Burning September (24 page)

“You should have seen her face when I told the bartender she was too drunk to drive home, that he should take her keys.  I was hoping I’d get to swoop in and offer her a ride.  Didn’t go over so well.”

“Sounds like you were an idiot.”

“No argument there.  What drunk twenty-nine-year-old isn’t an idiot?” 

I jogged the final few steps to the door.  He grunted, annoyed, but let me hold it for him. 

“I guess what I’m trying to say is, there are times in life when you just need to go for it and worry about consequences later.  You have to shelve your pride sometimes, hard as that is to do.”

“But he’s twenty-nine, and I’m barely legal.  Shouldn’t you be saying that’s wrong, that he’s using me, he thinks I’m some easy mark, like a wounded antelope?”

“If you’re an easy mark, I’m a ballerina.”  He hobbled to the sign-out desk and snatched up a Handgun Safety brochure.  “I don’t know how important the age difference is.  You don’t act immature, for the most part. No pissier than an older woman, but then, you’re all crazy.  That can’t be helped.”

“I’d rather be crazy than an idiot.”

“Good point.”  He flipped the brochure open, his eyes whizzing over the paragraphs before he handed it to me.  “I’ll help you study this for a bit, and we’ll go back for another round.  You’ll hit center mass if it’s the last thing I do.”

***

Caroline listened silently as I regaled her with my latest stalking tale, her eye contact never wavering, even as aides came and went, banging through the lobby doors.

“And you never got a look at this person?” she finally asked, after I’d fallen silent.

“No.  It was dark.  I asked the neighbor lady about it after I found the footprints.  She hadn’t seen anyone, but her baby was sick, so she said she was pretty busy.”

“And did the cop follow through?  Did he station a patrol car outside the unit?”

“Yeah.  For that night, at least.  Nothing since.”

“How helpful.  Of course the idiot wouldn’t have come back the same night.”  She ran her index finger over one of the violet crescent moons bleeding over the delicate creped skin beneath her eyes.  “And me speaking to Karen Stone is supposed to do what about this, exactly?”

“It’s just an opportunity for her to speak to me again, really.  Your interview is the excuse I need to mention it.”

I wondered if she felt the oddness of that statement the way I did.  Never before had I requested the limelight, asked her to be a stagehand and wait behind the red velvet curtain.  She had to have felt the tides turning, but if she did, she didn’t show it.

“What the hell can Karen Stone do about this?”

“Shed light on the fact that the police aren’t taking me seriously. In the end it’ll get more of the jury pool thinking the cops have it out for you, that’s why they’re ignoring me.”

“If you say so.”  She let loose a long sigh, cracking her neck.  “Make sure that camera’s running at all times.  I’m not sure when was last time I was at a complete loss, but I can’t think of anyone it could be.  Not a man, anyway.”

“You have female suspects in mind?”

“A big footed female, I guess.  Brian’s mom.  She’s a beast.  And then what’s her name.  That woman with the stripper name, the one wearing leopard print heels.  Did she have big feet?”

“I really didn’t notice.”

“Was she tall?”

“I guess.  Didn’t look like she’d ever worn a pair of Vans, though.”

“Well Prada doesn’t make proper B&E attire, babe.”

“I really doubt it’d be her anyway.  Looks like she’s got better things to do.  Wash her hair, glue rhinestones to her jeans.  She doesn’t even know where we live, anyway.”

She shrugged, one pale shoulder slipping out the neckline of her scrubs.  I couldn’t remember a time when her skin hadn’t been tinged with gold, but I guessed being locked up in Breakthrough would do that to a person.

“Well she’s seen your face all over TV.  I’m sure even an idiot could poke around on the internet and find your contact information.  A shitload of journalists managed to do it.  Why not one big footed stripper?  She sure as hell didn’t like you that much.”  She took a deep breath, let it out slowly.  “I’ll do the Karen Stone interview.  You’ll have to contact them for me, though, I don’t think the powers that be kept her contact information after I had them decline the interview for me earlier.”

“Thanks.”

