CHAPTER ONECarla
Friday, March 5
Carla Karolak was positive she had ADHD. “I’ve got ADHD,” she told her therapist. “That’s why I’m blocked. I need distraction! Nothing ever happens here!”
Carla’s therapist, Toonie Garabedian, sighed. “Last week your whole problem was pseudobulbar affect.”
“I have that also.”
Toonie was checking her damn phone messages again. She wasn’t even trying to do this secretly. “Look,” she said, not making anything close to eye contact with Carla, “if you’re just going to keep on self-diagnosing, you don’t need me. Carla, everybody doesn’t have ADHD. You know what your problem is, and it’s not ADHD.”
Carla gazed out the window, far out and down at the pounding La Jolla surf. Toonie was harping on the cremains again. Carla was beginning to dislike Toonie. No, she was beginning to admit that she’d always disliked her. “They’re just ashes,” she said, “and I’ll deal with them when I have a day to waste carting them up to L.A. And after I do that, I’ll still be blocked. They’re not magical cinders.”
“Not by themselves, no, but, as we’ve discussed, they’ve been made magical, as you put it—and that’s so significant; listen to yourself!—by your mother’s demands about them and your own refusal to comply. I mean, look.” Toonie gestured toward the urn, which squatted in a corner, unsuccessfully obscured by a potted fern.
Ever since Ma died, Toonie had been nagging Carla to deal with her ashes. Toonie was certain Carla’s writer’s block was caused by profound guilt, which was as stupid an idea as this stupid urn, a 3-D printout in the shape of the stupid hat Carla had worn for the stupid Nutty and Corny ad campaign when she was thirteen years old. Ma had insisted on this actual urn in her will. She must have ordered it from some custom 3-D tchotchke outfit: The thing was a huge blocky acorn spray-painted dull gold, and they’d misspelled “Corny” with a K, but Ma had died before it arrived so she never knew how awful it was.
Or maybe she had. Maybe that was the point. Carla was supposed to trudge north to the Hollywood Forever Cemetery bearing the Acorn of Broken Dreams, a symbol of her mother’s crushing disappointment in her only child, and scatter the ashes in the Abbey of the Psalms Mausoleum, where Judy Garland was entombed.
Carla had never once looked at the ashes. This was a small triumph of will, as the lid was ill fitting and tended to pop off whenever she tried to move it. “Toonie, it hasn’t even been three years since she died. I’ll deal with it when I get the chance. Meanwhile—”
“Listen to yourself! Not even three years! Deal with it before another year runs out. Make a point of it. Set a calendar date. You’ll be amazed at the difference it makes.”
“Deal,” Carla said, just to shut her up. “Meanwhile—”
Toonie made a big production out of looking at her watch.
“Meanwhile I have this problem. You do see the big fat irony? I’m not even an agent, and I’ve gotten forty-two people, forty-two, started on a writing career. Eleven of them have agents. Four are published already. And here I sit, blocked for all time.”
Toonie sifted through her notebook, an expensive leather thing she always carried with her. Carla doubted the notes had anything to do with her patients.
Did therapists take lessons in rudeness? Was Carla boring her? “How’s your meetaphobia book coming along?” Carla knew it wasn’t “meetaphobia,” but she didn’t give a damn about Toonie’s stupid book. She should never have agreed to pay the woman in trade. If Carla were a regular paying patient, she could just quit therapy, which was obviously what she needed to do.
“Symposimania.” Toonie brightened, snapping back to the present. “I had to coin the word myself! And it’s coming along brilliantly, thanks to you and the Point.” Toonie was working on a pop-science book-length anecdote-crammed exposé of “Meeting Addiction,” an epidemic which she claimed was endangering the mental health of hundreds of thousands of managers. Carla wasn’t sure what a manager even was. “I’m still fiddling with a working title. Right now it’s between Don’t Take That Meeting and Meet the I. I think Meet the I is better. What do you think?”
“What is Meet the Eye supposed to mean?”
