Naughty or Nice (24 page)

“I have ornaments with the faces of your parents and sisters and my parents and siblings up on the tree.”

“Bet it looks nice. The fake snow, all of it looks . . . It's beautiful, Tony.”

“Well, I have surgery tomorrow. If you want to come see it while I'm gone . . .”

His words lingered, like he didn't know how to finish his sentence, or maybe he wanted me to finish his thoughts.

“Tony, I want this to be civil. I want it to end with a little dignity, if possible. I don't want it to get ugly. Don't want all of our money going to attorneys. I want it to be fair. I'm devastated, but I don't want to destroy you. I'm not greedy, don't want all of what we have, just to be fair, then we can go on with our separate lives.”

“I've always been fair with you, Livvy.”

“Since we're being honest, were there others? Anyone else?”

“No.”

I went back into the living room, sat down on the beanbag. It was dark across the street. On that side of the street a relationship was beginning. On this side, the sun had already set.

“Have you . . . ,” I started, then the pain slowed me down. I
pushed my lips up into a smile, struggled through that barrier with a soft voice. “Have you talked to Miesha's mother?”

“Attorney said not to contact her.”

“Is that the best strategy?”

“Shit . . . I don't know.”

“Maybe you should nice up to her. Get in some visitation so the courts will look at you in a positive light. Buy the kid a ton of Christmas presents. It'll only help.”

“Too late for that.”

“Tony, not facing it won't make it go away.”

He took a hard breath. “When this shit first went down . . . I was so angry . . . and . . . and I had thought about getting somebody to hurt her.”

“What are you saying, Tony?”

“You know what I'm saying.”

I paused. “That's not like you, not with a woman.”

“I wouldn't do anything like that. I'm just saying I thought about it. That's how I feel about her. My love for you . . . I wouldn't do anything that could cause me to not be with you.”

“You already did, Tony. You already did.”

For a moment I wished that baby was mine. Was ours. But it wasn't. Then I wished that he'd had it before we met. But he hadn't.

His lover had a part in this crime too. An equal part. I hated her for bringing hate into my world. Women destroyed each other just as much as men destroyed women. She knew Tony was married. I closed my eyes and saw her face, a face blinded by desperation and selfishness.

And I remembered how I felt that night he was served. The night
we
were served. Wanted to stab him while he slept. Wipe the fingerprints down. I know a girl who pretended to set her husband on fire. That night I wasn't in a make-believe mood. Wanted to set the house on fire with him in it. Or take him out Lorena Bobbitt style. Then when I was done with him, I wanted to find her. Hurt her. Turn green. Go on a rampage. And if I got caught, plead insanity.

That hurt came back in waves, the headache became more intense.

“Tony, let me say this, because this might get ugly. No matter how ugly it gets, I want to thank you for how good you were to Momma. And what you did for Tommie.”

“I did it out of love.”

“I know. I'll never forget that. Thanks for being there.”

“I'll never forget you, Livvy.”

We both held the phone for a while.

Without saying good-bye, I hung up.

The theory, not the movie

C
arpe's car was down at the end of the block, closer to the beach.

It was brisk, too windy to rollerblade or volleyball. Too chilly to even think about walking on the boardwalk. But plenty of people were in the bars and restaurants on both Highland and Manhattan Beach Boulevard. Parking was a mess. After I wrapped a scarf around my hair, I buttoned up my leather coat, put my hands in my pockets and hurried toward our nest, my lover's present under my arm.

Carpe wasn't inside. I put his present by the small porcelain Christmas tree, adjusted the heat, then opened the shutters and let some light in.

That was when I saw some of my clothes had been taken out of the closet and put on the bed. Again I smiled. He had been here, waiting for me, picking out something for me to wear. I looked out the window and didn't see him coming from either direction. More Christmas lights were up, the last-minute people giving in to peer pressure. Only saw a few people on the side streets. When it dropped below seventy degrees, Southern California went into hibernation.

I tossed my coat and purse on the bed and rushed to use the bathroom.

Once again I was Bird. Once again I smiled. No problems existed in my world.

A key was put in the front door. The door opened. Cold air flooded the room.

My voice was bright and cheery as I called out, “Carpe.”

The door closed. No answer. Keys jingled. Then silence.

I listened. “Hello?”

There was the click clop of shoes moving.

My heart sped up. “Hello? Can I help you?”

“I'm waiting by the door.”

Fear jolted me off the toilet, back to my feet. I yanked my panties and pants up. It was a female voice, her tone cold and hostile. My purse and my keys were on the bed.

I yelled, “Who are you?”