She nodded, lips downturned, eyes glittering, her busy brain likely clicking and humming like a CPU buried deep in some complicated machine. 

APRIL

I didn’t like seeing that strange happiness shining out of Caroline’s eyes as she surveyed the controlled chaos of Karen Stone’s production crew.  Like the Joker looking down at the madness he’d unleashed on Gotham, so proud and self-impressed, spinning sticky webs of lies.  It wasn’t fire season any longer, but I still felt trapped in the center of a landscape of wildfire, like I had to cringe through hot smoke and cover my face to protect it from flying sparks and ash. 

And to think I could have kept the whole thing from unspooling by asking her a few prodding questions.  How are you feeling, Caroline?  What are you thinking?  What are you doing to yourself?  We can’t carry on like this any longer.  Let’s go somewhere, anywhere, it doesn’t matter.  We could go to Belize, you never wanted to stay in the States forever.  Visit those icy lakes in Norway you told me about, look at the architecture in Russia and sample the vodka, go see all those crazy outfits the girls wear in Tokyo. 

I could have convinced her.  Made her pause, anyway.  All I would have needed was a second of hesitation. 

You’re going to kill him because he exposed your weakness, proved to yourself you weren’t carved completely from glass?  And that weakness was only love; most people have come down with a case of love a few times in their lives.  It’s nothing that chronic, I can find you the antidote.  Give me a few minutes to Google.
I could have said all that and more, but I hadn’t. 

Nobody else in the room seemed to notice her lively eyes, but then none of them knew her the way I did. 

Kyle shifted his weight to his left foot, leaned against the wall we’d been holding up for the past thirty minutes, across the room from Caroline, watching the makeup artist try to find a flaw to fix on my sister’s face.  There weren’t any, but she made a valiant effort to improve upon Caroline’s perfection.  The result was nauseatingly beautiful.  I couldn’t watch this. 

I cinched my arms tighter around myself and exhaled a shuddering breath.  “I need to go outside, or something.  I don’t have to be here, do I?”

He blinked down at me, lines of concern I didn’t deserve rimming his eyes.  “No.  Is something wrong?”

Caroline’s gaze caught in my peripherals.  Watching me.  Us.  Me and Kyle.  Trying to dismantle the situation, pick apart body language and micro expressions, catalog our every movement for a later discussion I had no wish to be a part of. 

Bile boiled in my stomach, blisteringly acidic.  “I just can’t watch this.  I…I need to go somewhere else.  Just for a little while.  Until this is over.  Karen isn’t going to talk to me until later, back at home, right?”

“Yeah.”  His hand snared around my elbow as I brushed past him, toward the door.  “I—I’d go with you if I could, but I can’t leave.”

“I know.”

He unearthed his keys from his pocket, dangled them in front of me like a fishing lure.  “Do you want to visit Nicholas?  I can give you the key to my apartment.  You’ve just got to be back home by five.”

My fingertips hesitated in midair.  “You don’t think that’s weird?”

He unclipped a key from the ring and pressed it into my palm.  “Looks like you need it.  He’ll make you feel better.  I bought him some Party Mix treats.  Feed him with caution, that stuff makes him crazy.”

***

Nicholas wound frenzied figure eights around my legs as I stepped into Kyle’s apartment half an hour later.  I stooped to pick him up, slinging him over my shoulder like a stole.  Air whooshed out of his lungs, but it wasn’t long before his plaintive yowl spiraled down into purrs. 

I had to laugh, seeing all the cat toys Kyle had apparently bought littering the apartment.  A cat bed sat thoroughly unused in the living room, a plush cat tower carpeted with black fur sat in one corner, brightly colored mouse toys dotted the floor like a design from some artist on LSD.  He must have bought out Petco. 

“I missed you,” I crooned, rubbing the space between his eyes the way he liked.  His answer came in the form of a yawn which smelled strongly of fish. 

Skirting cat toys, I made my way to the sofa and sank into it, Nicholas struggling in my arms. 

