I take a step back, glaring. “I abandoned a story for you once”—I drop my voice—“with what was on the USB drive. You already used your one veto. It’s not fair of you to ask me to let this one go too. A big exposé like this could make my career.”
At the dismay on his face, it occurs to me that the last time we mentioned an “exposé” was when we discussed the libel case over the article about Sofia’s death. I must’ve hit a nerve—he looks so stricken.
Softening my expression, I take his phone from his jacket pocket and check the time. “I don’t want to fight about this, okay? I have to get back to my room. The call’s in ninety minutes, and I need time to prep.”
We manage to make up before I leave the bar, but I can tell there’s something he’s not saying. It nags at me like heartburn during the cab ride back to my hotel.
Ten minutes before the scheduled call, I get a one-sentence email from my contact:
I am so sorry, but circumstances have changed, and I must unfortunately withdraw from the interview and cannot reschedule.
All best,
Beshira
This feels like too much of a coincidence. Did Klaus do something to make her cancel? I’m so mad that I jab out an accusingtext to him, but then delete it unsent. I need to calm down first. It’s past midnight, and I have a ten o’clock flight in the morning.
I get in bed, but of course I’m not relaxed enough to sleep. I open and then reject a dozen books on my e-reader.
Tap, swipe away.
Tap, swipe away.
Phae’s comment echoes:You should read the stuff your mom sent.
With reluctance, I climb out of bed and get my laptop, then tuck under the covers again. Opening the desktop folder, I peruse the file names:
Trip_to_California.docx
Money_Runs_Out.docx
Meeting_Bux_and_Shockley.docx
Job_Gone_Wrong.docx
Hiding_Out_in_Barstow.docx
The_Arrest.docx
I fiddle around with the cursor arrow, gliding it over the words, pointing it at different letters like a tiny, inky accusation.
I close the laptop.
I reopen it.
I click on the first document.
For almost a year while Jace and I saved up the money, a name hung in my mind bigger and brighter than the Hollywood sign: Venice Beach. How could it be anything other than a paradise?
Venice: the romantic City of Canals in Italy. I’d neverbe rich or lucky enough to go there, but I could have the American version.
For a girl who’d never laid eyes on a body of water bigger than the Ohio River hugging Louisville, any beach sounded magical.
Everyone told us we were fools to go. But the sweet call of that blue Pacific was louder than the sensible warnings of people Jace and I saw as boring adults—those who would live and die working the soybean fields and mopping Kentucky sweat-dust off their faces, never to experience the joys awaiting us in California.
My friend Lila Knox worked at the Merry-Go-Round clothing store in Lexington, had pink streaks in her hair, and had once gone to bed with a man who had a genuine Australian accent, so I thought her mighty worldly.
She told me she was moving to California, and I should go too. Said with my looks, there was a good chance I could model or even end up in the movies. It took a year of pinching pennies to save the $2,000 Jace and I thought would be enough to get us started out west. Sometimes he’d look at that thick roll of twenty-dollar bills as it grew and talk about everything else we might do with it.
