Josh was late even though he lived ten minutes away in congested traffic. When she opened the door, he let out a “Heeeeey, Jessa!” with the “e” hanging around awkwardly for a ride. He presented a bottle of Casamigos to her like the Christ Child, and she pushed him back onto the porch, closing the door behind them.
“I couldn’t just not bring anything.”
“This is an AA meeting, Josh.”
“Hey! Nice one!” Art flopped onto the porch with spaniel energy and arms around Josh, arms around the bottle and, seeing Jessa scowl, arms around Jessa.
“Six feet, asshole,” pushing Art away from her back into the fraternity of Josh and the tequila. “I thought I made myself perfectly clear. You guys can only sit in if you are sober.”
“I know, I know,” Josh was one of the Lilliputian men native to the Los Angeles entertainment world. In apology, he seemed even smaller. “Honestly, Jess, this was for Art for later. You guys are being so nice by inviting me, I couldn’t come empty-handed.” He hung the bottle at his side in more of a crucifix mien. “You know my place, Jess. All I have is alcohol and Hot Pockets.”
Josh had made the mistake of moving from a bachelor pad in Venice to a midcentury in Brentwood last year with “if you build it, they will come” intentions of a wife and children to follow. In that time, he became running buddies with his neighbor Farrokh, a 58-year-old Persian real estate developer who was the only other 6AM runner who could make it to Sunset; overpaid a contractor to build a mother-in-law at the back of his property for the mother-in-law he hadn’t acquired; closed The Tavern bar more times than was respectable; and cultivated a first name relationship with the deli guy at Vincente Foods…even filled a graduation card for his daughter with hundred dollar bills. Josh did not come any closer to the family life seemingly enjoyed by everyone in that neighborhood but himself. He was a misery in quarantine. Most days were spent rolling calls, his skinny legs calf-deep in the salt water pool with the tintinnabulation of school-free children in nearby yards like Manifest Destiny ringing to the Donner party.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, tucking the bottle inside a stand of peace lilies growing beside the porch. “There. Gone. Like it never happened.”
“Fine. You can stay. But you both are here on a trial basis.” She opened the door before turning back to Josh. “Also, what are you dressed for? This is like day 10 of quarantine.” She was hoping his shirt was missing buttons and that its Magnum P.I. plunge had not been intentional.
“I didn’t know Brioni had a children’s department,” Art slapped the back of Josh’s suitcoat as they went inside.
Introductions were easy, everyone had been well-acquainted over the years. Seating arrangements had been equally uncomplicated due to these parallel relationships. Cyndi, Ronaldo and Kellee (who came on a pity invite by the rest of her quarantine throuple) shared a couch as they were sharing a home. Josh posted there as well, next to his half-brother Ronaldo who had been staying with Josh in Brentwood on nights his energy was deemed oppressive by the girls. Nadine, Violet, Roxy and Tasha were spaced apart in dining room chairs. Art and Jessa shared a kilim pouf on the floor which they negotiated like a pool float. With the exception of Josh, who was dressed for a yacht, and Roxy and Tasha with their masks and gloves, the group could have been mistaken for a trendy adult slumber party.
“We were at Costco yesterday. No more free samples.”
“Trader Joe’s, too.”
“It’s a new world,” Art lamented, his tall frame spilling onto the floor. “No more Joe’s O’s and Butter Chicken in paper cups.”
“I’m worried they’re never coming back.” Ronaldo put his arm around Cyndi and they both stared at the floor as though it had sprouted single-serving gravestones.
“I don’t ever take free samples.” Tasha, silent in past meetings, spoke under her mask.
“Who doesn’t like a free sample?” Art heckled.
“You wouldn’t if you knew what I knew.” Tasha had important, cheerless black eyes that when segregated by the mask from the softer features of her Madame Alexander face, added a sinister bend to her words. “Jessa, were you serious about us telling stories this meeting?”
“Yes.” Jessa had been waiting for someone to take the reins but didn’t think it would be Tasha. She was General Counsel at Paramount and customarily tightlipped, but she had spent too much of her early career in the L.A. County D.A.’s office to be dull. Jessa inferred her time in that office was the direct cause of her addiction.
“This is an old story. One I’ve never told before but maybe you heard about it on the news. We were working with a detective—I think her name was Jennie Holtz—to bring charges against a rapist in the Sawtelle neighborhood. I’ve been thinking a lot about this case lately, again in a position of identifying a threat but not knowing how to stop it. You mentioning samples, too.” The room leaned in. Tasha placed her hands on her lap as though van der Weyden might pick up his brush. “Like I said, it was a long time ago…”
It was hard to imagine him as a diabetic, that after weeks of surveillance he would have any vulnerability so curious, that after years of gorging himself on the sweetest parts of those girls he would have a fiber in him subject to temperance.
She had no idea where he had been keeping his used needles. He picked them up from the pharmacy but they never made it into the trash. In fact, nothing made it into Milton Carruthers’ trash. She knew because every Wednesday at 6AM he would roll all three containers (recycling, mixed and yard waste) to the curb and by 6:10AM Jennie was flipping their lids to find them empty and herself a weekly victim of his shell game.
She knew that Milton knew he was being watched from the first time she brought him in. He walked into the precinct with a tuna fish sandwich wrapped in wax paper which he methodically ate while she questioned him. The metallic smell of the fish, itself a kind of violence, filled the room as he repeated succinct accounts of an existence lived in proximity to the victims. None of it bothered Jennie, not the chewing, the lying, the crumbs and slick mayo he licked off the wrapper then his lips. She knew with each bite more of his DNA was being left on that wrapper… that’s right, keep licking your fingers and touching that wrapper, you dirty, filthy man. There was a match waiting in the lab, a swab from a later victim. Like all things repeated for gratification, more pleasure had come at the cost of control.