It was an odd feeling, being in Kyle’s place when he wasn’t around.  He didn’t think much of housekeeping, judging by the jackets draped over his kitchen chairs, the shoes cast aside by the front door.  T-shirts on the coffee table.  A film of spidery dust on the picture frames in the foyer, a heavier layer than the last time I’d seen the photos, when Kyle had pointed out who was who, his best friend, his old college roommate, his dead relatives.  I had a strong urge to wield a can of Lemon Pledge, run a vacuum, but it didn’t look as though he owned one.  Caroline would psychoanalyze my urge to organize, tell me it all boiled down to control, or more specifically, my lack thereof.  I couldn’t control the mess she’d made, but I could control the debris field that was Kyle’s apartment.  But even I had enough sense to know that would be weird.

This was the only man’s apartment I’d ever been inside.  He’d obviously cleaned before my arrival to watch the first Karen Stone special.  The state of the place now had me hoping he wasn’t as disorganized when it came to his work as he was in regards to housekeeping. 

Something stabbed me in the thigh and I shifted on the couch, blindly groping between the cushions, my fingers closing around something cold and metal.  It was an earring, I found, when I pulled it out.  An ugly, tacky thing, one those overlarge hoops with cheap rhinestones of varying colors.  What skank did this fall off of, I wondered, but it sounded like Caroline’s voice.  What, had it tried to commit suicide?

“Who does this belong to?” I asked Nicholas idly, spinning it by the pointy end.  “Looks like you’ve got a new stepmom.”

I didn’t know why an earring should piss me off so much.  Just a vulgar hunk of metal that had previously been impaled through the fat earlobe of a tasteless bitch who apparently thought little of Russian names.  I had the sudden, overwhelming urge to hunt down a bottle of hand sanitizer.  God only knew what kinds of germs festered in Crystal’s ears.  Crystal, with her mean laugh and makeup laid on like layers in sediment. 

Why would any man waste time hanging around a woman he clearly couldn’t stand all that much?  Apart from the obvious.  It looked like she gave the milk away for free quite frequently, especially taking the hooker heels into account.  I hoped he used a condom to ward off the cocktail of STDs swimming around in her veins. 

Nicholas’s marble eyes followed the sparkly circles the earring spun in midair until he couldn’t take it any longer and lunged forward to bat it with his paw.  I let him slap it away, hoping Kyle wouldn’t notice it in the general disarray of his apartment and accidentally step on it with bare feet, but thought better of it when Nicholas made a mad dash off the couch to retrieve it, sparkle lust shining in his eyes.

***

I didn’t ask how it went with Caroline when I opened the door for Kyle that evening, and he didn’t volunteer any information, shrugging out of his jacket as I locked the deadbolt behind him. 

“Did you check the cameras when you got in?”

“Yeah.  Nothing.”

“Maybe he’s gone for good, then.”

I snorted loudly, rolling my eyes.  “Or she.”

A tiny wrinkle threaded between his brows.  “What?”

“Or
she
.”

“No, I heard you fine.” The wrinkle deepened as his eyebrows rose higher.  “I just don’t know what you mean by it.  Seemed like male footprints to me.  Not that I’m a professional footprint examiner.”

“Tons of women out there have big feet.  Paris Hilton has big feet.  Your girlfriend had some huge feet, too.  Those ugly leopard heels couldn’t hide them.”

“Oh, come on.”  He ran a hand through his hair, shaking his head.  “You can’t be serious.”

I shrugged, looking away.  “She sure as hell doesn’t like me very much.  Caroline thinks it could be her, too.”

“Oh, well if
Caroline
says so.”  His nostrils flared, his words drenched in sarcasm.  “Crystal may not like you, but she’s also blissfully unaware of that which does not solely revolve around her.  She wouldn’t go skulking around your condo.  She doesn’t even know where you live.”

“She could figure it out, if she really wanted to,” I said, but even I didn’t believe it myself. 

“Fine.  Keep an eye on the cameras, then, we’ll see if it’s her.”

“She’d give herself away since she apparently can’t go anywhere without littering earrings.  One stabbed me in the thigh when I sat on your couch.”

“And you know it was
hers
how?”

