Goldilocks Forever

Chapter 26

Santa Monica, California

March 2006

Seagulls cawed, swooping over her in circles like buzzards descending on a meal of carrion. Their orange feet ventured toward where she lay on the hot pavement. One of the birds stood only a foot away from her face. She looked up at its beady eyes. It regarded her with the same look of curiosity. Other birds dared to move closer.

    She sat up too quickly and they scattered away, flying into the clear sky. The sun beat down on her oppressively. Her head throbbed with pain as she turned to take in the surrounding high concrete walls with occasional graffiti scrawls near the traffic bridges.

    The familiar panic of amnesia struck her. She tried to remember how she'd gotten there. For a second, she even thought she was in Las Vegas, but the green foliage draped over the side of one of the overpasses was too fertile for the desert.

    L.A. Slowly, she knitted together the pieces. She remembered some kind of fight. A dead man on the floor next to her. It was a large house, opulent. Her house? Why were they fighting?

    Casey. Casey had something to do with it. Anna dug into her pockets. The side of her jeans was coated with dried blood. She gingerly touched the source of the ache on her head and found blood there, too. Her mouth was parched, her tongue thick.

    She fumbled down the wash toward the nearest overpass. Under the shade of the overhead street, she put her hands in her pockets and pulled out a tube of lip gloss, a twenty-dollar bill, and a blank white business card. She flipped it over and read the ten-digit number—it looked like a phone number—scrawled in unfamiliar handwriting.

    Tears of frustration stung in her eyes. After a moment, she gathered herself and made her way up the embankment and onto a side street. She shuffled toward a convenience store on a not-too-distant corner. The mohawked man behind the counter barely noticed her when she walked in. She grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerated aisle and guzzled it after paying for it with her twenty.

    The bell on the door chimed as shoppers entered and passed by her. She shrank back, not wanting to invite attention or notice. While the cashier was occupied ringing up customers, she haunched toward the pay phone outside the store. She stared down at the card in her hand. It was all she had. She dialed the number.

     "Hello?" The man's voice was familiar, but she couldn't place his name or picture his face.

     "Hi," she said, exhaustion mixed with uncertainty in her voice.

    "Who is this?" the man snapped.

    "Uh...Anna."

    "It's Anna." His voice came quieter as he lifted his mouth from the phone to speak to someone nearby him. He came back on the line. "Where are you?"

    She read him the address listed on the payphone.

    "Stay there. Elliott will pick you up." He hung up and left her staring into the phone.

    Thirty minutes later, a black car pulled up and the driver came into the store, saw her, and gave her one nod of recognition.

    "Elliott?"

    "Come on." His chipped tooth—that made him vaguely familiar. She remembered that. She got in the car with him, trusting (hoping) that her memories about the house and the men who lived with her there were positive ones and she wasn't returning to a nightmare. She had the palpable sense that she had come from a nightmare.

    Elliott said nothing on the drive, and she didn't know what to say to him. She wasn't sure what their relationship was, as she had no strong memory of him. When they walked in the door, a man with bushy eyebrows met them in the foyer.