Page 45 of Again with Feeling

Waves slapped the sand. The afternoon sun laid a golden filigree over the surface of the water.

“Of course,” she finally said.

Neither of us said anything for a while.

Something must have roused Vivienne, because she said in a poor attempt at briskness, “My time is up. I believe I’ve changed my mind. I no longer require your services, and I expect you to end your investigation immediately.”

“What? Vivienne, they’re going to hang this murder on you. Candy’s story isn’t all that great, but there’s no alternative. Actually, that was one of the things I wanted to ask you about. When I asked her where she was that night, she lost her mind—”

“As I said, I no longer require your services.” Vivienne continued in a gentler tone. “But since you are so hungry for alibis, allow me to put your mind at rest. I was with Candy the night my brother disappeared. She’d gotten herself into trouble. There was a man—”

“Zane Potthof?”

For a moment, Vivienne’s surprise was audible in her pause. “Well done, Dash. Yes. Candy was infatuated with him. He was, among other things, a wastrel, a gambler, and a batterer of women. Richard had run him off once, to Candy’s dismay. Father hated him—I mean, my God, can you imagine?” Her voice turned mocking. “Arlen Lundgren, exalted leader of the Fraternal Order of the Sons of Sweden, Astoria Chapter, and his daughter is hooking up, I believe you’d say, with a man who was arrested the month before for public indecency. Candy went looking for Zane after Richard scared him away, of course; she’s always been unhappy, and she’s always been convinced that a man will solve her problems. She also, inconveniently, has terrible taste in men and doesn’t have the common sense God gave a pair of shoes. I remember after the divorce watching her prance around Neil; I could have told herthatwasn’t going to work. Anyway, she’d gone after Zane, and he’d decided to soothe his wounded pride by taking his anger out on her, rather than facing Richard again. She called me from a pool hall across the state line, and I spent the night with her at a hospital. Ihadto go get her because if I didn’t, Father would have tracked her down and killed her himself.”

“But she made it sound like she was home when Jane came over.”

“She was,” Vivienne said. “I got her home a little before dawn. So, there you have it, Mr. Dane. Everyone has an alibi, and you can rest easy knowing you did your best on an impossible task.”

Before she could disconnect, I blurted, “What happened with Jane?”

She was still there, still listening.

“Why did you leave? Why didn’t you—I mean, you loved each other, didn’t you?”

Her silence lasted so long that I began to think she wouldn’t answer. But when she spoke, her voice was strangely gentle. “Allow me to tell you something you’d have learned on your own over time, Dash: love is never enough.”

“What does that mean?”

Screams of excited laughter drifted down to me. Happy people living their happy lives. Birds cut the sky, nothing more than dark wings scissoring across the sunset. The waves kept coming.

“It means I was afraid.” Vivienne’s words were tight, the sound of someone trying their hardest to buckle down a sovereign emotion. “She wanted more. And I wanted to be famous.”

Chapter 14

I couldn’t go back to the sandcastle competition after that. Part of it was the disappointment of having been—well, fired wasn’t the right word, since Vivienne hadn’t been paying me. Dismissed, I guess. Pulled off the case. In an episode ofLaw & Order, Fox would have told me, I’d have been put on desk work, maybe even asked to turn in my badge and gun. It wasn’t hard to tell why she’d done it; even now, Vivienne didn’t want her secret getting out. It didn’t matter that the world had changed. It didn’t matter that, in a weird way, it might have actually helped her—she probably could have sold a lesbian book club version of the Matron of Murder series and made a mint.

The other part of what I felt was the heartbreak I’d heard in Vivienne’s voice at the end. I didn’t like Vivienne. In fact, I was downright scared of Vivienne. She was a murderer, and she was selfish, and she’d chosen to protect her own reputation over finding her brother’s killer. But it was hard not to have a glimmer of sympathy for the everyday tragedy of her story—having to hide who she was, in a high school romance and then in an unhappy marriage and then in an affair with her brother’s wife, and then, finally, in a life of solitude, wearing a mask she’d created for herself. The rational part of me knew that I shouldn’t feel sorry for Vivienne; she wouldn’t want me to feel sorry for her. She’d made her choices, and she’d chosen to gamble on herself, on her chance of becoming famous. She’d succeeded beyond her wildest dreams—and, of course, it had all come crashing down in the end.