“Isn’t it obvious? You have to meet yourself before you can meaningfully meet a roomful of people. Carla, don’t you know that?”
“But what does that have to do with—you mean you have to look at your face in a mirror or something?”
Toonie drew a large envelope out of her bag. “I got the headshots this morning. Want to see?”
No, but Carla looked at them anyway and pronounced them amazing, which they weren’t. For some reason Toonie was leaning against a jacaranda and hugging herself. She looked conspiratorially into the camera, glasses off, her wiry black hair exploding from an updo at least twenty years too young for her. The overall effect was that she had a terrific secret, but it was making her stomach hurt. Carla almost asked her if the headshot wasn’t a little premature, since the book was half finished and she didn’t have a publisher, but let it go. “Look,” she said, “could we get back to my writer’s block?”
“Time’s up. I’ve got to get back to work.”
“You are at work now, aren’t you? Isn’t this your work too?”
Toonie smiled, as though Carla were an adorable brat. “Fifty minutes is fifty minutes. We’ll do this again on Thursday, regular time. Meanwhile, don’t forget your exercises.”
Before Carla could object, or even say so long, Toonie scooted out of the office, no doubt on her way back down to her warren, the farthest cell out in the western wing. Carla stared after her. She’d have to do something with the damn Acorn before their next session, and then she’d terminate their stupid contract.
Carla’s house, the Birdhouse, was so named because, when viewed from the bluffs above, its long, sweeping, symmetrical wings gave it an avian outline. Both wings were filled with writing cells, each opening only to a corridor that ran the length of the wing. Carla’s quarters were the central tower, consisting of four round rooms stacked on top of each other, each narrowing in circumference. The very top room was her office, and it was here that she had been meeting twice a month with Toonie. Otherwise, she spent most of her time with her friend and assistant, Tiffany Zuniga.
Carla grabbed the Acorn, descended one floor down to Tiffany’s office, and popped her head in to ask what was up. Tiffany was feverishly pedaling her desk bike while doing something with an online spreadsheet. “What’s up,” she said, “is two applicants from Coronado and one from, get this, Topeka. Also, I’m pretty sure Garabedian’s been smuggling her iPad into her cell. What do you want to do about it?”
“What do you mean ‘pretty sure’? We can’t search her bag.”
“She stopped in on her way to see you, and her satchel was playing a tune. Silly woman isn’t even bright enough to mute the thing.” Carla rifled through the file cabinet, looking for Garabedian’s lease. “Don’t worry about it,” Tiffany said. “I’ll take care of her when the time comes.”
“You shouldn’t have to. I should be the one to do it.”
“You’re the one who makes the rules. You’re just shit at enforcing them. That’s my job.”
Do you enjoy it? Carla wanted to ask. How do you handle making them hand over the cell keys and pointing them toward the door, not to be darkened again until after a three-month penance? Sometimes they cried. Well, once. Mrs. Stotch, who had claimed to be compiling ancestral research, carried on so much that Carla had relented, which is why Tiffany did enforcer detail now.
Tiffany stopped pedaling and looked Carla over. “You’re still not writing, are you?”
“What do you think?”
“Garabedian’s useless. Terminate the contract. She won’t mind—she’s got plenty of money. Want me to do it? Cut her loose and I won’t narc her for the iPad.”
“I’ve got ADHD.”
Tiffany laughed. “See, that’s textbook malpractice. Last week it was pseudobulbar affect, which is the silliest thing I ever heard of.”
“Those aren’t her ideas, they’re mine; she’s not even paying attention. But that has to be what’s wrong with me. Why else am I the only one here not writing anything?”
“Remember what Amy used to tell us? If you don’t have anything to say, give up.”
“Now you’re making it worse.”
Carla missed Amy so much.
“I told you, do a serial killer. They’re still hot. You can crank out one of those while you figure out what you really want to write.” The phone rang. Tiffany picked it up, listened for a moment, yelled “FUCK YOU!” and hung up.
“One day,” said Carla, “you’re going to do that to a real human being.”