“I think you know. You should know.”

Her voice sounded vacant. And she had an accent, one that I couldn't figure out, not from the few words she said, not while my heartbeat was speeding up.

She said, “And I'm alone.”

 

She was standing near the front door. She was taller than me, thicker, full breasts, arched eyebrows, her brown hair pulled back into a bun, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, her long leather coat across her arm. She stood as still as a mannequin. Motionless, until her eye twitched.

She came to life, evaluated me head to toe, said, “Hello.”

I paused. “Can I help you?”

Her delicate perfume came to me as her heels clacked across the floor. She took four slow steps to the bed and dropped a silver key. It landed next to my silver key, its twin.

She cleared her throat. “You thought I was Michael.”

Our eyes met. In a blink I evaluated her. Diamond earrings. Tennis bracelet. Her jewelry was expensive. Well put together. But her skin was dehydrated, like she drank too much coffee and not enough water. She had post inflammatory pigmentation, a mild case, her face was breaking out and she had been picking at her pimples.

She said, “You always fuck married men?”

I tried to not be scared, but I was. My trembling was rising and it was a struggle to keep my composure. This had happened too quickly for me to think.

She asked, “Are you a whore?”

“I'm not a whore.”

Her eyes left my face and went to the clothes, the shoes, and all the gifts that Carpe had given me. Then I knew she'd already been here, had gone through my things.

She became fidgety, started opening and closing her hands, and that had me on edge, wondering if she was going to attack me.

Once again she nodded. “You're a whore.”

“I'm not a whore.”

“Then why do you . . . why do you keep fucking my husband?”

I shook my head. “You don't know me.”

“Whore.”

I snapped, “Leave.”

She pushed her lips up into a smile. “You are right. From what I see, this is serious. Maybe you started out as his whore, or he as yours, but now . . . this is serious.”

“I want you out of here.”

She shook her head.

It felt like I was clinging to the hood of a speeding car, trying to figure out how to survive before it crashed. I moved to the bed, grabbed my purse.

She took a quick step to the front door, stood there blocking my way out of this . . . this room that had become a cage.

I stood firm. “Move.”

She didn't.

There wasn't a back door. Her eyes told me that she wasn't going to let me leave without a struggle, that she'd come to slaughter the sheep. I reached into my purse, and pulled my phone out, didn't know who I was going to call, but I only had two choices, either nine-one-one, or text message Carpe. By the time I did either of those, she could be all over me.

She said, “Your name is Olivia Barrera.”

Her words were a noose around my neck.

“You work at Dermalogica in Torrance.”

That second surprise tightened the noose, made me lower my phone, made me stop and face her, my mouth wide open.

“Barrera. Spanish surname, but no accent.” She paused, evaluated me from my complexion to the texture of my hair. “I expected a Latin woman. Are you Latin?”

“Move out of my way, please.”

She pursed her lips and stepped away from the door. “Go ahead. Leave. Run. I'll find you. I can go to your home in Ladera. Or to Dermalogica. It doesn't matter to me. We can finish this now, finish it later; either way, we'll finish it.”

One hand trembled through my hair; the other hand reached out to the wall, my damp palm pressing into the barrier and holding me up. A moment ago I wanted to knock her out of the way and race out the door. I'd been ambushed, now trapped. I was terrified. Once again I'd become a lioness trapped, moving back and forth in her cage.

Seemed like forever went by before I was able to look at her again.

Her face was dull, wore pain and suffering, bags under her eyes as she stood rocking side to side. That desperate look in her eyes, I knew it because it was reflected in my own. A painful reminder of what had driven me here. The feeling that I had been damned. She looked the way I did the moment I found out about Tony's indiscretion, maybe the morning after I had been given my humiliation on a platter and I had been numbed by the truth.

“How do—?” My tongue had become lead. “How do you know my name?”

“Mrs. Barrera, I'm Mrs. Davidson. I'm Michael's wife.”

All I could do was swallow. I tried not to choke. All I could think was I was standing in this room with the wife of the man I'd been sleeping with; all I could say was, “Oh, God.”

“And I'm hurting. I'm trying to . . . I just want some answers, that's all.”

She opened her purse and I jumped, took a distrustful stance. She jumped too.

We stared at each other, very primal wide-eyed stares, both of us very defensive, bodies positioned to fight or flee, both of us breathing heavily and waiting to see what was about to happen next, who was about to do what to whom.

Her hand shook. “I'm not . . . I wasn't . . . I wanted to show you . . .”

