And Now She's Gone(3)
Natalie Dixon had also longed for a new life and hadn’t wanted to be found. Guilt had gnawed at her spirit, Gray recalled, and that prickly sensation of millions of eyes had pecked at poor Natalie Dixon, and she always worried that the wrong pair would pick her from the crowd.
“Two, three days, tops,” Gray said. “That’s Nick’s estimation.”
“I would say use sex appeal to help you,” Jennifer said, eyes on her coral-painted fingernails, “but that won’t work. Fortunately, you have a great personality. You can talk about books and … and … movies and … politics. Oh, and comic books. Improvise. Make shit up.”
Gray cocked an eyebrow. “I’m good at making shit up.”
“She’s better than you at that, Jen,” Zadie said.
“Doubt it,” Jennifer sang, with a twisted grin. “I’m a supreme liar—Oh!” She pointed at Gray. “Think I’m a bitch now? Skip Sam Jose’s tonight and see how evil I’ll be tomorrow morning. I can’t do Clarissa alone.”
Zadie rolled her eyes. “That girl does nothing but yak, yak, yak.”
“I’ll let you know about tonight,” Gray said.
Jennifer slapped Gray’s desktop. “Nuh-uh. I’ve dated enough black men to know that ‘I’ll let you know’ means ‘I’m not showing up.’”
Gray laughed.
“You’ll see your ex-marine,” Jennifer sang.
“Former marine,” Gray corrected.
Hank Wexler was the new owner of Sam Jose’s. Two weeks ago, the square-jawed jarhead with blue eyes and thick salt-and-pepper hair had claimed that the blue-inked Hebrew letters tattooed on his left forearm were Gray’s name. Back then, he didn’t even know her name, not that him not knowing had kept Gray from licking tequila salt off his skin. An hour later, she and Hank had made out in his office—it was like they’d known each other in a former life, so making out so soon was okay. He had tasted like whiskey sours and Juicy Fruit gum. That had been a good night.
“No flaking,” Jennifer said now, as she glided out of Gray’s office.
“Scout’s honor,” Gray shouted. “Have a margarita waiting for me.”
3
Dominick Rader, founder and CEO of Rader Consulting, was not at his desk.
Gray, though, had enough information to start working.
It was two o’clock, and traffic pockets filled with a trillion cars mixed with bursts of highway freedom, and sometimes, sometimes, the speedometer on Gray’s silver Camry crept toward forty miles per hour. Zooming. She rolled down the sedan’s windows, then turned up Angie Stone on the stereo, lamenting not being able to eat or sleep anymore cuz of love.
Right then, Gray felt “L.A. fly,” a near-native alone in her car beneath that weird-colored, murder sky with those white plumes of smoke to the north, to the east, and to the west of her. One woman in the second-biggest city in America, disappearing in a heartbeat from block to block. No one and everyone knew her in Los Angeles. Some called that a weakness, like color blindness or fallen arches. For Gray, that six degrees of anonymity was Marilyn Monroe’s mole or Barbra Streisand’s nose.
She kept north until she pulled into the garage for UCLA Medical Plaza, a city unto itself. Anchored by the university, the plaza spanned nearly seven hundred thousand square feet and was filled with outpatient centers, hospitals, and research facilities.
Cardiologist Ian O’Donnell worked in UCLA’s Urgent Care department, and Gray met the eyes of patients waiting to see someone about their lungs, their hearts, their mucus. Battered chairs hosted bloody men with bruised knuckles. Diabetics waited for insulin shots and children clutching blankets barked coughs that sounded like gravel trucks. The waiting room stank of phlegm and unwashed bodies, but the carpets were clean and the lights were bright.
At least.
Gray pushed her eyeglasses to the top of her head. She crossed and uncrossed her legs as though she needed to pee. She ignored the tingle and yanking near her belly button—her body knew she needed to be here as a patient—as she scanned the waiting room in search of threats.
Runny noses and runny eyes made her clench. She couldn’t get sick again—not even a cold, because colds sometimes masqueraded as stealthy pneumonia with its filled lungs and hacky cough. And then pneumonia led to health questionnaires that requested information she didn’t want to share with staff here or at sketchy clinics that passed ibuprofen off as penicillin.
“Next.” Behind the registration desk, a black woman beckoned Gray to step forward. She pushed an admissions form toward Gray. “What’s going on today?”
Questions, even though she had dry eyes and clear lungs.
And a missing appendix. And minor abdominal pain. And possibly a fever.
“Actually, I’m not here for a medical visit,” Gray said. “I’m here to see Dr. O’Donnell on business. I was asked to come by this afternoon.” She scribbled her name on top of the admissions form, then pushed it back.
The clerk said, “Okay, have a seat over in the chairs. He may be tied up, though. As you can see, we’re busy today.”
Since Gray would rather wait near blood than perch close to viruses she couldn’t see, she selected a seat near an old man holding a saturated bloody towel against his forearm. She winced at him to show sympathy, then found her phone in her purse.