Complete Corruption (Corruption #1-3) (15 page)

His tongue pressed between his lips, and his eyes drifted to my mouth in a nanosecond of weakness. “Be careful.”

“Good advice. I’m staying away from the dirtbags from now on.”

He tightened his grip on my arm, and we stood like that, breathing each other’s air, until a light rap came from the other side of the door.

“Spin?”

He waited a second and kept his eyes on mine as he answered. “Yeah, Zo?”

“Tow’s here, and they don’t know where to take the Beemer.”

Silence hung between us. His jaw moved as if he was grinding his teeth. I held his gaze. He could go straight to hell, and I still wanted him. The knock came again.

Antonio whipped his head around and shouted, “What!”

Zo’s voice was timid. “The tow guy has another call.”

Antonio pulled me to him so hard I knew I would walk out of there with a nice bruise. He pressed his lips together as if he had something to say but didn’t know how to say it.

I answered as if he’d spoken. “I know what’s between us. I know it’s real, as real as anything I’ve ever felt for a man. And I know you don’t really believe Daniel whored me out to get information. Even if you think he’d do something like that, you know in your heart I wouldn’t. But none of that matters. Even though you don’t believe I have ulterior motives, you’re scared of it.” He loosened his grip just a little, and I took that as my cue to continue. “That’s not the way to be together. It’s too long a bridge to cross. Let’s both be grown-ups and walk away before this gets uglier.”

It took a few seconds, or forever, for him to remove his hand, his fingers slipping over my sleeve as if magnetized. I took a long breath, memorizing his scent, the thickness of his hair, the cleft in his jaw, the angle I held my head to look into his deep brown eyes.

“I’ll have someone drive you home,” he said.

“I can get a cab.”

“I know. But someone from here will drive you.” He opened the door.

Zo was right behind it, hunched and tense.

“Make sure she gets home,” Antonio said.

“Sure, boss.”

I followed Lorenzo and looked back for the briefest second, enough to catch Antonio closing the office door.

On the way out, I saw a man with a comb-over I would have sworn I recognized. He wasn’t wearing a mechanic’s jumpsuit, but a zipper jacket. His left eye was badly bruised, almost swelled shut, and a bandage held a cut together at his brow. It was Vito, and when he saw me, he turned and walked in the other direction.

After some discussion, some signed papers, a few minutes spent waiting for something I couldn’t remember because I was distracted by Antonio’s presence in his office and the distance between us, I let Paulie Patalano drive me home. Apparently, my house was on his way.

ou ever been in a Ferrari?” Paulie asked.

“You’re joking,” I said as I got into the flashy yellow car.

“Gotta ask.” He slid into the driver’s side and shifted his shoulder a little, touching something behind him before he got his seatbelt on.

I’d dated a detective in college, and he made the same exact move when he got into a car. When he’d caught me watching, I got a lecture about how he had to wear his gun even when off-duty and how he didn’t want to take it off for a short drive. We had a long drive ahead of us, and poor Paulie was going to be very uncomfortable. He put the top down, and we got onto the freeway.

“Thanks for driving,” I said once we hit traffic and the wind didn’t whip as much.

“I was heading out this way.” He drove with the seat pushed all the way back and his wrist on the top of the wheel.

I had my bag in my lap and my knees pressed together. “I’m glad you found me at the bottom of that hill.”

“Yeah.”

“You work at the car shop?”

He smiled. Changed lanes. Adjusted the hunk of metal at his back. “I own it with Spin.”

“Oh, partners?”

“In everything. He’s like my brother. Pisses off my real brothers, but they’re douchebags. A cop and a lawyer.”

“And you?”

“Businessman.”

I put on my most political comportment because it was obvious what kind of business he did from the back of a body shop, with loose hours, carrying a firearm. I’d never seen one on Antonio though, which seemed strange.

I didn’t care. No, I shouldn’t care. It should all be meaningless small talk in a yellow Ferrari going twenty miles per hour on the 10 freeway.

“You weren’t really heading west, were you?” I said more as a statement than a question.

“Zo is the only other guy I’d trust to not speed, and he’d bore the paint off the car.” He glanced at me. “We just fixed it. He’d return it with primer, shrugging like, ‘dunno what happened, boss, I was just talking.’”

I laughed. “Sure.”

“And, you know, I want to get to know you. See what your deal is.”

Did he think I was working for the DA as well? I couldn’t easily ask. “My deal?”

“Spin likes you. Ain’t no secret.”

The road opened up for absolutely no reason, and the wind whipped my hair like cotton candy.

“I’m sure he likes plenty of girls.” I pulled out my bun and let my hair fly.

“Not like this,” Paulie said.

“Like what?”

He shook his head and put his eyes on the road.

“No, really,” I said. “I’m not asking you to tell stories about your friend.”

“Oh no? You women, you’re all alike.”

“Like what?”

“Like you don’t want a guy to like you. You have to know how much. How high. How deep. Never simple. So before you ask again, he’s never looked at a woman who’s not from home.”

“Pretty small dating pool.”

“He don’t date. You ain’t getting another word outta me.” He raised his index finger and put it to his lips. “Just know I’ll protect him with my life.”

“He’s a lucky guy.”

“Right about that.”

Nothing he said should have hurt me, because my thing with Antonio was done, but as I watched the city blow by me, it did.

***

Katrina was on set when I got home. The loft had never seemed so big, so modern, so clean. Everything had a place, and everything was in it. The surfaces were wiped sterile, and dust bunnies were eradicated.

