Beware Beware (17 page)

“Nothing illuminating?”

“No,” she said. “
Unni
, what do I do when he calls me again?”

When
. She knew he would. The fear in her voice crawled down my throat and made a fist that clenched in my chest. I held on to her hand. “Ignore it,” I said. “For now, at least. I'll talk to Chaz and see what else we can do.”

*   *   *

It was too late to call him then, so I waited until Lori fell asleep and sneaked out into my room. The poor baby, I thought. That poor fucking girl. She'd been living in dread of this horrible man, and the dread had been answered, borne out in a way that promised more pain to come.

I'd vowed to protect Lori to the best of my ability, but I wondered now what that even meant. Lori wasn't a child who needed help crossing the street. If she needed protection it was against the larger threats of the world, and I saw now how much my aegis was worth. I felt weak and defeated, pinned down by the full weight of my uselessness.

I thought I'd at least google Winfred, and then I realized I didn't even know his full name. I did nothing instead, just smoked a few cigarettes and stared at the wall until I felt like trying to close my eyes.

I had been lying awake under the covers for fifteen minutes when my phone rang. I was almost relieved. Sleep had seemed so unreachable that it took on the shape of a task, and I was glad to procrastinate even a few minutes more. I bent over the side of my bed and picked up the phone from where it lay on the floor.

“Song. It's Jamie.” His voice flagged, like he was within a two-minute window of a jagged, teary breakdown.

“Christ, Jamie. What's wrong?”

“You know what's wrong. Daphne told me.”

I bit down on my thumbnail and nodded, though I knew he couldn't see me.

“Can I come over?”

I looked down at the floor, where I had just dropped my bra on my way to bed. I was in my pajamas, and I could hear Lori breathing with the rhythm of sleep from across the wall.

“I mean, not really,” I said. “It's like one thirty in the morning isn't it? My roommate's asleep.”

“Sorry, did I wake you?”

“No, not at all. Look, I can meet you somewhere if you want.”

“Great,” he said. “That would be really great. I'm actually outside.”

“Outside my house?” I sat up and threw the covers down. My window overlooked the street and I drew the curtain and saw him there, leaning against his car, parked slanting down the road.

He looked up and found me in the darkness, and he sent up a meek wave. “Hi. I hope this is okay.”

He sounded so defeated that I couldn't raise any objection. In the bad, milky glow of the streetlight he was tiny, wan and alone.

“Just give me a minute,” I said.

I let the curtain fall, picked clothes off the floor, and got dressed. I dipped into the bathroom to sneak a peek in the mirror, splashed water on my cheeks, and went downstairs.

When I was close enough to see Jamie's face, I felt a wave of exhaustion hit me like a tranquilizer. I was right—he'd been crying, and he wasn't trying to hide it.

“Hey,” I said. I offered him a cigarette, and he took it in fingers that looked ghostly white in the dark. I lit his, then mine, and we stood on the curb smoking, our arms crossed against the night cold.

“What's going on?” I asked.

“Daphne broke up with me.”

It was a night of broken hearts. I was half wasted with empathy. “Really?” I wondered if she'd copped out when it'd come time to tell him her story. “How did it happen?”

“I don't even know.”

“Did she tell you anything? In particular, I mean?”

“Oh, yeah. She told me everything, about her name, about Joe, the whole grand confession.”

“And then she dumped you?”

“Yeah, she was telling me all this and I was trying to wrap my head around it when she said she'd understand if I couldn't forgive her, and then I don't know. Somehow we broke up, and I didn't even want that but it happened and she couldn't be convinced it shouldn't.”

He slumped against the hood of his car and I followed suit.

“Do you want to go somewhere we can sit or something?” I asked. “I'd invite you in but my roommate just got to sleep. She's had a rough night, too.”

“This is fine. The sky's pretty tonight.” He held an invisible tumbler and shook it back and forth. “And I'll bet you have something to drink.”