“Are you admitting to being a man whore right now?  Is that what you’re doing?”  Though I knew he was just being a lawyer, playing a game of Clue.  Who what when where why.  Do you have evidence?  An eyewitness?  A single earring is proof of nothing, entirely circumstantial; it could have found its way between couch cushions by any number of reasons.  Next witness.  “It had Crystal written all over it, looked like it was coated in chlamydia.”

“Can we move this conversation back to a planet I recognize?  Karen Stone’s people are going to show up any minute.”  He exhaled a long, slow breath.  “Aren’t you going to ask how the taping went?”

I didn’t need to ask.  Maybe it was her first time in front of a camera, but Caroline had been acting her entire life.  I was positive she’d exuded the perfect amount of melancholy and bewilderment. 
Who, me?

She wouldn’t have stumbled over her words; every consonant would be enunciated, precise as a knife slinger, clear and crisp, prominent
t’s
, no
umms
or long pauses. 
How did the taping go?
  What was I, new here?  She was a liar of the most impressive caliber. 

“I’m sure it went splendidly,” was all I ended up saying. 

“Karen loved her.  The sound guys loved her.  I’m sure the camera man had a hard time keeping the equipment from shaking.”  He shrugged, impressed in a grudging sort of way, but uninterested.  I wondered if that same reaction would happen if every other man on earth peeled back Caroline’s skin and looked at all that shiny steel beneath.  Would they still salivate over her, or would they feel the way Kyle did, appreciative of her acting skills, but keep a wide berth all the same? 

But men were men.  It didn’t take much, a pretty face would probably suffice, and those like Kyle were likely few and far between.  Wasn’t there a reason for all those irresistible femme fatales in James Bond movies?  She’d still have her admirers.  At this point I was mainly just surprised she hadn’t gotten fan mail, horrible sonnets she’d read aloud in her rubber room, pressing them to her chest as she laughed. 

“They filmed for over three hours.  Karen asked about your mom, your dad.  Growing up with an alcoholic.”

“I’m sure that made for some interesting stories.  How to keep a drunk from choking on his own vomit in his sleep.  Helping a lush with a bum leg up the stairs.”  But Caroline wouldn’t have done either, she’d have watched it happen and hoped he hurt the way she had.  I couldn’t blame her. 

Kyle cracked his neck, interlaced his fingers over his head, locking into a deep stretch.  He swallowed a yawn.  “The makeup people will need to get at you.  Ready for more bronzer?  What’s the stuff they put around your eyes, not mascara, that other black stuff in a tube?”

“Liquid eyeliner.”  Sure, I was ready for it.  Why not.  I didn’t think I cared too much what they did to me now.  When you lie for so long, you start forgetting what it costs you. 

***

Some brown eyes are dull, but Caroline’s sparkled.  I’d always noticed that about her.  Lights could set them on fire, make them sunny yellow, and anger could turn them flat, shut you out like a slamming steel door. 

The woman who’d done Caroline’s makeup was probably fielding congratulations about now, but I knew she had nothing to do with it.  Caroline was beautiful when she rolled out of bed in the morning with nasty breath, messy hair, and a ripped T-shirt on, beautiful even when she cried, which didn’t happen often, but still, it was impressive.  Not many people could look beautiful with their eyelashes glued into wet triangles, tears trembling at the edges as they choked back snot. 

The only time I remembered seeing her cry was after our father died, and not because of that, because someone from social services had told her I wouldn’t automatically be turned over to her custody, no matter the fact she was legally an adult.  That wasn’t the way the system worked, she’d have to go to court, prove her case.  It had scared me, seeing her cry like that, her back pressed against the ugly wallpaper in our old apartment.  She had both arms snared around her stomach as though some freak accident had disemboweled her and she was trying to stuff the innards back where they belonged. 

I knew she’d still look amazing in those ugly scrubs, flawless in her imprisonment, big
who, me?
eyes shining.  But I’d grown up with her, had a tolerance for her beauty; it was one of those things you sort of got used to after a while, the way it works when you have a funny-looking friend.  After a while, you grew accustomed.  After a while, they looked like everyone else.