Megan Abbott - Phoenix Noir

“Someone’s trying to get into the apartment,” she said, and they both looked over at the front door. “They’re trying to break in.”

“No,” Julie said. “You had a bad dream.”

“I’m worried about my house.” Brenda jumped to her feet. “I need to get home.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. Just relax, Brenda.”

Brenda’s body was shaking and Julie stood too, head groggy, and tried to speak slowly and firmly, like you’re supposed to do when someone’s having a bad reaction to dope.

“Brenda, you’re fine. You’re fine.”

“It’s like the dream,” she said, her voice pitching up and down. “It’s like the dream.”

“See? You were just having a bad dream. Don’t be scared, Brenda.” Julie put her hand to her own head, fighting off the dizziness. That buzzing noise was back. It had been gone while she slept and now it was back and it seemed louder.

“I’m sensitive that way,” Brenda said, gravely. “When the moon is a certain way, I can get these vibrations. It’s like a whisper. When I met Bob, I had this picture. It came to me. I blacked out for a second and it was like I could see something was in his way. It was a darkness, on his bed. A darkness there on the bed with him.”

“Brenda...” Julie said, starting to feel something prickly in the back of her head, like touching a hot wire.

“And when I got here, it was like I was hearing an atmospheric disturbance in the place.”

“No. No,” Julie said, but her voice quavered. “It’s the air conditioner. It’s the equipment.

Brenda, you—”

“And now I can see it. I can see it on the wall like a shadow.” She pointed at the wall by the front door.

Julie couldn’t see anything, or thought she couldn’t. There were lots of shadows, more than she could count. The prickling in her temples was worse and worse and she felt so hot, even with the air blasting behind her.

“I know you see it,” Brenda said. Then her voice rushed up fast and she pointed at the wall. “It’s behind you, Julie. It’s behind you!”

Julie felt her heart rush up her chest and she turned around so fast she nearly fell. The minute she did, she felt silly. “Brenda,” she started, but she couldn’t make her voice calm. “Did you drop a tab? Did you drop a tab?”

“You know I don’t use that. I don’t use anything,” Brenda replied, and her eyes were so wide and she kept putting her hand to her forehead and she started pacing back and forth in front of Julie.

“There’s nothing there, Brenda. Are we... are we still sleeping?” She knew it didn’t make sense but she felt it, she felt it looking all around the room, which was like the TV screen, everything either black or white, black cassettes and equipment and the tripod and shadows and white walls and Brenda, who was standing stock-still in front of the coffee table.

Suddenly, Brenda’s hand flew to her mouth. “The thing in the corner,” she said. “The thing in the corner.”

“What thing? What thing?”

“It sees you, Julie.”

And Julie felt her heart thundering and she wanted Brenda to stop and she wanted to leave. She wanted to leave but couldn’t imagine how to make her body move to the door.

“Stop it, Brenda,” she said, her voice jangling. She wondered how Bob did not wake up.

“It’s here. It’s here. Silent. Waiting. Voices, or a rush. Julie, don’t let it see you. Don’t let it...”

Julie felt her hands dart out and cover her ears. There was the buzzing and behind the buzzing it was like there were whispers and in the whispers was Brenda’s voice, urgent and throbbing, beating like a drum. “Julie, Julie, watch out. Watch out.”

She felt her arms fling out and shove Brenda, who staggered backward and curled into herself, and Julie ran to the bedroom door and saw Bob was sleeping still and the sounds of his breathing were so peaceful. But there was Brenda behind her.

An awful feeling came to her as she watched Bob. She felt like this was something Brenda was doing to Bob. She felt like Brenda might be the dark thing.

“Don’t, Julie,” Brenda was whispering. “Don’t go in. You’ll bring it in there.”

Julie backed up and turned around and her hand swung out and cracked against Brenda’s face and Brenda’s eyes stuttered shut and open and something broke and Brenda paused and Julie stood still, her hand shaking, and the pause stretched and the hurtling look in Brenda’s eyes was gone.

“Julie,” Brenda said. And she didn’t say anything else. There was a coolness in her face, a sudden calm. And there was a knowingness to it, like she could look at Julie and see everything.

“I have to go,” Julie said. “I have to go home now. Don’t I. I have to go home now.”

Brenda stared at her and nodded.

“Do you want to come with me, Brenda? I think you should come with me.”

But Brenda gave a half-smile and turned and walked toward the bedroom. She could see the flash of white sheets as Brenda slipped into bed beside Bob, who let out a forlorn sigh.

Julie grabbed her handbag and walked over, stopping at the bedroom door. “It wasn’t me, Brenda.” She wasn’t even sure what she meant. “I didn’t bring it...” Her voice trailed off.

Brenda, hair falling over her face, lying there, looked at her but didn’t say anything.

It was two weeks later, the day after the murder, when she called the police. Everyone in town was talking about it. Everyone had seen Bob, at all his places. Bob and his friend John, the one the police knew did it. Everyone was getting called in or getting visits. Carl told her to make the call or it could be worse. This was right before Carl started up with the hostess at Bobbie McGee’s and before she got into that new scene, the crowd that hung out at that dance place in Phoenix. The detectives came by and asked a lot of questions. They showed her pictures and it was terrible seeing them. Why do you have to show me these? she said, and seeing him lying there, nearly as she’d left him the week before, lying on his bed, eyes closed, but with that dark mass streaking from him, across the sheets.

For weeks and weeks she replayed it all in her head. It usually started with a dream, and the dream was always the same and it always began with her walking toward him in the Registry lounge, and that look in his eyes, like he was expecting her.

It wasn’t long after that she drove by Brenda’s place and saw new people living there. She asked around at the Safari, the Camelback, Chez Nous, Bogart’s, the modeling agency in Phoenix. One night, a regular at the Registry told her that she’d heard Brenda went to Mexico to make a film and was killed in the desert.

It was his face she remembered, long after. Brenda had said it was so blank, vacant, or transparent, like glass, knocking light and shadows off everyone. Or maybe it was a mirror. But that wasn’t how it was to her. In her head now, he was right before her, his eyes filled with things, cluttered with them, with desperation and darkness and loss and, now she saw it, surrender. It was as if he was waiting for it, for her. She knew that somehow he was.

Author’s note: [1] This story is a fictionalized account of a real-life incident, as reported in Robert Graysmith’s Auto Focus: The Murder of Bob Crane (Berkley, 2002).

Tempe

I’ll tell you what ruined my marriage, and it wasn’t gambling or drink or chasing skirt. Our son, Donny, was walking home from a friend’s house when a LeSabre blew the stop sign, ran the poor kid down in the street and dragged him twenty yards, then fled the scene.