Burn (6 page)

“You know how I feel,” I croaked.

“We can’t go backward. You and I are going to figure out how to make this work.”

His confidence should have made me hopeful, but it only filled me with dread.

“I want to go home now. Please.”

He walked me to my car. When he handed me my keys, dangling them from his fingertips, I had the desire to do what I did when we’d met, what Will Santon had done: overshoot my grasp for a touch. Just a little. But then Jonathan spoke.

“Until we talk, and you get your head on straight, I’m not touching you. You were right. We get reeled in, you and I. We touch and we feel good, and then we land in bed and we forget the basics.”

“Talking’s not going to fix this.”

“Neither is fucking.”

I snapped the keys from him. “We can fix us, but we’re not going to fix the world, Jonathan.”

“The world is full of assholes.”  He opened the driver’s door for me and closed it when I was safely in.

I lowered the window. “When I met you, I thought you were an asshole.”

He smiled. “You did not.”

“I did. A gorgeous asshole.”

His laugh came from deep in his chest. He bit his lip and reached out to cup my cheek but fell half an inch short. “I was an asshole for making you another conquest.” He put his hand in his pocket, and I missed the potential in that almost-touch. “Get out of here, goddess. Get some rest.”

When I got back to Echo Park, Darren was out. My face was a little swollen. I made myself an ice pack and went to the couch. I lay there with the TV muted, remembering him. The kiss we shared. His touch, the heat. I slid my hand under my cotton panties, shuddering in anticipation. I wanted to come. I wanted to want to come. I wanted to fall into my filthiest imagination and wrap myself in sexual desire.

But when I touched my opening, I found it unprepared for attention. A little fiddling got me nowhere, and I felt as though I was trying to get music from an instrument I’d never heard of. I pulled my hand away and went into an uneasy sleep.

                                                   
CHAPTER 9.
 

JONATHAN

I’d walked her to the car with few words, but not because I had nothing to say. I had plenty to say. In the time it had taken for her to forgive me for destroying her career, I’d thrown a dozen mental balls in the air, and if I spoke, I would have dropped them.

I didn’t have compassion for her situation. I had a raw empathy that made me want to hold her and whisper lies of comfort. But it wasn’t going to be all right. Things weren’t going to go back to normal. The only one way the whole thing would blow over was if she lived a life of obscurity. The recognition and success she’d earned and deserved promised to exacerbate her situation. There was absolutely no chance of people unknowing what they knew, and there was even less chance she’d drop her ambitions to protect her privacy.

If I let her go, the most likely scenario was that she’d swear off men until another dominant appeared. Then she’d fall right back into her submissive role with him.

That was not acceptable.

I had calls to Asia until well into the night. In the morning, after what felt like thirty minutes of sleep, I had Kristin find out when Eddie Milpas would be at the Loft Club. I needed to feel him out. I didn’t want to take action based only on Monica’s exploding imagination.

                                                  
CHAPTER 10.
 

MONICA

I woke at half past eight and stared at Darren’s popcorn stucco ceiling. The vertical blinds cast stripes across it, and only when my eyes hurt from looking at their odd symmetry did I get up.

I had an email from Kevin. I was tempted to delete it without reading it, but I was curious. I read on my phone while bleary-eyed and in the bathroom.

Dear Monica,

You’re not going to pick up my calls. I know you.

I feel like such a fuckup. I don’t care. I’ll put it all in writing.

I never knew what I did wrong. I should have damned my pride and waited on your porch until you told me why you left me. Really why. Not because of Tuesday nights. That could only be a symptom of some other disease.

I didn’t know what I was doing making the coalmine piece. I just did it, and it took a year. I wasn’t going to invite you. I thought if you saw it, you’d be pissed but you’d know how I felt. I figured it was the equivalent of me waiting on your porch, twenty months later.

Everyone said you were single, but you weren’t were you? When I saw you go in there with another man I wanted to eat my face off. And then you were in the garden crying on his shoulder. I can only imagine it was over the piece.

