go into denial already.”
Ray told Love not to get so worked up. “He’s thirty-five years old,” he said. “He’s not a baby.”
They left and I tried to make Love feel better but it was impossible. “I hate the way they go into denial,” she said. “He’s my twin and I know when something’s wrong. He goes on benders.”
Love texted his dealer, Slim, but the text bounced back. She threw her phone down. “Fucking Forty,” she snapped. “Of course his fucking drug dealer has a new fucking number. That’s what they do! They’re drug dealers.”
That was four days ago and Forty is officially on a bender. He hasn’t answered calls or texts or e-mails and he is an even bigger asshole than I realized.
“I miss him so much I feel crazy,” she says when we wake up. “I literally feel like I’m going crazy.”
“Me too,” I say, but she blows up at me. She’s in a terrible mood, worse every day, and whatever I say is wrong. And she doesn’t know that he fucked me over and I have to sit in this house and pretend to care about him, pretend that I’m not sitting here in shock.
There’s a knock on the door.
“Babies?” It’s Love’s mom. Again. Because this is how it is now. They show up in the morning and they’re here puttering around all day, all night. “Are you decent?”
“Yes!” Love shouts, with no regard for my morning wood.
Dottie comes into the room and flops onto the bed. “Did I not love him enough? You know, your daddy and I found out about his big deal from the trades.”
Every day we go over the events. I have to listen to the same fucking conversation, with Love assuring her mother that she did most certainly love them enough. I’ve grown too familiar with Love’s mother’s habits, the way she nervously twists her rings around her fingers, the way she brings a different purse every day even though all we do is sit in the house and speculate. I picture her at home, in Bel Air, moving all her pills and credit cards and blotting papers and lipsticks from one purse into another.