I went inside and filled a Snapple bottle with rye. It was chilly out, so I grabbed a college sweatshirt before leaving to rejoin Jamie. “This should fit you,” I said. “I sort of inherited it from a guy I used to know.”

“Thanks. Is that Snapple?” He looked at me with a small laugh in his eyes.

“No. Here.” I unscrewed the cap. “We'll share.”

He took a thirsty gulp, as if it were actually peach iced tea.

“You planning to drive home?” I asked.

He shrugged. “My car is comfortable.”

“Suit yourself.”

He passed me the bottle with an insistent nod.

We leaned against the hood of his car, smoking and boozing, a quiet little picnic of sadness and vice. The sky was an oily black, starless, chilly, portentous.

“Daphne is an odd girl,” he said. “I don't know that I've ever figured her out.”

“Just guessing here, but could this have anything to do with the fact that you learned she had a secret life, like, three hours ago?”

“Ha,” he said. “Probably. But I've thought this before.”

“Well, she had plenty of secrets before today.”

“It has nothing to do with secrets. She could tell me everything and I might never know her. There are just some people like that, you know?”

“Unknowable?”

“Yeah, like you put in the work, you peel the layers, and underneath—no core, just more layers.”

I shrugged. “I can't think of anyone like that. Not anyone I've bothered to get to know.” I took a warming swallow of rye. “I guess that isn't a very inclusive set.”

“You,” he said. “You seem like that type.”

“Coreless?” I laughed. “Black hole for a soul?”

He shook his head. “It's not that. More depth than emptiness, like any abyss.”

I felt flattered, somehow, against my will. The booze in my bloodstream was starting to tickle.

“So where is Daphne now?”

“I don't know.”

He crushed his cigarette under his shoe and asked for another. I lit it between my lips and passed it to him. In the low light I saw him watching my mouth.

“How do you do that?”

“What?”

“Light a match with your thumb like that.”

I smiled, oddly pleased. I'd put some effort into learning this trick back when I first started smoking, and it was still gratifying when someone noticed. “It's easy, as long as you have strike-anywhere matches.”

“Show me.”

He stood close and I demonstrated on a few matches, flicking the heads against my thumbnail. I concentrated on the bursts of flame, and I felt his eyes on my hands, then on my face. I looked up and he gave me a small smile, like he'd been caught.

“Do you want to go for a walk?” he asked.

I squinted into the night and shrugged. “Not particularly scenic.”

“Who can see anything anyway?”

We walked down the sloping street to Glendale, and I said, “We can take a nice walk around the lake.”

“Lake?”

I pointed at the cheerless shapes ahead, chain-link fence, bulky tarp. “In all its beauty.”

He laughed. It was good to hear.

We walked in silence on the narrow concrete path around the closed-off lake. As I nipped at the whiskey it nipped away at me. I looked at Jamie from time to time and grew sharply aware of the shape of him—a good-looking man at my side after midnight, sharing a stroll by a dormant park.

“Do you know how we met?” he asked, dispersing my cloud of thought.

I scanned through my long log of conversations with Daphne, and wondered if I'd heard the story—it didn't come to mind. “I don't think so, actually. You can tell me, if that's what you really want to do.”

“I saw her at a gallery opening. She was one of the artists, and I was there because my friend was part of the entertainment, playing keyboard for the band.”

“Right out of a
New York Times
wedding announcement.”

“I noticed her as soon as I walked in. I went right up to her—and she completely ignored me.”

I smiled. “I'm sure she gets hit on all the time.”

“She does. And I guess I interrupted her conversation with an art critic for some big magazine.”

I laughed. “So how'd that go over?”

“It didn't. I hung around the gallery, waiting for another opening, but I couldn't quite recover that night. So I left with my friend and got hammered instead.”

“So when'd you see her again?”

“Well, I had her name, and I knew where she was showing, and I managed to bump into her again.”

“She's not that easy to stalk,” I said. “I've googled her many times.”

“I'm resourceful,” he said. “Anyway, I managed to bump into her a few more times, and finally, she agreed to a drink.”

