Dark Debts (7 page)

She might as well go for broke. “Maybe I wouldn't have minded that.”

“Yeah, but my wife probably would have.”

Damn. Of course he was married. She felt like a fool. But then, he hadn't exactly mentioned it at dinner.

“Are you still there?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Listen, let's get together again. I'll give you the real interview.”

“Why?”

“I don't know. I guess I trust you not to turn it into a three-ring circus. And it's probably time for me to stop hiding from it. Maybe that's why you came along.”

They had met for dinner a few days later, and he'd told her the story. (
“In broad strokes, okay? I can't go through it in detail, I just can't.” 
) It was fascinating, if relentlessly disturbing. Cam told it without much emotion; she guessed it was a self-preservation instinct. He told her about his father, Will Landry, a violent drunk who had brutalized the family. His mother, Lucy, a classic martyr/enabler who was more terrified of Will than of what he was doing to the rest of them. His brothers, marauding delinquents who had terrorized the neighborhoods in which they had lived. Each of them, however, had been artistically gifted in one way or another. He told her about Ethan, who was almost as talented a poet as he was a cat burglar. Tallen, who had grown up in reform schools and graduated to prisons; painted mesmerizing, melancholy landscapes that screamed of loneliness. He had been the most sensitive, and therefore the most troubled. (The rest of Tallen's story, Cam had said, she could read in the papers.) And then there was Jack, his oldest brother, who had always been a complete mystery to Cam. It was partly because of the age difference, but mostly because Jack had hated Cam too much to reveal anything to him. Jack was the only one who hadn't done anything artistic, although he'd been a voracious reader. Jack had never
done
much of anything, but he seemed to have turned observing into an art form of its own.

Ethan and Will had both died the same year. Ethan had drowned (Cam supplied no details) and Will had committed suicide a few months later. Lucy had also killed herself, on the anniversary of Tallen's execution. Jack still lived in Georgia, as far as Cam knew. Cam hadn't seen him since Lucy's funeral. They had gotten into a bitter argument just as Cam was leaving, and he'd said some things he now regretted. Later he had written Jack a long, apologetic letter. It had come back marked
MOVED NO FORWARDING ADDRESS
. He had tried to find Jack a couple of times, with no luck. He knew Jack didn't want to be found and figured he'd never see his brother again. It didn't bother him, or so he claimed.

Cam wouldn't offer much about how he had managed to escape unscathed. He attributed it to the age difference (five years) between him and the next oldest, Ethan, or the fact that Will had been kinder to Cam than he had to the others, probably because Will knew it was his last chance to have a decent relationship with a son. Cam said he remembered realizing at a very early age that his family was crazy and declaring, “I'll be in my room until I'm eighteen, then I'm out of here.” He had kept that promise and had not done a lot of looking back.

The article about Cam had turned out to be one of the best things Randa had ever written. It caused a bit of a stir for a while, but Cam kept reassuring her he was not sorry he'd given her the interview. He said it had been very “freeing.” It had also bought him a lot of free publicity, but he didn't seem to think like that, as far as she could tell.

Not long after her article appeared, Cam's marriage had broken up. She never knew if there was any connection because he never wanted to talk about it. He just kept saying that it had been coming for a long time. Randa never even met Cam's wife. All she knew was that her name was Terri and she was or wanted to be an artist. Through a couple of cryptic comments he'd made, she also suspected that Terri had never been very faithful (although, by his own admission, neither had Cam) and that she had some kind of chemical dependency. All in all, it sounded like Cam was better off without her.

When Cam and Terri broke up, Randa was living with Evan, a screenwriter who made a fortune writing movies that were never made. The first time Randa had asked Evan if he loved her, he'd said he didn't know what love meant. When he was still saying it two years later, she moved out. The irony was that she wasn't sure she loved him, either, but she wanted the option.

Next she'd taken up with David, a studio musician who'd fascinated her because he was brooding and mysterious. When it had finally become apparent to her that he was merely brooding, she decided to chalk up another waste of time and move on. David hadn't minded much. It gave him something new to brood about.