Remember how we read Blake sometimes? I thought of this one—

I told my love, I told my love,

I told her all my heart,

Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears—

Ah, she doth depart.

I went a little crazy. I knew I wanted to do cooperative work before Eclipse, and you were the first person I thought of. I was just going to mention it to you later. After we talked. But the crazy took over.

We did good work together, but you wouldn’t talk about what happened with us, even though it was all over the piece. I heard about your new boyfriend and the kind of shit you were into. I thought maybe that was what you needed from me and you couldn’t say.

Wasn’t that easy, was it?

Last night, after you left, I was pissed. And hurt. And I said a lot of shit to that dickhead about you I shouldn’t have. I’m sure he repeated it to you. In the moment I meant it because my face was busted. But now I’m too embarrassed to wait on your porch. Once we get back from Vancouver, I will.

—Kev.

I sat on the bowl and read it again. Then the Blake poem. Then the letter in full.

I was a heartless bitch, hiding behind silence and self-righteous indignation that stayed unchallenged. I thought I was taking control of my life, but I’d left a mess behind me. How many people had I done that to? My mother? She never failed to hurl some innocent-sounding cruelty at me, but I’d cut her off and call it independence.

Everything hurt. I’d woken up with no more than a dark spot under my eye, but it weighed down half my face. My back felt twisted and weak, aching as if I’d lifted a piano up the stairs. I didn’t know what to do about my pain, or even if anything needed doing.

My phone blooped at nine a.m. exactly.

—How’s the eye?—

I’d never answered a nine a.m. text, but after the night before, and Kevin’s email, I thought I ought to.

—You should see the other guy—

There was a longer pause than usual. I imagined him reading my text, so surprised I answered he had to take a second to organize himself.

—I feel your hands on the phone—

I caressed the little plastic and metal box like a lover, feeling a warmth and tingle between my legs that had been missing the night before.

—
I have to go to work. Lunch shift
—

—I know—

Asshole. Gorgeous asshole.

                                                  
CHAPTER 11.
 

JONATHAN

“I really could have used you guys last night,” I said, blaming Will for something that wasn’t his fault. Margie, the money source, had moved his whole team onto a divorce case with triangulations from Flintridge, to Santa Monica, to Monterey Park, and back. I could have deduced who was splitting up if I cared.

Santon seemed unperturbed by what had happened to Monica. We sat at a table at the Loft Club. Santon didn’t seem impressed by the club at all. A mark in his favor.

He slid his hand over his glass in a way that looked like a threat. “I can’t get into the house, so even if one of my guys was there, I make no guarantee it wouldn’t have gone down that way.”

“Do you have anything on this guy? Or are my hands tied?”

“We found some warrants in Idaho. He led an anti-war protest outside Boise city hall and got picked up for inciting a riot. He dropped out of sight a month after he did his thirty days and no one up there actually gave a shit when he showed up down here. Parole officer my guy talked to never thought of him as a criminal. Then we found two open. One battery charge. A DUI. Different parole officers.”

I scanned the club. Larry poured drinks. Guys in suits laughed at the bar. I expected Eddie soon, and I wanted to be done with Santon before he arrived.

“The cameras?” I asked. “Anything?”

“We got taken off before we found out how it was done and who ordered the job. We did track the serial numbers though. Followed the money.”

He paused, and I rotated my hand at the wrist for him to continue. He didn’t. The guy was unflappable.

“Well? Where did it come from?”

“You.”

I snorted a laugh and drank the last mouthful of whiskey. “Fucking fantastic. Was it out of Ibiza?”

“Canary Islands. Someone’s got their fingers in your pie.”

“Apparently.” I held out my hand. “I appreciate you coming here to finish this off.”

Santon took it, and we shook. “Call me in a couple of weeks when things free up.”

“Will do.”

He left, and I went down to the locker room, chewing on what the fuck was happening with the Canary Island trust. Kevin certainly didn’t have the right kind of mind or connections. It was possible I was underestimating him. It was also possible I had latched onto him because I despised him.

