Dateline: Atlantis by Lynn Voedisch Read Free Book Online Page B

and tries to change the mental channel, but it’s stuck on domestic dowdiness and she can’t turn it off. The apartment, she decides, is just a reflection of her life in LA: spare, unfocused, and undernourished. She spends nearly every waking moment at work. She goes to the gym a couple times a week with Fiona, mainly to look at guys. She never dates. Well, hardly ever.
    She flops onto her back and rearranges the pillow so that it cradles her neck. And what’s the deal with the men in this town? Don’t they want to talk about anything but films and acting? She groans in her chest as she remembers the last party Barney and his wife dragged her to. She dressed to the nines, fluffing up her luxurious fall of wavy brown hair, outlined her hazel eyes in kohl, and wore a silver miniskirt that showed off her long legs. The only man in the entire room who talked to her was a beach-blond pretty boy who asked what she did for a living. When she told him she was a reporter at the Star , he said, ‘Well, I hope you’re making it better, ” and stomped off.
    How do you talk to men like that? When was her last date? The pillow is poking into a cervical disc, so she pounds it flat.
    What had she been covering before the Mexico story? Oh, yes, grandparents who had become parents all over again when their own sons of daughters were in jail or halfway houses. She’d spent a lot of time in South Central and Compton researching the story. The women would call at midnight with their stories and the whole experience was bringing Amaryllis to her knees emotionally. A rough story and no guy to share her tears or triumphs. Only plenty of praise from Wright. Big deal.
    Deep down, she knows why she can’t find a man. To enter into a solid relationship will bind her to this city. And that she cannot bear. L.A., L.A. It just isn’t home and never will be. She’s a Chicago girl to her the marrow of her bones. She longs for it, a real city with neighborhoods filled with people who stick together, massive skyscrapers, Wrigley Field, and a landscaped lakefront. But she hasn’t been home in six years, not for a Christmas, not for a birthday. But she can’t go back now. Not now….
    Somehow, between listening to sirens on the street and thinking of Aunt Freya’s homemade fudge, Amaryllis falls into deep dreams.
    #
    After a croissant and a friendly chat with Fiona in the morning, Amaryllis stumbles into her subcompact and drives up West Hollywood to her one-bedroom apartment. The Times sits on her doorstep side by side with the Star. Pulling the plastic wrap off the newspaper, she rips open the Times before she even sees the Star’s front section. On page three, Garret’s face peers out under a story headlined “Local freelance photog out of focus .”
    The Times has every fact that the police had furnished—pretty much the sketchy truth—but at the end is a curious sentence: “Lucas was last working with a Star reporter on a touchy political story in Mexico.”
    Where had that come from? Amaryllis opens the front door, and after a cursory check of the rooms, sits at her kitchen table, pushing aside enough clutter to spread the paper out flat. She thinks of calling Sandy Starr, whose name floats over the story. Sandy once worked in Metro news with her at the Star . They still get together for a quick burrito for lunch now and then. She goes halfway to her phone when she realizes her near blunder. Sandy knows something, and she is Times property now. It is the sad truth that if you cross the block, or the valley, your loyalties change. Amaryllis will tell Sandy plenty about a routine cop story—but not about her Mexican discovery.
    Those damn Mexican rags. That’s what Sandy’s been reading. The tabloids. The international news on the Internet. All that junk about finding Atlantis. She stomps off toward the bathroom for a shower. Atlantis, my ass.
    After dressing