I threw my bag on the couch. It didn’t belong there, but I left it.

I missed something. I felt a longing and a regret for something I’d lost. I couldn’t pin it down. In a way, it was Daniel. I missed his constant talking on the phone, the hum of his ambition, the steady foursquare geometry of his dependence. I missed his presence spreading over me even when he traveled, covering me in a way Katrina’s couldn’t.

“Fuck you, Daniel,” I whispered. I threw my jacket over a chair and left it.

Dad had always said all we’d ever need was our family, and I’d never doubted him. But he was wrong. Dead wrong. I couldn’t mold my life into any of my sisters’. I couldn’t take joy in breathing their air, or feel the electricity of physical connection. I couldn’t look at my house and see them coexisting with me as anything but an imposition.

The refrigerator. Vegetables in the crisper. Proteins on the bottom shelf. Leftovers above that, and on the top, condiments. I pulled out a tub of hummus. Crackers on the bottom shelf two over from the sink. I stood at the island, dipping, eating, dipping, eating. Double-dipping, even.

A blob of hummus plopped onto the counter. I swiped it up and ate it. The residual paste was the only disruption of the pristine surface.

What the hell had happened with Antonio? What was I thinking? Had I been trying to get away from Daniel in the most violent way possible? Was I trying to reject not just my comfort zone, but my lawfulness? Wasn’t there an easier way to do that than by getting involved with someone I had nothing in common with? No matter how my body reacted to him. No matter how excited or how free he made me feel. No matter how alive I felt around him.

But I couldn’t shake the sense of profound regret. I’d dodged a bullet but fallen onto a knife.

I let the paper towel roll drop from my hand. It rolled from the kitchen island to the front door. I needed something in my life besides a job and a man. I needed a purpose. I had nothing to care about besides myself. No wonder Daniel’s infidelity had thrown me so far off the deep end.

I whipped the stepstool around to the refrigerator and reached into the cabinet above it. As a kid, I’d collected porcelain swans. I didn’t know why, but I loved swans. Their grace, their delicacy. But when we moved to the loft, the mismatched animals didn’t make sense, so I hid them in the highest cabinet, where they wouldn’t get broken.

I took the first one out. It had a blue ribbon that flew in the wind as it raised its wings to take flight. It had cost a shameful amount. I put it on the counter. The next one was Lladro. Cheap, with a little cupid. There was a black one. An ugly duckling. One with an apron. Laughing. Swimming. Necks twisted together. I put them all on the counter until I came to the little white one in the back.

It was made of Legos. It had a red collar in flattish bricks and a bright yellow beak. My nephew David had made it for me some random Christmas. Hyper and brilliant David. How old had he been? Four? Aunt Theresa loved swans, and he’d made her a bird with such care. And she’d put it in the back of a cabinet she couldn’t even reach because it didn’t go with the décor.

“Fuck you, Aunt Theresa.” I got down from the stepstool and put the Lego swan in the center of the island.

I opened my dish cabinet. I loved my dishes. They had blue stars with gold flourishes. Why were they in a cabinet? I took them out and laid them on the counter in piles that specifically made no sense. My flatware had been chosen with utmost care. With no room on the counter, I threw the silver on the floor like pick-up sticks.

All of it came out. Everything in the cabinets I’d ever chosen. Everything I liked. Everything beautiful and worthy. The glass jelly jars and inherited Depression glass. The gold-leaf embellished glass rack from my great-grandmother. I didn’t break anything, but the frosted glass tray we got as an engagement gift almost slipped off the sink. I caught it and continued. Out of style napkin holders. Stained plastic containers. A red sippy cup Sheila had left behind on some visit. Out out out.

When I got to the last cabinet and found the dust and dirt in the back of it, I stepped into the living room where I could see the open kitchen. It was a wreck. I’d left all the cabinet doors open, and nothing was neatly or safely placed.

I reached over the island and moved some stacks until I found the little Lego swan. I had a date with my empty bed. I could figure out what to do with my life in the morning.

The bed still seemed too big. The mess downstairs offered a momentary peace then irked me into wakefulness. But I refused to go down and clean it. I had put my Lego swan on the nightstand, and when I wondered if I should just go put my life back in the cabinets, the swan clearly said no. Go to sleep. Think about the mess tomorrow.

Katrina came in. Lights went on. The TV went on. The toilet flushed. The water ran. The TV went off. The lights went off. I slept.

hat happened?” Katrina asked as she pulled a swan-shaped coffee cup from the pile. Its neck was a handle, and its wings wrapped around the bowl. “I can’t find the spoons.”

I picked one up from the floor. “Here. I’ll wash it.”

She snatched it and blew on it. “Sanitizing pixie dust. Knife too, please.”

I picked one of my best silver butter knives off the floor and handed it to her without offering to wash it. The sink was full of china cruets anyway.

“I’ll put it all away later.”

“Whatever.” She cleared a space in front of the coffee pot and poured herself some.

“But we have to be on set today, then I have work on Monday. I’ll get Manuela on it when she comes Tuesday,” I said.

“Whatever.”

“Are you mad?”

“Mad? No. I almost broke all these damned dishes last night in a rage, but not because of them. Only because they were in front of me.”

I handed her a dish. “Go ahead. Break it.”

She took it and waved it up and down, balancing it on her fingertips like half a seesaw. Then she put it on top of its stack. “It’s pointless.” She put the heels of her hands to her eyes and growled in a tantrum.