“You are free to go,” she said when Milton finished eating. She pushed a nearby trash bin with her foot next to the table. He wiped his mouth with the wax paper and folded it into a small square which he tucked into the pocket of his uniform. She watched in horror. He smiled, knocked twice on the table and left.
Since then, he had become his own tidy biosphere. Everything he touched became a part of him, absorbed into knapsacks and pockets. He wore gloves in 90-degree heat. His hair, once the copper-grey of wolf haunches, was now completely shaved. He walked to and from his janitorial job with the serrated sunshine glistening off his head. He seemed to carry with him an endless supply of tissues for wiping down keypads and door handles that were immediately recycled back into his being like groundwater.
She followed him for weeks in a car filled with empty evidence bags and Del Taco wrappers. Her cat hated her and the victims did too, as she had made promises she never would have considered had he not been so tantalizing close. When she saw him shooting insulin after another of his infernal sandwiches, she thought it was only a matter of time. He was a walking pin cushion. Surely he would drop a needle, prick too deeply, all she needed was a few drops, a cluster of cells abandoned and clinging to itself like those girls.
“Another day with no rain,” she would tell her lieutenant when she checked in, usually from her car parked with a view of Milton’s house, underneath the jacaranda tree that was forever sloughing its purple buds onto her windshield. There was no more leash to give her. She would have to come in soon and wait with the Brahmin for another victim or some new tip worthy of a warrant.
Spring was here with its layered city fragrance, fresh asphalt from a newly vital street crew and yellow smells from plants intent on survival. Milton had taken a Sunday afternoon to hang several hummingbird feeders from hooks on the eaves of his porch. He filled them with red sugar water, and she watched the tiny birds edge closer to the feeding tubes after he went inside. Their needle beaks slipped in and out of the tubes that branched from the feeders like open thermometers. She whispered to the birds to leave, knowing that he was on the other side of a window watching them too. Often there were scuffles and two hummingbirds would pointillize into flinty green mid-air. It was impossible to tell if they were fighting or making love.
The thing about a Spring afternoon is that it makes one crave something sweet. For Jennie, a cherry Dum-Dum lollipop, the kind they give a kid after a shot, would have to do. It had been fused to a pack of Nicorette in her glove compartment and still had a quarter of the wrapper on when she put it into her mouth. Milton’s tastes were more discerning. He got into his car and she followed him at a distance to the Menchie’s on Sawtelle.
The thing about Menchie’s is that no one goes there for the sugar-free frozen yogurt. It’s like going to a bakery for gluten-free bread or going anywhere for gluten-free anything. As a consequence, the self-serve dispensers for the sugar-free flavors are always full. The amount of pressure it takes to dispense more desirable flavors is not necessary for these yogurts, particularly the sugar-free mint-chip as it is, by its very nature, a flavor twice-removed from what a normal human would want to consume. But Milton was not normal. His body processed sugar as perversely as his brain processed desire.
The girl behind the counter lost her smile when she saw his gloved hand grab a stack of the sample cups. It must have been agony to pass all the flavors of authenticity and sugar before reaching the two sugar-free flavors on offer at the end of the row of dispensers. Jennie enjoyed watching this perp walk from her car, the lollipop staining her mouth red.
Milton was greedy. Jennie knew this from his victims, their frequent and feral penetrations. It is difficult for greed to reach its full potential when there are minimal options. It becomes frustrating, ungainly even for a greedy person to be comfortable in such a setting. Milton pulled hard on the lever for sugar-free mint-chip. Almost as eager to be rid of it as Menchie’s, the dispenser exploded a formless gob of the yogurt past the rim of the cup and down Milton’s gloved hand.
Jennie may have missed it had she not grown accustomed to watching the hummingbirds’ staccato feedings earlier. It was that quick. He licked the side of his hand and the toppling mass. Yet she swore she saw his tongue connect with the side of the paper cup. In these two licks, Milton firmly decided that sugar-free mint-chip was not the flavor for him. His face puckered and he tossed the cup in the trash with an air of violation. A sage Menchie’s employee had positioned a trashcan near the flavor for this purpose. There was a moment when she could tell he was considering going into the trash after it. Then he seemed to satisfy himself that it had been just the glove and the top of the yogurt he licked. Not to worry, it would be melted into a chiaroscuro of DNA in the trashcan. He took another cup from his stack and pulled the sugar-free Dutch chocolate lever with restraint. It shot out with the same velocity but Milton was a quick study. Jennie knew this about him. He flicked the lever back before the yogurt could capsize. It was unsettling to watch a rapist eat with a tiny spoon but he seemed to enjoy the Dutch chocolate. He went back for more forelock-shaped samples of the stuff until his pockets were filled with the used cups that he would not make the same mistake of throwing away. He walked toward the counter where the girl perked up for a legitimate order. Instead, he smiled, knocked twice on the counter and left.
Seconds after he drove away, Jennie burst into the Menchie’s with an evidence bag wearing a similar pair of baby blue rubber gloves. The girl behind the counter made a face that said this would be her last day. Jennie flashed her badge as explanation before heading to the trashcan. The sample cup had stopped short of the bottom. It clung to the side of the bag like pollen to the air outside from those poor plants who, through no fault of their own, found themselves in the care of the desert.
**This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.**
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