Secrets and Ink (5 page)

I recognized my mistake right away. I saw from the corner of my eye Olly eagerly prattling on, and the way he kept glancing at me, I knew the topic of conversation was not limited to beans.

“What did he want?” I asked Olly later, when I caught him alone.

He stuck his nose in the air. “Oh, nothing.”

“Nothing, my ass. You two chatted for five minutes at least.”

“He was very interested in the plight of the South American organic coffee grower. Did you know he’s even hunkier up close than from a distance? Maybe it’s his aftershave.”

I considered throttling Olly and hiding his body in the freezer. But then I realized it would be discovered and Nick might be sent to investigate the murder. Damn.

“I think he’s kinda bland,” I declared.

Olly remained unpersuaded. “Not with those eyes. They’re so…like, intense. You know what I mean?”

“No, I don’t,” I said between clenched teeth.

“I’d totally do him, even though he’s old.”

When Olly smiled, a couple of dimples appeared on his face. I usually found them endearing. Not this time. The idea of murder grew attractive again, so I marched away.

In my experience, physical exercise was the best form of stress release. Second only to good sex. Since the chances of me getting laid were nil, I spent an hour in the Burbank YMCA’s swimming pool after work the next day. I’d always loved water; as a kid I’d spent entire summers in the swimming pool. After getting smacked down by gravity, I’d done hydrotherapy as part of my treatment, and once I’d gotten better I’d started swimming regularly.

Stroke by stroke, the water leached the tension from my muscles and replaced it with the good kind of fatigue. I drove home in a state of languor, doing twenty-five in the thirty-five zone. It was a perfect summer evening, warm but not hot, and a breeze ruffled the aging pines lining my street.

When I found Nick sitting on the stairs leading up to my apartment, I hardly batted an eyelash. “You’re harder to get rid of than bedbugs,” I said, but my words had no true bite. Unlike bedbugs.

He remained in his spot on the steps, so he had to tilt his head up for our eyes to meet. His lips quirked to the side in a hint of a smile. “Your hair’s wet.”

“I was swimming at the Y,” I said, brushing my bangs to the side.

He held up plastic container and rattled it. “I brought a present.”

I looked. “Black licorice. Olly told you, didn’t he?”

Nick pushed himself up and nodded. “He spilled the beans. Can I come in?”

The sun hadn’t gone down yet, but a cricket, lured out by the cooler air, began to chirp nearby. I didn’t have it in me to be contrary. “Fine.”

I led him through the living room and kitchen and opened the back door. It was stuffy inside because I hadn’t turned on the A/C. “We can sit on the balcony. It’s nice this time of day.”

He wandered out and took one of the two lounge chairs.

“Do you want something to drink?” I asked. “I have most of a bottle of wine somewhere, left over from cooking. No, wait, there’s beer in the fridge.”

“I’ll have what you’re having.”

“Suit yourself.” I poured two glasses of juice and joined him outside.

He studied the bright orange liquid with suspicion. “What is this?”

“Organic carrot-orange.”

He took a sip. “Tastes appallingly healthy.”

“It is. I’m addicted to it. It’ll grow on you, trust me. Now hand them over.”

He placed the box into my outstretched hand. I popped the lid open and dropped a few candies into my mouth.

He drank some juice, grimaced and drank some more. “Nice view.”

“Pfft.” My view mostly consisted of the roof of the neighbor’s garage, a few trees and a slice of sky beyond.

“Well, it’s peaceful,” he corrected himself.

“After a fashion. I once sat here and watched a raven and a hawk fighting over the dead body of a small bird. I don’t know what that was, maybe a mockingbird.”

“Really? They fought?” He didn’t have the hard interrogator tone like last time we met. We could’ve been a couple of old buddies shooting shit.

“Well, it was more like a battle of wills.”

“Who won?”

“The hawk. I’ve seen him around since. Or her. I’m not good with birds.” I was not good with many things, like figuring out what the heck he wanted. So I let us sink into silence. He got us into this odd situation; I shouldn’t be the one doing all the work digging us out. However, he seemed content watching a lone squirrel doing acrobatic maneuvers on the nearest tree. Pancake used to go nuts watching squirrels and birds, making chirrupy sounds while her whiskers twitched from excitement. I missed that damn cat.