But I also couldn’t forget the girl I’d seen in the photograph Jane had shown me: young, innocent, happy. In love with herbest friend. It wasn’t even an uncommon story; maybe that’s why it hit me so hard. When you were gay, same-sex friendships inevitably blurred the boundaries of attraction and desire—and even more so when you were an adolescent and first starting to understand that you might like boys, for example, in a way that not all boys did. I’d had it happen with Ben Michaelson, who, it turned out, did not appreciate having a Valentine delivered to his locker in seventh grade. It was why almost every gay kid has had the experience of being in love with a straight friend. Don’t believe me? Do a quick search on Instagram.

Worst, though, were her words at the end:Love is never enough.

Those words followed me back to Hemlock House. It was dark and empty, full of long shadows and golden, glinting dusk. I put myself in the den and told myself to get to work.The Next Nightwasn’t going to finish itself. Hugo understood—and had a degree of patience for—my, um, idiosyncrasies, but the reality was that sooner or later, he was going to put his foot down. So, I pulled up the manuscript, scrolled to the scene I was supposed to be writing, and…stared at the page.

I’d left Hugo because I hadn’t loved him—and, almost as important, because I’d been fairly sure he hadn’t loved me. And I’d left because what I’d had with Hugo hadn’t been enough. I’d wanted more. I’d wanted love. I wanted to love someone the way I thought it was supposed to feel—and that was part of the problem. I didn’t know what it was supposed to feel like. I didn’t know if love was even real. For all I knew, what I’d had with Hugo was as good as it got—someone to come home to, someone who cared about you, someone you had fun with. If there wasn’t more—

I closed my eyes. I concentrated on my breathing. I counted slowly to ten, and then backward, until my heart slowed and the live wire of my anxiety was buried again. And then, keepingthose thoughts at bay, I turned my attention toThe Next Nightand made myself start typing.

This scene was supposed to be one of the most important in the book. Dexter Drake, our intrepid investigator, was hiding in the bushes of Pershing Square, watching as his lover, Dan Garrett, was led away by police. Pershing Square was an infamous cruising spot for gay men in Los Angeles, and in the 1940s, when our book was set, it anchored The Run, a corridor of businesses that were gay friendly. Unfortunately, the popularity of the area also made it a frequent target of police officers—and civilians—who wanted to catch men in the act, so to speak. Now, as Dexter watched the police lead his lover away, he had a choice to make: try to save Dan, or make his escape—and let it happen again.

Thatagainwas the crucial part. BecauseThe Next Nightwas a story about cycles, about bad things coming back around. Dexter’s bad decisions with his lovers, of course (that was a noir staple). His bad life choices in general, actually—too much whiskey, too many gin joints, too much loneliness and grief that built and built until the pressure forced him to do something rash. (Another noir staple.) And, of course, the murders. A serial killer was operating along The Run, and the police were ignoring the murders of gay men and other marginalized people, which left only Dexter to try to stop him. But because this was noir, Dexter kept trying to fix things the way he always had. And so, nothing he tried ever worked. Which meant the next night, and the next, and the next, were always the same.

I hated it.

I stopped, hands above the keyboard. I’d never put it into words like that, but Ihatedthe premise. I mean, it was good—Hugo’s ideas were always good. It captured how the best noir mixed cynicism and despair with a refusal to surrender virtue, to continue to try to do good. Even though I knew I was too close tothe project to be objective, I had enough awareness to know that it was sharp, incisive, powerful. Maybe even brilliant, because Hugo, according to all his starred reviews, was brilliant.

But as I sat there, staring at the keyboard, my stomach turned. I didn’twantDexter Drake to let the police drag Dan away. I didn’twantDexter to keep making the same bad choices, to go on living the same claustrophobic, hopeless life. Yes, it was historically accurate. Yes, it was true to the genre. Yes, it was a powerful and compelling tragedy, and it showed a sliver of what it might have meant to be gay in 1940s LA.

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