Chapter 1
At first, Ariel couldn’t tell what woke him. His eyes adjusted to the darkness and he stared out the window for a moment, the jagged edges of buildings slowly coming into focus against the tangled silhouette of palm trees and electrical poles and wires.
It wasn’t the noise of the neighborhood that interrupted his sleep. He had long grown accustomed to the music of South Central LA. He slept solid through the sounds of sirens and took no notice of the thick thrumming of helicopter blades as they cut through the sticky air. He slept through the cries of the child downstairs and the din provided by his neighbors – drunk karaoke versions of Llorar y Llorar to one side and soft R&B to the other.
And then he heard it. A rapid, sharp series of knocks followed by a shrill call.
He knew exactly who it was and didn’t bother with a greeting as he opened the door.
“What? What’s wrong?”
Sylvia Buenrostro was a sturdy woman, thick-hipped with hearty arms which were currently crossed over her chest as she clutched her rebozo. She stood slightly silhouetted in the door way, but her face was well lit by the bare bulb that served as a porch light. Ariel shared a duplex with his mother and sister but he was rarely alone enough to appreciate the separation of their living space.
Ariel studied her face for a moment and found only worry and fear. Her eyes were red-rimmed and wide. For a brief moment, her disquiet gave her sense of frailty he never associated with her. He was more familiar with her cruelty and disappointment in who he had become. But they were family, and family struggled together.
“Mariana never came home. It’s too late! It’s too late and she’s still not home!”
Ariel imagined his sister’s thin face, her delicate hands, her wily smile. Mariana was 23 and would incite any big brother to worry. She had always been pretty. Her thick, wavy hair tumbled over her shoulders and face to reveal her big, sad eyes. Her face stood out and was angular like his, their high cheekbones providing them a strange kind of regalness. But royalty wasn’t their reality. They were another poor Mexican family living in Los Angeles, trying desperately to make ends meet.
His thoughts turned back to Mariana and the bigger problem at hand. The problem was that Mariana was a little insane. A paranoid schizophrenic, the softness in her eyes could just as easily be replaced by unrelenting and unapologetic rage as she lashed out at those closest to her when her brain did its twisted dance and her medications weren’t working. Mariana not coming home from her shitty job in the kitchen of Jalisco’s didn’t mean she was out, laughing and joy riding with her friends. It meant she was lost to them, especially if she was in the middle of an episode.
She had run away for days at a time before. Eventually, they would find her when she slipped into a moment of lucidity and told someone at the shelter or hospital or jail cell she ended up in who she belonged to. Ariel and his mother would rush over and, more often than not, find her covered in filth and fully engulfed in the noise and terror her brain created.
There was no worse combination of words to Ariel than “Mariana never came home.” It meant that everyone’s nightmare was beginning again.
Chapter 2
“We’ll do what we can. Keep in touch. Try and get some rest.” The policemen turned away from the porch and trotted leisurely and self-assuredly towards their patrol car.
Ariel scoffed as he closed the door. Fucking cops, he thought. What’s another dead spic to them? He caught himself as he turned to his mother, trying to hide the concern in his face and the panic that was becoming second nature.
It had been 2 days, and Mariana was nowhere to be found. They tried her usual haunts, the places she almost always turned up in. While his mother sat like a sentinel by the phone, Ariel scoured the streets for his sister.
In the last 48 hours, Ariel had inadvertently toured the city. There was something especially sick about wandering the streets of Los Angeles, watching the lit up faces of tourists while he searched the alleyways for a heap that resembled his sister.
Rage swelled in Ariel’s chest. No one was going to look for Mariana. The cops were useless and would back burner her case. His mother was practically catatonic and was only animated the moment the phone rang.
Suddenly, Ariel couldn’t breathe. He was white knuckled as he maneuvered his car in and out of traffic. He was driving without knowing where he was going and when he came out of his daze, he realized he was parked upon a hilltop in the middle of a freezing night.
His subconscious had lead him to one of the few places him and Mariana shared as children – Griffith Park.
The rage subsided and was replaced by an equally potent longing for his sister. As children, they had taken field trips here so often it became routine. As a teenager, Ariel got stoned and watched the planetarium show with his friends. The dome of the Observatory clouded Ariel’s view and relief washed over him in an awesome wave. Even in the darkness, the vast expanse of the land below chided him, reminding him of all the trials and tribulations of the people before him -- their steps, their desires, and their grief were carved into the land. His story, his fear, and the trial before him was only one of many stories the land might whisper into the dark.
In that moment, Ariel was certain Mariana was alive and he would find her. He could feel her in the cold night air that whipped against his face and in the warmth and pulse of his own blood.
Ariel looked over the city, glistening. She was out there, and she was waiting for him.
Chapter 3
The next morning, Ariel resumed his usual routine of school and work. He couldn’t miss any more class or call-in to work again. Even the most lenient of his professors warned him of falling behind in his Chemistry courses. Sometimes even he couldn’t understand why he chose to pursue a Ph.D., save for the hope of a better future and more money to support himself and his family. Besides that, he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life working in a lab and taking orders from a balding little man with a God complex. He wanted to teach, to discover, and have the time to -- for the first time ever -- care for himself.
Sylvia went glassy eyed when she saw him pick up his backpack. He had been staying over in his mother’s apartment as a way of offering what little comfort he could. “Can’t you stay home? This is your sister! You’re giving up on her?!”
Ariel choked back resentment and answered, “Ama, someone has to pay the bills. That’s me. Its always been me. I’ve gotta go to school and work and then I’ll keep looking. I’m not giving up her.”
His mother, sensing she was losing the argument to stone cold logic, turned mean, “Disappointment. That’s all you’ve given me! At least your sister is honest, even with all her problems. She is who she has always been.”
Ariel was taken aback for a moment. She rarely mentioned his past, much less threw it in his face. Though he fought the urge to lash out, he made sure to slam the door so hard it nearly shattered the glass in the door.
As he stalked to the car, Ariel thought about what his life might look like to an outsider. His position was difficult. No part of his daily life was easy. But he made his life, shaped it carefully and intentionally and with great pain. He wasn’t born with wealth. In fact, he wasn’t born with much that informed who he truly was inside. His mother was having an especially difficult time adjusting to all the changes that had occurred over the past few years -- changes that Ariel, himself, was only beginning to understand the underlying causes of. He had so often felt like a foreigner in his own body. Couldn’t his mother just try to understand anything beyond her own pain?
He caught a glimpse of himself as he adjusted the rear view mirror in his car and sucked back tears as the sting of his mother’s words fully hit him.
Chapter 4
The day was long and shitty, and full of “I’m sorry to hear about your sister” which only reminded him, every hour on the hour, that Mariana was not wasting the day at home with their mother. She was somewhere or nowhere.
Ariel, in the meantime, sat on a concrete bench in a small alcove tucked away between the trees on the UCLA campus. It was a favorite spot of his and one of the first places he sat when he accepted entry into the Ph.D. program. He drove over the same day he received the phone call and found this sweet spot amongst the trees. It helped him feel some sense of peace on what was otherwise a campus that caused him a set of deeply conflicting feelings. He watched the frat boys and sorority girls walk past him and was instantly reminded that his kind – the queer, the brown, the poor – was never meant to walk these grounds. Sometimes he felt like every step he took here was a middle finger to the powers that be. Other times he felt like the whiteness and wealthiness of the place was killing him.
In between classes, Ariel began to diagram Mariana’s day. It wasn’t difficult since her illness made the places and people she came into contact with fairly minimal. As Ariel listed off names and places, he felt a surge of pity for the life Mariana could never really have. No wonder his mother felt such a sense of disappointment in him, too. She was his only hope for a normal child and what she ended up with was…him. Guilt and shame, an all too familiar combination of emotions, rose like heat in his body.
Mariana, he thought, Focus. This isn’t about you. Find her.
Ariel’s first stop was Jalisco’s, the hole-in-the-wall restaurant his sister had a part-time job at. The job she never came home from. It helped her feel more stable, more confident, even if it was just cutting vegetables and meat in the kitchen and doing the most menial of tasks. When she was lucid, it provided her a sense of normalcy. He liked to hear her come home and whine about how bad her feet hurt. If that was her only complaint about the day, it meant things were good.