While Randa was with David, Cam went through a country singer, a publicist, a freelance photographer, and, for the sake of cliché, a flight attendant. Not necessarily in that order and not necessarily one at a time.

Through all this, Randa and Cam remained fast friends. They got together at least once a week to share their successes and bemoan their losses, or to critique movies they'd seen or books they'd read, or to vent about the state of the world in general. They also took each other to any events their mates didn't want to go to, since they both always seemed to hook up with people with whom they had little in common. Their mates were always required to live with this arrangement, and only the most insecure of them had ever felt threatened by it.

Randa wasn't sure when she had realized she was in love with Cam. There wasn't any specific moment, just a sort of growing awareness; she'd admitted it to herself so gradually that at some point it simply became a given that she was in love with Cam, that she had been in love with Cam since the night she'd met him. It didn't really matter
when
she'd known it, because there was nothing to be done about it. Cam had never shown even the slightest glimmer of being romantically interested in her, and there was no way in hell she was going to make a fool of herself by saying or doing anything to call his attention to the fact. As long as they were friends, he'd be in her life. She wasn't about to give him a chance to reject her.

When Randa and David broke up, three days before her thirty-third birthday, Cam took her out to dinner, to “mourn or celebrate, whichever you want.” They'd gone to an Italian restaurant on Melrose whose only distinction was that it was possibly the darkest restaurant in the greater Los Angeles area. Randa always complained that every restaurant in LA was lit like a Kmart, and Cam wanted to prove to her that she hadn't been going to the right places. They'd sat on the same side of a large red-leather booth and picked at whitefish while Randa complained about her lousy luck with men.

“You don't have bad luck,” Cam informed her. “You have bad taste.”

“Gee, that cuts deep, coming from someone whose entire romantic history combined couldn't produce the IQ of an Irish setter.”

“We're not talking about me.” He was swirling the ice cubes around in his margarita; he seemed oddly serious. “Do you think you ever really loved this jerk?”

Randa didn't have to think. “No. I loved the idea of being in love with a tortured artiste. I figured that out months ago.”

“Then why didn't you break up with him months ago?”

“I don't know. I guess I didn't feel like going through all the drama. Not to mention having to find another apartment.”

Randa was still living in the apartment she shared with David, sleeping on the couch. Not a comfortable arrangement on any level.

“Why don't you buy a condo in my building? There's one for sale right below me.”

“Right. All I need is to move into your lovely, crime-infested neighborhood.”

“We could see each other more often.”

“Translated: I could feed your cat when you go out of town.”

He smiled. “You're such a cynic.” He put his fork down and stared at her for a moment, suddenly quite serious. “You know, you really look pretty tonight.”

She smiled back. He was just trying to make her feel better, but she appreciated it. “Thanks. I guess self-pity becomes me. Enough of my stupid life. How are you?”

“Oh, you know. My usual cheery self.”

“How's Patty?” Patty was Cam's latest girlfriend. She was a waitress at a health-food restaurant (which didn't explain where Cam had met her) who fervently believed there wasn't a problem on the planet that couldn't be cured by the right combination of herbs. Randa and David had gone out with them a couple of times. Randa was still trying to be open-minded.

“I don't know,” Cam answered. “I guess you'd have to ask Richard.”

“Who's Richard?”

“The New Age weight trainer she dumped me for.”

“Oh no.” Randa could not possibly bring herself to say she was sorry. “Are you serious?”

Cam nodded. “She doesn't know if she loves him, but she thinks they have karmic debts to settle. And he's going to teach her how to have an out-of-body experience.”

“Cam, Patty has never had an in-body experience.”

Cam smiled. “Yeah, she is a little bit out there.”

“Like Pluto.”

They sat in silence for a moment, then Cam got that serious expression on his face again. “Do you realize this is the first time since we've known each other that we've both been single at the same time?”

Randa hadn't thought about it. “Yeah, I guess it is.”

