White Lines II: Sunny: A Novel (13 page)

That was how Abe had described the longing for cocaine. He was so right, Sunny realized as she stared at her feet, feeling powerless to move them toward the door.

“Shit!” she cursed, angry that she was in this position. Jada should have come to L.A. with her, she lamented; then she wouldn’t have been bored enough to call Sean. She should have gone out with Malcolm, she thought. Anything would have been better than this.

She sat down on the bed beside the half-naked girl in pink, her mind reeling. Sunny closed her eyes and tried to think of something to silence the longing within. She thought about the last time she had gotten high. It was just after Mercedes was born twelve years ago. Sunny had gone into seclusion after Dorian’s murder. She had retreated to her mother’s family home in Puerto Rico, where she’d given birth to Mercedes. At first the joy of giving birth after years of unsuccessful pregnancies was enough to keep Sunny content, but soon it became too difficult to quiet the longing in her heart—a yearning to have Dorian back, to have their life back, to get high again. She had slipped back into her addiction, then. It wasn’t long before her family noticed and they coaxed her into rehab, where she finally mourned the man she loved and kicked her habit.

But here she was again, and it wasn’t the first time. Sunny had been to parties where people were snorting blow, doing H, were high off E. She had spent years living on the perimeter of those things, steering clear of being face-to-face with any hard drugs. But cocaine was her weakness. She had been fiending for it for so long that she had stopped counting the days, weeks, months and years that she was clean. She stopped seeing them as victories and started seeing them as a forced separation. Sunny hated Sean at that moment, hated all the men she had wasted her time with in recent years. Dorian would have never left her here this way. Sean had to know that she was gonna get high, and he simply didn’t give a fuck.

Sunny felt sweat beads forming on her face, but didn’t dab at them. She sat frozen in place, her fists clenched on her lap. For months, she had been numbing herself with Percocet and alcohol, an occasional puff or two of marijuana, maybe a fine cigar. But what she had been thirsting for was the satisfaction that only cocaine gave to her. She looked at it finally, staring as she sat with her pulse racing and sweat pooling at the tip of her nose.

Sunny thought about all the times she had wanted to get high over the years; all the times she had been tempted to talk about it—to Jada, to her mother, to anybody. She had actually come close to confiding in Jada about the struggle she was having to stay clean. But Jada was caught up in her own life. She was happy reuniting with Born, getting a second chance to get her life right. Sunny didn’t want to disrupt her best friend’s happiness with her own problems. As for her family, she didn’t know how they would react if she admitted that she had been tempted to take one hit—just one hit. Sunny hung her head low, wiped the sweat from her face at last, and reached for her purse. She took out a fifty-dollar bill, rolled it up so that it was skinny like a straw, and took a deep breath.

Sunny stood up and walked over to the dresser. She stared down at the white powder, reminisced on the times they’d shared over the years. They had been some magical times. Sunny wanted to feel that magic again so desperately.

With her pinky nail, she separated a thin line from the rest of the pile. She swept her finger back and forth until it was perfect. She looked at the girl still passed out on the bed and shook her head. Unable to resist it any longer, she tucked her hair behind her ear and bent forward, inhaling the line of coke through her makeshift straw into her nostrils. The sensation smacked her senses all at once and she squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head from side to side. When she opened them, her vision was blurry for a moment and then slowly everything came back into focus. The colors in the room, though, were brighter—almost neon now. Sunny didn’t feel the smile that spread across her glossy lips.

*   *   *

Two hours and three lines later, Sunny was sitting on the edge of the bed, with her head in her hands when Sean stumbled back into the room. Clearly, he had gotten caught up in the revelry, since he had not bothered to return until now. “I’ll be right back,” he had said hours ago. He lay now on the floor at the foot of the bed with his arms spread over the top of his head.

“She still ain’t up?” he asked, his voice muffled by bed skirt.

“No,” Sunny said, not moving. She was still high, still adrift in an alternate universe. She had spent the past hours dancing alone in this room to the music drifting up the stairs. She told herself that the reason she remained in the room after Sean left was that she was concerned about the groupie’s safety. But the truth was Sunny hadn’t wanted to leave all that good cocaine unattended.