Ariel learned to bask in these moments of relative calmness. Mariana had been at the restaurant for just over 3 months now, enough for people to miss her a little – even if she occasionally got in the way and was a pain in the ass.
“I told you, the cops already asked all this shit. We’re real sorry about it. Man, you look just like her.”
Ariel flinched at Manuel’s comment, unsure of how to register it. How does he see me? Ariel wondered. In truth, Ariel couldn’t shake his past, who he was and who he was born and socialized as – but moments erupted that forced the memory and made him wince. He was surprised at how triggering Manuel’s comment was and again, reminded himself of his purpose before pushing the feelings away.
Manuel, the manager, continued to rattle away half-assed apologies and hopes for Mariana’s safe return. Ariel felt no real trace of sincerity and let his eyes wander to the peeling yellow paint and the cracks in ceiling before settling on staring at the woman at the cash register.
She looked up, met his eyes, and quickly shifted her eyes away. Ariel realized she was trying, rather unsuccessfully, to hide her intent listening. Her hair was slicked back into a tight pony tail and she was chewing on her lip as she continued to avoid eye contact with Ariel and scribbled on receipts at the register.
Ariel nudged Manuel and nodded in the girl’s direction, “Who is that?”
“Linda? Ah, she’s been real sad since Mari’s been gone.”
Ariel stood up abruptly and walked over to her, too consumed with interest to care about interrupting Manuel's tirade.
“Linda?”
She flashed a small, tight smile and said, loud enough for Manuel to hear, “I can’t talk. I’m on the clock. I’m sorry…” Her eyes welled, “about your sister.” It was the first real apology Ariel received in all this mess. She uttered a small gasp and suddenly hugged Ariel tightly. Manuel looked amused and said something about women and their inability to control their emotions. Both Ariel and Linda ignored him.
It wasn’t until much later in the evening when Ariel searched his coat for his wallet that he came across a tightly wadded up scrap of paper. Written in pencil on the back of an old receipt was, “Frankie. 103 W 4th.”
Chapter 5
Ariel was only vaguely familiar with 103 W 4th. He knew it was a seedy place that once held promise. Indeed, it was a shit hole, as he expected.
He stormed into The Barclay Hotel. They had tried to recover some of its glory with peach paint and even he paused for a moment to glance up stained glass that adorned the windows in what served as a lobby. Pathetic garage-sale paintings were plastered across the walls and he almost caught himself laughing at the sad face of a clown as it stared down upon him. It helped him quell the anxiety that was currently ravaging his body.
He settled into an oversized chair and began to play the waiting game. No one was going to pay him any attention in a place like this. The whole point of its existence was so that people could come and go as they pleased.
He didn’t know what Frankie looked like but he knew what to wait for. It was early evening and Ariel had a full day of work. More than once, his head lulled as he lapsed into sleep. Each time, he awoke with a start and a moment of disorientation.
It was nearly eleven when Ariel’s patience was rewarded with the thick smell of Mexican food and the voice of a young man complaining to someone on the phone in Spanish. Ariel felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up and a cold stab in his belly. That’s what Mariana smelled like at the end of the day. Ariel had to keep himself from racing up to young man and throttling him. It took all his self-control to slowly follow him through the hall and pretend to walk right past him into a stairwell.
Ariel paced in the stairwell. He needed to calm down before this encounter. He needed a minute to think about what he was doing. Ariel felt himself go into another daze as waves of nervous nausea rocked him. He didn’t know how much time passed when he emerged from the stairs.
He stood in front of the door Frankie walked into and held his breath as he knocked.
Frankie opened the door with sleep still evident in his face. Ariel used this to his advantage and ran at Frankie, full force, pinning him to the wall and slamming the door shut with his free arm.
He spoke so forcefully that he spit in Frankie’s face, “Where the fuck is my sister?”
Frankie looked confused and before he could issue some kind of inquiry, Ariel screamed, “Mariana! What happened between you and Mariana?! Where is she?!”
Ariel felt a wet heat growing on his thigh and realized that Frankie had pissed himself. Ariel was both satisfied that he was capable of causing such a reaction and alternately disturbed with himself.
Frankie began blubbering, speaking between great gasps of air, “Mariana? Did they find her? Manuel said they would find her…I…I never…I never...I never touched her. We just talked sometimes. Sometimes, we went to the corner store together and got Cokes. I bought her an ice cream once. I liked to visit her in the kitchen and sometimes she would tell me about a crazy dream she had. Other times, she didn’t want to talk at all so I left her alone. I never touched her! I’m sorry!”
Ariel searched Frankie’s face for insincerity and found none. What he did find filled him with shame. Ariel realized that Frankie was just a kid. He couldn’t have been more than 21. Ariel saw this young Mexican man and saw a criminal instead of seeing what was there – a kid living in a dump just trying to keep a roof over his head and food in his mouth. He wasn’t much different from Ariel in that respect. It’s not like South Central was a palace.
Ariel let Frankie go and muttered an apology while Frankie looked down and tried to hide what had happened with a blanket.
“I’m real sorry. I’m real, real sorry,” Frankie sniffled.
“No. No, I am. It’s just…I have to find her. Linda…she said to come to you,” Ariel lied.
“Because Mari talked to me, maybe. More than she did the others. I liked to listen to her stories. I didn’t think she was as crazy as everyone said…” Frankie glanced up apologetically and shrugged, “I liked her stories.”
Ariel shook his head. He didn’t understand. “Linda had to think you could tell me something. Did you talk to Mariana before she disappeared? What did she talk about?”
Frankie nodded his head. “She said she kept having a dream about a man with bright blue eyes coming to visit her. She said she had that dream three times in a row. She was funny those days. She talked funny – slow, like when you wake someone up and ask them a question. Once, I was coming to talk to her but she was talking to herself. She said, “Happy house.” I didn’t ask her about it though. When she got like that, she could…she could be mean.”
Ariel was familiar with Mariana’s hair-trigger personality when she was starting to sink into an episode. He understood why Frankie backed off.
Ariel issued a few thousand apologies before he opened the door to let himself out. Frankie, while embarrassed at the stain on his pants, wished him luck.
In spite of his shame at frightening Frankie, Ariel accepted Frankie’s offer. After all, he needed all the luck he could get.
Chapter 6
The Happy House.
Ariel knew exactly what Mariana had been talking about. It’s what they called the behavioral facility where Mariana received regular treatment when things were bad. But Mariana had been fine – or so he thought. Why hadn’t his mother mentioned anything to him? Why was she still going to work if she was starting to slip?
Charter House was a typical psyche ward – sterile, unbearably white, and full of rounded edges and soft corners. Charter House also had several outpatient programs, some of which Mariana had participated in. It was Charter House that set her up with the job at Jalisco’s. Ariel had a sense that things were slowly starting to piece together.
Staring into the patient lobby, Ariel wondered if they were even allowed to use forks here. He looked over at a table of young people attempting to play a board game. Attempt was perhaps too generous a description for the empty gazes and wandering eyes of the players. He almost couldn’t believe they weren’t drooling on themselves. Maybe they were all worse off than Mariana was. This was, after all, a nut house.
A woman rounded the corner and smiled at him. Her short blonde hair fell in little curls around her forehead and the childishness of her haircut only accentuated the wrinkles in the corners of her eyes. Ariel thought she must have been pretty when she was younger. The letters J-O-A-N were stamped on her name tag. “The psychiatrist you’d like to see is not currently available. Is there anything I can help you with? I coordinate much of the programming here at Charter House.”
“Who coordinates the job program here? Is it you that set Mariana up with a job?”
“That’s me. Funding here is so poor that we all wear several different hats. All of our patients that are doing well are funneled into part-time employment with an assortment of establishments we’ve partnered with. We take the time to match employers with suitable employees.”
“So that’s why Mariana ended up working at Jalisco’s…”
“I’m sorry?”
“You kept the trash in the gutter, that’s all.”
Joan narrowed her eyes at Ariel in suspicion as Ariel defiantly raised his chin in her direction. “I want to see her charts. I want to know whatever you were logging on my sister. And don’t bother with the patient-doctor confidentiality shit. Something is fucked up here, and I have every intention of figuring out what.”