Cam picked up his fork, then put it down again. He looked at Randa, then shifted to face her. When he spoke, his voice was different, almost tentative. “Have you ever wondered what we'd be like . . . you know, as a couple?”

Randa had to remind herself to breathe. “Yeah, I've wondered. But I thought you . . .”

“What?”

“I thought you didn't think of me, you know, like that.”

“I thought
you
didn't think of
me
like that.”

They both smiled at the irony.

“So what do you think? How would we be?”

“I think . . . we'd be great.” Randa said it in a quiet voice, wondering if that was the answer he had expected. Cam smiled, and reached down and took her hand. She didn't have the presence of mind to feel awkward about it.

“See, I think the reason I keep getting into these stupid relationships is that I don't care who I'm with if I can't be with you.” He smiled self-consciously. “I never said anything because I was afraid of what your reaction would be.”

Randa heard the words, but she kept waiting for the punch line. This couldn't possibly be real.

“Cam,” she managed to say, “tell me this isn't a joke.”

“Of course it's not a joke.” He reached up and pushed a strand of hair away from her face; she felt the back of his hand brush her cheek. He kissed her, before she even had time to wonder if he was going to. Then he smiled and said, “God, I've been wanting to do that for so long.”

“Me too,” she whispered, afraid saying it out loud might jinx something. She could have happily died on the spot. Many times since then, she'd wished she had.

The scene in Randa's mind vanished suddenly, as if the film had snapped in the projector. She couldn't bear to think any further than that. The tears she'd been holding back broke through and slid down her face; they felt like an invasion, but she couldn't bring herself to wipe them away.

She sat in her car for a long time, watching the ocean, trying to lose herself in the waves that rolled onto the sand one after another, effortlessly, as if this were any normal day.

N
ick Varella answered the door with a scotch in his hand, very obviously not his first of the day. He had two days' growth of beard and his dark hair looked as if he'd just been in a strong wind. Randa had heard about Nick for years, but had never met him or even seen him before. He was the best friend Cam had, but not in a conventional way. They only got together about four times a year, but Randa knew that Cam told Nick things he never told anyone else. (Probably because whenever they met the main objective was to see who could consume the largest amount of alcohol in the shortest amount of time.) Even though their careers were roughly parallel—Nick's science-fiction novels were as respected in that genre as Cam's crime novels were in theirs—Cam considered Nick a mentor. Or maybe a surrogate brother. At any rate, Randa had heard about Nick until she felt she knew him. At least, she had until he answered the door and she was faced with having to explain her presence.

“I'm sorry to bother you. I'm Randa Phillips.” She saw no reason to beat around the bush.

“Oh. Wow. Hi.” He was staring at her, his eyebrows arched in a way she couldn't interpret. Maybe it just had to do with being thrown a curve when he was too drunk to handle it. Or maybe no one ever dropped in on him; he was a notorious hermit. She could hear loud music coming from the back of the house, and it suddenly occurred to her he might not be alone. That possibility hadn't entered her mind when she'd decided to go see him.
God, can't you ever think anything through?

“I wondered if I could . . .” What? She hadn't really thought about what she'd say. She tried again. “I know you don't know me and this is a bad time, but I have to talk to someone.”

He just kept staring at her. She suddenly felt very foolish.

“I'm sorry, this was a stupid idea.” She turned to leave, but he grabbed her elbow.

“No. Don't go. I'm just . . . I'm not very good at spontaneity.” He held up the drink by way of explanation. “I'm also not thinking all that clearly, thank God.” He finally smiled. “Wanna join me?”

She managed a nod. He opened the door wider and motioned her inside. He led her down a narrow hall into a room that, judging by the advanced degree of clutter, was where he spent most of his time. The music was coming from an elaborate stereo system against the back wall. It was loud, angry heavy metal; raspy voices screaming unintelligible lyrics. Nick went straight to the makeshift bar and started tossing ice cubes into a glass. “What can I pour you, given I don't have anything dainty?”