She had sang along to the songs, snapping her fingers, enjoying a party all her own while a stranger lay passed out before her. Time had ceased to exist as she enjoyed her party of one, and she had stopped caring whether or not Sean ever came back to check on his friend. Now she had no idea what time it was, but the music had finally stopped playing. The laughter, the voices calling to one another over the noise—it had all stopped about an hour ago. Yet, Sunny still had a playlist looping in her head. She didn’t know if all the people had gone home or if they had drifted into a lull as she had. And she didn’t care. She hadn’t felt this good in years.

*   *   *

Hours later, bored, she wandered out into the hall. She saw a few people lingering, some nodding out leaned against the wall, others practically screwing against the banister as the party continued. She didn’t stray far, and before she knew it the sun pouring through the crack in the curtains felt like a spotlight on her face. Sunny woke up, squinted, looked around at her surroundings and frowned. Where the hell was she?

She sat up on the bed and looked around. The pink-clad body next to her was instantly familiar and she mentally rewound the events of the previous evening. She didn’t recall falling asleep. The last thing she remembered was being high, seated on the edge of the bed. Her legs, dangling off the side of the bed, had felt heavy and Sunny had imagined herself on the edge of a roof, gravity pulling her legs down, begging her to jump.

She stepped out of bed and her foot landed on something soft. That something turned out to be Sean’s chest as he lay in the same spot he had crumpled into at the conclusion of his party earlier that morning.

“Oww!” he hollered as she unknowingly placed all of her body weight on his chest. Sunny apologized and stepped off of him, extended her hand in order to help him up. She regretted doing so as she struggled under his weight while he stood.

“Good morning,” he said, a silly grin on his face. “What a night, huh?”

Sunny nodded, glancing over at the dresser. There was still plenty of cocaine left and she felt as if she’d just had the night of her life.

Sean walked over to the girl lying on the bed, still. He shook her and then recoiled suddenly.

“She’s dead.” His head whipped around and he faced Sunny, his expression one of pure fright.

“Dead?” Sunny asked, in shock. Her mind wasn’t ready for this right now. “She can’t be.”

Sean’s face left little doubt. “She’s fucking
dead
, Sunny!”

Sunny’s gaze shifted from Sean to the girl. “I was just sleeping next to a dead body?” she asked, although she knew the answer. “How long was she dead?”

Sean shook his head. “She was alive when I came back in here this morning, right? Wasn’t she?” Sean tried to remember and so did Sunny. When was the last time she had checked to see if the girl was breathing? She had been so high it was quite possible that the poor young lady had died while Sunny danced beside her in a cocaine haze.

“Oh, my God.” Sunny felt her chest heaving. She couldn’t believe this was happening. Sean was pacing the floor frantic and distraught, but trying hard to think of what to do next.

“I gotta call Jimmy,” he said at last, searching his pockets for his cell phone.

Sunny frowned. “Your
agent
? What is he gonna do?” She suddenly had a pounding headache.

“He’ll help me figure this out,” Sean said, already dialing.

A thought occurred to Sunny, then. Anxiously, she looked down at her watch. 12:48
P.M.
She had missed her breakfast meeting with Malcolm and Abe Childs. She closed her eyes, swallowing the fact that she may have blown her big chance. While Sean was on the phone with his agent, pleading for him to get there right away, Sunny searched her bag for her own cell phone. She had seven missed calls from Malcolm. She shook her head and tossed the phone back in her purse.

Sean had hung up with his agent and was now calling an ambulance. Sunny took a deep breath and tried not to think about the fact that the angel of death had watched her in her sleep and passed her by—this time.

7

FACE-TO-FACE

Malcolm’s eyes were fixed on Sunny as she spoke.

“I woke up and she was dead. Just like I told the detectives, I never met her before so I have no idea if she had been sick or whatever.” Sunny wiped her nose. “Last night at the party I got drunk and wandered upstairs to one of the guest bedrooms. I fell asleep on the bed next to the girl, but she was alive when I went to sleep.” Sunny sounded certain, though she wasn’t. She had no idea when the pink groupie had passed away, nor did she understand why the universe saw fit that Sunny be present when it happened.