Joan’s eyes grew wide, “Look, I don’t…I don’t want any trouble. I can’t let you see most of what her psychiatrist writes. I don’t even have access to those files. I can, however, allow you to see her treatment history – if you’ve been granted permission, that is. I have protocol that I am responsible to, Mr. Buenrostro.”
Ariel relaxed a bit and felt his anger beginning to wan. He was surprised that she wasn’t putting up more a fight. Maybe she wants to help me, but why?
Ten minutes later, Ariel was looking over Mariana’s paperwork. He flipped through a bullet list of “Therapy Goals” and stopped when he found documentation of her medication. Her med regiment was certainly no secret to Ariel. He filled and picked up her prescriptions for her most of the time, but he was sure this particular paperwork was beyond what he should’ve been able to see. He glanced up at Joan, who had conveniently turned her back to him. In that instant, Ariel slipped the medication log into his pocket.
Joan turned to him and asked, “Did you find what you were looking for?”
Ariel decided to play dumb. “No…nothing of particular use to me. Not at the moment anyway. I suspect that I’ll be back, though.”
Joan offered a knowing smile, “Yes. I think you will be.”
Chapter 7
Joan knew something and for some reason, she was willing to let Ariel in on her little secret. Maybe Ariel had misread her. Maybe she was just fucking with him.
But that piece of paper shouldn’t have been in Mariana’s general file and it revealed too much for someone to risk letting just anyone view it.
In the privacy of his home, Ariel stared at the list of medications in disbelief. The amount of medication she was on was too much and the changes in her medication came too abruptly. The types of medication were right – what anyone would expect Mariana to be taking. She was under the influence of a chemical cocktail of mood stabilizers, anti-psychotics, and anti-depressants. Everything was, in its own right, sedating, but her doses were too high. From what Ariel could gather, she was either taking more medication than he realized at home or she was getting extra doses when she visited Charter house…or maybe both.
Ariel remembered the table of young teens at Charter House and their empty stares. They were over medicating the patients, certainly, but why?
Its not like over medication was a foreign phenomena in this day. Depression was more and more commonly diagnosed. Everyone was on something. But it was different for Mariana and for the kids at Charter House. This was a world of chronic illness, of diseases that had to be managed and balances maintained. This wasn’t the result of a bad day or a series of unfortunate events. This was brain chemistry and bad genes. This was nothing to be fucked with.
Chapter 8
“Ariel, yes? I thought I might see you again.”
Ariel titled his head inquisitively. He didn’t know they would be on a first name basis on day two. He decided that Joan wanted to help him after all.
“Where is your Dr. Mengele? Or Dr. Lugner, should I say?” Ariel was ready to deck the Stanford educated psychiatrist. Ariel hated him for a multitude of reasons but despised him with a renewed fury when he saw Dr. Lugner’s smug fucking face at various galas and fundraisers in photographs online. A quick Google search yielded almost too much information on the distinguished Charles Lugner, one of the leading treatment providers at Charter House. It was his signature that sat next to each entry in Mariana’s medication log.
Joan pursed her lips to hide a smile. “Aren’t you clever? He’s not in today. But he will be later. Much later. And I’m afraid I can’t tell you much more beyond that. If you’ll excuse me, I have patients to care for.” She emphasized the word “care” when she spoke and Ariel sensed bitterness.
Ariel searched their exchange for a hint and decided that “much later” meant more waiting around in the middle of the night.
One quick dinner and two cups of coffee later, Ariel sat in his car a few blocks down from Charter House. He felt like a kid in a movie, but he could feel the curiosity gnawing on him. Mariana felt close.
And then he saw it.
A classic Cadillac rolled up to the house, the black, glossy paint shining impossibly bright, even in the dim lighting. A thin, well-coifed white man sat at the wheel. Ariel pressed the binoculars into his eye sockets, as though it would help, as he studied the man. He looked pleased to be there.
The glass doors at the main entrance opened and Ariel strained to see more in the hazy light. He could see two shapes emerging from the relative darkness of the building. At first, Ariel thought one of them might be drunk since one shape seemed to be holding up the other shape. Finally, Ariel could tell it was two men. A young man and an older man.
Ariel adjusted the focus of his binoculars and studied the face of the maybe-drunk boy. He looked vaguely familiar. Then it clicked – it was one of the kids that had been sitting at the table attempting to play a board game! The older man shifted the weight of his ward and passed him over to the newly arrived man. The driver of the car quickly tucked the boy into the passenger side of his Cadillac.
Before Ariel could finish thinking, what the fuck? The man in the doorway stepped out slightly and caught the light just right.
Ariel recoiled in disgust as he watched Dr. Lugner wave goodbye to the now-disappearing Caddy.
Chapter 9
What the hell had he just seen?
It slowly snapped together in Ariel’s head.
They were manufacturing zombies at Charter House.
He was shocked at its brilliance. Who would ask questions about a bunch of crazy brown kids? They were capitalizing on some of the most disposable bodies around. They could even trot their prey out the front door and no one would notice. It was bold. It was fearless. It was a powerful display of arrogance.
And the fact is, no one believed the patients anyway. Besides that, the kid they traded off looked completely out of it. No wonder Mariana was on so much medication all of a sudden. They’re preparing her, he thought, but for who?
At home, Ariel returned to his computer and braced himself for what he might find. He was, once again, overwhelmed with the amount of information available online about Charter House.
Dr. Lugner knew the man and so Ariel first returned to his old image searches for the smug faced doctor. Ariel clicked image after image, searching and hoping to find some glimpse of the well-dressed man he watched steal away a boy for god-knows-what. Bleary eyed, hours later, Ariel found nothing.
He went to the Charter House site on the off chance he might ferret out some form of additional information. He scolded himself for not following the man in the Caddy that night but shock had set in and Ariel lost the car from sight too quickly to pursue it.
He was at what felt like an impasse as he scrolled absent-mindedly through the pages of information and thank yous to the benefactors of Charter House – big donors with big smiles, who probably bragged to their rich friends about the poor folks they helped even though they were donating what was probably equal to a teeny, tiny fraction of their yearly income. Ariel involuntarily snorted as he thought this and it momentarily brought him back to reality.
Ariel felt his stomach twist. Grinning back at him from the page was the well-coifed man. Ariel was also able to see something he couldn’t see in the darkness --- Dr. Richard Dieb’s bright blue eyes.
Chapter 10
The internet was truly a stalker’s paradise. It didn’t take much diligence for Ariel to track down the home address of Dieb. Rich people were conceited in that way – always looking to have their homes featured in a magazine or a newspaper, not realizing it might actually be their undoing.
Ariel sat in front of Dieb’s beachside house in Venice and shook with anger as he listened to the waves crash against the shore. The home was painfully modern – clean, white, and angular. The man worked at a hospital most of his life and chose to live in one, too.
Venice was eerily quiet and still. Ariel could hear the distant laugh of people emanating from a nearby bar. Against his better judgement, he got out of his car, double-checked the parking meter out of habit, and walked towards the beach.
He hated what Venice had become – gentrified as hell and filled with yuppies and hipsters. He almost preferred it when it was just heroin addicts and the homeless. Ariel stumbled in the sand as he ambled towards the ocean and, looking out, felt his smallness once again.
He allowed himself to bask in self-pity and wept out of pure exhaustion for what felt like an eternity and returned to his car. According to the parking meter, his flirt with an emotional breakdown cost him an hour of watching Dieb’s residence. He recommitted himself to his mission as he shifted around in the driver’s seat.
There was no movement inside or outside the house for another two hours. Ariel got out to feed the meter again and jerked his head so hard he hurt his neck when he saw a porch light come on and the sound of a garage door opening. He raced back to his car, letting change spill out of his hand and wondered where Dieb might be going tonight.
Ariel trailed him in to downtown Los Angeles.
Of fucking course, thought Ariel, as Dieb’s car turned into The Oviatt. He watched Dieb hand his keys off to a valet and stroll into the building. Maybe he was having a late supper or visiting some other smug fuck who was renting the obscenely priced and infamous Penthouse. Ariel didn’t care. He just wanted some extra time to watch the good Dr. Dieb and to circle back to Dieb’s place before the piece of shit went home for the night.
