I jumped up to make sure she remembered which door it was. Last thing I wanted was projectile vomit all over my coats. Erin made it in the nick of time. I stood outside feeling useless. Her hair was up in a pony so she didn’t even need me to hold it back. She puked, then retched, then puked some more.
I took it as a sign. It was time to go to bed.
*
I was the last one up Sunday morning, but then I’d been the last to go to sleep. Same dream. Same result, never finding my sister. The guest room door was open, the bed unmade, the carefully curated pillows Aunt E had given me strewn across the floor like landmines. It was the only clue Erin had been there. She was nowhere to be found, but it was okay. I knew where she was.
Aunt E’s kitchen.
I was surprised to find her actually eating, fork moving toward her mouth versus just around her plate. She stared at me in wonder. “I’ve never had grits before!”
I didn’t tell her she’d never have grits like that again. Aunt E’s grits could stop wars, at least long enough for both sides to eat. It took almost two decades of straight begging to get her to tell me the secret. Heavy cream and mascarpone. And according to generations of Black people, her foot in it.
Aunt E had my plate ready and waiting. It was part of our morning ritual, along with the hug, the kiss on the cheek, the waiting for me to take the first bite so I could properly compliment her and she could properly play shy.
“This is delicious,” I said. And it was. It wasn’t why I still struggled to eat.
She beamed. “Not my best, but I’m glad you like it.”
“What are you doing today?” Erin said. “Checking Karma?”
I gave her a look. Not in front of Aunt E. “No plans,” I said. “You?”
She shook her head. “Desiree and I would usually do brunch at Balthazar. I can probably go with someone else, but it’d be weird. But I don’t wanna go home either. It’s been hard to be alone since she died.”
Being alone was my happy place—at least over the last couple of years—but I still felt for Erin. She hadn’t mentioned much about her family, and as usual, I hadn’t asked—but it was clear they weren’t close. I at least still had Aunt E. Even if we hadn’t spent as much time together since Desiree had died, just knowing she was downstairs was comforting. Erin had nothing but a big, empty house.
Aunt E must’ve felt just as bad because she stood up, gently rubbed Erin’s stick-thin arm. “Well, we definitely aren’t kicking you out, baby.” She smiled. “Especially not with those dishes in the sink. I’m gonna go get dressed. You two get to work.”
She left, and we did as told. Aunt E had a dishwasher, thanks to Mel, but she considered that solely for extra storage and special occasions. I spent a lot of time standing in front of her side-by-side sinks, elbow deep in soapy dishwater. Sometimes Desiree had been next to me. Today it was Erin, but it took her just turning on the faucet for me to know she had never given much thought to how dishes were actually cleaned. She used cold water.
“It helps if the water is hot,” I said.
“Great tip!”
She said it with so much enthusiasm, I wondered if we’d need to stop for her to write it down. Once we got the water to a suitable grease-killing temp, she made mistake number two. I grabbed her hand just as it was about to dive into the water and gave her a pair of rubber gloves. “This will preserve the mani.”
“Another great tip! My manicurist is on set with Scarlett. I’m not flying out to see her until next week. Though I guess I could book a flight tomorrow if need be.”
We couldn’t have that. I handed her the dishrag. It’d been whiter than Erin once upon a time but now was a shoddy gray as depressing as New York in January. “How about I wash, you dry?”
That’s how I’d done it with Desiree too, though Erin caught on quicker than my sister. Drying turned out to be her forte. We got into a groove, working in a silence so comfortable I was surprised when she spoke. “I’m going to help you.” She must’ve noticed my look because she kept on. “Find Karma Dodson.”
I smiled, then started washing even faster. We had the kitchen spotless in five minutes and were back in my place in seven, me showing her the three Karma Dodsons listed on Facebook. “We could definitely shell out for one of those people searches, but they’re not the most accurate.” I ignored her how-do-you-know-that look. “I figure we start here. If she was out that late at night, I bet she’s young, and what person under thirty isn’t all over social? Figure I could send them each a message.”
“Let me do it. I actually have a Facebook account. We might have better luck if I friend each of them instead of just sending them a note that goes to their ‘Creepy Stranger’ list they don’t check.”
She had a point. I hovered while we went through each page on her cell. It was much easier to read while stone-cold sober.
“Let’s not mention Desiree,” I said. “Maybe ask if they helped out with a car accident a couple of years ago in New York.”
Erin nodded. “I’ll mention there’s a reward.”
“But there’s not…”
“People respond better to stuff like that. And if they do want money, I’ll take care of it.”
That wouldn’t have been my first choice, but I went with it. I was watching her type out a note to number two when my phone rang.
Mel, or rather his line.
Not now.
I ignored it, hoping it would go away. It just moved to text. Tam.
Mel wants to see you ASAP. When can you stop by?
Never. I wrote back: Today’s not good. It’s Sunday.
An immediate response: He’s pissed about the profile in the News. Trying to calm him down but the longer you avoid him the worse it’ll be.
I’d forgotten about Stuart’s story. I pulled it up on my phone. Two paragraphs in and I could see why Mel was mad. I wasn’t too happy myself.
“Everything good?” Erin said.
It wasn’t, but I nodded. “I just need to go see Mel.”
Then I texted Stuart Jones.
Seventeen
Mel had gone viral a few months ago. I couldn’t tell you when or where the original video came from, but I knew it was old. Because of the fuzzy quality that looked ripped from a VHS. Because no one in the video was glued to cell phones. Because Mel had twenty less pounds and one inch more hairline, only the handcuffs tatted on his wrists looking the same. It had to be mid-’90s, probably from one of those MTV shows where they follow you around as you pretend it’s a normal day. Except back then, this was standard operating procedure for Murder Mel Pierce.
He was stomping around some conference room table like he was playing a round of Duck, Duck, Goose, walking past skinny blondes, old white men, and everything in between. He was screaming at the top of his lungs, his deep baritone reverberating like too-loud speakers. I counted seven creative uses of the word “fuck” in the first fifteen seconds.
All because the people in the conference room had decided to have a meeting about Free’s next album without telling Mel. It later came out that Free was the one who hadn’t wanted him there because he was signing a new deal sans Mel. But Mel hadn’t known that then. When he found out, using just seven fucks would’ve sounded like a lullaby.