“You were persistent, huh?”

“That's not even the end of it. When she didn't fall in love with me right away, I painted post cards,” he said. “You know like the ones they have in museums? Of Picassos and whatever? She wasn't really famous, you know, so no one made post cards of her paintings. So I did.”

“Love letters?”

“Front and back. I mailed them to her, one a week, from wherever I was thinking about her.”

“That's really…” I trailed off.

“Say romantic.”

“Creepy?”

“I was afraid you'd say that. But two sides of the same coin, right?” He laughed, softly. “When you feel a connection that powerful, you have to trust it and follow through. It was like the movies, you know? I would've chased her through any airport.”

He went silent. I caught the film of wet shining in his eyes and offered him a cigarette.

“Why don't you have anyone?”

I shrugged. “I have Lori.”

“Not what I meant.”

“I know it.”

“Sorry. Didn't mean to put you on the spot. I just find you interesting.”

“You and your murky compliments,” I said. “Anyway it's getting late, man. I'm about to collapse.”

“What time is it?”

I looked at my phone. “Jesus, it's almost four in the morning. We've been out here for two hours.”

“Time flies when you're getting blitzed.”

“Yeah. Are you as drunk as I am?”

“Probably.”

“You can't drive home, then.” I hesitated, thinking of Lori. “You can crash on our couch if you want.”

He nodded. “To be honest, I was hoping you'd offer.”

I laughed. “Sneaky bastard.”

We tiptoed into my apartment and I grabbed a pillow and a throw blanket to set up on the couch. “It's not the Ritz or anything,” I whispered. “But it beats both your car and the drunk tank.”

“Hey, I drive a BMW.”

“Which has a vacancy, last I saw it.”

He smiled. “Thank you.”

“It's no problem,” I said. “Just don't bother Lori.”

“Not just this. Thanks for humoring me. For everything.” He sighed. “It's been a rough few days.”

“Yeah. I'd say so.”

He reached for me with a tired arm and I moved in to receive the hug. His head dropped on my shoulder, and he stayed there, holding me, for half a minute.

“Good night, Jamie,” I said.

“Good night.”

He pulled away just enough to kiss me on the lips. It was a curious, uninsistent kiss, lingering but slack, testing the waters. I let it happen with a spike in my pulse, and when we separated, it took some effort to look at his face. There was a question in it, and even confused and drunk, I knew to shake my head.

I stepped back and said again, “Good night, then.”

I went to my room and passed out. I didn't dream at all, and that was a relief.

 

Eleven

I woke up early the next morning with the feeling that I'd overslept. It was unusually sunny, and my head felt clearer than it had any right to. I found Jamie knocked out on the couch. He was asleep in his clothes, borrowed sweatshirt and all, his mouth hanging open like an emptied purse.

I ran the tape from last night—just four hours ago, it turned out—and determined I had in fact engaged when he kissed me. Without the permissive haze of alcohol, I had to acknowledge this was clumsy at the very least. I cursed quietly.

I washed up and took extra care to look professional. I put on mascara and a clean shirt, even busted out a black pencil skirt. When I was almost ready to go, I woke up Jamie by standing over him with my arms crossed. It was a trick I learned from my mother.

“Hey,” I said. “Time to go home.”

He shifted his legs under the blanket, a feeble sign of life.

“Come on. I have to get to work.”

He let out a long croak. “What time is it?”

“Eight thirty.”

“Don't you work for me?” he asked, scratching his head. “Go back to bed.”

“Actually, that's a good question. I work for your now ex-girlfriend, so I'll get back to you on that.”

He sat up, eyes awake with a look of panic. “You might drop my case?”

I put my purse down and perched on the arm of the couch. “I have to talk to Daphne. But hey, let's say I do. I'm not the only PI in Los Angeles.”

“I can pay you if Daphne won't.”

“That's not really the issue. She's been my client this whole time, so if she doesn't want me working for you, I might not even be able to.”