Ariel found a cheap lot to park in and decided to play “the lost tourist” as he walked into The Oviatt. No one attacked him at first so he walked through the door and quickly shuffled off the side. He didn’t spot Dieb immediately and skimmed the room quickly before settling on the back of his head. Ariel’s eyes burned holes into Dr. Dieb’s back but was pleased that he could gawk without fear of being seen by him.
He had never been inside this place. People like him had no business here. The chandelier sparkled and dazzled and the room was awash in gold light. The walls were paneled in a rich wood and gold statues of goddesses decorated niches in the walls. It was art deco at its most extravagant and finest. Ariel instantly loved and hated it for its daring decadence and its history.
Ariel wondered how many dirty deals had been done here, how many rich assholes had populated the building and left traces of their filth in the walls.
Ariel felt a tap on the shoulder and a man in a bow-tie curtly informed him that he was underdressed. Ariel smiled sheepishly, complimented the beauty of the space to the tight-faced man, and said he had just come in off the street to admire it. The man was unforgiving and continued to glare at Ariel like an intruder.
Ariel apologized again as he exited and thought, this building is like all of Los Angeles – beautiful, but full of evil.
Chapter 11
Dr. Richard Dieb was drunk as he staggered into his home, where Ariel was waiting for him by the garage door. As soon as it opened, Ariel ran inside and hid between a series of long, tall metal shelves. His encounter with Frankie had taught him something about brutal force and after the garage door closed and Dr. Dieb practically fell out of his car, Ariel pounced on him. He shoved him towards the entry to the house and, with a blade pressed against the lily white throat of Dr. Dieb, ordered him to open the god damn door.
Dieb was utterly compliant. The door opened into a kitchen that had every amenity imaginable. Dieb sat on a bar stool and squinted at Ariel before muttering a low, “Oh.”
Ariel didn’t understand why Dieb was searching Ariel with his eyes until he said, “You look just like her.”
Ariel felt another twinge of anger. Of course he looked like his sister. They shared the same genes, he told himself. He tried not to be sensitive to a doctor evaluating him yet again and fought a flood of insecurity about his masculinity. Then he remembered what he was there to do.
Ariel let fury take over.
“I saw you last night with that boy at Charter House. I watched our friend Dr. Lugner help you put that doped-up headcase into your car. You…you saw my sister. She said she had a dream about a man with your eyes. Repeatedly. I want her back. Now.”
Dr. Dieb smiled, “You know, I watched her for some time at the facility. Pretty girl with those deep, dark eyes. You must be Ariel. I read her file. I know about you, you know. All your changes. All the grief you’ve caused your mother…” Dieb didn’t finish the last part of his sentence because Ariel was choking him. The entire time, Dr. Dieb didn’t stop smiling.
Ariel relented, seeing that the good doctor was unmoved.
“What are you going to do, young man? Who would ever believe you? Who would ever believe Mariana? She thinks it’s all a dream, just another set of nightmares. Tell you what, for your silence, I will give you back your sister – and a whole week before she’s due back!”
Ariel didn’t answer. He didn’t know how to. He was frozen in fear, in frustration. This was the thing with rich white men – in the end, they always won. Ariel just wanted Mariana back. He thought about the empty-eyed boy and looked to the floor in shame. I can’t… he thought before meeting Dr. Dieb’s gaze.
“Take her back to the hospital. I’ll pick her up from there tomorrow. You’ve got until tomorrow, Dr. Dieb.”
He chuckled. “So you think you’ve got it all figured out, do you? You think you’re the one with leverage here, do you? Do me a favor,” Dieb requested through a toothy grin, “Check your mother’s bank account. Ask her about the deposit she received. If my hands are dirty, your mother’s are filthy!”
Chapter 12
Sylvia was curled up on their tattered couch when Ariel walked in. She woke up startled.
“Ariel…What did you find?”
“You got money, mom. Dr. Lugner. Dr. Dieb. Charter House. The Happy House. What the fuck did you do, ama?”
Her voice rose higher and higher, “You don’t understand! You don’t know what it’s like to struggle like this! To take care of your sister the way I do! They said….they said she wouldn’t remember anything anyway! They said it would be like a bad dream to her and she would wake up and then we’d get her back!”
She had done it. She had sold her own flesh and blood to those men, to that place. Ariel reeled at the corroboration of all his worst fears. And then he let loose, unleashing a year’s worth of pent up rage and resentment.
“All I have done is give up my fucking life for this family. I pay for everything. I’ve paid for it all and now you’re making her pay – with her body, mom. What do you think she’s going to be like when she comes back? Who do you think we’re going to get back?!”
“They said…”
“Fuck what they said.”
“I don’t have to listen to this! You have no right…with everything you’ve done.”
“Everything I’ve done?! You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. Are you going to mention my past now? Yeah, mom. Sorry, I wasn’t born a boy. I became one. I’m not sorry that I finally feel comfortable in my own fucking skin and you hate that so much. But it changes nothing. I didn’t forget who I am, who I was raised as. Mariana and I were sisters, and she is still my sister now. And you…you fucking sold her!”
Ariel hadn’t frankly addressed his transition with his mother since he first started taking testosterone and even then, he just informed her that he was going to start to look different. Disgust pained his mother’s face. Ariel was shaking again and could feel the onset of yet another panic attack. He was scared of himself, scared of what he might do to his own mother – and that would make him no better than her.
“Fuck you,” were the only words Ariel left trailing behind him as he slammed the door.
Chapter 14
Dieb made good on his promise to deliver Mariana back to Charter House within the day.
Ariel was sitting in the lobby when he saw Joan appear.
“You knew. You know. You know and you’re not doing anything. Not really.”
Joan immediately began sobbing before pulling Ariel into a private office. “What do I do? What happens if this place shuts down? What happens to all the people here? So many of them…we help. We really help. We really try. But the donors…they control everything. They’ve made it so we sacrifice a handful to help one hundred. What do I do? Tell me what to do and I’ll do it. I liked Mariana. I wanted you to find her. I tried…I put the log in the file…I’m trying.”
Ariel could offer her no counsel. He had, after all, left the young boy with Dr. Dieb so he could have Mariana. Ariel answered Joan with silence and a sad shake of the head. She blotted her face with tissue and said, “She’ll be here soon. Wait in the lobby again.”
When Ariel finally saw Mariana, he had to keep himself from falling apart. She saw him and offered him a weak smile. Well, at least she recognizes me.
The car ride home was excruciating. Mariana was still lost in a haze of sedatives and periodically babbled. He could see angry red marks on her wrists. She had been handcuffed or tied up. She was clean but that only repulsed Ariel – it meant someone had bathed her, touched her all over.
They were two blocks from home when Mariana started screaming about hands, confirming his own concerns about the violence that had been visited upon her body. Who knew what she had seen? Who would listen? He couldn’t. This was his mother’s cross to bear now.
Sylvia wept as she wrapped her arms around Mariana who went slack at her mother’s touch. “Mama?” Ariel and Sylvia traded angry stares and Ariel kissed the top of Mariana’s head.
As he drove away from the house, he saw the curtain move and watched Mariana wave slowly goodbye to him. It was a force of habit – something she had done since they were children.
Mariana’s body was back but her mind was elsewhere. Ariel didn’t know if he would ever be strong enough to question her.
They were right, he thought.
It was better if Mariana thought it was just a bad dream, just another nightmare.
Epilogue
It had been a month since the story broke. Ariel packaged all the information he had gathered about the abuses at Charter House and sent identical packages to competing news stations with a letter stating which other stations had also received the information.
They weren’t going to follow the story for the good of humanity, but they would for the sake of ratings. He was lucky it was sweeps.
Ariel thought of his sister, of the care he was incapable of giving her, at the pain in his chest it caused to think of leaving her with his mother. He thought of the patients at Charter House and what might have become of them.
He drove to Griffith again, in the hopes of clearing his head and maybe his conscious, and stood on the roof, overlooking all of Los Angeles. He thought of his sister’s empty gaze and her sad wave to him through the window.
Ariel turned his head sharply and began to vomit.