Malcolm sat with Sunny inside her suite at the Beverly Wilshire. She had called him when the police insisted on taking her to the station for questioning. Sunny, Sean, Roxy, and the other seven people who remained in Sean’s house that afternoon had been hauled into the precinct for questioning in separate rooms.

Malcolm had arrived to find Sunny shaken and trembling in fear. Little did he know that her fear was not of the detectives, but of being caught with all the cocaine she had swiped off the dresser and hidden inside her empty container of Altoids. That container was tucked into the crevices of her purse as the police questioned her about the events of the past twenty-four hours. They had interpreted her shaking hands as an understandable case of nerves after discovering a dead body. But Sunny’s problems were never that simple.

After the police were done interrogating her, Malcolm had escorted Sunny out of the police station and into a swarm of reporters and paparazzi. Cameras flashed as Sunny shielded her face from them, and Malcolm rushed her toward his car. She had seemed so fragile under such intense scrutiny and Malcolm had felt like her protector, keeping her safe from the mob that was taking her picture and shouting questions at her. He had driven Sunny back to her hotel, where she had showered and changed into a pair of jeans and an “I ♥ NY” T-shirt. Her hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail, and her face had been scrubbed clean of all makeup. It was a far cry from the glamour girl she usually was. Malcolm thought she looked angelic this way.

Sunny was quiet, lost in thought. Her mother, Marisol, had called once the story broke on the East Coast. The news had shown the footage of her being escorted out of Sean’s mansion with the detectives, and had also shown the body bag containing the pink lady’s remains. Sunny had been holed up in her room with the TV intentionally off in order to avoid seeing that image.

Malcolm spoke at last. “Abe and his people were very disappointed that you didn’t show up for this morning’s meeting.”

“I told you, by the time I woke up it was—”

“And you didn’t even call.”

“That’s because—”

“There were four top executives from Kaleidoscope at that meeting and for you to pull a no-show…” Malcolm shook his head. “I had to make up excuses for where you were, for why you hadn’t called. It wasn’t good.”

Sunny threw her hands up in exasperation. “I was drunk and sleeping next to a dead woman, Malcolm!” He closed his mouth and Sunny was happy that her words had finally shut him up. “I called you as soon as I could.”

He sighed. He had heard Sunny’s version of events, had listened to her go over the details of last night again and again. “In a way, this might work in your favor. Once the news starts running the story, this could provide Kaleidoscope with the perfect storm of publicity for anything you’re involved in.”

Sunny looked confused.

“Controversy sells,” Malcolm explained. “So if you look at it through that lens, this could be a plus for you. Once the media attaches your name to such a scandalous story—a woman found dead in the home of a professional athlete after a night of wild partying—this could prove to be a blessing in disguise.”

Sunny shrugged. As much as she wanted to have the movie opportunity, she had other things on her mind at the moment. She glanced at her purse lying on the bed, filled with the forbidden fruit. She turned her attention back to Malcolm, eager for him to leave so that she could get high again.

Malcolm rose to leave. “I’ll come back to pick you up at seven.”

Sunny frowned, confused. “Pick me up?”

He nodded. “Tonight is Abe’s charity ball. If you still want the chance to win them over, this is it. Get all dolled up and pull out your megawatt smile, and let’s go.”

Sunny nodded. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll be ready at seven.”

*   *   *

Ingrid Graham sat on the sofa in her living room, sipping some hot cocoa as she looked adoringly at her only son. Born had stopped by her apartment in Staten Island’s Arlington section, where she still lived after more than thirty years. She had raised her son in that apartment, had stuck around even after the neighborhood had declined from one of affluence to one riddled by crime and mayhem. Despite the neighborhood’s decay, it was home to Ingrid and she loved the familiarity of it—the grocers in the corner bodega knew her by name, as did all of the people in her building and in the ones surrounding it. She felt safe there. After all, no one would ever dream of fucking with Born’s mother.