I couldn’t contain my curiosity anymore. “Nick?”

“Hm?”

“Why are you here?”

He turned his attention from the squirrel to me. “You have a tendency to flee, so I figured if I cornered you at home you’d have nowhere to run.”

I had a feeling he enjoyed stringing me along. “That was a brilliant strategy, General Patton, but why are you really here?”

He looked me straight in the eye. “I don’t see why we can’t be friends.”

“You can’t be that hard up for company.”

“Well, maybe I just like you, and I could use a friend who’s not a cop. You’re pleasant enough company when you’re not throwing a fit.”

Instead of being annoying, his words tickled me. I had to admit, I found him pleasant enough company too when I wasn’t throwing a fit. But I had to clear up something. “What about my criminal past? Won’t you get in trouble for hanging out with a delinquent?”

“Your juvenile records are sealed. As far as I’m concerned everyone’s allowed a few mistakes, although I wonder why you…”

“Sold my nubile body to strangers?”

“Yes, that’s exactly how I was going to put it. At first I thought you were another runaway, but no. You lived with your parents in a big house in South Pasadena. Your father had a good job at the jet propulsion laboratory. Were they abusive?”

The mere suggestion horrified me. “No! My parents were perfectly nice. Bewildered and lost for a clue what to do with me, but never raised a hand to me.”

“Then why?”

“Do you wanna know the truth?”

“That’s why asked.”

Well, there it went—my big secret. “Since I was little, I didn’t feel comfortable in my own skin. Like something was wrong with me. Being Sasha was becoming another person—confident, sexy, exotic and sinful. It was dangerous and thrilling, and it made me confident. I can’t explain any better. Don’t you feel different when you put on your uniform?”

“That’s hardly the same.”

“I know, but it’s an identity. I knew who I was as Sasha.”

“And who are you now?”

“Boring old Jem.”

“I think you underestimate yourself. I haven’t had a boring moment around you yet.”

I snorted. “Give it time.”

“That’s the plan. So you dropped the role playing after the arrest?”

“Ehrm…”

“You didn’t get arrested again. I checked.”

Did he now? Well, not all history lay in police records. “I didn’t pick up johns in Hollywood, but I didn’t go straight either. Sure, I kept my head down that year, finished high school, but the moment I turned eighteen, I moved out and in with my friend Riley.”

“Riley?”

“Yeah. Riley Moore. We had a place in WeHo… Well, technically in Hollywood, on the wrong side of LaBrea, but it was West Hollywood to us. Four of us shacked up in a two-bedroom, but half the time a fifth or sixth person crashed on the couch or whatever horizontal surface they found. We had odd jobs here and there, I shook my money maker at clubs, various stuff. None of it exactly illegal, but not up and up either. Some sugar daddies on the side. No, I didn’t go beige till years later.”

“Why then?”

“You could say Karma caught up with me. Literally. I called her a bitch, and she put a hex on me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Ms. Karma Jones, from the Los Angeles Department of Transportation. I must say, I had it coming. She was only doing her job.”

“Be serious.”

“I’m dead serious. I don’t envy meter maids—I mean traffic officers. They have belligerent assholes hurling insults at them day in and day out. It makes them cranky. Although, I think Ms. Jones was cranky to begin with. I would be, with a name like that. Her parents must’ve been some sick bastards.”

“You are serious.”

“I told you I was. I apologized to her later, but it didn’t go down like in the movies. Neither of us said anything deep and profound, and there was absolutely no hugging. If I’d tried to hug Ms. Jones, she would’ve smacked me upside the head. And it made no difference about the curse—what was done, was done. My whole life went south three days after she had my car booted and towed. For starters, a house fell on me.”

He shook his head as if he didn’t believe me. “Oh, c’mon.”

I popped a few more candies into my mouth and put the box down on the floor. Story-time was just warming up. “It was a beautiful summer day and I was driving around in the hills, looking for this guy who sold pot, but I got lost, and then the car died. It was Riley’s, because mine was at the pound. So I rolled that piece of junk to a curb and started trekking back to the main road, thinking I could hitch a ride from there. I walked past this one lot. It was really steep; you wouldn’t think anyone could build a house there. They built it anyway but didn’t do it right because the whole thing slid off the side of the hill. Huge mess. It was fenced off with No Trespassing signs everywhere.”