At first, Ariel couldn’t tell what woke him. His eyes adjusted to the darkness and he stared out the window for a moment, the jagged edges of buildings slowly coming into focus against the tangled silhouette of palm trees and electrical poles and wires.
It wasn’t the noise of the neighborhood that interrupted his sleep. He had long grown accustomed to the music of South Central LA. He slept solid through the sounds of sirens and took no notice of the thick thrumming of helicopter blades as they cut through the sticky air. He slept through the cries of the child downstairs and the din provided by his neighbors – drunk karaoke versions of Llorar y Llorar to one side and soft R&B to the other.
And then he heard it. A rapid, sharp series of knocks followed by a shrill call.
He knew exactly who it was and didn’t bother with a greeting as he opened the door.
“What? What’s wrong?”
Sylvia Buenrostro was a sturdy woman, thick-hipped with hearty arms which were currently crossed over her chest as she clutched her rebozo. She stood slightly silhouetted in the door way, but her face was well lit by the bare bulb that served as a porch light. Ariel shared a duplex with his mother and sister but he was rarely alone enough to appreciate the separation of their living space.
Ariel studied her face for a moment and found only worry and fear. Her eyes were red-rimmed and wide. For a brief moment, her disquiet gave her sense of frailty he never associated with her. He was more familiar with her cruelty and disappointment in who he had become. But they were family, and family struggled together.
“Mariana never came home. It’s too late! It’s too late and she’s still not home!”
Ariel imagined his sister’s thin face, her delicate hands, her wily smile. Mariana was 23 and would incite any big brother to worry. She had always been pretty. Her thick, wavy hair tumbled over her shoulders and face to reveal her big, sad eyes. Her face stood out and was angular like his, their high cheekbones providing them a strange kind of regalness. But royalty wasn’t their reality. They were another poor Mexican family living in Los Angeles, trying desperately to make ends meet.
His thoughts turned back to Mariana and the bigger problem at hand. The problem was that Mariana was a little insane. A paranoid schizophrenic, the softness in her eyes could just as easily be replaced by unrelenting and unapologetic rage as she lashed out at those closest to her when her brain did its twisted dance and her medications weren’t working. Mariana not coming home from her shitty job in the kitchen of Jalisco’s didn’t mean she was out, laughing and joy riding with her friends. It meant she was lost to them, especially if she was in the middle of an episode.
She had run away for days at a time before. Eventually, they would find her when she slipped into a moment of lucidity and told someone at the shelter or hospital or jail cell she ended up in who she belonged to. Ariel and his mother would rush over and, more often than not, find her covered in filth and fully engulfed in the noise and terror her brain created.
There was no worse combination of words to Ariel than “Mariana never came home.” It meant that everyone’s nightmare was beginning again.
Chapter 2
“We’ll do what we can. Keep in touch. Try and get some rest.” The policemen turned away from the porch and trotted leisurely and self-assuredly towards their patrol car.
Ariel scoffed as he closed the door. Fucking cops, he thought. What’s another dead spic to them? He caught himself as he turned to his mother, trying to hide the concern in his face and the panic that was becoming second nature.
It had been 2 days, and Mariana was nowhere to be found. They tried her usual haunts, the places she almost always turned up in. While his mother sat like a sentinel by the phone, Ariel scoured the streets for his sister.
In the last 48 hours, Ariel had inadvertently toured the city. There was something especially sick about wandering the streets of Los Angeles, watching the lit up faces of tourists while he searched the alleyways for a heap that resembled his sister.
Rage swelled in Ariel’s chest. No one was going to look for Mariana. The cops were useless and would back burner her case. His mother was practically catatonic and was only animated the moment the phone rang.
Suddenly, Ariel couldn’t breathe. He was white knuckled as he maneuvered his car in and out of traffic. He was driving without knowing where he was going and when he came out of his daze, he realized he was parked upon a hilltop in the middle of a freezing night.
His subconscious had lead him to one of the few places him and Mariana shared as children – Griffith Park.
The rage subsided and was replaced by an equally potent longing for his sister. As children, they had taken field trips here so often it became routine. As a teenager, Ariel got stoned and watched the planetarium show with his friends. The dome of the Observatory clouded Ariel’s view and relief washed over him in an awesome wave. Even in the darkness, the vast expanse of the land below chided him, reminding him of all the trials and tribulations of the people before him -- their steps, their desires, and their grief were carved into the land. His story, his fear, and the trial before him was only one of many stories the land might whisper into the dark.
In that moment, Ariel was certain Mariana was alive and he would find her. He could feel her in the cold night air that whipped against his face and in the warmth and pulse of his own blood.
Ariel looked over the city, glistening. She was out there, and she was waiting for him.
Chapter 3
The next morning, Ariel resumed his usual routine of school and work. He couldn’t miss any more class or call-in to work again. Even the most lenient of his professors warned him of falling behind in his Chemistry courses. Sometimes even he couldn’t understand why he chose to pursue a Ph.D., save for the hope of a better future and more money to support himself and his family. Besides that, he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life working in a lab and taking orders from a balding little man with a God complex. He wanted to teach, to discover, and have the time to -- for the first time ever -- care for himself.
Sylvia went glassy eyed when she saw him pick up his backpack. He had been staying over in his mother’s apartment as a way of offering what little comfort he could. “Can’t you stay home? This is your sister! You’re giving up on her?!”
Ariel choked back resentment and answered, “Ama, someone has to pay the bills. That’s me. Its always been me. I’ve gotta go to school and work and then I’ll keep looking. I’m not giving up her.”
His mother, sensing she was losing the argument to stone cold logic, turned mean, “Disappointment. That’s all you’ve given me! At least your sister is honest, even with all her problems. She is who she has always been.”
Ariel was taken aback for a moment. She rarely mentioned his past, much less threw it in his face. Though he fought the urge to lash out, he made sure to slam the door so hard it nearly shattered the glass in the door.
As he stalked to the car, Ariel thought about what his life might look like to an outsider. His position was difficult. No part of his daily life was easy. But he made his life, shaped it carefully and intentionally and with great pain. He wasn’t born with wealth. In fact, he wasn’t born with much that informed who he truly was inside. His mother was having an especially difficult time adjusting to all the changes that had occurred over the past few years -- changes that Ariel, himself, was only beginning to understand the underlying causes of. He had so often felt like a foreigner in his own body. Couldn’t his mother just try to understand anything beyond her own pain?
He caught a glimpse of himself as he adjusted the rear view mirror in his car and sucked back tears as the sting of his mother’s words fully hit him.
Chapter 4
The day was long and shitty, and full of “I’m sorry to hear about your sister” which only reminded him, every hour on the hour, that Mariana was not wasting the day at home with their mother. She was somewhere or nowhere.
Ariel, in the meantime, sat on a concrete bench in a small alcove tucked away between the trees on the UCLA campus. It was a favorite spot of his and one of the first places he sat when he accepted entry into the Ph.D. program. He drove over the same day he received the phone call and found this sweet spot amongst the trees. It helped him feel some sense of peace on what was otherwise a campus that caused him a set of deeply conflicting feelings. He watched the frat boys and sorority girls walk past him and was instantly reminded that his kind – the queer, the brown, the poor – was never meant to walk these grounds. Sometimes he felt like every step he took here was a middle finger to the powers that be. Other times he felt like the whiteness and wealthiness of the place was killing him.
In between classes, Ariel began to diagram Mariana’s day. It wasn’t difficult since her illness made the places and people she came into contact with fairly minimal. As Ariel listed off names and places, he felt a surge of pity for the life Mariana could never really have. No wonder his mother felt such a sense of disappointment in him, too. She was his only hope for a normal child and what she ended up with was…him. Guilt and shame, an all too familiar combination of emotions, rose like heat in his body.
Mariana, he thought, Focus. This isn’t about you. Find her.
Ariel’s first stop was Jalisco’s, the hole-in-the-wall restaurant his sister had a part-time job at. The job she never came home from. It helped her feel more stable, more confident, even if it was just cutting vegetables and meat in the kitchen and doing the most menial of tasks. When she was lucid, it provided her a sense of normalcy. He liked to hear her come home and whine about how bad her feet hurt. If that was her only complaint about the day, it meant things were good.
