I’d made a lot from this deal—enough to buy two more mansions to try again—and was looking for more areas shrouded in dead rich people and superstition when I got a call from Georgie.
“Hey, deadbeat. Need me to pay off your gambling debts again?”
“Oh, that hurts. Truly, you have wounded me.”
“Well?” I muttered with a slight smile.
“Yes. But that’s not why I called.”
I waited a moment. “So…”
“Right.” Georgie reentered the conversation, and for the first time I noted a tremor in my friend’s voice. The calm Georgie who constantly laughed at himself sounded terrified.
“It … it’s the crying. I can hear a baby crying. All the time. When I gamble, when I sleep; it’s throwing me off of my game and making me stay up all night. And sometimes when the crying and screeching is so terrible I don’t think it can get any worse, I start to choke. I feel like I’m drowning. I feel like … like I’m supposed to be drowning. Is something wrong with me?” I could hear Georgie—Georgie! Crying.
“Georgie. Listen to me. I’m going to check on a few things, OK? Lie down, try to get some rest, drink a glass of water. I’ll call you back as soon as I can, OK?”
Georgie must have nodded or something before I heard the buzz of the call ending. I felt a little relieved that the conversation was over, but knew that there was a worse one ahead. I dialed the realtor who had sold me the mansion.
I introduced myself and reminded him of our prior relationship.
“Oh, you’re the one who took the Williams Manor off of my hands! I can only thank you. Please, feel free to ask anything of me.”
“How did the child and parents die?” I asked bluntly.
“Ah. Well, for her first birthday, little Dinah got a swimming pool. But—”
“She was one,” I finished curtly.
“Yes. In the night she fell into the pool and drowned while her parents were sleeping. After that, they were guilt-stricken. They put a painting of her up, and then, well, to be perfectly frank, they went crazy. They heard crying, even screaming, in the night, and felt like there was no oxygen around them. They called everyone they knew and asked them for medical advice, sometimes yelling out that they were sorry, that they didn’t know she would die. Only a week later, they drowned themselves in the same pool where they had found her body.”
Superstitious nonsense, I told myself insistently. Then, Could the painting be the problem?
“Thank you,” I said shakily, and hung up. I took a quick breather and called Georgie.
“Yes?” my friend answered almost immediately.
“I think there might be hallucinogens in the painting I gave you. I’m going to pick it up and have it examined, but first I’m going to check you into a hospital so that they can get rid of anything in your system that might be causing this.”
True to my word, I drove Georgie to a medical clinic and the painting straight home, setting an appointment to examine it. I should have kept it in an airtight box, but I couldn’t resist a peek. The painting was too big for me to unroll it fully in any of my rooms, so I just looked in the center at the smiling baby.
Her smile was a little wider than the first time I saw the painting.
Hallucinogens, I told myself. Then I called the realtor again and asked him to send me a picture of the painting from before the suicides. I gave him my email and in minutes had a message in my inbox. I opened the attachment and saw the painting as it was on the first week of its existence.
The baby was frowning.
I rushed into the kitchen and fumbled in the cupboards for a lighter. I knew then that the painting—that Dinah—had to die. I ran back into my bedroom, lighter in hand. I stared at the smiling baby and clicked the lighter. Flames flickered along the tip of my tool and then my hand went slack, dropping the lighter uselessly on the carpet, the flame spluttering out.
Dinah was frowning.
Suddenly I was, too, as I heard crying, screaming, filling my ears, my mind, my soul. I cried along with Dinah and collapsed on the ground, shrieking in a toddler’s tantrum. I stared at the baby with tear-soaked eyes as she began to smile again. The crying stopped, and pushing the oxygen from my lungs, I realized that I could not inhale any to replace it as any attempt to take in air felt like trying to breathe water. I found myself face down on the baby’s belly, crying, and as if I was drowning on dry land.
Dinah was smiling.
Idropped my suitcase on the scratched wooden floor and looked over the empty living room of the one-bedroom apartment. A closet, no windows, and a dead plant. The photos on the website had shown furniture but I should have known better. Either way, it was a long way from the fluffy white carpet and pink walls of the Alpha Delta sorority house.
But at $900 a month it was all I could afford—and I was lucky to even get it at that rate. The lease of the former tenant—who the landlord slipped out over the phone had been an actress too—had been broken and he was desperate to rent it out. But that was the price of living in North Hollywood. And it was worth it.
Or at least it would be worth it.
Dropping out of Iowa State after my