“And you trespassed?” He said it like he had me all figured out.

“Not for fun. I heard crying. I climbed over the fence, went closer and saw a calico kitten stuck between a wall and another piece of wall. I crawled in to dig her out, and the next thing I remember is waking up in the hospital. I was told the rest of the house collapsed on me.”

“That was a dumb thing to do.” Nick had a talent for pointing out the obvious.

“So it was. After the amount of stupid shit I’d gotten away with, I got smacked down when I was doing something nice for a change. You know, up till that point I thought I was invincible, but in the hospital bed, I felt so fragile—like if you poked me I would’ve crumbled. But the worst was seeing my family there. My dad, brother, sister, but especially my mom, with her eyes red from crying and trying act calm so as not to scare me.”

As the setting sun painted us in a golden glow, the world seemed to slow down. Nick silently nodded. It felt good to unburden myself. Cops were a lot like priests, weren’t they? Or shrinks. Although I’d never been to either, so I was working on assumptions.

“How badly were you hurt?” I could’ve sworn I heard concern in his voice.

I decided to dish it all out and see if it bothered him. “A bunch of broken bones. I had to do physical therapy even after they healed. And I got hit on the noggin pretty bad—it scrambled my brain enough for me to have speech problems for a while. That was the most frustrating part. I knew what I wanted to say, but the words didn’t cooperate.”

“So that’s why you have all those books now?”

“I needed a hobby to fill the time after I stopped partying, and reading keeps me out of trouble.”

He nodded, more to himself than me. “Brain injury explains your emotional outbursts.”

“What, now you’re a nurse too, like my sister?” I knew I should’ve cut him some slack—cops were liable to learn all sorts of stuff related to bodily injuries.

He surprised me. “My grandfather started having them after his first stroke. He got incredibly angry out of nowhere. It was frightening to me as a kid.”

“Oh.” His admission made me less self-conscious about my outbursts. “It’s more likely to happen when I’m tired, but it’s getting better.”

“Young brains heal faster. Still, it must have been a tough thing to deal with.”

Wasn’t that the truth. “None of the guys I called friends visited me in the hospital. Riley only came by once. But my family was there, and supportive, after the shit I’d put them through. I would have to be a real asshole to go on as before. So you see, I became a responsible and upstanding citizen out of guilt.”

He shrugged. “As good a reason as any.”

“Okay. Tit for tat. Why would you want to be friends if you find me repulsive?”

Nick squinted at me. “Where did you get that from?”

“From the way you looked at me the other night. When you saw the tattoo. You had the expression of a man who touched dog shit with his bare hands.”

“I didn’t—”

“The same look you gave me on the night of the arrest. I’ll never forget it.”

“Oh.” Nick sank back in his chair, and a dark cloud came over his expression. His eyes were on me, but he seemed to be looking inward.

“Ha!” I said triumphantly, although I didn’t know what I was so proud of.

Nick shook himself and leaned toward me, his eyes clear and focused now. “You’re wrong. I don’t know what you saw in my face, but my disgust was for myself alone.”

I didn’t believe him. “How so?”

“Isn’t it obvious? When I arrested you, I was aroused, and that was just plain wrong. I am an officer of the law.”

“Cops are human too.”

His expression twisted. “I was turned on by a teenager. That’s sick.”

“So? I was coming on to you pretty hard. It’s not like you were gonna actually fuck me.”

He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. The other night when I saw your spider tattoo, it came back rushing back, and all I could see was that sixteen-year-old boy.”

“Seventeen.”

Nick said nothing.

Was he for real? I blinked away my preconceptions and studied him inch by inch. I took in the serious eyes under the serious brows, the serious set of his jaws… Hell, even his ears were as serious a three-alarm fire. No, make it five-alarm. “You don’t give yourself a break, do you?”

“Not in the job description. Knowing you were that kid keeps messing with my head. I can’t help it. I’d like to get to know you better, though.”

I shook my head. “As a friend, can I tell you when I think you’re a knucklehead?”

“Sure,” he said, and the tension melted from his expression.

We clinked our glasses on it. The sun slipped below the horizon. We watched as the purple turned into gray and then indigo. Neither of us said a word, but it didn’t feel awkward or weird. We had a connection, I was certain. I was willing to settle for friendship, but I doubted I could stop wishing for more.