Ariel learned to bask in these moments of relative calmness. Mariana had been at the restaurant for just over 3 months now, enough for people to miss her a little – even if she occasionally got in the way and was a pain in the ass.
“I told you, the cops already asked all this shit. We’re real sorry about it. Man, you look just like her.”
Ariel flinched at Manuel’s comment, unsure of how to register it. How does he see me? Ariel wondered. In truth, Ariel couldn’t shake his past, who he was and who he was born and socialized as – but moments erupted that forced the memory and made him wince. He was surprised at how triggering Manuel’s comment was and again, reminded himself of his purpose before pushing the feelings away.
Manuel, the manager, continued to rattle away half-assed apologies and hopes for Mariana’s safe return. Ariel felt no real trace of sincerity and let his eyes wander to the peeling yellow paint and the cracks in ceiling before settling on staring at the woman at the cash register.
She looked up, met his eyes, and quickly shifted her eyes away. Ariel realized she was trying, rather unsuccessfully, to hide her intent listening. Her hair was slicked back into a tight pony tail and she was chewing on her lip as she continued to avoid eye contact with Ariel and scribbled on receipts at the register.
Ariel nudged Manuel and nodded in the girl’s direction, “Who is that?”
“Linda? Ah, she’s been real sad since Mari’s been gone.”
Ariel stood up abruptly and walked over to her, too consumed with interest to care about interrupting Manuel's tirade.
“Linda?”
She flashed a small, tight smile and said, loud enough for Manuel to hear, “I can’t talk. I’m on the clock. I’m sorry…” Her eyes welled, “about your sister.” It was the first real apology Ariel received in all this mess. She uttered a small gasp and suddenly hugged Ariel tightly. Manuel looked amused and said something about women and their inability to control their emotions. Both Ariel and Linda ignored him.
It wasn’t until much later in the evening when Ariel searched his coat for his wallet that he came across a tightly wadded up scrap of paper. Written in pencil on the back of an old receipt was, “Frankie. 103 W 4th.”
Chapter 5
Ariel was only vaguely familiar with 103 W 4th. He knew it was a seedy place that once held promise. Indeed, it was a shit hole, as he expected.
He stormed into The Barclay Hotel. They had tried to recover some of its glory with peach paint and even he paused for a moment to glance up stained glass that adorned the windows in what served as a lobby. Pathetic garage-sale paintings were plastered across the walls and he almost caught himself laughing at the sad face of a clown as it stared down upon him. It helped him quell the anxiety that was currently ravaging his body.
He settled into an oversized chair and began to play the waiting game. No one was going to pay him any attention in a place like this. The whole point of its existence was so that people could come and go as they pleased.
He didn’t know what Frankie looked like but he knew what to wait for. It was early evening and Ariel had a full day of work. More than once, his head lulled as he lapsed into sleep. Each time, he awoke with a start and a moment of disorientation.
It was nearly eleven when Ariel’s patience was rewarded with the thick smell of Mexican food and the voice of a young man complaining to someone on the phone in Spanish. Ariel felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up and a cold stab in his belly. That’s what Mariana smelled like at the end of the day. Ariel had to keep himself from racing up to young man and throttling him. It took all his self-control to slowly follow him through the hall and pretend to walk right past him into a stairwell.
Ariel paced in the stairwell. He needed to calm down before this encounter. He needed a minute to think about what he was doing. Ariel felt himself go into another daze as waves of nervous nausea rocked him. He didn’t know how much time passed when he emerged from the stairs.
He stood in front of the door Frankie walked into and held his breath as he knocked.
Frankie opened the door with sleep still evident in his face. Ariel used this to his advantage and ran at Frankie, full force, pinning him to the wall and slamming the door shut with his free arm.
He spoke so forcefully that he spit in Frankie’s face, “Where the fuck is my sister?”
Frankie looked confused and before he could issue some kind of inquiry, Ariel screamed, “Mariana! What happened between you and Mariana?! Where is she?!”
Ariel felt a wet heat growing on his thigh and realized that Frankie had pissed himself. Ariel was both satisfied that he was capable of causing such a reaction and alternately disturbed with himself.
Frankie began blubbering, speaking between great gasps of air, “Mariana? Did they find her? Manuel said they would find her…I…I never…I never...I never touched her. We just talked sometimes. Sometimes, we went to the corner store together and got Cokes. I bought her an ice cream once. I liked to visit her in the kitchen and sometimes she would tell me about a crazy dream she had. Other times, she didn’t want to talk at all so I left her alone. I never touched her! I’m sorry!”
Ariel searched Frankie’s face for insincerity and found none. What he did find filled him with shame. Ariel realized that Frankie was just a kid. He couldn’t have been more than 21. Ariel saw this young Mexican man and saw a criminal instead of seeing what was there – a kid living in a dump just trying to keep a roof over his head and food in his mouth. He wasn’t much different from Ariel in that respect. It’s not like South Central was a palace.
Ariel let Frankie go and muttered an apology while Frankie looked down and tried to hide what had happened with a blanket.
“I’m real sorry. I’m real, real sorry,” Frankie sniffled.
“No. No, I am. It’s just…I have to find her. Linda…she said to come to you,” Ariel lied.
“Because Mari talked to me, maybe. More than she did the others. I liked to listen to her stories. I didn’t think she was as crazy as everyone said…” Frankie glanced up apologetically and shrugged, “I liked her stories.”
Ariel shook his head. He didn’t understand. “Linda had to think you could tell me something. Did you talk to Mariana before she disappeared? What did she talk about?”
Frankie nodded his head. “She said she kept having a dream about a man with bright blue eyes coming to visit her. She said she had that dream three times in a row. She was funny those days. She talked funny – slow, like when you wake someone up and ask them a question. Once, I was coming to talk to her but she was talking to herself. She said, “Happy house.” I didn’t ask her about it though. When she got like that, she could…she could be mean.”
Ariel was familiar with Mariana’s hair-trigger personality when she was starting to sink into an episode. He understood why Frankie backed off.
Ariel issued a few thousand apologies before he opened the door to let himself out. Frankie, while embarrassed at the stain on his pants, wished him luck.
In spite of his shame at frightening Frankie, Ariel accepted Frankie’s offer. After all, he needed all the luck he could get.
Chapter 6
The Happy House.
Ariel knew exactly what Mariana had been talking about. It’s what they called the behavioral facility where Mariana received regular treatment when things were bad. But Mariana had been fine – or so he thought. Why hadn’t his mother mentioned anything to him? Why was she still going to work if she was starting to slip?
Charter House was a typical psyche ward – sterile, unbearably white, and full of rounded edges and soft corners. Charter House also had several outpatient programs, some of which Mariana had participated in. It was Charter House that set her up with the job at Jalisco’s. Ariel had a sense that things were slowly starting to piece together.
Staring into the patient lobby, Ariel wondered if they were even allowed to use forks here. He looked over at a table of young people attempting to play a board game. Attempt was perhaps too generous a description for the empty gazes and wandering eyes of the players. He almost couldn’t believe they weren’t drooling on themselves. Maybe they were all worse off than Mariana was. This was, after all, a nut house.
A woman rounded the corner and smiled at him. Her short blonde hair fell in little curls around her forehead and the childishness of her haircut only accentuated the wrinkles in the corners of her eyes. Ariel thought she must have been pretty when she was younger. The letters J-O-A-N were stamped on her name tag. “The psychiatrist you’d like to see is not currently available. Is there anything I can help you with? I coordinate much of the programming here at Charter House.”
“Who coordinates the job program here? Is it you that set Mariana up with a job?”
“That’s me. Funding here is so poor that we all wear several different hats. All of our patients that are doing well are funneled into part-time employment with an assortment of establishments we’ve partnered with. We take the time to match employers with suitable employees.”
“So that’s why Mariana ended up working at Jalisco’s…”
“I’m sorry?”
“You kept the trash in the gutter, that’s all.”
Joan narrowed her eyes at Ariel in suspicion as Ariel defiantly raised his chin in her direction. “I want to see her charts. I want to know whatever you were logging on my sister. And don’t bother with the patient-doctor confidentiality shit. Something is fucked up here, and I have every intention of figuring out what.”