“That was a real human being who wanted me to take a brief survey about home security.” Tiffany put her laptop to sleep, grabbed her sweater, and stood to leave. “Seriously, do a serial killer. It’ll write itself.”
“Big whoop.”
Tiffany fluttered her fingers toward Carla and left for the day. Carla opened the bottom file cabinet drawer and shoved the Acorn behind a ream of printer paper. The lid popped off. “Button it, Ma,” said Carla, jamming it back on.
Carla Karolak didn’t want to do a serial killer. She wanted to write a memoir. She was a natural for it, what with a predatory mother who had pimped her out as a child actor, forcing her to flog local car washes, taco stands, and car lots, and later to appear in national ads for junk food. The zenith of her showbiz career was when she became the spokes-tot for Nutty’s Joint, a family fun zone franchise that had been big in the ’90s before being crushed by Chuck E. Cheese. Corny made Ma a boatload of money, enough to buy the La Jolla house outright, enough, when invested, to set them both up for life. Ma had imagined it was only the beginning. She had been wrong about that. Ma was gone now, sort of. Her vengeful spirit swanned about the Birdhouse they had shared, hissing at Carla to eat less, you can never be too thin, and hustle, hustle, hustle. You’re only as good as your last gig, Carla.
Well, her last gig had been going strong for three years now. She had transformed half the house into Inspiration Point, where writers and writers-to-be could, for a substantial fee, rent windowless cubicles for three-month increments. She had marketed it first as a writer’s retreat, but really it was more a cross between a factory and a rehab facility. Renters signed a lease and committed to a minimum of four hours a day, five days a week. If they ever failed to show up and bolt themselves into their cubicles, they forfeited the rest of the rent. They could bring laptops, but Carla did not supply WiFi, and anybody caught using cell phone service to access the internet was banned for three months, which is what Tiffany wanted to do to Toonie Garabedian.
Inspiration Point was a money machine. Within two years, four of her renters had gotten book contracts, and one of them, Misha Bernard, who was already well-known, had made a huge splash with a series of erotic thrillers, the Aztec Moon Chronicles. All this occasioned a lot of sniping from the more traditional writer’s retreat industry: Critics asked where the inspiration was, given the absence of supportive fellowship, rustic solitude, yoga classes, spa treatments, and artfully wrapped writing prompts on pillows, and sniped about the wretched boiler room vibe of those cramped and joyless cells.
Writing Industrialists sniped because Carla’s boiler room was costing them customers.
So the gig was great, but since starting it up, Carla herself had yet to finish a thing she wrote. She’d given up on poetry, romance, and mystery. Everything she began remained unfinished, withering and slinking off in the middle chapters, in what Amy, her old writing teacher, called the Bog of Despond. And the truth was, although she knew better than anyone that what writers needed was four walls and iron discipline, she had yet to use a cell successfully herself. The walls, the spartan desk, and worst of all the un-Wi-Fied laptop terrified her. She needed distraction. She could not work without chaos. And now she couldn’t write at all, even while juggling multiple online role-playing games in front of the TV with L&O SVU blaring, which had long ago—when Carla was thriving in Amy’s workshops—worked like magic.
Carla hadn’t spoken with Amy or even seen her for almost three years. When Ma died Amy had written with condolences, a real letter that Carla never threw away. One time later Carla called her but just got a recording. She knew Amy was probably out, and would have picked up the phone otherwise, but Carla never tried again, because Amy wasn’t teaching anymore. Amy was writing, and Carla knew she shouldn’t be bothering her. Anyway, Carla was a businesswoman now; she didn’t need to keep leaning on Amy.
Determined to give her own writing a try before closing down for the day, she grabbed her laptop and headed down to the wings. It was Friday; most clients were gone for the day, and she had a passkey card to all the cells so she could use whichever one appealed to her. She started down the west wing. Each cell had its renter’s nameplate slid into a holder on the door: She strolled past Ricky Buzza, Simonetta Colodny, the Herman Twins (who did everything together), the redoubtable Harry B., and, on impulse swiped her way into the cell of a local pediatric dentist, Manny Singh.