With nervous movements, she took out a stack of photos. She looked them over, then tossed a few on top of the clothing. She moved away. I went to the pictures. My insides became hollow. They were photos taken in San Diego, the same night I met Carpe, both of us dancing and sweating at the hip-hop club in the Gaslamp District. A photo of my arms wrapped around his neck, us kissing while we danced and sweated in the heat of that club.

In a flash I remembered the drunken red-haired white woman taking our picture.

The woman who
pretended
she was drunk and photographed us all night.

In disbelief I asked, “You had him followed?”

She motioned at the images in a way that told me to draw my own conclusions. There were pictures of us shopping, working out, everything we had done in public.

She nodded. “We can be evil, or we can be civil. It's your choice.”

 

Suddenly, tears fell from her eyes. She lowered her head. Carpe's wife started to cry. She cried quietly with her head down, her hands over her face, the way a small child cries when it tries to hide itself from a world of pain and suffering. She cried the way I should be crying now. The tall woman moved to the bed, the one I had sinned on with her husband.

Her legs wobbled. She sat down.

Her eyes went to the exotic fruits, candles, the romantic CDs.

She pulled her lips in and cried.

I stood where I was, doing the same.

Her red-rimmed eyes looked at the bed, saw the colorful pillows and realized where she was sitting. Then her damaged expression came to mine, the eyes of a woman betrayed.

She glared at me like I was some selfish, low-life, evil woman, not a victim of any kind. In her eyes I had no history, and this moment would define how she regarded me from now until eternity. Just another bitch on the prowl and waiting to screw up another happy family.

“How long——” She started, fidgeted as she shook her head, cleared her throat, and softened her voice. “How long have you been . . . how long have you and Michael—?”

I owned no lies. Once again I had become that teenage child who had been caught stealing at Home Depot, the one who had stolen in order to decorate her life.

Eyes closed, living inside my own darkness, my leg bounced as I told her how I met her husband, that it was a chance meeting on the Internet.

“The Internet?”

“Yes.”

My words were few.

“How did you meet him on the Internet?”

I told her about his ad, about him being a man betrayed in search of a woman betrayed.

She shook her head. “Why . . . why my husband?”

That was a universal question, the same one I had asked about my own husband. I've heard so many women ask that question, or variations of that question.
Why my husband? Why my man? What did I ever do to you to cause you to do this to me?
Those were the screams and the tears I had cried months ago when my world shifted from underneath me.

I shrugged. “It was just a pop-up ad . . . and . . . and I responded.”

“Why? Why would anyone—? Why?”

I had no answer, none that rationalized what I had done, and nothing that could make what was wrong sound right. None that could soften this moment for either of us. I'd thrown
myself into my work. That helped at first. But it didn't help anymore. So I threw myself to another man who could relate to my trials and tribulations. The poison became the cure.

She said, “This box . . . your Christmas present to him?”

“Yes.”

She picked up the present and my heart galloped. I wanted to run and snatch it from her. But I was frozen. Gingerly, she pulled the wrapping paper away, her breathing so hoarse.

Her lips didn't move. “A Rolex.”

“Look, I think it would be best if you left and . . . and . . . talked to your husband.”

“This is serious.”

I pulled my lips in, leaned forward in sprinter's position.

“Tell me how . . .” Her voice splintered a thousand ways. “What made this possible?”

She sounded so small, so helpless, so unraveled.

I lost something when Tony had his affair. Lost the feeling of being significant. Carpe made me feel significant. He came into my life the same way I had imagined I'd come into his, like a bolt of lightning, gave me so much passion, and now, tear-by-tear, the storm was ending.

She wiped her eyes and put the present to the side. “All lies.”

“I'm not lying.”

“No, what he told you . . . all lies. We're . . . we're . . . we have no problems. And even if we did . . . you have no right . . . not even if those lies were the truth . . . you have no right.”

“I'm sorry. I know you don't believe it, but I'm sorry.”

Her name was Selina. She was from the small Caribbean island of Antigua. Educated at Baruch. Just like Carpe had said. She was upset, venting to me the way I did to strangers.

Listening to her problems only reminded me of my own.

We both jumped when someone knocked on the door. Then we looked at each other.

She said, “Let him in.”

I went to the door, held the handle a moment, then eased the door open.

At least twenty people were outside. As soon as the door opened, they all started singing “Joy to the World.” Some stood on the porch, some on the sidewalk underneath the streetlights. A couple held surfboards. Wearing Dockers, hiking boots, sweaters, leather jackets, gloves, and red Santa Claus hats. Some had on Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer noses. At least three wore fake white beards. The aroma of Coronas, daiquiris, and apple martinis on their breaths.