Joan’s eyes grew wide, “Look, I don’t…I don’t want any trouble. I can’t let you see most of what her psychiatrist writes. I don’t even have access to those files. I can, however, allow you to see her treatment history – if you’ve been granted permission, that is. I have protocol that I am responsible to, Mr. Buenrostro.”
Ariel relaxed a bit and felt his anger beginning to wan. He was surprised that she wasn’t putting up more a fight. Maybe she wants to help me, but why?
Ten minutes later, Ariel was looking over Mariana’s paperwork. He flipped through a bullet list of “Therapy Goals” and stopped when he found documentation of her medication. Her med regiment was certainly no secret to Ariel. He filled and picked up her prescriptions for her most of the time, but he was sure this particular paperwork was beyond what he should’ve been able to see. He glanced up at Joan, who had conveniently turned her back to him. In that instant, Ariel slipped the medication log into his pocket.
Joan turned to him and asked, “Did you find what you were looking for?”
Ariel decided to play dumb. “No…nothing of particular use to me. Not at the moment anyway. I suspect that I’ll be back, though.”
Joan offered a knowing smile, “Yes. I think you will be.”
Chapter 7
Joan knew something and for some reason, she was willing to let Ariel in on her little secret. Maybe Ariel had misread her. Maybe she was just fucking with him.
But that piece of paper shouldn’t have been in Mariana’s general file and it revealed too much for someone to risk letting just anyone view it.
In the privacy of his home, Ariel stared at the list of medications in disbelief. The amount of medication she was on was too much and the changes in her medication came too abruptly. The types of medication were right – what anyone would expect Mariana to be taking. She was under the influence of a chemical cocktail of mood stabilizers, anti-psychotics, and anti-depressants. Everything was, in its own right, sedating, but her doses were too high. From what Ariel could gather, she was either taking more medication than he realized at home or she was getting extra doses when she visited Charter house…or maybe both.
Ariel remembered the table of young teens at Charter House and their empty stares. They were over medicating the patients, certainly, but why?
Its not like over medication was a foreign phenomena in this day. Depression was more and more commonly diagnosed. Everyone was on something. But it was different for Mariana and for the kids at Charter House. This was a world of chronic illness, of diseases that had to be managed and balances maintained. This wasn’t the result of a bad day or a series of unfortunate events. This was brain chemistry and bad genes. This was nothing to be fucked with.
Chapter 8
“Ariel, yes? I thought I might see you again.”
Ariel titled his head inquisitively. He didn’t know they would be on a first name basis on day two. He decided that Joan wanted to help him after all.
“Where is your Dr. Mengele? Or Dr. Lugner, should I say?” Ariel was ready to deck the Stanford educated psychiatrist. Ariel hated him for a multitude of reasons but despised him with a renewed fury when he saw Dr. Lugner’s smug fucking face at various galas and fundraisers in photographs online. A quick Google search yielded almost too much information on the distinguished Charles Lugner, one of the leading treatment providers at Charter House. It was his signature that sat next to each entry in Mariana’s medication log.
Joan pursed her lips to hide a smile. “Aren’t you clever? He’s not in today. But he will be later. Much later. And I’m afraid I can’t tell you much more beyond that. If you’ll excuse me, I have patients to care for.” She emphasized the word “care” when she spoke and Ariel sensed bitterness.
Ariel searched their exchange for a hint and decided that “much later” meant more waiting around in the middle of the night.
One quick dinner and two cups of coffee later, Ariel sat in his car a few blocks down from Charter House. He felt like a kid in a movie, but he could feel the curiosity gnawing on him. Mariana felt close.
And then he saw it.
A classic Cadillac rolled up to the house, the black, glossy paint shining impossibly bright, even in the dim lighting. A thin, well-coifed white man sat at the wheel. Ariel pressed the binoculars into his eye sockets, as though it would help, as he studied the man. He looked pleased to be there.
The glass doors at the main entrance opened and Ariel strained to see more in the hazy light. He could see two shapes emerging from the relative darkness of the building. At first, Ariel thought one of them might be drunk since one shape seemed to be holding up the other shape. Finally, Ariel could tell it was two men. A young man and an older man.
Ariel adjusted the focus of his binoculars and studied the face of the maybe-drunk boy. He looked vaguely familiar. Then it clicked – it was one of the kids that had been sitting at the table attempting to play a board game! The older man shifted the weight of his ward and passed him over to the newly arrived man. The driver of the car quickly tucked the boy into the passenger side of his Cadillac.
Before Ariel could finish thinking, what the fuck? The man in the doorway stepped out slightly and caught the light just right.
Ariel recoiled in disgust as he watched Dr. Lugner wave goodbye to the now-disappearing Caddy.
Chapter 9
What the hell had he just seen?
It slowly snapped together in Ariel’s head.
They were manufacturing zombies at Charter House.
He was shocked at its brilliance. Who would ask questions about a bunch of crazy brown kids? They were capitalizing on some of the most disposable bodies around. They could even trot their prey out the front door and no one would notice. It was bold. It was fearless. It was a powerful display of arrogance.
And the fact is, no one believed the patients anyway. Besides that, the kid they traded off looked completely out of it. No wonder Mariana was on so much medication all of a sudden. They’re preparing her, he thought, but for who?
At home, Ariel returned to his computer and braced himself for what he might find. He was, once again, overwhelmed with the amount of information available online about Charter House.
Dr. Lugner knew the man and so Ariel first returned to his old image searches for the smug faced doctor. Ariel clicked image after image, searching and hoping to find some glimpse of the well-dressed man he watched steal away a boy for god-knows-what. Bleary eyed, hours later, Ariel found nothing.
He went to the Charter House site on the off chance he might ferret out some form of additional information. He scolded himself for not following the man in the Caddy that night but shock had set in and Ariel lost the car from sight too quickly to pursue it.
He was at what felt like an impasse as he scrolled absent-mindedly through the pages of information and thank yous to the benefactors of Charter House – big donors with big smiles, who probably bragged to their rich friends about the poor folks they helped even though they were donating what was probably equal to a teeny, tiny fraction of their yearly income. Ariel involuntarily snorted as he thought this and it momentarily brought him back to reality.
Ariel felt his stomach twist. Grinning back at him from the page was the well-coifed man. Ariel was also able to see something he couldn’t see in the darkness --- Dr. Richard Dieb’s bright blue eyes.
Chapter 10
The internet was truly a stalker’s paradise. It didn’t take much diligence for Ariel to track down the home address of Dieb. Rich people were conceited in that way – always looking to have their homes featured in a magazine or a newspaper, not realizing it might actually be their undoing.
Ariel sat in front of Dieb’s beachside house in Venice and shook with anger as he listened to the waves crash against the shore. The home was painfully modern – clean, white, and angular. The man worked at a hospital most of his life and chose to live in one, too.
Venice was eerily quiet and still. Ariel could hear the distant laugh of people emanating from a nearby bar. Against his better judgement, he got out of his car, double-checked the parking meter out of habit, and walked towards the beach.
He hated what Venice had become – gentrified as hell and filled with yuppies and hipsters. He almost preferred it when it was just heroin addicts and the homeless. Ariel stumbled in the sand as he ambled towards the ocean and, looking out, felt his smallness once again.
He allowed himself to bask in self-pity and wept out of pure exhaustion for what felt like an eternity and returned to his car. According to the parking meter, his flirt with an emotional breakdown cost him an hour of watching Dieb’s residence. He recommitted himself to his mission as he shifted around in the driver’s seat.
There was no movement inside or outside the house for another two hours. Ariel got out to feed the meter again and jerked his head so hard he hurt his neck when he saw a porch light come on and the sound of a garage door opening. He raced back to his car, letting change spill out of his hand and wondered where Dieb might be going tonight.
Ariel trailed him in to downtown Los Angeles.
Of fucking course, thought Ariel, as Dieb’s car turned into The Oviatt. He watched Dieb hand his keys off to a valet and stroll into the building. Maybe he was having a late supper or visiting some other smug fuck who was renting the obscenely priced and infamous Penthouse. Ariel didn’t care. He just wanted some extra time to watch the good Dr. Dieb and to circle back to Dieb’s place before the piece of shit went home for the night.