The club’s huge lot had a driving range, tennis courts, batting cages, and a fake pitcher’s mound and home plate. The owner had owned a major league team or two, and he kept baseball in the club even if the facilities weren’t used much. Eddie and I used it more than any other two members. I’d set up the time with him to feel him out about Monica. Maybe I could convince him to try another marketing angle, any other angle, because I knew what he wanted to do was putting her through hell.

I rubbed the ball, scraping the fake pitcher’s mound under my cleat. Eddie stood in the batter’s box. Such a cocky fuck. Guy hit .209 on his best season.

“Come on, Drazen!”

I waved him off, getting ready for my pitch. Eddie’s stance was as comical as it had been at Penn. “Eddie! You constipated?”

“What?”

“You’re standing there with your ass out.”

“Fuck you.”

“No, fuck
you.
” I threw. He hit it to the left field, smacking a target marked SINGLE before it puckered the nylon mesh. A minor miracle. I caught a glimpse of the speed clock to my right. Sixty-five. My shit was rusty. Or I was distracted.

After his success connecting bat to ball the first time, Eddie was back in the box, looking triumphant.

I took another ball from the bucket. “I heard you met with Monica Faulkner.”

“She’s a hot number.” Eddie whipped the bat around before getting into constipation position. “You buy her song or you’re just keeping her from singing it?”

I fingered the ball. “Why?”

“We want it, and she’s not giving it up.”

“It’s her song.”

“It’s all about collaring and floor licking. Got you written all over it.” He pointed the bat at me. “I want it. It’s money. I think you’re keeping her from releasing it.”

I threw a strike. Seventy-five, but my elbow had snapped a little from the exertion. I wasn’t pulling from the shoulder. “You’re giving me a lot of credit.”

“You’re the master.”

I hated it. I hated knowing the undertone of what he meant, because someone like Eddie trivialized something I took seriously.

“Doesn’t work like that, douchebag,” I called out.

I threw another strike, well inside the zone. Clocked at seventy-seven, but it didn’t jerk my elbow.

“Then help me understand ‘the point.’”

“The point is you can’t trick her out like a whore and put her on stage.”

“Come on, man. Give the world a taste of what you got.”

When I threw the next pitch, he connected. Hard. I stuck my glove in front of me and caught it before it hit me in the nuts.

“Sorry, O’Drassen.” He used my great-grandfather’s name from the old country when he wanted to tease me. It bothered me in college, and he’d latched on to it. I was setting up the next pitch when Eddie stepped out of the box. “Seriously, I want her.
We
want her. She’s got that thing. You know the thing. The thing I can sell. Every man in the room will want to fuck her.”

“What?” I had it coming. I’d been the joker, the storyteller, the adventurer. I’d been the guy making cracks about who I fucked, and where, and how many times, over beers. Meanwhile, I’d defended Jessica from every unkind word hurled behind her back. Why should anyone think I gave a shit? “She won’t fuck you, Ed.”

“Why not? I’m a record executive,” he joked.

Despite the fact that he was kidding, the images came to mind like a neighbor I avoided. Her eyes half closed. Eddie on top of her, pushing one of her legs up as he pumped into her, and her saying his name when she came. Over and over. Then the images came faster. Her laughing with him. Bending over for him. Holding his hand. Looking up at him with love, a smile spread across her face while he thought of using her and dumping her.

I shook it off. I was being an adolescent. “Get in the goddamn box.”

“All right. Sorry, man. I didn’t know she meant something to you.”

When I felt the ice in my chest and my mind went completely and utterly clear, I should have known. I’d spent a long time getting my temper under control, and I knew it well. My temper wasn’t a fire burning out in a confused jumble of thoughts; it was a frozen lucidity, a clarity of intention, whose sole purpose was to harm. I’d learned the warning signs, but on the mound, I fooled myself into thinking I was concentrating on the strike zone.