Naomi Hirahara - Santa Cruz Noir

Kemper said: “ I am an American and I killed Americans, I am a human being and I killed human beings, and I did it in my society.”

That cassette tape of hers really did a number. Even as I tightened my grip around her skinny little neck, she still begged me to squeeze harder. She was begging me with her sapphires, wasn’t she? I was just trying to give her what she wanted. For all the if s to become is ? I’m a runaway. I killed a runaway. Do you get that? I’m a dropout who killed another dropout. And even as I severed her psycho little head, all blood and tendons, I was thinking, I’m taking care of my girl, right?

It’s not like I don’t have a conscience. I know a person’s eventually supposed to turn their ass in and make some calm confession. But that’s why I’m telling you right here at The Jury Room, where everything smells like smoke and Roy Orbison is still crooning. I had to get this whole thing off my chest before I blow this fuckin’ town. And while I’m at it, I’ll tell you the weird part.

I went back to San Lorenzo Park. I couldn’t very well stay on at the St. George. For the first few nights I was paranoid, like the cops at sunrise were coming just for me. But they kicked everyone out like they always had, and I didn’t care — but, you know, not one of the kids in the park asked me what happened to my girl Jane.

Like, how can a person fuckin’ vanish and nobody’s gonna come looking for her?

I lace up my boots and walk up to the Clock Tower and the Food Not Bombs guy is getting ready to set up his grub and I ask him, I say, “Don’t you wonder what ever happened to skinny Jane?”

Guy scratches his goatee and looks at me quizzical-like, and he says, “Apex, you’re the only person I ever met named Jane.” He smiles and shakes his head. “I remember when you showed up here emaciated and topless and bragging about the ten sheets of acid you stole from your psychiatrist before you busted out of Agnew.” He shakes his head again. “I was worried about you back then. You seemed really vulnerable.”

I could just taste the faintest bile in my mouth.

Sometimes I still think about that. I put a tab of acid on my tongue and I run my hands over my pink little tits and I wonder if skinny Jane was ever separate from me or if she was just the part of myself I wanted badly and knew had to die — like Bob Innes’s girlfriend’s baby back at the Catalyst.

I remember a lot more about where Jane came from than where I did. I try to remember my life before I got here, and the furthest back I can recall is when I was on a bus riding Highway 17 up into the mountains where the oak trees give way to second-growth redwoods. I remember cresting the Summit, my passenger window cracked, and the wisp of ocean air and smell of eucalyptus.

But then I let the questions go.

What does it matter, really?

I killed my girl Jane.

I’ll never know if we started out as two, ’cause truth be told, nobody ever came looking for either one of us.

I buried her head in San Lorenzo Park, right next to the duck pond and blue playground slide.

I buried her looking up.

Capitola

That little girl stood right in my way.

“You’re lucky to be here,” she said.

I was carrying the last of the boxes from the U-Haul trailer to my new furnished cottage. It was one of those mother-in-law units — sharing a long driveway with a main house up the road.

“These were built to be maid’s quarters, you know,” the girl continued. She looked to be about ten, with straight dirty-blond hair and small brown eyes. I was taking an instant dislike to her. She was the kind of child privy to too many adult conversations and too many items on her Christmas list. She already knew she belonged to a class far above me, and likely most of the other tenants she encountered in Capitola.

I smiled to acknowledge she was talking, but I said nothing back. She didn’t offer to help.

“Really. This unit is never empty for very long. We used to use it as a guest room, but we’ve remodeled rooms in the main house. You could’ve wound up in the trailer park,” she said.

I was to be here for six months, working on a grant project out of UC Santa Cruz. I wanted to tell the girl I owned a house someplace else. Someplace just as nice as Capitola, if not better. I was taking this job to be helpful and useful to the world — and because primo academic jobs were hard to come by. It was an honor. A feather in my cap. Why did I feel the need to explain this to a ten-year-old?

“Sometimes my parents allow the tenant access to the pool too. I can put in a good word for you.” She sat in an oversized wicker chair by the door. Her legs dangled over the edge. She kicked at the marble umbrella stand with two long black umbrellas in them.

I hadn’t even noticed how odd the furnishings were. It felt like the whole cottage was Hawaii-themed from the 1970s — perhaps an effort to make Capitola-by-the-Sea feel warmer and cozier than the fog would allow for.

I smiled at the girl and stood in front of her to offer my hand and help her up. She didn’t take it. “Well, that looks like that’s my last box,” I said. “Going to go return the U-Haul now. You can come by some other time.”

“I don’t need to go anywhere.”

“But you do. I’ve rented this place from your parents. It is mine for the time being. I need you to go.”

“But I always hang out in here.”

“Not today, I’m afraid.”

“You’re going to need me,” she said. She stood up and walked around me, eyeing me up and down. I felt defensive about — well, everything — my dress with its pilling around the arms, my shoes from five years ago. Everything. The girl opened the door and looked back. “Suit yourself. Though it is very — very ill-advised. My parents can tell you more about it.” She walked toward the main house.

I exhaled, locked the door behind me, and headed out to return the trailer.

As I merged onto Highway 1, I could feel the fog settling in. Perhaps the Hawaiian décor would help a seasonal depression that was sure to take hold given the constant damp I’d felt in just a few days of being here. It was September and I felt like I couldn’t get warm.

I found the Capitola cottage while having a bite to eat at the local strip mall book café. There were poetry anthologies out front and a giant brass elephant head on the wall. Both things made me calm. Their bulletin board said a cottage was available and that the owners only took graduate students or visiting professors. I fit in somewhere in between. I took their ad to mean they would be serious, older, and, for some reason, childless. They would, no doubt, invite me to tea. We’d exchange poetry.

Sharon, the wife, had bobbed blond hair and a country-club smile. The husband, Bradley, seemed a little out of it, but innocuous — sandy brown hair, overly groomed face. I admired a Victorian chair they had in the foyer when I came for the interview. Its upholstery was faded yellow, with bright leaves in the print. Holes and a few brown stains. The arms were solid oak and the legs had an inlay of cast-iron fleur-de-lis. I liked the chair immediately. It signaled that they’d be appreciative of antiquities but not too fussy about having everything absolutely manicured.

“This chair?” Bradley said. “It has a fascinating history. The innkeepers who used to own this property back in the early 1900s. Well, the wife shot herself in the face in this chair. You can still see the stains. Isn’t it marvelous? What a story!” He pointed out frays in the fabric and told me he just didn’t have the heart to restore it. He was sure you could still smell the gunpowder if you breathed in deep. He never looked at my face to gauge my reaction. Part of me appreciated him for that.