Ariel found a cheap lot to park in and decided to play “the lost tourist” as he walked into The Oviatt. No one attacked him at first so he walked through the door and quickly shuffled off the side. He didn’t spot Dieb immediately and skimmed the room quickly before settling on the back of his head. Ariel’s eyes burned holes into Dr. Dieb’s back but was pleased that he could gawk without fear of being seen by him.
He had never been inside this place. People like him had no business here. The chandelier sparkled and dazzled and the room was awash in gold light. The walls were paneled in a rich wood and gold statues of goddesses decorated niches in the walls. It was art deco at its most extravagant and finest. Ariel instantly loved and hated it for its daring decadence and its history.
Ariel wondered how many dirty deals had been done here, how many rich assholes had populated the building and left traces of their filth in the walls.
Ariel felt a tap on the shoulder and a man in a bow-tie curtly informed him that he was underdressed. Ariel smiled sheepishly, complimented the beauty of the space to the tight-faced man, and said he had just come in off the street to admire it. The man was unforgiving and continued to glare at Ariel like an intruder.
Ariel apologized again as he exited and thought, this building is like all of Los Angeles – beautiful, but full of evil.
Chapter 11
Dr. Richard Dieb was drunk as he staggered into his home, where Ariel was waiting for him by the garage door. As soon as it opened, Ariel ran inside and hid between a series of long, tall metal shelves. His encounter with Frankie had taught him something about brutal force and after the garage door closed and Dr. Dieb practically fell out of his car, Ariel pounced on him. He shoved him towards the entry to the house and, with a blade pressed against the lily white throat of Dr. Dieb, ordered him to open the god damn door.
Dieb was utterly compliant. The door opened into a kitchen that had every amenity imaginable. Dieb sat on a bar stool and squinted at Ariel before muttering a low, “Oh.”
Ariel didn’t understand why Dieb was searching Ariel with his eyes until he said, “You look just like her.”
Ariel felt another twinge of anger. Of course he looked like his sister. They shared the same genes, he told himself. He tried not to be sensitive to a doctor evaluating him yet again and fought a flood of insecurity about his masculinity. Then he remembered what he was there to do.
Ariel let fury take over.
“I saw you last night with that boy at Charter House. I watched our friend Dr. Lugner help you put that doped-up headcase into your car. You…you saw my sister. She said she had a dream about a man with your eyes. Repeatedly. I want her back. Now.”
Dr. Dieb smiled, “You know, I watched her for some time at the facility. Pretty girl with those deep, dark eyes. You must be Ariel. I read her file. I know about you, you know. All your changes. All the grief you’ve caused your mother…” Dieb didn’t finish the last part of his sentence because Ariel was choking him. The entire time, Dr. Dieb didn’t stop smiling.
Ariel relented, seeing that the good doctor was unmoved.
“What are you going to do, young man? Who would ever believe you? Who would ever believe Mariana? She thinks it’s all a dream, just another set of nightmares. Tell you what, for your silence, I will give you back your sister – and a whole week before she’s due back!”
Ariel didn’t answer. He didn’t know how to. He was frozen in fear, in frustration. This was the thing with rich white men – in the end, they always won. Ariel just wanted Mariana back. He thought about the empty-eyed boy and looked to the floor in shame. I can’t… he thought before meeting Dr. Dieb’s gaze.
“Take her back to the hospital. I’ll pick her up from there tomorrow. You’ve got until tomorrow, Dr. Dieb.”
He chuckled. “So you think you’ve got it all figured out, do you? You think you’re the one with leverage here, do you? Do me a favor,” Dieb requested through a toothy grin, “Check your mother’s bank account. Ask her about the deposit she received. If my hands are dirty, your mother’s are filthy!”
Chapter 12
Sylvia was curled up on their tattered couch when Ariel walked in. She woke up startled.
“Ariel…What did you find?”
“You got money, mom. Dr. Lugner. Dr. Dieb. Charter House. The Happy House. What the fuck did you do, ama?”
Her voice rose higher and higher, “You don’t understand! You don’t know what it’s like to struggle like this! To take care of your sister the way I do! They said….they said she wouldn’t remember anything anyway! They said it would be like a bad dream to her and she would wake up and then we’d get her back!”
She had done it. She had sold her own flesh and blood to those men, to that place. Ariel reeled at the corroboration of all his worst fears. And then he let loose, unleashing a year’s worth of pent up rage and resentment.
“All I have done is give up my fucking life for this family. I pay for everything. I’ve paid for it all and now you’re making her pay – with her body, mom. What do you think she’s going to be like when she comes back? Who do you think we’re going to get back?!”
“They said…”
“Fuck what they said.”
“I don’t have to listen to this! You have no right…with everything you’ve done.”
“Everything I’ve done?! You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. Are you going to mention my past now? Yeah, mom. Sorry, I wasn’t born a boy. I became one. I’m not sorry that I finally feel comfortable in my own fucking skin and you hate that so much. But it changes nothing. I didn’t forget who I am, who I was raised as. Mariana and I were sisters, and she is still my sister now. And you…you fucking sold her!”
Ariel hadn’t frankly addressed his transition with his mother since he first started taking testosterone and even then, he just informed her that he was going to start to look different. Disgust pained his mother’s face. Ariel was shaking again and could feel the onset of yet another panic attack. He was scared of himself, scared of what he might do to his own mother – and that would make him no better than her.
“Fuck you,” were the only words Ariel left trailing behind him as he slammed the door.
Chapter 14
Dieb made good on his promise to deliver Mariana back to Charter House within the day.
Ariel was sitting in the lobby when he saw Joan appear.
“You knew. You know. You know and you’re not doing anything. Not really.”
Joan immediately began sobbing before pulling Ariel into a private office. “What do I do? What happens if this place shuts down? What happens to all the people here? So many of them…we help. We really help. We really try. But the donors…they control everything. They’ve made it so we sacrifice a handful to help one hundred. What do I do? Tell me what to do and I’ll do it. I liked Mariana. I wanted you to find her. I tried…I put the log in the file…I’m trying.”
Ariel could offer her no counsel. He had, after all, left the young boy with Dr. Dieb so he could have Mariana. Ariel answered Joan with silence and a sad shake of the head. She blotted her face with tissue and said, “She’ll be here soon. Wait in the lobby again.”
When Ariel finally saw Mariana, he had to keep himself from falling apart. She saw him and offered him a weak smile. Well, at least she recognizes me.
The car ride home was excruciating. Mariana was still lost in a haze of sedatives and periodically babbled. He could see angry red marks on her wrists. She had been handcuffed or tied up. She was clean but that only repulsed Ariel – it meant someone had bathed her, touched her all over.
They were two blocks from home when Mariana started screaming about hands, confirming his own concerns about the violence that had been visited upon her body. Who knew what she had seen? Who would listen? He couldn’t. This was his mother’s cross to bear now.
Sylvia wept as she wrapped her arms around Mariana who went slack at her mother’s touch. “Mama?” Ariel and Sylvia traded angry stares and Ariel kissed the top of Mariana’s head.
As he drove away from the house, he saw the curtain move and watched Mariana wave slowly goodbye to him. It was a force of habit – something she had done since they were children.
Mariana’s body was back but her mind was elsewhere. Ariel didn’t know if he would ever be strong enough to question her.
They were right, he thought.
It was better if Mariana thought it was just a bad dream, just another nightmare.
Epilogue
It had been a month since the story broke. Ariel packaged all the information he had gathered about the abuses at Charter House and sent identical packages to competing news stations with a letter stating which other stations had also received the information.
They weren’t going to follow the story for the good of humanity, but they would for the sake of ratings. He was lucky it was sweeps.
Ariel thought of his sister, of the care he was incapable of giving her, at the pain in his chest it caused to think of leaving her with his mother. He thought of the patients at Charter House and what might have become of them.
He drove to Griffith again, in the hopes of clearing his head and maybe his conscious, and stood on the roof, overlooking all of Los Angeles. He thought of his sister’s empty gaze and her sad wave to him through the window.
Ariel turned his head sharply and began to vomit.