Carla routinely used her renters’ cells and didn’t worry about intruding since they were almost always bare when not in use, and furnished only by writers and their laptops otherwise, so it wasn’t as if she was trespassing on private space, but now she was brought up short by what looked like a family picture propped up on Manny’s desk. Six kids, three of each, flanked a pretty woman in a burgundy pantsuit, all smiling right at Manny, so proud that he was going to write the story of their family. Or maybe he was the one working on a Raj serial killer whodunit. No matter, they were proud and happy, and Carla scurried back out and locked the door.
She kept on, past Dr. Surtees, Sophia Rosales, John X. Cousins, past all five McPhails (Tiffany was convinced that four of these cells were for forced homework, but there was no rule against that), and on and on, finally arriving at Toonie Garabedian’s cell. The Doc hadn’t gone home yet, plus Tiffany was so right—she had to be fooling around with her iPad. Carla stood at the door and listened. Toonie’s playlist was apparently all about meetings. A Bing Crosby song (Ma had been crazy about Crosby), “Fancy Meeting You Here,” was just ending, followed now by some shrill R&B chorus telling women not to be late for “a meeting in my bedroom.” Carla wanted to turn back and try the other wing, but something about the music gave her a What Would Tiffany Do? shove, and without further thought she raised her keycard to swipe into Toonie’s cell, but the door wasn’t even locked.
Carla stood in the doorway, looking toward Toonie but not really at her, formulating her next words. I’m sorry to interrupt, but … That wouldn’t do, because she wasn’t sorry, or at least she shouldn’t have been, because music was a no-no. Toonie, you know you’re not supposed to bring online devices in here. No, she should apologize first, because she was, after all, barging in. “Toonie,” she said, looking not toward her but at her—well, at the back of her head, because Toonie wasn’t turning around. Her laptop was closed, her iPad propped on a stand in front of her, and on it the stunning Retina display image of a mollusk. Or a penis. Definitely a penis. Carla reached out to put her hand on Toonie’s shoulder but hesitated because Toonie was looking at a giant penis and not turning around at the sound of Carla’s voice, which was just not the behavior of a normal human being. And it smelled bad in here, like Toonie had had an accident.
When she was ready, Carla walked around Toonie so she could look at her face. Then she called the police.
CHAPTER TWOCarla
Carla could not stop looking. Toonie’s face was the color of eggplant, her eyelids were swollen almost shut, and her pink tongue ballooned from her lips. Something had been drawn and tied so tight around her neck that it was invisible, buried deep in her flesh. Carla didn’t feel anything, and then she did, but it wasn’t fear, it was wonder. That a person who had just been in her office, fluttering around, ignoring her, stuffing a notebook into her handbag, waving goodbye, walking down stairs and through corridors, staring at a penis, that a person could just disappear like that, leaving behind a Halloween mask and an embarrassing smell. And that music, someone was singing I see that you’re hyper, let’s take it upstairs. Hey girl! Let’s have a meeting, and Carla started to turn off the damn iPad, but then thought about fingerprints and DNA, and she was afraid to even turn down the sound, she could go find some gloves, but where.
Now she could feel fear, just in general, not for her own life, just fear that something like this could happen to a person, that the world was such a place, and without thinking she took out her phone and called Amy Gallup.
It rang just once, and then to Carla’s amazement Amy answered with her actual voice, not the recording, and she said, “I know who you are. I know where you live. If you call me again, I will hunt you down and kill you.” Then she hung up.
Carla stared at her phone. Now she felt wonder, fear, and crushing sadness. When it rang again, it was Amy.
“Carla? I’m so so sorry! I didn’t even look at my damn caller ID!”
“You aren’t mad at me?”
“I had no idea it was you! I would never—”
“Something terrible has happened,” said Carla.
“What? Can you turn down that music?”
“Something terrible!” Carla shouted. She kept shouting it.
Copyright © 2022 by Jincy Willett
