wet. “Sure.”
“No paparazzi.” She hangs up.
I fall asleep with the phone in my hand, picturing corpulent, dead Alan. Something about the position of his body troubles me. I wake up two hours later, just shy of my meeting with the reality-show contestant. It’s already getting dark. I pull from the closet a full-length wool jacket and walk into the cold to head to the Ramp. I’m thinking about the Chinese characters, and something I remember about PRISM, Sandy Vello’s employer. It’s got headquarters in Beijing. I’m wondering if this mystery just jumped the ocean-when my phone buzzes.
On it, a text: “I looked u up. I’ll tell you about Kathryn, God rest her soul, but I can’t imagine why you’re interested. Jill.”
I click on the text, which brings up the sender’s contact information. I dial.
“That was quick.”
“Thanks for the response, Jill. I. .”
She interrupts. “Why are you interested in Kathryn?”
“I’m honestly not sure.”
She pauses. “I’m her mother. I was. You do really interesting stories. You won an award from. .” She pauses again, then rephrases. “You won a fancy journalism award.”
“Kathryn is. .” Now it’s my turn to pause.
“She died twelve years ago. She was seven.”
“I’m sorry, Jill. I really didn’t know. Was she sick?”
“No. She. . car accident, a wreck, an accident, something. I’ve never been able to find the right word. But I don’t really want to talk about this by phone and I still can’t understand why you’d care at all about it.”
“Can I come see you?”
She doesn’t respond.
“It so happens I’m going to be in the area.” I’m using a common tactic to suggest it would be convenient for us to get together.
“How do you know my area?”
“Your area code. I assumed Palo Alto.”
“Not tonight. Tomorrow. Menlo Park. Between two and four, I’ll be at the Woodland Learning Center on El Camino, near Kepler’s bookstore. You know the area?”
I know it. We hang up. A dead girl. I wonder what a former reality-TV star knows about it. And where is Faith?
18
Wraparound sunglasses, name-brand windbreaker, and a vacant smile that communicates she feels herself in control of the situation, whatever it is. These are the first of my second impressions of Sandy.
She sits at the end of a long, wooden outdoor table in a light wind and drizzle, dark sky mitigated by a weak patio light. The rudimentary ambience at the Ramp suits the post-college Greek system crowd, which suggests Sandy’s chasing hipness. Twentysomething San Franciscans brim with confidence they’ve found Mecca here until they have their first kid and realize they can’t afford housing AND private schools, and then move.
The deck extends over bay water a half mile from AT amp;T Park, home to the San Francisco Giants. I wonder, looking into the misty fog in the direction of the ballpark, whether AT amp;T realizes that half the expletives uttered during games are directed not at the visiting team but at the fact that AT amp;T’s iPhone service doesn’t work there.
“Wimps.” Sandy looks through the window at the after-work crowd toasting with plastic cups. “But we can talk privately out here. Some things I’ll tell you about the show are off the record.”
She removes her glasses and winks.
“Do they have anything stiffer than beer?”
“I drink water. I got you a Bud Light. What’s your kid like?”
I tense but don’t respond and she doesn’t need much of an opening to get on her soapbox. “I’d love to have a kid. It’s important to pass down life lessons.”
It’s all about Sandy. Good. The challenge tonight isn’t getting her talking but getting frostbite when I can’t shut her up. I sit, feeling dampness; wish I’d worn something thicker than my T-shirt under the coat. She pushes a plastic cup filled with dull yellow liquid at me. I bring it to my lips, sip. Awful.
“He’s got an oral fixation.” I feel a pit in my stomach at the idea of sharing anything about Isaac with this woman. But I have to give to get. Take my time moving from me to Sandy the TV contestant to Sandy the PRISM employee, which is the reason for this ignominious meeting. “Puts things in his mouth, tastes them, senses the world that way and tests his boundaries. If his taste buds are any gauge, he’s curious like his dad.”
My brain bounces; I think for an instant about the new science around the oral fixation. Freud had us think it was psychological. But the infectious-disease specialists suspect kids put things in their mouths to train the immune system what to react to. The innocuous things, like chalk, get ignored. The bacteria-laced Styrofoam cups found on the ground prompt an immune response.
“There was an episode where they made us eat bugs.” Sandy smiles, taking back the limelight. “It was a joke. Clyde told me he knew from his Marine training that the bugs they chose couldn’t make us sick. Lots of protein. Whatever.”
“Clyde.”
“Robichaux. From the show. Tough-ass Marine.”
“He’s. .”
“Lives in Redwood City. Don’t go there. He shoots trespassers. The main thing is, I’d trust him with my life.”
“Right, I remember but. .”
“Aren’t you going to write this down?”
“Is that okay?”
“I’ll tell you when it’s not.”
I pull a notebook from the inside pocket of my coat. My head pulses from concussion and the pain of this interview. What thoughtful conspirator could possibly make use of this narcissist? Am I being decoyed? Let the source ramble, I remind myself as coldly as I once dissected bodies, and it will reveal its nature. And that of PRISM.
Suddenly, she’s off and running with her story. She tells me how she had a rough childhood but became a triathlete, double-majored at a community college in child psychology and fitness, moved to Los Angeles with dreams of doing life and nutrition management for children of movie stars and other wealthy people who grow up facing “more stress than young people should.” She got some big-name clients, who she lists but I’ve not heard of. One of them, a big soap-opera actor, got her a casting call on the reality show.
“The cliche is that you make your own luck. But I say you
“You’re always moving forward.”
“What do you mean?”
“You didn’t get hung up by the nonsense on the show. If I can speak honestly, it must have been tough, what happened-getting the boot-and yet, boom, you moved on.”
This is a key reporting technique; say something that sounds just mildly critical-but ultimately is not-because it implies growing intimacy. Like, We’re tight enough that I can take a chance on being frank.
“Bingo. What else do you observe about me?”
There are various carvings on the old wooden table: hearts and filthy overtures. If I had a camping knife, I could whittle, “My Intellectual Curiosity Died Here.”
“I observe you’ve got some lessons to pass on, like you were saying earlier. The stuff at the youth center. .”
